Work Text:
Pet Freak
by PEJA
"Admiral Montague is dead."
Jack Harkness never turned his attention away from the night sky, the only sign that he may have even heard his visitor at all was when he lifted his face until the moon bathed his eternal beauty in a halo of angelic silvery light. This slight movement, however, got the response he'd sought from the grim voiced man. Jack's sensual lips twitched ever so slightly at the sound of his visitor's hitched breath, the heat of his body coming to rest like a gentle caress at his back.
"An animal attack, they're saying." Charles Gaskell murmured, trying very hard to ignore the proud beauty as his dark hands moved up Jack's blue shirt sleeves, not holding, simply ...brushing. A tease's touch. "Brutal." He breathed into Jack's ear.
Hedouisticly sensual before anything else, Jack luxurated to the tremors Gaskell's warm breath sent racing through his slender body.
"So tell me, Jack," Haskell nibbled at Jack's lobe, sending a new rush of shudders through the other man. "Did you have anything to do with the murder?"
Jack let his head drop onto Gaskell's shoulder, turning his face into the muscular neck. He breathed Gaskell's scent deeply, greedily through both his nose and mouth before answering. "Does it matter?"
Gaskelll's full lips pressed and lingered in Jack's dark hair. "So you did have a hand in it."
"Let's just say I arranged an...introduction." Jack's soft tongue made a leisurely swipe over Gaskell's neck, purring his enjoyment in the taste of his young, breath-taking lover and drawing a responding growl from the man holding him in a suddenly aggressive, possessive embrace.
"An animal attack, Jack?" Gaskell managed to keep is focus. By the gritting of his strong white teeth.
Jack turned in Gaskell's arms. He tilted his head seductively, slanting a lusty glance through his dark lashes. Slathering on his impeccable charm with a thick palate knife technique. "They were children, Charlie. Innocent children." Diamond bright tears glistened in his eyes. "Montague corrupted a regal race. Reduced a gentile, sentient people to monsters." He released a shuddering sigh. "He got what he deserved."
"The man was ripped to shreds." Charlie's hands captured Jack's face, forcing him to meet his eyes. "Alice said it looked like he was mauled by sharks."
"He got what he deserved." Jack ground out once more, glaring. "What?" he demanded a storm brewing darkly in the blue of his eyes. "What, Charlie? You saw what he was authorizing. You know the horror he put those dead human babies through. He fed human infants to his creations. He reduced the amphibian infants to barbaric, dangerous animals. You want me to feel pity towards that....that pyscho-path? And do you want to know why, Charlie? Do you? He did it to create an army of what he considered animals. Small sacrifice, sending his genetically mauled army to battle, as long as none of the realm elite had to serve. "
"You were there, as well. You saw....Jack, at the very least the children on the Hades were alien, very probably savage...Most assuredly dangerous. Christ's blood, man. They would have killed us if we hadn't gotten off that ship."
"Amd whose fault is that. They were children," Jack snapped. "Sentient children."
"Alien children."
Gaskell knew his fatal error the moment the unthinking words left his lips. His knowing was confirmed as Jack stiffened in his arms.
"Alien," Jack said without emotion. He didn't need emotion. Not when it was all screaming from his stance, from his guarded glare. "Yes, How foolish of me to forget.... all things alien are not ever to be trusted, isn't that right, Gaskell? Used for Queen and country, certainly. Captured, tortured, imprisoned, but never trusted as an equal to the bloody superior human species."
Oh, God, He hadn't mean it.
Jack's harsh gaze reminded Charles that he may appear human, but he only knew one man who ever died and walked the earth again, and that was only once, not time after time. Jack may have the face of a fallen angel, but he sure as hell was not of a heavenly mind-set. Not according to any bible Gaskell had ever read.
Some of what Gaskell was thinking must have showed on his face because Jack shoved out of his arms, sneering. "Its like you always say, Gaskell. I'm nothing more than the pet freak you all pet and stroke and play with when you want something." He hissed. "That's all Jack Harkness, alien, is always gonna be when it comes right down to it, right? Torchwood's pet freak."
"Jack," Gaskell reached for him, wanting nothing more than to kiss away the hurt he had put in those expressive blue eyes.
Jack flinched away from his touch, backing away into a the shadows. "Go away, Gaskell. Go fuck your pretty barmaid. Your human barmid."
"Jack, please..."
Jack shook his head, unable to speak past the tightness in his throat. He snatched up his greatcoat and dashed from the room, leaving Gaskell alone in the room.
Alone to wonder if Jack would be back.
God, Gaskell hoped against hope that he would.
Three hours.
He slumped down in the nearest chair. He would give Jack three ours before he sought out Emily and Alice in their quarters, God save him, for they had had that hungry look in their eyes as they retired tonight and would not appreciate their games interrupted, and report him on the run. Three hours before he set the might of Torchwood on his precious Jack's heels.
Please, God, let him be back before the ladies found out he was gone.
He owed Jack that much.
end