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wintercompanion2008-03-05 03:39 pm
caduceus03.livejournal.com) wrote in wintercompanion2008-03-05 03:39 pm
Entry tags:
caduceus03: Lucky Days (Ten/Jack) [PG]
Title: Lucky Days
Author:![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
caduceus03
Challenge: Luck
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Post-S3 so I suppose minor, vague spoilers for Utopia-Last of the Time Lords
Summary: The TARDIS takes matters into her own circuits, and the Doctor explains himself more clearly.
A/N: Hello, all! I'm not new to writing fanfic, but this is my first DW fic so I'd dearly love some feedback.
Author:
caduceus03 Challenge: Luck
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Post-S3 so I suppose minor, vague spoilers for Utopia-Last of the Time Lords
Summary: The TARDIS takes matters into her own circuits, and the Doctor explains himself more clearly.
A/N: Hello, all! I'm not new to writing fanfic, but this is my first DW fic so I'd dearly love some feedback.
The Doctor would have said it was mere circumstance that brought him jolting out of the vortex in Wisconsin of all places if it weren’t for that smug resonance to the hum of TARDIS in the back of his mind’s middle left lower quadrant.
Well, there was nothing for it until the old girl got over whatever snit she was in, so with a little flick of his fingers at the console to show his irritation, he snatched up his coat and moseyed – ooh, he liked that word, moooooosey – down the ramp to somewhere in northwestern Wisconsin, Earth, 2011.
Hmmm, he’d have to remember to pick up some cheese while he was here. An omelet just didn’t taste right with that Eumistrian substitute. The human colonists had tried, bless them, but just because the native goonda looked like oversized cow-rabbits did not mean they produced particularly appetizing milk.
He pulled open the TARDIS’s doors with a dramatic flourish and found himself staring at a singularly uninspiring street lined with plain little houses and square green lawns. The place felt decidedly empty but, ears perking up, he could hear something of racket going on a few streets over.
“Allons-y, then,” the Doctor murmured to an imaginary companion and set off.
The hollering sounded more excited and high-spirited than the terrified, run-away-run-away screams with which he was most familiar so he took his time ambling along and looking about. He was clearly some sort of small town, probably even tiny enough to be considered a village.
The cheers were quite close now, egging on some sort of competition with cries of “Faster!” “You can do it!” “Go go go!” and the like. When he finally turned the corner, he blinked in surprise to see several customized beds-on-wheels flying down the street in his direction, and then he broke into a wide grin.
“I didn’t know there was bed-racing in this era! I haven’t seen this since Fernifitifor-4 where it was the primary mode of transportation – logical too since the commutes were so long that it was the only way for the Fernifitiforth to get enough sleep,” he explained aloud, garnering some peculiar looks from a nearby spectator. “Oh, and there was a fad,” he suddenly remembered, “in New New New New New York for awhile before they were outlawed because of the Pillow Fights of 186,965.”
Turning an innocent smile on the rather paunchy fellow next to him, the Doctor asked, “By the way, and I realize this may sound a bit odd, but where am I?”
The man eyed him sourly and finally grunted, “You’re in luck,” before he moved away.
“Oi! That was rude!” the Doctor shouted after him. Tucking his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels, he muttered, “Didn’t even answer my question.”
There was a girlish giggle from behind his back and then a teenage girl stepped to his side and said, “Yes, he did. You are in Luck. That’s the name of this place. Luck, Wisconsin.” She grinned, her round face widening even further, but it was a bright, cheerful expression that was inviting by human standards and positively divine by Leghixic standards. “Whereabouts you from?” she asked eagerly. “We don’t get a lot of strangers around here. You British?”
“Hmm,” the Doctor pulled a thoughtful face. “I’m a lot of things,” he evaded. “My name’s the Doctor, by the way. And you are?”
“Janey. Nice to meetcha.” She grabbed his hand, shaking it enthusiastically. “You should come to tonight’s concert. My friend, Regina, she’s gonna sing and she’s really good.”
“Well, I think I just might at that. Now, Miss Janey,” he continued, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm, “why don’t you show me around Luck and explain why exactly there were beds rolling down the street?”
Janey was more than happy to tour him around Luck, which didn’t take that long since the Doctor’s estimates of its size were of course correct – it was indeed a small village, population just over a thousand. The bed-races, he discovered, were an annual tradition of their community summer festival, fittingly named Lucky Days, of which he had arrived in the midst.
It was not the most stimulating of celebrations nor the most grandiose of sights, but without a companion to impress, the Doctor felt free to revel in the mundane without risking one of those ridiculously patronizing looks from a silly ape. It seemed the whole of the village was out on the blocked off streets – chattering and gorging on grease and sugar while their offspring dived into piles of sawdust, whooping with glee as their eyes reddened and watered with irritating dust.
The tour ended at the community hall where volunteers were setting up for the concert later that night. The Doctor bemusedly found himself the subject of acute teenage scrutiny when Janey introduced her friends while she was the quietly feted for snagging the most sought after of commodities in a small village – someone new with whom to talk. The Doctor was fairly certain he wasn’t supposed to hear the part about him being a “hottie.”
He chatted with one point eight percent of his mind – small talk did not require much brainpower, after all – while he turned the rest of his attention to his contrary TARDIS. She was humming at him quite loudly now without communicating anything at all, almost like white noise, and he was beginning to get a bit worried about such aberrant behavior. Just when he was about to extricate himself and check on her, she suddenly went quiet.
Oh. Not white noise. Distraction.
“Doctor.”
“Jack,” the Doctor bit out as he exerted considerable mental effort into holding his expression impassive and his body immobile.
“Fancy running into you here. How lucky for me,” Jack smirked, and he was still as striking as ever – more even, wearing his age and responsibility in his older eyes and the tiny care lines worn into his face – but he was still just as wrong.
In return, the Doctor arranged a grin onto his features, more a baring of teeth that he could not control, and then he made his excuses and swiftly strode away. The girls would be happy to turn their attentions to the handsome Captain, and the Doctor had to run.
~~~~~~~~
Jack caught up with him nearly two hours later by the TARDIS where the Doctor, leaning against the reassuring mimicry of blue-painted wood, was waiting for him.
“What are you doing here, Doctor?” The unhealed hurt added a tense dissonance to Jack’s otherwise pleasant timbre.
Keeping his eyes averted, the Doctor shrugged and forced himself to form words, “Apparently, even my TARDIS is not entirely immune to your charms. Take it up with her.”
Jack paused, silent, clearly unsure how to take that, and then came the sound of boots scuffing against the ground as he approached hesitantly, and after another pause, gingerly settled at the Doctor’s side, leaning against the TARDIS.
“And you, Jack?”
He snorted out a laugh. “Reggie Nelson. It’s her first public performance and I couldn’t resist.”
“Regina. Of course,” the Doctor said, making the connection immediately. “Her music did make quite the comeback at the turn of the fiftieth century, didn’t it?”
“The Zartian remixes, yeah. I was always a fan of the original, though.”
Conversation lapsed and the silence stretched out into awkwardness.
“So this is how it’s going to be, now?” Jack’s voice was harsh. “You won’t even look at me, won’t really talk to me. The Doctor, the universe’s greatest chatterbox, can’t find anything to say to me. You’re just going to try to ignore me, is that it? Ignore me because I’m wrong?” His voice rose to a shout, cracking on the last word.
The Doctor’s head whipped around as he finally looked straight at Jack and he marveled that the man had ever made it as a conman with all that he could see written on his face. Yearning, anger, confusion, hurt. And oh, the love. It shone in his eyes, unmistakable and unshakeable. The Doctor had known it would be. Jack had had many casual affairs and a few of deep affection but he had never fallen in love. Now that he had, he did not know how to let go. The Doctor, on the other hand, despite what many may think, did know how to love, knew it all too well, but he had also learned how to eventually let go.
Now here was Jack again, pushing and demanding, his undying heart bright with his undying love.
But it was the thread of bitterness winding through the jumble that captured the Doctor’s attention and worried him. Bitterness like that, small as it was with Jack believing now that he had forgiven the Doctor, that sort of bitterness could and would grow and poison a man. With the years that lay ahead of Jack, it was inevitable and utterly unacceptable.
Brimming with sudden energy, the Doctor burst into movement, pushing off the TARDIS and careening forward a few steps before he began pacing. His hands tugged at his hair, tousling it into a mess of disheveled tufts. He could feel Jack’s eyes on him, intense and wary.
He was no good at this, no good, but he had to try even though he had messed it up so horribly last time.
“Jack.” He clenched his fists, scalp prickling. “Jack,” he started again. “It wasn’t – isn’t a case of liking or not liking you.”
“Because telling someone they’re wrong is nothing personal?” he snapped.
The Doctor winced and then threw his arms open, lashing back. “No! Just listen!” He sighed, deflating, letting his arms drop to his side. Antagonism wouldn’t work with this Jack, this wounded Jack who hurt because of him. “I’m not good at this, Jack, and I said things poorly then.”
A sideways peek at the man showed that he too had subsided and was willing to listen again. The Doctor restarted his pacing. “You compared what I said before to being prejudiced, but it’s more like… What’s it like? Oh, it’s like an allergy!”
“An allergy?”
Still willing to listen, good, good, good. “Jack, a Time Lord isn’t human. My senses, the way I perceive reality itself isn’t human. No human can really understand, not even an immortal one,” the Doctor continued, groping for words and finding them coming easier now. “I was once told Rose, back when I first met her and she asked who I was, that I could feel the Earth revolving, spinning around like a human child on a carousel going a thousand miles an hour. That I could feel the Earth orbiting the sun, careening round and round at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, the fastest rollercoaster any of these humans have ever ridden. I can feel it, Jack. And that’s just the beginning.
“I’m a Time Lord – it’s not just a pretty title, Jack. I sense Time as naturally as you use your senses to see me in front of you or hear me talking. It flows and shifts all around me, and there’s no way to describe anymore than I could describe orange to the colorblind, but it’s always, always there. I can move through it and move with it, feeling as timelines weave in and out, crossing, starting, ending.
“Jack, to me, everything is in motion. Even matter, all this stuff pressing around you, it’s all just vibration and probability – little compressed pockets of humming activity that tingle all over,” the Doctor explained, flourishing a hand through the air, feeling the bump-bump-bump of air molecules shiver around him. “The universe, it dances. So beautiful.
“But you? A fixed point in time and space? You’re still when everything moves around you. And being around you - you’re the opposite of vertigo. It’s as if you exert a sort of pressure, a vacuum of stillness in an otherwise moving universe, and I can feel that pressure as though everything inside me is trying to push out, and…” The Doctor trailed off, not really wanting to go further in that direction because he had a feeling what he would see when he looked at Jack again.
Realizing that at some point during his talking he had stopped pacing, he took a deep breath and looked at Jack.
The Captain was sitting huddled against the TARDIS, his face clear of any bitterness but tight and awash with a new sort of pain. “I hurt you, don’t I? That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?”
“Essentially.” No more evasions, no half-truths kindly meant but backfiring.
“You don’t like to look at me or talk – ”
“Because it’s easier to control my reactions, yes.”
“Shit. Shit, Doctor.” White-faced and curled up, Jack looked so very young, swamped in the blue fabric of his coat, and the Doctor felt his left heart clench a little tighter.
“Oh, Jack,” he sighed, stepping forward and staring into the Captain’s upturned face. Taking a deep breath, he lowered himself to the ground at Jack’s side and settled an arm around his broad shoulders.
Jack made a horrible little whimpering sound, a sound the Doctor never wanted to hear from him, and stiffened, trying to pull away. But he had forgotten that the Doctor was stronger than a human of comparable size, and the Doctor refused to release him. Instead he reeled him in, pressing Jack’s head to his shoulder, and murmured, “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m so sorry.”
Jack didn’t cry or explode in some cathartic emotional release, but gradually his muscles did unlock and he relaxed into the Doctor’s hold. He turned his head, hiding his face in the Doctor’s neck, and his warm, moist breath tickled at the Doctor’s skin.
Finally, in a small voice muffled by the Doctor’s collar, he said, “I never want to hurt you, Doctor.”
“I know,” was the simple reply.
Silence fell again, the calm after a storm, and the Doctor’s thoughts whirled around regrets and second chances, mistakes and attempted efforts. The Doctor didn’t get many second chances, sometimes through bad luck and sometimes from his own making, but here was one now with Jack warm and lax under his arm. The pressure was still there, the throb behind his eyes and that incessant ache that felt as though it could steal his breath and burst his hearts if he allowed it, if he was unprepared for it, but the Doctor had handled it before and as he had said, it had never been about dislike.
“Come with me again,” he offered impulsively. “No, listen,” he continued quickly when he felt Jack’s head began to shake. “I mean it, Jack. I can acclimate myself, really, and I want you to. I’d like to try.”
The Doctor wondered what Jack was thinking. Was he thinking about his responsibilities, about who would take over his team if he left? Was he thinking about people he would miss and who miss him? The Doctor had an inkling that those were stray thoughts at best. It was the recent revelation that would weigh on Jack’s mind the most, and the Doctor did not know how to reassure him other than to do his utmost to behave normally.
“Well, come on then,” the Doctor said cheerfully, springing to his feet. “Miss Regina Nelson is to perform half an hour – well,” he interrupted himself in a drawl, “in thirty seven minutes really since she’ll be late due to a wardrobe malfunction –and you didn’t want to miss it, right?”
He held out his hand, an offer to help him up, a gesture laden with deeper implications, and wiggled his fingers enticingly. The smile was bright and playful on his face, inviting of all sorts of conspiring and mischief, and he bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. Every nuance, every expression of his face and body was primed to encourage. See, see, Jack? It can be okay.
After a moment, Jack smiled too, a slow smile that wasn’t a leer or a smirk or any of those other expressions he used like he would any other tool, and his hand, big and gun-callused, slapped with reassuring confidence into the Doctor’s and grabbed on.
Well, there was nothing for it until the old girl got over whatever snit she was in, so with a little flick of his fingers at the console to show his irritation, he snatched up his coat and moseyed – ooh, he liked that word, moooooosey – down the ramp to somewhere in northwestern Wisconsin, Earth, 2011.
Hmmm, he’d have to remember to pick up some cheese while he was here. An omelet just didn’t taste right with that Eumistrian substitute. The human colonists had tried, bless them, but just because the native goonda looked like oversized cow-rabbits did not mean they produced particularly appetizing milk.
He pulled open the TARDIS’s doors with a dramatic flourish and found himself staring at a singularly uninspiring street lined with plain little houses and square green lawns. The place felt decidedly empty but, ears perking up, he could hear something of racket going on a few streets over.
“Allons-y, then,” the Doctor murmured to an imaginary companion and set off.
The hollering sounded more excited and high-spirited than the terrified, run-away-run-away screams with which he was most familiar so he took his time ambling along and looking about. He was clearly some sort of small town, probably even tiny enough to be considered a village.
The cheers were quite close now, egging on some sort of competition with cries of “Faster!” “You can do it!” “Go go go!” and the like. When he finally turned the corner, he blinked in surprise to see several customized beds-on-wheels flying down the street in his direction, and then he broke into a wide grin.
“I didn’t know there was bed-racing in this era! I haven’t seen this since Fernifitifor-4 where it was the primary mode of transportation – logical too since the commutes were so long that it was the only way for the Fernifitiforth to get enough sleep,” he explained aloud, garnering some peculiar looks from a nearby spectator. “Oh, and there was a fad,” he suddenly remembered, “in New New New New New York for awhile before they were outlawed because of the Pillow Fights of 186,965.”
Turning an innocent smile on the rather paunchy fellow next to him, the Doctor asked, “By the way, and I realize this may sound a bit odd, but where am I?”
The man eyed him sourly and finally grunted, “You’re in luck,” before he moved away.
“Oi! That was rude!” the Doctor shouted after him. Tucking his hands into his pockets and rocking back on his heels, he muttered, “Didn’t even answer my question.”
There was a girlish giggle from behind his back and then a teenage girl stepped to his side and said, “Yes, he did. You are in Luck. That’s the name of this place. Luck, Wisconsin.” She grinned, her round face widening even further, but it was a bright, cheerful expression that was inviting by human standards and positively divine by Leghixic standards. “Whereabouts you from?” she asked eagerly. “We don’t get a lot of strangers around here. You British?”
“Hmm,” the Doctor pulled a thoughtful face. “I’m a lot of things,” he evaded. “My name’s the Doctor, by the way. And you are?”
“Janey. Nice to meetcha.” She grabbed his hand, shaking it enthusiastically. “You should come to tonight’s concert. My friend, Regina, she’s gonna sing and she’s really good.”
“Well, I think I just might at that. Now, Miss Janey,” he continued, tucking her hand into the crook of his arm, “why don’t you show me around Luck and explain why exactly there were beds rolling down the street?”
Janey was more than happy to tour him around Luck, which didn’t take that long since the Doctor’s estimates of its size were of course correct – it was indeed a small village, population just over a thousand. The bed-races, he discovered, were an annual tradition of their community summer festival, fittingly named Lucky Days, of which he had arrived in the midst.
It was not the most stimulating of celebrations nor the most grandiose of sights, but without a companion to impress, the Doctor felt free to revel in the mundane without risking one of those ridiculously patronizing looks from a silly ape. It seemed the whole of the village was out on the blocked off streets – chattering and gorging on grease and sugar while their offspring dived into piles of sawdust, whooping with glee as their eyes reddened and watered with irritating dust.
The tour ended at the community hall where volunteers were setting up for the concert later that night. The Doctor bemusedly found himself the subject of acute teenage scrutiny when Janey introduced her friends while she was the quietly feted for snagging the most sought after of commodities in a small village – someone new with whom to talk. The Doctor was fairly certain he wasn’t supposed to hear the part about him being a “hottie.”
He chatted with one point eight percent of his mind – small talk did not require much brainpower, after all – while he turned the rest of his attention to his contrary TARDIS. She was humming at him quite loudly now without communicating anything at all, almost like white noise, and he was beginning to get a bit worried about such aberrant behavior. Just when he was about to extricate himself and check on her, she suddenly went quiet.
Oh. Not white noise. Distraction.
“Doctor.”
“Jack,” the Doctor bit out as he exerted considerable mental effort into holding his expression impassive and his body immobile.
“Fancy running into you here. How lucky for me,” Jack smirked, and he was still as striking as ever – more even, wearing his age and responsibility in his older eyes and the tiny care lines worn into his face – but he was still just as wrong.
In return, the Doctor arranged a grin onto his features, more a baring of teeth that he could not control, and then he made his excuses and swiftly strode away. The girls would be happy to turn their attentions to the handsome Captain, and the Doctor had to run.
~~~~~~~~
Jack caught up with him nearly two hours later by the TARDIS where the Doctor, leaning against the reassuring mimicry of blue-painted wood, was waiting for him.
“What are you doing here, Doctor?” The unhealed hurt added a tense dissonance to Jack’s otherwise pleasant timbre.
Keeping his eyes averted, the Doctor shrugged and forced himself to form words, “Apparently, even my TARDIS is not entirely immune to your charms. Take it up with her.”
Jack paused, silent, clearly unsure how to take that, and then came the sound of boots scuffing against the ground as he approached hesitantly, and after another pause, gingerly settled at the Doctor’s side, leaning against the TARDIS.
“And you, Jack?”
He snorted out a laugh. “Reggie Nelson. It’s her first public performance and I couldn’t resist.”
“Regina. Of course,” the Doctor said, making the connection immediately. “Her music did make quite the comeback at the turn of the fiftieth century, didn’t it?”
“The Zartian remixes, yeah. I was always a fan of the original, though.”
Conversation lapsed and the silence stretched out into awkwardness.
“So this is how it’s going to be, now?” Jack’s voice was harsh. “You won’t even look at me, won’t really talk to me. The Doctor, the universe’s greatest chatterbox, can’t find anything to say to me. You’re just going to try to ignore me, is that it? Ignore me because I’m wrong?” His voice rose to a shout, cracking on the last word.
The Doctor’s head whipped around as he finally looked straight at Jack and he marveled that the man had ever made it as a conman with all that he could see written on his face. Yearning, anger, confusion, hurt. And oh, the love. It shone in his eyes, unmistakable and unshakeable. The Doctor had known it would be. Jack had had many casual affairs and a few of deep affection but he had never fallen in love. Now that he had, he did not know how to let go. The Doctor, on the other hand, despite what many may think, did know how to love, knew it all too well, but he had also learned how to eventually let go.
Now here was Jack again, pushing and demanding, his undying heart bright with his undying love.
But it was the thread of bitterness winding through the jumble that captured the Doctor’s attention and worried him. Bitterness like that, small as it was with Jack believing now that he had forgiven the Doctor, that sort of bitterness could and would grow and poison a man. With the years that lay ahead of Jack, it was inevitable and utterly unacceptable.
Brimming with sudden energy, the Doctor burst into movement, pushing off the TARDIS and careening forward a few steps before he began pacing. His hands tugged at his hair, tousling it into a mess of disheveled tufts. He could feel Jack’s eyes on him, intense and wary.
He was no good at this, no good, but he had to try even though he had messed it up so horribly last time.
“Jack.” He clenched his fists, scalp prickling. “Jack,” he started again. “It wasn’t – isn’t a case of liking or not liking you.”
“Because telling someone they’re wrong is nothing personal?” he snapped.
The Doctor winced and then threw his arms open, lashing back. “No! Just listen!” He sighed, deflating, letting his arms drop to his side. Antagonism wouldn’t work with this Jack, this wounded Jack who hurt because of him. “I’m not good at this, Jack, and I said things poorly then.”
A sideways peek at the man showed that he too had subsided and was willing to listen again. The Doctor restarted his pacing. “You compared what I said before to being prejudiced, but it’s more like… What’s it like? Oh, it’s like an allergy!”
“An allergy?”
Still willing to listen, good, good, good. “Jack, a Time Lord isn’t human. My senses, the way I perceive reality itself isn’t human. No human can really understand, not even an immortal one,” the Doctor continued, groping for words and finding them coming easier now. “I was once told Rose, back when I first met her and she asked who I was, that I could feel the Earth revolving, spinning around like a human child on a carousel going a thousand miles an hour. That I could feel the Earth orbiting the sun, careening round and round at sixty-seven thousand miles an hour, the fastest rollercoaster any of these humans have ever ridden. I can feel it, Jack. And that’s just the beginning.
“I’m a Time Lord – it’s not just a pretty title, Jack. I sense Time as naturally as you use your senses to see me in front of you or hear me talking. It flows and shifts all around me, and there’s no way to describe anymore than I could describe orange to the colorblind, but it’s always, always there. I can move through it and move with it, feeling as timelines weave in and out, crossing, starting, ending.
“Jack, to me, everything is in motion. Even matter, all this stuff pressing around you, it’s all just vibration and probability – little compressed pockets of humming activity that tingle all over,” the Doctor explained, flourishing a hand through the air, feeling the bump-bump-bump of air molecules shiver around him. “The universe, it dances. So beautiful.
“But you? A fixed point in time and space? You’re still when everything moves around you. And being around you - you’re the opposite of vertigo. It’s as if you exert a sort of pressure, a vacuum of stillness in an otherwise moving universe, and I can feel that pressure as though everything inside me is trying to push out, and…” The Doctor trailed off, not really wanting to go further in that direction because he had a feeling what he would see when he looked at Jack again.
Realizing that at some point during his talking he had stopped pacing, he took a deep breath and looked at Jack.
The Captain was sitting huddled against the TARDIS, his face clear of any bitterness but tight and awash with a new sort of pain. “I hurt you, don’t I? That’s what you’re getting at, isn’t it?”
“Essentially.” No more evasions, no half-truths kindly meant but backfiring.
“You don’t like to look at me or talk – ”
“Because it’s easier to control my reactions, yes.”
“Shit. Shit, Doctor.” White-faced and curled up, Jack looked so very young, swamped in the blue fabric of his coat, and the Doctor felt his left heart clench a little tighter.
“Oh, Jack,” he sighed, stepping forward and staring into the Captain’s upturned face. Taking a deep breath, he lowered himself to the ground at Jack’s side and settled an arm around his broad shoulders.
Jack made a horrible little whimpering sound, a sound the Doctor never wanted to hear from him, and stiffened, trying to pull away. But he had forgotten that the Doctor was stronger than a human of comparable size, and the Doctor refused to release him. Instead he reeled him in, pressing Jack’s head to his shoulder, and murmured, “I’m sorry, Jack. I’m so sorry.”
Jack didn’t cry or explode in some cathartic emotional release, but gradually his muscles did unlock and he relaxed into the Doctor’s hold. He turned his head, hiding his face in the Doctor’s neck, and his warm, moist breath tickled at the Doctor’s skin.
Finally, in a small voice muffled by the Doctor’s collar, he said, “I never want to hurt you, Doctor.”
“I know,” was the simple reply.
Silence fell again, the calm after a storm, and the Doctor’s thoughts whirled around regrets and second chances, mistakes and attempted efforts. The Doctor didn’t get many second chances, sometimes through bad luck and sometimes from his own making, but here was one now with Jack warm and lax under his arm. The pressure was still there, the throb behind his eyes and that incessant ache that felt as though it could steal his breath and burst his hearts if he allowed it, if he was unprepared for it, but the Doctor had handled it before and as he had said, it had never been about dislike.
“Come with me again,” he offered impulsively. “No, listen,” he continued quickly when he felt Jack’s head began to shake. “I mean it, Jack. I can acclimate myself, really, and I want you to. I’d like to try.”
The Doctor wondered what Jack was thinking. Was he thinking about his responsibilities, about who would take over his team if he left? Was he thinking about people he would miss and who miss him? The Doctor had an inkling that those were stray thoughts at best. It was the recent revelation that would weigh on Jack’s mind the most, and the Doctor did not know how to reassure him other than to do his utmost to behave normally.
“Well, come on then,” the Doctor said cheerfully, springing to his feet. “Miss Regina Nelson is to perform half an hour – well,” he interrupted himself in a drawl, “in thirty seven minutes really since she’ll be late due to a wardrobe malfunction –and you didn’t want to miss it, right?”
He held out his hand, an offer to help him up, a gesture laden with deeper implications, and wiggled his fingers enticingly. The smile was bright and playful on his face, inviting of all sorts of conspiring and mischief, and he bounced lightly on the balls of his feet. Every nuance, every expression of his face and body was primed to encourage. See, see, Jack? It can be okay.
After a moment, Jack smiled too, a slow smile that wasn’t a leer or a smirk or any of those other expressions he used like he would any other tool, and his hand, big and gun-callused, slapped with reassuring confidence into the Doctor’s and grabbed on.
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