trobadora: Cold Comfort (Ten/Jack) [R]
Title: Cold Comfort
Author: trobadora
Pairing: Jack Harkness/Tenth Doctor
Rating: R
Warnings/spoilers: Consent issues. Spoilers for Children of Earth.
Challenge: Summer Holidays
Prompt group: 15: memory - the past - absolution - forgiveness
Summary: Jack nods, thoughtfully. "So you kill me, you fuck me, and - well, what's next? Thrilling, I have to say."
A/N: Many thanks to wojelah for her help and encouragement!
ETA: There's a DVD commentary for this by janne_d here.
~*~
There was a camera in the room.
There was a camera, recording everything, and this is how the Doctor knows.
He watches, closely, several times, watches Jack, watches Stephen, watches Jack kill Stephen.
Alice, imploring her father: "Dad, no!"
Johnson, the assassin, urging him on: "Captain!"
The Captain wins out over the father.
The Doctor watches, and watches again, absorbing every detail, every twitch of muscle, every last desperate look.
Then, with a decisive movement, he flicks on his sonic screwdriver and destroys the recording.
He spends several hours tracking down every other instance of this recording and destroys those, too.
It's one small thing he can do.
Right now, the only thing.
~*~
It's easy for the Doctor to find Jack when he really wants to. His immortality is, after all, an impossible Fact; it stands out among the timelines, this alone immutable, this alone always unchanged.
He takes one look and steps back into the TARDIS, moves a few months into the future of Jack's personal, convoluted timeline.
No, not yet, either.
For the next year or so, he haphazardly trails after Jack in between his own adventures, never quite catching up, never quite losing sight.
Waiting.
Waiting for that moment to come, the right time.
~*~
On the third moon of Bryl he hears the hydrogen-breathing Brylians tell stories about a nameless traveller who helped them challenge the Selvakian pirates, blew up their flagship and flew off with the frigate he'd commandeered for the purpose. No one seems to have spoken more than a handful of words to him. They call him the Captain.
The Doctor snorts. Jack's gained himself a Time Lord name.
Well, if anyone who didn't come from the Academy ever had the right to choose one, it's Captain Jack Harkness.
~*~
On Abraxis Prime, late 49th century, he's too early - Jack is still here. He decides to watch. There's no substitute for personal observation, after all.
It's the middle of the Terobraxian war of independence against the ruling Abraxians, and Jack is saving people again. It's become a habit, it seems. But the way he goes about it ...
Any other time, the Doctor would have shuddered. Any other time, the Doctor would have stopped him.
Not now.
Now is not that time.
Now, the Doctor watches as Jack sneaks into the Abraxian general's headquarters and calmly breaks the woman's neck, destroying the orders she was about to sign.
That would have been the Massacre of Braxis Day. Jack knew it didn't happen, of course - it's in the history books, after all, the massacre that almost was, the narrowly avoided disaster. Jack isn't interfering with the timeline; he's not that stupid. He's just taking more of history into his own hands, onto his own shoulders.
The Doctor watches as Jack looks down at the general's corpse and fades into the shadows.
~*~
On P'trl'ksst, Jack seems to have not only saved the queen of the insectoid P'trl species from a Rutan infiltration attempt, but also charmed said queen into something highly experimental, dubiously pleasurable and definitely lethal.
The Doctor decides it's time.
~*~
He finds Jack back in the twenty-first century, in a bar on an Elavanian space station, of all places, chatting with a Trlirrlian triad, of all people. Oxygen atmosphere, of course - the Trlirrlian is wearing an environmental suit. What it's doing in a bar when it can't even drink is anyone's guess.
Jack's more than making up for all three of the Trlirrlian's heads, though, and is past sloshed and well into completely blotto by the time the Doctor cuts in.
"Captain", the Doctor says. Just that word.
"Doc - Doctor?" Jack's tongue stumbles over the syllables. He sets down his drink, some disgusting Elavanian cocktail, no doubt.
The Trlirrlian takes one look at the Doctor's expression, catches a hint and leaves.
"Hey!" Jack slurs a complaint. "We were talking here!"
The Doctor ignores it, produces a flask and quickly pours its contents into Jack's glass. "Drink that."
Jack eyes him blearily and shrugs. "Whatever." With a quick gulp, he downs the liquid. "Now what?"
The Doctor remains quiet, and it only takes a moment. When Jack falls over, the Doctor carries him out, flashing psychic paper at the innkeeper to keep him from interfering.
~*~
He manages to deposit Jack on a sofa in one of the TARDIS's many rooms just before he revives. A convulsive gasp, and Jack is among the living again.
A far gentler death, a far more comfortable resurrection than most he's experienced in recent memory.
"Ouch." It seems to take Jack a moment to get his bearings, to take in his surroundings, take a deep breath of air.
His next breath, the Doctor catches with his own lips.
Jack, being Jack, goes with it as soon as he's realised who's kissing him - possibly before. The Doctor wouldn't bet on either.
It doesn't matter.
Much.
He divests Jack of his clothing with deft fingers, but doesn't bother to do more than shrug off his coat and open his trousers for himself. Pushing Jack into the sofa, plundering his mouth, his fingers pushing roughly into Jack's body ... and Jack's body yields to him, welcomes him, even now, even like this ...
It's fast and dirty, pushing against Jack, thrusting into that warm body, Jack's legs wrapping around him, his own hand wrapping around Jack's cock, pulling roughly ... Jack jerks violently underneath him, but the Doctor pays it no mind, he simply drives into Jack again and again, sharp thrusts of his hips, one-two-three, and he comes, spilling himself into the other man until, almost as an afterthought, he remembers to bring Jack off as well.
He rests against Jack's flushed body only for a moment; then he pulls out and sits back, adjusting his clothing, watching.
Waiting, again.
Jack stretches lazily, contently. He yawns.
Then his eyes widen in realisation, and he's fully awake and sitting up within an instant. "You poisoned me!"
The Doctor shrugs. "Seemed like the quickest way to get you sober," he says blithely.
Jack blinks. "You're cold."
"You're a killer."
Jack flinches, but only a little. "So what else is new?"
The Doctor merely looks at him.
Jack swallows. "So," he says, "I take it you heard."
Never slow on the uptake, that one.
"I heard," the Doctor agrees gravely. "You went and delivered human children to Trlirrlian drug dealers back in 1965, got Torchwood blown up in 2010, nearly lost 10% of humanity's children to a bunch of addicts, used your own grandson as a weapon, and - what, went drinking with a Trlirrlian afterward?"
Jack closes his eyes. "I didn't know they were Trlirrlian then. Not that it'd have done us any good - they completely blocked communications, as you must know. The guy I was talking to was law enforcement, not that it matters now."
"You killed them," the Doctor agrees. Coldly.
"Yeah." Jack opens his eyes and stares at the Doctor. "Would do it again, too."
The Doctor nods, slowly, very slowly, and leans forward. "Would you kill your grandson again, too?"
Jack flinches back. His face, bleary until now, grows hard. "Given the same choice, you mean? Fucking right I would."
"I suppose that means you're not just a killer. You're a cold-blooded one."
"I know full well what it makes me! Spare me the fucking platitudes. Christ." Jack throws himself down on the sofa again, a forearm covering his eyes.
The Doctor looks at him. Jack's naked body, unchanged, unchanging. He can take any amount of punishment, survive any amount of destruction, and he'll always come back unchanged.
Outwardly.
"Very well," he says, quietly, and puts his hand on Jack's flat stomach, feeling the shudder that runs through the other man at the touch.
Jack opens his eyes, looks at him with a pensive expression.
"Not that I'm complaining, but why this?" Jack gestures between them. "Why now?"
The Doctor tilts his head at Jack, examining him. "Perhaps just because I could."
Jack snorts and raises himself onto his elbows. "You always could have, and you know it. You only fuck killers? Or, what, you have a thing for questionable consent and only go for it when the other guy's feelings don't matter?" Impatiently: "What?"
From any other man, that would have been a condemnation. Not from him. Jack is perfectly matter-of-fact.
And so is the Doctor: "Perhaps."
Jack nods, thoughtfully. "So you kill me, you fuck me, and - well, what's next? Thrilling, I have to say."
"You don't seem surprised."
Jack rolls his eyes. "I'm not one of your starry-eyed young companions, Doc - haven't been in a long time. Maybe I never was."
And that's true, frighteningly so - Jack's not blind, after all, and he's known him too long. He knows full well what the Doctor is capable of. He knows the Doctor's darkness, his cruelty, just as well as his cowardice and dithering, his idealism and his courage. That he still loves him is a miracle.
But love him he does, even now, even here. Of that there is no doubt.
Jack's gift has always been acceptance. He can accept a friend's casual cruelty, can love the man who abandoned him, can suffer loss after loss and still rebuild, can die and revive over and over again and retain the will to live - but he's a social creature, and this time, too many of his ties have been severed.
He's been stripped of too much, and the phantom pain will not relent. He's made the impossible choice, drawn that impossible line, and he's paid the price. He gave hostages to fortune, and look where it ended. He's not ready to do it again.
The last thing he needs right now is the threat of more of that.
He needs the Doctor's cruelty, needs his coldness - warmth and friendship and comfort are only preludes to loss, and Jack has no tolerance left for any of them. Harshness, he can deal with - it's gentleness that would break him.
He'll need a long time till he can stand it again.
The Doctor knows; he's been there. There was no one there for him, then; it's one thing he can do for Jack, at least.
Now that Jack has caught up with him.
~*~
"So, you gonna keep me here?" Jack asks after a while. "Your own personal fucktoy?" He leers at the Doctor.
"I wouldn't mind," the Doctor replies, rolling the idea round in his mind. "Could keep you for a long time, couldn't I? And it would be convenient."
He's almost serious - much too serious even for his own liking. Jack must see that.
But Jack, as always, is utterly unimpressed.
"Mmmm," he hums and stretches provocatively, showing off his body. "Never been a kept man before."
~*~
Jack is perfectly happy to wake up with a cock inside him. Or fingers, with or without a mouth on his cock at the same time. The Doctor isn't surprised. Sex is easy for Jack, after all.
The immortal man doesn't need much sleep, but here in the TARDIS, he's fallen into the habit of sleeping nearly as much as a normal human would. They hover in the vortex, between anywhere and nowhere, and their days are spent tinkering with the TARDIS, interspersed with the occasional terse conversation. At night, they alternate between sleep and sex, sex and more sleep. It suits the Doctor just right, right now.
Right now, Jack's wrists are wrapped tightly into the Doctor's belt, tied to the bedframe, and Jack is sound asleep again. The Doctor - who had had to run out to fiddle with the dimensional stabiliser because he'd just had a brilliant idea how to increase its performance by at least 20%, and there was no way that could wait - studies him for a moment as he walks back into the bedroom. He opens his trousers, straddles Jack's chest and nudges Jack's lips with his cock.
Jack is perfectly happy to wake up with a cock seeking entrance to his mouth.
"You do realise I'm not going to be magically healed by the miraculous powers of your manhood," Jack says afterwards, drily.
The Doctor snorts and undoes the belt, releasing Jack's hands. "You've been reading that stuff again, haven't you?"
Jack shrugs, rubbing his wrists. "Plenty of time."
The Doctor eyes him critically. "This isn't about healing. You know that."
"Whatever."
Jack does know, obviously; he's just chattering. Jack's version of normalcy is banter, and it's a reflex to fall back into it. A self-defence mechanism. A good sign.
Probably.
Jack smirks. "Want to see if my magic cock can heal you?"
The Doctor rolls his eyes. "Oh, come here, you."
~*~
"Seriously, though," Jack asks some days later. "You gonna keep me here?" Casually curious. Unperturbed.
"You're not complaining, are you?" Harshly - more harshly than necessary, perhaps, but it's uncomfortable, Jack's acceptance, it's always been. The Doctor doesn't like it.
Except when he does.
Jack smirks. "Would it matter if I did? You basically abducted me, after all. Does it matter if I want it?"
Prison or safe haven; is there a difference?
The Doctor looks at him coldly. "You always want it."
Jack only laughs.
~*~
"Where are we going?"
They're in the control room. Time to move on. Time to go somewhere. They can't hover in the vortex forever, after all.
Well, theoretically ...
The Doctor shrugs off the thought.
"Anywhere. Any particular place you want to go? Just say the word."
It's not like he cares right now, after all.
Jack hesitates for a moment. "Cardiff," he says decisively. "Third November 2008."
The Doctor recognises the challenge.
With anyone else, the Doctor would tell him it's a bad idea. Would tell him why they can't, why it's too dangerous. Would say no.
But this is Jack, who knows all that well enough. This isn't about changing things; Jack's just being masochistic. And what's time travel good for if you can't occasionally indulge your masochism?
"Allons-y!" he cries, and they're off.
~*~
They stay back, out of sight, and Jack stares at the two young people with burning eyes.
Ianto Jones and Toshiko Sato, getting rip-roaringly drunk after some Torchwood event or other.
Dead people, laughing.
But it's not they who are the ghosts, the Doctor thinks.
Jack himself - his younger part - isn't here; the time frame was carefully chosen. Jack knows what he's about: no amount of care, no perception filter even would keep him or the Doctor out of his own sight, after all.
The Doctor stands beside him, waiting. Waiting for something. He's not sure what exactly it is, but he'll know it when he sees it.
"Where is he buried?"
Present tense, even in the sight of the man, very much alive right here, right now.
And that is it.
~*~
They find out where Ianto's last resting place is, and the Doctor carefully picks a time when they'll be alone in the graveyard. They walk through the rainy dusk like ghosts, long coats billowing, and come to a stop in front of a simple gravestone.
Jack goes berserk the moment he sees the inscription:
IANTO JONES
WRIT IN WATER
"That little shit!" he seethes.
"His doing?" the Doctor asks curiously. "Well, would be pretty heartless from someone else, I suppose!"
"Aimed at me, not him", Jack grumbles. He hesitates, then becomes serious. "He asked me to remember him, you know. That - that there, that's just his way of making sure I will. Irritating me into remembrance, even from beyond the grave. So very Ianto." He sighs.
The Doctor snorts. "Knew you well, didn't he?"
"As well as ..." Jack swallows the rest of the sentence.
The Doctor nods. "As well as ... - that's pretty well, all in all, isn't it?"
Jack's smile is fond but wry. "You would know."
They leave the graveyard as they came, ghosts in the darkness, unseen and unknown.
~*~
Back in the TARDIS, Jack pushes the Doctor against the controls, pushes the coat off his shoulders and rids himself of his own with a practiced shrug. His thigh is hard between the Doctor's, and his grip is bruising. The console is digging into the Doctor's back. They claw at each other, hands and mouths greedy, leaving bruises and scratches and bite marks in their wake.
Jack fucks him right there on the floor, hard and unyielding behind him, inside him, and the harsh metal grating of the floor digging into his hands and knees.
They fall asleep there on the unforgiving metal, the grating pressing patterns into their bare skin.
~*~
"Why this? Why now?" Jack's question still hovers between them, but the Doctor gives him no better answer than before, and Jack is nothing if not patient. He's waited several human lifetimes for the Doctor; he's obviously decided he doesn't mind waiting some more.
It's weeks before Jack forces the issue.
"I'm not you, Jack," the Doctor huffs, backed into a corner. "I don't jump into bed with anything that moves. And I won't ..."
"What? Inflict yourself on some innocent little thing?" Jack's voice is cutting. "You're underestimating people again."
"I won't gloss over that part of myself", the Doctor corrects. He knows Jack will recognise which part he means. "Not with this. And I won't touch someone who can't meet it. Not any more."
Jack gives a surprised nod. Acknowledgement. Understanding. "When you put it like that ..."
It's something the Doctor hadn't fully admitted to himself until just now, when he had to put it into words. But it's true. The Time War changed things for him, irrevocably, and he needs ... As much as he needs his human companions, as much as he needs them to keep him going and to hold him back, he also needs someone he can meet on that other level.
Someone who knows the part of him that has no warmth, no mercy, no human compassion.
Someone like ...
The Master.
Or Jack.
The Master was always his twin, his mirror, but he'd lost the part of him that understood more than pain and destruction long before he died. He'd lost so much in his descent into madness, all for the drums, the never-ending drumming ...
But while the Master had moved away from him, becoming more and more unreachable, Jack had moved towards him, catching up.
Now he's there.
Now they're here: two people outside ordinary time, judge and jury and executioner at times, two people who, sometimes, cannot stand human warmth any more.
Two people who have each other when they need to feel the cold.
He sees it in Jack's eyes, right here, right now: cold and needy. Sees it in the cruel slant of his mouth, feels it in hard lips on his own, the bruising grip of his hands. They grant no mercy, give no pardon, and this is how they can live.
There is no forgiveness. And here, now, they stop pretending there will be.
They live.
~end~
Author: trobadora
Pairing: Jack Harkness/Tenth Doctor
Rating: R
Warnings/spoilers: Consent issues. Spoilers for Children of Earth.
Challenge: Summer Holidays
Prompt group: 15: memory - the past - absolution - forgiveness
Summary: Jack nods, thoughtfully. "So you kill me, you fuck me, and - well, what's next? Thrilling, I have to say."
A/N: Many thanks to wojelah for her help and encouragement!
ETA: There's a DVD commentary for this by janne_d here.
~*~
There was a camera in the room.
There was a camera, recording everything, and this is how the Doctor knows.
He watches, closely, several times, watches Jack, watches Stephen, watches Jack kill Stephen.
Alice, imploring her father: "Dad, no!"
Johnson, the assassin, urging him on: "Captain!"
The Captain wins out over the father.
The Doctor watches, and watches again, absorbing every detail, every twitch of muscle, every last desperate look.
Then, with a decisive movement, he flicks on his sonic screwdriver and destroys the recording.
He spends several hours tracking down every other instance of this recording and destroys those, too.
It's one small thing he can do.
Right now, the only thing.
~*~
It's easy for the Doctor to find Jack when he really wants to. His immortality is, after all, an impossible Fact; it stands out among the timelines, this alone immutable, this alone always unchanged.
He takes one look and steps back into the TARDIS, moves a few months into the future of Jack's personal, convoluted timeline.
No, not yet, either.
For the next year or so, he haphazardly trails after Jack in between his own adventures, never quite catching up, never quite losing sight.
Waiting.
Waiting for that moment to come, the right time.
~*~
On the third moon of Bryl he hears the hydrogen-breathing Brylians tell stories about a nameless traveller who helped them challenge the Selvakian pirates, blew up their flagship and flew off with the frigate he'd commandeered for the purpose. No one seems to have spoken more than a handful of words to him. They call him the Captain.
The Doctor snorts. Jack's gained himself a Time Lord name.
Well, if anyone who didn't come from the Academy ever had the right to choose one, it's Captain Jack Harkness.
~*~
On Abraxis Prime, late 49th century, he's too early - Jack is still here. He decides to watch. There's no substitute for personal observation, after all.
It's the middle of the Terobraxian war of independence against the ruling Abraxians, and Jack is saving people again. It's become a habit, it seems. But the way he goes about it ...
Any other time, the Doctor would have shuddered. Any other time, the Doctor would have stopped him.
Not now.
Now is not that time.
Now, the Doctor watches as Jack sneaks into the Abraxian general's headquarters and calmly breaks the woman's neck, destroying the orders she was about to sign.
That would have been the Massacre of Braxis Day. Jack knew it didn't happen, of course - it's in the history books, after all, the massacre that almost was, the narrowly avoided disaster. Jack isn't interfering with the timeline; he's not that stupid. He's just taking more of history into his own hands, onto his own shoulders.
The Doctor watches as Jack looks down at the general's corpse and fades into the shadows.
~*~
On P'trl'ksst, Jack seems to have not only saved the queen of the insectoid P'trl species from a Rutan infiltration attempt, but also charmed said queen into something highly experimental, dubiously pleasurable and definitely lethal.
The Doctor decides it's time.
~*~
He finds Jack back in the twenty-first century, in a bar on an Elavanian space station, of all places, chatting with a Trlirrlian triad, of all people. Oxygen atmosphere, of course - the Trlirrlian is wearing an environmental suit. What it's doing in a bar when it can't even drink is anyone's guess.
Jack's more than making up for all three of the Trlirrlian's heads, though, and is past sloshed and well into completely blotto by the time the Doctor cuts in.
"Captain", the Doctor says. Just that word.
"Doc - Doctor?" Jack's tongue stumbles over the syllables. He sets down his drink, some disgusting Elavanian cocktail, no doubt.
The Trlirrlian takes one look at the Doctor's expression, catches a hint and leaves.
"Hey!" Jack slurs a complaint. "We were talking here!"
The Doctor ignores it, produces a flask and quickly pours its contents into Jack's glass. "Drink that."
Jack eyes him blearily and shrugs. "Whatever." With a quick gulp, he downs the liquid. "Now what?"
The Doctor remains quiet, and it only takes a moment. When Jack falls over, the Doctor carries him out, flashing psychic paper at the innkeeper to keep him from interfering.
~*~
He manages to deposit Jack on a sofa in one of the TARDIS's many rooms just before he revives. A convulsive gasp, and Jack is among the living again.
A far gentler death, a far more comfortable resurrection than most he's experienced in recent memory.
"Ouch." It seems to take Jack a moment to get his bearings, to take in his surroundings, take a deep breath of air.
His next breath, the Doctor catches with his own lips.
Jack, being Jack, goes with it as soon as he's realised who's kissing him - possibly before. The Doctor wouldn't bet on either.
It doesn't matter.
Much.
He divests Jack of his clothing with deft fingers, but doesn't bother to do more than shrug off his coat and open his trousers for himself. Pushing Jack into the sofa, plundering his mouth, his fingers pushing roughly into Jack's body ... and Jack's body yields to him, welcomes him, even now, even like this ...
It's fast and dirty, pushing against Jack, thrusting into that warm body, Jack's legs wrapping around him, his own hand wrapping around Jack's cock, pulling roughly ... Jack jerks violently underneath him, but the Doctor pays it no mind, he simply drives into Jack again and again, sharp thrusts of his hips, one-two-three, and he comes, spilling himself into the other man until, almost as an afterthought, he remembers to bring Jack off as well.
He rests against Jack's flushed body only for a moment; then he pulls out and sits back, adjusting his clothing, watching.
Waiting, again.
Jack stretches lazily, contently. He yawns.
Then his eyes widen in realisation, and he's fully awake and sitting up within an instant. "You poisoned me!"
The Doctor shrugs. "Seemed like the quickest way to get you sober," he says blithely.
Jack blinks. "You're cold."
"You're a killer."
Jack flinches, but only a little. "So what else is new?"
The Doctor merely looks at him.
Jack swallows. "So," he says, "I take it you heard."
Never slow on the uptake, that one.
"I heard," the Doctor agrees gravely. "You went and delivered human children to Trlirrlian drug dealers back in 1965, got Torchwood blown up in 2010, nearly lost 10% of humanity's children to a bunch of addicts, used your own grandson as a weapon, and - what, went drinking with a Trlirrlian afterward?"
Jack closes his eyes. "I didn't know they were Trlirrlian then. Not that it'd have done us any good - they completely blocked communications, as you must know. The guy I was talking to was law enforcement, not that it matters now."
"You killed them," the Doctor agrees. Coldly.
"Yeah." Jack opens his eyes and stares at the Doctor. "Would do it again, too."
The Doctor nods, slowly, very slowly, and leans forward. "Would you kill your grandson again, too?"
Jack flinches back. His face, bleary until now, grows hard. "Given the same choice, you mean? Fucking right I would."
"I suppose that means you're not just a killer. You're a cold-blooded one."
"I know full well what it makes me! Spare me the fucking platitudes. Christ." Jack throws himself down on the sofa again, a forearm covering his eyes.
The Doctor looks at him. Jack's naked body, unchanged, unchanging. He can take any amount of punishment, survive any amount of destruction, and he'll always come back unchanged.
Outwardly.
"Very well," he says, quietly, and puts his hand on Jack's flat stomach, feeling the shudder that runs through the other man at the touch.
Jack opens his eyes, looks at him with a pensive expression.
"Not that I'm complaining, but why this?" Jack gestures between them. "Why now?"
The Doctor tilts his head at Jack, examining him. "Perhaps just because I could."
Jack snorts and raises himself onto his elbows. "You always could have, and you know it. You only fuck killers? Or, what, you have a thing for questionable consent and only go for it when the other guy's feelings don't matter?" Impatiently: "What?"
From any other man, that would have been a condemnation. Not from him. Jack is perfectly matter-of-fact.
And so is the Doctor: "Perhaps."
Jack nods, thoughtfully. "So you kill me, you fuck me, and - well, what's next? Thrilling, I have to say."
"You don't seem surprised."
Jack rolls his eyes. "I'm not one of your starry-eyed young companions, Doc - haven't been in a long time. Maybe I never was."
And that's true, frighteningly so - Jack's not blind, after all, and he's known him too long. He knows full well what the Doctor is capable of. He knows the Doctor's darkness, his cruelty, just as well as his cowardice and dithering, his idealism and his courage. That he still loves him is a miracle.
But love him he does, even now, even here. Of that there is no doubt.
Jack's gift has always been acceptance. He can accept a friend's casual cruelty, can love the man who abandoned him, can suffer loss after loss and still rebuild, can die and revive over and over again and retain the will to live - but he's a social creature, and this time, too many of his ties have been severed.
He's been stripped of too much, and the phantom pain will not relent. He's made the impossible choice, drawn that impossible line, and he's paid the price. He gave hostages to fortune, and look where it ended. He's not ready to do it again.
The last thing he needs right now is the threat of more of that.
He needs the Doctor's cruelty, needs his coldness - warmth and friendship and comfort are only preludes to loss, and Jack has no tolerance left for any of them. Harshness, he can deal with - it's gentleness that would break him.
He'll need a long time till he can stand it again.
The Doctor knows; he's been there. There was no one there for him, then; it's one thing he can do for Jack, at least.
Now that Jack has caught up with him.
~*~
"So, you gonna keep me here?" Jack asks after a while. "Your own personal fucktoy?" He leers at the Doctor.
"I wouldn't mind," the Doctor replies, rolling the idea round in his mind. "Could keep you for a long time, couldn't I? And it would be convenient."
He's almost serious - much too serious even for his own liking. Jack must see that.
But Jack, as always, is utterly unimpressed.
"Mmmm," he hums and stretches provocatively, showing off his body. "Never been a kept man before."
~*~
Jack is perfectly happy to wake up with a cock inside him. Or fingers, with or without a mouth on his cock at the same time. The Doctor isn't surprised. Sex is easy for Jack, after all.
The immortal man doesn't need much sleep, but here in the TARDIS, he's fallen into the habit of sleeping nearly as much as a normal human would. They hover in the vortex, between anywhere and nowhere, and their days are spent tinkering with the TARDIS, interspersed with the occasional terse conversation. At night, they alternate between sleep and sex, sex and more sleep. It suits the Doctor just right, right now.
Right now, Jack's wrists are wrapped tightly into the Doctor's belt, tied to the bedframe, and Jack is sound asleep again. The Doctor - who had had to run out to fiddle with the dimensional stabiliser because he'd just had a brilliant idea how to increase its performance by at least 20%, and there was no way that could wait - studies him for a moment as he walks back into the bedroom. He opens his trousers, straddles Jack's chest and nudges Jack's lips with his cock.
Jack is perfectly happy to wake up with a cock seeking entrance to his mouth.
"You do realise I'm not going to be magically healed by the miraculous powers of your manhood," Jack says afterwards, drily.
The Doctor snorts and undoes the belt, releasing Jack's hands. "You've been reading that stuff again, haven't you?"
Jack shrugs, rubbing his wrists. "Plenty of time."
The Doctor eyes him critically. "This isn't about healing. You know that."
"Whatever."
Jack does know, obviously; he's just chattering. Jack's version of normalcy is banter, and it's a reflex to fall back into it. A self-defence mechanism. A good sign.
Probably.
Jack smirks. "Want to see if my magic cock can heal you?"
The Doctor rolls his eyes. "Oh, come here, you."
~*~
"Seriously, though," Jack asks some days later. "You gonna keep me here?" Casually curious. Unperturbed.
"You're not complaining, are you?" Harshly - more harshly than necessary, perhaps, but it's uncomfortable, Jack's acceptance, it's always been. The Doctor doesn't like it.
Except when he does.
Jack smirks. "Would it matter if I did? You basically abducted me, after all. Does it matter if I want it?"
Prison or safe haven; is there a difference?
The Doctor looks at him coldly. "You always want it."
Jack only laughs.
~*~
"Where are we going?"
They're in the control room. Time to move on. Time to go somewhere. They can't hover in the vortex forever, after all.
Well, theoretically ...
The Doctor shrugs off the thought.
"Anywhere. Any particular place you want to go? Just say the word."
It's not like he cares right now, after all.
Jack hesitates for a moment. "Cardiff," he says decisively. "Third November 2008."
The Doctor recognises the challenge.
With anyone else, the Doctor would tell him it's a bad idea. Would tell him why they can't, why it's too dangerous. Would say no.
But this is Jack, who knows all that well enough. This isn't about changing things; Jack's just being masochistic. And what's time travel good for if you can't occasionally indulge your masochism?
"Allons-y!" he cries, and they're off.
~*~
They stay back, out of sight, and Jack stares at the two young people with burning eyes.
Ianto Jones and Toshiko Sato, getting rip-roaringly drunk after some Torchwood event or other.
Dead people, laughing.
But it's not they who are the ghosts, the Doctor thinks.
Jack himself - his younger part - isn't here; the time frame was carefully chosen. Jack knows what he's about: no amount of care, no perception filter even would keep him or the Doctor out of his own sight, after all.
The Doctor stands beside him, waiting. Waiting for something. He's not sure what exactly it is, but he'll know it when he sees it.
"Where is he buried?"
Present tense, even in the sight of the man, very much alive right here, right now.
And that is it.
~*~
They find out where Ianto's last resting place is, and the Doctor carefully picks a time when they'll be alone in the graveyard. They walk through the rainy dusk like ghosts, long coats billowing, and come to a stop in front of a simple gravestone.
Jack goes berserk the moment he sees the inscription:
IANTO JONES
WRIT IN WATER
"That little shit!" he seethes.
"His doing?" the Doctor asks curiously. "Well, would be pretty heartless from someone else, I suppose!"
"Aimed at me, not him", Jack grumbles. He hesitates, then becomes serious. "He asked me to remember him, you know. That - that there, that's just his way of making sure I will. Irritating me into remembrance, even from beyond the grave. So very Ianto." He sighs.
The Doctor snorts. "Knew you well, didn't he?"
"As well as ..." Jack swallows the rest of the sentence.
The Doctor nods. "As well as ... - that's pretty well, all in all, isn't it?"
Jack's smile is fond but wry. "You would know."
They leave the graveyard as they came, ghosts in the darkness, unseen and unknown.
~*~
Back in the TARDIS, Jack pushes the Doctor against the controls, pushes the coat off his shoulders and rids himself of his own with a practiced shrug. His thigh is hard between the Doctor's, and his grip is bruising. The console is digging into the Doctor's back. They claw at each other, hands and mouths greedy, leaving bruises and scratches and bite marks in their wake.
Jack fucks him right there on the floor, hard and unyielding behind him, inside him, and the harsh metal grating of the floor digging into his hands and knees.
They fall asleep there on the unforgiving metal, the grating pressing patterns into their bare skin.
~*~
"Why this? Why now?" Jack's question still hovers between them, but the Doctor gives him no better answer than before, and Jack is nothing if not patient. He's waited several human lifetimes for the Doctor; he's obviously decided he doesn't mind waiting some more.
It's weeks before Jack forces the issue.
"I'm not you, Jack," the Doctor huffs, backed into a corner. "I don't jump into bed with anything that moves. And I won't ..."
"What? Inflict yourself on some innocent little thing?" Jack's voice is cutting. "You're underestimating people again."
"I won't gloss over that part of myself", the Doctor corrects. He knows Jack will recognise which part he means. "Not with this. And I won't touch someone who can't meet it. Not any more."
Jack gives a surprised nod. Acknowledgement. Understanding. "When you put it like that ..."
It's something the Doctor hadn't fully admitted to himself until just now, when he had to put it into words. But it's true. The Time War changed things for him, irrevocably, and he needs ... As much as he needs his human companions, as much as he needs them to keep him going and to hold him back, he also needs someone he can meet on that other level.
Someone who knows the part of him that has no warmth, no mercy, no human compassion.
Someone like ...
The Master.
Or Jack.
The Master was always his twin, his mirror, but he'd lost the part of him that understood more than pain and destruction long before he died. He'd lost so much in his descent into madness, all for the drums, the never-ending drumming ...
But while the Master had moved away from him, becoming more and more unreachable, Jack had moved towards him, catching up.
Now he's there.
Now they're here: two people outside ordinary time, judge and jury and executioner at times, two people who, sometimes, cannot stand human warmth any more.
Two people who have each other when they need to feel the cold.
He sees it in Jack's eyes, right here, right now: cold and needy. Sees it in the cruel slant of his mouth, feels it in hard lips on his own, the bruising grip of his hands. They grant no mercy, give no pardon, and this is how they can live.
There is no forgiveness. And here, now, they stop pretending there will be.
They live.
~end~