Andraste

It is hot. I cannot sleep. I am afraid that the contents of my inbox will eat me if I look at it too hard. So obviously the best thing to do is stay up and play Trope Bingo! And work on something I was writing in ... good grief. January 2010.

One is meant to write a separate story for each square, but since the parts of this are only connected by theme, I don't really see this as cheating as such.

Rating: PG

Characters: Ninth Doctor, Jack Harkness

Summary: Forced intimacy clichés are no match for the Doctor. Ten times the universe failed to get everyone's favourite Time Lord laid, despite its best efforts.



IX. Bonded

Jack's martini wasn't very good. Not only that, the bartender had been careless and there was vermouth running down the outside of the glass. Jack didn't care much about that, though, licking the residue off the side as he checked out the bartender's ass. Maybe he could be licking vermouth off of something else while he ... calculated the formula for Terileptil hyberspace fuel and ... and that definitely wasn't his own thought. He rubbed the side of his head and tried to focus his mind.

"Do you ever think about anything except sex?" the Doctor asked.

"Do you ever think about sex?" Jack countered, grinning. Ever since their minds got linked, it had been nothing but differential equations, Puccini arias and football results from 1972.

He'd learned about the basic effects of time rifts at the Time Agency, of course, but one of their lesser known properties was the ability to cause psychic powers in humans. When he and the Doctor had plunged through one together, their minds had been accidentally placed in contact. The Doctor said that the effect was only temporary, which was a relief. It wasn't like Jack wanted to have his travelling companion looking in on his thoughts for the rest of his life. On the other hand, it was also a golden opportunity. Not that the Doctor saw it that way.

"I'm just saying, I don't think we should waste the chance. You never know when you're going to get to have telepathic sex again, right?"

A series of sounds and images flickered through Jack's head, too fast for him to fix on. Once again he had the feeling he was just seeing the ripples on the surface of a dark, deep lake. Maybe the Doctor knew more about telepathy and sex than he was admitting.

"So you are thinking what I'm thinking."

Jack could feel the door in the Doctor's mind slam shut. "Doesn't mean I have to think it's a good idea," he said, putting his drink down and jumping lightly off of his bar stool. "Come on, I think we'd better get out of here. Rose might be getting lonely."

Jack somehow doubted that. The poor kid had gone through the rift on her own, ahead of the two of them, and that had opened her mind up to everyone's thoughts. She was stuck in the TARDIS with a splitting headache until it wore off.

Of course, maybe if her head was a little better, Jack could try thinking some dirty thoughts at Rose. If he couldn't get the Doctor to play along, he could at least have fun with someone else, and then Doctor would be able to feel it through their link, and maybe it would loosen him up a little or – once again his head was crammed full of quantum physics and the jingle to a 20th century Earth commercial for dog food.

"Jack!" said the Doctor out loud. "Focus!"

"You never let me have any fun."

The next time he got telepathically bonded, he was going to make sure it was to someone more entertaining.