Title: Forgetting the Nightmare
By: Casira
Pairings: Nine/Jack
Rating: PG-13
Summary: In which neither the Doctor nor Jack can get any sleep, but for very different reasons.

***

Inside the TARDIS, the passage of time was ironically irrelevant. Still, humans had to sleep. And so on those days when they weren't instantly elsewhere, life fell into a rhythm -- work, travel, artificial nighttime. The Doctor tolerated it. He didn't need so much rest as the others, but if nothing else, it gave him several hours of silent solitude while the rest of the ship slept.

Even the TARDIS seemed to dream, some nights; he'd go from room to room and find dimmed lights, quiet spaces, soft sounds in the corridors that seemed like breaths and heartbeats. He paused once in the console room, one hand against the panels, and wondered what she was thinking.

And then he opened a floor panel, settled down underneath the controls, and got to work.

It was some time later -- so involved in his tinkering that even he lost track of the hour, at least until he stopped to think about it -- that he heard something else. There were footsteps coming close, at a steady pace and familiar weight, but falling too carefully from heel to toe. He finished fiddling with one wire, feeling the TARDIS twitch just slightly at the adjustment, as if he'd nudged her in her sleep; then the ship sighed and rumbled and settled back down, just as he turned his head to see the approaching silhouette.

"Nightmares?" he casually asked.

Jack stared down at him. He was more or less dressed -- in a plain white shirt and comfortable trousers -- but he was barefoot, and his hair still looked rumpled, and at the Doctor's assessment, his hand had twitched just slightly. "How'd you guess?"

"The way you're walking," the Doctor said, glancing back at the controls. "Like you're afraid something's following you."

Jack's lips twisted, but he said nothing. Instead, he crouched down to look at the exposed wires and pipes. The detached fiberoptic cable beside him -- a twenty-third-century modification -- threw a spot of blue light onto Jack's nose; the Doctor looked, almost laughed, and moved it. "What's in the works?"

"Maintenance." The Doctor lifted his screwdriver and trained it on the nearest panel as he spoke. "We're picking up instability during multi-millennial leaps...."

"Would it help if I got out and pushed?"

He raised an eyebrow at Jack, switching the screwdriver off. "It would help if you came down here and made yourself useful."

"And I could be useful in so many ways...." The Doctor snorted, but smiled back. Jack waved a hand. "Here, move over."

The Doctor scooted sideways just far enough for Jack to join him. He slid onto his back underneath the control panels, settled in, and peered up; despite the double entendre, he seemed intent on the ship. "So what's the work order?"

The Doctor waved his screwdriver in the direction of the nearest circuits. "Just give those a test, will you? I think I isolated the short."

Jack nodded and made himself busy. It was another several minutes of work before he said, "I'm surprised you trust me with your baby."

The Doctor closed a panel. "You're good enough with mechanics."

"Wish I knew why." Jack's hands went still amongst the wires, then slowly finished their work, and dropped down to fold over his stomach instead. When the Doctor glanced at him sideways, he sighed and shrugged. "There's some things that feel like reflex, but if I poke at it... can't remember where it came from."

The Doctor looked up again. Above his head, a series of test lights were blinking -- a tiny string of lights all in a line, with two in a row still dimmed. He gave the missing lights a good stare. "Is that what you were dreaming about?"

Jack reached up to reattach something, gave the panel a harder hammer than was absolutely necessary, and watched over the Doctor's shoulder as the diagnostic tools gave a flicker of protest before going blank again.

"Pretty much," he said dryly.

The Doctor thought over what he knew about Time Agents, made a face, then went quiet. "Here," he said after a few more tweaks. "Connect that cable to the temporal cortex, would you?"

"Which one -- ah." Jack reached up over his head, muscles working as he wrenched the connection into place, then said, "How's it look?"

The test lights flickered out of rhythm, then finally lit in one complete sequence. Beneath him, the Doctor could feel a steadier, more contented hum. "I think that's it."

Jack let go of the wires, sighed, then folded his hands behind his head. "That it for the bumpy rides, then?"

"Theoretically."

"Some ship you've got here."

"Just you try to outdo her."

Jack looked over, laughed, and said, "Watch me--"

-- but just as he looked like he was on the brink of moving, he went still.

And then he was pushing himself out from underneath the controls, hoisting himself onto the grate again, and sitting with his hands gripping the edge. The Doctor frowned and sat up, ducking his head around the edge of the electronics panels.

"Sorry," Jack said, before he could ask. "Just... a little --"

He shook his head, swore under his breath, scrubbed at his face with both hands, and then blinked out into space at nothing in particular. He looked calm enough now, but the Doctor couldn't help but notice that the heels of his hands weren't quite dry.

Without a word, he sat on the opposite side and watched him, waiting.

"I can never remember," Jack said finally, his eyebrows drawn, still looking somewhere over the Doctor's right shoulder. "There's just... vague images. Then I wake up in a cold sweat and there's nothing. But it feels like... whatever they did to my head--" He finally met the Doctor's eyes. "Two goddamn years, Doctor."

He stayed quiet.

"And you still trust me," Jack said. "I wonder why."

"I trust what I know."

"You don't know much."

"Neither do you," the Doctor pointed out. "I'd say we're on equal footing."

Jack almost smiled, but it was a wry sort of look; he didn't hold the Doctor's gaze. "Guess you're right."

"Captain," the Doctor said quietly -- and the title made Jack sit up straighter, and look at him again -- "you should get some sleep."

Jack seemed to think it over, and almost to agree -- but then he stood up, not on the ship's floor but underneath, so that he was looking at the Doctor almost at eye level. There was a long moment of silence before something else flickered through his expression. "I'm not sure it's sleep I'm wanting," he said.

It wasn't exactly a surprise, but something felt different than Jack's usual flirtations, and so he waited, not saying yes or no as Jack came closer. He didn't look away. He stayed very quiet, and very calm, and didn't say a word when Jack reached out to brush his thumb across his cheek. The touch felt strangely careful.

The Doctor tilted his head, as if to prompt him.

And when Jack leaned forward to kiss him, the touch began as slow, a simple press of lips to his -- until the Doctor subtly responded, and it gradually deepened into something dream-dark and intense. The heat of it sank straight into his veins. His eyes slowly closed as he felt Jack's hand slide up his neck, caressing the skin and brushing at his short-cropped hair; and when he shifted forward, inviting the other man closer, Jack wasted no time anymore in moving. He felt hungry, his touches warm and urgent, and his hands kept wandering --

"Doctor," Jack murmured into his mouth. His other hand had crept up the Doctor's chest, resting on the right-hand side and lingering there. "God, your heart....."

He suddenly paused, pulling back just enough that his kiss-warmed breath still brushed across the Doctor's lips. "Hearts?"

The Doctor arched an eyebrow. Jack stared back at him, shaking his head just slightly. "But that would m--"

The Doctor cut off the word with another kiss, silencing him with his own tongue. Jack forgot all his questions and pressed into him, his hips arching close and his single pulse beating hard enough to rival the Doctor's. And it only took a few deft twists of the Doctor's fingers, creeping beneath fabric and against sensitive skin, before he could feel the shudders begin in Jack's body, the slow unraveling of need and heat within him.

Oh, he'd forgotten how warm humans were. This was so simple, so primal, and yet that little hitch in Jack's breath, the intensity in his eyes as he stared down into him, felt deliciously rich. He gave himself to it, and soon they were moving, falling, sprawling across the grate -- and as the Doctor shut his eyes to feel everything, the hum of the ship beneath him and within him seemed to merge with the pace of his blood, Jack's breaths, and the slide of skin on skin --

-- and there was only one, soft discordance: something, just a whisper, just one word from Jack's lips before....

The world went bright and indistinct, timeless, still.

And then there was the tumbling onrush of gravity, and at the end of it, the warm, comfortable weight of a very satisfied Captain half-atop him.

Time reassembled around them, piece by piece. The Doctor didn't move, didn't even breathe, until the hum of the TARDIS felt again as it had before; then it felt safe enough to stir a little, lift his head. Jack was moving too, but he was moving closer, still enjoying the intimate proximity. The Doctor, whose hand was sliding across Jack's shoulder to feel the shift of muscles beneath, couldn't blame him.

"Fucking hell," Jack said in a low chuckle against the curve of his neck. "Didn't think... you'd let me get away with that."

The Doctor blinked his eyes open to see his own fingers trailing across Jack's bare skin, then peered into his eyes. "When did I take your shirt off, exactly?"

The answering laugh was darkly ironic. "See how memory goes?"

The Doctor didn't say anything. Jack rolled onto his back. stretching out and hauling in a deep, lung-filling breath. The Doctor watched him closely as he settled down and reached to redo his trousers. When the Doctor tried to do the same, though, he found only snapped threads where the button should have been.

"Well," he said. "This might prompt questions in the wardrobe room."

"What?" Jack said, grinning at him. "From the ship?"

"Someone's got to do the repairs."

"And you're above doing anything so domestic."

"I," he said with precision, "do not do domestic--"

He cut off as Jack crawled over him again, leaning down and smirking. "No," he murmured, "but you'll do me, right down on the floor." He bent over and kissed him with mischievous thoroughness, then lifted back up, looking entirely too satisfied with himself -- at least until he lifted his hands, too. After studying the imbedded patterns on his palms, he snorted out a laugh. "Next time, though, let's pick something more comfortable."

The Doctor sat up, briefly thinking over a reply to this -- then gave Jack a good stare, and abandoned it entirely. See how memory goes, he'd said himself. From the looks of the easy, sated smile still lingering on Jack's lips, the Doctor suspected not a single trace of what he'd whispered had remained in his mind.

Might be for the best, the Doctor thought, keeping carefully expressionless.

All he said, though, was "Feeling any better, then?"

Jack looked at him, eyebrows raised. "Should hope so." He laughed once. "And you?"

The Doctor smiled, leaned over, and kissed him gently on the cheek. "Dream well," he said.

Jack returned the smile and added a snappy mock salute -- with his fingers in completely obscene positions. "You bet I will."

The Doctor watched him go, and didn't get up until those near-silent footsteps had entirely vanished from the hall.

After a long few moments, he turned to the TARDIS console, eyebrows raised.

"Suppose you heard all that, too," he said under his breath. The telepathic ship, obscure as always, kept any opinions to herself -- but it wasn't enough to dispel the sensation that everything going through Jack's mind just then had been heard, and catalogued, and filed away. There was more than one reason the Doctor had given in to that kiss.

On the other hand, he didn't want to know about it. That one whisper -- from whatever remained of Jack's dreams before blissful oblivion wiped it clean -- had been enough.

You trust me, Jack had said, just moments before. I wonder why.

The Doctor leaned against the console, staring at nothing in particular. Two years may have been the slightest blink of time for him, but for humans, as short and volatile as their lifetimes always were, that could have been an eternity. And with all that locked away, inaccessible, forgotten....

He glanced at the doorway Jack had closed, feeling grim.

"I trust who you are," he said quietly. "Let's keep it that way."

The ship, as if it had sensed his mood, dimmed the lights.

And for the rest of their artificial night, even with no more reasons left to stay awake, the Doctor didn't sleep.

***