Sooo, there's no plot in this. None at all. You were warned. It's just some Jack angst and a happy ending, because Hikari said there were not nearly enough hugs in Torchwood and I needed to fix that. There you go, I did. Have fun, but don't expect too much!

–

"Run!"

"I am running!"

"Then run faster!"

Not breaking stride, the Doctor reaches for Jack's hand and pulls the man with him, his other hand grabbing for the next person that he can reach, which turns out to be the Asian girl. He barely registers her surprised look as he pulls her along, over the empty square – not a soul out there, all having been evacuated hours before – towards the TARDIS.

Her door swings open when they get close and he silently thanks her, rushing through with Jack and, what was her name again, Toshiko, and stumbling to a halt at the console.

"Close the door behind you!" he calls out to the last one who gets in, (formerly) crisp, now slightly charred white shirt, suit jacket lost somewhere along the line, and the boy obeys without a second thought.

Only seconds after the door snaps shut, the muffled sound of explosions shakes the TARDIS and the Doctor collapses against Jack's chest, laughing hysterically and out of breath, but happy, because look at that, everybody lives. He lets go of Toshiko's hand to hug Jack properly for the first time since he arrived – it has all been a bit of a mess with the alien bomb and everything – his arms around the other's shoulders as he giggles, riding his adrenaline high to the fullest. Jack, oddly, hesitates for a moment before he returns the embrace with his arms around the Time Lord's waist, chest shaking with quiet laughter.

When he has sort of caught his breath, the Doctor straightens up, turning around and grabbing the next human being he can spot. He draws Toshiko close, causing a startled yelp from her, and presses a kiss to her forehead, still giggling.

"You were brilliant," he exclaims, meaning every word – oh, how he adores his brilliant little humans, "that was amazing what you did in there."

"He sure is touchy," someone mutters from the entrance.

The Doctor turns, raising his eyebrows at the man (Owen?) who had spoken, panting and leaning against the door next to the black-haired girl. "What, and you're surprised?" he asks, leaning back against the console and waving a hand in the Captain's direction. "You're Jack's team, he's pretty much the touchiest person I've ever encountered, and that includes touch-telepathic species. It's not like you can avoid getting cuddled by him. I'm harmless against that."

"Jack?" Toshiko demands incredulously. "I feel like we're talking about different persons here, is there any chance of that?"

"There's a lot of adjectives I'd use for Jack," Owen agrees, "but touchy is so not on that list."

The tea boy is leaning against a coral, silent, straightening his tie like that is going to change something about his dishevelled appearance and the scorch marks on his white shirt.

Now slightly baffled, the Doctor turns his head back towards Jack, who leans against the railing with his arms crossed in front of his chest, looking mildly uncomfortable. Gesturing towards the team that is watching them in various states of confusion, surprise and anticipation, the Doctor asks: "What, are you telling me you don't... I don't know, hug them? Or spontaneously kiss people? Are you sure you're okay?" Jack bats his hands away with an eye-roll when the Doctor tries to tilt his chin up.

Not looking at him, the immortal replies: "Of course I'm okay, why wouldn't I be? Because I don't randomly run around and hug people?"

"Yes!" the Doctor agrees without missing a beat. "You used to go around randomly hugging people all the time! Don't think I forgot Big Ben."

Jack shrugs, still not meeting his eyes. "Yeah, well, people change, it's bound to happen, isn't it?"

"Not like that!" the Time Lord protests, momentarily forgetting about the people around him. Something feels fundamentally wrong here, and he's determined to find out what it is. "I mean, I've barely been gone a few months!"

"A few months?" Jack echoes, a trace of anger in his voice. "I–" He falters, his gaze flickering towards his team, but then he mutters something that sounds like "oh, fuck it" under his breath and snaps, "I waited for you after you abandoned me up there, surrounded by dead bodies, have you any idea how long ago that was?"

"Well," the brunet makes, slightly taken aback by the sharp tone in the other's voice, "it was about two hundred thousand years in the future, so I can't really –"

"Yes, yes it was, and I came back here to find you again," Jack interrupts, raising the wrist with his vortex manipulator around it. "Malfunctioned. I was stuck. Crashed. In 1869." He takes a deep breath, cutting the Doctor off before he has the chance to say anything. "I waited for you – you're good with numbers, aren't you? – for almost 140 years, stuck in Cardiff of all fucking places because I hoped that you might come by here again, with no guarantee for it, and what do you think I did all these years?!"

He's nearly shouting now and the Doctor stares at him with wide eyes, overthrown by the sudden shift in mood. Neither he nor Jack pay attention to the murmurs behind them now as the Captain goes on.

"I've been to war, I've watched everyone else I came to love wither and die around me, and you know, in the beginning, for fifty or sixty years maybe, I was still believing you'd come back, but –" He pauses for a brief moment, hands clenched around the railing behind him. When he goes on, his voice is a lot more quiet than before. "I kept dying. Getting shot, poisoned, starved, drowned, take your pick. And the thing is, I do die. I die, and I'm dead, but I come back and it's haunting me. Every normal person has something to work for, something to reach, something to look forward after death, and me? I'm waiting. I've been waiting for decades, and I do have faith in you, and you came back, yes, but all this time? Have you any idea – everyone around me just dies and I can't, I get left behind, you of all people should understand that."

He digs the heels of his hands into his eyes, taking a shuddering breath to fight back the despair that has crept into his voice. Still, there's none of his initial fury left when he continues without dropping his hands, his voice soft.

"I just don't know how you do it. How you stay so hopeful, and optimistic, and keep... keep getting attached to people, willingly, when all they end up doing is break your heart."

"Oh, Jack," the Doctor breathes, and what on Earth is he supposed to say to that? He has posed the question to himself often enough, after Rose and with all these people he temporarily adopted and lost because he put them in harm's way. Still...

He crosses the distance between them and pulls Jack close. The other's shoulders shake, but he doesn't make a sound, and the remaining persons on the TARDIS watch without daring to make a sound. Apparently, the time he's been away – less than a year for him, more than a century for the immortal – has changed Jack, a lot more than he would have expected. And he has honestly no idea how to deal with that.

"Because they're worth it," he whispers anyway, and there's a huff against his neck in response that might have been a suppressed sob, too. "They really, really are. Every single one of them. And it's going to be a lot more painful when you look back and see all the opportunities you missed instead of all the things you did while you were able to." Jack takes a few slow breaths, not responding and therefore not contradicting, and that's a good thing, right?

Just a few seconds later, though, he pulls away and clears his throat uncomfortably. His blue eyes are suspiciously bright and the Doctor raises an eyebrow at him, wordlessly staring at the space that Jack has put between them as if to say where do you think you're going?

"What?" the Captain hisses at him. "I'm in front of my team!"

"So?"

"So nothing," Jack responds, takes a deep breath and stares at the ceiling as he gathers his composure. "Just... gotta get a grip. I'm okay."

"What's this for now?" The Doctor gestures around the TARDIS, at the team that collectively tries to hold its breath like they're afraid of Jack's reaction if they remind him that they're still there, seeing everything. "There's no need for that, is there? They're practically your family."

The Captain glares at him half-heartedly. "You decide now who my family is? How come I don't get a say in that?"

Now, one of the others finally pipes up: "So we're not?" It's the black-haired girl, Gwyneth, no, Gwen, arms crossed in front of her chest defiantly.

"Now, I didn't say that!" Jack defends himself.

The tea boy chimes in quietly: "Thought it, though."

"Like you would know," Jack shoots back. "Do you read minds now, too? Where is the point in this, exactly?"

"Easy," the Doctor answers, planting his hand between the Captain's shoulder blades and giving him a push towards his team. "You love them, they love you, just go and hug it out. I can't believe you need me to tell you that – off with you, heaven's sake."

"Stop patronising me!" Jack complains, turning with his arms crossed. "These are all grown-ups, if any of them had wanted a hug, they could have told me!" The Doctor silently takes note of the fact that Jack deliberately ignores the first bit of his sentence.

"We didn't know you did hugs," Owen points out. "All you ever do is yell at us."

"Now that's not true." The immortal, turning back around to face the others, sounds very nearly petulant.

While he keeps arguing with his team mate, Toshiko turns to look at the Doctor, a questioning look on her face. He shrugs helplessly – he really is no good at this, but he's trying to help, that has to count for something, right? He can see that Jack likes these people, and although there seems to be a strange distance between him and the rest of his little group, the Time Lord is pretty sure that the feeling is mutual.

She looks at the Time Lord with her lips pursed for a moment more, then turns and tries to catch the tea boy's attention without making a sound. It takes a few seconds, but then Ianto looks at her and the Doctor leans back against the console, a smile on his lips, as Toshiko waves vaguely into Jack's direction, who isn't paying attention to either of them.

Ianto points at himself and mouths me?, to which she nods and gestures in the Captain's direction again. The tea boy hesitates, but then sighs like he wants to say what can you do before he pushes away from the coral he's been leaning against and walks up to Jack briskly, scorched white dress shirt and all.

The immortal doesn't flinch, but it's a close thing; he tenses like he expects Ianto to sock him in the jaw. Half exasperated, half defensive, he begins: "What now, do I get the –"

"You," the Welshman interrupts him, "just shut it."

He pulls Jack close by the lapels of his coat, making him stumble, and then wraps his arms around the other man. It's not graceful, there are no violins in the background, no spontaneous declarations of love, just Jack's softly uttered "but – oh, well". It takes him a moment until he returns the hug, careful and tentative, but he does, and Ianto seems to relax a bit more as well, then.

Everybody is holding their breath, like something might explode at any given second, and the Doctor rolls his eyes from where he stands, but he's still smiling, and Jack is hugging, and everybody lives and the moment isas close to perfect as they're going to get.

The two part after a while and Ianto presses a kiss to Jack's cheek and then pats his Captain's shoulder with a half-smile as he asks: "There, was that so bad?"

"You patronising me too now, tea boy?" Jack asks, and although he's with his back to the Doctor, the Time Lord can perfectly picture the look on his face, eyebrows raised and the hint of a slightly defensive smile on his face.

Ianto takes it in stride and replies: "If you need patronising by your tea boy, you should really take a moment to stop and think about your life choices. Sir."

The remark, delivered with an innocent smile and a slight tilt to Ianto's head, makes the Captain huff indignantly. He spreads his arms then, looking like he's trying to shake something off, jumping over his own shadow, as he declares: "Alright then, he started it. Everybody gets some."

"Sounds fair," Gwen agrees, patting Owen on the shoulder as she leaves his side to hop over towards Jack. She throws her arms around his neck, standing up on her tip-toes, and mutters "idiot" under her breath as he hugs her back.

She, too, pecks him on the cheek before she pulls back, which prompts Owen in the background to announce: "I'm sure as hell not kissing you."

"And thank god for that," Jack replies drily.

It dissolves the remaining tension somewhat and the Doctor leans back, smiling to himself as the team finds to each other, adrenaline and relief easing the way once the first few steps are done. The TARDIS' passengers begin to chatter amongst one another and she hums at him contentedly, satisfied that he isn't alone right now (like she has any say in that, insolent ship that she is).

They wind up with Jack's arm slung around the tea boy's waist, Owen and Gwen close to each other and Toshiko at the Doctor's side, curiously poking and prodding at the TARDIS controls. She's wonderfully bright, and he only just realises how much he has missed having somebody to talk to. Especially if that person is as open and curious as the Asian scientist.

Jack looks a lot more at ease now, too, his head tilted to murmur something in Ianto's ear as he smiles when he notices the Doctor's gaze on him. Yes, getting attached to humans can (will) always end up unpleasant, and it won't ever be easy to handle – but human minds, brilliant human minds and their wonderful ways will always make it worth it.

So, all in all, all things considered? It's fantastic.