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There Once Was a Man Who Could Never Die

Who: Jack Harkness and you!
What: In all the madness going around, Jack is trying to help those he can while not losing himself in the ghosts that cluster around him.
When: From 17-28
Warnings: Jack Harkness is a warning in and of himself. That said, Jack hasn't always led a pleasant life. Mentions of blood, gore, hauntings, death, trauma, etc. Can switch to brackets or prose to suit your prefs!

[March 17-22]

He barely glanced at the group of men in the mirror he passed, paid even less attention to the rose petals that drifted from their mouths. It wasn't that Jack didn't remember them, he did. It wasn't that he couldn't look them in the eyes. He could.

It was that he knew they weren't real. They were people he had been laughing with in the moments before the faeries had come. The dead man who lurked at their edges was disregarded along with them when he caught their image again in the polished tabletop. The boyfriend if he remembered rightly. Yeah, he remembered them. He had done what he needed to, what saved all of them. It was he did. It was what he always did.

They were growing stronger, every hour or every day. Jack had the bad feeling that things were going to get worse before they got any better. Those he had met in this place where the ones he hunted now: Thea, Clara, Harry, and the Doctor, but he wasn't going to turn down anyone if they needed him.

Anything to distract him from the long dead that were waiting in the shadows. Movie star smile fixed in place, he headed for the figure down the hall.

[March 23-28]

It wasn't just the name of 'Jack' that he heard following him down the hallways, echoing through the rooms, but the multitude of names that had been his over the years. His brother trailed along behind him, trying to touch his hand and hold on... the same hand that had let go of him long ago. A pack of small children waited up ahead of him, clustered together as if they were the sole survivors when they had really been a sacrifice.

He fell into one of the chairs by the fireplace, chin propped on a curled hand as he watched them come closer. Gray was first, of course he was. His own little brother who's hand he let slip from his own. Behind him came the children, those that Earth had sacrificed. He counted off all eleven of them that had been taken. Clement McDonald wasn't there. Their little hands went through his as they tried to touch him and pull him along.

"I had to. The Indonesian flu would have mutated and killed twenty-five million people. They thought I wouldn't care, that I was cold enough to be able to do it."

Estelle Cole lifted a hand and waved to him.

"All you wanted was to spend the rest of your life with me," he told her. To a watcher, he must have looked like a madman talking to empty air by the check-in desk. "It was what... 1935? It was the Astoria Ballroom. You were so beautiful. We said we would be together until we died. Then I saw you again in 2007, and you thought I was my son. You kept my picture all those years."

Near her lurked another man, one that Jack could never deny. Someone he had loved enough to tell things to that he wouldn't another for at least a few decades.

"It was 1927, and you stole my visa. It all ended so badly."

Its only his name that Angelo whispered, holding out a hand to him.

"Then you thought I was the Devil because I couldn't die. How many times did you let that crowd kill me? Shouldn't I be haunting you instead of you me?"

The old man limped around the corner, Jack sighing heavily. He tried to smile and failed badly.

"It was 1898. Hello, Anthony. You're looking much older. I keep going on, I keep living on. And everyone else just dies."

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It wouldn’t be accurate to say it’s been the longest fortnight of his life. When one is being held in a lightless underground cell with the occasional jab from an electric shock baton just to check one’s still alive - for instance - the time really does drag on quite incessantly. Particularly after the more lurid hallucinations start. The hotel has certain advantages over Harry’s least favourite holiday spots, then, but it’s still nowhere near a walk in the park. The whispering ghosts are innumerate, and they are precisely chosen, and they are dedicated.

Harry is, whatever his colleagues might tell you, a human being. (Perhaps moreso now he has apparently reached beyond the end of his own lifespan.) He takes up his coping strategies where he can get them.

It’s a few days after Jack fails to die that they find themselves in the same bed again, and if he must be honest with himself, the hiatus has less to do with an existential crisis over anyone’s mortality and more about reassuring himself that there’s no more petty squabbling in the offing. (Eggsy really is a damned idiot of a boy if he thinks he would ever be anything less than Harry’s first and greatest concern, but — he’s a damned idiot of a boy who has no reason to believe that the older people in his life will be dependable, or consistent, or trustworthy.) Harry sleeps lightly, and very little, often waking to more exhaustion than he felt when he fell asleep.

He would guess that it’s the early hours of the morning when he stirs, a few undramatic blinks drawing him into consciousness. Two or three AM, perhaps. Jack, typically, is awake. He can’t see him in the dark but he knows the difference between a partner at rest and a man asleep.

“Is it that you don’t?” he asks quietly, the room so silent that his words need barely stir the air. “Or is it that you can’t? Sleep.”

Or is it that he won’t, but that’s another sort of question.

"I can," comes Jack's answer, just as quietly. With Harry awake, he finally shifts to face the man. Touch comforts him, fills the empty spaces and so Jack indulges in it whenever he can. When Harry sleeps, Jack stays next to him, not intruding but close enough that only an inch or so separates them. His sleep is so restless that Jack dares not touch him. What moments Harry manages to steal are precious to him.

"I choose not to. There's too much out there waiting for me to waste time sleeping."

The tip of his thumb lifts to try and slide gently against Harry's temple unless Harry waves him off. When all is said and done, Jack is a hedonist, a sensualist that enjoys touch and being touched. Whether sexual or not doesn't matter (most of the time). He could tease for hours with a touch, but he could see the signs in his lover that a touch could hurt more than help.

"Did you talk to Eggsy?" he asks, propping himself up on one elbow. That is the one surefire way to distract Harry from whatever line of inquiry he might be trying to follow.

Too much out there waiting. At first it seems a curious perspective from a man who, to all intents and purposes, has literally all the time in the world. But then, if you don't maintain momentum regardless, what's to stop you simply grinding to a halt?

When Jack brushes a hand against the side of his head, he doesn't demur. Like a lot of men raised in the old-money landed classes - lacking familial affection, trained to loathe and fear aberrant sexuality even in oneself - he grew up at arm's length from his peer group. The agent Galahad is who he needs to be from mission to mission, but Harry tends not to get closer than a handshake. Even in bed he's reasonably economical about how he uses his hands. Recently, though? Touch is welcome. It's necessary. The ghosts do not touch.

Furthermore, he's adaptable. By the time this is over, he supposes he may very well have adjusted to Jack's more tactile nature.

"I did."

And that's the end of that. There was no particular avenue being pursued; he accepts a change of subject without a fight, but not this one in particular. What passes between himself and Eggsy has the sanctity of the confessional, as far as he's concerned. He won't even be subtle about signaling that the topic is out of bounds.

He tilts one arm, brushes his fingertips over Jack's inner wrist.

"You were going to tell me about Torchwood."

He could admit that when he slept that nightmares often came with it or dreams of other times when he was happy. It wasn't in Jack to admit that waking up from the latter was worse than dying. Better to laugh and say too much was waiting for him even after all these years than that.

"Good."

That is all he plans to say on that. Jack is still learning where the emotional landmines are scattered in the field that is Harry, but that one is a blazing flag that he usually respects. A quiet laugh is buried against Harry's shoulder as he leans down to kiss the skin there. His fingers continue the exploring, a slide against his temple down to the line of his jaw. Drawing back up, Jack grins at him in the low light.

"Torchwood, or more correctly, the Torchwood Institute, was created by Queen Victoria to monitor alien threats. We are," he pauses there, giving a small chuckle, "above the government and beyond the police. I guess in a way, you could say I am Torchwood since only Torchwood Three really exist after Canary Wharf and other... incidents."

He gazes down into Harry's face, watching to see how all this is being taken. As soon as 'aliens' are mentioned most shut off or think him mad.

"A lot of what we do is take alien technology, reverse engineer it and use it to further or re-establish the British Empire. Anytime you see something 'secret' military groups or MI6 using outlandish equipment, chances are that it's something we made or helped with. We basically defend the Earth from what's out there and what's here too. People sometimes find bits of tech that they misused, possesses them or any number of bad things. There are times when humans are the enemy. We take whatever is thrown at us."

Jack's eyes dip down and back up to Harry's, a sign he's not being completely honest but actively lying either. There's simply too much about Torchwood to condense it down.

"No one in Torchwood lives long enough to collect a pension is the running joke."

All Jack gets in the half-darkness in response to the A-word is Harry's do go on look of polite, credulous curiosity. Jack's already mentioned them before, during his understandable (albeit unnecessary) outburst regarding stress, and the good Doctor clearly doesn't identify as human. He's already long since filed extraterrestrial life into his mental dossier on the man.

Besides which he is, at this point, prepared to throw his hands up in the air and say fine to almost anything he's likely to encounter. Ghosts; immortals; magic; time travel; alternate universes. Why not aliens? If anything - in the context of an infinite and unexplored universe - intelligent alien life is one of the more feasible things he's encountered so far.

The smile when he hears tell of secret military groups and MI6 and outlandish equipment is all internal, not reaching his mouth or even his eyes. Kingsman's toys are, at least, classic spycraft and developed entirely in-house. Simple, sometimes brutal tools - but elegantly and efficiently used, at least until something goes wrong. While there's some vague comfort in the fleeting notion that Valentine's pet project was not of their world - that human hands couldn't have forged something so terrible - he knows that that, too, isn't so. Valentine was a genius; he just happened to be demented. Quite simply, if an organisation as historically well-heeled as the Torchwood Institute existed in the England he knows and loves, they would know about it.

(As for running jokes, well. He's still a few years off his bus pass, isn't he? And there's never going to be a pension in the offing, not for him.)

The way his gaze darts away for just a moment is noted but not commented on. He would guess a condensation of the truth, maybe a veil drawn over something that doesn't belong in the mission statement, rather than an outright lie. He can't begrudge that, all things considered.

"Except you," he ventures quietly, and permits himself the reach of a hand to stroke the hair at the nape of Jack's neck. "And you've hardly a face that would convince the Treasury to stump up."

Reading Harry is next to impossible for Jack, and that's saying something. Being disbelieved is part and parcel of being Torchwood, not that they tell many people as much as he has Harry tonight. If ever called out on why he did, Jack would make as many innuendos as it took for any official questioning to end. For professional interrogators, Jack has found it take surprisingly few. Maybe he just wants someone to know. Hell if he knows.

"Except for me," he agrees quietly even as he tilts his head back to the touch of fingers through his hair. It's like dealing with a huge cat. "Not yet, but who knows? I found a grey hair last month."

Another of those sneaky kisses to Harry's chest comes as he wriggles more against the other's side. His fingers slide warming against his skin, mouth tracking along their path as long as Harry allows it.

"What about you and Eggsy? Going to tell me something or no?" he asks, breathing warmly against where his tongue had just wettened.

"There's little to tell, I'm afraid."

He doesn't feel bad, exactly, about telling Jack so little - about outright lying - when Jack's told him so much. Harry has never considered himself secretive or even particularly dishonest, simply discreet. Such is the nature of the work, and even now that discretion has no currency he finds it impossible to cast aside.

Besides which, it's difficult to string together a narrative when Jack's behaviour is edging away from affection and towards foreplay. This is not a thought which discourages him from touching Jack's hair, the side of his throat, the smooth skin of his shoulders.

"I was in the Royal Marines, a long time ago, now. I knew Eggsy's father. Circumstances intervened, and nowadays I work at a tailor on Savile Row. I ran into Eggsy not long ago, he wasn't in a good place in his life, and...I was able to pull some strings with my employer. We work together, now." A subtle quirk at the corner of his mouth. "Worked."

Some of Jack's best fact-finding has been done between the sheets, not to mention many other things. Harry isn't sleeping, and there is one thing Jack knows of that puts most men to sleep. Doesn't hurt that it's something he enjoys as well.

His chin brushes against Harry's chest, skin smooth and without a prickle of beard no matter what the hour. All hail fifty-first century genetics. He stops his mapping of Harry's body with his mouth and fingers long enough to look up into his face.

"A Marine. I would have loved to see you in a uniform." Another kiss, a taste of his skin. Whether he believes Harry or not is absent from his face. Makes it easier when his eyes can easily be on the body under him, any movements of his mouth disguised in a kiss. "Worked? You quit?"

"I can't equate coming here to having handed in my notice, nor the bullet in the head I'd have received had I not come here, but - well. Suffice to say the job's over for now."

He glances over the top of Jack's head into the dull space of the room, not focusing on anything in particular - then realises that there's nothing else to focus on. No silent staring bodies in the dark, none of the gleaming emotionless eyes peering back at him. It's unnerving, how quickly they became part of the landscape, how empty the room feels in their absence.

"....Jack, do you still have company?"

Those words give Jack pause. A bullet to the head. That isn't something he had considered. If this place pulled Harry away from what was sure to be death, could he go back? And if he did, go back to what? To die? There's an involuntary tightening of Jack's grip on Harry's body. It only lasts a split-second but it is there.

The conclusion is simple. If Jack finds a way out, he'll try to take Harry with him. He would fit in with Torchwood. If not, Ianto's father is a tailor. Finding him a job would be easy enough. A former Marine is someone ... well, Jack will worry about that when he gets there.

"Harry, I really have to say that the mood I'm trying to establish is being killed here."

But he does lift his head to take a look around. They had been pressed in close before. Since he didn't sleep, all Jack had to look at in the hours before were the ghosts crouched down and staring back at him. Now they were gone. No one was whispering his name or reaching for him.

"They're gone."

That says it all for him. Hands weren't reaching for him, or mouths forming his names.

"Think it's over?"

Harry takes in a deep breath, pushes it out.

"Without wishing to tempt fate? I hope so."

It started around two weeks into his stay; lasted about two weeks in all. It would fit with the monthly cycle he's been told about. The relief he feels is half elation and half exhaustion but Christ, he'll take it. Anything has to be an improvement on the whispers, the movement in the corner of his eye, the dead in the dark.

It's a dark sort of celebratory mood he's in, but he turns his head to kiss Jack's mouth all the same.

The kiss is sweet no matter what Harry's intentions are and something that Jack draws everything from that he can. The tip of his tongue laps gently at Harry's lips. Whether denied or accepted, he draws back for breath and to calm himself soon enough.

"You need to sleep. I love sex as much as the next person, but if they're gone..."

Jack's voice trails off there. Selfishness is his nature. Ianto could attest to that. But here, that doesn't work. He doubts Harry is even beginning to get into it as he was.

"I'm here. I'll be here. Get some sleep. If others like Eggsy don't realize they're gone, he might need you to talk him into resting or want you there to do so. Too long without makes a person paranoid, squirrely."

It's a form of blackmail, and Jack knows it. Can live with it. But with how this place has worn on the others who aren't immortal, he's been growing more and more concerned. He can live through this shit, but 'normal' people? Not so much.

"You're right."

Right that he needs to sleep. Right on 'paranoid and squirrelly'. Right, even, that Eggsy might need some light nudging (though not his physical presence, for reasons best kept to the two of them) into resuming his previous patterns. What's not going to be so simple is resuming his own habits. He wasn't sleeping well long before the ghosts showed up. Their presence has barely impacted on his sleep at all, in fact.

He drops another kiss on Jack's jaw, brief and chaste; a goodnight kiss.

"Do try to get some sleep yourself, won't you? To pass the time, if nothing else."

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There Once Was a Man Who Could Never Die

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