dameruth: "Linchpin" (Ten/Jack) [Adult/R]
Title: "Linchpin"
Author: dameruth
Challenge: Identity
Characters: Ten/Jack
Series: "Flowers"
Rating: Adult/hard R
Spoilers: None, but part of an AU series.
Summary: What does the Doctor see, when he looks at Jack? Perceptions can change, in more ways than one.
A/N - Yay! I'm finally getting a fic done in time for a challenge here! This is a huge one by my standards (nearly 5,000 words), set in the Flowers!verse during Ten and Jack's "bachelor years" before "Untouched By Frost" (though it sets up some things that will be developed in that later story). A bit of skience-pr0n (see here for more info about the "glowing skin" phenomenon, which I immediately knew was going into one of these stories the minute I read about it), some angst, some alien!Doc stuff . . . in other words, business as usual for this 'Verse. ;)
Thanks to aibhinn for the beta, and for fearlessly taking hammer and tongs to my eccentric punctuation.
Moving with perfect, reflexive synchronization, Jack and the Doctor slammed shut the lead-lined steel hatch of the emergency shelter and dogged it down. In response, the automatic emergency systems came on-line, lights and filtered-air circulation stuttering to life. For a few seconds, the thrum of the life support system and the deep, winded breathing of the shelter's two occupants were the only sounds. Then there was a low, bass rumble, as much felt as heard, and both lights and air cut out. Air circulation restarted almost immediately, but the shelter stayed dark.
"I think that was it," Jack said, swallowing and beginning to relax.
"I think you're right," the Doctor replied, sounding as if he were regaining his composure. Fabric rustled, and Jack imagined the Doctor reaching up to run a hand through crazed, spiky brown hair, attempting to tame it now that the emergency was over.
"And here I was looking forward to being pleasantly bored for a weekend. Should've known a scientific conference with you in attendance would get interesting . . ." Jack said, casting a useless glance around, hoping for some sign of the lights coming back.
"Oi! I wasn't the one who decided to prove my colleagues were 'fools, all fools, they never should have called me mad . . .!' by bringing in an unstable prototype to demonstrate my scientific know-how. Good job I was here, or things would have ended up a lot more exciting than they did, in a thrillingly glow-in-the-dark way."
"Not that most of us would've been around to enjoy the show. Think they've arrested Dr. Frankenstein yet?" The darkness was becoming oppressive, but Jack refused to let it get to him. He hadn't thought he'd ever be anywhere darker than that cave they'd been trapped in several adventures back, but he was re-thinking that conviction.
"Frandersham. Dr. Frandersham. I expect he hung around to gloat a bit - after all, the isotopic converter did work. For a few seconds. Nobody can argue that. So, yes, he's probably in custody."
"Guess we'll find out in about four hours. Glad that stuff he was making has such a short half-life."
Once they'd managed to get the deadlocked and overloading converter (fortunately only a tabletop model that they could carry between them, though Jack's back muscles would be feeling the strain for a while yet) from the exhibit hall to the Academy's shielded radioactives research center, they'd planned to exit the (now-evacuated) facility before the thing blew. Automatic safety systems would read the burst of energy and bolt the doors from the outside until radiation levels had dropped enough to allow safe reentry.
That had proven easier said than done; fortunately, the center was well-equipped with emergency shelters intended for just this sort of experimental circumstance. It didn't seem like a great way to inspire confidence in the safety of shortlife fission energy systems, but Jack had to admit he was glad the facility's builders had been thinking of worst-case scenarios.
It was still pitch-black in the shelter. Unable to stop himself, Jack asked, "What's up with the lights, anyway?"
"I was wondering that myself," the Doctor admitted. His sonic screwdriver flared to life, its small blue light nearly blinding after the darkness. It revealed a blue-and-black monochrome portrait of a bare, efficient little room with padded benches along the walls, suitable for maybe twenty people who were willing to share. While the Doctor fiddled with the screwdriver, taking readings, Jack took advantage of the light to make a quick recon. Cupboards along the walls, above the benches, yielded a solid array of emergency supplies -- water, rations, medkits, blankets -- while a single door at the back offered cramped-but-servicable sanitary facilities in a standard multispecies configuration.
If we had to be stuck somewhere for the duration, it could be a whole lot worse, Jack thought, spirits lifting a little now the oppressive darkness was gone and he had a better grasp of their surroundings.
The Doctor, however, was glaring up at the light fixtures with his teeth bared in a frustrated snarl. "Graaah! It's not working. They're fried." He glared a moment longer, then his expression eased and his eyebrows went up. "Still. Better air and no lights than the other way 'round."
"God, yes!" Jack seconded as the potential horror of that alternative hit him.
"I'm not a hundred percent sure about that hatch, either," the Doctor continued. "The surge might have fused some of the circuits. I'm not about to try opening it now, but just in case I'll have to try later, I need as much of a charge as possible." He looked at Jack and held up the screwdriver for clarification.
"Makes sense," Jack admitted, and headed for one of the benches so he didn't have to try and find it with his shins in the dark. The Doctor dropped down beside him, companionably close, before flicking off their last light.
They were silent a moment, shoulders and hips bumping in familiar contact. "I have an idea how we could pass the time," the Doctor said then, sounding so innocent Jack was sure he must be grinning like a cat.
"Not a game of I Spy, I take it?" Jack shot back, earning a chuckle, followed by the Doctor leaning in for a kiss. Jack responded readily to the Doctor's cool lips and tongue, but the Doctor broke contact after a moment and pulled back.
"Are you all right?" he asked, in a worried tone, and Jack wondered how he knew. Some subtle shift in his movements, or flat-out biochemistry?
"Fine," Jack said with a sigh. "I'm just not a big fan of total darkness. It reminds me a little too much of . . . ." He trailed off, not really sure how to finish without sounding melodramatic. The cave they'd been trapped in a while back hadn't been great, but there they'd been moving towards a goal, not sitting still and letting the absolute lack of light press against them. "Being dead," he finally finished, deciding on the direct approach.
The Doctor huffed an unhappy little breath against Jack's cheek, his hand slipping up to cup the far side of Jack's face. "I could try again to get the lights working," he began, but Jack cut him off.
"Don't bother. Save the battery power. We're not talking a full-out phobia here. I just don't like it." It wasn't fear that got to him, it was the creeping melancholy of remembering everything and everyone that had gone (and would go) into that final darkness, the one that kept spitting him back out again and again.
"What can I do?" the Doctor asked, his voice soft, but there was an added texture to his words, the first velvet hints of extra harmonies and vibrations.
"Remind me that I'm alive," Jack said, And that you are, too. The timbre of his own voice dropped as he spoke and he turned his head, seeking the Doctor's mouth by the cool feather-touch of the Time Lord's breath, its faint honey-tang masking the other types of chemistry no doubt being exhaled, all which were going straight to Jack's reptile brain. He brushed his lips very lightly over the Doctor's, the barest contact, feeling the glow of his own body heat contrasting with alien coolness.
The Doctor's grip on the back of Jack's head tightened, guiding him closer. "Oh," the Doctor murmured. "You're alive, all right. You are so alive . . ." The buried harmonics in his voice surfaced completely on the last word, turning it into a soft chord just before he leaned in and kissed Jack in full earnest.
Jack responded, and the darkness ceased to exist.
---
The padded benches being far too narrow, the two of them ended up on the floor, cushioned by a pile of emergency blankets (pilfered hastily by touch and memory from one of the storage cabinets) and their own shed clothing. It wasn't the softest surface in the Universe, but they'd both bedded down in far less comfortable circumstances. They ended up in a pleasant arrangement of spent bodies and limbs, the Doctor spooned up against Jack's back with one leg draped over Jack's, his arm snaking around and under Jack's and his hand pressed lightly over Jack's heart. Predictably, once they'd reached that point, the Doctor fell asleep. Jack didn't blame him. They'd had an active few days, all spent searching for peace and quiet . . . and finding anything but.
Until now. Now the peace and quiet weren't just available, for a few hours they were strictly enforced. Jack felt himself yielding to that knowledge, reaching a rare state of relaxation. The darkness was no longer oppressive; it had been transformed into nothing more than a simple lack of light. It was a sign of how much energy he'd expended recently that he found himself slipping into the light doze that was as close as he ever got to sleeping, drifting in a haze of half-dreams and almost-memories.
The Doctor (and Ianto) had been right. He needed times like this, when he wasn't the Director of Torchwood -- wasn't the Director of anything, for that matter. Even while dozing he could feel intangible things slipping back into place within his heart and head, like healing bones and muscles pulling into alignment.
He was brought to full consciousness by the Doctor twitching awake with a truly unique noise somewhere between a snort and a harmonica being stepped on. A moment of silence, no doubt while the Time Lord reoriented himself and remembered where he was.
"How long do we have left?" Jack asked, still in such a languid state he didn't particularly care about the answer.
"Ninety-three point four minutes, bare minimum. Figure two hours to be safe," the Doctor replied with prompt precision, better than a watch with a glow-in-the-dark dial. His driving in the TARDIS wasn't always accurate, but his personal timesense was impeccable.
"Mmmmm," Jack responded, lips curving up in an anticipatory smile. The way he was feeling, those two hours stretched out in front of them like a pleasant eternity. He was still too limp and relaxed for actual physical arousal, but there was a faint coil of anticipation starting to build within him. Plenty of time for a second round, slow and lazy now they'd taken the edge off their appetites.
The Doctor shifted, unhooking his chin from Jack's shoulder and levering up on one arm.
"Ah," he said after a moment. "I like that smile of yours."
Jack's eyes blinked open to reveal absolute darkness, confusion pulling him into greater alertness.
"How can you tell I'm smiling?" he asked. Is his sense of smell that good . . .?
"I can see it," the Doctor said, sounding playful, even teasing.
Jack blinked. It seemed even darker with his eyes open than with them closed.
"How exactly are you doing that?" It was the natural question and he knew it was what the Doctor wanted him to ask. He could practically feel the Time Lord thrumming with the desire to explain.
"You're glowing," the Doctor said, enunciating the words with great self-satisfaction.
Jack opened his mouth and closed it again. He knew the Doctor didn't see infrared (though he did get more of the ultraviolet end of the spectrum than a human did), and was mostly limited to visible light the way humans were. However, in total darkness, human skin did emit a faint but real glow in the visible light spectrum -- a thousand times fainter than anything the human eye could detect, and of no real practical use. Some non-human species exhibited the same phenomenon, to a greater or lesser degree, but with equal irrelevance in the long run. It was just one of those odd science facts, the sort that stuck in memory precisely because of its triviality.
"Yeah, I am, but I didn't think was something humanoids could see with the naked eye," Jack said.
"I'm not just any humanoid," the Doctor said, shamelessly smug. "If it's completely dark and my eyes are adapted enough - which they are, after two and a half hours - I can just barely detect it."
Jack snorted. "If you're trying to give me an inferiority complex, you've picked the wrong guy," he said, unfazed. He began relaxing, caught between full wakefulness and drifting again.
"Don't I know it," the Doctor murmured with wry affection. Then, in a brighter tone, "Would you like to see?"
That brought Jack awake. "How?" He wasn't quite sure he was hearing the Doctor correctly.
In answer, the Doctor's fingertips slid into place over the neural connections just under the skin of Jack's face and temple. It was a very suggestive gesture from a touch-telepath and not something Jack had expected. Sex was one thing, mind-to-mind contact something entirely different, fraught with its own potential implications, complications and taboos - not even counting the wariness unique to their situation. Despite the Doctor's light tone, Jack knew his offer wasn't a mere whim.
"Don't we need to be in a swimming pool with parasitic worms hanging off us?" he asked, carefully keeping his tone neutral, with a hint of lightness to match the Doctor's.
The Doctor made an amused noise and brushed gentle lips down the vulnerable, unguarded side of Jack's throat, sending a gooseflesh-shudder through his body. I'm more powerful than you, that gesture said, but I won't hurt you, you can trust me, see? It was part of some instinctive dance, like the steps leading to physical seduction; the animal part of Jack's brain understood that much very well. He knew enough about Time Lords to realize that he should probably be scared at this point. He would have been, with anyone but the Doctor.
"For a full-spectrum, real-time sensory exchange we would," the Doctor said, his human-toned English flawless and controlled, which was reassuring. "Even I can't manage that many channels at once. But exchanging one or two senses is well within my abilities. No Galfraxian mirror worms need apply."
"You're full of surprises today," Jack said, managing to keep his voice steady as the Doctor's tongue traced a cool, damp line along the rim of his throat hollow. He wasn't sure which was more disconcerting: the Doctor's offer or the fact that none of his own survival instincts were kicking in. His heartbeat might be speeding up, but it wasn't out of fear. Then again, survival instincts always seemed to take a holiday when the Doctor was around.
"I thought that was part of my charm," the Doctor replied, arrogant, cheerful, bantering, and -- God -- completely irresistible. His fingertips hadn't budged from their positions on Jack's face.
Jack had to laugh. "And you call me shameless. Sure, I'll give it a shot. I've always wondered what it looked like."
The Doctor planted a final kiss on the point of Jack's shoulder and then, without further ado, his mind was open and applying polite pressure on Jack's psychic shields. Jack lowered his defenses and was rewarded with an instantaneous mental lurch, followed by mild disorientation as his brain began receiving new input. He'd closed his eyes against the darkness, but now he was seeing a faintly glowing blob that didn't make any sense. He felt the Doctor give a helpful mental nudge and the blob resolved itself into his own face, seen in profile, along with part of his neck and shoulder. Hair, eyebrows and eyelashes were dark (dead tissue, he realized), masking the subtle glow, and the Doctor's extended hand and wrist were black silhouettes against Jack's skin.
"So you don't glow?" Jack asked.
"Nope," the Doctor said, sounding smug. "Better free-radical scavenging pathways."
"There you go, being all alien again," Jack said. He brought his hand into the Doctor's field of view, moving tentatively. It was tricky, like positioning a reflection in a mirror, the visual feedback not quite matching the body's kinesthetic sense.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," the Doctor replied, refusing to take the bait. Jack could see his own faint smile in response, though the Doctor's eyes.
Jack rotated his hand; the palm was slightly brighter than the back. Different epidermal thickness, probably . . . Then he froze. "What was that?" he asked.
"What was what?" the Doctor asked, sounding confused.
"Something just at the edge of my - your - peripheral vision. Like an afterimage."
"Was it like this?"
The Doctor did something indescribable and Jack's view of things changed, filling with faint, coiling wisps and lines of light.
"Yeah, exactly like that. What is that? Not something alive, is it?"
"No, not alive," the Doctor said, in his happy-science-geek voice. "This is brilliant! Synesthesia!"
"Translation?"
"A neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway."
Jack was treated to the sight of his own luminescent fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. "No, I know what synesthesia is - I meant, what's its significance now?"
"Well, I'm out of practice, and I'm being a bit leaky about just passing along sight," the Doctor said. He looked up and around the pitch-black room (a dizzying shift in perspective for Jack), which seemed filled with the small, ghostly after-images. "But you haven't got a proper timesense, so your brain is translating fragmentary timelines as visual input. Like I said, brilliant!"
"Timelines? The way you always talked about them, I thought they'd be bigger. More obvious, anyway." It seemed best to follow the Doctor's lead and take the scientifically-interested track, rather than being too freaked out by the thought of being in "leaky" contact with someone whose mental landscape could swallow Jack whole.
"Oh, these are just little ones - probabilities of air currents' changes in direction, bit of Brownian motion here and there. It's different with people and events." The Doctor rolled his head back and grinned up at the ceiling. Jack could feel the expression from the inside. Definitely leaky contact.
"What are those? The big rectangles?" They were faint, fainter even than the glow from Jack's skin, but they were clearly visible to the Doctor's eyes.
"Afterglow in the light fixtures," the Doctor said. "You know, I could show you my own timeline, if I open up a bit more. I'd love to see what your brain makes of that."
"Wait, so you're seeing what I'm seeing? Or . . . who's seeing what?"
"It gets a bit fuzzy in situations like this. Easier not to try and tease it out too much." A hint of a mental shrug; from the way the Doctor's body shifted against Jack's it was accompanied by the physical gesture as well. "What do you say -- fancy a look?"
It was a variation on the Doctor's usual challenge, the invitation-dare he loved to give at the TARDIS doors: Shall we go see what's out there?
"What the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound."
"That's the spirit!" Perception shifted, a delicate change in plane-of-focus, and the room exploded with color and light.
At first Jack couldn't make any sense out of the tangled mass that seemed to fill his field of vision, but the Doctor's mind steadied his and sought to provide context. Patterns became apparent in the luminous, swooping curves and helicies: one bright central line (the Doctor's actual timeline) weaving back and forth on itself like a drunken ouroboros, intersecting a myriad of other lines, changing and deflecting them in some cases, strengthening and supporting others along their way, creating a huge, intricate structure, full of color and life.
The Doctor laughed out loud. "Blimey, it looks a right mess like that. I do get around, don't I?"
"You see this all the time?" Jeez, no wonder he seems like he has his head in the clouds sometimes.
I heard that, came the amused, subvocalized response. "Not this," the Doctor said aloud, sounding unperturbed. "This is your brain trying to process it all. But think of how humans experience things -- you aren't consciously aware of everything you sense, all the time; it would be overwhelming. That way lies madness, for any species. So what you perceive all depends on what you're paying attention to at any given moment."
Jack had been tracing the central timeline as best he could, following its intricate path, and he encountered a disturbing phenomenon. "Wait, does it end, right there?" He tried to "point" mentally.
"Well spotted!" The Doctor sounded proud, like a teacher whose student was proving quicker than expected. "That's the present, actually. So my timeline hasn't ended, that's just as far as I can perceive it. One's personal future is next to impossible to 'see' clearly - you're too close to the material. Bit like trying to see the back of one's own head. Nearly as disquieting when you manage it, too."
Speaking of disquieting phenomena, Jack could also see the pattern of the Doctor's life wasn't static, everything was moving, subtly and slowly. Well, he's always saying Time isn't as fixed as humans think it is. As unsettling as the implications might be to someone who experienced Time as a linear phenomenon, when filtered through a Time Lord's perceptions the movement had the feeling of being part of the natural, inevitable machinery of the Universe - the Greater Dance, Jack remembered the Doctor labeling it in his thoughts, back when they'd given the mirror worms a trial run.
I wonder what my timeline looks like? Jack thought. Bet it's a doozy. Without understanding how, he knew how to look for it; a quick shift in perception, like focusing on an alternate interpretation of an optical illusion to see a vase instead of two faces, and the Doctor's timeline receded into the background. The swarm of timelines associated with him jumped into sharp focus, and Jack had no trouble spotting his own.
It was straight. Absolutely ruler-straight, infinitely long - and it was wrong, the one and only thing in the entire Universe that wasn't in motion, defying the Dance, defying Time, defying life. Reality warped around it, forced into a contorted shape it should never have achieved, and the mind recoiled, seeking to flee that unnatural influence . . .
Jack flinched physically and struggled against the mental contact, trying to shake the Doctor's perceptions out of his head. No wonder the Doctor had run from him; God, any sane being who could see this would do the same. He fought to break free of the Doctor's touch, wanting only to get away. But even if he could stop seeing the horror of his own existence, he knew he'd never be able to forget it; the knowledge of what he'd become would haunt him the rest of forever. A small, hopeless sound wrenched itself from his throat as he fought harder against the Doctor's mind and embrace.
Jack! Be still! the Doctor said silently, the normally airy quality of his mind gone to steel even as his joints and muscles locked around Jack like manacles. For the first time, Jack found himself fighting the Doctor's full strength, and it was considerable.
"No!" the Doctor said aloud, through gritted teeth. "I will not let you see yourself that way." He slipped back into direct communication and the sheer force of his thoughts served to subdue Jack as much as the physical grip. That's what I saw the first time and that's why I ran, but I was wrong, Jack. I didn't look hard enough. That's not the truth, this is.
The Doctor forced another change in perspective, pulling back, so far back that Jack's timeline looked thinner than a hair, and everything else fell into place around it. Jack stopped struggling as he took in the new information revealed by the greater "distance."
His timeline was still an impossibility, still absolutely fixed, but that didn't keep it from being part of the Dance after all. The Dance continued around it, adapted to it, even incorporated it, going off into new spirals and elaborations that could only be supported by contact with a fixed point. One impossibility made others possible, adding to the beauty, the complexity, the joy of things. What looked like warping in the short view evened out in the longer perspective, became the way things had been, should be, would always be. That single straight line wasn't wrong, it was unique: yet another flavor, another note, another dance step, and it belonged.
Rose loved you, the Doctor said, pressing a kiss to Jack's temple, in the empty space between the thumb and forefinger of his spread hand, still holding the neural contact points. She wouldn't have made you into something 'wrong.' I should have had more faith, but I was scared and dying and half-blind . . . then, after that, I was ashamed of myself and could hardly look you in the eye. But this is what I see now. You burn like a star and stand as linchpin of the Universe, and I'm lucky you gave me another chance.
He ended with a second kiss, more lingering this time, his body pliant and gentle again against Jack. The vision of timelines faded, replaced with the former view of Jack's subtly-glowing profile, shadowed by the Doctor's hand. Jack, his head whirling, barely registered the change. The first question that managed to take coherent form in his mind was, How long? How long have you seen things this way?
The Doctor hesitated, just a split second, but his answer held a hint of wariness as he caught the tone underlying Jack's thoughts. A while now. Since the plague on Enala Tuzaren.
Air hissed out between Jack's teeth. He saw his own lips curl back in the Doctor's eerie night vision. That long? How much longer before you were planning to tell me, if ever? The thought burned with the sting of remembered pain and rejection.
Everything went black as the Doctor closed his eyes and fell silent for a few long heartbeats. I'm not proud of myself, or the way I acted, he finally admitted, so careful in his framing of the thought that it felt awkward and stilted.
In other words, he'd been avoiding the pain (particularly his) involved in addressing the topic again. Jack understood Doctor-ese well enough to read between the lines. Yeah, that's what I figured, he thought back, swallowing against the bitterness in his throat.
Jack, the Doctor began, with a hint of helplessness, I'm --
Jack cut off the apology before it could be formed, even at the speed of thought. Never mind, just . . . get out. Out of my head.
The mental contact closed like a slammed door, and the Doctor's hand vanished from Jack's face as if his skin had gone scalding-hot. It was yet another hard, fast shift, but Jack wasn't so disoriented that he missed the hasty shift in the Doctor's weight, preparation for a more physical form of disengagement.
"You don't have to leave," Jack told him, irritated, though he wasn't quite sure why, or with whom. "I just wanted to have my brain to myself for a while."
The Doctor paused, weight poised, and then slowly, carefully, joint by joint, he relaxed back into his half-spooned, half-draped position. Jack guessed (though he could no longer tell directly) that the soft sigh of breath against his shoulder was at least partially one of relief.
Jack sighed, too, feeling the way his own body eased back against the Doctor's solid, cool weight. He should be angry, he knew -- more angry, anyway -- but he also knew the Doctor's mere presence would erode any such feelings. What's that they say about being a fool for love? I'm walking, breathing, eternal proof of that concept . . .
Finally, he said aloud, "'Linchpin of the Universe,' huh?" He let his voice be friendly, his cadence bantering.
"Uh-oh," the Doctor replied, and Jack could hear the smile. "I think that pinging noise I just heard was your ego popping its buttons as it grew another two sizes."
"And I still think this you is incredibly cheeky," Jack retorted, knowing they were all right again, for good or ill. "How much longer have we got?"
"Oh, at least sixty-eight point seven minutes - half an hour more if we're being careful," the Doctor said. "Why? Did you have something in mind?" He sounded cheerful and innocent, which meant he was being deliberately dense -- as he proved by reaching forward to suck at Jack's earlobe.
Jack inhaled sharply, arching his back in reaction and realizing that he was at a disadvantage in terms of retaliation. "Yeah," he gasped out, "definitely cheeky." He shuddered as cool fingertips brushed the sensitive skin just below his navel, tracing a slow line downward that sent nerve endings all but exploding, filling Jack's head with light enough to drive away any darkness. He tried to roll over and face the Doctor, so he could start returning favors, but the Doctor's limbs tightened gently, with no more than normal human strength.
"Let me," the Doctor murmured in his ear, using the low, velvet voice that was almost sex in and of itself, and Jack didn't argue. Whatever the Doctor's motive -- atonement, thank-you, test of trust or even all three -- he found it didn't really matter. The only things that mattered were the moment, the Doctor, and the power of one all-encompassing point on a long line stretching to infinity.
Author: dameruth
Challenge: Identity
Characters: Ten/Jack
Series: "Flowers"
Rating: Adult/hard R
Spoilers: None, but part of an AU series.
Summary: What does the Doctor see, when he looks at Jack? Perceptions can change, in more ways than one.
A/N - Yay! I'm finally getting a fic done in time for a challenge here! This is a huge one by my standards (nearly 5,000 words), set in the Flowers!verse during Ten and Jack's "bachelor years" before "Untouched By Frost" (though it sets up some things that will be developed in that later story). A bit of skience-pr0n (see here for more info about the "glowing skin" phenomenon, which I immediately knew was going into one of these stories the minute I read about it), some angst, some alien!Doc stuff . . . in other words, business as usual for this 'Verse. ;)
Thanks to aibhinn for the beta, and for fearlessly taking hammer and tongs to my eccentric punctuation.
Moving with perfect, reflexive synchronization, Jack and the Doctor slammed shut the lead-lined steel hatch of the emergency shelter and dogged it down. In response, the automatic emergency systems came on-line, lights and filtered-air circulation stuttering to life. For a few seconds, the thrum of the life support system and the deep, winded breathing of the shelter's two occupants were the only sounds. Then there was a low, bass rumble, as much felt as heard, and both lights and air cut out. Air circulation restarted almost immediately, but the shelter stayed dark.
"I think that was it," Jack said, swallowing and beginning to relax.
"I think you're right," the Doctor replied, sounding as if he were regaining his composure. Fabric rustled, and Jack imagined the Doctor reaching up to run a hand through crazed, spiky brown hair, attempting to tame it now that the emergency was over.
"And here I was looking forward to being pleasantly bored for a weekend. Should've known a scientific conference with you in attendance would get interesting . . ." Jack said, casting a useless glance around, hoping for some sign of the lights coming back.
"Oi! I wasn't the one who decided to prove my colleagues were 'fools, all fools, they never should have called me mad . . .!' by bringing in an unstable prototype to demonstrate my scientific know-how. Good job I was here, or things would have ended up a lot more exciting than they did, in a thrillingly glow-in-the-dark way."
"Not that most of us would've been around to enjoy the show. Think they've arrested Dr. Frankenstein yet?" The darkness was becoming oppressive, but Jack refused to let it get to him. He hadn't thought he'd ever be anywhere darker than that cave they'd been trapped in several adventures back, but he was re-thinking that conviction.
"Frandersham. Dr. Frandersham. I expect he hung around to gloat a bit - after all, the isotopic converter did work. For a few seconds. Nobody can argue that. So, yes, he's probably in custody."
"Guess we'll find out in about four hours. Glad that stuff he was making has such a short half-life."
Once they'd managed to get the deadlocked and overloading converter (fortunately only a tabletop model that they could carry between them, though Jack's back muscles would be feeling the strain for a while yet) from the exhibit hall to the Academy's shielded radioactives research center, they'd planned to exit the (now-evacuated) facility before the thing blew. Automatic safety systems would read the burst of energy and bolt the doors from the outside until radiation levels had dropped enough to allow safe reentry.
That had proven easier said than done; fortunately, the center was well-equipped with emergency shelters intended for just this sort of experimental circumstance. It didn't seem like a great way to inspire confidence in the safety of shortlife fission energy systems, but Jack had to admit he was glad the facility's builders had been thinking of worst-case scenarios.
It was still pitch-black in the shelter. Unable to stop himself, Jack asked, "What's up with the lights, anyway?"
"I was wondering that myself," the Doctor admitted. His sonic screwdriver flared to life, its small blue light nearly blinding after the darkness. It revealed a blue-and-black monochrome portrait of a bare, efficient little room with padded benches along the walls, suitable for maybe twenty people who were willing to share. While the Doctor fiddled with the screwdriver, taking readings, Jack took advantage of the light to make a quick recon. Cupboards along the walls, above the benches, yielded a solid array of emergency supplies -- water, rations, medkits, blankets -- while a single door at the back offered cramped-but-servicable sanitary facilities in a standard multispecies configuration.
If we had to be stuck somewhere for the duration, it could be a whole lot worse, Jack thought, spirits lifting a little now the oppressive darkness was gone and he had a better grasp of their surroundings.
The Doctor, however, was glaring up at the light fixtures with his teeth bared in a frustrated snarl. "Graaah! It's not working. They're fried." He glared a moment longer, then his expression eased and his eyebrows went up. "Still. Better air and no lights than the other way 'round."
"God, yes!" Jack seconded as the potential horror of that alternative hit him.
"I'm not a hundred percent sure about that hatch, either," the Doctor continued. "The surge might have fused some of the circuits. I'm not about to try opening it now, but just in case I'll have to try later, I need as much of a charge as possible." He looked at Jack and held up the screwdriver for clarification.
"Makes sense," Jack admitted, and headed for one of the benches so he didn't have to try and find it with his shins in the dark. The Doctor dropped down beside him, companionably close, before flicking off their last light.
They were silent a moment, shoulders and hips bumping in familiar contact. "I have an idea how we could pass the time," the Doctor said then, sounding so innocent Jack was sure he must be grinning like a cat.
"Not a game of I Spy, I take it?" Jack shot back, earning a chuckle, followed by the Doctor leaning in for a kiss. Jack responded readily to the Doctor's cool lips and tongue, but the Doctor broke contact after a moment and pulled back.
"Are you all right?" he asked, in a worried tone, and Jack wondered how he knew. Some subtle shift in his movements, or flat-out biochemistry?
"Fine," Jack said with a sigh. "I'm just not a big fan of total darkness. It reminds me a little too much of . . . ." He trailed off, not really sure how to finish without sounding melodramatic. The cave they'd been trapped in a while back hadn't been great, but there they'd been moving towards a goal, not sitting still and letting the absolute lack of light press against them. "Being dead," he finally finished, deciding on the direct approach.
The Doctor huffed an unhappy little breath against Jack's cheek, his hand slipping up to cup the far side of Jack's face. "I could try again to get the lights working," he began, but Jack cut him off.
"Don't bother. Save the battery power. We're not talking a full-out phobia here. I just don't like it." It wasn't fear that got to him, it was the creeping melancholy of remembering everything and everyone that had gone (and would go) into that final darkness, the one that kept spitting him back out again and again.
"What can I do?" the Doctor asked, his voice soft, but there was an added texture to his words, the first velvet hints of extra harmonies and vibrations.
"Remind me that I'm alive," Jack said, And that you are, too. The timbre of his own voice dropped as he spoke and he turned his head, seeking the Doctor's mouth by the cool feather-touch of the Time Lord's breath, its faint honey-tang masking the other types of chemistry no doubt being exhaled, all which were going straight to Jack's reptile brain. He brushed his lips very lightly over the Doctor's, the barest contact, feeling the glow of his own body heat contrasting with alien coolness.
The Doctor's grip on the back of Jack's head tightened, guiding him closer. "Oh," the Doctor murmured. "You're alive, all right. You are so alive . . ." The buried harmonics in his voice surfaced completely on the last word, turning it into a soft chord just before he leaned in and kissed Jack in full earnest.
Jack responded, and the darkness ceased to exist.
---
The padded benches being far too narrow, the two of them ended up on the floor, cushioned by a pile of emergency blankets (pilfered hastily by touch and memory from one of the storage cabinets) and their own shed clothing. It wasn't the softest surface in the Universe, but they'd both bedded down in far less comfortable circumstances. They ended up in a pleasant arrangement of spent bodies and limbs, the Doctor spooned up against Jack's back with one leg draped over Jack's, his arm snaking around and under Jack's and his hand pressed lightly over Jack's heart. Predictably, once they'd reached that point, the Doctor fell asleep. Jack didn't blame him. They'd had an active few days, all spent searching for peace and quiet . . . and finding anything but.
Until now. Now the peace and quiet weren't just available, for a few hours they were strictly enforced. Jack felt himself yielding to that knowledge, reaching a rare state of relaxation. The darkness was no longer oppressive; it had been transformed into nothing more than a simple lack of light. It was a sign of how much energy he'd expended recently that he found himself slipping into the light doze that was as close as he ever got to sleeping, drifting in a haze of half-dreams and almost-memories.
The Doctor (and Ianto) had been right. He needed times like this, when he wasn't the Director of Torchwood -- wasn't the Director of anything, for that matter. Even while dozing he could feel intangible things slipping back into place within his heart and head, like healing bones and muscles pulling into alignment.
He was brought to full consciousness by the Doctor twitching awake with a truly unique noise somewhere between a snort and a harmonica being stepped on. A moment of silence, no doubt while the Time Lord reoriented himself and remembered where he was.
"How long do we have left?" Jack asked, still in such a languid state he didn't particularly care about the answer.
"Ninety-three point four minutes, bare minimum. Figure two hours to be safe," the Doctor replied with prompt precision, better than a watch with a glow-in-the-dark dial. His driving in the TARDIS wasn't always accurate, but his personal timesense was impeccable.
"Mmmmm," Jack responded, lips curving up in an anticipatory smile. The way he was feeling, those two hours stretched out in front of them like a pleasant eternity. He was still too limp and relaxed for actual physical arousal, but there was a faint coil of anticipation starting to build within him. Plenty of time for a second round, slow and lazy now they'd taken the edge off their appetites.
The Doctor shifted, unhooking his chin from Jack's shoulder and levering up on one arm.
"Ah," he said after a moment. "I like that smile of yours."
Jack's eyes blinked open to reveal absolute darkness, confusion pulling him into greater alertness.
"How can you tell I'm smiling?" he asked. Is his sense of smell that good . . .?
"I can see it," the Doctor said, sounding playful, even teasing.
Jack blinked. It seemed even darker with his eyes open than with them closed.
"How exactly are you doing that?" It was the natural question and he knew it was what the Doctor wanted him to ask. He could practically feel the Time Lord thrumming with the desire to explain.
"You're glowing," the Doctor said, enunciating the words with great self-satisfaction.
Jack opened his mouth and closed it again. He knew the Doctor didn't see infrared (though he did get more of the ultraviolet end of the spectrum than a human did), and was mostly limited to visible light the way humans were. However, in total darkness, human skin did emit a faint but real glow in the visible light spectrum -- a thousand times fainter than anything the human eye could detect, and of no real practical use. Some non-human species exhibited the same phenomenon, to a greater or lesser degree, but with equal irrelevance in the long run. It was just one of those odd science facts, the sort that stuck in memory precisely because of its triviality.
"Yeah, I am, but I didn't think was something humanoids could see with the naked eye," Jack said.
"I'm not just any humanoid," the Doctor said, shamelessly smug. "If it's completely dark and my eyes are adapted enough - which they are, after two and a half hours - I can just barely detect it."
Jack snorted. "If you're trying to give me an inferiority complex, you've picked the wrong guy," he said, unfazed. He began relaxing, caught between full wakefulness and drifting again.
"Don't I know it," the Doctor murmured with wry affection. Then, in a brighter tone, "Would you like to see?"
That brought Jack awake. "How?" He wasn't quite sure he was hearing the Doctor correctly.
In answer, the Doctor's fingertips slid into place over the neural connections just under the skin of Jack's face and temple. It was a very suggestive gesture from a touch-telepath and not something Jack had expected. Sex was one thing, mind-to-mind contact something entirely different, fraught with its own potential implications, complications and taboos - not even counting the wariness unique to their situation. Despite the Doctor's light tone, Jack knew his offer wasn't a mere whim.
"Don't we need to be in a swimming pool with parasitic worms hanging off us?" he asked, carefully keeping his tone neutral, with a hint of lightness to match the Doctor's.
The Doctor made an amused noise and brushed gentle lips down the vulnerable, unguarded side of Jack's throat, sending a gooseflesh-shudder through his body. I'm more powerful than you, that gesture said, but I won't hurt you, you can trust me, see? It was part of some instinctive dance, like the steps leading to physical seduction; the animal part of Jack's brain understood that much very well. He knew enough about Time Lords to realize that he should probably be scared at this point. He would have been, with anyone but the Doctor.
"For a full-spectrum, real-time sensory exchange we would," the Doctor said, his human-toned English flawless and controlled, which was reassuring. "Even I can't manage that many channels at once. But exchanging one or two senses is well within my abilities. No Galfraxian mirror worms need apply."
"You're full of surprises today," Jack said, managing to keep his voice steady as the Doctor's tongue traced a cool, damp line along the rim of his throat hollow. He wasn't sure which was more disconcerting: the Doctor's offer or the fact that none of his own survival instincts were kicking in. His heartbeat might be speeding up, but it wasn't out of fear. Then again, survival instincts always seemed to take a holiday when the Doctor was around.
"I thought that was part of my charm," the Doctor replied, arrogant, cheerful, bantering, and -- God -- completely irresistible. His fingertips hadn't budged from their positions on Jack's face.
Jack had to laugh. "And you call me shameless. Sure, I'll give it a shot. I've always wondered what it looked like."
The Doctor planted a final kiss on the point of Jack's shoulder and then, without further ado, his mind was open and applying polite pressure on Jack's psychic shields. Jack lowered his defenses and was rewarded with an instantaneous mental lurch, followed by mild disorientation as his brain began receiving new input. He'd closed his eyes against the darkness, but now he was seeing a faintly glowing blob that didn't make any sense. He felt the Doctor give a helpful mental nudge and the blob resolved itself into his own face, seen in profile, along with part of his neck and shoulder. Hair, eyebrows and eyelashes were dark (dead tissue, he realized), masking the subtle glow, and the Doctor's extended hand and wrist were black silhouettes against Jack's skin.
"So you don't glow?" Jack asked.
"Nope," the Doctor said, sounding smug. "Better free-radical scavenging pathways."
"There you go, being all alien again," Jack said. He brought his hand into the Doctor's field of view, moving tentatively. It was tricky, like positioning a reflection in a mirror, the visual feedback not quite matching the body's kinesthetic sense.
"You say that like it's a bad thing," the Doctor replied, refusing to take the bait. Jack could see his own faint smile in response, though the Doctor's eyes.
Jack rotated his hand; the palm was slightly brighter than the back. Different epidermal thickness, probably . . . Then he froze. "What was that?" he asked.
"What was what?" the Doctor asked, sounding confused.
"Something just at the edge of my - your - peripheral vision. Like an afterimage."
"Was it like this?"
The Doctor did something indescribable and Jack's view of things changed, filling with faint, coiling wisps and lines of light.
"Yeah, exactly like that. What is that? Not something alive, is it?"
"No, not alive," the Doctor said, in his happy-science-geek voice. "This is brilliant! Synesthesia!"
"Translation?"
"A neurologically-based phenomenon in which stimulation of one sensory or cognitive pathway leads to automatic, involuntary experiences in a second sensory or cognitive pathway."
Jack was treated to the sight of his own luminescent fingers pinching the bridge of his nose. "No, I know what synesthesia is - I meant, what's its significance now?"
"Well, I'm out of practice, and I'm being a bit leaky about just passing along sight," the Doctor said. He looked up and around the pitch-black room (a dizzying shift in perspective for Jack), which seemed filled with the small, ghostly after-images. "But you haven't got a proper timesense, so your brain is translating fragmentary timelines as visual input. Like I said, brilliant!"
"Timelines? The way you always talked about them, I thought they'd be bigger. More obvious, anyway." It seemed best to follow the Doctor's lead and take the scientifically-interested track, rather than being too freaked out by the thought of being in "leaky" contact with someone whose mental landscape could swallow Jack whole.
"Oh, these are just little ones - probabilities of air currents' changes in direction, bit of Brownian motion here and there. It's different with people and events." The Doctor rolled his head back and grinned up at the ceiling. Jack could feel the expression from the inside. Definitely leaky contact.
"What are those? The big rectangles?" They were faint, fainter even than the glow from Jack's skin, but they were clearly visible to the Doctor's eyes.
"Afterglow in the light fixtures," the Doctor said. "You know, I could show you my own timeline, if I open up a bit more. I'd love to see what your brain makes of that."
"Wait, so you're seeing what I'm seeing? Or . . . who's seeing what?"
"It gets a bit fuzzy in situations like this. Easier not to try and tease it out too much." A hint of a mental shrug; from the way the Doctor's body shifted against Jack's it was accompanied by the physical gesture as well. "What do you say -- fancy a look?"
It was a variation on the Doctor's usual challenge, the invitation-dare he loved to give at the TARDIS doors: Shall we go see what's out there?
"What the hell. In for a penny, in for a pound."
"That's the spirit!" Perception shifted, a delicate change in plane-of-focus, and the room exploded with color and light.
At first Jack couldn't make any sense out of the tangled mass that seemed to fill his field of vision, but the Doctor's mind steadied his and sought to provide context. Patterns became apparent in the luminous, swooping curves and helicies: one bright central line (the Doctor's actual timeline) weaving back and forth on itself like a drunken ouroboros, intersecting a myriad of other lines, changing and deflecting them in some cases, strengthening and supporting others along their way, creating a huge, intricate structure, full of color and life.
The Doctor laughed out loud. "Blimey, it looks a right mess like that. I do get around, don't I?"
"You see this all the time?" Jeez, no wonder he seems like he has his head in the clouds sometimes.
I heard that, came the amused, subvocalized response. "Not this," the Doctor said aloud, sounding unperturbed. "This is your brain trying to process it all. But think of how humans experience things -- you aren't consciously aware of everything you sense, all the time; it would be overwhelming. That way lies madness, for any species. So what you perceive all depends on what you're paying attention to at any given moment."
Jack had been tracing the central timeline as best he could, following its intricate path, and he encountered a disturbing phenomenon. "Wait, does it end, right there?" He tried to "point" mentally.
"Well spotted!" The Doctor sounded proud, like a teacher whose student was proving quicker than expected. "That's the present, actually. So my timeline hasn't ended, that's just as far as I can perceive it. One's personal future is next to impossible to 'see' clearly - you're too close to the material. Bit like trying to see the back of one's own head. Nearly as disquieting when you manage it, too."
Speaking of disquieting phenomena, Jack could also see the pattern of the Doctor's life wasn't static, everything was moving, subtly and slowly. Well, he's always saying Time isn't as fixed as humans think it is. As unsettling as the implications might be to someone who experienced Time as a linear phenomenon, when filtered through a Time Lord's perceptions the movement had the feeling of being part of the natural, inevitable machinery of the Universe - the Greater Dance, Jack remembered the Doctor labeling it in his thoughts, back when they'd given the mirror worms a trial run.
I wonder what my timeline looks like? Jack thought. Bet it's a doozy. Without understanding how, he knew how to look for it; a quick shift in perception, like focusing on an alternate interpretation of an optical illusion to see a vase instead of two faces, and the Doctor's timeline receded into the background. The swarm of timelines associated with him jumped into sharp focus, and Jack had no trouble spotting his own.
It was straight. Absolutely ruler-straight, infinitely long - and it was wrong, the one and only thing in the entire Universe that wasn't in motion, defying the Dance, defying Time, defying life. Reality warped around it, forced into a contorted shape it should never have achieved, and the mind recoiled, seeking to flee that unnatural influence . . .
Jack flinched physically and struggled against the mental contact, trying to shake the Doctor's perceptions out of his head. No wonder the Doctor had run from him; God, any sane being who could see this would do the same. He fought to break free of the Doctor's touch, wanting only to get away. But even if he could stop seeing the horror of his own existence, he knew he'd never be able to forget it; the knowledge of what he'd become would haunt him the rest of forever. A small, hopeless sound wrenched itself from his throat as he fought harder against the Doctor's mind and embrace.
Jack! Be still! the Doctor said silently, the normally airy quality of his mind gone to steel even as his joints and muscles locked around Jack like manacles. For the first time, Jack found himself fighting the Doctor's full strength, and it was considerable.
"No!" the Doctor said aloud, through gritted teeth. "I will not let you see yourself that way." He slipped back into direct communication and the sheer force of his thoughts served to subdue Jack as much as the physical grip. That's what I saw the first time and that's why I ran, but I was wrong, Jack. I didn't look hard enough. That's not the truth, this is.
The Doctor forced another change in perspective, pulling back, so far back that Jack's timeline looked thinner than a hair, and everything else fell into place around it. Jack stopped struggling as he took in the new information revealed by the greater "distance."
His timeline was still an impossibility, still absolutely fixed, but that didn't keep it from being part of the Dance after all. The Dance continued around it, adapted to it, even incorporated it, going off into new spirals and elaborations that could only be supported by contact with a fixed point. One impossibility made others possible, adding to the beauty, the complexity, the joy of things. What looked like warping in the short view evened out in the longer perspective, became the way things had been, should be, would always be. That single straight line wasn't wrong, it was unique: yet another flavor, another note, another dance step, and it belonged.
Rose loved you, the Doctor said, pressing a kiss to Jack's temple, in the empty space between the thumb and forefinger of his spread hand, still holding the neural contact points. She wouldn't have made you into something 'wrong.' I should have had more faith, but I was scared and dying and half-blind . . . then, after that, I was ashamed of myself and could hardly look you in the eye. But this is what I see now. You burn like a star and stand as linchpin of the Universe, and I'm lucky you gave me another chance.
He ended with a second kiss, more lingering this time, his body pliant and gentle again against Jack. The vision of timelines faded, replaced with the former view of Jack's subtly-glowing profile, shadowed by the Doctor's hand. Jack, his head whirling, barely registered the change. The first question that managed to take coherent form in his mind was, How long? How long have you seen things this way?
The Doctor hesitated, just a split second, but his answer held a hint of wariness as he caught the tone underlying Jack's thoughts. A while now. Since the plague on Enala Tuzaren.
Air hissed out between Jack's teeth. He saw his own lips curl back in the Doctor's eerie night vision. That long? How much longer before you were planning to tell me, if ever? The thought burned with the sting of remembered pain and rejection.
Everything went black as the Doctor closed his eyes and fell silent for a few long heartbeats. I'm not proud of myself, or the way I acted, he finally admitted, so careful in his framing of the thought that it felt awkward and stilted.
In other words, he'd been avoiding the pain (particularly his) involved in addressing the topic again. Jack understood Doctor-ese well enough to read between the lines. Yeah, that's what I figured, he thought back, swallowing against the bitterness in his throat.
Jack, the Doctor began, with a hint of helplessness, I'm --
Jack cut off the apology before it could be formed, even at the speed of thought. Never mind, just . . . get out. Out of my head.
The mental contact closed like a slammed door, and the Doctor's hand vanished from Jack's face as if his skin had gone scalding-hot. It was yet another hard, fast shift, but Jack wasn't so disoriented that he missed the hasty shift in the Doctor's weight, preparation for a more physical form of disengagement.
"You don't have to leave," Jack told him, irritated, though he wasn't quite sure why, or with whom. "I just wanted to have my brain to myself for a while."
The Doctor paused, weight poised, and then slowly, carefully, joint by joint, he relaxed back into his half-spooned, half-draped position. Jack guessed (though he could no longer tell directly) that the soft sigh of breath against his shoulder was at least partially one of relief.
Jack sighed, too, feeling the way his own body eased back against the Doctor's solid, cool weight. He should be angry, he knew -- more angry, anyway -- but he also knew the Doctor's mere presence would erode any such feelings. What's that they say about being a fool for love? I'm walking, breathing, eternal proof of that concept . . .
Finally, he said aloud, "'Linchpin of the Universe,' huh?" He let his voice be friendly, his cadence bantering.
"Uh-oh," the Doctor replied, and Jack could hear the smile. "I think that pinging noise I just heard was your ego popping its buttons as it grew another two sizes."
"And I still think this you is incredibly cheeky," Jack retorted, knowing they were all right again, for good or ill. "How much longer have we got?"
"Oh, at least sixty-eight point seven minutes - half an hour more if we're being careful," the Doctor said. "Why? Did you have something in mind?" He sounded cheerful and innocent, which meant he was being deliberately dense -- as he proved by reaching forward to suck at Jack's earlobe.
Jack inhaled sharply, arching his back in reaction and realizing that he was at a disadvantage in terms of retaliation. "Yeah," he gasped out, "definitely cheeky." He shuddered as cool fingertips brushed the sensitive skin just below his navel, tracing a slow line downward that sent nerve endings all but exploding, filling Jack's head with light enough to drive away any darkness. He tried to roll over and face the Doctor, so he could start returning favors, but the Doctor's limbs tightened gently, with no more than normal human strength.
"Let me," the Doctor murmured in his ear, using the low, velvet voice that was almost sex in and of itself, and Jack didn't argue. Whatever the Doctor's motive -- atonement, thank-you, test of trust or even all three -- he found it didn't really matter. The only things that mattered were the moment, the Doctor, and the power of one all-encompassing point on a long line stretching to infinity.