Chapter Text
“Doctor.” Captain Jack Harkness strolls into the console room. The TARDIS pulsates a greeting and Jack pets the dashboard.
“Jack! What do you think the universe has in store for us today?” the Doctor dances around the console, flipping a switch here, turning a dial there, often doing both at the same time. “The TARDIS has been humming me towards the Couplet nebula, but -” finally the Doctor looks up from his navigation. “Jack, what’s wrong?” A furrowed brow prompts Jack uncomfortably, and the eyes of concern don’t help.
“Doctor, I - it’s not anything wrong, I just wanted to ask you about how the bedrooms work.” A beat. “Like, how the TARDIS organizes the bedrooms.”
Oh. Obviously, the Doctor thinks, then shrugs, “She seems to know how to bounce them around where they need to be. Always seems to know who’s coming before I do,” he muses, tinkering with a wonky vortex compass, spinning incessantly in all directions. It seems there is always something that needs fixing, or tweaking, or just attention, really. The TARDIS does her best, but both she and the Doctor suffer from having a solo pilot. Things were just so much easier with a full fleet of ten pilots.
Jack puts his hands in his coat pocket and follows the Doctor around the console, “Have you ever thought of teaching your companions how to fly?”
The Doctor hums, a perfunctory flick here, a button or four pressed there, “Yes. The Wright brothers don’t like me very much.”
“I meant the TARDIS.” The Doctor blinks. How did Jack know that was what he was just thinking about? A compass chimes, listening to his musings.
“Cheeky little thing,” the Doctor mumbles.
“Why, thank you,” Jack preens.
“Too complicated, mostly. Been doing it for 900 years and I still don’t know where I’m going half the time,” he rests his chin against his hand, pausing from being a mechanic to be an observer of the console’s great mysteries. Some things don’t change.
“I feel you shouldn’t be so hard on yourself,” Jack saunters over and plops himself close beside the Doctor. “The TARDIS seems like the co-pilot, anyway.” The Doctor snorts.
“Sure keeps me on my toes,” he admits, then flicks on his positivity, “But! Wouldn’t have it any other way, right?" The Doctor turns his head and Jack is much closer than he thought. “Suppose you keep me on my toes as well.” They shift slightly, just enough to be leaning on each other, dependent for a little stability.
Jack sighs, “As if you aren’t the one running me ragged,” pushing the Doctor’s arm with his own, their limbs slightly moving with the pendulum. The Doctor looks quite fondly to the distance.
“You couldn’t handle ragged,” a low quip slips out before the Doctor even thinks about it. Aaaand, shift.
The Doctor feels Jack turn towards him. “Is that a threat or a promise?”
“Depends.” The conversation starts, but the Doctor does not know where he is in it. His brain pauses and just lets him talk, not knowing what will come next. But he trusts Jack, and nothing he could say could actually change the two of them - not after everything.
“Depends on…?”’
“Do you actually want to learn how to fly the TARDIS?”
Jack smirks and winks. “Why, would I be the first?”
“Though you’d love to be my first,” the Doctor grins with a nudge, knowing just how to play with Jack when Jack is trying to play with him.
“So no one else? Ever?” The Doctor’s nippy humour and Jack’s question both fade with the moment. Jack stays still, waiting patiently for the man, always short on time.
“Suppose my granddaughter did,” he confesses, “She was quite good at it.”
“Is her room the one with the toy console?”
The Doctor cracks to attention, “What?”
“Remember I was asking about the rooms?” Jack continues, shifting back into the Doctor’s comfort zone. “I think the TARDIS had a mix-up because the door is always open across from mine, but only every ten weeks.”
“Susan’s room is always across from mine, though,” the Doctor says, “The TARDIS has never moved it.”
“The only thing in there that the TARDIS draws me to is that little playset,” he leans back, hand sliding behind the Doctor, “You know how I love toys.”
The Doctor laughs lightly with a thin blush, “Well, you know, wasn’t too far off from the little mechanical bench I used to have - it’s when I discovered I love wood,” the hand slides along, slowly, patiently, like a man with all the time in the world to let the Doctor decide. This is the game they play.
“So I’ve taught myself how to fly the TARDIS,” Jack shrugs simply. The Doctor turns to Jack, hand flying to hold his waist while he twists to look at him.
“You taught yourself how to fly the TARDIS?" he damn near squawks, "I had to go to school for that, you know, like an A-level-”
“Well, maybe you forgot, but I am a captain trained in temporal vortex manipulators, and I’ve been around you for a while,” Jack says, a little indignation flutters through from the Doctor’s flabbergastion that he figured out how to use a toy.
“No, I know, it’s just,” the Doctor’s hands fly up, and then he doesn’t know where to put them. “Think about that. She is the last person I piloted this ship with.” The Doctor just keeps looking ahead, eyes glazed with nostalgia; Jack tenderly touches one of the Doctor’s hands, and he doesn’t flinch at all. “No one else. Ever." The Doctor turns his gaze slowly, as if it takes him a few tries, "And now there’s you.” Finally looking at Jack, the captain sees the other side of the Doctor. Not the destroyer of worlds, or the oncoming storm, but a lonely old man in a box, exploring the universe with a registrar of temporary explorers to go with him.
“About that,” Jack rubs his thumb across the back of the Doctor's hand, and the Timelord finally clocks the sensation of being touched. If the Doctor focuses, he might be able to hear Jack’s heartbeat, but he should know better. The Doctor is always focused. “Me. Who am I to you?”