for logan

[more_flexible]

[From here]

Maybe it was a fetish, but Jack hated labels of all sorts. He just knew what he liked. Too bad for the universe that what he liked amounted to pretty much everything. He'd left the compound and made his way back to his hut with Logan, covertly keeping tabs on how the guy handled breathing the cold air. Cold air wasn't a problem inside. The strange, round hut was warm and dry. Dulcita lay curled on an old shirt of Jack's near the fire and mewed at the pair when they came in, demanding the food she'd been promised.

Comments

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

"No," Logan admitted, frowning slightly to himself. "Jack, it was just supposed to be fun." Which it had been, up until a point, and part of Logan couldn't help but wish that he hadn't taken the time to get upset or care, or that they could just start over.

"Look, I get that you don't understand why I feel it's wrong, and I know I'm not going to be able to see it your way, because I've never had to do the things you did. Hell, I don't want to see it your way, I'd like to stop before I get that jaded and fucked up. I know you did bad things, but..."

But what? He'd known what Jack was like when this had started. He'd never been dazzled and blinded by the charm. He'd seen the bad long before he saw the good, and he'd accepted it. He'd wanted it. Logan didn't love Jack because of the man he was to everyone else, Logan loved Jack because of the man he was underneath the flawless skin and too white smile. The good and the very bad. He'd been just as seduced by the man's right hook as he had been by his kiss, so why was this different? Jack was Jack, and for all Logan couldn't understand how the other man could be okay with what he'd done, that didn't change how he felt.

"What else are you hiding in there, Jack?" he asked quietly, curious now as he turned his head to look at the other man. "We already opened the door, right? So what else is hiding in there?"

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"Logan," he said, his tone a warning all on its own. He couldn't imagine anyone really wanted to know the things he'd done. He'd spent the past three years doing a fairly effective job insisting he wasn't That Guy, even though he knew that he could be. Given the right circumstances, he could be in a heartbeat.

"What do you really want to know?" he asked, sighing softly. "Because whatever you learn, I can't undo. You know a lot of it. Not details...just facts. So what is it you want to know? What a fucking monster I can be? I think you just found out."

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

"You made a mistake, that doesn't make you a monster, Jack. You didn't even really drug me, you stopped when I said stop... You're not a monster, you just have different rules or something. And I'm not making excuses, I still think it's fucked up, but there's a difference between being a monster and being different. A monster would have kept going," Logan said, sitting back down on the bed.

"But yeah, I want to know. I want to know everything. I want to see you as who you really are, you don't have to hide shit from me. Maybe I don't like to sit around and talk about feelings or whatever, but when you're here, you don't have to be whatever it is you think you need to be to protect me."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

Jack huffed a soft, bitter laugh and shook his head. "I don't do it to protect you. I do it so I can stand myself," he said. That was enough to get him to his feet and he started to pace the floor. There was so much he could tell Logan, and so much he'd already told him. Logan knew things in detail that he'd shared with very, very few people in his life and only a couple other people here...who had vanished, so it didn't matter anyway.

"Okay," he said after a few passes from one side of the room to the other and back. "I...okay, first of all, I hate talking about this. It's too much like therapy." He returned to his seat but he was virtually vibrating with tension, as if his body was waiting to flee what memories Jack might make more real by giving them voice. Memory was a fragile thing; Jack knew that fact intimately. Fragile and volatile and sometimes impossible to ever put away again.

"I learned about control before I turned twenty. Before I was ever an agent. I started out in infantry. Nothing personal in infantry. You see the enemy and you kill them. But then I worked my way through the ranks and it wasn't long before I moved from infantry to leadership, then to specialized service. My specialty was using the enemy's methods for interrogation against them since I'd been there."

He let that sink in and waited for Logan to show any sign he remembered what Jack had told him about when he and his best friend had been captured. About what it took to break Jack.

"I was the go-to guy, see? Then, pretty soon it wasn't just the enemy. It was sympathizers. People who thought we should seek peace through surrender. I did them, too. I remember this one guy, we knew he'd given up secrets about weapons and tactics. He wouldn't tell us how much, though. So I had his family brought in. See, some people just need a little more incentive to break than others. I started with his wife. I saved the kids for later..."

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

Jack had told him plenty of stories now. Some funny, some tragic, each one chipping away a little of who Jack appeared to be so he could see underneath. He'd confessed to doing horrible things in the past, but Logan couldn't have been prepared to hear that, no matter what Jack might have told him as the weeks had passed.

He sat in silence, part of him trying to excuse it somehow while the rest of him shrank back. As much as he wanted to assure jack if hadn't been his fault or his choice, Logan knew that wasn't true, and he wasn't going to lie to other man and act as if he was just a victim. In situations like that, people made choices, and Jack... Jack had made his. Or so he said.

Another part of Logan, a much louder part, didn't want to believe it. It was so much easier to pretend it wasn't true, that Jack was just trying to scare him off.

"I don't believe it," he said after a moment, his voice soft and his body betraying how conflicted he was. "I don't think you could hurt someone like that."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"I had him tied to a chair. I made her bed over and hold onto his knees while I hiked up her skirt and fucked her while he watched her face. I made sure she came," he said flatly. Just facts. Just things he had done.

"You want to hear about what I did to the kids?"

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

Logan shook his head no, his face screwed up slightly as he looked away. Though it was unclear if he was asking Jack to stop talking, or if he still simply refused to believe the other man.

"Whatever you did, you had a good reason, I'm sure. I mean you were at war, right? You didn't have a choice, you had to so what they said."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

There was another sigh and he shook his head. "There was never a war I had a stake in when I was a Time Agent...and by then?" He paused, bile rising at the words on the tip of his tongue.

"I kinda liked it."

He had to get up and move again, hands finding his hair. "Do you remember, after Halloween, when I told you that you weren't a killer? That you'd killed him, but it was a good thing that you felt bad about it?"

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

Logan nodded slowly, looking down at the floor rather than at Jack as he spoke. "I remember. You said feeling bad about it was... better or something. That it meant I wasn't really a killer."

He had a horrible feeling he knew where this was going, and he looked up at the other man from where he sat. "You can say you enjoyed it at the time, that you didn't feel bad, but you do now, Jack. I can see it in the way you look right now. The way you're pacing. Maybe you were a monster, but not anymore. You wouldn't do that now."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

"They violated my devotion by ripping two years away from me. They stuck shit in my head that justified everything I did. They stripped my family from me," he rattled off, agitated more than he'd ever been in front of Logan...bordering on true, righteous fury that he was keeping in check through sheer force of will.

"I did everything they ever asked and then some and they paid me back with a brain full of nothing! I don't even know why they did it...if I even earned it!"

He rubbed his hand against his forehead. Hard. If he did it hard enough it might keep every memory tied to the ones he'd chosen to share in their place.

"I quit hurting people after that. I swore I wasn't going to be the twisted bastard they'd created. And then I met the Doctor and he saved me from the rest of it. I'd almost gotten over all the baggage of being an Agent when I died, came back, got abandoned, and then landed here. When the Doctor finally showed up, he wasn't the same man I'd known, and by that time I'd gone back to what I knew best to survive here." In case there was any doubt as to what he knew best, Jack added, "Lying and fucking."

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

"But that's not all you are, Jack," Logan said, trying not to flinch when Jack started to raise his voice. "You tell me all the time just how amazing you think I am. Sometimes I think maybe I should be saying the same to you. You talk about how you're good in bed and good in war... but I've seen so much more of you than that. I've seen you dance, and the way you find something attractive in nearly everything you see. I've seen you hunt and build, and... I'm just trying to say, it isn't all sex and lies. You do so much more than you realize."

He hesitated slightly, doing his best not to think about the torture or anything else, and got to his feet. Moving to stand behind the other man, he carefully wrapped his arms around him, pressing his face against the back of his neck.

It wasn't something he'd usually do, that level of affection reserved for only the most intimate of moments. And chances were, it wouldn't happen again for a long while. Still, in that moment, he needed to do it, and he refused to let his pride or nerves get in the way.

"I love you," he said softly. "Even knowing what I know now... I love you, Jack. I meant it when I said I wanted to know it all. Even the bad stuff. I want to know that part of you too. Even if it hurts to hear you talk about it, even if it sort of scares the shit out of me. ...I want it."

Taking a deep breath, he popped open two of the buttons on Jack's shirt, and slid his hand under the fabric to rest his hand over the other man's heart. "Captain," he whispered, though this time the title wasn't said to be seductive or mocking. It was said with quiet respect, his fingers tapping against cool skin in time with the other man's heartbeat.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

Jack was so tense, so stiff, he was practically trembling. The air around him was stifling and he wasn't sure he could catch his breath. Adrenaline coursed through his blood as his heartbeat raced. Control...he just needed to latch onto something to find some control before he fell and shattered.

He should leave. He should find Ianto. He should find some booze or get well and truly stoned. Avoiding all this shit was what he fell back on when he couldn't control it.

But then there was the solid warmth of Logan pressed against him, holding on, fingers against his bare skin. Jack swallowed hard as he listened to the guy speak with what seemed like such innocence and such insanely misguided faith. Jack could practically smell the fear and mistrust, could almost taste the disbelief...or want of it.

Captain.

He closed his eyes as that one word made him realize it wasn't the air choking him. He managed one shuddering breath and a slow nod before he felt something slide down his cheek, leaving a quickly cooling path as in sought the line of his jaw.

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

Logan went silent as he felt Jack shudder, letting out a breath he hadn't realized he was holding before kissing the other man's neck. The fingers that had been resting over Jack's heart stopped tapping, and he held the other man tighter as his other hand came to rest against the soft cotton of his shirt. With his fingers splayed over Jack's stomach, Logan found that his pinky grazed over where Jack's navel would have been had he been nude, and blindly he started to map out the other man's body through his shirt, finding freckles and other landmarks without undoing a single button.

There were a lot of things he could have said just then, but Logan had always felt that some moments just needed silence. That sometimes words were too much. It seemed as if uttering so much as a syllable would have shattered the moment, bringing them both crashing down. So even though he knew he'd eventually have to speak up, he remained quiet, content to simply hold the other man for as long as he would allow.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

He worked up to a deep breath that made his chest expand to the point of aching before he exhaled and reached up to dry his face. He had absolutely no right to let this effect him like this. It was fantastic hearing Logan say things Jack wanted to hear, but he was far too experienced at saying thing other people wanted or needed to hear to completely believe in anything but the idea that Logan believed what he was saying.

"I need a drink," he said flatly. More than one. More than twelve.

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

Logan held on only a second longer, and when he let go it was as if he'd never been holding Jack at all. His fingers went straight to his sleeves, undoing the cuffs and letting the fabric hang down over his fingers as he sat down on the bed again.

"I only have rum," he said quietly. "And it's kinda gross."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

Just the thought of rum made his stomach do a slow roll. Jack shook his head and purposefully kept his back to Logan as he went to the pan to use the last of the water to make a half a cup of tea.

There was no way he could face Logan--not now. The last thing he could take was hearing the guy say he loved him and then seeing what hid behind Logan's eyes now that he had an inkling of what Jack was capable of.

"I...am sorry," he said quietly, hardly loud enough to be heard across the room. "For everything."

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

"Good," Logan said simply, though his voice wasn't hard or cruel. and if jack had turned around, he would have seen that the look in Logan's eyes was no different now than it had been yesterday or the day before.

He was silent for a long moment, then wet his lips as he looked up at Jack, watching him from behind as he started to speak again.

"I drugged someone once. My friend. My best friend, actually. I thought if I slipped something into his drink he might chill out. He did, except... maybe more than I meant for him too. He wasn't the only one that got spiked that night either. This girl, this girl who I really- This girl who I ended up dating a year later, she had a spiked drink too. And, uh... she was raped," he said awkwardly, careful no to use any names as he spoke. "In a way, it was kind of my fault. I hated her back then, and I sat and laughed while she humiliated herself in front of all these people. I did nothing when they carried her off. She'd been a really good friend in the past, and I just... Hated her. I hated her so much that I let her get hurt, and now it doesn't matter how sorry I am. 'Cause I can't change it, and whenever I think about it, I have to remember how I laughed. How I encouraged it. How I turned a blind eye."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

It took the span of a breath for Jack to form the name.

"Duncan."

That was the only one it could be. From the way Logan had spoken about him and the way he spoke now, it didn't leave many other options. He wasn't sure who the girl would be, but considering Logan's small social circle here and, admittedly, back in the world as well, he could hazard a guess.

"All that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing. Tolstoy...or Burke. Depends on which side of the curtain you're on," he mused to his tea. In all of time and all of space, those were two words that persevered. Good and evil. Jack felt best in the realm of black and white--good or evil--to be neither and linger in grey made his skin crawl.

He had a sudden jolt of empathy for the Doctor, languishing here in the unending hell of questions. It was a thought he banished quickly, concentrating on his tea and debating the good and evil of laughing and turning a blind eye.

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

"I watch those reels, and I think... I think I was supposed to be the villain, and some writer in some other world took pity on me, and made me a victim instead," Logan said quietly. "When I first learned I was part of a show, I was so angry, but now? Now it's almost a blessing. It's like when people say it's god's will, not their own. Suddenly I had someone to blame for all the shit that happened, and all these things I'd done. It's not that simple though, is it? There isn't some guy sitting at a desk writing this shit for me. There are no hidden cameras or excuses. Just choices I've made."

Glancing up again, he silently willed Jack to look at him, wetting his lips once more as he spoke a little louder.

"I know you've done bad things, really bad things. But you're the hero of your story, Jack. I've only seen a little of it, but it's so obvious. You're the hero, and in the end you get to make the right choice. I think maybe that's why I'm still sitting here. You fucked up, but I know you'll make it right. It's what you're, like... programmed to do or something."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

Programmed. Wonderful. Jack spun on his heel and meandered to the chair Logan had been in to begin with, his eyes never leaving the dark liquid in the cup. He radiated the conflict and turmoil that kept twisting around in his mind and when he sat, the line of his jaw and mouth gave away a weakness he only indulged when he was alone.

When he finally turned to look at Logan, his eyes were rimmed red and utterly hollow. The only thing that ever made him feel like a hero was exercising the amount of control it took to keep his darker side in check.

"Can we just drop it?" he asked flatly.

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

"Sure, whatever," Logan sighed, toeing his boots off and pulling his feet up onto the bed. The look Jack was giving him went right through him, and he looked uncomfortable as he wrapped his arms around himself and frowned.

"Jack, if you don't want to be here, you don't have to stay. I just invited you here to have some fun. ...I think we stopped having fun a while ago."

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

He nodded, but made no move to leave. He wanted out. He wanted to run...except that's what he always did, didn't he? He took a sip of tea and found it cool enough to down in a few gulps before he laid the cup aside.

He was so good at leaving, but there was nowhere to go. That coupled with the fact that he didn't really want to leave, but he couldn't just sit there mulling over everything that had gone wrong since he'd left the rec room with Logan up to this moment made for more conflict than he was comfortable with.

It took mere seconds to reach a happy medium.

"I have to pee," he announced, then walked out of the hut without his coat, his shirt still undone, and one bootlace dragging across the floor.

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

Logan nodded, his gaze fixed on Jack's shoelace as he watched the other man walk out the door.

He'd planned what was supposed to have been a fun afternoon, only to instead end up with... this. It was a mess, Jack was a mess, and Logan raked his fingers through his hair as he tried to clear his head. His eyes wandered around the room, settling on Jack's coat and lingering.

He glanced at the door and then slid to his feet, picking it up and looking it over. When it didn't seem as if Jack was coming right back in, he slipped it on, looking down at himself snd then pulling it shut as he straightened up.

It was one stupid moment out of a whole afternoon, but in that moment, Logan felt a little better. The coat smelled like Jack, and he smiled softly, relaxing in a way he never did in front of other people. Jack would be back in a minute, and he'd have to think of something to say, something reassuring, but for now? For now he could smell the other man, and he let himself drown in the coat for a moment while he tried to think of a way to clean up the emotional mess they'd made.

[captainjack.livejournal.com]

The door practically erupted open as Jack rushed in, one hand jammed under his arm.

"I about froze my dick off," he declared, then noticed Logan in his coat. There was snow in his hair and he'd tucked the other hand in the opposite underarm as he shivered. "That looks good on you."

The cold had clearly frozen something other than his dick. Jack was more like himself, as if he'd left the introspection out in the cold. If it was as easy as that to let go of, he absolutely would have, but he'd only used the moments alone, shivering in the chill air to find a way to push the memories and feelings back where they belonged.

"I liked the pea coat, too."

[echolls-cursed.livejournal.com]

Turning, Logan eyed jack suspiciously, as if somewhere between the door and whatever snow pile he'd just pissed all over, he'd been abducted by aliens and replaced by an impostor. A happy impostor.

His eyes narrowed a little, but he didn't say anything about it as he shrugged off the coat.

"It looks better on you," he said, holding it out in offering and chewing his bottom lip thoughtfully. "Look, Jack, how about... How about we start again? If I could forget all that stuff that just happened, I would. So let's just pretend it didn't happen and... try again. Unless you just want to call it a night."