GIFT FOR LILITHBINT: Near Miss (Ten/Jack, Various Doctors/Jack) [M+]

[wojelah.livejournal.com]

Title: Near Miss
Author: fortisgreen
Recipient: lilithbint
Rating: M+
Pairing(s): The Doctor (multiple regenerations, focusing mostly on Ten, also Eight)/Jack
Spoilers/warnings: Angst, hurt/comfort, slash
Summary: Sometimes a miss is as good as a mile
Author’s Notes: For the prompt, “Jack keeps running into the Doctor in the wrong order”

**
The Doctor was tucked up in bed asleep.

Jack wished he could stay nestled next to his lover's not quite warm body and enjoy his company but insomnia and ghosts from the past made it impossible and he soon found himself wandering the corridors of the TARDIS.

He had just been on the edge of sleep when he remembered waking up on Platform One, alone. He had spent days searching the empty satellite for signs of life but with only piles of ashes and the stench of death to keep him company he finally used his vortex manipulator to leave the floating coffin.

The only problem was; somehow the device had been damaged. He meant to set it for modern day Earth, catch up with The Doctor, and reunite with Rose. But instead he wound up in India in the 1700s.

He spent the first year drinking himself to death, only to find that death didn't want him. One minute they were measuring him out for his funeral pyre, the next mumbling under their breaths as the corpse rose from the dead and asked for a neat gin.

After that he decided to move on.

As he left town, nervously glancing over his shoulder for people with clubs and knives to be following him, he wandered around Asia. He was on the trail of a legend that a god in a blue chariot-like conveyance had been visiting the area.

The artists captured the chariot in great detail, down to the hatch for the phone and he knew he was onto something.

Just outside of Edo he thought he had caught up with The Doctor. He saw the familiar blue Police box and with a wide grin approached it. Only instead of the close cropped hair, pale blue eyes and ever-present leather jacket, this man was wearing a dark, formal suit and his grey hair was neatly combed back, slicked to curl behind his ears.

And he was traveling with a young woman who Jack overheard him to refer to as his granddaughter.

Jack held back, this man was too old to be his Time Lord, he reasoned. This was obviously not the one he was looking for. He hesitated to approach the older man and the woman, trying to decide how to introduce himself, but by the time he had come up with a plan the ship had gone.

Rounding another hallway in his night time journey Jack noticed a portrait hanging on the wall. His heart stuttered in his chest as the familiar face came into view. It was the old man he had seen in Edo!

Why was his portrait adorning the TARDIS walls? he wondered.

There were more paintings, he realised, each frame held the image of another face.

Maybe, Jack reasoned, these were relatives of The Doctors? Given the next two portraits a quick glance he moved on down the hallway.

Then he saw another familiar face. This time of a man with wildly curly hair, a long scarf and an almost maniacal grin. He had seen this man before! In a pub in London in the 1970s.

He was three gin and tonics into what he figured would be a long day of drinking. He had jumped through time so often that he no longer knew or really cared where he was, as long as he had access to a pub or even some potent home brew he was happy.

Well, not exactly happy, he remembered, but the ability to get passed out drunk certainly helped.

The curly haired man had burst into the pub, smiling like a mad man, inquiring if any of the seasoned drunkards had seen a tin dog anywhere around? When everyone who was still aware of their surroundings shrugged unhelpfully he fished out a small white bag, tipped some sweets into his mouth and ran back out of the pub with the same speed he had entered it.

Jack had forgotten about this until he saw that distinctive grin again. Who was that man to The Doctor and why was his picture on the wall?

He proceeded on and saw more faces, a blonde with wispy hair wearing a cricket uniform, a shorter squat figure in a rainbow coat, a dandy in full Edwardian dress and then he stopped frozen to the spot, and his mouth fell open.

The last portrait on the wall was his Doctor, the first one, the one with the leather jacket smiled at him as if to say "hello Jack, glad you found me again, isn't this fantastic?"

Once he was able to breathe again Jack slowly walked back down the hallway, at each painting he searched his memory only to discover he had seen everyone of these men, at least once, in his ongoing search for The Doctor.

As each encounter flooded his mind his breath quickened in time with his frantic heart. Unable to bear it any longer he ran down the hall to The Doctor's room and threw open the door.

The Doctor was curled up on his side, blankets pulled up tight as if the warmth of Jack's body was missed, even in his sleep.

He stared down and the tousled dark hair, the long fingers holding the covers in tight and the spray of freckles on the Time Lord's youthful face.

"Doc?" Jack ventured, "are you awake?"

The large brown eyes opened slightly as the thin man rolled over on his back, "am now," he grumbled, as he held back a yawn.

"I was in the hall by the library," Jack sat on the edge of the bed, his legs now seeming to be unable to hold his weight, "all those portraits, those men? Who are they?" He asked, even though he knew, deep down inside what the answer would be.

The Doctor finally seemed to catch on that something was bothering the ex-Time Agent, and sat up to take his trembling hands in his, "they are, or were, me," he explained.

Then his brow suddenly curled into a concerned frown of confusion as the man sitting next to him burst into tears.

Holding the sobbing man to his chest The Doctor rocked gently, still completely lost as to what could be causing Jack's meltdown.

He had never really liked the portrait gallery, himself. In fact he had attempted to remove the pictures more than once but no matter where he stashed the paintings the TARDIS always managed to find them and put them up again.

He had tried to reason with her about this, but she remained steadfast in her belief that the portraits should remain.

He found it, if truth be told, just a little creepy walking past the empty frame that would one day hold this regeneration's likeness when the time came to move onto a new body.

As he made soothing noises to the distraught man in his arms, he wondered if Jack had been bothered by the empty frame too? He knew Jack had grown quite fond of this form and maybe the reminder that he would not have it forever had upset him?

He looked down at Jack's usually perfectly combed hair, and smoothed some of the more wayward locks down with his chin and held him just a bit tighter hoping that sometime soon he would get to the bottom of this and perhaps the two of them could make it all better, whatever it was.

Jack seemed to be quieting down, but still clung on to The Doctor as if he were drowning and the Time Lord was the only one saving him from a watery death.

Knowing that until the ex-Time Agent was ready to talk, pressing him might reopen the flood gates The Doctor remained silent. Patiently waiting for the moment when conversation would be an option.

Overcome by giving himself over to his grief Jack cried himself into an exhausted slumber. When The Doctor heard the sound of soft snoring he knew that talking was out, at least for a little while.

Moving the now deeply sleeping man to a more comfortable position, lying on his side, The Doctor covered him up with the blankets and climbed over him to join him on the bed.

His fingers fairly itched to touch the sensitive pulse points at Jack's temples, to reach his mind and find the answers to the questions he was burning to find out but he resisted. Instead he spooned up against his back and wrapped his long arms around him once more, waiting until Jack would wake again and tell him what was going on.

It was only when the TARDIS brought up her lights, simulating dawn that The Doctor felt it was safe to leave Jack's side. The ex-Time Agent had barely stirred after falling into his exhausted sleep so The Doctor thought he wouldn't be missed.

As soon as his feet touched the floor Jack's hand shot out and grabbed his arm. He was so startled he let out a squeak of surprise and whipped around to find Jack staring at him, "you left me," he snarled.

"I was just going to make some breakfast," The Doctor protested, a bit taken aback by Jack's hostile tone.

Jack sat up, still holding onto his thin wrist in an almost vice-like grip, "you left me," he repeated, this time with a bit more tremble in his voice.

The Doctor stopped trying to get free and came to sit next to him, "please?" he almost whispered, cupping his free hand to Jack's strong jawline, "please tell me what's going on?"

A heavy silence settled over the room. Jack seemed too lost in his pain to give words to his feelings. The Doctor was getting a low panicky feeling in his stomach, he could sense something was really wrong and knew that somehow he had caused this.

Just when it seemed like Jack was going to talk, he let go of The Doctor's arm and took off at a near run for the bathroom.

Staring in disbelief as he heard the lock click shut the thin Time Lord rose slowly from the bed and exited the room. Instead of heading to the kitchen as he had originally intended he made his way to the portrait gallery instead.

The pictures were as he remembered them, starting from his first incarnation to the one just before his current body. For him the shedding of an old form for a new, was, yes a bit unsettling at first, but part of the rhythm of life for his kind.

Humans, in his experience, never quite understood the process. Maybe it was because they only had one body, birth to death?

He had embraced humanity as his family since his own was now gone. But he never exactly felt completely excepted by them, and it was times like these that reminded him he was not truly one of them.

He stopped at the last picture in the row, a soft smile on his face as he remembered the first time he had met Jack.

Even though Jack showed no reason to trust him or gave him any reason to like the cheeky man, he did. He had been angry at him for his carelessness but soon found he couldn't stay upset for very long.

Now, somehow he had upset Jack. He wracked his brain trying to come up with how he had managed to do that. They had just spent time on a resort planet, and had enjoyed everything it had to offer.

Did he cut their visit too short?

Then he recalled Jack's words, "you left me!"

He shook his head ruefully, recalling his cowardice when Jack first became immortal. It had frightened him to know that somehow he had been responsible for this crime against the cosmos, and did what he always did when he couldn't face something...he ran away.

The Doctor had tried to make up for that, apologised more times than he could count, and still it seemed to wound Jack to the quick every time he recalled that abandonment.

He wished he could go back and undo that, but history was not the plaything of anyone, especially a Time Lord.

He just hoped Jack would some day forgive him for it and they could leave that unfortunate incident behind once and for all.

Jack trembled as if he was stood naked on the top of Mt. Everest in the middle of a blizzard with no shelter, instead of being held in the warmth of the TARDIS. She, sensing his inner chill, had raised the temperature in the small bathroom he had practically barricaded himself into.

He ran a hot bath, hoping the steam and heat would loosen the knots his muscles had become, and then he could think beyond the physical to address the emotional pain.

His rational mind knew that The Doctor hadn't actually met him until his ninth incarnation but those years of wandering lost and alone without realising he had come so close to rescue so many times stung him to the core.

Worse was knowing that he had actually come in such intimate contact with one of The Doctor's previous forms made him feel stupid, incredibly thick and ashamed that he hadn't caught on as to his identity until he had seen his portrait.

Climbing into the near-scalding hot tub he forced himself to feel the scorching water as soothing and closed his eyes recalling the night in question.

The man with the curled hair, the penetrating deep grey-blue eyes and the more-than-passing resemblance to Oscar Wilde had breezed into the costume party alone. Jack had come dressed as a Harlequin complete with a glittering mask. He had many admirers and several offers but none of them intrigued him as much as the newest arrival in their midst.

The man looked about the crowded dance floor as if he were in search of someone, so Jack figured he'd offer himself as a source of amusement.

He approached the strangely aloof new comer with a glass of champagne for each of them, "who are you here with?" he asked as he handed over the glass.

"I'm not here with anyone," the man had replied, and even though he continued to talk that was all Jack needed to hear and he tuned the rest out.

Not even waiting for the object of his desire to finish whatever it was he was saying, Jack pulled him out onto the dance floor for a fairly intimate waltz. At first it seemed as if the man in his arms was an unwilling partner, then he shrugged and let Jack lead.

'That shrug,' Jack chided himself, 'I should have known then!'

After all hadn't the first Doctor he met practically raised the shrug into an art form? The way he'd roll his eyes and his mouth would set into a firm line as his leather jacket clad shoulders would rise and fall in resignation or exasperation.

But he was so caught up in the intoxicating scent of this stranger that all he could think of was getting him out of his costume and into his bed that he never put the pieces together.

The Doctor was still stood in the hallway, seeming to give each portrait a very throughout going over when Jack joined him. He announced his arrival by coming up behind The Doctor and slipping his arms around his waist.

The Doctor's keen senses picked up the smell of fresh soap, mixed with the slight scent of fear and the still tense vibes being given off by the man holding him but said nothing as he let himself melt into the embrace as he waited for Jack to speak.

Finally he did, "I owe you an explanation," he started.

"You don't owe me anything," The Doctor cut him off but Jack raised one hand to his face and put a finger to his lips.

"I need to get this out, and I need you to listen," Jack chided him softly, his breath tickling The Doctor's ear as he spoke.

Nodding slightly he went silent.

"I was just wandering around last night and found this hallway," Jack's voice was strained with repressed emotions as he recounted the events, "and I realised I've seen all of these men before."

"That's impossible," The Doctor replied, "I'm pretty sure I would have..."

The finger pressed to his lips again, "please Doc, this is hard enough, let me finish?"

"After you let me on Platform One I tried to find you, but my Vortex Manipulator was messed up, I bounced around until I finally got back to you," Jack could feel The Doctor tense up, he knew the thin man in his arms wanted to say something, most likely to apologise again but he wasn't ready for that, not just yet.

"In my 'travels' I saw all of these faces," Jack insisted, "and it just struck me how many times I was that close," he held his fingers up indicating a very small distance, "to you and a way home!"

The Doctor counted to one hundred slowly, giving Jack time to finish his speech before saying, "I am so, very very sorry," he spoke softly, "I know what I did on Platform One, I will never be forgiven for."

Jack stayed quiet, so he continued, "I wouldn't have known you," he made a sweeping gesture at the portraits, "we never really met until then," he tapped the last painting in the row with one of his long fingers.

Jack let go of him and spun him around, and gazed at him with an unreadable look in his large blue eyes. He opened his mouth as if to say something, then closed it again with a snap.

He took a deep shaky breath and walked the length of the gallery once more placing his hand on each picture as he went. Then he came back to the flesh and blood Doctor and cupped his cheek with his hands, "I don't want apologies," he finally said, "I just wished I had known. I was so alone, so lost and so close to being rescued so many times!"

"What do you want me to say?" The Doctor asked in a near whisper.

"I honestly don't know," Jack sighed as he turned to walk away.

Jack knew that The Doctor assumed he was angry with him. He wasn't. He was more angry at himself for not catching on until now.

Here he was the supposed expert on alien life, after all he was an ex-Time Agent! And yet he was too lost in his own self-pity and testing the limits of his new found immortality to look beyond his own wants and needs to notice much of anything.

Funny thing, looking back on it now, he had only heard mere whispers and rumours of the existence of Time Lords, yet the first time he met one he wasn't nearly as impressed as he should have been.

Maybe it was because he met Rose first, and had heard about this illusive creature from her so the shock of meeting one in the flesh was lessened?

Or, maybe...he slowly came to realise, it was because on an instinctive level some part of him knew he had met one before. OK, so it was the same one, each time, just with a different form, but still...

He really should seek out The Doctor and let him know how he really felt but just being around him now made the old pain flare up again like a long forgotten injury suddenly springing back to life.

And, to be honest, some part of him did want to make the thin Time Lord feel just a bit of his pain. He wasn't proud of this and tried to dismiss it as something else but in his heart of hearts knew that it existed.

Returning to his room, empty now, save himself, he shut the door and stretched out on the bed. It seemed immense and lonely without the not-quite-warm body laying next to him, but he needed the time alone to gather and organise his thoughts before seeking out The Doctor again.

The Doctor busied himself with some intricate but completely mindless repair on the TARDIS' osmosis clamps to take his thoughts from Jack and his recent discovery.

It was working, he noted with an inward sigh. He had known, for many years, that he was dangerous to humans. Not that he ever set out to be, but something happened to every one of them that he crossed paths with, they all changed.

Sometimes they changed for the better, and became more aware of the world around them and focused on matter it a better place.

And sometimes the scars of being around him scored deep into their psyches, damaging them forever.

Jack had always seemed to be one of the former. He had started out a conman and had ended up as a defender of Earth. The Doctor had always known Jack had a warrior side and had tried to temper that with reason, but Jack was basically a good person.

Now, he realised, Jack was one of the latter. The trauma of being too close to him had damaged Jack in ways he had not even begun to realise. Maybe it was time to let him go, and get out of his life forever.

Next time they talked, if they ever did again, he would offer to take Jack home. He would miss the easy laughter, the excellent companionship, and the comfort of knowing that no matter what happened Jack would come out of it alive.

Maybe Davros had been right, perhaps he did truly take ordinary people and fashion them into weapons, and Jack was just the latest in that sad line?

Suddenly what he was working on became blurry, he rubbed his eyes and with surprise noted that they were now wet.

Chiding himself for lapsing into self-pity he angrily wiped the tears from his eyes and went back to fixing the osmosis clamps.

Alone on his bed Jack recalled his encounter with the eighth incarnation of The Doctor. The party had gotten louder as the glitter bottles of champagne and hidden hip flasks had grown more empty.

By the second dance Jack had given up on the formal waltz and had let his hands slide down to grip the velvety backside of the man in his arms. Given the way this man had initially tensed in Jack's embrace he was pleasantly surprised to find his actions met with a low throaty chuckle instead.

"Subtle," the man laughed.

"Subtlety takes too much time," Jack had countered.

"And you're in a hurry?"

"I have all night," Jack breathed as he leaned in to first kiss then nip at the sensitive skin of the man's neck, "and as long as it ends up with you in my bed, screaming my name, I can be patient."

"I don't even know your name," the man countered with amusement in his eyes.

For some reason, Jack remembered, maybe he was feeling the effects of too much champagne or it was the almost mocking look his dance partner gave him he didn't tell him his name instead he said, "you can call me by the name most of my lovers use," he replied.

"And that would be?"

"Oh god!" Jack laughed.

This seemed to amuse the other man greatly, "let's hope you truly live up to your self-granted impressive reputation."

It was then Jack knew this stranger would be his.

Sometime during the worst of the alcoholic haze Jack had settled into, he had lost track of his intended bed partner. He had let himself be distracted by a beautiful dark eyed woman with almost flaming red hair and as the party grew to a close he frantically searched for the stranger.

He had just about given up and was heading back to the inn, discouraged that the double bed would only have a single occupant for the night.

As he stepped out into the chill night air he gulped it in and hoped it would clear his head enough to make it to his room before passing out.

Then, from the darkness he heard, "your place or mine?"

He focused his bleary eyes as best as he could and saw the stranger casually leaning against the wall of the alley he had just come from.

"Mine," he replied his voice more steady than his legs as he led the man to his room.

Once there he didn't bother to light the gas lamps or a candle. After all for what he intended to do light was not necessary, neither was getting fully undressed. He only unbuttoned his tunic and slid his tights down, just enough. Then he opened the strangers' trousers and let them drop to the floor before bending him over the bed with no preliminaries to take him.

The encounter was not gentle or kind and held no resemblance to making love. It was pure and simple lust and neither of them seemed to want or need anything different.

The only sounds were the slap of flesh upon flesh and the quickening of breaths as both men raced towards their climaxes.

Jack howled as he came in the tight confines of his partner's body, then bit him viciously on the shoulder, tasting both the salt of his sweat and the hint of iron of his blood. Soon he felt the man go rigid as he used his hands to bring him to a shuddering release of his own.

As soon as Jack let go of him, the stranger pulled away. In the dim light of the moon that filtered into the room Jack could see him carefully reassemble his clothing and then without a word exited the room, leaving Jack alone once more.

When Jack woke the next morning, with a pounding hangover and the taste of last night's lover's blood still on his tongue he realised he had never caught the man's name. He asked around and even the hostess had no idea who he was. In fact, she whispered conspiratorially in his ear, she was pretty sure he had not been invited and had crashed the party.

After a few days of inquiry Jack gave up, and moved on to continue his search for The Doctor.

The Doctor had run out of things to fix, or more accurately, ran out of patience to seek out other things to fix, and it was clear by the little warning shocks the TARDIS had given him that she, too, was getting tired of his tinkering.

Realising he was breaking things just to have an excuse to have something to do, he apologised to her and decided instead to look for a tie he remembered having that had really cool swirling patterns on it. It would look stunning with his blue suit, and he was sure the last time he had seen it was in the attic along with all the other clothing this regeneration didn't wear.

He briefly thought about seeking out Jack, but recalling the way his mere presence seemed to upset the other man, he continued on with his original plan.

As he made his way to the attic he thought about the aura of wrongness around the ex-Time Agent, his fixed point in time being an outright assault to his Time Lord senses, and yet, he could tolerate and even enjoy being around Jack.

The Master had said that being near Jack was like fingernails on a chalk board. He had to admit it was a bit jarring at times, but he had tolerated it better than his fellow Time Lord and now, he figured, he knew the reason why.

If Jack had truly seen all of his incarnations then he had been a part of his life for longer than he would have known. He would have grown more used to that tingle of impropriety, and the fact that Jack didn't set his teeth on edge bore this out.

He tried to recall if he had been consciously aware of that feeling before he had properly met Jack. The problem was that tingle was not exclusive to the ex-Time Agent, many things set that extrasensory internal alarm off.

He reached the attic and as he stepped through the doorway the reason for him being there changed, he approached the first wardrobe, the one that held his first incarnation’s clothing and peered inside.

Jack tried to imagine his life before The Doctor. When he had first met the man with the piercing pale blue eyes and intense personality had made him into the man he was today. He owed The Doctor so much and could never repay him for saving him from a life of aimlessness and crime.

And this version of The Doctor with his chocolate brown eyes, ready smile and easy laugh had almost become Jack's entire reason for existence. He loved him and wished he could erase everything that caused him to lapse into melancholy silences every so often.

The Doctor was always too hard on himself. Maybe he was still reeling from the Time War and the death of his kind at his own hand. Jack paused at that thought, how many times had he had to offer up some else's life to save the world, knowing that his could not be given instead?

Then realised he was adding to The Doctor's heavy burden of guilt, that he was punishing him for something completely out of his control. The Doctor had said that his life never went in the right order, surely if he had known who Jack was he would have rescued him!

But now he was wracked with guilt, and thinking somehow he was at fault for being the unique and wonderful creature that he was. What form of self punishment would his almost masochistic personality take if Jack didn't stop him?

That masochistic tendency, Jack thought ruefully, was something the current incarnation of The Doctor shared with the one Jack had his brief sexual encounter with on that night. Right now, he knew The Doctor was probably beating himself up, emotionally, over this.

He rose to his feet, determined to put and end to this once and for all.

Putting aside his self pity he figured it was time to take some of that burden of guilt from the Time Lord's thin shoulders.

But a quick check of his two favourite places, his bedroom and the console room, turned up no sign of The Doctor.

The TARDIS would keep Jack from finding her pilot if he didn't want to be found. But she made no attempt to move rooms on him as he went along, nor did she change hallways on him so he knew she wasn't trying to keep The Doctor hidden from him.

After another seemingly endless corridor he asked her for some help, "I need to talk to him," he address the ship, feeling a bit silly for doing so, "please show me where he is?"

This time she did reconfigure part of herself and he found himself on one of the top most levels, just outside a large storage room full of free standing wardrobes and clothing racks. The Doctor was sitting in front of a large chest and rummaging through the contents as Jack came into the room.

"What are you looking for?" Jack asked peering into the chest.

As The Doctor glanced up at him, and Jack's heart clenched as he saw the haunted look in the large brown eyes and could see the slight red tinge that told him that he had been crying. For now, at least, his eyes were dry.

"I came up here for..." The Doctor shrugged, "something..but I got distracted and now I can't really remember what it was."

Jack couldn't help but smile at this, for a man with such an impressive mind he was easily distracted, "I usually retrace my steps and then it comes to me," he offered.

"I did that, and it didn't work."

Jack knelt down next to him, and gently shut the lid of the trunk, "you're wrong," he stated simply.

The Doctor frowned, "about what?"

"I do forgive you," he smiled, taking the long fingered hands into his own, "I forgave you a long time ago."

"Then...why?" The Doctor started to ask but Jack cut him off.

"I am mad at myself for being so blind, for not caring anything about anything but myself that I was completely blind to everything else," he admitted slowly.

The Doctor regarded him silently, so he pressed on, "and, I'll admit, now that I've found you, I live in constant fear that I may lose you again."

"I won't live forever," The Doctor spoke in a near whisper, "you will out live me, someday I will have to leave you."

"I know," Jack nodded solemnly, "but in the meanwhile, please promise that you will always come back for me."

"I promise," The Doctor smiled softly, "cross my hearts and hope to die."

"Can we change that to 'cross my hearts and hope to live'?" Jack asked seriously.

This made The Doctor's smile widen, "you've got it!"