tampered | (no subject)

(no subject)

When; August 3, around noon
Rating; PG-13
Characters; Kyle Brooks

justashow and Jack Harkness

handsomejack
Summary; The Captain and the Barrister attempt to have lunch.
Log; Kyle waited outside the restaurant, leaning casually against the rough stone wall of the building and trying not to look like his stomach was doing flips. He also resolved not to check his watch again, as he knew he'd arrived far too early and it was pointless to watch the minute hand tick around. Part of him was still expecting a phone call with Jack's apologies and the reluctantly given statement that he just wasn't ready to see Kyle again.

Which was all right. Kyle would accept that, yes, if he'd been sent home to a world that forced him to kill off pretty much every joy he had and then was dumped back into the City after a year of mourning to find these things set in his lap again, he would be hard-pressed to face them too. But from Kyle's perspective, he'd had both his lovers stolen from him and even though they returned to be right in front of him, he couldn't touch them. And that was difficult to deal with too.

Kyle shook himself and rolled his eyes. This was not the pity-party hour. This was lunch. He wouldn't be greeting Jack with sad eyes and shaking hands. He was going to be bright and casual and gently coaxing and not at all clingy or otherwise give the impression of a man who has neither slept nor ate well in almost a month. In fact...

Kyle took his sunglasses off and checked his appearance in the reflective surface. Not that bad. His outfit was perfect, hair too, and concealer and moisturizer hid the shadows under his eyes. He was ready.

And still early.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Well, there was a lot of excitement and a really cool SUV, speaking of which.

"Did Ianto tell you he got the SUV stolen?"

Jack's smile was a little more relaxed after Kyle took his hand and he closed his fingers gently around the other man's.

"How did he manage that?"

Kyle had visions of a tentacled alien hijacking.

"He took it to the estate development where his sister and brother in law live. Figured that the triple deadlock would keep the rowdy lads from having a go at it."

Jack chuckled and looked a bit rueful.

"He figured wrong."

"I suppose that's a bit like leaving an Audi in downtown Detroit?"

Kyle laughed a little, imagining the look on Ianto's face.

"Poor guy."

"Do they usually take a victory lap and moon you out the window of an Audi?"

Hey, he didn't know! He did, however, know enough about the estates to know the drill. It was all together possible Jack had lost a car once while looking in on Rose.

"I'm surprised he didn't shoot them," Kyle said, mock serious.

"Or hire them. Teenagers who can remove a triple deadlock and have enough balls to do a victory lap while mooning might be good ones to have on your side."

"You have a point and I might have thought about that but Ianto told me right after we learned Gwen was pregnant and just before we learned I was about the blow up. Sort of slipped my mind."

There was a hint of the old Jack in the casual way he spoke of blowing up, though he brushed his thumb lightly along the side of Kyle's palm.

"Blow-" Kyle stopped himself and shook his head.

"Nevermind," he said firmly, "I don't want to know." It seemed like the kind of thing that would only upset him and he still needed to convince himself to eat lunch.

Speaking of which, the food was arriving. Kyle refused to move his hand from Jack's which gave the waitress a bit of a panic moment as she decided where to put the plates, but Kyle gave her a brilliant smile when she nudged the appetizers to the side of their linked fingers and she returned it knowingly.

Taking the hint, Jack smiled and looked away as the waitress came with the food. Personal he felt it was an all time record, he'd died 6 times in 5 days.

When they once again had their privacy, Jack picked up a mushroom with his free hand and held it up to Kyle's lips. There was no pushy expectancy from the gesture, it was actually an attempt to be playfully romantic.

Hesitantly, Kyle parted his lips for the food. Tension, for Kyle, sat in his shoulders and his stomach and he kept waiting for the knot in his abdomen to untie enough that food would go down easily. So far it rarely happened.

But the gesture was familiar and Kyle recalled other shared moments, taking pieces of pineapple from Jack's fingers while they watched a movie, laughing around the mouthfuls. He wanted that back.

If Jack noticed the hesitancy, he didn't pay it any mind. Drawing attention to it would only cause Kyle to dig in his heels, so Jack had at least learned -and remembered!- that sometimes it was best to just carrying the younger man along.

Please at the disappearance of the mushroom, Jack ate one himself before reaching to fork up the second appetizer, offering it to Kyle to taste.

Pineapple sharing had always been a good time, as had teasing whoever ate the most pineapple.

The first bite went down well. Kyle relaxed more and there wasn't any hesitation in taking the second offering.

Although he did lick the fork tines teasingly when the bite was swallowed.

"We look ridiculously sappy, I hope you realize."

"Well," Jack said, picking up another mushroom and offering it to Kyle. "If I'd waited till tomorrow, I believe we would have had a proper anniversary to celebrate."

"Oh?" Kyle blinked and thought a moment, then smiled as he remembered that first face-to-face meeting.

"I'm not sure you can call you plying me with alcohol in order to temper the strange time-travel tales an actual date."

"Oi," Jack said, snarfing a mushroom and then back to offering Kyle a forkful of the other treat. "There was alcohol, conversation and flirting. That counts as a date in my book."

This time, since someone had been sassy with the tines, Jack lightly brushed the rich food against Kyle's lips.

"Only alcohol for me," Kyle pointed out. "As I recall, you had water. And you were playing with phallic objects."

And then he had to pause and lick his lips clean. He raised an eyebrow at Jack and murmured, "You're making a bit of a mess."

"Well," Jack chuckled. "You and Ianto both know, you never can take me anywhere."

It was shy, unused for that long year, but a hint of the old twinkle showed in blue eyes that were probably older than Kyle remembered.

"That is certainly true."

Kyle took up his own fork, a spark of mischief in his own eyes, and made his own offering to Jack's lips.

"I suspect that's why Ianto has the pizza delivery place on speed dial."

Smiling softly, Jack curled his tongue around the tasty morsel and slowly drew it off the tines. He was at least polite enough to chew and swallow before speaking.

"That and Thai. You never want to take me out in public where chopsticks are involved."

"Yes, I remember your last attempt at chopsticks," Kyle said with amusement.

Without thinking about it, he stabbed at a mushroom with his fork and put it in his own mouth.

"You're lucky someone didn't lose an eye."

Edited 2009-08-04 01:02 (UTC)

"I still say I could do that trick with my tongue and it would work," Jack insisted and realized that for the first time, in what felt like a long time, he was genuinely relaxing and enjoying the moment.

No worrying about the past or the future, just living in the now.

"Ianto makes it look so easy, it isn't fair."

Kyle laughed at the slightly sulky statement and gently waved his fork in Jack's direction.

"I think you should leave those kinds of tongue tricks to Ianto and concentrate on the other kinds of tongue tricks you already know you can do."

Jack gave a little mock pout and popped a mushroom in his mouth as if making a statement.

Chuckling, the waitress found them like that as she came to take their lunch orders. With a glance towards Kyle, Jack put in an order for soup (the bisque that Ianto liked) adding in the extra quart for Kyle to take home and then he made a special request of the kitchen.

Rather than one large, possibly overwhelming sandwich, Jack asked if the kitchen could make quarters of some of their specialties. The waitress seemed surprised but after a quick consult she agreed it could be done.

Sending her on her way, Jack turned back to Kyle and squeezed his hand.

"Now, I'm definitely being sappy."

"It's all right, I'll forgive you it," Kyle said, smiling softly.

He felt much better now. They weren't strangers, they just had to learn to get used to each other again, and it would happen in its own time. Jack was still Jack.

"We should probably be careful though. That waitress looked like she was two seconds from sending over a violinist with roses in his teeth."

And as the Doctor had said, Jack was still Jack, maybe a little wiser now but still the same man, he just needed to remember by being around the people who cared about him and who he loved.

"You don't like violinists?" He said, teasing softly and offering Kyle another mushroom.