This is a Lie

Title: You Just Have to go With What Feels Right - Part 2 Word count: 521
Characters: Jack Harkness, 9th Incarnation, Rose Tyler
Rating: R-ish
Warnings: A bit of slash
Spoilers: If you don’t already know Jack Harkness met The Doctor… oops.
Disclaimer: As with all fanfiction, this is not-for-profit, just for fun, and all the assorted other words that really mean nothing but look like an attempt.

Summary: Set immediately after “The Doctor Dances”. Jack’s first few days on board the TARDIS. Mild slash.

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Later, after everyone agreed it was “bed time,” Jack quietly opened the door to The Doctor’s room. It was lit with a pale blue fluorescent glow that seemed to filter down from the tops of the walls.Jack could see The Doctor’s bed through the narrow opening. He could just make out that he had his back to the wall. Rose was cuddled close to him, her face pressed against his chest. The Doctor’s arms were wrapped around her and he was stroking her hair and murmuring softly in her ear. Jack moved away from the door.

The Doctor caught the movement and then caught Jack’s eye. He pressed his finger to his lips in a shushing motion. Rose was obviously upset about something. Jack raised an eyebrow, telegraphing the question “anything I can do?” The Doctor flashed a smile and shook his head. Jack nodded in understanding and went to his room.

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The next “day,” The Doctor and Jack found themselves in a long stretch of curiously straight hallway. They had panels off the wall and one tile out of the floor. The Doctor aimed his sonic screwdriver at the exposed wiring in the wall. Jack, a voltmeter in hand, knelt next to the open floor.

“Red wire… now,” The Doctor touched the screwdriver to the wire.

“Normal. Try the green.”

“Green…. now.”

“Normal. Blue?”

“Blue… now.”

“Normal. Black and yellow.”

“Black and yellow. Jack.”

“Normal. Doctor. White and red.”

“White and red. Rose had a nightmare last night.”

“Normal. Green and yellow. It’s no business of mine what you two do in private.”

“Green and yellow.”

“Normal. Blue and white. Unless you want the extra company.”

“Jack!”

“Calm down! I was kidding. Sort of. Although if you were interested….”

“I mean it’s that wire!” The Doctor was sucking the index finger of his right hand. “It fed back on me. Does that ever sting. What’s the reading?”

“Null. So the short is somewhere between that panel and this tile.”

The Doctor knelt down to loosen the lower wall panel and the remaining floor tiles. Jack leaned in closer. “So, are you?”

“Am I what?” The Doctor said brusquely. “We’ve got work to do, Jack. Save your flirting for another day.”

“But I should save it, right?” Jack flashed his most winning smile.

“Another time, another place, another whatever.” The Doctor tried to follow the wire by sight and lost it in a bundle of neon-coloured cables. “Now where do these go” he asked no one.

“Doc.”

The Doctor looked up, glaring. “What, Jack. What?”

Jack grabbed The Doctor’s face. “We’re on a machine that goes through time and space. Everything is another time and place all the time.”

The Doctor started to mock Jack for his purple prose. “I’m not some vacuum-headed alien” or “I bet you say that to all the Time Lords” or maybe he was just going to laugh in Jack’s face, but the fact that Jack was kissing him made speaking difficult.

He managed a chuckle seconds before Jack overbalanced and fell face-first into the open floor.

“Found the short,” Jack said.