Title: A place to call home

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 3,305 words

Content notes: None

Author notes: Written for Challenge 387 - Amnesty, using Challenge 31 - Apology & Challenge 100 - Choices

Summary: Greg isn’t going to let a few heated disagreements drive Jack away from him.


Greg let the Daimler cruise to a halt along the road, the engine purring as he stared out at the early morning vista. He could see what Jack liked about this place. For all of Cardiff’s gloomy grey skies and endless rain, on a morning like this one, there was a calm beauty to it. Just having a small stretch of coast that wasn’t lined with filthy docks and stagnant tidal flats was something as well.

This small section of the Penarth coast had something akin to a real beach. The pier, which was the main drawcard for visitors, stood off three quarters of a mile to Greg’s left, far enough away to give the small half dozen beach boxes lined along the sand some privacy and seclusion. Greg imagined that was yet another advantage for Jack. The man, for all his outlandish behaviour and wily charms, seemed to prefer his own company and space almost as much, if not more so. How many secrets could one man harbour, and how many of those could he fit into a space that was designed not for human habitation, but to preserve the modesty of twentieth century ladies who came to enjoy their summer breaks by the sea?

Not that Greg had to worry about tourists at this hour on a cool autumn morning. All the bathing boxes, apart from one, would be unoccupied and likely unutilised between now and next July. A more isolated place Jack couldn’t have picked whilst still being in the vicinity of the sprawling metropolis as it grew larger with each passing year.

Greg cut the engine of the car and sat there a moment, just staring through the window at the wind-buffeted timber structure. It was not a home of any sort. There was no running water, no bathroom facilities, and Greg knew from experience, only a rickety wooden sleeping cot, a few upturned crates that doubled as tables or chairs, and a small camp stove. Primitive didn’t even begin to describe it, yet on the few occasions Greg had been permitted to join Jack there for the night, it had struck him as remarkably cosy. Or perhaps that was merely the company he kept that distorted his view of it. No man could truly live there on a permanent basis. It was scarcely more accommodating than military quarters, of which Greg had only a fleeting experience of before being decommissioned to join Torchwood. It had been enough however to make him glad that he was able to serve Queen and country in another capacity before his orders had come through to be sent to the front. British barracks had been bad enough. He dreaded to imagine those poor lads suffering in muddy trenches. It felt almost criminal to be upset about anything more trivial when men were dying every day in a war they hadn’t chosen.

Still, Greg had come here with a purpose, albeit maybe not the one he’d been ordered to accomplish, though not completely misaligned with his own desires, either. He stepped out of the car and felt that first blast of chilly salt air assail him, before making a slow route towards the bathing box. Sand crept inside his shoes and his feet sunk down into the untouched sand, dry and soft without the rain of several days ago to compact it into a more manageable surface. The sun had only just barely risen, bringing a pepper-coloured dawn across the sand and sea, making them meld together where one met the other.

Jack’s chosen abode was of course the last in the series of small structures, each thirty yards apart, and his the furthest from anything akin to humanity. It stood alone and stoic, rather like the man that occupied it.

Greg leaned by the door and gently knocked on the warped timbers, their pale yellow paint slowly peeling from the winds and salty air that buffeted it constantly. ‘Jack?’ he called out from the outside, praying that Jack was only sleeping, or at worst, trying to ignore him. ‘It’s Greg. Can we please talk?’ There was no response, so Greg slumped down beside the door, back pressed to the door and pulling his knees to his chest. ‘I’m just going to stay here for a bit until you come out. Even if it starts to rain.’

He knew that would no doubt get a response from Jack. He wouldn't leave Greg sitting out here in the rain, no matter how mad he was. Not that he was mad with Greg in the slightest. Not directly. Greg just happened to be the perfect envoy to try and smooth things over after they'd gotten more than a little heated two days ago. Brennan was a hard woman to win an argument against, though she rarely raised her voice above abject disdain. Only Jack managed to set her temper flaring to the point where they were both shouting at the tops of their lungs, forcing Greg, Llinos and Rhydian to take shelter in a part of the hub where the shouting was dulled to an angry murmur.

Jack may have worked for Torchwood for decades, but Brennan was always keen to remind him of his place. Since Jack refused to lead the Cardiff arm of Torchwood’s operations, he had to live with whoever was put in charge in his stead. Jack’s dislike for Brennan in particular – not that Greg had any other Torchwood leader to compare to – impacted all their lives. Jack was a valuable asset to Torchwood, for his knowledge and experience alone, but he was becoming more and more reluctant to offer it in exchange for regular employee and working conditions. The politics of the place, in Jack’s opinion, were the sole reason he refused to give them his unwavering loyalty. Greg had attempted in his own small way to be arbiter between Brennan’s orders and Jack’s temperament, but it wasn’t easy.

‘Jack? Come on, this is silly,’ Greg insisted, still talking through the door and knowing Jack would be perfectly capable of hearing him. ‘What if I’d come all this way just so you could ravish me with your tongue, and you’re leaving me stuck out here?’

He couldn’t believe that even those comments didn’t get a rise out of him. Greg half expected the door to be thrown open and for Jack to have had a fistful of his shirt in no time at all, dragging him inside to do just that. Instead he leaned his head back, contemplating the cloud-filled sky and re-rehearsing what he was going to say when Jack finally did relent. He had carefully paraphrased all of Brennan’s words, since they’d lacked any kind of empathy or diplomacy. In truth, she’d told Greg in no uncertain terms that he was to say whatever was necessary in order to get Jack to tow the line. Reminding him who was in charge was not part of his strategy to win Jack over.

He sat there for twenty minutes until movement down by the water caught his eye. Someone was out there, taking a swim from the looks of things. It wasn’t until they stepped from the water and began moving back up the beach that he realised it was Jack, and that all this time he’d been talking to an empty bathing box.

‘Just when I thought the morning couldn’t get any more perfect,’ Jack remarked, approaching Greg as he pulled himself back to his feet.

He could see the gooseflesh forming all over Jack's arms and torso as the seawater clung to the skin and dripped from the ends of his hair. Below the waist there were other notable signs that confirmed Greg’s assessment of the water’s temperature. Greg knew those physical attributes well enough to know that they'd taken their leave in the name of self preservation. Only a pair of underpants concealed the true extent of it. Greg was slightly surprised that Jack bothered with clothing and modesty of any kind, assured that no one else would have taken leave of their senses to attempt a morning swim, clothed, unclothed or otherwise. The beach must surely have been exclusively his.

‘You must be positively freezing, Jack!’

He paraded past Greg, tugging open the bathing box door and reaching in for a towel, quickly rubbing off the seawater from his upper body and wrapping the towel around his hips. ‘It clears the head,’ he replied. ‘Nothing like being reminded how good it is to feel so alive.’

‘Alive? You’re going to catch your death doing that. Put some clothes on for heaven’s sake.’ He ignored impropriety and helped himself inside, grabbing Jack’s coat which he knew would be hung on a peg by the door, wrapping it around his shoulders.

Jack smirked at him. ‘Nice to know you care.’

‘Of course I care! Whatever made you think I didn't?’

Jack’s expression darkened slightly. ‘Well, there is a certain Torchwood leader who no doubt has you all choosing sides right now.’

Greg sighed. ‘It isn’t like that. Besides, you should know that Llinos and I care and support you. We’ve been through too many scrapes not to.’

‘But that’s not why you’re here, is it?’ Jack nodded his head in the direction of the top of the beach and the road behind it, where he’d now spotted the cream coloured Daimler that belonged to Torchwood, signalling that Greg was here on business, not pleasure. ‘She sent you here, didn’t she?’

‘Not here specifically, but she knew that I'd be able to find you after you went AWOL on us.’ Greg knew several of Jack's haunts by now, but he'd started with the most obvious. ‘She says she apologises.’

Jack scoffed and shook his head. ‘So much so that she sent you rather than coming down here to say it to my face. What does that tell you?’

Greg chewed the inside of his lip, knowing that he’d have to put up with more petty stubbornness from Jack. ‘That she's as sinfully proud and stubborn as you. Pretty much a prerequisite for working at Torchwood from what I gather.’

Jack pushed past Greg, stepping inside the bathing box where he divested his coat, and then carried on with removing his underpants, heedless of the fact that Greg was standing right there as he disrobed, fumbling around for fresh clothes. Not that Greg hadn’t seen it all before. ‘Well, just so long as we’re all being stubborn then, you can tell her I'm not coming back.’

‘Jack…’

‘No, I mean it. I’m done,’ he said, angrily tugging on new underclothes, and then his trousers, letting them hang loose and unbuttoned whilst continuing the search for a clean shirt.

‘I don’t want to do this without you,’ Greg said.

Jack reached past him and Greg realised he was standing in the way of the cramped space where a fresh shirt lay in wait. ‘I’m not cutting you off, if that’s what you think,’ Jack said, slipping an arm through the pale blue fabric, leaving small patches where the water from his hair had dripped onto his shoulders and chest, marking the fabric. ‘Work for torchwood, I don't care. Just so long as I don’t have to go back there.’

‘Let me ask you something, Jack. All these years you’ve worked for Torchwood, why now? You must have experienced worse than this?’

Jack’s shirt hung open, matching his trousers which he'd also abandoned halfway, giving Greg a tempting view of that middle strip of muscled skin that ran from his adams apple all the way down to his groin. ‘I’m tired. I’ve had enough. This place treats aliens like they’re criminals, or beasts that need to be put down for their own good.’

‘Some of them are dangerous, Jack. You yourself can’t deny that.’ How many times had Jack saved Greg from being their next meal or victim?

‘Brennan would have us all dead.’

Greg frowned, unsure he’d heard correctly. ‘Us?’

Jack heaved a sigh. ‘Haven’t you figured it out yet, Greg? I can’t die. I’ve lived a whole lifetime and more already. How do you think that’s possible?’

Greg tried to understand what point Jack was trying to make. ‘You said something happened to you that changed you. Alien technology. Is that what this is about? You’re mad because Torchwood made you this way?’

Jack shook his head again. ‘It wasn’t Torchwood. I joined – was forced to join – long after that.’ Greg’s expression must have given away the fact that he still didn’t know what point Jack was trying to make. ‘I’m not human, Greg.’

‘Of course you are.’ It didn’t take a qualified ex-British Army medical officer to be able to make that distinction.

Jack sank down onto the narrow sleeping cot and patted the space next to him, indicating for Greg to sit with him. ‘I was born on an alien world in the year 5065, three thousand years into the future, and 757 parsecs from Earth. I may be descended from human genetics, but in the last three millennia your race has evolved and interbred with so many other alien species that my genetic code is so vastly different to yours that even in another century when they finally begin decoding and mapping DNA, they won’t be able to conclude that mine is human. I’m an alien from another world, Greg. No different to a weevil, or a blowfish, or any other creature that comes through the rift. Brennan wants to kill and dissect us all. We’re not worthy of living. If she knew the whole truth of it, she’d have me locked up and experimented on too. Immortality is one thing, but if she knew I wasn’t even born on this planet, then there’s no way I’d be allowed to come and go. The only reason I stay in Cardiff is because some time in the next century, a doctor I once knew is going to return here and when he does, he’s going to be able to explain what happened to me and how he can fix it.’

Pieces began to finally fall into place for Greg. He’d always considered Jack progressive for his time, an advocate for alien rights and wellbeing, of a more scientific approach to monitoring and managing the rift, but he'd never appreciated that Jack himself felt like a refugee here. Small wonder he got so upset at the way Brennan treated the creatures that fell through the rift. He could identify with their plight, and their inability to find their way back home.

He reached out for Jack who instinctively pulled away. Greg however persisted until he had Jack gripped firmly by the arms, forced to look Greg in the eye as they sat side by side. ‘You’re human enough for me. I tried so hard not to fall in love with you, but it was impossible. The days when you're not there just aren’t worth it. Torchwood isn’t the same without you there. It’s just a job.

Jack’s hands curled to wrap around Greg’s forearms as they remained locked in a grip together. So leave with me. Neither of us has to stay there.’

‘You said you were waiting for a doctor.’

‘And he won’t be here for at least another sixty years. We could live a lifetime before I have to worry about coming back here.’

‘My lifetime,’ Greg emphasised, realising the enormity of what Jack was telling him. He'd be old and grey and Jack would still be the same. How long could something like that possibly last? Did it really matter just so long as Greg had him for as long as he could? Then he remembered his duty. He’d trained as a medical officer and joined the army to do some good in the world and that had led him to Torchwood instead. If he wasn't saving the sick and wounded on the battlefield, then he had a duty to do something of value here. As nice as it might be for them to just stay holed up in Jack's bathing box until the end of days, what good would that achieve? Torchwood would carry on without them, certainly, but what kind of purpose would it serve without Jack there to advocate for a better way, and for Greg to stand there beside him and support his ideas? He hadn’t come here to deliver a disingenuous apology from Doctor Brennan, trying to lure Jack back into the fold for whatever she deemed his usefulness to be. He’s come here to persuade Jack that Torchwood needed him, not just because Greg needed him. The Brennan’s of this world would come and go but jack would live on beyond them. His legacy would outlive everyone's.

Jack pulled Greg a little closer. ‘I only need you, for as long as we have. I’d give up all the rest of it in a heartbeat.’

Greg slowly shook his head. It pained him to see how much love was burning in those eyes, directed all at him, for reasons he couldn’t understand. It was fanciful to think that they needed nothing else. They couldn't even be seen in public together. Just standing out there on the shore, wrapped in one another’s arms, could be noticed by a passerby and reported to police. Greg had always walked a careful line of embracing his homosexuality and sating its needs without putting himself at risk of persecution. Jack had no doubt done the same over the years, though perhaps with lesser success. Certainly he had the advantage of being capable of surviving persecution, be it from ignorant fear of the general public, or formal punishment by law authorities. It felt ridculucous that in an age of world war that two men being in love was still a far wrose crime than murder.

‘If you choose me, you have to choose Torchwood as well,’ Greg said, hating the need to use such harsh blackmail. He banked on Jack’s love for him being stronger than his will to sacrifice one for the other. One thing he’d come to learn about Jack was that he loved deeply or not at all. Loathe as Greg may have been to accept it at first, Jack would never let him go. ‘Make your false peace with Brennan. Do the good that won’t happen unless you’re there. If you leave, I’ll quit. I’ll reapply to the army, tell them it didn't work out at Torchwood. I could be in Poland before the week is out.’

That got Jack's attention. ‘It’s too dangerous.’

‘I’m not a coward, Jack. I'm not afraid of going, perhaps dying in the line of duty.’.

Jack’s grip on him tightened considerably. ‘I am. You don't know the things that I've seen. I’ve travelled through time. I fought in the war. I was there in 1942 at the front. The things I saw…’ His eyes glazed with the memory of horrors unspoken. ‘I couldn’t stop it, couldn’t change it. I can’t protect you there.’

‘Then don’t make me go. Stay here. Don’t throw everything away for the sake of your ego. A hundred Brennans aren’t worth it.’

Jack sighed, leaning forward. Greg met him halfway, leaning until their foreheads touched, feeling the damp of Jack’s hair. ‘She's not sorry at all is she?’

‘I believe she may harbour some small regret, tempered by the fact that you were in fact correct on this occasion.’

‘She's never going to admit that.’

‘Possibly not, but doesn't being right count for anything?’

Jack lifted his head to look Greg in the eye. ‘I want to hear her say it.’ What he really wanted was to know that Brennan would accept that there were aliens who were peaceful, even willing to help or provide insight into other worlds and technology. That there was a place for them on this world when there was nowhere else for them to go. That there would be a place for Jack on this world, even if there weren’t people like Greg and Llinos to protect him.

‘Then I'll make sure it happens. With sincerity. Just say you haven't given up on us.’

Jack ran a finger across his cheek. ‘I'm never giving up on you, Greg Bishop.’

‘Good. Now get in the car and let me take you back to mine for a hot bath before you catch cold.’

‘Any excuse to get me naked, huh?’

Greg ran his own finger down the gap in Jack’s shirt, tracing the shallow cleft between his pectorals. ‘You already were when I arrived in case you hadn't noticed.’ Greg’s nose scrunched up at their proximity. ‘I don't care how many pheromones you have, you still smell like a Tiger Bay fishmonger.’

Jack smirked. ‘Ooh, maybe we should go to the hub first and for me to get my apology then.’

Greg shoved him out the door, still half dressed, and towards the car. ‘Forget it. Brennan isn’t that sorry.’