m_findlow

Greg Bishop puffed out a breath as he was permitted to leave Doctor Brennan's office. Even though he already had the job, it had still felt like he'd just been put through a second gruelling interview, in which she was testing his mettle and his ability to comprehend what she was telling him without him having a complete mental breakdown. After everything she'd shown him around this massive underground complex hidden beneath the tidal flats that skirted the city, he didn't think it was likely that anything else could surprise him. In the last week his whole world had been turned upside down with the revelation that there existed aliens and other worlds. That there was a task force charged with keeping incursions of such alien origins in check surprised him less than did the request that he be transferred to their operations. 

'All of the relevant records will of course be made available to you,' Brennan continued on, following just behind him, seemingly not done with him yet. 'You'll want to study them, I'm sure, so that you can understand what's to be expected of you here, and also to identify where our observations have been somewhat… lacking.' 

'I'm sure your team have things well in hand,' he assured her, 'but I will of course review all the files and report back to you.' 

'Of course you will,' she replied, as if there had ever been any doubt. As she finished the comment, the pair of them spotted someone off across the other side of the hub's main floor, a tall man in a heavy military greatcoat that made Greg feel immediately at ease. 

'Captain Harkness!' Tilda Brennan's voice called out sharply to him, and had a parochialism to it that hadn't been present when she'd been speaking with Greg. 

The man turned on his heel and smiled. 'Doctor Brennan! You look ravishing today.' 

Greg thought she looked anything but in her dour brown pantsuit meant only to intimidate. She was not an attractive woman, and he'd even go so far as to say she wasn't what would be described as handsome, either. 

Brennan's arms folded across her chest. 'To what do we owe the pleasure of your company, today?' 

'Just tying up a few loose ends. And who is this?' As he said it he was giving Greg an up and down look, appraising his own attire - charcoal pinstripe and a sky blue necktie, meant specifically to draw attention away from his eyes which were precisely the same colour and always far too intense for his own liking. People always made comment about them and it made him grossly self conscious. This man was giving him that same look now. It was also impossible to deny that the man was quite handsome himself. 

'Jack, I'd like you to meet Greg Bishop. He comes highly recommended to us.' 

Jack threw out his hand and Greg took it, giving it a firm shake. 

'Mister Bishop will be joining us in his capacity as our newly appointed chief medical expert. Not that I expect you'll have much of a need in that respect.' 

Jack gave her a playful smirk, and Greg could see the way it rankled her, this flippancy in their rapport. 'Oh, you know me. Always do my best to stay out of trouble. In peak physical condition.' 

She narrowed her eyes at him. 'Indeed. One should almost think you were bulletproof, if not always in the figurative sense. She gave him another baleful look. I'd have Mister Huws give Mister Bishop here a run down on basic procedures and equipment, however he's gone home early on account of a locally acquired malaise. I don't suppose you could avail yourself for a few hours? Unless of course you have…' she cleared her throat in a disparaging tone '…other commitments?'

Jack gave their newest recruit one look and Greg knew he wouldn't mind hanging back one bit. 'I'm always happy to serve.'

'Mmm,' she hummed disbelievingly as she swept back towards her office. 

Jack threw his hand out again, looking for a second handshake, along with his best smile. 'Captain Jack Harkness. Welcome aboard.' Greg's grip was still firm the second time around with none of the hesitancy or awkwardness he might expect. It was a little game Jack liked to play, getting that measure of the man, but it was the eyes that grabbed him. His own were like muddy pools in comparison to the bright ice blue that snared his attention and held it, like a deer in the headlights. 

'We've never had a proper doctor here before.' Jack chuckled at his own statement. 'Makes sense now that I think about it, given how often people get injured in this line of work.' 

'So Doctor Brennan tells me,' Greg replied. 'She's briefed me on the key matters but I'll be wanting to review whatever medical files are on hand, and to conduct some baseline physical examinations of the staff here.'

Jack didn't let this sudden burst of professionalism put him off. 'I'd be more than happy to let you take down my particulars any time,' Jack said, puffing his chest out a little further and twisting slightly to the side to give Greg what he perceived to be his best angle. Not that all his other angles weren't equally fine. 

'All in good time.' 

Jack frowned a little at the initial failure to impress. 'That's no Welsh accent you've got there. Where're you from?' he asked, trying a different tact.

'Birmingham. I just moved down this week. My landlady wasn't so enthusiastic about having a bachelor move in but she was happy enough to accept double the rent she might have gotten from anyone else not conscripted. I daresay she thinks I might woo the young ladies at the uniform factory at the end of the lane.' 

'I'll bet she does. You don't sound like a Brummy, though.' 

Greg chuckled and Jack decided he liked the sound. 'Eleven years of public boarding school will beat that out of you.' 

'So, what you're saying is that they only raise cultured boys?' 

He gave a small shrug. 'They attempt to.' 

Jack grinned at him. 'I've never dated an alumni.' 

'And you won't be dating this one,' Greg warned him, those blue eyes flashing angrily for a moment. 

Jack threw his hands up in defence and backed away half a step. 'Sorry. I didn't mean to ruffle your feathers. I just assumed by your wardrobe that you batted for the opposition. Did I misread the signals?' 

There was a tension in Greg's shoulders that immediately gave away the truth of the matter. 'You mean does everybody throw themselves at you? Yes, Brennan warned me about you. And how I dress or what my romantic preferences are is really none of your business.' 

Jack kept his hands raised, trying to be as non-threatening as possible. 'Okay, okay. We've really gotten off on the wrong foot here. For the record I don't care what the law says. Your secret is safe here.' Greg's own response had given him away. If he wasn't he'd have been outraged at being declared a homosexual. Jack had been on the receiving end of the problem more than once, loathing the idea that it was criminal to love another man. 'I only meant to say that I think you're very handsome, and a good doctor as well, I'm sure. We could really use one.' 

He could see Greg wasn't sure how to take the flattering comment. His earlier defensive anger dissipated. 'Sorry. I don't mean to snap at you. After all these years you'd think I'd be used to it, but it's a dangerous world out there for people like us. At times it's difficult to know who you can trust.' 

Jack nodded. 'You don't know the half of it.' 

'If we could keep things professional, it would be appreciated.' 

'Of course,' Jack promised. He slid Greg into the "slightly too hard" basket for now. Just because they were both open to wider deals didn't make them an automatic match, much as Jack might hope. 

'Jack?' Brennan's sharp voice cut through the air once more. 'I've just had a telegram that there's a weevil running amok a few blocks from here. Llinos has got her hands full. I don't suppose you could stop flirting long enough to hang around and deal with it?' 

Jack sighed dramatically and rolled his eyes at Greg. 'I suppose I could do that for you.' 

Greg watched their intriguing rapport. Brennan had described Jack as something of a freelance agent, rather than a full time Torchwood operative. Whether it was Brennan's terse nature that put Jack off, or his laissez-faire attitude that annoyed her, he couldn't say. Neither seemed all that happy to be in one another's company, that much was clear. He decided he would have to tread carefully until he could ascertain whose favour he should work harder to win. 

'Take Doctor Bishop with you,' Brennan said, not even meeting his eyes as she commanded it, already speaking about him in the third person as if he weren't standing right there. 'If it gives you trouble, kill it. It'll give Bishop a specimen to properly study.' 

Jack's eyes narrowed and his jaw tensed. 'Yes, ma'am.' 

Greg waited until he was certain that Doctor Brennan was out of earshot and even then he decided to keep his mouth shut, just in case. Instead he looked toward Jack for guidance. He watched the man sigh and shove his hands in his pockets. He nodded towards a doorway half hidden in the side of the tiled wall. 'Let's roll.' 

Greg's confidence to open his mouth and speak his mind only returned once they were safely behind that door, all the way down a dark corridor and out the other side into what appeared to be an underground space where a large cream coloured Daimler lay parked. Jack unlocked the passenger side door and popped open a small compartment, extracting a pistol. 

'We're going to kill it?' Greg asked, as Jack passed him the gun. Greg didn't question the action of being handed a firearm, nor make any comment about it. He'd handled guns before and this one wasn't dissimilar to one he'd owned before. It had been one of Brennan's quizzes, whether he could handle firearms, given his history. The wooden grip felt rather sickenly familiar, but he tried to remind himself that the pistol was meant as a defensive weapon rather than an offensive one, and that he wouldn't be using it against humans, so he hoped. 

Jack's face turned stormy as he rounded the front of that car and slid into the driver's side. 'No. We're going to capture it, sedate it and put it back where it belongs.' 

Greg slipped into the passenger seat beside him, pulling the door shut. 'And where's that?' 

'A pocket of sewer tunnels down near the wetlands. Not what you'd call prime real estate but they seem happy enough there, and they don't bother the locals so much.' 

'Is that not a direct contravention of Doctor Brennan's orders? She seemed to be very clear on the killing and dissecting part.' 

All that earlier charm and smiles had drained from Jack's face, leaving just a stern, steely determination. 'Torchwood likes to kill the things it doesn't understand. My job is to prevent that as much as possible. Don't get me wrong, a weevil is extremely dangerous. Lots of teeth, razor sharp claws and no negotiation skills whatsoever. If it feels threatened, it'll tear your throat out. It needs to be put in a community of its own kind where it'll cause less trouble.' Jack reached across to the glove box and popped it open again, pulling out two small canisters that would fit in the palm of a hand. 'Take this,' he said. 'If you get close enough, you spray that in its face. It'll confuse it long enough to slip a bag over its head and get it properly sedated.' 

Greg studied the canister. 'What's in it? Chloroform? Mustard gas?' 

'Something else,' Jack replied. 'Something the Ministry of Defense would probably like to have to fight off the Germans. In close quarters combat at least.' He took the second vial and slipped it into his pocket even as he was pulling the car out of the darkened space, up a ramp and out into the night air. 'The Ministry could probably weaponise it for wider distribution, but let's just say that's one headache we won't ever have to worry about.' They wouldn't need to. The Americans would come up with something far, far worse with which they would win the war. 

Jack took his eyes off the empty road for a moment and watched as Greg turned his own canister over in his hands, a studious expression in his face, as if he took everything in life seriously. Jack wondered what it would take to put a smile on that face and how he might go about breaking down that defensive professional wall. There was an immediate sexual attraction Jack felt being so close to a handsome man like Greg. Jack couldn't help it. The harder they liked to resist, the more Jack wanted them. But he'd told Greg hoped to keep his professional distance. For now at least.

'So, tell me, Greg Bishop, where did Doctor Brennan rustle you up from? Torchwood doesn't tend to find people. People usually find it.' 

'I was decommissioned from the British army.' 

'Ex army?' That made Jack's eyebrows raise up. 

'Medical corps.'

'Seen much action?' 

'No.' He seemed slightly ashamed of that, judging by the tone of his voice. 'In fact, I'd only just received my commission. Rushed through officer training straight out of medical school.' 

'Good time to be decommissioned,' Jack observed. 'War's an ugly thing. Those boys they're sending over to France right now are just cannon fodder.' 

'You sound like you've seen some action yourself.' 

Jack nodded. 'Air Force volunteer. Torchwood. Bit of both, really. The Great War was a real eye opener.' 

Greg looked at him curiously. Jack could tell he was trying to calculate how old Jack must have been back in 1914 and realised he wasn't old enough. Even coming in right at the end in 1918 wouldn't make the maths work. 

'I'm not quite what I look like,' Jack said, trying to figure out how to put it delicately without freaking the man out. Rather than come right out and say it, something made him hold back. Usually he was so flippant about his immortality but Greg felt different. Jack felt a little vulnerable telling him. Whether that was because he was a doctor and might want to experiment on Jack, he couldn't say. He didn't think Greg was that type. Some who'd worked for Torchwood in the past definitely were, but Greg seemed gentle enough. Perhaps he just didn't want to put Greg off. There was always a chance Jack might get to know him a little better - and he Jack - before it came to spilling that secret. Being immortal and undying didn't always feel like something he should be proud of. It made him a freak of nature and he didn't want Greg thinking he was a freak. 

'Older than you look?' Greg offered. 

'I work out and moisturise.' He could tell Greg wasn't entirely sure what that meant but he didn't pursue it. 'Torchwood is going to deliver you the unexpected on a regular basis. All I can suggest is get used to it.' 

'Starting right now?' 

Jack's smile returned. 'Oh, yeah. Your first weevil is not something you're likely to forget.' 

Brennan had said the weevil sighting was only a few blocks away so Jack pulled the Daimler over to the side of the road and stepped out. If they wanted to find it, they'd need their eyes and ears not impeded by the roar of an engine and the beam from their headlights. 

'Stay close and keep your eyes peeled,' Jack told him as he plucked his webley from its holster and kept it pointed out in front. He realised what a contradiction he must look like, stating that they were going in for the humane capture and release, yet maintaining a weapon. So much of him was a contradiction, as Greg was bound to discover. 

'How big is this weevil thing? I'm hazarding a guess it's not the same weevils your mother finds in her flour.' 

'Six feet, sometimes taller, bipedal and built like a wrestler, blue boiler suit. A weevil isn't usually that hard to find. You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes, especially when you go hear the screaming start up.' 

Greg cast a glance around at the empty streets. 'And in the absence of screaming?' 

'Claw marks, dead animal carcasses and that oh so pungent smell of effluent.' Jack caught the confused look in Greg's face, which didn't belong there, messing up the otherwise attractive countenance. 'They like the sewers,' he explained. 'And their diet is, well, whatever you can find in a sewer.' 

'What charming beasts.' 

Jack smirked. 'Charming is one thing they're not. We might not be going out to kill it, but it's still dangerous.' He paused. 'I hope you're not put out that you won't be getting a body to study.'

Greg looked down at the pistol in his hand, keeping it low like someone who'd had military training. 'I trained as a medic. If I'd wanted to be a mortician I wouldn't be here now.'

'You'll get your share of bodies, don't worry about that. But let's wait until we can find you one whose cause of death isn't Torchwood.'

'Fine by me. I'm not a pacifist but I was a little relieved to be honourably discharged. But I'm not a coward, either,' he quickly added. 

'I didn't think you were,' Jack reassured him. Cowards didn't handle guns with that air of confidence. 

'It's just…' Greg continued on, forgetting entirely for a moment why they were out here, '…this war. It feels so senseless. Haven't we had enough of war?' 

'The last one was senseless,' Jack agreed. All because of one thoughtless assassination had a dozen countries had to pick sides. At least this time they were fighting something more than just a knee jerk reaction. And yet millions would still die, many of them not even combatants. That was what made war truly senseless. He clapped Greg on the shoulder, trying to lift the sombre mood. 'Well, war or not, we've got a job to do tonight. Nothing like getting your hands dirty first day in. Just don't shoot unless there's no other option.' 

The scent off the Bute West Docks rose up and over the low brick buildings that hugged its westernmost edges. In a few decades it would cease to exist, filled in and transformed into Lloyd George Avenue. Jack's senses were alert to even the slightest smell out of place, or the low keening growl that to untrained ears might sound like nothing more than the creak of wooden crates and wet seaman's rope. 

It was in fact Greg who first froze at something he'd detected, though whether it was smell or sound or just some innate sixth sense Jack couldn't tell. He hadn't picked up anything. 'What is it?' 

He slowly pivoted on the spot, looking carefully around them. 'Not sure. Just felt like I was being watched.' 

Jack nodded. He'd often felt the same when pursuing weevils, feeling more like the hunted than the hunter. In an area like this, there were too many places to hide, too many transient people and too many temptations for a weevil not to want to see what it could find. The growing urban sprawl hadn't yet put them off their nightly wanders. 'This way.' 

Jack slipped between two red brick storehouses. Greg heard the echoed footsteps of his companion as he followed the billowing coattails. On the other side the docks and the waterway stretched in both directions with towering steel cranes hunched over the water's edge, sleeping until the early hours of the morning when once again they'd haul coal and cotton from ship to shore and vice versa. Puddles formed in the gaps between rail car tracks, a mixture of salt-water and local rain. The coastal chaos of the dockside was as alien to Greg as anything, having spent his entire life in landlocked English suburbia. For now though, at this hour, all the stevedores were sleeping or at the local publicans. Even unpopulated it made for an awe inspiring sight. He lost himself for a minute staring up at the huge loading cranes, like monsters themselves. In the moment of awe and the darkness of the night that closed around him, he lost sight of Jack, whose own dark greatcoat concealed him. Greg thought of calling out, then remembered that they weren't alone here and doing so might attract the wrong kind of attention. He added a second hand to his pistol grip as he readied to lift it against anything that might see him as a threat.

He strained to find Jack in the darkness, but just like their quarry, he'd become completely elusive. He must have assumed Greg was right behind him, otherwise he would have come back for him, surely. They definitely hadn't made any mutual agreement to split up. He just prayed that Jack wasn't the trigger happy sort that might shoot him by accident. 

The warehouses ran for at least a mile along the dock, alternating between sturdy red brick walls and corrugated tin doors. They cast strange shadows across the dock with their pointed roofs. It was a perfect place to hide, Greg thought. He regretted losing sight of Jack, whose coat had camouflaged him perfectly. Greg then realised that in his own dark suit he was probably equally concealed. 

Jack's coat may have hid him well from Greg's eyes, but not enough that Greg didn't hear the sudden cry as something assailed Jack up ahead of him. At first there was only the intermingling of human cries and very inhuman growls as Greg attempted to pinpoint their exact point of origin. Then he caught the silhouetted outline of two large men driving forward from inside one of the warehouses and out onto the docks. Both had arms raised high and were grappling with one another until one had the other flat on his back. Without hesitation, Greg ran towards them both. 'Hey!' 

At a distance it had looked like nothing more than a pub brawl, but as Greg got closer, the face of the thing pinning Jack down on the sodden concrete was like a monster out of a film. It made him pull up in horror at the sight of it. From the neck down it was almost human in its strangely blue collar attire, but the claws and the face were monstrous, and both were working at stripping Jack's face from his skull. It must have weighed three hundred pounds by Greg's estimation, and all of it was sat on top of Jack as he tried to fight it off. 

Jack's hands flapped around its head, trying to stave off the pointed snout and the vicious teeth. 'Remember how I said don't shoot?' he said, acknowledging his companion come to his aid. 'Now would be a really good time to ignore me!' 

Greg had almost forgotten the gun in his hand. His palm had gone sweaty  as he went to pull back the safety catch. Jack's sudden blood-curdling scream ripped through that chill night air and the sound caught Greg off guard, his gun slipping from his hand as it jerked in surprise. The gun bounced once and then slid off the edge of the dock and into the bay. 'Shit!' Greg swore, cursing his own stupidity. 

Bereft of other ideas, he let a kick fly out at the head of the weevil and connected with something approximating its ear. It turned its head and growled angrily at him before diving back into Jack's neck and biting down to finish what it had started. There was only a half-hearted strangling cry from Jack before all Greg could hear was a crunching on bones and a sickening squelching of blood. 

In a last act of desperation, Greg remembered the canister in his pocket. He tugged it free and pointed it as close as he dared into the face of the weevil. It howled and wailed at the sudden assault, curling in on itself in an attempt to protect itself, but Greg pressed forward, feeling a rage rise up inside him as he boldly got closer, so that the spray was right in its eyes and nose. The weevil moaned and all the fight went out of it as it turned over and went suddenly limp. 

Bloody hell, Greg stammered as he gave it a testing poke to make sure it really was out cold. It lay heavily over Jack and it took all of Greg's strength to haul it off to free Jack from being pinned underneath. 

'Jack!' he called out, running through a medical assessment that was almost second nature. There was a large pool of blood under Jack's head and the side of his neck was mangled and torn where the blood was still oozing out. Oozing, Greg noted, not pumping. That was a bad sign. He grabbed Jack by the shoulders and shook him. 'Jack!' He was unconscious but warm, but the blood loss worried him. He applied pressure to it, feeling for a pulse with his spare hand and not finding one. Jesus. He grabbed Jack's arms and lifted them up over his head, then started to press down on his chest with the heel of one palm, whisky keeping the other pressed to the neck wound. He felt ridiculous, but this strange heart massage technique was something he'd read in a medical research paper. The army had scoffed at the idea that pressing on the chest could restart the heart, but Greg tried anyway. It wasn't within him to give up until he'd tried absolutely everything to save a patient. Small wonder the army had suggested that he was a prime candidate to be discharged. Dealing with the thousands of wounded and dying men might have driven him mad. 

He kept going for several minutes, feeling less and less hopeful that Jack would recover from his injuries. Even a qualified doctor knew his chances had been slim at the outset. Bloody hell, but what was he going to tell Doctor Brennan? Would she believe him? Would she think he'd failed to prevent it happening? 

Thoughts about his future were cut off by a sharp inhalation of breath and Jack's body jerked underneath his hands. Jack's eyes flew open and Greg flinched backwards in shock. 

'You're not dead!' Greg exclaimed. Beyond that he couldn't comprehend how. 

Jack groaned. 'Really? What was your first clue?' Jack winced and raised his head again. 'Help me up?' 

Greg knelt and grabbed him from underneath his shoulders, propping him upright. The pool of blood was still behind him where he'd been lying and Greg stared fixatedly at it. 'That's not possible. I swear to God you were dead.'

'And now I'm not,' Jack replied. 'Welcome to Torchwood.' 

Greg pondered it only for a plot second before his, outh took over the thinking for him. 'But… are you all like this?'

Jack raised one knee and rested his arm on it, looking altogether too casual. 'Nope. Just me. Something happened to me a while back, makes me unable to die, or stay dead, I should say. The dying part still works perfectly. Just doesn't last very long. Also means I don't age.'

Greg kept his expression neutral, though it was a challenge. He sat back on his own haunches, taking a few measured breaths as Jack's eyes followed his every motion. 'And here I thought tales of the elixir of life were just that - tales.' 

Jack gave him credit for that. Not everyone took the news so well. Then again, he was trained in medical science - or at least what passed for medical science in 1940. Still a long way to go, even by the end of the century. Hell, a Time Lord from millennia into the future was probably the only one who could explain it. 

'Doctor Brennan didn't mention that part,' Greg said when Jack failed to respond. 

Jack waved off the omission. 'Oh, she'd have gotten round to it eventually, I suppose. Never can quite tell if she hates it or finds it useful that she can use me as cannon fodder of her own.' 

'Or just waited until you got mauled to death by a weevil and let me see for myself,' Greg quipped. 'Her idea of an initiation right?' 

Jack smiled. 'Yeah, there's that, too. I always did think she was a bit of a sadist.' It would be just like Tilda Brennan to find something like that amusing, assuming she ever found anything at all amusing. Jack had gone digging around in their archives, looking for a case file that proved she'd had her sense of humour surgically removed by some alien device, but had yet to come upon any such case file. 

Jack pulled himself to his feet, helping Greg up at the same time. He studied the weevil lying just a few feet away. It was virtually insensible, which led Jack to assume it had received more than a good dose of sedative. Good in that it wouldn't stand much chance if mauling one of them to death again. Bad in that they'd now have to carry it completely. Jack tended to like them still a little bit awake, pliable and compliant with being encouraged to walk under their own steam, even if they couldn't see where they were going on account of the hemp sack over their heads. Sure, it had killed him but he wouldn't begrudge it doing what instinct told it to do. Killing weevils was going to lead to longer term problems with the colony. If they felt threatened, they were more likely to attack and defend themselves. This was about setting a good precedent. I let you live, you let me live. Capice? 

'Right,' Greg puffed out a breath, loosening the button in his suit jacket so that it fell open, giving him elbow room to set his hands on his hips. 'So, can't die, huh?' 

Jack shrugged off the comment. 'Has its advantages.' 

'And disadvantages, I should imagine.' 

The comment struck Jack like a hand across his face, waking him up. No one ever stopped to consider that this existence wasn't all rosy. Llinos was all about the here and now. Time spent in contemplation wasn't in her nature, but she was a hell of a good time at a party. 'Take the good with the bad,' Jack replied. 

'More good than bad I hope.' Greg stepped closer, trying to inspect his injuries, even though they'd healed completely, leaving just a stain on Jack's shirt collar. 'Are you sure you don't need-' 

'Healed,' Jack said, cutting off his concerns. 'Not a scratch left on me, just a bit of blood. There's your disadvantage right there. Laundry is a murder.' 

Greg's bright blue eyes pierced him. He didn't seem to like Jack's flippancy, or was at least troubled by it. Perhaps he was right to be. When had Jack stopped caring about life and death? 'If you're sure…' 

Jack forced a cheeky smile into his face. 'I can strip and show you, if you like. You did say you wanted to get a medical baseline for your new team.' 

For the first time Greg managed to break out a smile. There was a little piece of Jack that thought maybe - just maybe - Greg was already imagining what was underneath. 'I'll bet you offer that to all the boys.' 

'Nope. Just the good looking ones.'

Greg's worried frown returned momentarily. 'And you're sure there's nothing I can prescribe for you? I'm fairly certain that Torchwood would be able to provide any kind of medicine you might need. Even if they haven't in that past I'm sure I could sway their thinking. This whole thing can't be entirely painless, surely.' 

'Well, actually there is one thing.'

'Yes?' 

Greg's earnest expression was almost too much for Jack. He leaned forward and stole the kiss from Greg before he could back away. He jolted a little but he didn't pull all the way back, not completely opposed to the motion. Jack gripped at the soft lapels of Greg's suit, making sure he couldn't get away easily. He smelled faintly of musk and Imperial Leather soap, with just the right amount of five o'clock shadow to tickle Jack's lips. He didn't break away until he could feel Greg responding with more enthusiasm. Always leave them wanting more. 

Greg's eyes almost glittered in the night, at least in Jack's mind. 'That wasn't exactly what I meant.' 

'I know. But it has made me feel a lot better. You ve got that magic healing touch.' Jack ran a finger along Greg's lawline, demonstrating the seductive power of his own touch. 'Just what the doctor ordered.' 

Greg sighed. 'So I've been told.' 

Jack smiled at him, still a little giddy from his own boldness and the delightful results. 'I think you're going to fit into Torchwood just fine.'