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Author's Note: OK, this was written after the "The Empty Child" was transmitted (but before "The Doctor Dances" hence the slight continuity errors) as a belated birthday present for Anya2. She wanted voyeur!Jack spying on the Doctor and Rose, and erm... that's what she gets. Cos everybody ought to get what they want at least once, for their birthday. And I got to write something I prolly never would have written otherwise, which was fun as well. It would suck beyond the telling of it without my betas. *snuggles her comrades in arms and hands out mimosas*. Extra special hugs to nos for hand-holding. Originally posted 23 May 2005.

Odd Man Out
by LJC

The sound of raised voices in the TARDIS console room drifted down the hallway, stopping Jack in his tracks.

"Don't flatter yourself," the Doctor was saying as Jack crept along the wall, rubber-soled shoes soundless on the TARDIS floor. He edged forward until he could peer into the console room. He could see the back of Rose's head, and the Doctor's profile. He was about to enter the room when the Doctor leaned forward, waggling a finger in Rose's face.

"I am not jealous," he went on to say and Jack immediately took a step back into the hallway and pressed himself up against the coral-like wall.

"You are. You're positively green." Jack didn't need to see Rose's face to imagine what it would look like. "You weren't jealous with Adam—"

Adam? Jack mouthed to himself, wondering just how many "companions" these two'd had.

"It was Adam," the Doctor said dismissively. "And this doesn't say much for your taste in men—Rickey the Useless, Adam the Prat, and now Biggles, with his really white teeth and matinee idol hair. We'll be lucky if he doesn't try and auction the TARDIS off on eBay."

Jack's spine straightened reflexively, despite the fact that he wasn't sure what a "Biggles" was. Or, for that matter, an ebay.

"Oh yeah. Not jealous at all." Rose's tone was smug, and Jack rolled his eyes. The girl obviously had to learn a lot about seduction techniques. Now, if he was seducing the Doctor... well, there would be a lot more flattery, for one thing. Sweet words, a nice bottle of wine, maybe a little fondling...

Jack smiled happily to himself at the mental image.

"I am not jealous!" The Doctor repeated. "I'm just appalled at your taste in boyfriends."

"Well I picked you, didn't I?" she snapped, and Jack risked a look. He could see them on the other side of a support strut, completely oblivious to his presence, but close enough that he could see both of them in profile.

"Excuse me? Who exactly asked whom to come travelling with them again?"

Rose poked the Doctor in the chest with a stiff finger. "And who exactly said yes, eh?"

"Oh, don't try to re-write history to cosy up to me now."

"What do you mean, re-write history?"

The Doctor folded his arms, learning against the console and frowning. "You didn't come with me cos you fancy me."

"Well, maybe not so much when you blew up my job, and trashed my flat—" Rose ticked things off on her fingers.

"I was saving you from a disembodied arm!"

"You handed me the stupid arm in the first place! And you made it perfectly clear you didn't fancy me—"

"When?"

"How 'bout when you were hanging all over Jabe like moss on a rock?"

"You told me to go pollinate!"

"I'd only known you for twenty-four hours! What did you expect, a table-ender? What kind of a girl did you think I was?" Rose's voice was shrill now, and Jack bit back a chuckle, mainly due to his own first impression of Miss Tyler, after she'd passed out and ended up in his bed.

"The kind who'd go off with some bloke she's only just met, for one," the Doctor pointed out in a singsong tone, "and the kind who'll fall for nice teeth and hair, apparently—"

"Who says I'm falling for him?" Rose snapped, defensive.

Jack smiled to himself. Obviously, he still had it. He'd wondered, particularly after he'd read the slightly psychic paper when Rose had handed it back to him, and bluffed his way through a charming answer that had made her blush and wasn't exactly entirely completely truthful.

"Rose, I'm not blind."

Rose sighed, and Jack could see the anger slowly draining out of her with the breath. "He flirts with me. He looks at me and makes me feel... I dunno." She shrugged, blonde hair falling into her eyes as she stared at her shoes. "Sexy. Pretty. Not so much like a stupid ape tagalong—"

The Doctor's jaw dropped. "I never said—"

"But it's just flirting, you git." She smacked him leather-clad shoulder affectionately. "Never any harm in flirting. It's just a game."

Jack's smile faded. Well, that wasn't quite what he wanted to hear. Then again, what was that ancient proverb? Eavesdroppers never hear good of themselves. Somehow, learning Rose considered him nothing more than a game hurt much more than the Doctor dismissing him as nothing more than teeth and hair.

"You don't..." the Doctor began and then stopped, and Jack peered around the wall to see him staring at the floor, a muscle working in his jaw.

"That's cos I don't play games with you," Rose said softly, laying a hand on his arm. From his vantage point, Jack could see she was suddenly shy and he imagined her blushing beneath the green glow of the screens, as if she'd suddenly realised what she'd said.

"I'd better go see he hasn't got lost—" she tried to slide past him, but the Doctor caught her arm, steering her in a circle until she was pressed back against the edge of the time ship's hexagonal console.

"Biggles can find his own way around. We're not finished, here." Jack watched, transfixed as the Doctor reached up to touch the side of her face, long fingers trailing over her cheek before he buried the hand in her hair. "You are sexy."

"For a human?" she said softly, pink tongue darting out to moisten her lips. "For a boneheaded stupid ape that's only barely crawled out of the muck?"

"You are pretty," the Doctor said slowly and deliberately. "You are sexy. You're not a tagalong. And I am jealous."

Rose grinned. "I knew—"

The Doctor stopped her gloating with a kiss and Rose went very, very still.

Jack was guessing that this was the first time this had happened—partly by the Doctor's hesitancy, and partly by the way Rose's eyes were wide and her hands hovered in midair before coming to settle on his chest and her eyes drifted closed. As she relaxed, the Doctor's technique, Jack noted, definitely improved.

What began with some uncertainty as to where noses went, and awkwardness as the Doctor bent over her as she got up on tiptoes to compensate for the difference in their heights, changed as Jack watched. Tentative gave way to confident. Sweetness began to be lost in the shadow of hunger and need.

Jack knew he was intruding on something intensely private—a first kiss, an admission he had no part of, a relationship he had no place in. If he were a gentleman, that would have been his cue to depart.

Jack had never been much of a gentleman.

He felt too warm, suddenly, in his wool RAF jacket as he imagined what those lips—either pair, or better yet, both—would feel like against his skin. Watched, frozen, unable to move as Rose's hands crept up the Doctor's shoulders, fingers clutching at the dark leather of his jacket as one jean-clad leg pressed between her thighs. The Doctor's mouth swallowed her gasp as they began to move against one another. He could see that pink tongue again now as her mouth opened beneath his and the Doctor wrapped her blonde hair around his hand, trying to pull her even closer.

From his hiding place, Jack bit his lip to hold back a moan as Rose made a hungry sound in the back of her throat and hooked one leg up around the Doctor's waist, the heel of her foot rubbing the back of his thigh rhythmically. The Doctor's hand slid down her side to the underside of her thigh and hitched her leg up higher on his hip. Breaking the kiss, he released her hair and effortlessly lifted her up so she was resting on the sloping TARDIS console, the Doctor's body pressed against hers the only thing keeping her from sliding off.

Her other leg came up to wrap both around him, her knees hidden beneath his leather jacket. The Doctor's arm went around her waist, fingers pressed against her spine, following it down to where her jeans gaped slightly—just enough for long, slender fingers to slip down that extra inch.

Jack's mouth went completely dry, hair on the back of his neck prickling as he imagined how that would feel—the rough pads of the Doctor's fingers pressed just below his tailbone. Or Rose's hand, warmer, smaller, and probably clever.

Rose pulled the Doctor back to her mouth, her fingers with their blunt nails covered in chipped polish sliding through his short-cropped dark hair. Her hands slid down and disappeared beneath the jacket, and Jack imagined her tugging the hem of the lambswool jumper up so she could run her palms over his sides, trace his ribs and dig her nails into his back as she rubbed against him through two sets of jeans.

Jack had a very, very good imagination. And he was no stranger to the wonders of friction.

The Doctor's mouth travelled from hers to her jaw, and then slid down her neck even as his other hand came up to trace the curve of her ear, cupping her cheek in his hand while his thumb ran over her parted lips. Jack could hear her breath hitch, even from across the room, with each languid movement of the Doctor's body, sliding against hers. Feel his cock straining against his uniform trousers as Rose sucked on the Doctor's thumb, her back arching as the Doctor's lips, tongue, and teeth found the tender spot where her neck met her collarbone.

"Oh, God," she breathed as the Doctor's wet thumb traced a path down her chin and the hand came to rest on the swell of one breast. "Oh God!" she repeated, tensing as he brushed the thumb over her nipple through the thin cotton tee-shirt. Her legs tightened around his hips as he cupped the breast in his hand, squeeze the nipple between two fingers. Her hands slipped from beneath the open leather jacket and she braced herself on the console, head suddenly thrown back and mouth open as she drew in a shuddering breath.

Even hidden by the open jacket, Jack had a fairly good idea where the Doctor's other hand had gone.

Jack's own hand had, ever so slowly, moved to the front of his trousers, matching the rhythm of his strokes to the movements of Doctor's hand as it pressed against the crotch of Rose's jeans. The sound of the teeth of the zipper as the Doctor finally lowered it was impossibly loud in Jack's ears. He caught the briefest glimpse of white panties before the Doctor slid fingers inside the waistband and Rose made a low keening sound in the back of her throat. The Doctor's response, almost lost in her hair, was no word Jack knew in any language—if indeed it was a word at all, and not simply a sound of pure pleasure.

Jack leaned back against the wall, needing the support as his eyes drifted shut for a second, heat sliding through him as the sounds coming from the console room drifted to his hiding place. Ragged breathing, whispers he couldn't hear but felt as each of Rose's breaths were punctuated with soft, high-pitched cries at each stroke. Jack opened his eyes enough to see her hips lifting to meet the Doctor's hand, her cheeks red and sweat sliding down the side of her neck and plastering wisps of blonde hair to her forehead as she squeezed her eyes tightly shut and clutched at his shoulders.

The Doctor buried his face in her hair as the pace of his strokes quickened, and Rose turned her face to kiss him. Jack could see her sucking hard on the Doctor's bottom lip as she began to tremble. The Doctor's movements became jerkier, and Jack could see trickles of sweat run down the back of his neck where the collar of the jacket rested inches below his dark hair. Her hands gripped either side of his head, her tongue darting in and out of his mouth as her kisses became hungrier and hungrier.

"Rose..." the Doctor murmured against her mouth, over and over again until she buried her face in his neck, going limp against him with a strangled cry.

Jack bit the inside of his cheek to keep from signalling his presence with a cry of his own as his hand stilled and he leaned against the wall, gasping. As much as he wanted to stay for what would undoubtedly happen next, he was suddenly very much needing to know if the TARDIS had a laundry.

With a silent sigh, he padded away from the console room, smiling.

He'd definitely picked the right marks to scam for a ride.

Maybe next time, with the right motivation, they'd let him in on the fun.