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He'd had words for everything, once--every movement of skin on skin, for romance, fucking and climax. Most of those nuances from the old Gallifreyan were gone now, and he'd known so little to begin with. Hundreds of private, pornographic dialects had been annihilated when his planet burned.
The Doctor lay on his back, listening to the Captain’s rising and falling breaths. He snored softly like a human and woke up in the mornings hard and wanting. His 51st century pheremones were fragrant as jasmine blossoms, and his language was a blunt instrument. The Doctor tried to be kind and give Jack what he needed. He said nothing about the panic seeping like spilled ink in his own mind.
But now, alone in the dark, he pushed a hand under the sheets and gave into the rising temptation. There had been names once for each movement. A word for fingertips grazing around the base of his cock. For sliding up the shaft and flickering across the pressure point on the head.
With a syllable added or changed, he could specify whether he was stroking himself with lube, saliva, or pre-come, or like this, dry. A rising or falling tone could indicate whether the movement was slowing, steady, or speeding up. Another inflection could show if he was being watched, or alone, or someone else’s hands were dancing across his body.
Time Lords used to write private dictionaries of lovemaking. They built narratives that echoed their bodies writhing under the sheets, coupling. But humans lost the ability for speech and semantics during sex. Even the Captain, who loved to talk, who used his mouth in beautiful ways, fell mute while the Doctor touched him every morning. Once aroused, it all boiled down to Faster-Harder-More.
The Doctor closed his eyes to the room. He'd let his language go fallow. He’d told himself for decades that sex was no longer worth it. He could have been inventing new words all this time, as his people did. There had once been words for repressing the urge, or waiting till morning. Inflections for stroking himself like this, alone with the Captain beside him, snoring.
He’d had words for pumping his cock from base to tip, while making noise-–while silent-–while trying to keep silent. For plucking his own nipples and feeling his back arch off the bed. Words for pausing to let his heart calm down and stop thundering in his ears.
Here was a word for turning toward his Captain, and pulling the heat from his body. For kissing the little nook between his shoulder blades. A word for pumping himself with coarse strokes, for speeding up and nearing completion, till he was coming onto his Captain's back.
Then he was moaning it all out into the warm expanse of Jack’s shoulder. The word, "Coming with you," in the sense of beside you, wanting you, but you're asleep.
Spent, he reached out, smearing the hot fluid across Jack’s lower back. He’d made a mess of his sleeping lover. He'd never dared before.
There had been a hundred words for “afterglow,” and he couldn’t remember any of them, especially one that meant, I am so grateful yet can never tell you what I’ve just done against you, loving you.
Jack moved, his muscles coiling and uncoiling into a new rhythm, waking up. "Doc?"
“Hm.”
Jack reached behind himself, his thick hand grasping the Doctor's thigh, and the Doctor pressed his face in Jack's shoulder. "I miss everything, Captain."
"Hm?"
"Gallifrey. My language."
Jack shifted again, breathing deep. "What happened?”
“Nothing. Go back to sleep.”
But Jack half-rolled over, then reached around to touch the stickiness on his skin. “Doctor?"
Without moving off Jack's shoulder, the Doctor grabbed something behind him--a pillowcase with a pillow attached--and wiped off Jack's back.
Jack was definitely awake now, his voice slurred with confusion. “You just jerked off thinking of Gallifrey?”
"No. Yes. Well. No." The Doctor was sitting up now, wondering what he could have been thinking. Jack slept fitfully most nights.
"Could have woken me up."
"No. I really couldn't." The Doctor lifted himself up, dropped the soiled pillowcase in a corner, and left his Captain to sleep. Down the corridor, up the stairs, and the Doctor leaned on the console, touching the dials. The Tardis in his head was relief, an old friend.
He watched the time rotor spin. He himself was just an old book, yellowing, his words devoured by moths.
There were footsteps behind him. The Captain looked half-asleep in the shadows, but he stumbled up the steps.
"Didn't mean to wake you,” the Doctor said, looking down at his shining ship. “Were you dreaming?"
"Something like that.” His Captain was warm beside him. “Tell me about it."
"We used to make up new words for everything,” the Doctor said, fiddling with the gravitational stabilizers. “Relationships were built on a shared language.”
A broad hand was on his shoulder. “I know English and Galactic are simplistic, comparatively, but-–“
"They’re fine for speaking, just not this,” the Doctor interrupted. “I can’t talk with you, not really--and don't you say we're talking right now."
The Captain pulled him in, wrapping an arm around his shoulder. "You won’t have sex with me, because I don't speak your language?"
"It's not like that.” The Doctor tried to pull away, but the Captain shifted with him, moving behind him. He rested his forehead on the Doctor's shoulder, placing his hands on the Doctor's bare hips.
"I gave up,” Jack finally said, his voice muted in the Doctor’s skin. “Every morning you touch me, and I come for you”-–he said this with a small push of his hips, and yes, he was hard-–“And you act completely uninterested. All this time, because you don't know how to talk to me?"
"It's not like that," the Doctor said again, his hands still braced on the console.
"Then how is it? You do this a lot?" Jack’s hands were sliding down over the Doctor’s arms, to his hips, and inward around his thighs.
“Never.” The Doctor shifted away from Jack’s hands and turned around to face the Captain. He could smell those pheremones, and there was anger mixed in that arousal, and it was brilliant. The Doctor leaned back and gave into temptation for the second time this night. He reached out.
"My hands on your hips, fingers spread, we're naked." He started in English then repeated it in Gallifreyan, just a few words. "Brushing my fingers on your stomach, your nipples, your shoulder, upwards."
The Captain’s mouth hung open, and he leaned in as the Doctor traced small circles on his neck, with the knuckles. The Doctor spoke every movement in his own language, and then drew his lover into his mouth, where their tongues worked together in their familiar way.
Jack’s body was hard, his hands trembling, his eyes wide and wanting. “You can talk dirty to me anytime. You know that.”
“It’s not just dirty talk–more like inventing words and editing. Together. Give and take.”
Jack moved his hands over the Doctor’s shoulders, and downward, the back of his hand tracing the muscles of his torso. “Translate for me then, into Gallifreyan.”
“That’s not how it works,” the Doctor said, taking the Captain’s hand away.
“Let’s start where we can.” Jack squeezed the Doctor’s fingers. “Teach me.”
A mischievous smile tweaked the Doctor’s mouth. “I’d make up a phrase. The Captain, squeezing my fingers, persuading me to have sex, while naked. Two or three words, each nuance told through inflections.”
“In English, I’d kiss you and tell you that’s ridiculous, and I love it.” Jack leaned forward but the Doctor did not kiss him.
“So crude, Jack.” The Doctor’s eyelids dipped but his smile was quirked upwards.
The Doctor had always repelled his come-ons, but Jack pushed forward this time, letting his hands stray across the curves of the Doctor’s arms and over his chest. The Doctor was speaking under his breath.
“I’m brushing your nipples, in circles, with my thumbs.” Jack flicked the dark red points on the Doctor’s chest, making them stand taut. He could feel the Doctor’s breath catch.
The Doctor replied with something else unintelligible, and his fingers rested along the hair on Jack’s wrists. He rubbed his fingernails along Jack’s arms, down his sides, along his hipbones. “Fingernails, moving closer to your sex,” he translated.
Jack dipped his fingers down in slow spirals over the Doctor’s waist, his hip-bone, and taut muscles of his stomach and back. “Touching you everywhere at once.”
“Got to be more specific than that,” the Doctor said. “Medium pressure, using your palms and fingertips, up and down, while you’re excited. Say that in one phrase–four words maximum.” His eyes were bright and his freckles seemed to glow brighter when he was teasing like this.
“I don’t think it works in four words.” Jack reached in for a kiss.
“I know,” the Doctor chuckled against him. His eyes were dark brown, flashing and boring into Jack.
Next Jack dared to curve his hand around the Doctor’s bottom, and then reach forward to his sex. “Finally touching you for the first time, your cock, half-hard, warmer than I expected.”
The Doctor was murmuring again, then said, “English is so blunt–everything is out there, it’s all direct, no hints and connotations. Like a pidgin.”
Jack just moaned his agreement as he studied the heft of the Doctor’s cock in his hand. He knew how to touch–how to pull the skin over the head, to make the Doctor give up his words and groan against him.
Long, lanky fingers slid down Jack’s belly, gripping his curls. “Tugging you, making you twitch, while you’re touching me.”
“You’re a tease.” Jack pushed his hips forward, thrusting in the Doctor’s hand. “Not to mention, a motormouth.”
The Doctor’s mouth tilted in an indulgent smile. “Shall I get straight to the point?”
Jack felt the hand against him tighten, jerking at him with that finger right there at the base. “God, yes.” The Doctor had learned how to make him lose control, and Jack’s fingers fell limp for a moment as the Doctor stroked him, faster, harder and more, all at once.
“Wait,” he remembered himself. “Like you said. Give and take. I want to touch you.”
The Captain reached out for his Doctor’s sex again. “Two fingers stroking you, brushing lightly, while I’m hard for you.”
“Captain, I don’t know if I can.“
“We’ll figure it out,” Jack answered. “Doesn’t have to be all at once.”
“It won’t be.” The Doctor’s eyes were dark, something deeply hidden behind them.
Jack bit back his questions about the Doctor’s refractory period, and how long it had been since he’d had sex with another human. He coaxed the Doctor’s cock in his hand, and the Doctor’s breath rose and fell with a wheeze against him.
Jack watched the white drops come to the surface and squeezed them out using slow strokes. The Doctor bit his lip shut till he couldn’t keep silent anymore. He was murmuring in Gallifreyan again, with a lilting chant.
He shifted against Jack again, finding his mouth in a kiss and letting his words go. Jack wrapped around the Doctor’s body, pressing his erection in the Doctor’s thigh. He cupped the Doctor’s bum, pulling their bodies closer together, and felt the Doctor grind against him with a whinging noise.
The Doctor’s fingernails were cutting into his hips, clutching him tight. Jack tried to interpret his groaning. “I’m not hurting you, am I?”
“What? No, not pain. Well, maybe a little. Well, it’s good pain.” The Doctor had dropped his head, murmuring against Jack’s neck. “Well. Captain, you’ve made me hard. All my blood in your hands.”
“So I have. But, blood?” Jack’s fingers hesitated until the Doctor opened his eyes and tried to translate.
“Just a phrase. All the blood in my head, in your hands. You’ve pulled my thoughts away, brought blood flow to my sex, and we’re kin. Family. Lovers. It’s just a phrase.”
“Yes, we are,” Jack said, amazed, still swirling his fingers around.
The Doctor let his layered phrases go and shut his eyes again. “Your thumb on the head. Right there. That translates better, I think.”
“Like this? Swirling? Getting wet?”
“Yeah, Captain. Now, down the shaft. Three fingers at the base tightening around me, faster.” Jack moved to the Doctor’s instructions, watching his eyelids fall and feeling his body sag into the sensation.
His eyes still shut, the Doctor kept talking, moving his fingers downward to find Jack’s cock again. “My fingers tight on your skin, leaving marks behind on your hips. My hand on your sex waving between us. So hot compared with me. Even our hands are sweaty.”
“My free hand running up your thigh, cupping your ass and the curve of your back, and I can feel your cock twitching,” Jack hissed.
The Doctor was groaning again, and his eyes snapped open, watching Jack, who kept stroking him. Finally he opened and shut his mouth a few times. His lower lip trembled.
Jack could tell he wanted something, or wanted to say something, but didn’t want to speak it aloud. The Doctor shut his eyes again before speaking. “Slap me.”
“What?” Jack nearly let him go in surprise.
“My cock. Lightly. The back of your hand, back and forth.” The Doctor demonstrated slightly with Jack’s sex, and they were both moaning again, as Jack moved to his instructions, pushing his hard cock back and forth like a pendulum between them.
He slapped it between his hands, feeling it harden against him. It hit against his own sex. “You like that?”
“Wouldn’t you?” the Doctor groaned, then fell to mumbling in Gallifreyan. Then he said, “This is embarrassing in English.”
“It’s fine. It’s good, right?” Jack tried distracting him with a tug on his nipples, and the Doctor shivered.
“My Captain, so hot, hard for me, touching me in the dark, listening to my language.”
“You’re a romantic,” Jack laughed, kissing his way across the Doctor’s neck.
“Nope.” The Doctor lifted his head toward the ceiling as Jack sucked at his shoulder, moved down, and nibbled the skin on his chest. “Soft teeth on my skin, warm mouth. You’re so good with your hands and your mouth.”
“Mm-hmm,” Jack agreed as he sank down, licking the Doctor’s hip bones. “Don’t forget my tongue.”
“Good strong ego, too. Tip of your tongue, rough and firm, on my stomach. My Captain, on my-–oh yes, on my cock.” The Doctor bit back his sentence with a gulp as Jack took him in his mouth, running his hands between the Doctor’s legs and cupping his testes.
There were Gallifreyan words, and a second later, between small moans, the Doctor added, “that doesn’t work in English. Now I get why you’re always saying, ‘Fuck, yes.’”
Jack hummed around his cock, careful to keep the rhythm steady, slowly pressing harder with his thumb around the base, licking a little harder against the tip, and rocking his head with slowly increasing speed. He could feel the Doctor panting above him, clutching at his shoulder, tightening and relaxing his thigh muscles.
Applying suction with his mouth, Jack lifted his hand and found the Doctor’s fingers, and rubbed his wrist in that pressure point just below his palm that calmed him down. Then he held the hand lightly. He flicked his tongue over the Doctor’s head, and nibbled--if he liked slapping, Jack would bet the Doctor loved a little careful application of teeth.
The Doctor tasted like iron and frustration and the soot of a dead planet. His voice was all grief and desire. In this dizzy moment, Jack thought he could give back everything the Doctor had lost, if only he could make the Doctor come in his mouth. There was the pre-come, oozing to the surface, foreshadowing more.
Minutes went by with just the noises of sex and a few surprised words, narrating the more unusual movements Jack managed with his tongue. When the Doctor tugged his hair, pulling him to his feet again, Jack felt disappointment rising in his stomach.
Almost simultaneously, they spoke.
“I don’t want to stop till you come.”
“I want to be inside you.”
“You do?”
“Your whole body against mine, around me, trembling.” There was laughter in the Doctor’s voice again, his hands rubbing circles on Jack’s hips, his mouth finding Jack’s cheek.
“Not many men can make me tremble like this,” Jack said. His legs were indeed shaky.
The Doctor drew him back to the console, and they were pushing each other, struggling for position, nipping each other’s shoulders and elbows and anything they could find, their erections battling against each other as they ground their hips together. They dropped to the floor at some point, turning over and over, each struggling for the top.
“Are we fighting or fucking?” Jack finally laughed as the Doctor pinned him down.
“It’s the same.”
Jack could hear a bottle opening, the soft squelch of the liquid, and arched his hips, spreading his legs in a way that always made him embarrassed and rock hard. “Cold fingertips against my ass.”
“Use crevice. Or hole. Don’t be crude.”
“Usually I wouldn’t say anything except, 'Fuck, Yes.'”
“Hmm.” The Doctor teased him, looking him in the eye, until Jack pushed against him.
“Sliding inside, Doctor,” Jack urged. “Your fingers.”
“Impatient, you are,” the Doctor pressed one long digit inside. “You’re not tight. Oh you are. Squeezing. Now you’re so open.” He looked impressed.
Jack groaned and arched into the sensation as the Doctor pushed a second finger inside, swiftly stretching him. “I’ve had a lot of practice,” he panted.
“Not with me.” The Doctor curved his fingers, finding the pressure points that made Jack jerk his legs wider and shout.
“Yeah. Wider.” The Captain tilted his hips upward as the fingers scissored to open him up, then thrust in and out. “God I’ve wanted this.” Then he was grunting into it, not bothering anymore with words.
“Good thing we don’t have neighbors,” the Doctor said. He was perfectly collected, even amused, the way he was every morning as Jack lost his speech.
“Uh-huh.” Jack reached a hand to paw his own cock, whimpering. “Do me. Fuck me. Take me. Doctor?”
“Yeah, Captain.” Strong, lean thighs spread his legs further, and the Doctor was hovering above him. Jack reached down, helping the Doctor push himself inside. He whuffled and snorted like a horse, and started murmuring in Gallifreyan, and all Jack heard for a long while was the Doctor groaning foreign, sweet nothings in his ear.
Jack bit down on the Doctor’s shoulder and his chest, his arms, and struggled to help the Doctor slide in and out, to slow down and then speed up. He reached out hands to the Doctor’s hips, pulling him into a rhythm. He didn’t know the words, but he knew the positions, the muscle memory of what lovemaking should be.
Together they managed. Jack pulled the Doctor’s hand into a rhythm around his cock, and finally came in white streams that hit his chest and arced up to the Tardis console.
The Doctor seemed even more turned on by that. “My Captain coming on my Tardis,” he muttered, and then his eyes shut and he was groaning and coming too, in long bursts that made Jack shiver and cry. Some compound in the Doctor’s semen tingled and paralyzed for a moment inside Jack’s body. He could only lie, unmoving, watching the Doctor’s face contorting above him, calling out in a musical lilt.
Finally he fell onto his hands above Jack, pulling out and staring into his face. “It means, the rhythm of coming inside my Captain is long and opening, stretching who I am inside you-–something like flooding a continent, it’s a homophone-–“
Jack waited for the Doctor to stop babbling and held his fingers. “Waited a long time to make love with you and hear your language.”
“In Gallifreyan making love is just a variation on the word making language. Actually, it’s from–-”
“Never realized my Time Lord had such a filthy tongue.”
“Only in private,” the Doctor laughed and moved off Jack’s body. “Need to invent a word for scraping my knees on the Tardis grating. Blimey.”
Jack sat up and felt himself for damages as well. “I think I have permanent grid marks on my ass, if that’s any consolation.” His bum was tender and he worried that it would hurt to sit for a while–-but then, he’d enjoy standing that much more.
The Doctor sat back on his haunches, thoughtful. “English has so many small words. In Time Lord, it’s like, ‘Red-gridded bottom, console room play.’ See it’s a word-play on bottom and-–“
“I get it, Doctor,” Jack said, kneeling, and they both stood up and leaned on the console, smiling together. “Sounds more like Chinese, if you’re looking for an Earth language analogue. Stick to the main nouns and dispense with articles and conjunctions; use prepositions sparingly.”
The Doctor was petting the console again, looking distant. Only his face was still flushed, his hair messy and pointing all directions. “Actually, some insectian dialects are more aptly suited, but I don’t think you and I want to learn a third language just for sex. We’ll have to build on one we already use.”
Jack leaned in beside him. “Plus I can’t pronounce all those clicks, and I don’t think I can get it up while you’re chirping and clacking at me like a giant praying mantis.”
The Doctor was stroking the console again. “I think she can feel the difference.”
“You’re a daydreamer,” Jack said. “Your language is very musical though.”
The Doctor reached around Jack’s waist, pulling him close. “Think so?”
“Trust me next time,” Jack said, leaning into the Doctor. “Just tell me if there’s something holding you back.”
“Yeah.” Then the Doctor’s mouth was on his, silencing him.
As he broke off, Jack waited a moment to open his eyes. The Doctor was going to leap away and pretend nothing had happened, and Jack would spend the next day wondering-–
“Captain?”
“Yes?”
“Want to go again? There’s a few things we could try…”
“Hell yes,” Jack said, reaching both his arms around the Doctor, whose hands were on him again.
His eyes were bright, his hair a crazy shock of brown, and his freckles still glowing under the flickering time rotor. He was talking again, and grinning because he knew Jack couldn’t understand.
“If that’s an instruction, you’ll have to translate.”
The Doctor shook his head, and tugged Jack’s elbow, guiding him toward the bedroom.
“Thought you’d never ask,” said Jack as they slipped into bed.
The Doctor woke up in the morning remembering several old Gallifreyan words for “afterglow.” Some of his favorite were remarkably similar to “Jack” and “Yes.” When he reached over to his Captain, curling long fingers around his hips and seeking out his waiting erection, instead he found his human deeply asleep, his sex limp under the covers.
“Time to start taking turns,” he murmured with a little laugh, and curled up against Jack’s back. Time to invent a new word for "waiting," again.