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The Doctor didn't ask again; not then.
Good.
Jack watched the Doctor watch the Master's body burn on its pyre, then stalk straight back into the TARDIS control room. The Doctor's eyes were shadowed, Time Lord eyes, his face frozen into a mask, and his normal chatter was notably absent. Jack trailed behind, equally silent, and simply went to work alongside him, putting the TARDIS control room back into order, restoring everything the Master had rewired and rearranged.
He'd known the Doctor well, a long time ago, and for everything that had happened, he still did. The emotion simmering under the Doctor's skin was certainly intimately familiar. He'd known how to cut through it, too, once.
Grief. Loss. Self-loathing.
The Doctor viciously ripped out a quantum segmenter the Master had wired into the main temporal gauge. Jack winced in sympathy, and then very deliberately took a moment, resting his forehead against the console he'd been working on.
He wished he hadn't taken off his coat.
The sound of the Doctor's tinkering, the hum of the TARDIS retreated into unreal distance. Jack sat. He breathed. His heart kept beating. He breathed.
Jack noticed no movement until skin touched skin: a cool hand against the back of his neck. He didn't flinch; he didn't stiffen. He didn't let himself physically react at all - not until reality caught up with him and he remembered that the man he wouldn't give a reaction to was dead. Then, the muscles in his back tensed after all, and he made no effort to hide it.
The Doctor twitched in response, but didn't move his hand. "Jack," he said, quietly. Merely his name.
Jack barely suppressed a growl. "I said I don't want to talk about it." Answering all the wrong questions, what good would that do? The Doctor knew those answers well enough.
The light touch of the palm against the nape of his neck became pressure, cool and insistent.
"Jack. What did he do to you?"
It didn't sound like concern; it didn't sound like pity. It sounded ... Jack's hand clenched around the spanner he was still holding. He set it down.
"Jack." There was a timbre in the Doctor's voice that Jack had never quite heard so clearly before. Dark and ageless, and not entirely here-and-now. In it he heard the Master's cruelty, and the Doctor's despair, and he knew exactly why. He wasn't going to give in to it.
Jack said nothing. Loudly, stubbornly.
"I need to know." Quiet, insistent. "Tell me," the Time Lord's - the Doctor's voice insisted, low. His hand was still on Jack.
Jack sighed. "I did what he wanted, you know," he said, almost conversationally. "Sometimes, at least. He never could figure it out."
The Doctor stilled. "I asked what he did."
"And I'm not telling you," Jack snapped. I'm not telling you what you already know. "But I'll tell you this. He expected me to play the stoic hero. He expected to break me - he wanted to make me scream and beg." He smirked, viciously. "And I did, but not the way he expected me to." Jack had given him random responses, and because the Master couldn't conceive of someone not being too proud to beg - because he couldn't imagine someone doing it deliberately without being broken by it, Jack had managed to confound and frustrate him all through that year, no matter how many times he'd died in the process.
The Doctor's hand against Jack's neck softened, just a little. "All right," he said. "All right." His voice was low, distant, but his other hand came around to splay over Jack's belly, a familiar touch.
Jack almost shivered, almost smiled. That was usually his move. He nodded briefly, and that was enough. The Doctor shifted closer, deftly undid Jack's fly, and snaked a cool hand inside to cup Jack's soft cock.
"You know too much already," the Doctor muttered almost to himself. His fingers fluttered along Jack's length, teasing. Jack gasped, and leaned back a little.
A swat against his hip. "Up."
Jack complied, kneeling up and hooking his thumbs into his trousers' waistband, tilting his hips in invitation.
"... All right," the Doctor said again. Jack smiled to himself at the brief hesitation.
His trousers were down in a moment; then the Doctor's cool palm was firm again at the nape of Jack's neck. Soon, cool fingers were between his cheeks, probing, pushing.
"You begged for him, did you." The Doctor nearly spat the words.
Jack threw a glare over his shoulder. He knew where that was coming from. It didn't take a moment for him to decide, though. He arched his spine, pushed back against the Doctor's fingers. "Please," he rasped. "Please, Doctor."
The Doctor's fingers jerked, and then drove into him in one harsh thrust. Jack moaned, without restraint.
"So obliging," the Doctor said, viciously. "Enjoying this, are you?"
"Always." The Master had never managed to truly reach him; the Master hadn't managed to ruin this for him. And Jack wasn't going to let the Doctor think otherwise - wasn't going to feed into the Doctor's self-loathing. The Doctor wanted revulsion, wanted resistance. Wanted punishment. Jack wasn't going to give it to him. "Please," he whispered again.
"Wringing pleasure from anything. Aren't you, Jack?"
Jack couldn't decide if that sounded more accusing or jealous. At any rate, it deserved no response. Once upon a time, the Doctor had told him the same thing, but then it had been delight in his voice, a shared joy.
Now, Jack took a wry sort of pleasure from reminding the Doctor of that joy. From refusing the darker memories the Doctor wanted to dwell on.
When Jack came, he slumped forward, crumpling against the console. The Doctor's hands withdrew, almost hesitantly. Jack turned around, pulling up his trousers.
There was a wet spot on the Doctor's crotch. Jack smirked at it.
That seemed to jerk the Doctor out of his script; he gave a brief deer-in-the headlights look, ran a nervous hand through his hair and fiddled with a shirtsleeve, which had been rolled up and was coming loose. But then his eyes were back on Jack. Focused; so focused. Dark, fathomless. "Why won't you tell me?" he asked again.
And Jack finally had enough. He leaned forward and pushed, hands against the Doctor's shoulders, snarling right into the Doctor's face.
~*~
But part of him was glad. He'd known - had known, always, that if he pushed hard enough, eventually Jack would push back. And then he'd finally get what he deserved.
"All right," Jack said, lip curled. Disgust, finally. "Ask me."
The Doctor blinked; then bared his teeth. "I did. Several times." He shook his head tiredly, threw Jack a long look, and turned away. "Out with it, then."
"I didn't want to have this conversation." Jack's voice was tight. "All you had to do was keep your mouth shut. But you didn't, so now you're going to finish what you started."
The Doctor met his eyes, almost steadily. He could feel the fury simmering under Jack's skin. He welcomed it. He knew how to stoke it. "You were the one who didn't want to answer."
"No, I didn't. Not until you stopped prevaricating. You've been tip-toeing around it for days."
An innocent head-tilt. "I have no idea what you mean. I'm trying to help, Jack."
Jack lashed back with something worse than viciousness - with truth. "No, you're not."
Well, Jack had the right of that. The Doctor couldn't help anyone, least of all Jack. They were getting there now. They were staring at each other, both furious. Both furious at the Doctor.
"You think I don't know?" Jack demanded. "Ask me, damn it! Ask already. And you'd better be ready for the answer."
The Doctor held up for another moment; then even his anger deserted him, leaving nothing but revulsion. He opened his mouth, but he couldn't force out the words.
"Say it!"
The Doctor swallowed. "We were the same," he finally forced out, tonelessly. "We were the same, he and I. Weren't we?"
"Were you?" Jack sounded calm now, cold. "Time Lord." His eyes ran over the Doctor's body, and then he reached out, holding the Doctor's face between his hands.
The Doctor flinched, but couldn't flinch away. Good. Say it, Jack.
"What you are, Doctor. What you can do. Do you think it's a shock to me?" Jack's voice whipped at him like a lash. "All that power, all that vision. All that callous caprice. You think I didn't know you could ruin worlds if you chose? You think I don't know that you have?"
The Doctor held very still. If he moved, Jack might stop.
"You think I can't see it in your eyes, Time Lord?" Jack spit out the name again, like something vile and rotten, like truth. "I know what you are. You're a god, aren't you? A god among men."
He couldn't keep quiet at that. "I'm not some higher being." It was a weak protest. They both knew it.
Jac snorted. "Whatever gets you through the day." He leaned forward, his breath harsh against the Doctor's face. "I know you, Doctor." And then his lips were on the Doctor's.
The Doctor's face went slack with shock, and Jack used his advantage. The kiss started hard, forcing itself into being, a reminder and a punishment, but then it shifted into unwanted gentleness. No, no, that wasn't how things were supposed to go! The Doctor tried to resist, then, but couldn't find the strength.
When Jack finally allowed their lips to part, the Doctor felt empty, adrift. Jack was holding him, and that, too, wasn't supposed to be.
"Was he anything like you? Yes, of course," Jack said, almost kindly. "And no, not at all."
The Doctor looked away. "What kind of an answer is that?"
Jack snorted. "A truthful one. Would you rather I lied to you?" He huffed a humourless laugh, and had to look away himself. "I can do comforting lies; done plenty of that in my time. Only I'm not sure which you'd find more comforting."
The Doctor said nothing.
"You loved him." Then, more firmly, "You forgave him."
If his hearts clenched, was that admission? If he refused to say it, was it denial enough? The Doctor knew his own guilt well enough. If only Jack would hate him for it.
"You're a Time Lord," Jack finally said, quietly, like a judgment.
Finally. After all.
"I know," the Doctor said. And he knew Jack heard the despair in his voice.
~*~
"I said once that I'd never doubt you. Obviously that was spoken in ignorance," Jack sneered. "I didn't know then what I know now."
He could see it land, could see the Doctor flinch. "Of course," the Doctor whispered.
"You were lucky, you know," Jack continued, conversationally. "Doubt was the least of it. There were times I hated you. There were entire decades when the first thing you'd have had from me would have been a punch to the nose." The Doctor's brown eyes were fixed on him, hungry, drinking it up. "And with all that I know now ... yes, I'll always doubt you." A wry smile. He cupped the Doctor's face in both hands again. Here it was, the final blow. "And yes, I'll always have faith in you."