"…And in conclusion, if you don't, you're a damned fool."

Sitting at the empty, barren wooden desk in the library, the Doctor sighed, pouring more amber liquid into a tumbler, trying to ignore the room's other occupant. But it was so damned hard. Especially when Jack was being Jack. "And I thank you for that observation. And NO, I WILL NOT. Now do me a favour and shut it."

Maybe he could push Jack out an airlock on their way to the console room. Maybe he could slam Jack's head repeatedly in the drawer until it snapped off at the neck and fell, rumbling and echoing into the cavernous hanging file drawer, where he could lock it, toss the key out an airlock and forget about it. Well, he'd have to do something with the body, of course. He could push the body and the key out the airlock. Or feed the body to a carnivorous tulip in the gardens two floors levels down. Jack just brought those sort of feelings out in him.

That aside, he liked the bloke.

"And an idiot. Have I mentioned how you're an idiot? God. She's like… oh Doctor, then she bats her eyes," Jack paused and demonstrated, a little intoxicated himself. "And she's like…can I helllllp you fix the TAAAAARDIS? Then she bends over to hand you a wrench, and her funbags are right in your face," he illustrated gleefully, holding his palms at eye-level. "And you just take it and look away, and you're like…boobs? What're those? Ugh. She is NOT wearing those skirts to impress ME. Doesn't matter how many times I stick my tongue down her throat, she's only got eyes for ONE time traveller. And trust me, I tried. You're an idiot because you keep acting like you don't notice that she's giving you the subtle hints. But you're an idiot, so you might not be noticing them. Since the TARDIS doesn't do it for you, let me translate Human Girl for you—'oh Doctor, take me now!' She couldn't be any more obvious if she was saying she was going to your bedroom to get naked, and to meet her there in twenty."

The Doctor rolled his eyes. "I think your brain has been pickled by hormones and you're inventing subtext in relationships where there simply is none." Of course… Romana had flat said that to him once, and he'd simply asked her why she'd want to do such a thing? His room was a bit drafty, wouldn't she be cold?

He hated Jack and all of Jack's ancestors and all of Jack's future progeny and descendants. A lot.

Comfortably ensconced in a squishy chair, Jack paused in his tirade. "Ok, so you have issues with relationships and intimacy, and whatever. I don't care. You've got some needs that aren't being met, and you keep insisting they're needs that I can't fill, which I think is a tad insulting—I am pretty damned good at the medicinal lay, but oh, it hasta be a girl. It hasta be Rose. But you're not in love with her or anything, oh no. This is all biological. Ok, so it's biological. Which brings me back to my previous point. That's the beauty of the fuck buddy system…"

At which point, for the sake of what was left of his dignity (and sanity), he tuned Jack out. Lifting the glass to his lips, he contemplated what his life had come to. He was drinking again. Jack did that to him. Well, not Jack. Rose did that to him. Ok, not Rose. Or Jack. Jack TALKING about Rose did that to him. And Jack wasn't talking about Rose, so much as talking about the Doctor and Rose. Not the Doctor, in addition to Rose. The Doctor and Rose, as if they were, or should be some single entity.

Of course, he wouldn't mind if his hips brushed her hips and he just so happened to…

See? This was why he needed to kill Jack. "You're still not getting it," he grumbled, interrupting Jack's latest tangent on the benefits of having a 'buddy.' Rassilon, did he hate that term. "This is not about 'like' or 'love.'"

Jack was sitting in his favourite leather chair, feet crossed and propped up on the arm of his second favourite chair, which had somehow ended up leaving the Doctor sitting at the stodgy old desk in his least favourite wooden seat, a high-backed thing he'd been suffering with since his first incarnation, back when he thought such things were a good idea. "So you're saying you don't like Rose."

They'd been going in circles for two days about this. "This isn't about 'like' or 'love.' I keep telling you that. Like and love do not enter the equation for my kind. Let me rephrase—there is no equation for my kind. Usually. This sort of thing…isn't heard of."

It somehow managed to come back to how he had to do everything in his youth that was forbidden, taboo, or just not done by his people. It accounted for that whole past 'sewing of wild oats' thing. So he knew the mechanics of what they were talking about. It was the rest of this that was entirely foreign to his people.

Hormones. What the hell did he need with them? "This is about Rose being a human female. You're a smart boy, Jack. What do you know about humans and inter-species relations?" Oh Jack should know everything about that, shouldn't he? Jack was a one-man, inter-species Welcome Wagon. Nice to see a new face in this part of space. Want to dance?

Taking a sip of his own drink, Jack let the tumbler rest on the arm of the chair he was in, making the picture of a man far too relaxed and at ease with the world. "That reproductive-wise, humans are the species most compatible with, well, just about every other race out there. Even those weird cactus slime aliens that reproduce by--"

"Yes, Jack, thank you very much," the Doctor interrupted before the former Time Agent could go any further. "And my body knows this. Separate from any sort of intelligent thought on my part, and oh how that rankles, my less intelligent parts know this and are seeking to propagate the species. It is not about like or love."

Jack's pale blue eyes that usually held such mischief and joy glared at him, betrayed something else. He was obviously annoyed and possibly angry that the Doctor was not subscribing to his world view. "Which is where the fuck buddies thing comes in."

Shoulders slumping, the Doctor's head fell to his chest. "Jack, maybe that's your modus operandi, but I'll not use Rose like that. Simply because my body tells me it wants something, I don't need to give in. That's a weakness for…lower species."

Uncrossing his feet, Jack put one of them on the floor and leaned forward a bit. "And yet, there you are. And it's not using Rose. You can't use the willing."

The lower being grinned, flashing those perfect white teeth and the Doctor clenched and unclenched his free hand repeatedly, trying to swallow down the urge to kill. It would just make more work for himself in the end, there was all that trouble of cleaning up after the murder, and making up some excuse to Rose about the whole thing. "She is not—I'm not even going to--" he sighed. "Just don't go there."

Putting his other foot on the ground, Jack leaned forward, elbows coming to rest on his knees. "Ok, so, you keep resisting the primal urges of us lower creatures. That's fine. But it brings us back to like and love." He held up a hand. "And before you say it's not about that, we just put aside the whole propagating the species thing. If we remove from the equation your ardent desire to make Rose scream for God and mean you, then that leaves us with like and-or love that you will not act upon in such a way as to make the girl's toes curl."

Turning in the chair, the Doctor looked away from the room's other occupant. Leave it to Jack to make him blush. HIM. BLUSH. And that's what it had to be, with his cheeks burning like that, and his ears stinging so badly it was almost painful. "Jack…" But that hadn't sounded whiny. Now he was a blushing whining Time Lord that wanted to make his young, impressionable travelling companion scream for God and mean him…

Pathetic. Beyond pathetic. Sad in a way that was possibly unfathomable to lower races. Not to mention entirely unbecoming. It was juvenile, this sudden hormonal...thing. He was far too old for Time Lord Puberty and a sudden and complete obsession with hips brushing against hips and…dancing. Did Jack have to rub his nose in it?

Using the opportunity to wipe a bunch of dust from the edge of the shelf just behind the desk, he heard Jack shifting behind him. "Look, I said we were taking that out of the equation. No fuck buddies for the Doctor, he's too smart for that. Do you like Rose?"

He wiped the grey particles off of his fingers and onto his jeans, then brushed that away from the material at his knee. It'd just end up back in the air and back on the books, but it gave him something to do and didn't require him to look at the man who was grilling him as if he were a criminal. "Would I be travelling with Rose if I didn't like her?" It was a stupid question, really. He tried to spend as little time as possible with people he didn't like. Call him crazy. Of course, that was probably why Jack was still alive after all the different types of hell he'd been dishing since he'd figured out the Doctor's problem. "Yes, you nitwit. I like Rose."

"And you like spending time with her?"

The Doctor knew he was being lead in to something, so he turned back around to look Jack in the eye practically daring him to do it. "Obviously."

Jack was back to sitting with his feet on the arm of the other chair, slouched a bit and his head resting against a cushion. He was looking down his nose at the Doctor, judging him.

Rolling his eyes, the Doctor finished the remainder of his glass, shifting around uncomfortably in the silence. "Look, she's a clever girl. Saved both of our lives more than once."

Nodding, Jack rested his glass on his leg, looking like a man with no problems. It was infuriating. "And she's smart, and she's funny. Don't act like I don't hear you two laughing over every little thing. And she puts up with you. That's got to win her browning points right there."

…And the Doctor could see where this was circling back around to. "She's my best mate. And she says I'm hers. Can't we just leave it at that?"

Shrugging, Jack got up, snagging the bottle from the corner of the desk and pulling off the lid and refilling his glass. "See, that's exactly what I'm getting at. You like her. She's your best friend. Nothing wrong with that."

"And it's only natural," the Doctor pointed out forcefully, practically tearing the half-full clear carved crystal decanter out of Jack's hand, filling his own glass nearly to the rim. Jack made him drink. That's why he did it. "She's clever and she's fun and…" just about all I have left in the universe, the Doctor almost confessed. Well, except for his ship. But the TARDIS wasn't a hand to hold, and it certainly wouldn't keep him warm at night.

He really needed to stop that line of thought before it even started. That would only lead to trouble. Rose was…Rose. In some ways, she asked everything of him. Like when she stood up to him, standing between his weapon and the Dalek. She asked him to rethink his thousand-year-old view of the world. But in other ways, she asked nothing of him. She did not pry, she did not demand anything emotionally from him that he was incapable of giving.

In that respect, she was the perfect companion. Tegan was his poster child for needy companions. She was always trying to pry something out of him, using the old guilt technique that he'd dragged her off when she knew nothing about him. Even Adric was looking for positive reinforcement constantly. Peri, who knew what the hell she had wanted…no, wait. When looking at his past with these new…hormone coloured glasses, he suddenly had a very good idea what Peri had wanted. Which was a tad frightening, considering how…colourful and bulbous he'd been back then.

Romana too, now that he thought about it. She should have been his ideal companion, she was the closest to being his intellectual equal, after all (so sorry to her memory, but he graduated higher in his class, which was a near-miraculous feat considering that he did not test well). But she'd always been poking and prodding him in some direction he couldn't understand. Again with someone asking something of him that he could not give.

Ace had been a nice safe relationship. She was a bright, slightly dysfunctional pyromaniac teenager in need of direction, and he had happened to be quite fond of filling that professor role that she had thrust him into. Oh she'd been a right pain when she'd wanted to be, but they'd gotten along amiably. They weren't friends, though. Not the way he and Rose were. Rose laughed at his jokes. Ace laughed at HIM.

Damnit. He could run through the list of companions that he had liked, perhaps loved in the way he was capable of loving people. He'd enjoyed their company, had been sad when they'd parted ways, but he'd never quite had the comfort level that he'd had with Rose. It wasn't that he'd torn down that wall (a barrier which was probably higher now than it ever was before), it was that he wasn't being asked to. And that made all the difference in the universe.

Jack just didn't understand that. What he and Rose had… he was not going to muck up with this…biological aberration that he was being forced to suffer through.

It was only natural, he kept telling himself. She was Rose, and that summed it up exactly. He didn't tell her to quit Ricky the Idiot, she didn't ask him about the Time Lords. Perfect relationship. "She keeps me honest," he finished up quietly, taking a long draw from the glass.

Rose did that, questioned him, made him rethink his position when necessary. It was a wholly important job, in a universe where his people weren't around to stop him, should he ever go too far. Or at least annoy him into less flamboyant subversive behavior. He never realised the unique burden of being the only being in the universe with the types of powers his people possessed. He wasn't sure he believed in fate, but it was a bit of a serendipitous blessing that Rose had come into his life when she had, just after the war, and before he could destroy space and time too badly.

Only natural he should be attached. Completely and utterly…natural. And not his fault. Psychologically speaking, she was a prime candidate to be the object of his… affection? Fixation? Hormones aside, it was natural that she should be his best mate. There. That was the natural part.

So why did Jack have to keep going on about this? Why did he have to interrupt the Doctor's efforts to dull his senses (all of them) and contemplate his lousy bit of luck?

Well, because he was Jack. And Jack was constantly asking for it. He never knew just how close to death he walked on a daily basis, especially when he insisted upon bringing up the current subject matter.

And once again, Jack found a way to bring himself one step closer to Decapitation By Filing Cabinet. "Ok. So you like her, you're friends, she keeps you honest, she saves your life…" that was it, right there. That unwitting honesty. It made the Doctor want to just... "And even though she's your 'best mate,' you're not, under any circumstances what so ever EVER going to mate with her, because that's just… BASE. So we don't have to worry about that. Which leaves me with one last question. Do you love her?"

The desk drawers were empty in this old clunker. Well, except for the bottle of ink and the old hard-tipped pen in the middle drawer. The ink was unnecessary (well, he was sure he could use it in the whole staging it to look like an accident thing. Hunt for Red October—brilliant book) but he could use the pen to give Jack a frontal lobotomy. Horrible calligraphy accident, Rose. Don't look. Here, I'll protect you…

He sat up in the chair, causing it to creak like the dried out floorboards in a house of horrors. "Jack, can you just give it a rest? I'm quite aware of my situation, and I'm not going to muddle up the whole situation by mixing personal feelings with biological imperatives or vice versa. So, if you're done drinking my alcohol, I'd really like to get back to trying to figure out why the TARDIS refuses to go to thirteenth century Japan, because I really had my hearts set on it. Alright?" A perfectly reasonable and logical argument for why Jack should mind his own damned business.

Bottoming up the glass, Jack gulped the rest of the booze, shaking it so the last few drops clinging to the sides would drip into his mouth. "All done. And come on—you would love me less if I weren't in your business every three minutes." Jack was doing that cheeky grin thing he seemed so good at. It was equal parts charming, and 'why're we letting him live again?'

Plugging the bottle back up, the Doctor rose from the most uncomfortable chair on the ship and held out a hand for Jack to give him the glass, making it clear the captain was being dismissed.

Seeing that the Doctor's threshold for being told what to do about Rose had been passed for the evening, Jack handed over his tumbler casually then stuffed his hands into his pockets.

As the former Time Agent began wandering toward the door, an evil half-smile raised one cheek and those ice-blue eyes were back to twinkling with mischief. Whatever it was, the Doctor was sure he wouldn't like it. "Oh, by the way. I already talked to Rose about this."

Yeah, it was a mistake letting him live this long, the Doctor concluded as he felt the blood drain from his face. "You what?"

Flashing his pearly whites, Jack laughed. "She said she's always ready and willing to help out a friend in need."

Before the Doctor could lunge over the desk and strangle the life out of him, Jack chuckled and ran out the door.

Collapsing into the unforgiving chair, all the air rushed out of the Doctor's lungs. Why didn't someone just kill him now? Still…Well, that was certainly one burden lifted from him.

Jack's last statement left him open to start thinking bigger, grander and more emotionally fulfilling, because he no longer felt obliged to make the man's death look like an accident.

THE END?