FIC: Le Petit Mort

[anjenue]

Title: Le Petit Mort
Author:Anj (rosesanguina)
Fandom: Dr Who/Torchwood
Pairing: Ten/Jack, implied Ten/Rose, Jack/Ianto
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: breathplay, bloodplay, quasi-snuff
A/N: Happy Christmas to spifftastic, whose fault it is that I'm hooked on this show. This was his idea, and I'm just playing with it as a bit of an unbetaed, fun introduction to the fandom. :D I ♥ you, Seph.

Jack leaned back in his chair, scrubbing a hand through the mess of his hair. Glancing at the clock, he saw it was four twenty-six in the morning - the witching hour. Well, all of these hours were the witching hours - aliens, as he always told the others, don't adhere to business hours.

What he meant, of course, but what he'd never tell them, was that the Doctor didn't adhere to business hours. He slept as rarely as Jack - that is to say, only when he was undergoing some serious physical and/or mental trauma, and even then, that was questionable - and was likely to pop up at any given moment, the tell-tale wheezing of the Tardis Jack's only indication. And he was as like to leave five minutes after he'd arrived as not, and Jack had this irrational fear that the moment he drifted off would be the moment the Doctor appeared.

He stared at the computer screen blankly. A schematic of one of their latest finds - an antiplasma injector coil, as far as he could tell - spun lazily in LED lines against the black, and he sighed, punching a couple keys. The image winked out of sight. Behind it, pages and pages of news articles from tabloids and other sketchy sources scrolled past, blurred pictures and headlines screaming Alien Intelligence Controlling Our Government?! and the like his only link anymore to the man he'd once...

Well. Everything ends, as the Doctor had liked to tell him, and so it was inevitable that they would go their separate ways. Jack didn't regret his decision, nor did he regret the fact that it meant he'd been left behind. Not really, anyway. He'd had the earth to rebuild, after all, and had to catch the human race up to where they were supposed to be, and the Doctor...well, he had Rose.

Rose.

Jack pinched the bridge of his nose. He could still hear her laughter, see that cheeky little smile as she tossed her hair and looked over her shoulder at him, remember the way he and the Doctor used to exchange fond looks whenever she started poking at something so standard to them but brand new and exciting to her. He could almost imagine her fingers sifting through his hair, down his chest, just as it had felt that day, so long ago now. Or was it so long ahead? The twists and turns of time still didn't make sense to him, even after all these years; he had no idea how the Doctor kept it all straight without going mad. But That Day, anyway, the day she'd done...something, and he knew it was her because he could hear her voice in his head, feel her fingers as if they were inside him, massaging his heart back to life. One minute he wasn't, and the next he was, and had been ever since. It was because of her he couldn't die, and he loved her and hated her for it.

He was about to go back to staring blankly at the injector when one of the other computers beeped. He looked up wearily, blinking at it...and then jumped up, darting across the room.

It was the Tardis detector.

He'd calibrated it to pick up on the exact frequency of the sound the Tardis made when it appeared, and boosted its accuracy by programming it based on the electromagnetic signature the Tardis had left behind when it had left Cardiff. And it worked. It had picked up the signal...

...wait, that wasn't possible. It had picked up the signal on the exact spot that it had stood before.

Jack stared at the screen, and then snatched his coat off the back of the chair and ran for it.

He didn't think he'd ever run so fast in his entire life, even on the frequent occasion when he'd been threatened with death; as a result, he burst out onto ground level, breathing hard, just as the Tardis finished sputtering fully into appearance. He took several deep breaths, trying to look as if he hadn't just made a mad dash from some undisclosed location just so he could see a man he hadn't seen for, oh, several lifetimes now, and then shoved his hands in his pockets as the Tardis doors folded open.

And a stranger looked out.

Jack tilted his head, studying the slender, bespectacled man with the wild brown hair, admiring the slim cut of his suit and the long brown coat. This wasn't the Doctor he remembered, but faces were only faces, and what he really saw when he looked at people wasn't their faces anyway.

'Hello, Doctor,' he said, sauntering forward. The Doctor's head whipped around, and he squinted at Jack, one hand coming up to draw his glasses down the bridge of his nose. For a long moment, they simply looked at each other in silence, Jack's heart pounding in his ears and his hands clammy against the silk lining of his coat pockets.

Then, all of a sudden, the Doctor's face split into a brilliant, crooked grin, and he all but leaped out of the Tardis and caught Jack up in a hug. Jack shivered, surprised and pleased at the same time, and wound his arms around the Doctor's narrow frame, half lifting him off the ground. The crackling energy of two time travellers coming together again shot through his veins, and he bit his lip as he realised this was the most alive he'd felt since the Cyberwoman had tried to kill him.

'Captain Jack!' said the Doctor in cheerful acknowledgment, pressing his hands against Jack's shoulders and pushing himself gently out of Jack's embrace, dropping to the ground and beaming up at him. 'Well, well, it has been a long time. ...How long, exactly?'

Jack grinned. 'Three hundred eighty nine years, seven months, twenty-three days, and...oh...six hours or so?'

The Doctor looked impressed. 'You've been time travelling for too long,' he teased him, then tilted his head, gaze sweeping Jack in that intense way he had that had always made Jack feel naked, even when he already was. 'And you haven't aged a day.'

'And you traded your body in for a new model,' Jack retorted, squeezing the Doctor's shoulder.

'That I have,' he replied. 'D'you like it? I'd sort of hoped to be ginger, but I've become rather fond of this body.' He leaned in close, as if imparting a great secret, and murmured, 'I've got a mole between my shoulderblades.' He grinned wider as he straightened, eyes crinkling at the corners. 'I love that mole.'

Jack laughed. The Doctor seemed even more full of energy than before, almost childlike in his manic excitement; his eyes darted around the square, returning constantly to Jack's face, and his slim frame positively vibrated with energy.

'You'll have to show me later,' Jack said slyly, and then took a step back, looking around. 'So what brings you here? I must admit, even though I rather like it here, I don't know why anyone would voluntarily come to Cardiff.'

The Doctor shrugged, gaze slipping away and back to the Tardis. 'I was erm.' He coughed. 'Looking for you, actually.'

Jack's stomach somersaulted.

'You were,' he said, voice carefully neutral. 'Why's that? Have another world you need saving?'

He hadn't intended for the bitterness to seep into his tone; in fact, he'd been unaware of it until it was there already. He'd thought he was over that. Or at least, he'd convinced himself he was.

A shadow passed over the Doctor's face, and he took a step forward, sliding his hand up to Jack's bicep. 'I'm sorry,' he said quietly. 'I'm sorry we left you. I didn't even know if you'd...and Rose was in trouble, and we...'

'Forget about it,' Jack said. Though it still stung that the Doctor had chosen Rose over him, it wasn't surprising. He only wished there'd never been a choice involved in the first place.

The Doctor looked at him sadly, and then stepped back, scrubbing his hands through his hair. Jack's chest filled with warmth; he recognised that move, as the Doctor had teased him about it so many times, and he smiled before the thought had even fully registered.

'Come on,' he said, stepping forward and slinging an arm across the Doctor's shoulders. 'You were looking for me, and now you've found me. No point standing around out here talking about things that happened a million years ago. Let's go have a cup of tea, shall we?'

The Doctor's face lit up with half of a brilliant smile, and he turned readily into Jack's embrace. Jack grinned down at him, and then said, 'Does Rose want to join us?'

The Doctor stopped. Jack looked down at him in confusion, and saw his face twist into the ugliest grimace he'd ever seen, eyes filling with pain and lips pressing together so hard they turned white. Then, that quickly, he was smoothing out his expression, and he tilted his head up to meet Jack's gaze. 'She's gone,' he said shortly. He stared at Jack for a moment more, and then shrugged off his arm and began walking in the direction they'd been heading, leaving Jack to chase him down, mind whirling with questions he knew he shouldn't ask.

'I'm sorry,' he said as he caught up to the Doctor, who simply shrugged and kept walking. Jack watched him helplessly, and then caught hold of his arm. 'Maybe we need something a little stronger than tea, mm?'

A few minutes later, they were seated at a cozy little table in the local pub, foamy pints of Guinness leaving wet rings on the pocked wood. Jack watched in mixed amusement and relief as the Doctor picked up his drink and took a deep swig; when he set it down, his upper lip was covered with foam, and his eyebrows were quirked, making him look about twelve years old.

'I've not had Guinness for ages,' the Doctor said, and his voice was stronger now, almost back to its normal cheery tone. ''F you're away long enough, you forget the little things, and then it's like having them for the first time all over again.'

'Meal in a glass,' Jack replied. 'And only in the UK could you get one at five in the morning.'

'Is that what time it is?' the Doctor asked, and then laughed. 'No wonder it's so quiet. I was about to say, I don't remember the Welsh being so subdued.'

Jack chuckled, and leaned forward. 'You've got foam just...' He brushed his thumb across the Doctor's upper lip, collecting the foam, ad pulled his hand back to his mouth, licking it clean. The Doctor watched him silently, but Jack saw his fingers tighten around his glass, and smiled to himself. It was good to know that not everything changed; this new Doctor, in fact, seemed even more responsive than the last one had been. Or maybe he'd just been alone too long.

They stared at each other for a long, tension-filled moment, and then the Doctor looked away, taking another sip of Guinness. 'So how did you come here anyway? Last I saw you was a couple thousand centuries from now, and now you're here.'

Jack chuckled. 'The rift,' he explained with a broad, expansive gesture. 'Came across it on one of my oh-so-exciting adventures--' This time, he managed to keep the sarcasm out of his tone. '--went through it, and wound up here. What a godforsaken place. It would be Cardiff that shits out aliens.'

The Doctor snorted, but Jack could see genuine amusement there, and he grinned as well, reaching across the table to cover the Doctor's hand with his own. 'And then I just...stuck around. They needed someone like me to take care of all the other aliens the rift was crapping.'

The Doctor nodded absently, and took another drink. 'So 's that what you do then?' he asked. 'Capture rogue aliens before they can make a mess of the planet? Quite selfless of you.'

'Not really,' Jack replied, feeling his hackles raise slightly at the implication. 'I have my own reasons for doing it. Not making a profit or anything, this time, but it gives me something to do. Makes my life feel like less of a pockmark on the space-time continuum.'

He watched silently as the Doctor made no acknowledgment that he'd heard, except for the way he tipped up his glass and drained about half of what was left. Jack knew he understood. They were two of a kind, really - two people who didn't belong anywhere they went, two people just looking for a reason, a purpose, some sense of usefulness by which to gauge their never-ending lives.

'I have a good crew too,' he added when the silence stretched out a bit too long for his comfort. 'One of them went a bit nuts on me, unfortunately, but that's just a hazard of the job. The rest of them seem to be holding up fairly well, all things considered. We got a new recruit a few months ago and she's fitting right in. Funny, since she's local, former police force. I suppose the Welsh really have seen it all.'

'What is it you do exactly?' The Doctor looked only mildly interested, but it was enough for Jack.

'I work for this organisation called Torchwood. It was established by the--'

He cut himself off. The Doctor's face had drained of all colour, and he was staring at Jack like he'd grown a third head.

'You've heard of it?'

He stared for another moment, uncomprehendingly, and then, without a word, shoved back from the table and stalked off, his coat whipping around him as he moved. Jack stared after him in shock, and then snatched up his coat and hurried after him, at a complete loss.

Jack was fast, but the Doctor was faster, and he was halfway across the square before Jack caught up to him, grabbing his arm.

'What?' he asked, gritting his teeth when the Doctor shook off his arm and running in front of him, blocking his way. 'What did I say?' The Doctor wasn't looking at him, and somehow that was even worse than the silence, the anger reverberating off him in waves.

The Doctor stood there for a second, and then shoved past him, their shoulders colliding hard as he set off toward the Tardis again. Jack could see everything he'd waited for collapsing around him, and he didn't even know what he'd done.

'Stop!' he protested, but the Doctor walked straight up to the Tardis, unlocked the door, and stormed in, the door swinging shut behind him...until Jack caught it and slipped inside.

It had been almost four hundred years, but the memory of the Tardis was as fresh as if it had been only yesterday that he'd last set foot inside, and he wavered, leaning against the door as it shut behind him. The Doctor turned from where he was already fiddling with knobs, and glared at Jack as if looking straight through him.

'Get off my ship.'

Jack's momentary flash of hurt turned to anger as all these repressed feelings bubbled up to the surface. 'No,' he snapped, stepping away from the door with new resolve, hands clenched into fists. 'No, I fucking well will not. It's easy for you to desert me, isn't it? Easy to leave me behind? You blow through town, turn everything upside down in your wake, and then flit off again? Oh, I know, the life of the time lord is a solitary one, no room to be bogged down by silly hangers on, but we had something, and you enjoyed it. Don't pretend you didn't. And then you just turned your back on it. Well maybe it's easy for you, but it's not so easy for me, and I won't let you do it again. Four centuries, Doctor. Four fucking centuries I've been trying to find a way to track you down, and then I come here, to the end of the fucking world, and join an organisation that deals with aliens just so I'd have a chance to track you down again, and--'

'She's dead because of you!'

Jack shut his mouth, staring at the Doctor in shock. He was red, his hands fisted, eyes shining wild and wet and furious, and he was glaring at Jack like he wanted to kill him. 'Because of your fucking Torchwood, having to go meddling in things they've no right meddling in, opening up portals between universes, bringing the Cybermen and the Daleks down on the-- oh, you've heard about that part,' he said sarcastically when Jack flinched. 'Well what you didn't hear, what your precious Torchwood covered up, was that Rose died saving the world from your mistakes. She died, Jack. She was here, and she promised she'd be here forever, and then she got sucked into another universe with no way back and I can never see her again and--'

He broke off, slumping forward, breathing hard. Jack watched him, still filled with anger, but beneath that was sympathy and a deep sorrow. He knew what it was to lose someone he'd loved for so long and thought to be with forever, to be alone after that, and there at least he could understand the Doctor's fury.

'I'm sorry,' he said, taking a few steps forward. 'I didn't know. I didn't mean...'

The Doctor he knew might have let Jack put a hand on his shoulder, wrap an arm around him, comfort him with gentle touches and hot kisses and more. But this Doctor...

At the first touch of Jack's fingers to his shoulders, he whirled, fist flying through the air and catching Jack hard on the jaw. Jack's head exploded in pain, his teeth slicing through his lip and the force of the blow sending him sprawling onto the metal grating of the floor.

'Don't you dare,' the Doctor said as Jack rolled over, looking up at him in pained surprise. 'You're a hypocrite, Jack, claiming to have respect for alien life while exploiting it for your own purposes without even considering the consequences. Torchwood is poison, and you use it because...what? Because you missed me? Because you want someone who understands the world like you do, who's like you? Well I'm not like you, Jack, because I would never sell my soul.'

'Bullshit,' Jack breathed. The pleasure at seeing the Doctor was quickly dissolving into abject fury, and he pushed himself up into a seated position, and climbed slowly to his feet, glaring right back at the Doctor. 'That's fucking bullshit, and you know it. You'd sell your soul in an instant if it would bring her back.'

'Shut up.' The Doctor's voice was quiet, but filled with icy fury. If Jack knew what was good for him, he would stop talking.

He didn't. 'No. It's written all over your face. We're not so different in the end, are we, Doctor? Only I'm not afraid to admit it, because I don't--'

'Shut up!' This time when the Doctor swung, Jack was ready for it, and caught him so the momentum of his swing knocked them both to the floor. Jack landed hard on his back, but flipped them immediately, pinning the Doctor's hands to the floor. The Doctor was much slighter than he, and should have stayed pinned, but his anger gave him steely strength, and he lashed out, throwing Jack off-balance and coming up atop him again, landing another hard punch on his jaw and whipping his head to the side. Jack's mouth filled with blood, and the initial flare of ugly rage was accompanied by the delicious thrill of feeling alive again.

'What are you afraid of?' Jack taunted, knowing that he was playing with fire and if he kept this up, the Doctor could easily kill him with his bare hands. Well, that is, if Jack could die.

'I'm not afraid.' The Doctor was white with fury, his teeth bared as he caught Jack around the throat and squeezed. 'But I'm nothing like you. Nothing.' He wasn't raging anymore, but this cold anger was even more dangerous, the look in his eyes murderous and the pressure of his hand around Jack's throat deliberate as he throttled him. It was getting difficult to breathe now, and Jack's vision was greying around the edges, but he kept staring straight at the Doctor, his mouth curved into a little smirk.

'Oh no?' he managed, his voice tiny and constricted, mouth dry, breath laboured. 'Nothing like lowlife brigand Captain Jack, hmm? You'd never lower yourself to lying, or cheating?'

'No,' the Doctor growled.

Jack struggled to draw in another breath. He could feel his face turning blue. Funny - with the number of times he'd died, he was starting to be able to tell exactly what all the different iterations felt like.

'Or killing?'

The Doctor opened his mouth, but Jack gave him as pointed of a look as he could with his eyes bulging out of his head, and he stopped, face turning even whiter as he pulled his hand back as if he'd been burned. Jack coughed, sucking in great lungfuls of air and bringing a hand up to massage his throat. The Doctor was looking horrified, brown eyes enormous behind his glasses, and Jack had never wanted to kiss him so badly as he did right that moment.

So he did.

The Doctor's eyes went even wider with shock, and he froze, hands by his sides and mouth tight as Jack sat halfway up and slid his arms around his back. He wasn't kissing back, not yet, but he wasn't resisting either, and Jack took that as encouragement, throwing himself into the kiss as fully as possible. He'd had no shortage of kisses since the last time he'd done this, but it had never felt quite like this, like two of a kind coming together instead of two strangers seeking some sort of connection and using kisses to bridge the gap. It was exactly what he'd been missing, filling the expansive black emptiness that kept him up at night with a slow, warm glow and negating the pervasive feeling of being alone in the universe, and he clung to it, to the Doctor, as he deepened the kiss and willed him to kiss back.

He could feel the Doctor shaking, filled with tension and confusion and, if he was correct, a bit of fear, and he pulled him closer, sliding his hands up his spine. When one hand reached his hair and tangled there, the Doctor sucked in a sharp breath and opened his mouth, grabbing Jack by the back of his neck as he kissed him with a desperate fury.

That's more like it, Jack thought, and then he stopped thinking altogether, letting the Doctor's weight push them both to the floor of the Tardis. This was where they'd fucked the first time, Rose watching while she pretended not to and both of them not caring the slightest bit, and it made his dick harden more against the front of his trousers. Surprisingly, the Doctor was already there, and Jack grinned against the Doctor's mouth before moaning without meaning to as the Doctor settled his narrow hips firmly against Jack's and moved.

'Oh, fuck,' he whispered against the Doctor's mouth, and the Doctor lifted his head, eyes wild and breaths coming fast and hard.

'I just tried to kill you,' he said, sounding confused and thrilled and hungry all at once. 'Why are you...'

'I liked it.' Jack smiled at him, though there was no humour in the twist of lips, and he thrust upward against the Doctor to punctuate his statement. The Doctor groaned, dropping his head forward to press against Jack's shoulder, and shuddered as he tried to catch his breath. The fact that he had to made Jack even harder, and he started to move in earnest, trying to make sure that the Doctor wouldn't be able to.

'Why?' the Doctor gasped after a moment, lifting his head and studying Jack's face. 'Why would you want...'

Jack caught one of the Doctor's hands and brought it back to his neck, fitting it where he could feel fingerprints starting to bruise against the skin. 'I can't die,' he said calmly, though he felt anything but. 'Rose...she brought me back, and now I can't die. People have tried to kill me. I've tried to kill myself. But I just...keep coming back. And it's...'

'...the only thing that makes you feel alive?'

Jack looked up, and saw the Doctor smiling at him, understanding veiled with sadness in his dark eyes, beneath the desire still burning there. That, more than anything else, made him feel so good he thought he was going to shake apart, and he nodded silently, letting go and feeling his eyelids droop when the Doctor left his hand there, the V between thumb and forefinger pressed against his Adam's apple. They stared at each other for a long, silent moment, their bodies stilling, and even their breaths slowing until it was like they weren't breathing at all, like they had stopped the movement of time and shrunk the entire universe down to just the two of them.

The Doctor reached up with his free hand, pulling off his glasses and slipping them into a pocket of his coat. 'I'm not a murderer,' he said softly, gaze pained and eyes flicking back and forth as he studied Jack's face.

'No,' Jack agreed, lifting his own hand to the Doctor's face, brushing across his eyebrow with the pad of his thumb. 'But you know when and how to kill.'

'Yeah,' the Doctor said, and the word sounded like defeat and catharsis all at once. 'Yeah, I suppose I do.'

This time when he kissed Jack, there was no hesitation. He was still filled with raw emotion, but it wasn't cold ire or overwhelming sadness. They were still there, beneath the surface, as was the case with anyone who had lived long enough to possess every single emotion, but now he kissed Jack with desire, want, need, and Jack gasped softly as he kissed back, feeling the Doctor's weight bear down on him, hips between thighs, chest against chest, mouth on mouth, and the deliberate pressure of a hand against the soft cartilage of his throat. It felt like the Doctor was trying to not only starve him of air but also steal what little air he could manage to hoard, choking it from him and inhaling it greedily as it left Jack's lungs.

It was terrifying and delicious all at once, and Jack bucked against the Doctor desperately, body tensing in instinctive reaction and eyes rolling back in his head and cock so hard it was painful. His hands scrabbled at the Doctor's shoulders, heavily clad and deceptively thin, and he shuddered as his disparate efforts to loose the Doctor's grip and beg him for more only resulted in a tighter grip. His head was starting to spin now, needling with pain as his brain craved oxygen he wasn't getting, and he felt like he was being stretched in either direction with his neck as the midpoint, the feeling between his head and his body becoming more and more disconnected with every passing moment, every passing breath that wasn't breathed.

Again, it was instinct that made him struggle, limbs flopping about weakly as the Doctor pressed him back against the uneven floor, shoving his hips down to pin Jack in place, and he felt a curious peace come over him as it always did when he was nearing death, the lack of sensation in his body only amplifying his sense of self-awareness, his acknowledgment of the life that was slowly being snuffed out. His lungs burned, his extremities were numb, his cock jerked with each slowing heartbeat, and still the Doctor did not let up, crushing his windpipe until Jack started to make gurgling noises against his mouth. Only then did he lift his head, staring into Jack's face with a terrible calm as Jack clawed at his hand and struggled with what little strength he had left. The movement only made the air leave him faster, the edges of his vision blur and darken sooner, the feeling in his body disappear more completely, and it felt as always like dark fingers were dragging him down into the abyss of nothingness. Cold blue lips struggled to form a word, one single word, shaking as they moved soundlessly, and then they went still as Jack's body stopped fighting and everything went black.

A few moments of silence, quiet peace and the nothingness that Jack had become so familiar with over the past centuries, and then he sucked in a huge breath as his soul came slamming back into his body as if he'd a rubber band binding the two together. He coughed, blinking several times, noting the sharp blinding pain behind his eyeballs and the rawness of his throat every time he breathed, and looked up at the Doctor, who was squinting back at him in concern and fascination. 'Are you all right?' the Doctor asked.

In response, Jack lunged, flipping them over and pinning the Doctor to the floor as he kissed him hard, driving his tongue into his mouth. The overwhelming feeling of life that always followed the few moments of death possessed him, and he growled like a wild animal as he thrust down against the Doctor, feeling the wet stickiness across the front of his shorts but already ready to go again. It was probably disturbing that death was such an aphrodisiac for him, but he didn't bother to worry about it any more now than he ever had in the past. The Doctor didn't much seem to care either, twisting his hips beneath Jack's and shoving at the heavy wool of Jack's coat in an attempt to remedy the lack of nakedness. His frantic desire fed Jack's, which in turn fed the Doctor's, until they were nearly mad with it, simultaneously tearing at each other's clothes and trying to fuck each other through them.

They both had enough practice at this, and with each other, to have each other naked in a matter of moments, and when Jack came up astride the Doctor again, the cleft of his arse pressed against the Doctor's prick, he noticed with some pleasure that this Doctor was even more well-endowed than the last. He looked down at him hungrily, noting with pleasure the equal desire written across the Doctor's face, and shifted until the Doctor's cockhead pressed against his hole, not quite hard enough to breach him, but hard enough to make the muscles stretch.

'Jack...' said the Doctor, and Jack watched a shadow pass across his face, just enough to make him hesitate, before an almost-grimace took its place and he moved with shocking suddenness, flipping Jack onto his back and using the momentum to roll him over onto his stomach. Jack's hands flew out, fingers hooking into the metal grating, and he clenched them there as he felt the Doctor stretch out across his back, grinding his prick into him again and leaning down until his lips just brushed the back of Jack's neck.

'...yeah?' Jack asked raggedly, biting his tongue against the odd almost-pain of ridged metal against his prick and the unforgiving weight bearing him down against it.

The Doctor hesitated, and Jack could hear him lick his lips, could almost feel the flash of tongue against his nape, and he shivered, pushing himself up a little bit more.

'Would you...what would you say if I said that...that I wanted to do that again?'

Jack blinked, and then twisted his head. He couldn't see the Doctor, who was carefully averting his face, but he could sense the shame and embarrassment emanating off him in waves, buried amidst the pervasive lust. But it wasn't so much so he could see as so the Doctor could see him, see the dark flush staining his cheeks, the desire in his eyes, and the way he smiled as he said, 'I would say yes please.'

A moment of silence, and then Jack became aware of a low, rough sound that he presently recognised as growling, deep and feral and vibrating against his back as the Doctor flattened him against the floor again and thrust against him hard, hard enough to push just into him with painful suddenness. Jack sucked in a breath - it had been a long time and he hadn't been quite ready - and dropped his head forward as the Doctor rolled his hips in a fluid movement that pulled him almost out and then drove him forward deeper until he nudged up against Jack's prostate.

'How would you want it?' The Doctor was moving now, in tiny little thrusts that felt exactly as they had four centuries ago save the degree of accommodating stretch. 'How would you want to die? What sort of violent ends have you concocted for yourself in your head? What sort of extremes does it take to get you off these days? I gather a well-placed bite won't do what it used to, hm?'

Jack moaned, curving his back over and bracing himself hard as he pushed back against the Doctor, meeting his movements. 'Not really,' he gasped, and then offered a brief half-smile. 'Now if that bite goes through a major artery...'

He'd halfway meant it as a joke, but as he felt the Doctor tense, prick jerking inside him and body pushing him harder against the floor, he thought that maybe there was nothing to joke about after all. The Doctor's lips were hot and damp on the back of his neck, and he could feel the slightest hint of teeth as the Doctor opened his mouth to kiss the top vertebral bump. He knew the Doctor had a lot of pent-up anger, had done before any of this happened, just from the death of his people, and it seemed like they could help each other out - the Doctor would have an outlet, which was much healthier than the cheerful façade overlaying this dark side that so few people ever got to see but that seemed to become more and more pronounced as time went on, and Jack would have a way to feel like part of the human race again, even if only for a few moments.

'If you're playing with me,' the Doctor breathed hoarsely, 'you'd best tell me now, because I don't know if--'

'I'm not,' Jack interrupted him suddenly, surprising even himself, but the statement no less true as an accidental interjection than it would have been spoken with deliberate gravity.

The Doctor mumbled something that sounded remarkably like The Sumatran equivalent of 'oh god' before twisting a hand in Jack's hair and pulling him up, arching his back. 'You want me to make you bleed?' he growled, and he sounded completely insane now, like Jack had somehow broken him. It was the hottest thing Jack had ever heard, and he moaned before nodding as best as he could with the Doctor giving him a makeshift facelift. The Doctor shuddered, and Jack could tell he was fighting with himself, his desire to preserve mankind and to be the saviour rather than the judgment-bringer warring with his own darker needs that he refused to admit to.

'Please,' he breathed, the word slipping out of his thoughts and into the air between them, and the Doctor froze before yanking Jack's head back and slamming into him hard, knocking the breath from both of them. Again it felt like time had stopped, but this time the moment was full of kinetic energy, and it consumed them both, driving them onward until the air between them crackled with energy and their bodies were slick with sweat and Jack knew he'd be awfully sore after. But that only made him fuck back harder, claiming whatever leverage he could to writhe between the unyielding metal of the floor and the unforgiving punishment of the Doctor's thrusts. The Tardis felt alive with electricity and vibrance that Jack had only felt the one time he'd laid his hand on the panel beneath the controls, right next to the core of the ship, and he wondered if they'd all three needed this to remember who and what they were.

As he shifted, he felt the Doctor's hand slip from his hair, only to have it return to wrap around his throat, crushing his windpipe from behind this time and with even greater force than before. Jack's eyes rolled back in his head at the feel of new bruises forming, but this time he realised the Doctor wasn't trying to choke him - he was holding him there so he could bend his head and bite down roughly on the back of Jack's neck. His teeth were sharp, though not quite sharp enough to puncture skin, and they dragged against his flesh like a dull knife, sensitising it until the gentlest brush of lips made him whine and grit his teeth against the delicious pain. It wasn't enough though, and he groped for his jacket, for the switchblade he always kept in his pocket, because he knew the only weapon the Doctor brandished was his sonic screwdriver, and that wasn't much good for slicing through flesh. They'd discussed it, the advantages of the screwdriver approach versus the good old-fashioned handheld weapon, and as Jack's fingers closed around the handle of the knife, he was very glad he hadn't backed down.

The Doctor's body jerked as Jack pulled the knife free and handed it back to him with a trembling hand; he stopped moving aside from the unconscious tremble of his muscles as he stared at the knife, and Jack thought for a moment that maybe he was going to change his mind. But then his fingers clenched around it until his knuckles turned white, and Jack moaned at the sudden wave of lust washing over him at that simple movement.

The hand moved from his throat back to his hair, and he pressed both his hands against the floor again, pushing himself upward until his back was arched and his hipbones dug into the floor. He shook as he fought to hold himself still, to keep the Doctor's resumed thrusts from dropping him forward onto the floor or, worse, impaling him on the blade of the knife. It still wouldn't kill him, but he didn't fancy a punctured windpipe or a severed spinal cord - he'd heal, of course, but it would be significantly less pleasant to try to ride out an orgasm while gasping like a fish as he waited for his throat to heal. Or worse, to not be able to feel his orgasm in the first place.

He should have known better though; the Doctor was an expert with everything he touched, including Jack, and his hand didn't tremble at all as he flipped the blade open and brought it up to Jack's throat, pressing it there until it began to slice skin and Jack could feel blood welling up in the cut and trickling down his neck. Despite the continued brutal thrusts, the blade held steady, and Jack closed his eyes, leaning into it the slightest bit, welcoming it, wanting to feel it slice through the skin, needing that overstimulation to come again and properly this time. It wasn't like this with anyone else, even with Ianto - still full of rage about Lisa, he took it out on Jack sometimes much to Jack's pleasure, but then he always apologised profusely, and he never pushed Jack hard enough to make him lose his mind. It had seemed so easy before, before he'd become jaded, cut off from life and the human race, but now there was so little that could really affect him anymore. This was the first time in a long time that he'd felt so full of tension he was liable to snap at any moment, and he needed more, needed that little extra nudge to--

The Doctor's hand suddenly tightened in his hair, and Jack gasped as he felt the Doctor stiffen against him and simultaneously yank his arm back, the blade of the knife biting deep into his flesh as the Doctor slit his throat from ear to ear, severing both arteries and sending a spray of arterial blood pouring from his neck. It hurt, the fiery pain of sliced nerves throbbing through his body in time with his heartbeat, the pulses from his throat, from his prick, the shuddering breaths against his nape, the jerk of the Doctor's cock inside his body as he came as well, filling Jack with heat as the warmth slowly drained from his body. He felt relaxed, as if the blood coursing from him was taking all the tension and anger and bitterness with it, and he was vaguely aware of the Doctor saying something, but all he could do was smile as he slumped slowly forward onto the blood-slick metal and went still.

He floated in blackness for longer than usual this time, though he never would have noticed a difference had he not had so much practice with telling time outside of time. When you were dead, every second felt like an eternity and an eternity passed by in a heartbeat. But this time, he was fairly certain at least ten seconds, or ten eternities, had passed him by before he finally felt his soul slip back into his body. It was cold here, his limbs numb and heavy, his heart thudding slowly in the hollow cavity of his chest, and he shivered in slow motion as he forced his weighted eyelids open and moistened his blue, tingling lips.

'You're insane.'

The voice was slow, blurred, barely intelligible, but he recognised it immediately as the Doctor, and he managed the faintest hint of a smile as he tried to turn his head and found he couldn't quite manage it yet.

'Stop moving.' The slight warmth of a hand against the small of his back, and he stilled obediently, straining to look up as the Doctor's face swam into view. 'That's a lot of blood you lost there. It'll take you awhile to regenerate it all. Hold still before you injure yourself further.'

Jack smiled a bit wider, the concern in the Doctor's tone feeling even better than the afterglow of his orgasm. ''M fine,' he slurred, blinking heavily. 'Jus' need a nice cup of tea.'

The Doctor stared at him for a moment, and then slowly, grudgingly, his face split into a smile, and then a grin, and then he started laughing. Jack didn't quite get the joke, but the Doctor looked so comical with his quirked eyebrows and his crinkly eyes that he laughed as well, the sound getting stronger as he felt the blood return to his hands and feet, his heartbeat growing stronger by the second. Half a minute later, he was able to push himself upright, and he grimaced at the sticky-slick mix of blood and come all down his front, pooling in the indentations the metal had left in his flesh and making him look like a Vermicious Blood-Mud Lamprey. That only made him laugh harder, and he slung an arm around the Doctor's shoulders cheekily, snickering as the Doctor made a mock-horrified face and shoved Jack off of him before looking around for something to wipe his hand on.

'It's good to see you again,' he said finally, still chuckling, as the Doctor finally gave up and affected as casual a pose as possible while holding his hand carefully away from the rest of his body. It occurred to him that saying that after the Doctor had tried to kill him not once but twice was a little bit twisted, and yet that was really the gist of their relationship, wasn't it? It didn't adhere to the standards of the rest of humanity, and while they both strove to be as human as possible, that was just the truth of their existence. There were some ways in which they would never be human, and despite their protests, they both sort of liked it that way.

'Yeah,' the Doctor said, smile subsiding to something less manic but still as genuine as ever as he took a step forward and touched Jack's cheek. Jack could still see sadness there, wistfulness, but he looked less alone now, and that made Jack's chest swell with warmth. 'You too.'

And then he slyly swiped his sticky hand on Jack's arm and darted out of reach.

Oh, no, Jack thought, staring at the Doctor in feigned shock and fury as he fought back a delighted grin. He was going to pay for that. It was his turn to be mashed into a waffle.

And they had all the time in the universe.