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Jack trailed behind as the Doctor rushed down yet another TARDIS corridor mumbling to himself. The odd "Wherever did I…." and "when did I last…" floated back as the manic alien poked his head in and out of rooms as they appeared. Somewhere along the way he had acquired a cobweb that was trailing from the edge of spiky hair.
Jack caught his arm as he darted back from the latest room being investigated. "I don't know why you won't just let me handle this myself. You know this is one form of alien challenge uniquely suited to my…talents." Flashing his most dashingly suggestive smile, he asked the question that was really uppermost on his mind. "What's the matter Doc, don't you trust me?"
Breaking eye contact and looking uncomfortable, the Doctor ran his fingers through his hair, finally dislodging the clinging web but adding even more volume. "It's not that, Jack. There is a high probability, something close to 95% I would say, that you are more than capable of…rising to the challenge leveled by the Lady Ambadella." His sly smile at that was quickly replaced by frustration. "Its just that I know for 100% certain that if I could just find what I am looking for, I could impress upon her just how stupid, arrogant, and needlessly dangerous this all is, not to mention the risk to the people of Earth! There was no need to make this into a fight, but if she wants to make it one, I have just the weapon to put her in her place."
Jack raised an eyebrow. "I thought you didn't believe in weapons?"
"Well… there are weapons, and then there are weapons. But in a sense you are right; there is a reason I haven't seen this particular device in a very long time. It's not the kind of thing any of my other recent selves would have been very comfortable with."
"So this 'weapon' is what we have been all over the TARDIS looking for?"
"Oh no, I know exactly where that is. It's in a box in the library. What I have been looking all over for is the key. But, you know, now that you have gotten me thinking about my former selves, you may have given me a new idea on where to look." And Jack was left jogging to keep up as the Doctor darted down yet another corridor.
He finally caught up with him again in the wardrobe rifling through an old black coat that had clearly seen better days. "This really should have been one of the first places I looked, Jack. First rule of finding lost things, check the pockets of what you were wearing the last time you had it." Giving up on the pocket he was currently searching, he moved to look in one on the inside of the coat. "Of course, I should be given a little leeway for not thinking of it right off, it has been nearly 800 years…..Ha!" Producing a small brass key, he darted off again, in the general direction of the library.
Since Jack knew where they were bound this time, he elected to follow at a more subdued pace, reaching his destination just as the Doctor was lifting a wooden chest down from atop a case full of stately leather volumes. Dust clung to the carvings on its surface obscuring their details, but Jack recognized the basic shapes he regularly saw on the control screen in the console room.
Fitting the small key in the lock and opening the lid, the Doctor drew his prize out with a delicate reverence that nearly had Jack laughing his ass off. The object in question appeared, at first, to be a golden hand, causing Jack to wonder if he had looked quite so ridiculous with his reverence for the one formerly attached to this version of the Time Lord. Swallowing the irony, and taking a closer look, he saw that it was more like a glove, made from a fine gold mesh and set with tiny gems in intricate patterns. It had appeared like a severed hand because it had been stored on a wooden form.
"Is that Androosian work?"
"Good eye you have. Yes it is. Finest craftsmen in ten galaxies, they are, and pretty good psychomechanics as well. This is some of their finest work."
"Sounds expensive."
"Oh, it is. A master craftsman could make his family's fortune for generations with one of these, providing he could arrange a buyer. The clientele has always been a bit specific."
"How much are we talking here?"
"In monetary terms? Something on the order of several billion Androosian credits, but they were rarely paid for in cash. They were usually taken in trade for things much more valuable."
Something clicked in Jack's mind as he looked at the beautiful object. "They were made for Time Lords, weren't they?"
The one in front of him shot Jack a sharp look, but shrugged and answered, "Yes they were, or rather they were made for the select few of us who were so inclined as to desire one. Most of the population of Gallifrey wouldn't have had any interest in such a thing, and if they did, they would never have agreed to the type of favors the Androosians generally demanded in payment."
The Doctor shot a look Jack's way that he was hard pressed to decipher, stroking the golden mesh of the glove with his fingers. "Some of us, however, found breaking the rules to acquire one only added to the satisfaction."
"So what is it?"
"Oh this, this is really right up your alley, Jack." Drawing the glove off its form he slipped it on his right hand. The smile on his face was the same as when he had shown his human companions any number of strange and wondrous things, but the look in his eye held a glint that Jack had never seen there before. Touching the tips of his two middle fingers together caused the golden glove to form itself tightly to the Doctor's hand until the mesh and swirls seemed to be nearly part of his skin. He held the bejeweled hand out towards Jack, his eyes never leaving it, even as the glint in those eyes got deep and sharp. "It's a sex toy, one of the universe's most expensive sex toys."
Jack was held momentarily speechless by the revelation. Those were not words he ever thought to hear the Doctor speak, but what flashed in those alien eyes as they were raised to meet his own, spoke to the truth of them. Jack shivered, wondering just what was showing in his own eyes at that moment.
Holding his now gloved hand out, palm up, the Doctor quietly asked "Would you like a taste, Captain?"
Unable to speak, and wondering where all of his lewd humor and raunchy quips had gone, Jack could only nod in response.
---
Standing close, the Time Lord smelled mostly of dust, and a bit like chips as he reached up with his ungloved left hand and unfastened the first few buttons on Jack's shirt, smoothing the fabric away from his neck. The human shuddered but remained still. Being the focus of this much of the Doctor's concentration was a heady experience in itself, and he soaked it up even while he wondered was to come next.
When the shirt was arranged to satisfaction, that left hand was raised to lightly touch his forehead, brushing gently across it before trailing down his cheek to cup his chin and slide slowly around the column of his throat, finally coming to rest with its fingertips stroking lightly at the back of his neck. Up, down, up down, up, each caress bringing out a small hitch of breath. On the third up-stroke, the Doctor leaned in and pressed his lips to Jack's in an achingly sweet and tender kiss, nearly chaste, except for all the ways in which it wasn't.
Stepping back slightly and bringing his left hand down to his side, the Doctor raised his gloved right hand up between them. Jack watched as the minute jewels began to glow slightly, almost seeming to float just above the surface of that hand in its golden cage. The effect was disorientating, but strangely beautiful. The effect it seemed to be having on the Doctor was much the same, his eyes darkening but slightly unfocused as he gazed at his own fingers. Then, raising them, he mirrored his earlier actions, beginning a soft stroke across Jack's forehead.
Jack felt the slightly different texture of the mesh-wrapped fingers as they began their path at his right temple, but as they moved left something else began to blossom in the touch. At first it seemed a deep and satisfying warmth, like the touch of the hands of a great masseuse, but soon the pleasure of the touch grew beyond all reason, in a way that had both nothing and everything to do with the press of slightly cool fingers as they moved to the left side of his face.
When the touch reached his left temple the sensation began to change again, the all-encompassing warmth of pleasure fading, only to be replaced by another form of heat as the fingers began their descent down his cheek. This heat pricked and burned until Jack thought his face must catch fire. His whole body burned with it. Pain, sharp and hot, that stabbed through him wrenching agonized whimpers from his lips as the touch finished its downward journey to his throat. And yet, he could not seem to find the will to pull away.
The hand of fire, still mirroring the Doctor's earlier gentle touch, began to slide around as the gloved hand came to cup the side of his neck. As it moved, once again the feel of it began to change. The earlier pleasure at the touch returned, soothing the pain while not displacing it. Instead the two sensations twined about each other, until the feel of the four fingertips in their golden shell that came to rest at the base of his neck could be counted among both the best and worst things Jack had ever felt.
Pinned in place by those fingers, he forced his eyes to focus on the face of the man in front of him. The Time Lord's face was at once impassively alien and extremely expressive, bearing a serenity that also seemed to reflect back all the turmoil that Jack himself was feeling. Whatever it was that was happening here, Jack wasn't going through it alone, the Doctor was right there with him. Clutching to that knowledge, Jack forced himself to relax into it as the fingertips once again began to move.
As they climbed from the base of his neck towards his hairline, the pain did not abate at all, but the pleasure began to rise above it, forming a warm blissful balloon driving higher and higher, fueled by the white-hot flame of the pain beneath it. It was like the best sex, but also like a hot bath when you're tired and sore, or holding hands while running for your life. By the time it had reached the top of the stroke Jack wondered how his body and brain could contain so much wondrousness. Then, as the touch of the fingers, that he could still somehow feel as four ordinary fingers stroking his neck, even as they also felt like portals to heaven, began their slow journey back down, the feeling started to fade. The pain in the touch backing off just enough to allow the balloon of pleasure to deflate, sinking gently back to join its fellow.
The briefest of pauses as the fingers reached their nadir, but it was long enough for Jack to realize what was most likely coming next. It took every ounce of control he had ever learned to suppress his flinch as the touch once again began to rise. Resolutely he reminded himself that he trusted the Doctor.
For the second time a bubble of sensation was forming, being buoyed up by the other underneath it, but this time it was the pain that was on top. Every bit of the pleasure behind it just opening up more nerves, more pathways for the pain to rush down. His whole self was aflame with it, his ears past hearing, but he distantly felt his mouth move with what he supposed were pleas or screams, he wasn't sure which. As the touch drew near the top of its oscillation, he once again caught sight of the Doctor's face hovering mere inches from his own, eyes intense and dark-bright, just for an instant, with something terrifyingly familiar to Jack from his time on the Valiant. The burst of fear within him at that recognition propelled the pain even higher, until the man who had died a hundred deaths, could honestly say nothing had ever hurt nearly so much. And under it all remained the pleasure, fueling the agony as it sought out every single piece of him, and set them all screaming.
Just as Jack was convinced he could bear no more, that the pain would consume him leaving nothing in its place, the touch of those gloved fingertips that he could somehow, unbelievably, still feel through all the torture began to move lower. The pain lessened, the pleasure beneath catching him and cradling his descent. As the sensations receded, Jack became aware that he was trembling. He had slumped against a nearby wall for support, his legs still managing, somehow, to hold him upright.
The Doctor's touch again found the base of his neck The pain/pleasure of their gentle pressure, that he had found so overwhelming just a few short minutes before, now served to ground him, helping to restore just a bit of his failing composure. Jack closed his eyes, and leaned back into the touch. Having survived whatever that just was, his body felt primed, desiring something else, deserving something beyond the pain. He wanted whatever came next. At this sign of his surrender, Jack heard the first reaction from the Doctor that he was aware of since this whole thing had started. A soft huff of breath that he felt brush his face even as the fingers at his neck began to rise once more.
This time it was neither the pleasure nor pain in the touch that rose to the top. Instead both sensations twirled around each other, darting and dancing in such an intricate interplay, that Jack's mind was barely able to even comprehend it. It was beautiful and terrible and, for a moment, Jack believed that this is what the Doctor had been building to all along. Then, along with the slow and steady rise of the fingers on his neck, the feelings began to change. No longer two sensations at all, but blending together into something new, yet ultimately, very familiar to Jack. This was sex.
This was the melding of all that had come before, desire so hot it burned like a supernova, pleasure so enveloping it soothed that primal heat, even while it fanned the flames higher. Agony, ecstasy, elation, terror, joy. Nerves that had thought themselves overloaded, found new ways to spark and tingle under the touch of those four cool fingers in their packaging of gold and jewels. His mind had begun to drift, thoughts nearly gone from his mind altogether as the fingers reached their final zenith. When suddenly they tightened, pulling him roughly forward to be met by other lips in a savage kiss. This kiss was everything the first one wasn't. It was passion, rage, possession, and even love. All given roughly, no longer mindful of the frailty of the human flesh. Jack did his best to return it in kind, to express some fraction of what he was feeling, though he couldn't have told even himself just what that was. In the midst of that fierce grip, Jack's world went white with the taste of his own blood in his mouth.
---
Jack came to sitting on a bench he vaguely remembered being near where they had been standing when this all started. The carved wooden chest lay, still open, on the floor in front of them. The Doctor occupied the other end of the bench looking the same as ever except for a slight flush on his cheeks and an unusual stillness as he sat there, watching his companion. Jack looked down to take stock, and was surprised to find himself looking mostly the same as he had before he harried off after the Doctor on his frantic search of the TARDIS. Somehow he had expected to find his clothes a mess, possibly torn, or at the very least the front of his trousers sticky.
Seeing the direction of his gaze, the Doctor stirred himself and explained. "The glove works by allowing someone with certain specific psychic abilities to directly manipulate the perception of any physical sensation created with it." Slight wave of that still gloved hand and the Doctor shook off his unaccustomed stillness. "Oh, it's a bit more complex and delicate than that, but that is the basic idea. A particularly attractive one to Time Lords because it is a specific resonance between the psychic and the physical that we, well those with any interest at all, seek to create. Rather like getting an opera singer to break glass, the note involved varies by individual, but the concept remains the same. In this particular case, I kept your experience slightly more weighted on the psychic end, both from personal preference, and because I doubted you would wish to take the time to change afterward."
"My clothing thanks you for the consideration."
The Doctor shot Jack a look at the sarcasm in that statement, but it quickly changed to be a bit sheepish. "I am sorry if I was a bit ham-fisted with you there. I am about eight hundred years out of practice, and I have never tried to calibrate the experience for a human before. Your pain threshold is so much lower, your physical responses both stronger and less nuanced than I am used to. Still… None of that is an excuse for springing it on you without any explanation like that. I don't really know what I was thinking."
"You were thinking about the fact that you hadn't used that device in eight centuries, and that it might be better if you were as certain of your own prowess as you pretended to be before wagering the future of the Earth on it. Perhaps by flexing your long unused sexual muscles on someone whose physiology more closely resembles our esteemed lady adversary than whomever you used to cavort with in your relative youth."
The Doctor looked hurt at Jack's response, but there was enough guilt in there to tell him he had hit somewhere near the mark as well. He smiled at the other man to soften the blow as he felt his own composure gradually returning. "It's also quite possible that you wanted to take a moment to share your reacquired toy with a friend you care about before you ran off to whore it for the safety of your favorite planet."
That caused the Doctor to flinch, but there was a wry self-aware note of amusement in his eyes, and he directed a shrug in Jack's direction. "Perhaps you have a point. Once again I offer my sincere apologies."
"No need, Doc. You know the secrets of the universe, and the building blocks of Time itself, but if there is one thing I know, it is the many and varied reasons people have sex. And one of the things I know is that they are rarely simple, unselfish, or altruistic in nature. That is generally why the other party is required to say yes. Which, in case you forgot, I did." Pushing himself to his feet, Jack smoothed down the front of his trousers, and rebuttoned his shirt. "Now, I believe we still have a planet to save."
"Right you are. I think we have kept the lady waiting long enough, wouldn't do for her to get antsy."
As they strode down the corridor towards the TARDIS exit, Jack forced himself to refocus on the crisis at hand. He would figure out his own feelings about what just happened, some other time. Perhaps one long removed from here. After all, time was one thing he had an infinite supply of.