'Oh, Rose,' Jack sighed. She had to ask that. Didn't she see that the Doctor would hate confessing to what he believed to be a weakness? Or that she'd need to tell him how she feels first?

Jack calmed his thoughts and listened closely for the Doctor's reply. He could almost hear the second hand of a clock ticking.

No response came, so Jack pressed his ear closer to the door...

... And promptly fell into a hurrying Doctor.

The Doctor barely seemed to notice Jack was there as he ran off in the direction of the library. Jack looked around the room and saw an upset Rose.

'Don't worry, love, he'll come round soon,' Jack soothed. 'You'll see. He's just scared, that's all.'

'But Jack,' Rose allowed Jack to embrace her like a small child, her vulnerability showing through. 'What if we're wrong?'

'Then he'd have told you that he didn't love you,' Jack replied. 'Or he wouldn't have let you kiss him in the first place.'

'That makes sense,' Rose said softly.

'Of course it does,' Jack mocked. 'I said it. Therefore it must be correct. After all, I am the amazingly sexy, handsome, intelligent, lovable and sexy Captain Jack Harkness.'

'Yes,' Rose said, her voice low and sarcastic. 'Of course you are!'

'Hey! I am,' Jack huffed, indignantly. 'And aren't you forgetting that you over heard him say he loves you anyway?'

Rose smiled at the memory. Jack could almost see the wheels in her mind turning and telling her that she shouldn't have been so stupid.

'Come on,' Jack said. 'We're going to have fun this afternoon and try to forget all about lost loves, and then... then we'll try and get you your man.'

----

In the library, the Doctor read his book quietly, trying to ignore the hurt rising in his chest. She wanted to use him.

He never noticed the grin of a violet boy, hidden in the corner of the room.

A/N: Sorry it's so short, and that it's taken so long. I have quite literally lost the plot. That is to say, the book which had the plan of how this story was going to pan out in it. Therefore, I'm going to need to re-write most of what I already had written. Add to that 3 A2 levels (two of which will involve taking up my sleep time or failing because there's so much work to do) and a possible new writing course... ooh, and driving lessons... well, I may not update for a while. In fact, I will go so far as to say that you shouldn't expect an update soon, though if there is one, it's only because I found a spare minute! I will try to update as often as possible, but as you can probably tell, my life is chaos at the moment.