A/N – Pre-Cannon appearance of Captain Jack Harkness, beta by the wonderful Noctregryps.
The whole crew got completely pissed on Drakkus IV after they reeled in the big one - three vortex manipulators, a somewhat singed diatomic power converter, and a double shipment of lovely Earth-made hand blasters. All three of them had gotten out with only minor paradox burns and even splitting the take had gone quickly for once. Jack idly spun one of his new blasters on the tabletop while Gzzik and Rynn were engaging in a contest that could have been arm wrestling, if it wasn't for Gzzik lacking arms. Arms or no, Rynn was a clear victor once she'd cheated and seized control of Jack's blaster just long enough to use it to melt the tabletop, subsequently imbedding Gzziik's appendage in the sticky surface.
Jack rocked back from the table, grateful that 'Zik was a gracious loser. Given that Zik was half a ton of nearly indestructible pale orange gel, it was most certainly a good thing that he had a short memory, an even temper, and a high tolerance for being cheated by certain grey space pirates. Instead of considering one of any number of potentially painful methods for retribution, he just began oozing off in the general direction of the barkeep (unconcernedly dragging the table along behind him).
Rynn casually shoved the blaster back across the table. "Jack, I am not a space pirate. I am captain of the finest piece of transportation hardware ever to grace this poor excuse for a spaceport. You work for me, and and that makes you the space pirate, not me."
"You're not only a space pirate, you're a rude space pirate, Roswell. I didn't say that out loud," Jack smirked.
Unreadable glassy obsidian eyes bored into Jack's. "Why is it you humans persist in calling my people after the place where a couple of joyriding teens managed to crash a borrowed translight freighter? Honestly, you have any idea what its like to get called a Roswell Grey by every ignorant Earther in the Milky Way? And you lot breed like Turlean rats I might add while we're addressing your species' better traits, which would be splendid if you tasted half as good spit roasted as those little blue puffers. But no, you're just blindly breeding another few billion idiots who will wander up to me in bars and ask if I've been in New Mexico lately."
Jack rolled his eyes at the familiar tirade and fired up his third-best seductive pout. "So since this will be our last night together, I don't work for you anymore, and Gzzik has gone to find the slime of his dreams..."
"Ooh, nice touch, to go catalog the entire list of reasons I turned you down at the start of this run." Rynn wove her long thin fingers together in a characteristic gesture of deep thought that Jack had spotted as her tell on first meeting the Shel'ni'tok pilot. "Answer is still the same as it was then, Jack, you're not in it for the fun anymore."
Jack tapped two fingers to the side of his head. "So tell me, oh great reader of minds, what am I in it for now?" He knew issuing a challenge to an amoral criminal telepath was a mistake even as his expression shifted from seductive to cocky, but it was already too late.
Rynn's hand shot across the table toward his head, halting a bare millimeter from contacting his skin with one long bony finger. Or that's where she would have stopped if Jack hadn't been overwhelmed by instant panic when she reached for contact. His looked up at the now-motionless Rynn from a less than dignified vantage on the floor and surmised that his reflexes had got the better of him.
"Tell me again, Jack, tell me again how much you'd like to get re-acquainted with me. Tell me the lie again that you're ready for my kind of intimacy. Lie to me a bit more about why you left Earth, and why you came to me when the Time Agency put a price on your head." Dark purple lines flowed across her forehead clearly displaying her anger to everyone in sight, and given that he'd made a fair amount of noise while becoming acquainted with the floor, every eyestalk in the place was pointed at them. Nothing like an angry telepath to make the most jaded of bar patrons call out "Check, please."
"I thought you liked my pretty lies, at least you did the first time around," Jack spoke with cool malice, erecting mental walls of titanium around the turmoil in his brain, locking away the screaming voice inside him… the screaming voice that he knew couldn't be hidden from Rynn.
"Sex is your drug, pretty boy, it's just as much of a depressant as the alcoholic poison in my glass. Lasts just about as long. It's barely begun before all the good part is over and you start the ugly part, you know, that part when you wake up the next morning."
Jack suppressed a wince as her words struck him. "Life is a depressant, Rynn. Sex is a painkiller."
The angry purple under her skin faded to a silvery blue as Rynn calmed instantly. Jack admired her lightning-fast shifts of mood: he'd always thought it made her beautifully unpredictable. Funny that, how a telepathic race had evolved to display emotion as color. The inflexible facial structure wasn't a lack in Jack's eyes, not after the first time when he'd watched a magenta sunset of passion pour across her skin in a rush of brilliant color.
"That's the first honest thing you've said since you signed on with me, and I'd like to walk away from this with truth between us. Honor among thieves, right, Jack? You've got your share and it's more than enough to turn your back on Earth and the Time Agency and never look back." Green hints of distress flickered along her throat for a moment. "If I was sure you could walk away from them I'd keep you on, but you are going to keep at them until it gets you killed and I'm not risking my ship for your personal crusade."
He watched her walk away, too afraid to speak. Rynn never looked back.
Somewhere deep inside his mind, the screaming went on.