Title: push the shift to overdrive
Series: Torchwood/Final Fantasy VII(/Star Trek)
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Reno; Gaila
Rating: PG-15
Total length: 1,792
Warnings: Jack. And Reno. In a relationship.
Summary: In which Jack learns lessons, happens upon a family, and realizes that the gingers in his life have a lot of hair.
Author's Note: This is actually something I wrote for
tierfal in a recent meme. But I liked it a lot, so I cleaned it up so I could post it here. Basically, it goes like this. Back in December
I wrote a fic. It was... fic-like, but kind of bad because I wrote it in about an hour. Now technically this fic that I speak of is Axel/Reno, but in it, Reno is pretty much in the backwater mafia version of the Time Agency. In a comment I actually said, Shinra running the Time Agency, hell yeah, Harkness could fit in with the Turks. He and Reno would be best friends. Probably. So uh. That universe is where these drabbles are coming from. Also, these drabbles take place in various different times
Jack meets Reno in the year of the Rabbit, a week and a half before finals. Of course, it being the 51st century, most people don't really have a tendency to follow outdated customs like the Chinese Zodiac. Oh no- humanity had long progressed into other ways of deluding itself into thinking there was some greater purpose.
But Jack, as a burgeoning time traveler, liked to keep track of different eras, and their customs. So it was the year of the Rabbit; in some star dates, they would have met in September. In others, it would have been well into January.
Of course, just because they meet doesn't necessarily mean that anything comes of it. Two weeks of study partners with a little bit too much sexual tension, and before Jack can propose that they act like the hotblooded fiftieth century gentlemen they are, Reno vanishes into the stars like a particularly well crafted mirage.
(Later, he'll learn that Reno had been recruited as a member of an exclusive group of terrorists/bodyguards and that the offer had been too good to pass up. But at the time, Jack had spared several moments of mourning at the loss of a good fuck before moving on. Life was short, and he was easy.)
.
The first time they did wind up having sex, Jack had been under the assumption that Reno was one of those boys who wanted to bend him over a desk and show him how it was done. He'd certainly spent enough time ogling Jack's ass between study breaks before. And it's not like he would have been a self-hating jackass, either. Homophobia- even homophobia towards oneself had died out nearly completely by the 40th century.
It's just that Reno was always one of the dangerous sorts. He reminded Jack a little bit of John, actually- whiskey in one hand, explosions in the other. And John had definitely been one of those boys, but Jack didn't really mind getting bent over a bar stool and fucked in an empty pub if they made it good for him.
So when they come across each other in the Rhelion Quadrant, Reno with three different guns on his person and Jack with five knives and some stolen shrapnel hidden back in his ship, neither knowing just when the other had come from, Jack had expected a quick and dirty fuck in the back alley. The kind that left his knees week and everything sore and wonderful and perfect.
That is not what he gets.
For one, Reno really isn't fussy about taking a bit of cock- something that becomes abundantly clear the minute that Reno drops to his knees outside the pub and swallows Jack's cock down with a smirk.
When Reno pulls away a few minutes later, smirk curving the corners of his mouth and purrs, "so your ship or mine?" Jack has to discard his previous hypothesis.
He makes the new one as Reno pushes past him onto Jack's own ship, stopping to remark on the salvaged (stolen) parts that Jack has sitting in a heap next to his cot.
The new one is this- Reno is definitely dangerous. But there is no way in hell that the kid is cock-shy.
.
Jack likes Reno's hair just fine. He's comfortable enough with Reno that he has no qualms about admitting that it's actually kind of pretty. Sure, Reno smacks him afterward, and pretends to sulk in the engine room while Jack attempts to get his breath back, but there's always a bit of a grin lurking around the pout.
After a couple fuck-kiss-cuddle-leaveforamission visits, Reno starts to actually leave stuff behind. A brush with red strands stuck in the bristles, a spare change of clothes, even a few stolen paintings snatched from various points in time all over the universe.
He even lets Jack help him dye his hair occasionally, allowing Jack to card dripping red gloved fingers through his hair while he sits on the lid of the toilet and tries not to fidget.
(The only thing that annoys Jack about Reno's hair is how he will always, always find heaps of it in his shower drain after a visit.
But that's not that big of a deal.)
.
Finding the baby was an accident.
Deciding to raise her, however, was not.
"We should name her Facebook!" Reno grins, cradling the child protectively to his chest while Jack fires off round after round over their shoulders.
"Do we have grenades?" he asks, eying their scaly reptilian friend over their shoulders. A grenade would work on that skin. Or maybe a flamethrower. Reno shifts at his side and the baby makes a sniffling sound. He stops, realizing. And then- "God no! What is wrong with you?!"
"Fine, okay. Jessica? Elena? No- she'd castrate me if I named a kid after her. Jenny?"
"That's the name of the Doctor's daughter."
"Oh. Well then."
They both watch as the alien drops it's gun through the grating. Reno raises an incredulous brow. "Oh come on! There is no way that he didn't do that on purpose!"
"Gender neutral pronouns, Reno. Try zir," he mutters, because there's a voice annoyingly similar to the Doctor's in his head telling him that even if they're shooting at him, it never fails to show some manners.
The alien gets a new gun.
They run.
The little girl turns out to be mostly human, save the fact that her skin is the color of Reno's eyes and her eyes are a shade of blue that actually isn't discovered until the early 5600s.
Her hairs the same color as his though. Figures. More red hair in the drain.
They name her Gaila, after a slowly wakening nebula that they pass by on the way home.
It suits her.
.
Jack appreciates a partner whose vocal in the bed. He really does. After all, there's nothing quite like getting good feedback. But when their six year old daughter is sleeping in the next room and the engine isn't nearly loud enough to cover the sound of Reno's groans, he doesn't really think it's a good idea.
(Good thing Reno doesn't mind being gagged.)
.
When she's seven, Gaila asks the Doctor for a time machine.
Thankfully, she does this within earshot of Jack, who immediately detaches himself from Reno's side and makes his way over just in time to catch the Doctor crouching down before her, his eyes lit up with glee as he whispers excitedly, "-an't give you one, but I can show you how to make one! How would you like that, you clever little thing, you?"
He swats the Doctor (mostly because he deserves it for encouraging her) and puts Gaila in time out (because 1: putting her in time out on the TARDIS never fails to make the Doctor giggle like a mad man and 2: it's the third time that week she'd asked for impossible things.)
Of course, later, the Doctor takes the time to mulishly grumble that he wasn't going to show her how to make a real one, just a nice one that can shift a few seconds through the time stream. "Really, as if I would give any child of yours free reign to the whole universe."
.
When she's fourteen and stroppy, Gaila steals the TARDIS for a week.
Jack isn't sure which is worse, worrying about his daughter or babysitting a grounded Doctor.
They never really figure out where she went, but considering that she comes back fifteen and nearly through puberty, they can guess that it wasn't just a week for her.
.
Reno teaches her how to make bombs. Luckily, he also teaches her how to deactivate them.
She's far too pleased by this development.
.
When he looks at them, it's hard to think about any family he'd had before them. He's had a wife and a child- had grandchildren, even. But they've never had this. Reno knows time like the back of his hand, when one planet is in the middle of a civil war and another a revolution. He knows when all the big heists in history go down, because he wants to be the one to steal them. They pop in an out of time lines like some humans move through towns.
He thinks he wouldn't do it as often if Gaila clearly didn't love adapting to certain time period's cultures and customs.
They're a family in the strangest way- taking their daughter on jewel heists (but never the assassinations), letting her Time Lord pseudo uncle pop in every so often to shower her with gifts. By the time she was ten, she was fluent in thirteen languages.
Gaila, for her part, has a tendency to make others think that she's a little bit daft. Seeing her around her friends is like seeing a completely different person. She's still confident, strong, and lovely- but has tucked all that knowledge from years of futuristic schools and visits from alien geniuses into the very back of her head. When Reno asked her once why she did it, he says that she'd smirked and said, "So they'll underestimate me, of course."
.
Sometimes, her daddy looks out at the stars like he's afraid of them. He's sad about a lot of things, she knows. He feels bad because he thinks he's failed people, because he killed his grandson in that incident that she's not really supposed to know about and watched his boyfriend die.
Aunt Gwen says that those times were pretty bad for her daddy, and that if he hadn't found her dad again, he probably would have been sad forever.
Gaila knows that he's sad because of her dad's laugh lines and how he still doesn't have any. He's sad because he's older than Uncle Doctor and because he had to leave Aunt Gwen and her baby in the 21st century. That he couldn't show them the stars.
He's sad because she's older now, and while she still likes his stories, she can actually live them now.
(The first time she'd watched him die, it felt like something in her was dying with him.)
(The feeling didn't ease when he gasped back to life moments later.)
But he's happy most of the time. When he has her dad at his side and sometimes when he has a gun in his hand. She knows that they still like to play- that they'll always like the thrill of dismantling a bomb or saving a planet. It's part of the reason she made her decision.
"What the hell is Starfleet?" he asks, glancing towards Dad imploringly. Dad's eyes are wide, so she knows he knows what it is.
She smiles.