[item post || Roger Davis]

[more_flexible]

It had been two years. Two years on this fucking island with no way off. Jack had sucked it up and gotten on with it, just like he always had. Two years after losing Grey, he'd signed up and gone to war. Not so glorious when he got to watch his best friend get tortured. Two years wiped from his memory by the Time Agency, sparking a vendetta like none other. Two years...and what did he get for his trouble.

He saw it sparkle in the sand as he came out of the water. A shimmer of silver that tempted him to come closer, to see what it was. He bent and picked it up and he knew without really having to think about it. It was the ring. The Ring. It was so much more than a sub-space radiation transmitter, guaranteed for five millennia through three ecological permalayers. It was so much more than a reminder of his tenure as a Time Agent. It was so much more than a reminder of that mission.

It was the closest thing to a wedding ring he'd ever had. He'd had a partner, once. A real partner. Not like House. Not like Rose or the Doctor. Not like anything anyone here could even compare to. No one here could possibly be as close as he and the other agent. Fighting, fucking, stealing, conning, torturing, killing. Jack had been a Very Bad Man, once upon a time...and there had been someone who had understood that more than anyone else in all of time or the universe.

He'd changed, being here for two years. He'd recognized that more than anyone else. He could feel the change deep in his bones. He hadn't had any other option. He didn't even remember when he'd stopped waiting for an escape and started believing his own lies. He'd been here long enough to be that guy he said he wasn't.

And then there was a silver ring with a dark green stone in his palm, reminding him just what kind of man he had been for most of his life.

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[one--song.livejournal.com]

Wasting was one of those words that just sat in your throat wrong. When the bones were so angular that sleeping was made entirely uncomfortable, and eating about three pieces of mango made you full, it was time to get up and about. So, he went running.

His whole frame seemed lighter, not that he did the whole running thing so much. This was the cycle: he'd be OK for a while, then let himself shrivel up to near-oblivion, and then focus on his health enough to get by until he was OK again, and then the cycle would start over. At least he was in a part that built his muscle mass up. Would get people looking, again, if nothing else. And he'd showered. Extra bonus.

What he hadn't expected to find was Jack, wet and staring into his palm like he'd discovered some kind of artifact.

"Jack?" He called, slowing to a stop a few feet away from him. "Haven't seen you in a while."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

He looked up at the sound of the name and looked at Roger like he had to be talking to someone else. It took a second for him to register he was the one named Jack.

"Uh, yeah. Hi," he said, consumately distracted by the ring in his hand. He curled his fingers around it, hiding it from the man. "How've you been? You're..." He actually looked, then blinked. "Thinner."

[one--song.livejournal.com]

Although Jack was right and Roger was thinner, it was Roger's eyebrows that had drawn down in concern. He was behaving sort of like a junkie, hiding some obvious little thing in his hand and allowing speech to delay to the point of near unconsciousness. It made him feel... destitute. Alone. Old.

"Jack? What's up?" He took a step forward, eyes darting down to his hand.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

A slight shake of his head, a little bit of a shrug, Jack could feel it all through his body that he was thrown completely off his game. Of all people for it to happen in front of, too. Roger would call bullshit. He always did.

"It's nothing," he lied before swallowing hard. "Just one of those things. Island's fucking with me," he said, unable to speak above a hush. Fucking with him...great way to put it. It might be better described as gutting him, tearing out his heart, and hanging him to twist. It took nearly everything in him not to hit his knees. Every bit of control he had just to keep breathing.

[one--song.livejournal.com]

"Well, it looks like the Island's winning," Roger said, never one to disappoint. If paths had a reason for crossing, he had a feeling that bullshit-calling was his purpose in Jack's life. Although, Jack seemed like the kind of person who would have people lined up to call his bullshit. And if he wasn't Roger would gladly give him some of the 400,000 people that liked to keep Roger nice and fucking grounded when all he ever wanted to do was sleep and die.

"Are you gonna let me see it? Or are we gonna pretend like there's not something in your hand?" Roger could go either way. It was a nice day.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

As much as he wanted to cling to it and keep it safe, Jack equally wanted to turn and throw it into the breakers. Maybe he'd been lucky up until now. He hadn't gotten any corpses of dead lovers, no notes scrawled in his own blood. Things the island threw at other people, he'd been spared. Until now.

His fingers uncurled slowly and Jack held his hand out. It was nothing remarkable. Sort of gaudy, really. Anyone could mistake it for some piece of costume junk and pass it on by. That was part of the lure of it.

"That's it. That's all," he said, trying to sound calm and collected. Sound was one thing, the way he looked at the crappy jewelery was something else entirely. He might say it was nothing all that interesting, but it was painfully obvious it meant everything to Jack.

[one--song.livejournal.com]

Roger didn't dare try to take it out of Jack's hand. He really, really wasn't that stupid. Instead, he leaned forward to look at it, his hand curling around Jack's wrist to steady himself as he got a good look at it. Yeah, it did look like crappy costume jewelry, but there was something... majestic about it. Almost as if the air around it shimmered and displaced with some kind of pulse. Maybe it was just the power of sentimental value (no one just got some meaningless item, Roger knew that), but there was a pull to it.

"Looks... crappy," Roger admitted, bringing his gaze up to Jack's face, hand still steadied on his wrist. "So do you look at all rings like they just proposed on their own or what?" He smiled. He wasn't trying to start a fight, not really. Jack fascinated him and he wanted to know things about him. Not necessarily shit no one else knew, but things.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

He looked at Roger's hand on his wrist and his arm tensed to pull away, but he couldn't if he wanted to. Just tense, still, struggling with the memories of everything the ring meant.

"It's...my wedding ring," he said, following the statement with a short, bitter bark of a laugh. It wasn't really. It was just the most expeditious way to explain it without having to divulge all the details of the agent, the Agency, or much of his history.

[one--song.livejournal.com]

Roger raised a brow and slowly took his hand off of Jack. Those brief moments of short-supply, pressurized sexual energy that either exploded or seeped fumes of pheromones seemed to be absent, and he took a breath, cursing himself for missing it.

"Somehow I doubt that," Roger snorted, but that was only half-true. There was so much that Roger didn't know about Jack, so much he didn't dare ask about, that maybe he was married. Maybe he had kids. All those stories about time-travel and rifts had to have love stories scattered about, with loss and gain and dual losses, all for the quest. So yeah, he may have been married.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"Close enough," Jack replied, fingers closing again around the ring. "Might as well have been. It's part of my past I'm not exactly proud of," he lied. Not entirely lied. When he thought about it, when he could get past his hatred of the Agency, yeah...he was really damned proud of the work he'd done. He'd followed orders. He'd been one of the best. He'd been a Go-To guy.

Just because it was some of the most unsavory work by a lot of Galactic Standards was secondary.

But when he thought about it now, hating the people who ripped away two years, knowing he could be so much more than that sort of brutal criminal, remembering all the fucked up things he and his partner had done...that was when he was less than impressed with himself.

Jack took a slow breath, looked up at Roger, and forced a smile. "No, you don't get to make good on the suicide pact, Roger. It was a really long time ago."

[one--song.livejournal.com]

"That was my next question," Roger said, his lips quirked into a small smirk. Jack faked smiles and good days so well that sometimes, Roger couldn't tell the difference. A forced smile was something different, though, but if Jack needed a joke or two to be real enough, Roger could go with it.

"So, gonna tell me about it? Or are we gonna change the subject like we don't always meet at the shittiest times." Actually, Jack had missed Roger's shittiest time. But the way his rubs protruded probably told him that.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

That question coaxed a genuine laugh. "Tell you about it? It'll sound like a bad sci-fi movie," he said. He tok another look at his closed fist and uncurled his fingers, shifting the ring so he could hold it up by the band.

"I was a Time Agent. Travelled through time and space to steal things,set things right, make sure people didn't have tech before they were supposed to...or undo damage from other time travellers. That kind of thing. My partner and I, we were supposed to get this, get out, go on. Except the fucker who had it had a security trap that stuck us in a two week time loop. By the time we got out, it was five years later."

[one--song.livejournal.com]

Roger gaped. "Five years?" He blinked and shook his head, looking down at the ring like it had just spouted a mutant head from the center. All over a bad piece of theater jewelry? That couldn't have been. Amongst the hoodlums, hooligans, and hobos of Alphabet City, there were also skilled con-men, and Roger was pretty sure people didn't get sent out to steal 99-cent store rings.

"Time Agent? Is that like... a government institution?" There was now doubt in his mind that the government would endorse the theft of some kind of ring? He really, really didn't doubt it. Sooo much didn't doubt it.

"What's so special about... that ring?" He still looked at it like it might rust and fall apart or possibly jump up and bite him and with Jack? The latter was the most possible.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"Not...exactly a government agency, no," Jack said bitterly. "They're ruthless, heartless, brutal cocksuckers." He looked up and grinned, nothing in his eyes but a cruel hardness. "I didn't used to think that. This ring, it's just junk. It's just some other bit of tech that was a reason to kill people."

He stopped abruptly and looked at it one more time and affection and nostalgia washed over him, warm and comfortable. More comfortable than it should have been.

"But for five years, it was ours."

[one--song.livejournal.com]

Sometimes Roger wondered why Jack told him all this. His name was one that was whispered down the hallways, carrying over idle urinal conversation, on the tongues of the kitchen staff. Everyone knew Jack Harkness, most had fucked Jack Harkness, and many laid claim that they knew him not just intimately, but well. Roger understood that the two were not mutually exclusive with Jack (or hell, with so many) but did the others? And more importantly, did they know about this ring? This past life?

"Don't put too much stock into it," Roger said, both to Jack and himself, but he went on to clarify the former. "It's just another Island trick. I bet whatever it is doesn't even work here."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"I don't think the point of it is whether it works or not, Roger," Jack replied. Eyes on the ring, he tossed it into the air and caught it, the weight of it in his palm both a comfort and pure torture.

He was the only consistant thing in my life for half a decade.

For only a few years...we were like gods.

I will never get away from what I've done.

"Yeah, you're right. It's just a piece of junk from a long time ago," Jack said, his tone casual, his body relaxing as he put the lie on like a familiar suit. "I'll just hang onto it."

Jack paused.

"It's got sentimental value."

[one--song.livejournal.com]

For a second, Roger felt rather properly chided. He hadn't meant to be cruel about it, he just had a certain opinion on weddings and the shit that the island dropped in, and Jack obviously had some kind of attachment to it. But he seemed fine after the initial reply, and Roger did something he'd never done: leaned in and kissed Jack's cheek.

"Do what you want with it. It's from your funeral." Whether there had been a service or not, weddings were funerals, and all implications therein.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

The kiss, the touch, the twist on their previous conversations about marriage and death, and Jack finally smiled with a bit of warmth behind it. The unoccupied hand rose to cup Roger's cheek lightly, then he laughed as he gave the other man a little shove.

"It was before I ever got here. You can't hold my past against me." Mostly because Jack did plenty of that on his own. "Besides, from what I understand about my future, that was the only funeral I'll ever have."

It was so easy, this casual facade, this persona of Captain Harkness that he could just put on when he needed to. The ring had blown him sideways, but he was back. Righted. Steady. If it hadn't been for Roger's appearance, he might have fucked up and taken the shock back to the more populated areas of the island.

Not now. He had donned that same carefree attitude he always had, and he'd done it as much for Roger as for himself. No one wanted him to be honest.

Least of all, himself.

"I'm gonna head back, I think. You going that way?"

[one--song.livejournal.com]

There was a very, very good joke about holding things against Jack, but Roger didn't go for it. If for no other reason that he was speaking again before Roger could get the joke out, and he found his subsequent response more amusing.

"You can walk me to my door, but don't get handsy," Roger said, getting sibilant and flamboyant about it. He even put a limp-wristed hand to his chest and sashayed his way back over to where Jack was. He'd bought it. Every last word of Jack's carefully crafted calm had translated to truth, and Roger was carried away by the spectacle. It was a victimless crime, sure, but not even Roger knew he'd been conned.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

Jack rolled his eyes and laughed, the sound of it spilling from his lips, smooth and soft as silk. He shot Roger a look of affectionate exasperation before jutting his chin toward the path back.

"Fine. I won't get handsy," he replied as he started to walk. At least one of his hands was occupied, anyhow, and there wasn't a single person on the island he'd release the ring for. Not Roger. Not anyone.