Chapter One

For the first time in forever, Jack Harkness smiled.

His Time Lord, his Doctor, was sleepful in his lap, bony back snuggled against Jack's chest. There was nothing quite like it in all the worlds, he thought, as he reached around to brush a crumb of pastry crust from the alien's face.

Oh yes, it had been a lovely pie, golden brown and filled with brie and apple, what little Jack had seen of it. Being pregnant had really driven his favorite extraterrestrial's appetite to new extremes. This incarnation, -the eleventh- was eleven months gone, and so very beautiful. It was enough to drive any sane man mad, the way that floppy hair fell just right across the temples, skirting laugh lines that fed into sunken orbs of olive green so deep one could drown forever and be happy about it. And those lovely articulate big bones were no slouch of construction, either. But ah, it was what wore those bones that mattered. The man behind the mask, who wore each cage of sweet, sweet flesh with such glorious abandon. The strong, roundish chin and squarish jaw were nice too, Jack reasoned as he cupped them both, then set about exploring his other favorite places.

They were both still naked, gift wrapped with the bed linens in places, uncovered in others, rather like presents at Christmas. The Doctor stirred briefly, breathing against Jack's hand when it fell across his mouth…the impossible human fancied he could hear bells there, hidden in the song of that faceted voice he'd craved since, oh, so many yesterdays ago. Some days he thought perhaps he'd wanted this before he knew he had, as though he'd been searching for what and who had found him that day above Britain his entire life.

The four-poster Victorian bed, with its white linens and dark wood, was wide and long, more than enough for two ancient-eyed little boys playing house. Suddenly the Time Lord's leg slipped from its perch across Jack's own, so the Time Agent reached carefully around his lover, moving the offending limb close again, leading the bony hip into careful alignment with his own so the leg would straighten and fall blissfully slack again. It would be a sin to wake the man now, he realized, as he cupped fore and thumb over a stretch of the Doctor's soft white thigh and moaned a random pet name into the Doctor's neck. The fact that his favorite alien was seated far too near his manhood for a proper one man salute would be a nice challenge, but for the sake of chivalry, Jack decided not to shift anything larger than his thoughts for just a little longer, enjoying his dessert, the milk and sugary lump of Time Lord snoozing in his lap.

Jack had been sitting cross-legged for several hours, back against the headboard and one leg out, ready to stabilize the alien just in case he took the wrong tilt on his way out of dreamland. And all that time the Doctor had slept in the crook of his body, happy and swollen and dead to the world. Pregnant. The Time Agent still couldn't quite grasp that the alien was with child. Fatherly pride not-withstanding, Jack knew the real miracle was that life had taken root at all. The Doctor had always said his race had been cursed with sterility in the first Great War, yet the alien's growing mound of belly was full with the counterproof.

"You're amazing, Theta Sigma," he murmured, craning his neck to whisper in the Doctor's ear. Then he wrapped his arms around his Time Lord's chest and sighed into his hair, settling the alien's prostrate self against him again, and damned if the man didn't mewl in his sleep… an impatient kitten.