He could live a thousand lifetimes (and he very probably would) and he'd never get sick of it.
Living. Living was fantastic.
Jack Harkness closed his eyes for a moment and revelled in the hum of blood in his veins and the air in his lungs, everything that made him alive. The food he'd eaten earlier that day and the soft brush of clean (well, cleanish) sheets against his skin.
The woman moving against him, her mouth leaving damp trails of heat that still excited him. That was the wonderful thing about humanity – there was always more to see, more to know, and there always would be. The Great and Powerful human race.
They were gorgeous.
Jack opened his eyes and looked down at her, flashing the smile he knew had melted many hearts before her. She couldn't possibly forget this night, no matter how long she lived.
She certainly seemed flattered, blushing prettily right down to the pale skin of her breasts. He reached a hand out to tuck a lock of dark hair behind her ear. She giggled, leaning forward and pressing a cold, slick hand against his stomach.
Then she shot him.
Damn. He really should have seen that coming.
Jack died with the sound of her giggle still ringing in his ears, distantly aware of the hot wetness pooling around him (there go the sheets, and his deposit) and the radiating pain from his gut, but he didn't really mind.
After all, he had more lives to live.
And it really had been fantastic sex.
He breathed again and she was still there, fiddling around with his coat as though trying to decide whether she could pawn that as well. He sat up, wincing, and clucked his tongue at her. "Don't be silly, just take the money and go. You'll leave a trail selling that."
She jumped, faced him, and (as expected, nothing really ever changed) screamed. "You're dead!"
He winked. "I'm not now." He glanced down at his front, itchy and bloodstained. "And you've really ruined the mood."
Her eyes widened enough that he fancied he could lean over and see himself in them. "Devil," she whispered, backing away, the gun in her hands again but shaky and aimed at the floor as though she'd lost faith in it. He sympathized. He'd lost faith in a lot of things in his life. "You're the Devil!"
He pulled himself away from the sheets with a painful tugging at his body hairs as the congealed blood fought to reclaim its grip on his skin. "Oh honey, he wishes he was half this handsome," he said with another wink, just for good measure.
She screamed again and ran, leaving the gun and (thankfully) his coat behind.
What was it with humans and screaming?
Looking down at the bed he quickly decided that his deposit probably wasn't coming back. That was a pity because without checking, he knew she'd cleaned him out.
Oh well.
It wasn't like he couldn't find another bed to sleep in.
Smiling again, the ache from his death fading and the day beginning to gleam with promise, he slipped out the window and into the oncoming dawn.
Breathing hurt.
Everything hurt.
And there was more pain to come.
He opened his eyes once more to find the men still clustering around, the women torn between pushing forward for a better look at the Man Who Couldn't Die (and who really didn't want to), and holding back to preserve their pretence at being uninterested (such funny morals).
His arms ached from being tied up, pulling the muscles of his shoulders up and back and forming a tight band around his chest that made his breath whistle and wheeze. He savoured every breath. Soon enough, he'd die again. He could feel it coming like the swell of mist off an ocean breeze.
The agony burning in his body was nothing compared to the way his heart twisted when he raised his head weakly and met Angelo's dark eyes from across the crowd.
This. This was betrayal. Raw and vicious and cutting over and over again, sharper than any knife.
He forgave him (of course he did). And he put that forgiveness in his eyes and when they started cutting him once more, he didn't look away from the man who'd left him here to die again and again and again.
Angelo didn't look away either.
Jack died with Angelo's eyes burning into his skull, and he fancied there was sorrow and repentance in them.
It didn't matter if there was or not.
Angelo was young.
And even this would pass.
Even after all this time, his team still managed to shock him.
Well, a bullet would shock anyone, really, but he gave Owen points for trying.
He came back (of course, he'll always come back), and it was almost worth it to see the looks on their faces. Owen's in particular was a shade of 'oh shit' that he quickly memorized in order to savour later.
By this point, even the pain bullets brought didn't keep him down for long. And there were benefits to this.
One particularly tempting benefit.
Ianto sighed over Jack's injury and Jack milked it shamelessly, neither of them dwelling on the small subject of his resurrection, or the bigger subject of the way Ianto's pulse raced when Jack touched him.
He certainly wasn't dwelling on the way his own heart skipped a beat when Ianto leaned in close to run warm fingers over a tear in his shirt. He'd done that before, the inter-team fucking, and it never ended well.
He was sorely (hopelessly) tempted though.
Then there was Abbadon and the worst death Jack had known so far.
It plunged him into darkness and fear and what he would later find out was days of grief for (Ianto) his team.
He woke up and Gwen was there but more importantly, Ianto was too and Jack knew within seconds of looking at him (don't do this again, Jack) that if he did this there would forevermore be more than just sex between them. And he didn't do that, he didn't do domestic bliss and gentle kisses under the bedcovers and waking up in someone's arms, not anymore.
Not after Angelo.
He hadn't reckoned on Ianto making the choice for him.
And he hadn't reckoned on the softness of Ianto's lips against his and the hungry need he kissed with, as though he'd been craving this for a millennium and wasn't going to give it up now that he'd had a taste of it. He kissed with a desperation that Jack knew (intimately) and he couldn't help but respond to that.
When it was over and they separated, flushed and panting and shaking with everything they were leaving unsaid, he knew this wasn't the end of them, no matter how much the emotion in Ianto's face made him want to turn tail and run.
It was just the beginning
There was something about being blown up and having your organs all slowly reform that really put a damper on your day.
Maybe it was the weird sensation of wiggling your toes and watching them wiggle next to your head instead of being at the end of your feet like you expected them to be. That was disconcerting (but cool, really).
Although, more than likely it was the excruciating agony.
Yeah, Jack was putting his bets on the excruciating agony.
He hadn't really expected the day to improve from there because if there was one thing his long time on Earth (and off it and well… inside it) had taught him, it was that days that began with a bomb being sewn into your guts rarely got better. They usually got worse, even after the boom.
He should be thankful. For anyone else, the boom would be as low as it got.
He was kind of jealous of them. Almost. He loved living with a passion that burned, but what also burned was being coated in cement (what do they call this? First degree burns? No, that was best case…. Fourth? Was there a fourth?) and feeling it sear skin that was raw and new. It filled his mouth and his ears and his nose and he was pretty sure his eyes were gone but he was still (dead, Jack, they call it fucking dead) alive and there was still hope.
He needed a miracle.
He got one.
"Alright there, Jack?" Ianto Jones asked with a crooked smile after dropping him and his cement prison off a cliff.
He should have told him that he was his miracle. He should have pulled him close (perhaps with clothes on first… or… not) and told him just how god damned important he was, and how he'd somehow become the centre of Jack's being.
He should have told him how damn sexy he looked as he carefully picked his way through the cement dust of that quarry and held out a steady arm.
The Doctor had told Jack that he was a Fixed Point in time, one of a kind. He was wrong. There was one more.
Ianto was Jack's Fixed Point and Jack didn't ever say I love you to anyone because it would be a lie (but not really, because he did love them, love all of them, but not like they'd understand), but he should have said it at this moment.
He didn't.
Because travelling with the Doctor had given him one misconception.
He thought they had more time.
It began in the future on a planet so damn far away it was almost inconceivable.
Or perhaps it began closer.
When a Fixed Point in time met an ordinary (not ordinary, anything but) mortal man, and they fell in love.
The world's oldest tale.
And like many of the world's oldest tales, it ended in blood.
It began with Ianto stepping casually into one of Jack's many lives and making them inseparable, Jack and Ianto, against the world. Torchwood 3. It was the time when everything changed.
Jack wasn't ready for it.
He didn't rely on people (but he relied on him, infinitely). He had added that to the list of things he didn't do when Owen and Tosh died. He didn't say I love you (but he should have). That had always been on the list.
It ended with Ianto slumping slowly to the floor and looking at (no) Jack with eyes that were scared and resigned and just the slightest (stop it) bit in love. It ended with him taking one last rattling breath in Jack's (why are you doing this) arms and dying (if I can live through this, why can't you?) as though Jack hadn't given him all the reasons (stop this) in the world to live.
Ianto stopped. Stopped breathing, stopped being, stopped everything.
Jack died next to Ianto's cooling body and for the first time, he hoped to never wake up.
He wasn't ready for this.
"I'm sorry about Ianto," Gwen said later and he didn't answer. She didn't know the first thing about mourning Ianto Jones. "But… you're here, Jack. You didn't die. That's got to count for something, yeah?"
"But I did," he replied quietly.
He died in that room for the last time because no matter how many times in the future his body stuttered to a stop and restarted again like a faulty motor, he'd already lost something he couldn't ever regain.
(iloveyou)
It ended.