Title: Your Mission, Should You Decide To Accept It
By: karaokegal
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Captain Jack/Captain John (Time Agent era)
Rating: R
Wordcount: 1125
Notes: Written for the extravagantly lovely kohl_rimmed_eye, who wanted something with Captain John and the prompt: Bad for each other. (At least I think that's what it was. If I got it wrong, I'm sorry.) Excellent beta job done by vanillafluffy who called me on tons of BS.
Summary: After what they’d been through together and done to each other, he’d be lucky if his former partner didn’t put a square hole in his head before saying hello.

“How long?” he asked when they first gave him the assignment. Or rather when they caught up to him and offered him a way out of the rather large, smelly hole he’d managed to dig himself into.

“Two years.”

He found himself staring in disbelief at what he was being asked to do. Two years was forever
to a Time Agent. They packed more living into a week than most beings experienced in all the years they had.

“Why?”

“That’s when he started asking questions.”

“Why me?”

“He trusts you.”

“Hardly.”

After what they’d been through together and done to each other, he’d be lucky if his former partner didn’t put a square hole in his head before saying hello.

“Enough for you to get close.”

He’d gotten close. Too close. That’s when things had started going wrong. Not that they’d ever been completely right, even when his beautiful recruit actually believed what the Agency was selling.

Boeshane was known for pretty. They claimed it was luck and not eugenics, but whatever the reason it would be hard to find a better looking race of people and he’d managed to pull the prettiest one of all. Recruiting was easy in those days. A bit of leather, a flash of light, quick trip to some other place and time, and they were ready to sign their lives away in return for a one-way ticket out of whatever was passing for life at the moment, without asking what would be taken from them in return.

This one was prettier than most, too much temptation for close quarters on a transport to the training centre. Sly looks led to a shared bed and a shared room-mate. The first of many thirds and fourths and numbers you couldn’t count on one hand unless your species had more than five fingers and that was never a problem either.

If only it could have stayed so innocent. No matter how many ways he violated the young man’s body or gave him the opportunity to return the favor, it was still fun.

Who knew the kid would start asking questions, even when sitting in his lap, being fucked at a leisurely pace, as though they both had forever? Like why he couldn’t use the Agency’s resources to find his missing brother. Helluva time to ask, really, and he didn’t have an answer.

Distractions worked for awhile, but the questions started again. Who was being kept in confinement and why? It wasn’t something he’d ever bother asking. The Agency had its secrets and he had his.

The kid, who was no longer a kid, wouldn’t listen, until he threw another angle at him.

“Look, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you apply for interrogation training? That’s where the real glamour is. And who knows, if you ever find someone who knows something, you’ll be able to get them to spill it.”

Never saw a man so happy to inflict pain in the name of the greater good. Someone had a few demons that the psych testing had missed. Added a whole roster of delights to their personal life as well, just when the possibility of boredom had been setting in. All kinds of fun to be had with handcuffs and electrodes.

The training made it a lot easier to break up that spy-ring on Camtal 5, by putting on a rousing performance of Good Cop, Bad Cop He’d had a moment of genuine fear, that the girl they’d caught wouldn’t give up the information in time. What they’d threatened to do to her would have been bad enough. What he was sure would have happened after that gave him chills, and not the good kind.

With success came upgraded wrist-straps and better assignments. Pompeii. Vestal virgins, his arse, even before the pair of them showed up at the temple. Those girls could teach you a thing or two, as long as you got out of town before volcano day.

World War Two. Plummiest assignment going. The other boys had been jealous as hell. Stopping the Hitler assassination. An oldie, but goodie. Why not hang around London a bit before going back? Pretty girls, all so fresh and innocent, thinking the world was ending, so they might as well give it up to the first dashing fellow who asked. After a week, he’d lost count of the girls and forgotten their names if he’d ever knew them, not to mention having no idea where his partner had gone off to.

He tracked him down with the wrist-strap and found him violating several Agency rules, the ones they actually cared about. Using Turing’s algorithm so he could hack into Agency archives? Brilliant. Using the strap as a power-booster, not so much.

“This is wrong.”

Oh bloody hell. Moral convictions? It made him sick, mostly with worry.

The time loop wasn’t just a convenience; it was a last chance. This was his recruit. His partner. He cared. Maybe too much; certainly more than he wanted to admit.

Two weeks that felt like five years. What did that book say? Best of times, worst of times. By the end, they knew everything there was to know about each other. Those scars would take a long time to heal. He could only hope he’d made the case for laying low, playing the game and just letting it go. The Agency was their home; their family. It had made them.

Boeshane boys were beautiful, and as it turned out, very stubborn.

They said good-bye on a cold night in 2205, in a bar so sleazy, he thought he might like to work there someday. There were drinks and tears and kisses and promises that when this was over, they’d get back together and rule the stars.

He went as far as a wrist-strap would take him, but a man can’t outrun his own vices, not without a partner. Alone, he was a disaster waiting to happen.

When his “saviour” showed up, wearing the Agency insignia and pointing a blaster, he thought he was holding off a local police brigade although that may have been an hallucination caused by whatever his latest mistress was trying to poison him with.

They took him back to head-quarters, sadly sober by that time, and told him exactly what the charges and fines would be if he didn’t take this one assignment. It wasn’t like he had a choice.

“What’s in it for me?” he asked, putting on the old grin. They had him by the bollocks and he knew it but why not try to negotiate some kind of bonus. The worst they could say was no, right?

Wrong.

The worst they could say was,

“We won’t get him to do it to you.”