Angel

Summary: Ten/Jack. "Do you know why you frighten me, Jack?" Drabble-oneshot.

Brown eyes stared into the clearest blue. Jack held his breath, hardly daring even to blink, for fear the moment might pass. The Doctor was bared to him, his eyes bright with the age and knowledge of his too-long life. Emotions, emotions stronger than anything human, swirled beneath the surface, both frightening and enthralling Jack all at once.

And he spoke.

"Do you know why you frighten me, Jack? No, let me rephrase that. Do you know why you frightened me? Why I run, or ran?

"You became a fixed point in time. Your timeline, your very being, became a solid pillar in the center of time, fixed, unchanging. Oh, your timeline itself could still change, here and there. Even something as set and stone and you fluctuates slightly; that's just how time is. But whatever happens to you will always happen, and it will happen for farther than I can even fathom - beyond my own sense of time. Billions of years into the future. It's too much for me. It overwhelms me, if I, for just one moment, look too closely at you. You're blinding.

"But no, that's not what scared me the most, Captain Jack Harkness. What terrified me.

"You became immortal, and suddenly our timestreams intertwined, dancing around each other beautifully. Crossing, crossing back over again. Sometimes together for just an adventure, sometimes together for years, sometimes breaking apart, then coming together all over again. That's what really scared me. You were my future, Jack, and the future has always frightened me above all else, because I don't know it. Because I can't know it. I didn't know what to think of you.

"Of course, now I realize. You're supposed to be that one unchanging thing, Jack. You, above all else, remain. Doesn't matter what happens to the rest of the world - somewhere, somewhen, there is a Jack Harkness. A fact. And somewhere, somewhen, I'm going to run into that Jack Harkness.

"You became a permanent part of me, without my say-so, and that scared me.

"And so I ran. Jack Harkness became a solid fact for the rest of my life, for all of time, and I ran, because I didn't know how to handle it. Never had something permanent before, you know. Everything dies, everything leaves. But now, something doesn't. I didn't understand.

"But I think I'm beginning to.

"You are my anchor, Jack, keeping me on my feet while diving through this madbrained universe of ours. The one thing I can always count on, that I can always come back to.

"Thought you were a curse, an omen. A demon, a mistake, haunting me the rest of my life."

Breath caught.

"Jack Harkness, you are my angel."

It was the most natural thing in the world for their lips to meet. Time snapped into place around them, and then faded into the background, eclipsed by sensation and the starkest ecstasy, and the truth of unending love.