HEARTSTOPPING

by elfin
Crazy day.  Another disaster averted.  Shit hitting the fan, day in, day out.  Jack sat in his office with his feet on his desk and listened to the comforting sounds of Ianto moving about in the Hub, tidying up, collecting their rubbish, throwing it away.  There was always Ianto.  Always.  Always the same sounds late at night.  Everything was always the same.  He surprised himself by the tears that sprang to his eyes; he'd turned down the universe and trapped himself here - his choice, his fault.  And at first he'd been fine with it.  But as the time had worn on�.   

His choice, his fault. 

So he swiped at his eyes with the back of his hand, dragging a fingernail across one pupil, making it water, making it sting.  In frustration he grabbed the closest thing to hand and launched it across the narrow room.  His favourite coffee mug splintered into five pieces when they hit the toughened glass, which dropped to the floor, the handle skidding across the boards until it collided with a desk leg and stopped.  He stared at one of the large china shards.  When the hell had he got a favourite coffee mug?  What the hell kind of dull, human trait was that?!  Why had Cardiff seemed like a good idea when he was being offered the stars?

Picking up the nearest pen he tapped it against his teeth and when that started to give him a headache he instead tapped it against the surface of the desk, tapping out a rhythm from somewhere deep inside of him; the rhythm of drums. 

A sound - a different sound - reverberated through the stone floors and brick walls of the hub.   

The pen dropped from Jack's fingers as he listened for an aftermath of whatever had just happened, waiting for the ceiling to cave to, for the walls to collapse, just for it to happen again.  But all he could hear was Ianto washing mugs in the skin two levels down.  Even Ianto fell silent, and sitting forward in his chair, Jack put his hands flat on the desk and rose slowly to his feet.  Moving around the room, he looked through the glass wall front of his office, peering down, seeing nothing out of the ordinary.  Opening the door, leaning out,  

"Ianto?  Ianto!" 

"Sir?"  He appeared, as if from nowhere, looking up from around one of the archways.  "Jack?" 

"I'm fine," pre-empting the next question.  "Did you just hear something?  A sound like�."  Like something tearing a hole in the universe?  Ianto shook his head, like Jack found he was expecting him to do. 

"I just heard you.  Sorry." 

"Don't be."  Closing his office door, he dropped back into his chair, muttering to himself.  "Just losing my mind."   

"Lose it to me." 

Jack's head snapped up and he stared at the man who was standing against the back wall of his office, hands tucked behind him. 

"Where did you come from?  What are you doing here?" 

The Doctor chose to answer the second question.  "You called." 

"What are you talking about?"  He couldn't quite believe this was happening.  Didn't he turn this man - the last of the Time Lords - down several months ago?  Wasn't he just wishing he hadn't? 

"The sound of drums?"  The Doctor shook his head.  "Careless pen tapping, you need to be careful with something as powerful as rhythm, Jack." 

He glanced down at the pen still lying on his desk.  "You gotta be kidding me!  What are you doing back here?" 

The Doctor pushed off from the wall.  "Well, I know I'm asking for the big hurt, but I thought I'd give you a second chance."

"Right, a second chance."  Suddenly he was angry, furious.  "I waited a hundred years for you to turn up and when you do it's just to catch sight of me and run away again!  You spend the time we have together telling me I'm wrong and only when I've been tortured and killed again and again for you do you tell me it's okay, that I have your permission to come with you, that you don't mind me!"

He was silent for a couple of seconds, an oddity in itself.  "I'm sorry, Jack." 

The anger dissipated as quickly as it had gathered.  He closed his eyes.  "Why are you here?"   

His fire, apparently, had jumped to the Doctor.  "You know you want something from me that I just can't give you, don't you?"   

Jack stared at him.  "I'm sorry, did I start this conversation?" 

"Yes." 

"When?" 

"1941 when you asked to dance with me." 

"Right."  There was absolutely no point in challenging that.  "You came all the way back here to carry on a conversation I started over sixty years and an entire planet's lifetime ago."  He shrugged.  "So what do I want?  And why can't you give it to me?" 

"You want me, Jack, you want a part of me I've never given to any human, a part of me I haven't known for longer than I can remember."

Exactly who was the Doctor trying to convince?  "You said you didn't do sex." 

"I don't, Jack.  I can't, not with a human."

"Why?"

The Doctor's lips parted but he swallowed his words before they were spoken.  "Do you trust me?"

He shook his head slowly, "Not at all."

A wry smile was his response.  "You'll die for me, but you won't trust me?" 

"It's different when you can't die."

"But that isn't true is it?  You can die.  You do die.  You just� come to life again." 

"It's not always like that.  Remember the radiation room?  I was dying over and over again, so quickly my body didn't have time to shut down before it had� regenerated."

The Doctor's expression changed.  "Must have hurt." 

"Yeah, it did.  But someone was keeping me distracted."  He let himself smile.  "Wasn't so bad."

Taking a step forward, the Doctor reached out his hand, hesitated inches from Jack's.  "If we� had sex, I would kill you." 

Jack laughed, he couldn't help it.  It bubbled up from somewhere inside him, spilt over.  "No wonder the TARDIS has to be so big on the inside�."

"I'm serious, Jack.  The energy I give out when I� climax - it's similar to the energy of the time vortex, to what did this to you.  It would kill you and I couldn't stop it." 

Staring at the Doctor's hand hovering an inch from his own, he said the words he knew he didn't need to say.  "You wouldn't have to."

"You'd let me kill you, just to have sex with me?" 

"Yes."

"Why?" 

"Because I want to do it with a Time Lord, just once in my life."  He grinned, smile fading at the serious expression in the Doctor's eyes.  "Because you are undoubtedly the love of my life and I'm not going to pass the chance of a lifetime."

The Doctor's hand collided with Jack's, fingers curling around warm fingers.  "The TARDIS is in your basement.  Come with me?" 

Jack's answer was to return the Doctor's hold of his hand firmly, following him as he lead the way out of the office, down the metal stairs, footfalls echoing in the silence of the hub.  He didn't see Ianto until the Doctor walked into him.

"Leaving us again, Sir?"  There was a note in his voice that resonated with Jack but not, he hoped, with his companion.  It might have been an awkward moment, caught by his lover holding hands with a stranger in their top secret base.  Not just holding hands - holding hands with intent. 

He wiped what must have almost certainly been a 'cat got the cream' grin off his face.  "The Doctor here has something he wants to show me."  Try as he might, he couldn't keep the innuendo completely from his voice.  "I won't be long."

Ianto looked like he was going to say something else, his eyes flew over the Doctor's face, down his long body and Jack knew there must be a thousand questions vying for attention but he gave it to none of them, meeting Jack's eyes and nodding once.  He walked away, but the Doctor hesitated, turning to Jack and asking the obvious question without words. 

Jack met the large, brown eyes and whispered, "It's you.  How can there ever really be anyone else?"

 

The TARDIS was a sight for sore eyes.  Inside, all oranges, greens and browns; its permanent autumnal colours.  Beautiful, calming.  Home.  The Doctor led him across what he'd come to think of during his time aboard as the flight deck, and out left along a corridor roughly matching the colour and design scheme of what Jack was used to until he stopped suddenly, letting go of Jack's hand and placing both his palms flat against a blank section of corridor wall.  It changed, subtly, and when the Doctor turned the handle of the door, Jack couldn't be certain if it had always been there, or if it had suddenly just appeared. 

The room they stepped into definitely wasn't in keeping with the rest of the ship - or at least with the rest of the ship that Jack had seen.  It was old, wooden panelling and peeling wall paper, faded polish on dark floorboards and fading, threadbare rugs, there was an open armoire filled with clothes hanging on ornate hangers (and if he looked carefully he would find all the clothes were the same - the pin-stripe suit this incarnation of the Doctor habitually wore), a chest of drawers with things scattered across the top (Jack picked up a tiny, exquisitely detailed orrery and stare at it for a moment as it appeared to move by itself� appeared even to have its own stars). 

There was a window although beyond it was nothing but black.  And in the centre of this designed chaos stood a large four poster bed with no canvas, its sheets a deep, dark red against the dark wood posts and plain headboard, a black velvet throw across the foot.  For once in his long life, Jack was left speechless. 

Standing at the foot of the bed, staring at it with his back to Jack, the Doctor murmured, "You can change your mind, Jack."

He recovered his voice.  "This just isn't what I expected." 

The Time Lord turned his head to look over his shoulder at him.  "Really?"

"How long has this room been here?" 

"About a minute and a half."

He opened his mouth to retort and realised the Doctor wasn't joking.  "You just created this?"

"I told the TARDIS I needed a bedroom.  Haven't had much use for one before but this is obviously the kind of room she thought I would have if I had had one�."  He trailed off as Jack crossed to him, to stand behind him and focus on the perfectly made bed. 

"It's very you, or at least� very one of you, I'm just not sure it's very this one."

There was a pause.  "What you just said made less sense than what I said."  But there was no volume to the words, no substance, they were just words to bridge a gap between what their friendship was, and what it was about to become.  Knowing he would have to, knowing the Doctor had made all the first moves he was going to, Jack tentatively placed his hands on narrow hips and leaned in to kiss the exposed nape of a neck. 

"If we do this," he whispered, "I won't ever be able to forget it happened.  Nothing will be the same."

The Doctor turned, Jack's hands skimming his waist before they settled again on pronounced hip bones.  "I bet you say that to all your conquests." 

"You're not a conquest."  The breathless quality to the statement was caused by the sudden proximity of the Doctor - big brown eyes which weren't quite human and had seen far, far too much, mouth unusually lacking expression - "I meant what I said in my office.  I've danced my way across the universe and it's brought me to this point.  I've never felt, and I will never feel the way I do about you for anyone else."

The last dregs of humour left the Doctor's face and he leaned forward slightly, eyes lowered, "Kiss me." 

Jack followed the instruction, closing the remaining distance, touching his mouth to the Doctor's in an almost reverent touch.  He lingered there, not nervous but holding back nonetheless.  Then the Doctor hummed, softly, more a vibration than a sound, and suddenly Jack was parting his lips, reaching his tongue into the warm, smiling mouth pressed against his own.  His arms closed around the Doctor's waist, hands rising to settle on his arms, sliding up to his shoulders as he pulled the wiry, slim body towards him and felt the Doctor, mouth to toe, the length of him.  It was Jack's turn to hum, his body becoming aroused so quickly, so strongly it was already painful.

Firm fingers stroked the curve of his spine and he broke the kiss, taking a half-step back and a deep breath with it, raising his head to meet the Doctor's eyes, twinkling like the night sky.  Already his coat was falling from his shoulders, nimble fingers dropping to the buttons of his light blue shirt, pausing there when that was the last thing on earth he wanted them to do.  Instead of unfastening them, the Doctor spread one hand out over where Jack's heart was thudding against his rib cage. 

"It'll stop your heart," the Doctor told him.

It took him a moment to remember what would.  "It'll start again." 

"Be sure."

"I've died over and over again for lesser reasons.  You're the best reason I can think of." 

The right answer it seemed, because long fingers quickly made short work of his shirt buttons and a moment later the Doctor was trailing kisses along his collarbone and down to his chest and all his could do was stare at the brown head while his mind took a second to record every detail.  He muttered something, although what it meant and what language it was in he couldn't have said, and then his hands were sliding under the Doctor's suit jacket and those hands left him long enough to shrug off the material before his own shirt was pooling to the floor.

He got the buttons of the white shirt unfastened and pressed them together, skin to skin, as he reached for a kiss only to pull back from it to take in the sight he'd spent countless long lonely nights imagining.  The white shirt would stay, he determined, as the Doctor's mouth quirked into a smile and a teasing finger ran the line from his belly button to the waistband of his trousers.  Not so fast.  As much as he wanted the Doctor's touch to his cock, he wanted something else before he completely lost the ability to think straight. 

He went to his knees, dark eyes watching his every move as he unzipped, unbuttoned, pulled the pin-stripe pants down and laughed at the absence of underwear.  "Commando!  Doc, I'm impressed."  Light words only momentarily lifted the weight of meaning from what they were doing.  Removing shoes and socks at the same time, Jack settled his hands on those narrow hips and licked a line from large, heavy balls to the tip of the long, slim, perfectly formed erection that bounced against his nose.  A shiver drove its way through the Doctor's frame, hands landed on his shoulders and fingers caught his skin, fighting the need which after - just how long had it been? - was now realised and acknowledged and must have been tearing through the Doctor's system like a raging fire.  Jack sank down on the Doctor's cock, sliding full lips over silky skin, letting his teeth catch lightly, until the head tapped against the back of his throat and meaningless words were starting to drop from above him.

He glanced up, recorded the sight of the Doctor's face, eyes closed, lips moving, something clearing from his face like clouds leaving the sky.  Sliding his hands around almost chastely to smooth warm palms over taut cheeks, he closed his own eyes and gently sank his fingers into the firm buttocks.  One hand moved from his shoulder to his head, fingers stroking, catching, twisting in his hair, fighting the urge to direct him, an urge Jack could almost taste.  He pulled up just slightly before falling back, sucking in his cheeks, loving the low growl the action elicited from his partner.  In this he was an expert, and he worked the Doctor's cock like so many in the past and future had worked his own, only his feelings - growing for the Doctor exponentially with every moment that passed - were tempering his actions, changing them, gentling them while at the same time intensifying each detail. 

He brought one hand around to cup one heavy testicle before the other and suddenly the fingers in his hair were clutching at him painfully and he was being dragged off the Doctor's dick�.  His head snapped back, "I'm sorry�."

The Doctor reached for him, kissing the edges of his mouth, "No, just� not like that.  However good.  If this is my one chance -" 

"- I'm not running from you."

"- if you change your mind afterwards -" 

"- I wont -"

"- I want to be inside you.  This time, that's what I want.  Please." 

He didn't - really didn't - have to say please.  Jack's pants and underwear were around his ankles before he realised it and he stepped out of them, his hand taken and he was led around to the side of the bed.  The Doctor sat down on the high mattress, creasing the immaculate bedding, shuffling back, lying down and reaching one hand up to Jack in invitation which for a moment he didn't accept.  He just stared; the Doctor lying, pale skin and open white shirt against the dark red sheets, lips parted, one leg bent at the knee as he started to sit up.  Jack took the offered hand and put one knee on the bed, other leg straddling the Doctor as he lowered his leg and reached up to pull Jack down to him.  Their mouths meshed, teeth clacking together until they both gave just a little and the Doctor's tongue swept over Jack's, tasting, soothing his own aching arousal brought into sharp relief as he lowered himself to the Doctor's body and their cocks slid one against the other.

Each swallowed a groan from the other, Jack bending one knee to wrap a leg around the Doctor's, pushing his foot under one shin, rubbing them together with practised accuracy, balls nestling, the intimacy almost enough in itself to push him over the edge.  He lifted his head as his brain processed two strong hands gripping his ass, and with witty one liners well beyond his capability right then, he uttered, "Please, do it." 

The Doctor's eyes met his own and he knew the wordless question being posed.  He smiled, nodded, and the Doctor's mouth lifted to touch the place his neck met his shoulder, teeth bared and gently sunk into his skin.  A feral sound escaped him, from somewhere deep in his chest, and using the same technique Jack had done to bring them together, the Doctor rolled them over and without a word Jack wrapped his legs loosely around the Doctor's waist.

There was no pain as the long cock slid into him.  The Doctor's hands felt as if they were touching him everywhere at once, both soothing and exciting, pinching his nipples, tracing over his ribs, long fingers insinuating themselves between them, stroking his stretched hole, parting and pulling on his balls, wrapping around his cock trapped between them.  His thrusts were wonderfully unhurried, agonisingly slow, each forward movement sliding tantalisingly over his prostate, driving him ever so slowly insane. 

Balanced above him, the Doctor's dark eyes never once left his, even when what was happening became intense enough to have its own momentary existence it was witnessed by both of them.  Time after time he felt his own orgasm racing up to claim him and again and again the Doctor put it off, squeezing in just the right place with just the right twinge of pain to stop it.  Until the moment he saw the same thing in the Doctor's eyes, saw the fight against it finally lost, saw the tiny pin-pricks of light in those brown pupils start to shine like planets and something else - something he would later believe he imagined until the moment he saw it again.  A glow, like starlight, coming from the Doctor himself - white light shining from him - the time vortex, the energy of the universe, building, as Jack's orgasm built, unstoppered this time.

He let loose a wordless groan, forming something akin to worship as he felt it start in his toes, in his stomach, in his fingertips, saw it reflected back at him in his Doctor's eyes, and just as he knew he was coming, at the moment before he let it consume him, he saw the Doctor's lips move over three words he barely knew. He exploded, eyes closing, body arching as the pleasure rolled through him in wave after wave.  Everything went white.  Just a heartbeat before he heard the Doctor yell out hard and suddenly there was nothing. 

 

The first breath was always the worst - that first, virgin beat of his well-worn heart.  After that, and each time he did it, it got easier, so that not a second passed before he opened his eyes and looked straight into a Time Lord's soul.  He couldn't help the sob that pressed itself outwards from the back of his throat and immediately brown eyes darkened once more and a hand was stroking through his hair.

"Sorry, I'm sorry�."  Lips touched his.  "I didn't mean for you to see that."

Jack returned the chaste kiss, uncertain of what he had seen, left with just a vague memory that tasted of death.  Leaning forward, he made the kiss something more, deepened it until the Doctor was all he could taste, more familiar, and so real�.  They were still in the position they'd both climaxed in, he could still feel the Doctor inside him, and he let his head drop back to the crumpled sheets.  The Doctor moved carefully, sliding out and over, rolling them until they were on their sides, face to face, inches from each other, legs tangled, Jack's hand stroking the Doctor's arm through the creased white shirt, the Doctor's fingers in his hair.

Unguarded, they stared at one another; gratitude, awe, even love unspoken. 

"Stay with me."  The first words were the Doctor's; not a command, not a question, more of a fact.

"Always."  The intensity of the moment was cloying and something within him needed to dilute it.  "You think after that I'm going anywhere?" 

"I love you."  It seemed, with those words, even the TARDIS held its breath.  Then even the Doctor apparently felt the need to lighten the mood.  "And don't think you'll be hearing that every day."  For a second or two he couldn't seem to speak.  What he was feeling right at that moment could have illuminated Cardiff for a month of winter nights.  "You've heard that before."

"Not from you.  And from you�.  Doctor, you give it more meaning anyone - anything - else could ever give it." 

"Ever said it?"  Jack moved his head and the Doctor smiled.  "And you, you great sentimental, soft hearted thing."  He paused.  "I know how you feel about me.  I can see it in your eyes.  Better still, I can feel it in the vortex, like the universe is singing out with it."  His expression darkened just slightly.  "Need to be careful with that, if I can feel it so can others."  And just as quickly he was smiling again, leaving Jack without the chance to ask who those 'others' were.  "I've never been the focus of what you feel for me."

"Don't do that."  "Do what?  I'm serious.  Rose loved me, I've no doubt, other companions have had crushes on me - like Martha had - but even Rose couldn't channel into the time vortex, I couldn't surround myself with how she felt like I can with you."  A fingertip touched the end of his nose.  "You're unique, Jack."

"Wrong."

"Different.  And different I can live with."

He let it go.  What did it matter now anyway?  He turned his head, looked up at the ceiling which wasn't easy as the pattern in the wooden beams seemed to keep shifting.  "So what's the role of a companion, anyway?  What do they actually do aside from keeping you company and giving you someone to show off to?" 

Strong fingers tickled him in just the right place and he squirmed away as far as he could get, which with the Doctor's feet entangled with his own wasn't all that far.  "The main role of a companion," the Doctor started, getting a firm hold of Jack's hands which were batting him away and lifting them to his mouth, "is to get captured the moment we land on a new planet."  He kissed Jack's knuckles.  "But you're not coming along as a companion, Jack.  You're coming as a� well, as my lover."  His eyes lit up, smile open and genuine.  "Hey!  I've never had one of those before!"

"Yeah, and no dumping me for newer a model.  Not for a while, anyway." 

"As if I would."  He let go of Jack's hands.  "You know it's going to happen every time."

"Let it.  I will die for you, Doctor.  I would die for you even if I knew it was permanent."  The Doctor's fingers combed aside the hair at Jack's temple, his hand coming to rest against his cheek.  "Now that's a declaration of love."