A/N: Doctor Who? Thing is, I think that given the opportunity, I would fuck Jack Harkness senseless. Unfortunately, I don't have the opportunity, but the Doctor does…mwaha. So here's a little something.

Slightly AU – Jack and Ten are in the TARDIS, Martha is…somewhere. Can be set around "Utopia", I guess…

NOTE FOR ALL YOU BLASPHEMING AMERICANS OUT THERE: By braces, I do not mean the metal apparatus that orthodontists put on your teeth to make them pretty. I mean suspenders. I was called on this, so...

I don't own Doctor Who, Torchwood, Jack Harkness, etc.

10XJH

He was loath to admit it, but there was a slight, tiny, miniscule, teensy-weensy, small, small, small-small-small chance that the Doctor had a fixation with Captain Jack Harkness. More specifically, his braces. Small. Teensy. Weensy. He just wanted to curl a finger underneath a strap, feel it bend around his joint, and watch it snap back, hearing the supple crack as it hit the shirt and the flesh underneath, which, incidentally, the Doctor was not interested at all. Not at all. Not even a weensy bit.

Just the braces. Just the braces, stretched across Jack's chest and over his broad shoulders, one band of elastic clipped to his pants, right in the center, which the Doctor imagined was covering a very tight -- erm. Not interested. Not in the least, Doctor. Stop right there.

The trouble was, Jack Harkness was an innately sexual being. Every fiber of his body just screamed, "I use this thing for sex." Most people's bodies were just — there. But Jack. Jack smelled of sex. Jack breathed sex. Jack's open smile and quick laugh were sexy. Everything about Jack was sexy, from the toned shoulders and chest to the dedication to the team to the way his hand wrapped around the barrel of a gun. Oh, God. It really was all the braces' fault. So, of course, the Doctor resolved to do what any normal, rational being would do. It was all the braces' fault, right? Totally normal. Futsuu, in Japanese. Pu-ton in Mandarin. Normal in French. Relving in Sect Six Churl. Totally normal.

He hid the braces under Jack's bed. There were three or four of those horrible, fantasy-inducing elastic things, and so when Jack was showering (something else the Doctor was NOT envisioning, you know, all the drops rolling down the –) he stole into the room, nimbly and swiftly taking them from where they were strewn across a hanger and unceremoniously shoved them under the bed, as far as his arm could go. (The thrusting motion of his arm wasn't mimicking something the Doctor was thinking about either, by the way). Then he ran out of the room, half sprinting, half dancing, adrenaline hot on his heels and making his heart race and his chest heave and his – erm. His erm got a little...erm.

Being a Time Lord, he was more than slightly acquainted with the whole pansexual thing. Homophobia was so twenty-first century: Jack, as a contemporary of the fifty-first, wasn't strange to the idea. (The Doctor pushed aside the fact that Jack fucked everything with a pulse and in the immediate vicinity). So, it wasn't rejection that the Doctor was afraid of. At least, not in that sense, of the whole male on male thing. Maybe Jack would reject him because he thought that it would make things too complicated. Or that fucking a Time Lord would mess with his metabolism. Or maybe he just wouldn't find the Doctor attractive enough to fuck.

It wasn't often that the Doctor had such misgivings. Sometimes, in the night when the stars blurred into smog and midnight reached the peak of it's darkness, they would haunt him, creeping in on the edges of sleep, crawling back to him through time. In times like that, he wanted someone to hold him. (Someone like Jack?) "For someone who's not interested," he told himself, "you're certainly thinking really deeply about it."

"Deeply about what?" said a voice behind him. The Doctor sighed and rolled his eyes. Of course this would happen. Of course he would have paused, a hand on the doorframe, thinking about how nice it would be just to sleep in the warmth against a lean body, holding him, holding him... Of course a Time Lord would have the worst timing.

"Going back," the Doctor lied quickly, snapping his hands to his sides and turning around with a wide smile. "You know."

"To Gallifrey?" Turning around had been a big mistake, as it turned out. There was a soft-looking white towel hung on Jack's hips like a toga about the statue of a Greek god. A confused and concerned expression graced the chiseled face. The blue eyes glinted.

"Yeah," the Doctor said slowly. "Yeah. Gallifrey."

Jack sat on the bed, slumping. His legs moved apart with the motion, and the Doctor forced his eyes to the ceiling. "Martha and I can't go, of course."

"What makes you say that?" The Doctor leaned against the doorframe, aiming for nonchalance. The stiffness in his crossed arms told him he was failing spectacularly at it.

"I just thought…it might be too personal," Jack mumbled. "I mean…it's gone now. And you'd probably want to be alone. Not to let Martha and I…just thought." Jack shrugged and sighed.

The Doctor frowned. "Not to let Martha and you…what?"

"In."

"I'm going to need a little more explanation than that, Captain."

Jack looked up at him, then gazed at the floor. "You don't want to let anyone in," he said. "You've worked so hard to build this wall. You'd never...let's just say it won't go over well. It goes against your basic instinct."

"What? What do you mean?" The Doctor was, for once, genuinely perplexed. "I let Martha onto the TARDIS. I talk to her about things. It's not like I'm keeping her in the dark."

Jack laughed. It was a meek hollow sound, and the Doctor ached to snatch it out of the air and replace it with the rich sound of Jack's real laugh, the shout of amusement which so warmed and filled a room. "You can't bring yourself to care, Doctor. You can't admit to yourself that there might be attachment."

The Doctor tried to smile; he could feel the corners of his mouth turning up but his insides felt like broken china. "What's brought this about, anyhow, Captain Harkness?" He caught himself distancing again, just like Jack said. He hoped he wouldn't pick up on it. "Thinking of studying Time Lord psychology?"

Jack stared at him, mouth open, chest moving that fraction of an inch with each breath. The towel was draped about his legs, slipping down his hips. "Nothing, I guess," he said finally, with a heavy sigh. He seemed to deflate sadly, like an animal-shaped balloon after a party, after it's life has been spent. "Just tired, I think."

"We haven't done much for a week," the Doctor pointed out.

"It's just…" Jack sat up in frustration. "That feeling that you want something, you want it so badly, but you don't even know what the hell it is?"

"My problem is quite the opposite," the Doctor said, dry-mouthed. "I know exactly what I want. I just don't know…"

"How much you're willing to risk?" Jack finished for him, morosely.

"No!" the Doctor exclaimed, recalling too late all those lovely misgivings having a cotillion in the back of his head.

Jack stood up, looking puzzled. "Then what?"

The Doctor contemplated lying and going into some sob story about Gallifrey, but then decided that that would be disrespectful. Then he contemplated telling the truth. They stood there for long minutes as Jack waited expectantly, watching the Doctor think, and the Doctor thought. "You're right," he said finally, shrugging. "I push people away, I try not to let them in. It does go against my basic instinct."

Jack paused, caught between victory and deep sadness. The strange mix warbled in his voice when he said, "I'll be here when you figure out how to open yourself up."

"I –" The Doctor began, but nothing else would come to mind.

"Come here," Jack said softly. As if in a trance, the Doctor obeyed him, and they stood there, face to face. Tentatively, Jack's hands slid up the Doctor's arms, and he neither was able to repress a shiver. "Don't…just…" His hands moved to caress the Doctor's jaw. Trembling fingers lifted the Doctor's face to Jack's, and after a few moments in which they just watched the other, quivering for the kiss but still, not quite sure, their mouths met.

They stayed there, lips barely touching, the warmth coming in at that point and spreading giddily through the whole body, the taste pervading the very pulse so that every heartbeat was hot and cold and nice all over. Then Jack's lips moved a little more and of course the Doctor had to kiss back, and so the intensity skyrocketed faster than an elastic snapping.

Jack's tongue in his mouth was so right it was almost wrong, and that feeling shot straight down from wherever that tingle was coming from to a heat in his stomach that the Doctor accurately equated with arousal. He had put his hands on Jack's hips, managing to let the towel slip to the floor in a heap of dejected terry. Somehow his shirt was coming off, and the button of his trousers was undone. Everything was going by in a whirl of pure sensation, hot, wet; he was drowning in the scent and feel of Jack and –

Maybe this was more than a kiss, but an expression of forever and undying love. Maybe they'd fuck in the next ten minutes. Maybe he didn't just want to snap a brace. Maybe now he was caught between the mattress and Jack's lean frame. Maybe he really couldn't help laughing at the fact that Jack had tied him to the headboard of the bed.

With a pair of braces.

Maybe it didn't matter. Maybe the irony was worth laughing at for a few moments, and then he really should get back to their version of the Tongue Wars. Dalicks. Enough with the stupid puns, Doctor.

"I'm going to make you scream," Jack breathed hotly into his ear, hands running down his sides and making him shiver delightfully.

"I don't doubt it," the Doctor murmured, and let Jack in.