Work Text:
They solve the problem of all the things they can't talk about by not talking. Not one word beyond an exchange of names. "Jack" "Doctor" Jack understands. Now that his vortex manipulator is fully functioning, neither of them live in anything like linear time. Their personal timelines have developed twists and turns it is impossible to keep track of. Once upon a time the Agency kept meticulous records to avoid such difficulties. Once upon a time the Time Lords maintained Gallifrey as the universe’s collective measure of the fourth dimension. Now both are only dimly remembered fairy tails. They have each driven themselves crazy at least once, trying to bring order to the vastness of time. The job is just too big for any single being, and Jack resigned himself to that fact a long time ago. Most versions of the Doctor he meets have as well. They don't try to make this thing between them anything like normal. Back when Jack had still been on the slow path, the Doctor had told him about River. About Journals and Spoilers, and working so hard at having something that was recognizable as a relationship despite the wimeyness of time. About how it all went wrong. So they don't try. Instead they just let this thing between them exist , let it be until Jack sometimes thinks of it as the second inescapable fact in the universe. A thought he refuses to dwell on, because the amount of comfort he draws from it is terrifying. For them there is no discussion, no dancing around the unknown or the unknowable. There is merely the dancing. Although he has danced up close and personal with several new faces now, he has no framework to hang them on, and he doesn't want one. The only clue he ever allows himself to notice, is the occasional appearance of a wide-eyed look on the Doctor’s face after he does something he knows the Time Lord particularly likes. The look that shows, for the Doctor, it was the first time.