for quitehomoerotic: Welcome to the Boeshane Peninsula

[rude_not_ginger]

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When the Doctor woke, he was prepared to feel stiff and uncomfortable. Usually, when reaching that point of exhaustion, he usually found himself on the floor or on the console, in some sort of an awkward position that left him sore for the next day. This morning, however, he was out of his clothes and stretched out on his bed, under the covers with a heating blanket.

A breathing heating blanket.

He raised an eyebrow and looked to where Jack had an arm around him as he slept. The previous day came rushing back. Pearl Harbor, the goodbyes, the return of Gallifrey, being captured by the Shadow Proclamation, and finally nearly killing Jack. They came so very close. Too close.

Without really thinking about it, the Doctor found himself wrapping an arm around Jack's shoulder. Jack, who was ready and willing to die the previous day. And the Doctor was willing to give him that. He had been willing to give him that. Not anmymore.

Where could they go, now?

Onwards, of course. It was the only way they could go.

The TARDIS wasn't moving anymore, and the Doctor slowly extracted himself from Jack's embrace. He grabbed his trousers and shirt and threw them on quickly, heading towards the console, hopefully before Jack woke.

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"Home," Jack echoed back again with a laugh in his voice. He wasn't sure how acurate a word that was for it. He wasn't sure there was anywhere that word ever fit. But if it ever had? This would be one of those places.

"You smell that?" he asked the Doctor, watching him with a half smile. "That's the ocean. Must be about late afternoon from the smell of it."

It was nice to be somewhere he knew, somewhere he knew entirely. He felt as though he knew each individual grain of sand.

He gave an emphatic nod and stepped forward, before jogging ahead in the sand, moving up over the dunes to reveal what was ahead; the vista of the peninsula. Ahead he could see it all, the sea the towers of the buildings.

He looked back over his shoulder towards the Doctor.

"Doctor? Welcome to Boeshane."

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"No place quite like it."

The Doctor followed slowly behind him, grinning as they went over the dune. It was breathtaking, the sight of the city and the sea. No two worlds were alike, and Jack's homeworld was amazing.

"Looks like there's a westernly wind," he said, licking a finger and checking the air. A storm seemed to be darkening the sky far off, but other than that, it was a clear day.

He nodded. "Where should we start?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

There were few times that Jack was truly overwhelmed, but here and now? It was one of those few times.

"We won't blend in in here," he said, gesturing towards the buildings in the distance. It wasn't like Jack ever usually cared about sticking out like a sore thumb, but he cared here. Everyone else always dressed in their shades of sandy browns and creams.

"Might get away with it for you, especially with the coat but me? Well I'm far too... blue."

There was not too much wind, and that was good, else the sand would catch in their eyes and they'd need goggles. But with the weather as it was, calm and pleasant, they'd be fine.

"The sea?" he suggested, "You know I used to sit down there for hours. I'd play in the dunes, hide and seek with all my friends and then we'd go sit on the beach."

He nodded over the way and started walking, "Come on, sea!"

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"There a reason for that?" the Doctor asked. "You in the blue?" In his own lifetime, he'd worn nothing but odd Earth clothes in a rebellion against his stuffy, robe-wearing people.

The sea. The Doctor wouldn't deny Jack, of course. He followed with a slight hop, catching up easily. The breeze was comfortable, but not too strong. The sun blazed against his head, but it wasn't too hot. A sand-and-sea paradise, it was.

Why did Jack leave, he wondered. He obviously loved his home.

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"Of course there's a reason!" Jack said, turning to walk backwards and look at him as he spoke, moving forward again as the Doctor caught up.

"I look good in it," he said by way of explanation, a small smirk with his words; he knew it was true. More than that though, it had started off as uniform. Uniform and then some sort of mask, some sort of protection and a persona, and it suited him. He liked it. And it had become as much who he was as anything else.

They reached where the water lapped against the sand and Jack crouched down, touching his fingers against the edge; making sure it was real.

"Why do you always wear the same two suits?" Jack asked, looking back over his shoulder. "It's not like you're not the adventurous sort."

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The Doctor looked down at his suit, then back up to Jack. "It's comfortable. And I changed my jumper!"

He had a whole cabinet full of different colors of the same suit. It was what fit him, what looked good, and it was easier than trying to go through the wardrobe room every day. He could've probably chatted for ages about his sartorial taste (and his choice of hair products), but they were somewhere new. Talking about this place was far more important.

"Are those Cretonian trees out there?" he asked. He didn't think so, but they were similar.

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Jack sat ack down on the sand and laughed up at the Doctor. "Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining. I like it. I think you should get a red one though, it'd suit you. And I'm just making a point. You wear that because you want to. Same goes here."

He ran his fingers through the sand beside him, feeling it shift and move. If he closed his eyes he could almost feel young again.

"Hmm?" he asked, looking over to the tree. "No idea," he said. "I left here by the time I was 15. Never was quite the botanist back then. I can tell you though I broke my wrist falling from that tree. See the big one? Wanted to get to the top and kept falling down. Had a pretty bad fall once, ended up with my arm in a davis sling. Two weeks later I was at it again. Made it to the top of course."

A pause. "Its a cretavis tree I think, same family."

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"Oooh, that's very you," the Doctor said, dropping into the sand next to him. "And very me, come to think of it. Had a tree near my parents' home I fell out of a few times. 'Course, if we learned our lessons back then, we certainly wouldn't be here now, would we?"

He tried to imagine a young Jack climbing to the top. He could only imagine him being gleeful inside and quietly smug on the outside. Ah, youth. For the Doctor, it seemed so long ago. He wondered if it felt the same way for Jack.

"So! Where did you live, then? Back in the city?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack looked at the tree a moment, in thought, remembering. He'd refused to cry that time he broke his wrist, but as soon as the door was shut he'd been in floods of tears. His Mom had come to him and told him it was okay to cry, and then proceeded to tell him off for climbing trees. It was a memory so long ago that it barely felt like his own. Someone else, another life.

"Oh I'll never learn my lesson," Jack said, looking back to the Doctor, squinting slightly in the sun. "Wouldn't want to," he added. "And like you say, we wouldn't."

And Jack was glad they were. As ironic as that seemed considering the previous evening.

"Yeah," he said, sitting back up a little again. He pointed his hand out towards the city ahead. "You see those buildings at the bottom to the left? The first set of windows? Well see the little bit cropping out there? That's my house."

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"You had a view," the Doctor said with a smile. "Not bad. Not bad at all."

While always a tourist, the Doctor loved places like this. The places away from the big city, the places only a local might find. They were better than any tour route could be.

"I like it," he said. "Where it all started. Little Jack Harkness, running about and breaking wrists. This is what traveling should be about. Seeing where the big slices of universe begin."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"I had a view," Jack echoed back in agreement with a smile of his own. He looked over at it, at his house, he could almost see himself playing outside, running, his hand in Gray's. His parents watching them and smiling. And somehow he could block out the bad. He didn't have to look and see the creatures in the sky or hear their screams, he didn't have to see his father dead lying in the sand.

He was glad of that.

"I'm a big slice of universe?" Jack asked, teasing. He shook his head though, sifting a little sand between his hands. "You're wrong though. No little Jack Harkness here." A sigh and a breath, "But, there was a little boy called Skye, once. And he was a bit like me."

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"Skye." The Doctor said the name slowly, as though it were one he'd never heard before. He could never imagine Jack being called that, but then again, he could almost not imagine himself being called the name he told Jack the night before. So much had changed and they'd become such different men from the boys they once were.

They were eerily similar at times. Their twisted, mystery-laden lives and lost homes. Maybe it was what drew them together, like seeking out like. He reached out and took Jack's hand, trying to show through a gentle touch that he appreciated the confidence.

"So, tell me, what else did Skye do on Boeshane?"

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

Jack took the Doctor's hand and gripped it, he shifted his own so that his fingers threaded with the Doctor's, and he smiled over at him.

It couldn't possibly mean so much, his name, not as much as the Doctor's did. Jack didn't even imagine it would. But it meant something. He didn't tell people, and he hadn't told anyone since leaving Boeshane. Maybe it was because he was here that he could say it. But then maybe not.

"Well," Jack said, looking down with a smile and back up and over at the buildings in the distance, "he used to sit and take apart his dad's droids, just to see how they work. He used to go to school just over there--" he reached out and pointed towards another small collection of sandy coloured blocks, "and he used to stay late reading more books than he had to just because he wanted to. He was the butt of jokes but good at turning it around."

He looked at the Doctor again and let out a laugh. "And he used to hold hands under the desks with this one boy in class."

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"Now, why am I not surprised about that?" the Doctor asked with a small smirk. "Starting out young in the Casanova business, eh?"

No, that wasn't really why the Doctor wasn't surprised. Jack was a first-class flirt, but holding hands secretively was a romantic gesture, and deep down, Jack was an impossible romantic. Very different from the Doctor, who picked fights with Koschei as a child in order to show his affection. But his romantic thoughts were so secret, he kept them from himself, too.

"Now your dad," he went on. "Brilliant, I'm telling you. Those droids are absolute masterpieces. I'd keep one around the TARDIS just for aesthetics if I didn't worry about it killing me in my sleep."

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"No," Jack said with a laugh. "I wasn't always like this, you know. I didn't get it, all that stuff. There was this girl I knew, she was a few years older than me and once, she brought me out to the beach --right about here, actually-- and she kissed me. I had no idea what was going on. But she... well she knew perfectly well, right down to the last detail."

It was funny, Jack thought, when he looked at himself as a child, he couldn't in many ways see the man he turned into. He doubted he'd recognise himself as the same person. And then in so many ways? He was still exactly the same.

"Oh he was," Jack agreed, "he was. I thought he knew everything. He used to bring the prototypes home, we had them all over the place. You know they're really not all that dangerous if you just programme them right."

He looked over and offered him a fond smile, "And don't you worry, I'll protect you while you're sleeping."

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"Careful, Jack, you'll make me blush," the Doctor said. "But after leaving that many clockwork robots back in France, I'd really be all right if I never saw another one again, I think. Well, at least for another couple hundred years. You know my memory, I'll forget why they tried to kill me."

Which was nonsense, of course. He'd never forget that night, it was the sort that would stick with him regenerations from now.

"Though, with Dads, isn't that always the way? You think they'll never be wrong." He bit the inside of his cheek. He'd felt the same way about his father, silent and cold as all Time Lords were, up until the day of his mother's death.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"No, I won't," Jack said amused. "But if you want me to, I'll certainly give it a damn good go."

He laughed again then, looking out at the sea as it lapped gentle waves against the sand, still holding the Doctor's hand and stroking his thumb just gently over his fingers.

No droid then, Jack understood that, and he understood the expert way in which the Doctor brushed it off. It was utterly transparent to him of course, and perhaps both because he knew him well enough to see it, and because he was just as good at lying himself.

"But then they are," he went on, "wrong, I mean. If he hadn't died then I'd have never ended up going away. He wouldn't have wanted it. I'd have stayed here. Maybe worked in a factory, maybe did some teaching. Without any of those heroics and definitely without any Doctor."

He looked at him again, and tried to really look at him. To see him.

"If I gave you a promise, would you believe it?"

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The Doctor had a flippant remark on the tip of his tongue. Something along the lines of Well, if it's a promise not to flirt with waiters and waitresses, absolutely not or Really, now, is this the sort of place for that sort of thing?, but the look Jack gave him made him pause. It wasn't a teasing remark, it wasn't a playful look, it was the sort of serious Jack usually held in.

Which meant teasing wasn't the right sort of a response at all.

"Course I would," he said.

[quitehomoerotic.livejournal.com]

"What happened last night," he said, "in the past, I know, but still. It won't happen again. It won't. And I am sorry. I am. It was selfish. I've been..." he laughed again, slightly empty, and looked down at the sand.

"I've been too busy feeling sorry for myself to think about how it must be for you. And what I did? That was unforgivable. And don't argue with me on that, it was. And how could I want to go? How could I? Look at this, this place, and out there, all of it. There's so much. And there's you."

And because of course he could never be entirely serious, and to mask his words slightly, saying one thing and meaning another, "And come on, I make you look good. As if I could take that away from you."

And again serious.

"I won't. And as long as you want me around? I'll be there."

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The Doctor wanted to tell him it was all right, and everything would be forgiven. After all, he'd worked hard to repress the previous evening so it wouldn't hold too much on now or keep him from moving forward. Repression was a tool, and the Doctor wielded it well.

But it wasn't all right, and no matter what Jack promised, the Doctor was certain it wasn't over. Even now, despite all of his many, many self-promises to stay sane and keep from suicidal exploits, the Doctor still leapt from a hovering space craft through a window. Granted, he had planned to land on the window and the force of the fall tossed him through, but such an act was so idiotically suicidal.

If Jack was that ready to die, he'd be that ready again.

He considered saying such a thing, but his attention was swiftly broken. "That's not good," he said.

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Jack watched the Doctor. He hoped he'd say something. He didn't know what he hoped he'd say, but something. He didn't want him to tell him it was okay, or to forgive him for what he'd done. He didn't think he deserved that. And it wasn't okay, was it? It wasn't like everything was suddenly fine, things just didn't work that easily.

But then the response wasn't to him at all, and he noticed the Doctor's attention was elsewhere.

"What?" he asked, lifting his head to look around. "What's wrong?"

There was something of a panic in Jack's tone. He was used to things going wrong, bt not here. Here was safe. Here had to be safe. The creatures always left Boeshane alone until that fateful day, they never knew why, but they did. It was safe.

It had to be.

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"The water," the Doctor said, gesturing. "Unless that's some sort of a submerged lightning storm..."

Beneath the bright waters was a line of light bursts, followed by larger patches of darkness, like the storm that was raging overtop of the mountains in the distance. And the Doctor had heard some things about the Boeshane Peninsula, but nothing like this.

"Tell me that's something you've seen before," the Doctor asked, looking over to his companion.

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Jack straightened his back a little and looked forward at the sea. It was wrong. Very wrong. And not because it looked like something inherently bad or evil, but because it wasn't something that was part of this place. Boeshane was spectacular in so much as it wasn't. There was nothing that made it remarkable in the set of planets it sat amongst.

Definitely nothing like this.

"No," Jack said firmly, shaking his head as he looked out to the sea. "Never."

He looked back to the Doctor.

"Looks like we've just found ourselves something to do."

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The Doctor's face split into an excited grin. From one adventure to the next and no stops in between. He was addicted to adventure, and in a way that couldn't have been fair for Jack, who clearly needed a break.

Jack was ready to die the night before, he reminded himself. It wasn't fair, tossing him back into this, now.

He controlled himself.

"Nah, you know what? I'll take a look into it, you stay here, keep an eye on the TARDIS."

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"You're kidding, right?" Jack said incredulously. "I've had enough of staying back and keeping an eye on the TARDIS. And I'm not having you go off there while I kick my heels over here like the guard dog."

He stood up then, releasing the Doctor's hand to shift and dust himself down.

"And besides, I know this place like the back of my hand. You don't."

He offered his hand down to help him up.

"And like I said. I make you look good. We go together, Doctor."