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Barbados, Day 8
There is a grapevine. After it was all over, Gwen rang Martha.
Martha Jones, sitting on the side of a gleaming hotel bath, turning a complimentary bottle of shampoo mindlessly over and over in her hand, dialled the number for the hundredth time. Mickey is checking the news, channel after channel, trying to find out something, anything. He's got a mobile in his hand too - he's trying to sort them out an early flight home. Nothing doing, everyone wants the same, even now it's all over.
She can't get through. Half the time it cuts out, or goes straight to an unfamiliar answerphone message or just a blaze of static. Once, it redirected to some archaeologist woman with a strange name who has never heard of Martha. Sometimes, it rings.
It will ring seven times then cut out, like it always does. Her heart tightening slightly, Martha starts to count the rings.
Brr-Brr.
'No, to London. Heafrow, Gatwick, Stanstead - I don't care, even Luton - ' comes Mickey's voice from the other room.
Brr-Brr.
No, listen man, I have been holding, I've been on hold for the last twenty - hello? '
Brr-Brr
'Fucking shit!' Mickey snarled, and thumped the mattress he was sitting on.
Brr-Brr.
Click.
'Helloo?' It's a female voice, Scottish, cheerful. Martha catches her breath.
'Hi, can I speak to the Doctor, please?'
'Who's calling please?' said Amy, her voice singsong in an imitation of a perfect receptionist.
The Tardis is spinning dramatically across the Patroclan system. Amy is hanging on with her free hand, and she jerks her head - c'mere! - at the Doctor, who is round the other side of the console, tugging levers and twiddling with the screen.
'It's for you. Martha,' she said.
The Doctor manouevred round the console, hung on with one hand, took the phone.
'Martha Jones! Hello!'
Where have you been? I've been trying to get hold of you!' Out there somewhere, the last Doctor has gone well beyond the range of phone contact. And right now, as he and Amy skip through 2009 on the way to somewhere else, the Time Vortex randomly connects the call. 'You sound different, are you all right?'
'Regenerated.'
'Already?' But that's not the problem, and she shook her head, switched focus to the main point.
'Listen, Doctor - it's about Jack.'
The Tardis gave a wild lurch in telepathic sympathy with the Doctor's hearts. Amy hung on to the handles of the monitor, her hair flinging across her face.
'What's happened?' Amy glanced up at the note of - something unusually intense - in his voice.
The Doctor listened intently for a minute, kicking repeatedly at a lever on the console, one hand wrenching what looked like a bellows wired into the machinery. The Tardis gave a judder and hung in midair.
'Oh. Oh. Blimey. OK. Um, right, I'll - see if I can find him. What's the date with you?'
'It's the 13th of July, 2009.' The Doctor checked his watch - they have nearly a year before the wedding. Not the wedding, the whatever-it-is.
'OK, I'll try to find him. I'll give you a call later, all right?
'Brilliant, thanks.' Martha feels a weight fall off her shoulders. Someone capable is dealing with it, she can stop panicking about getting home and trying to sort it out. 'Give Jack my love?'
'Course. Thanks, Martha. B'bye, bye. Bye.'
The Doctor put the phone down and tugged at the bellows-thing, twisting one of the random taps with his other hand. Amy had climbed up the diagonal floor and was hanging on hard to a step. The Tardis gave a whir and another lurch, and she was flung over so she was leaning against a near-vertical surface which was conventionally the floor.
'Doctor, what are you doing?'
'Change of plan,' cried the Doctor, spinning something that glowed on the console. 'We'll do Paris in a bit - right now we need to go to Cardiff.'
'Cardiff? Why Cardiff?'
'I need to find an old friend. A very old friend. Practically an ancient friend. Hang on!' and the Tardis whirled round and spun back towards Earth
* * *
New York, Day 15
Jack was standing by one of the big walls that hem in Ellis Island, staring at the sea. He was doing the tourist trip, just for something to do, but it's wrenchingly different to how he remembers it. It smells different, it's less noisy and frightening, and it's been prettied up as a sort of high point of American history. Which is not how he remembers it at all.
The sea, reassuringly, looks the same as the sea always looks.
Jack looks neat. Properly shaved, his hair cropped close, wearing his old military gear with a poker-straight back. He looked like he was awaiting a posting somewhere.
Someone came and stood beside him, followed the direction of his gaze. He was about to move away when a voice said 'I had a feeling you might be here.'
Jack turned. The man in front of him looked vaguely ready to run away again, and the set of his shoulders suggested he'd just taken three deep breaths and adjusted his bow tie.
'Jack.' The tone is full of empathy. When the Doctor moves to hug him, he lets him, but hardly engages. There's a silence.
'Where have you been?'
Jack shrugged. He'd been all over the place. He's been running away, hardly spoken to anyone, eaten only because self-discipline dictates it. Kept travelling, moving on, frantically trying to find somewhere safe he can hide until he stops hurting.
He considered going looking for John Hart, but that would quickly get messy, and drunken, and then violent. So he's moved fast and stayed sober and tried very very hard to avoid thinking about anything at all. He wants the Doctor to leave, now, because if he starts talking he knows what he'll say and how much it's going to hurt both of them.
'Come and have a cup of tea,' said the Doctor. 'I've parked just over there.'
Silence.
'Listen, I can go if you want. But we should at least talk. Gwen and Martha will be after me if we don't.'
Jack managed a sick impression of his old laugh.
'OK.'
After this long spent dealing with the grimy, criminal, seamy side of alien life, it was only fair that Jack got a look at the last Tardis in existence, at what was possibly her most beautiful yet. Even switched-off as he was, he stared at the steam-punk dream of the console with something like awe.
'Tea? Coffee?' asked the Doctor, breezily.
'Tea,' said Jack. He is in so many ways not ready for coffee yet.
'Back in a sec,' and the Doctor bounded up the stairs and vanished into what were presumably still the old living quarters. Jack wandered aimlessly round the console, and then, slightly to his own surprise, gave the dashboard a brief pat.
'Missed you,' he breathed, and realised that he could feel, somewhere in the swamping of his grief, a tiny twinge of pleasure at being back.
Then he threw himself onto the weird aircraft-seat and stared at the glass centrepiece of the Tardis til the Doctor returned.
'Here we go,' he brought it over, handed one mug to Jack, put the other on the floor. 'Now.' He sat down next to him, well forward on the seat, knees apart, elbows resting on his knees, hands clasped loosely. 'Tell me - '
'No, wait a minute.' Jack stopped him with effortful, blank words. 'You tell me.' He met the Doctor's eyes. 'Where were you, Doctor? When it happened. Where were you?'
'I was. I was, um - '
Running away from you. All of you. Because when Davros hit him with what his companions had grown up into, he’d had to run, as far and as fast as he could, from all of them. He'd finally found himself to be the thing he most feared becoming.
It feels blank in memory now, the emotions don't flood him like they used to. New man, new body. He doesn't feel things the same way the last man did.
It doesn't justify abandoning Jack, but at least makes it make sense.
'C'mon. Where were you?'
'I was - I don't know.' The Doctor dropped his head, stared at his clasped hands.
'You dunno, huh?' Jack laughed that horribly dead laugh again. 'You don't know.'
'Jack, listen - '
'No, you fucking listen for a change,' and now, slightly to their mutual relief, Jack is building up to be really, epically angry. The Doctor would prefer anything to those horrible blank words, and Jack hasn't actually got angry since it happened, has been saving his rage for something and intuitively knows that all this has to be said now.
'Dumb of me, but I thought maybe there was a good reason you weren't here, y'know, a great epic battle somewhere, some whole galaxy in deadly danger - '
'Jack - '
'You didn't show up. You didn't do anything. You left it to me. Why, though, why was it my problem? Why was it my boyfriend, my family - what the fuck were you thinking?' Now he's really shouting. The Doctor sits immobile, frozen in the onslaught. 'Why did I have to be the one who chose? Why me?'
Nothing to say. The Doctor shook his head slightly.
'You fucking bastard. You turn up here now, because Martha sent you, but when it mattered, when I had to choose - I was waiting for you. I thought you'd show up and make it fine, make it OK, and then, no, there's just me, me and Steven, and I had to choose - '
And then his voice cracked.
'What is the point of you? What is the fucking point, if you can't even - '
He buried his face in his hands, crying properly, for the first time since it happened. Reliving every horrible second. Reviving and seeing Ianto looking ethereally peaceful and utterly gone. Watching Steven - meeting his eyes and hearing that appalling scream - the shaking -
The Doctor watched him fold in on himself, and reached out a hand. Very carefully, he touched Jack's shoulder, encountered no resistance. He stroked Jack's shoulder through his coat, over and over, til he was half-hypnotised with the rhythm of it, while Jack gasped and sobbed and choked.
Eventually, when Jack made a determined effort to control his breathing, the Doctor reached in his pocket for a handkerchief and handed it to him.
Then he sat very still, next to Jack, not touching him.
'I know.' He said it very softly. Jack turned to look at him, his face raggedly blotchy, his eyes swimming. 'I know what it's like. I watched Gallifrey burn.'
Jack hitched in another gasping breath.
'My family was there. My grand-daughter. I made that choice.' He looked away at something beyond seeing. 'I know.'
Jack shook his head, as if trying to shake this shared knowledge out of his mind.
'I - listen, right now, I'm out there, off somewhere, letting it happen to you. And I hate that. I hate - him.'
The man before, he did it. It's his fault. The Doctor can think of a hundred things he'd do differently now, but he can't alter any of them.
'So you could go back, change it,' Jack said frantically, grasping his arm. 'You could. I know you could. You could save them!'
'It doesn't work like that. It would tear everything to pieces, rip apart the fabric of the universe. If I could - do you think I wouldn't have? You think I wouldn't go back and save them in a second?' And now the Doctor's eyes are spilling unregarded tears. 'If I could. But you can't do it, Jack, it makes it ten times worse. If we went back, if we saved them all - it would make it worse. Not just you and me - everyone would be hurt, everyone would feel as bad as this.' The last four words were ground out across his teeth. 'And that's the choice. Do you let everyone feel like this? Every single person of this silly, wonderful species?' He waved a hand vaguely at the door, at New York, at planet Earth. 'Or do you take it on for them, do you make that - sacrifice?'
Jack dropped his gaze.
'I wouldda let it happen. I tried to.'
The Doctor reached an arm round him, so Jack is pulled against him. He talked on, not even noticing.
'I was trying to be a hero, in front of the 456. I shot my big, stupid mouth off and I didn't think - and he was standing there beside me. And then when they - ' his voice cracked again. 'When they released the virus - I said I'd take it all back - I said I'd do anything, just - not Ianto. Just don't hurt him.'
The Doctor's hand squeezed on Jack's arm, tight enough to stop the blood flowing.
'And he died.'
Jack shut his eyes, trying to blot it out and only making it more vivid.
'Guess I was a coward after all.'
The Doctor clung on. Like the only survivors of a shipwreck, they held together.
'You're not a coward.'
'You know, I've been thinking - if I could - I'd die. If I had the choice. But I can't.' His voice was blank again.
'Don't.' The Doctor was still holding him against his chest. 'You grieve - and then you go on living. You have to.'
Jack shook free, angry again.
'Yeah, cause I don't have a choice. I get to live. But I don't get to die.'
The Doctor shut his eyes, gritted his teeth. He has to get through this conversation and it hurts.
'I wanted to die, after the Time War. I could have.'
'But you regenerate.'
'I don't have to. Remember the Master? I don't have to regenerate, I could stop, I could. But I didn't. Not yet. There's still - Jack, listen.'
Unwillingly, Jack looked him in the face.
'There's still things out there, there's still wonderful things, it's not forever, this feeling, I promise...There's always hope - '
Jack wrenched away from him.
'Aw, fuck off!' he snarled. 'You and your fucking everything's-all-right bullshit! You're wrong, you are so goddamn wrong!'
He stormed away, up the stairs and into the corridors beyond.
The Doctor dropped his head. Touched his face, noticed tears for the first time.
'Well done,' he muttered to himself, in what sounded horribly like the voice of the Dreamlord. 'Oh well done.'
* * *
Day 6, Cardiff
'I told you, I'll pick up the heavy bits,' said Rhys, irritably. 'You need to be careful, Gwen.'
'Oh, stop your fussing,' she said, wearily, trying to keep it light. 'I can still bend down, I'm going to make the most of it.'
'All right, look,' he said, picking up on her tone and changing his well-intentioned nagging hastily into something less intense. 'You - you do the alien-tech search and recovery which you are the unquestioned expert at, and I,' he hefted a solid piece of rubble, 'will do the heavy lifting under your direction. Is that all right?'
She smiled, a quick, grateful smile.
'OK.'
The slow, painful task of clearing up the wreckage had fallen to them. The police tape was getting bedraggled now, and while the terrorism specialists still looked in ocasionally, the gaping hole which marked the former Hub was pretty much left alone. It would be rebuilt soon, but first, the area had to be made safe. Which meant Gwen and Rhys, down in the wreckage and feeling hemmed in, digging throuigh piles of junk.
When the Hub blew up, the vaults went with it and all the stuff that Torchwod had collected was blown away. Most of it was destroyed, but the police had been finding bits and pieces that survived all over the place. Alien junk was lying in the gutters for kids to pick up So now, the day after the 456 left, Gwen is back at work, looking for alien tech with no scanning equipment, no backup but Rhys and a blinding stuffy headache from crying and lying awake. Rhys doesn't look much beter than she feels.
Nagging in her mind is the thought that she must get away, after they finish this. A burning need to run, far away from Cardiff and Torchwood and all of it, is gripping her. She has said nothing to Rhys yet, but she knows he'll agree.
Behind them, there is a weird whirring.
'Oh, bloody car alarms,' said Rhys, dropping the breezeblock he's picked up onto a heap.
The whirring stops. A door bangs. More whirring, fading to silence.
Then, behind them, a clear voice said, 'Need some help?'
Gwen turned. A girl was standing on the lip of the crater, loking down at them.
'No thanks, love, we've got it under control, ' called Gwen.
'Only, if you're looking for all the alien stuff that got lost in the explosion, you might need,' she produced a small metal thing with a flourish, 'this. Set to 875, it'll pick up anything alien in the vicinity and beep when you get near it.'
'Blimey,' said Rhys, before Gwen could say a word. 'Who are you - Torchwood Two, is it?'
'A friend of Jack's sent me,' said the girl, 'he reckoned you'd need some help with all this. Can I come down?'
'Be my guest,' said Gwen. She pointed to the easiest way to scramble down.
On closer inspection, the girl was young, red-haired, and wearing a big jumper. In her hand was a small metal thing.
'What's that then - Geiger counter?' said Rhys. 'Weird looking thing.'
'Sonic screwdriver,' said the girl. 'I'm Amy, by the way.'
'And who sent you?' asked Gwen.
'The Doctor.'
* * *
'Listen, Pond,' he'd said, closing her fingers over the sonic screwdriver. 'This is important. Set that to 875, when you find something alien it'll make an odd noise. Be careful. Don't drop anything alien you find. Don't kick it, don't shake it, don't lick it to see how it tastes, don't poke it to see what it does, and don't try to mend it.'
'Why not?' asked Amy, warily.
'Because that's the fun part, I get to do that.'
He called after her just as she was stepping out of the Tardis.
'Oh, and one more thing. There's something I want you to look out for...'
* * *
Jack had gone, without really thinking about it, to the room he'd slept in when he travelled with the Doctor. It had changed. For a start, the light switch had migrated to the other side of the door. Before, the room had subtly altered to suit him after the first couple of days. It had developed consoling hints of 51st century decor, and small useful things had showed up while he was absent - a hook behind the door, extra pillows. The Doctor had said it was down to residual Tardis telepathic energy.
Now it had reverted to a generic space with a bed in it, and some of the miscellaneous junk that accumulated in unused corners of the Tardis had strayed in again. Jack moved some odd things - a few paperback novels, a broken Auton foot - off the bed wearily, and then lay down, wrapping his coat round him. He felt utterly drained and useless.
* * *
The Doctor stayed sitting in the control room for a long while, occasionally pushing his hair back off his face, thinking hard.
It is tempting to give up now, let it be, not try. The last man would have done that in a second, would have set his face and spun off in the Tardis and left Jack to deal with his grief on his own. Maybe - maybe on a good day - he'd have spared him a thought much later, when it wasn't helpful at all, caught him up long afterwards and -
Oh, yes. He did, didn't he?
The Doctor winced. What a dick. Never mind having the conversation, never mind being some help, he just showed up, threw someone shiny in Jack's direction and fucked off again. And not for months, by Jack's timeline. Not til he was ready to take an interest in a slightly lost pilot called Alonso.
I'm not the man I was, he thought. I don't have to act like him.
He got up and made more tea. Human habits are catching. Then he went in search of Jack.
Jack was lying curled up on the bed, staring at nothing. There was a silence.
'Made some tea.' He put the mugs on the bedside table.
Jack sat up, wearily, swung his feet over the edge of the bed. The Doctor sat next to him.
'What I said before,' said the Doctor, haltingly. 'I'm sorry, I'm not - I'm not any good at this. But - '
No. There aren't words. Damn.
'Just. If you need to talk - I'm here.'
He forced himself to accept the difficult fact that sometimes, there isn't anything to say. It doesn't happen to him often, but he's effectively silenced by the magnitude of Jack's grief. Sometimes, very occasionally, being there is all he can do.
Jack started to talk. He told the Doctor about Ianto. The way he made amazing coffee, and knew about clothes, and always seemed to have a stopwatch. The way he had rescued Jack from various things - a pterodactyl, a block of cement, and Jack's own darker side. The way he had trusted Jack more than Jack would ever have thought he deserved.
* * *
'So, uh - Thursday afternoon, I slept with an old friend.'
'OK,' Ianto had said, handing him a cup of coffee. 'Was it fun?'
'Yeah.' Jack is torn between not wanting to brag and really, really wanting to brag. 'Sorta - took his virginity. I think.'
'Really? How come you didn't sleep with him before?'
'He's changed since I last met him. Totally different man now.'
'OK.' Ianto hopped back into bed, pulled up the covers. 'You were safe, weren't you?'
'Course we were!'
'Then - it's OK.' He kissed Jack's shoulder. 'You don't have to come to me for permission. We've talked about this. I know you're - well, very flexible.'
'Total slut, you mean.'
'I didn't say that. But if the cap fits...' He smiled that soft little secret smile, as if he's got some pleasing joke that no one else has caught on to yet. 'I get it. It's fine. I'd rather you were happy and flexible, than faithful and miserable because I said so. I know you're coming back to me afterwards.'
'Yeah.' Jack sounded dubious.
'I'm sorry, is this you naked in my bed? I know you'll come back. So long as it's safe - I trust you.'
Jack shrugged, sipped his coffee. 'There's kinda more going on with this one.'
And he explained all about the Doctor - the bits he hadn't told Ianto after the Earth was stolen. The time-travel got a bit complicated to explain. As, for different reasons, did the use of the L-word.
'It's not reciprocated, though. But he's - well. He's not even human. He's something different. If you met him - ' Jack paused. 'I kinda do love him. It's very hard not to love him. Except occasionally when you have to hate his guts.' He stopped talking, his face full of one worried question.
Ianto thought about it for a bit. 'It's still OK.'
'Yeah? You sure?' Jack looks concerned. He still underestimates Ianto's capacity for being relaxed about this.
'You can love more than one person.' He doesn't mention the grieving for Lisa which had run alongside the falling for Jack, and the way he'd reconciled them. But it's there in his mind. Love is not linear or limited like that. 'I know you're coming back for me. And if - you know, if one day there's a girl I fall for - ' Pause. In deference to Jack, he adds, 'Or a guy. But I know you'll be cool with that.' Ianto turned to face him, smiled. 'The difficult bit will be stopping you from joining in, but - we'll deal with that when it happens.'
Jack exhaled. Ianto had accepted the fact that Jack would never be a one-man guy, and calmly negotiated round his various shenanigans. It seemed to come to him much more naturally than Jack would have assumed, and Jack is still trying to work out what he did to win this much trust from a 21st century man. But he can't guilt-trip, not really. Ianto is OK with it. Let it be.
* * *
The Doctor sat and listened, nodding. The conversation shifted round, again, to the last few days, the loss and shock of it. Jack was still tearing himself apart inside, worried he would forget and also worried that he'd never get this out of his mind.
'You don't have to blame yourself,' the Doctor offered, when Jack went silent. It falls short, but what else can he say?
'Except I do. I dunno if I'll ever stop.'
The Doctor shook his head slightly, knowing that feeling all too well. But - nothing to say. No light little words to make it all better, to put it right. Jack, unprompted, reached out a hand and gripped the Doctor's. The Doctor put his arm round Jack, squeezed him against his chest again.
There was a misjudgement of balances, somewhere, totally accidental - because the Doctor is clumsy and Jack is leaning heavily - that tipped them back on the bed.
'Sorry! Don't know what happened there.' The Doctor moved to sit up, but Jack laid his head against the Doctor's chest again.
'S'OK. It's fine.' It was comfortable and comforting, this sudden lapse into an actual embrace.
The Doctor was looking slightly frantic, glancing for a way to escape so Jack wouldn't know - not here, not now, come on! - that his hearts were pounding, and it was because he was holding Jack. On a bed.
Jack stayed where he was. It's a comfort, in some infinitesimal way, it's helping to have someone to hang on to. Then he raised his head as he felt a shift - a very slight, hastily suppressed hitch - in the Doctor's breathing.
'Doctor?'
'Sorry. Sorry.' The Doctor tried to sit up again, and Jack recognises, as if he's seen it a thousand years ago, that look. Scared, denying, ready to run away - and hot.
Jack thought about this. He remembered - quite vividly - what it was like with the Doctor, how unexpectedly, breathtakingly good the sex was.
'It's OK,' he said.
Jack does not have the 21st century capacity to spend weeks pulling his motives to pieces and crushing back his impulses. He only guilts over the important things, like getting people killed. He's never guilted over being sexual, at weird times, and in weird places, with pretty weird people, because where he comes from you don't. If it's mutually consensual and fun, it's fine.
Besides, it has been two weeks, and the knowledge that he missed his last chance to make love to Ianto has been hurting him so much he's been trying to avoid thinking about sex at all. It's like he's been irrationally waiting, saving it, in case Ianto turns up again.
No, he thinks now. Gotta let that go now.
Because it's needed, Jack can admit this to himself, he needs this. It's the right time. And - maybe the Doctor isn't the right person right now, but he's close. In spite of everything.
So he doesn't have more than a second's hesitation, a quick interrogation of what he feels like now, before he snuggles closer to the Doctor.
'Hey - it's OK.'
The Doctor is still looking for a way out, still trying not to let on.
'No, no, I'm not trying to - sorry. Sorry, sorry.'
'Stop saying that.' Jack ran a hand up the Doctor's chest, undeniably sensually. The Doctor lost his breath a little.
'Doctor...'
'Uhm?' The Doctor is making moves, as gently as he can, to get out of this closeness, still looking scared.
It would be easier not to have to speak. In the 51st century, this would be easier. But - new man, new sex drive, still a bit confused. Jack sat up, looked at the Doctor squarely.
'Doctor, I want us to have sex now.'
'Oh - !' The Doctor wriggled away, and got up, stood with the bed between them. 'Oh, no no, bad idea, that's - '
'Only if you want to.'
'Um. Look, you're - no, I mean - but - no, bad idea - ' The Doctor was entirely at a loss. He's spent too long in the 21st century, he's absorbed all that guilt, all those arbitrary barriers.
'Why is it a bad idea? I - I'd like to, and and I'm pretty sure you want to. What's scary about that?'
'Um - '
Jack watches the possibility slipping away from him. Then -
'Oh - wait. Oh - perhaps, hang on, just a second, yes - ' The Doctor has thought of something, something daft and scary and it-might-work-maybe-if-I'm-lucky brilliant. And that's reassuring, because these are the moments he lives on.
'Jack - can I - can I do something first?'
He, moved back to sit on the bed, put a hand to Jack's face and looked at him intently.
'This is basically sort of like telepathy. A bit. Anything you want me to keep out of, imagine a door, and I'll keep out. Or say spaghetti. Whichever. Is that OK?'
No sign of mistrust, Jack looks calm and oddly dignified.
'OK,' he said, and took a deep breath. The Doctor closed his eyes, and felt his way gently into Jack's thoughts.
Ouch. The grief was so dreadful that the Doctor felt a sympathetic stab in his solar plexus that made him flinch. He felt past it, to where Jack had been thinking, to the places where he had decided he wanted this.
And the Doctor understood it. It was something that would help, it would not be taking advantage or cheating or anything horrible. It would be OK.
He disentangled, withdrew, breathed out. Opened his eyes.
'Yes. Yes, you're right.' And the hands on Jack's face stayed in place as he leaned over to kiss him.
* * *
Amy shook the screwdriver impatiently and pointed it at something that might have been a broken satellite dish or might have been a bit of a dynatrope.
'Come on, you - thing,' she hissed at it.
'So, you travel with the Doctor?' Gwen asked. She was sorting through a pile of remnants they had collected together, while Rhys went off to fetch them tea from the nearest cafe that was open. Given most of the cafes in the city centre had just lost all their windows to a massive explosion, it was going to take him a while.
'Yeah.'
'Jack's told me a bit about him, volunteered Gwen. 'He used to travel with the Doctor, a while back - well, quite a while. Him and Martha Jones.'
'Oh, her on the phone?' said Amy. 'Right. That's how they know each other.'
'Yes. I don't know much about it, Jack's always been a bit cagey about the Doctor. He can time travel, yeah?'
Yes. The Doctor's - well, he's a time traveler. And an alien,' Amy said, breathlessly. 'It sounds weird, but - I haven't told anyone that. Does that sound weird? God that sounds weird.'
Gwen shrugged.
'I guessed.'
'You don't seem too bothered by it. Get a lot of aliens round here, do you?' asked Amy, mildly peeved.
'Oh, you'd be amazed.' Gwen laughed a little. 'We're in Extraterrestrial Central here, love. We're right on top of the rift.'
'The rift?
'Yeah. He's told you about the rift?'
'No, what rift?'
Gwen explained the rift. With anecdotes. By the time she finished, they were sitting on a collapsed wall, giggling.
'No, really?'
'Cross my heart,' said Gwen with an attempt at seriousness. 'An alien that got its energy off male orgasms.'
'And you kissed it?'
'Yep! Lucky for me it didn't do girls, or I'd have shagged it!'
Amy laughed.
'I thought they were all - y'know - huge and scaly. Or stony. Or metal with weird voices. Not - interested in sex.'
'Well, Jack's the one to ask,' Gwen giggled. 'He's very - flexible with his partners.'
'What, he sleeps with aliens? Really?'
'He slept with the Doctor,' Gwen said.
* * *
It was soft and slow and very vanilla. The Doctor has a good idea now what Jack needs from this and is going to devote all his considerable intelligence to giving it. So the moves Jack makes do not surprise him as they did before. They sat, kissing, on the bed for a long time before Jack breaks away to unlace his boots, and the Doctor leans over and presses his cheek against Jack's curved back. The Doctor's hearts are hammering in his chest, because he wants this, wants it a lot. There is a level of recently discovered sexuality, of raw visceral need, that he's not felt with anyone else but Jack, but also an immense tenderness that he can show him, now, without having to get a grip on words. He shut his eyes.
Jack kicked his boots off, took off his socks. He stuffed the socks in the boots, and then - moved by something very deep - paired the boots up together, neatly, in line with the edge of the bed.
(Jack's experience of this sort of grief is drawn from wars. He has these routines that make him comfortable when he's lost people, that take up little corners of his attention and chip away at the enormity of his emotions. He makes a point of shaving properly, polishing his buttons, staying neat. It's what he's done every time something this terrible happens to him - after the Somme, the Battle of Britain, the Millenium. It keeps him sane).
Then he turned back to wrap his arms round the Doctor again. He finds he's automatically half-anticipating moves that don't get made, moves that were Ianto's, and that hurts, but at the same time holding the Doctor, warm and excited and tender, is a different thrill altogether, and one he can almost lose himself in.
The Doctor is not nearly so scared, now, of being demonstrative, because somehow, having felt Jack's thoughts, he owes him something back and the shedding of hesitation is the least he can offer. So when Jack reaches down to touch him, he follows the move neatly and slips his hand between Jack's thighs, feels carefully upwards, warmth and pressure on his fingers. Strokes him, loses his breath.
They lay like that, kissing, their hands moving slowly, their bodies pressed together, for a long time. Until Jack starts working on the buttons of the Doctor's trousers, and the Doctor moves away.
'No, not yet. You first.' And he unfastens Jack's trousers, needing to use both hands because he's not very good at this, and edges awkwardly down the bed, for the first time presses his face against Jack's lap.
'Is this OK?'
Jack nodded, his eyes closed. The Doctor dipped his head, and began to kiss, vaguely, not quite sure he's doing it right, til Jack's moves and breathing tell him he is. He traced his tongue over Jack's cock, still slightly scared and inept but getting very involved in this. The taste makes him shiver slightly, something pheromonal that turns him on immensely and makes him want to not stop.
'Uh - please, yeah - ' Jack sighed. The Doctor, encouraged, took the tip in his mouth, a small part of him surprised by this new sensation, thrilled and astonished. He did things Jack had done to him - circled with his tongue, teased, then used a hand to cover his inexperience, his frequent pauses to adjust and to make his jaw stop hurting. Jack is trying not to press too hard, trying to hold back, but - ah - it feels good, the arousal's like fire, burning through him, the physical taking him over because his body knows damn well that this needs to happen.
But, hot though it is, Jack is missing the hugging - he needs someone to hold on to, so he reached down to pull the Doctor back up. Awkwardly, the Doctor scrambled back face-to-face with Jack, his hand still moving with a surprisingly deft grip.
'You've been practising,' Jack said, huskily, an almost-joke that made the Doctor relax. It's OK, he's trying to tease me. This reassured him immensely.
'Maybe a bit,' he said, flushed and pleased.
'Not complaining.' Jack is pushing against the Doctor's hand, his face tense, his teeth clenching together. He kissed the Doctor again, slowly, sensually, tasting him, and without stopping he raised a hand and tugged the Doctor's bow tie undone.
They stripped off, hastily, between kisses, and when they were naked and rolled back together, they both gasped. Jack pressed a thigh between the Doctor's legs and started to grind against him, drawing answering pressure from the Doctor. A careful, unhurried move finished with Jack on top, leaning on his hands and moving fluently, hungrily, getting a kick off the pressure and friction, and another from the smoothness and paleness of the slender body beneath him, the spaced aroused look on the Doctor's face.
The Doctor put his hand to Jack's face, reaching up to keep kissing him, moving in sharp pushes, intensely turned on to this way of doing it. Jack ran a hand down the Doctor's body, stroking what he could reach of him, his side, his hip. Expertly he insinuated a hand under the Doctor's thigh, cupping the precise curve of his bum, and stopping there. The Doctor pressed upwards harder, that hand making him moan, and then - still not too familiar with the rhythm of his own arousal and with Jack's expert attention not on the pace they're moving at - no, no, too soon, too fast, but oh, oh yes - he felt it happening, and he gave a cry and arched his head back as he came, rocking with the force of it, clutching Jack closer.
He recovered, opened his eyes wide. He looked almost panicky.
'Oh - sorry. Sorry, um - '
Jack kissed him to still the words. The energy had felt terrific, and he'd felt a sympathetic stab of excitement pulse through him, a kind of echo.
'Hey. I take that as a compliment,' Jack smiled. He rolled off, ran his fingers across the smudge of cum on the Doctor's abdomen, then licked them, looking the Doctor carefully in the eye as he tasted him. The Doctor was breathless and looked slightly lost, but the anxiety had left him. Jack curled up round him, kissing his neck and his shoulder, bringing him down.
After a minute, the Doctor rolled over.
'Now, how about you?'
Jack took hold of the Doctor's hand and guided it back to his cock. Smiling slightly, the Doctor started to stroke him, slowly, getting quicker but not as fast as Jack wanted it, so he shifted and moved, trying to get him to speed up. The Doctor, teasing him with a half-smile on his face, focussed his attention on the tip, teasing the most sensitive place, til Jack started to shiver...
And then, to his surprise, found he couldn't stop.
The room wasn't cold, but he was shaking, in a way he hadn't done during sex for a long time. It only happens when he's very nervous or scared, and he's got very good at avoiding those situations and staying in control, at least in bed. Not since - hell, January the 12th 2000 - has he been this fucking vulnerable during sex.
'You're shaking,' the Doctor said, stilling his hands. 'Get under the covers.'
For the first time, he took charge, and Jack obeyed him without question. The Doctor took advantage of the break to snag a tissue from the box by the bed (which must have materlialised quietly while they were both distracted) and clean up slightly. Then he wriggled in under the duvet beside Jack, and hugged him close til he warmed up again.
Now, it felt right to talk, to murmur things, so the Doctor said, 'You are so beautiful.' He stroked Jack's back, held him tight, whispering in his ear. 'Did I ever remember to tell you that? I'm - oh - luckier than I deserve.'
And now, because Jack has almost caught him up in terms of timeline and knows very nearly all the things the last guy inflicted on him, he knows what he's talking about.
'I'm sorry about - him. The man before. I know he was - so cruel to you. I was - oh, I dunno.'
And he tried to explain, a little, how Timelord biology means you have the same memories and knowledge but something - the deep, phsyical, visceral self, the flow of emotions - is different.
'I'm not him any more. I remember him, like when you see yourself in a really old picture, but I'm not him any more. I almost hate him, for - lots of things. What he did to people - to you...'
He lapsed into silence, and Jack, recalling the last few weeks, swallowed, closing his eyes for a second. He can't hate this Doctor, now. The man holding him didn't abandon him.
The Doctor lay, very quiet, letting this sink in. Finally appreciating the way Jack has waited so long for him, waited for a version of him that coincided, and still loved him despite everything.
Then he kissed Jack again, softly, and reached a hand down. 'Shall we....?'
Jack sighed, nodded. 'Please. But gently?'
'Of course,' breathed the Doctor, utterly reassuring, and began stroking again, and Jack's arousal returned, he felt safer now, safe to explore it and go with it. The Doctor kissed him, lightly, on one ear, then his brow, then the tip of his nose. And stopped, drew away, smiled again. Oh, that smile - broad and caring and really, really gorgeous. Jack registers this on one level, while physically he's burning up with arousal, and at the same time this is breaking his barriers so he feels weak and defenceless and hurt, so hurt. The two feelings coalesced so that even while he's writhing and pressing against the Doctor, his eyes are brimming, easily, without effort, he's crying and gasping with pleasure at the same time. The Doctor saw this, leaned in, kissed his eyelids, his hand still working fast, and his other arm round Jack, hanging on to him.
'Yes, that's it,' he breathed. 'Is this OK, like this?' Jack opened his eyes - the position wasn't quite working for him.
'It's better if I'm on my back,' he breathed.
'Right.' The Doctor sat up, and then - a small stroke of inspiration - shifted to sit behind Jack, his long legs either side of Jack's hips, his back against the headboard, so he can cradle Jack against his chest.
'How's this?' he asked, putting his arms round Jack's body.
'I feel like Kate Winslet,' Jack laughed - a proper laugh, though slightly husky with crying - that made the Doctor smile as he reached his hand down again to continue, his other tracing across to tease Jack's nipple. Jack let his head fall back on the Doctor's shoulder, and - if he twists - they can just about kiss. From where the Doctor is, gazing down at Jack's body, this is amazingly hot and intimate. The nipple thing is making Jack more turned on than ever, and he's really really close. He wrapped his own right hand round the Doctor's, moved with him, getting the pace and the pressure perfect -
' - yes - ah - yes - oh god that's good - '
The Doctor felt him tense, his jaw tightened.
'- yeah - oh yeah - !' He lapsed back heavily into the Doctor's grip, shaking with the strength of his orgasm. The Doctor kissed his neck and shoulder, swiftly, saying 'Yes, yes, oh Jack - '
Jack's body stilled. His eyes opened. He took two breaths and then began to cry.
Something in the release of his orgasm has set this off, but it feels sweet, an extension of the sex, it's racking him but he can take it now. Some complexity of endorphins is running through him, making it easier, making it OK to cry, to curl up, drawing up his knees and turning to rest his head against the Doctor's neck, and sob like his heart will break.
The Doctor laid his hand against Jack's chest, feeling his heartbeat and the gasping breaths, and Jack's own hand finds his, interlocks with his fingers. The Doctor held him, his other hand stroking Jack's hair, and he is aware that this is right, this is what was needed, that being here now is good. With this, with only touching and holding, he's allowing all his empathy and affection to reach Jack, to help him heal.
'I'm here,' he breathed, 'it's OK, sh-sh-sh, that's good, Jack, I've got you, I won't let go...' whispering nonsense words of comfort and affection to him, letting him grieve.
Jack cried for a long time, and then grew calm again. He drew in a deep breath, and reached over to the bedside table for the cooling, untouched mugs of tea.
'Woah. That was - Thanks. I guess I needed that.'
The Doctor shrugged, pleased and embarrassed.
* * *
'No!' Amy said, schoolgirlishly amazed.
'Oh. Oh shit.' Gwen looked mortified. 'Did he not tell you? Are you two - ?'
'No.' Amy resumed her seriousness. 'No, we are not. But if he does boys -' Amy did a little dance of astonishment and glee. 'He's into boys - that explains everything!'
'Really?' said Gwen.
'I - made a move on him. The night before my - no,' she shook her head, puzzled at her slip of the tongue. Where did that come from? 'The - other night. And he said no. Oh my god he's into boys!'
'Doesn't prove he just does boys, mind,' Gwen pointed out. Amy composed herself.
'No, of course. Anyway. None of my business, really.' Then she laughed again. 'I thought nothing he did would ever surprise me again.'
She stares into the middle distance for a moment, astonished and amused.
'Anyway,' said Gwen. 'Alien tech.'
'Yep, absolutley. Job to do.' Amy got out the screwdriver, and gave it a little shake. She trained it on the next artefact, and got no interesting results.
'It's a melted calculator, isn't it?'
'Yeah, that's a calculator,' said Gwen. 'Come on, next thing.'
Amy rooted through the pile.
It's aaaa - watch?' she said, brandishing something.
'Oh my God!' Gwen cried suddenly, as they pulled a chunk of ceiling plaster away from a pile of miscellaneous junk. 'That's his wrist-strap!'
She picked it up, hesitantly. To her relief, it wasn't bloodied that she could see. Just dusty and smashed about.
'Jack said this used to be a time-travel thing, only it got broken,' she said. 'It does - weird stuff. Sort of all-purpose remote control.'
'Hang on. Is it a Vortex Manipulator?' asked Amy. 'I've got instructions for this one.'
'Instructions?'
'The Doctor said to look out for it. He wrote it all down for me.'
Pond,
If you find a vortex manipulator - looks like an elaborate sort of watch thing with a leather strap - use the Sonic set at 1004 on it until the red light flashes.
DON'T press any of the buttons.
Give it to Gwen, tell her she has to hang on to it and give it back to Jack when she sees him. THIS IS IMPORTANT.
Underneath, in a different ink, scribbled very fast, it said
This is VERY important.
'OK,' said Amy. 'Think this might be important. Let's have a look at it.'
* * *
Jack and the Doctor walked slowly down towards the bay, a breeze from the sea fluffing up their hair and billowing Jack's coat.
'What are you going to do?' asked the Doctor.
Jack shrugged hopelessly. 'Dunno. There's always a war to go fight in. That's what I usually do.'
'I always wondered,' the Doctor said, steering gently to the safer spaces of the distant past, 'why did you join the British army?'
'S'good camouflage. I mean, I'd visited the twentieth century loads of times - specially 1941 - but I never expected to have to live through it. So, I end up back here and I need to find somewhere to be a misfit in. The American army wouldda caught me out straight away. The Brits - you know, I don't understand cricket, I'm screwing up the social stuff all over, I can barely remember who the Prime Minister is, and they just go "Oh, don't mind Harkness, he's an American." It was easier.'
He thought about it.
'It's not a bad life. For a misfit, y'know - the army's good.'
'Mm.' Now is not the time to start in about the military. 'You could - travel,' suggested the Doctor. 'I mean - if you wanted - you could come with us.'
Jack looked at him. He was considering it.
'That's - thanks, but I'm not - fit to be around people yet. I just wanna spend a while on my own.'
The Doctor nodded, thinking of those years, rattling across the sky on his own, the years before Rose.
'I thought - travel the world for a bit. You have no idea how sick of Cardiff you get after the first cenury or so.'
They walked in silence for awhile.
'Listen,' the Doctor said, eventually. 'You need to go back and see Gwen.'
Jack turned, his face set.
'Not right now, obviously, but sometime soon. Go and find her. Don't just - '
He paused, and the wind from the Atlantic blew across them noisily.
'Don't just vanish, Jack. She needs to at least know you're safe.'
Jack feels a surge of irritation.
'How do you know? You've talked to her for about twenty seconds.'
'You know how it feels when people just vanish and don't come back?'
The question came out of the blue, but fuck did he know all about it. Running back to the control room, miraculously alive, to hear nothing but the fading whir of a Tardis heading anywhere at all. Without him
'Yeah, I know.' he said, feelingly. 'You - '
But when he turned his head, the Doctor was already walking away.
'Doctor? Hey!'
And, once agan, he's running after him.
It doesn't occur to him now to wonder if this is the nature of their relationship, set for millenia to come - the Doctor fading out of his life much too soon, and him giving chase, running against the breeze to catch up.
'Doctor!'
The Doctor turned at the door of the Tardis.
'Go and see her. You,' he paused. This is how Jack recalls him for a long time, his hair stirred by the breeze, beautiful, intent, leaving.
'You take care of yourself.'
They kissed, a long, intense kiss, both breaking away as if forced to.
'And look out for me,' he added over his shoulder, turning to unlock the door, 'You'll see me soon.'
The door clicked shut. The Tardis whirred into life almost at once, leaving Jack standing there, the view drawing away, until he is just a tiny, lone figure at the edge of the sea.
END