Summary: Captain Jack Harkness is dead sexy. However, he's the only one who cares.

Dead Sexy

Captain Jack Harkness was a dead-sexy man and it seemed to be his self-appointed job to make sure that the entire universe knew it.

The only problem was; parts of the universe didn't seem very inclined to accept Jack's dead-sexiness.

And that's where the problem had started.

"Look, how was I supposed to know that she was the queen?" Jack asked in a whiny sort of voice.

"Oh, I don't know. Probably from the way she was dressed." Martha said in a deadpan voice.

"Or the fact that she had at least 20 heavily-armed guards around her." the Doctor added in an equally deadpan voice.

"Or the fact that everyone was bowing to her."

"Or that everyone was addressing her as 'Your Majesty'."

"You just wanted to cop a feel." Martha said, sounding a touch smug.

"He did more than that." the Doctor said, more to Martha.

Jack grumbled to himself, deciding that he was at an unfair disadvantage in this. He hadn't known Martha Jones long enough to win her over to his side, meaning in any given argument, she was going to agree with the Doctor.

And that didn't help this situation one jot.

Apparently, this world had rather strict rules regarding the feeling-up of its royalty by "unauthorized" people. Thus Jack had been stripped naked and strapped tightly to large stone slab to await whatever would happen next. He might have made some bondage jokes had the Doctor not threatened the removal of the former Time Agent's nuts once they got out of this. Jack, being very fond of his nuts, wisely kept his mouth shut.

"You're jealous." Jack decided to say.

"Jealous of the fact that we haven't been strung up naked?" Martha asked in a long-suffering voice.

"Why would we be jealous of that?" the Doctor asked in an incredulous tone. "I rather like my clothes where they are, thank you very much."

"I'd still like to see you take 'em off." Jack said flirtatiously. "You too Martha." he added so the med-student wouldn't think she was being left out. What he heard in response was an indignant huff and the rattle of chains.

Jack examined the ropes binding him down. He had been in situations like these before -- he never very keen on repeating them unless they ended in a very, very nice way -- so he considered himself a bit of connoisseur of ropes and anything else used for tying people up. These particular ropes he had never seen before. They were blue and every time Jack tried to move, they seemed to get a little tighter.

Which explained the mysterious loss of feeling in his left foot.

The Doctor and Martha had the fortune to remain fully clothed and merely get their wrists manacled together. They were chained up just out of Jack's line of sight; being unable to turn his head.

"Doc, do you have any brilliant plans on getting out of this?" Jack wanted to know. "'Cause I'm drawing a blank here.""Working on it." the Doctor muttered and Jack swore he heard the buzz of the sonic screwdriver. "Just pray our jailers don't come in and use that."

There could be only one thing the "that" could be. It was a hefty, rusted pair of what looked like garden shears hanging on a hook in the wall by the door. Jack peered closer and realized that the rust was actually blood. His blood cooling a couple dozen degrees, he tried not to imagine what those "garden shears" were really used for. And they looked like they been used plenty of times before.

"Er... Doctor, make with the brilliant plan already." Jack requested nervously. He was fearing the future of his nuts.

A scraping noise preceded the Doctor's answer.

"I said I'm working on it." the Time Lord replied.

"Well, work on it faster." Jack half-snapped. He did not want to be around when the jailers turned up.

There was another scraping noise.

"Okay! Brilliant plan starting now!" the Doctor chirped cheerfully.

"Thank you!" Jack said, relieved.

There was no reply. No sound, actually.

"Doc?" Jack ventured tentatively and got silence as his response. "Doctor?"

He tried to twist around and take a look at the back half of the cell, but there was no point. He didn't need eyes on the top of his head to realize that he was somehow alone in the cell.

"Oh! I bet there's a vent in the ceiling!" Jack shouted, annoyed. "Those bastards! They left me behind!"

He fumed and plotted his own escape brilliant plan. Except that he had no strokes of genius; his mind had jumped ahead to the part where he wreaked crippling revenge on the Doctor and Martha for abandoning him to get his nuts hacked off in what was likely to be a very messy debacle.

Oh why couldn't people just accept the fact that he was sexy hunk of man and indulge him? Even for just a minute?

Jack plotted his crippling revenge -- never once coming up with an escape plan of any sort -- for a few minutes until the door opened. Standing in there in the doorway was -- to Jack's horror -- one of his jailers, cloaked and hooded and practically faceless like the rest of them. The jailer strolled in with a cocky, smug attitude. Jack let out a completely undignified squeak when the jailer grabbed the shears from its hook on the wall and approached the stone slab.

"Hey-- Y-You don't know what your doing!" Jack said in an unusually high-pitched voice. "You'll be denying the people of the universe a glorious thing! Can we talk about this? Please?..."

The jailer opened the shears with a shwing noise and Jack's blood turned to ice.

The shears moved into position, dangling menacingly just over that spot. Jack tried desperately to squeeze his legs together and offer some protection, but his ankles were tied down too tightly.

The shears came down with agonizing slowness. The jailer was deliberately dragging this out to make his squirm. Jack wouldn't admit that it was working.

"Hey-- C'mon... Maybe we can work something out... Hyper-Vodkas! Let me go and I'll treat you to all the Hyper-Vodkas you want! Just don't chop off my nuts!" Jack practically wailed, squeezing his eyes shut.

For a long moment, nothing happened and Jack risked opening one eye. The jailer had pulled down his hood and there gleamed the cheekiest smile the former Time Agent had ever seen.

"DOCTOR!! YOU BASTARD!!" Jack screamed, struggling mightily against the ropes, filled with the urge to kill and maim.

The Doctor began to sever the bindings.

"You're too easily scared, Jack." the Time Lord said lazily. "One mention of castration and you scream like a little girl."

"That was not funny." Jack said through gritted teeth, wincing when the blood rushed back into his numb foot. The Doctor snapped the rest of the ropes and Jack contemplated strangling the cheeky, pinstriped bastard.

"I told you I had a brilliant plan!" the Doctor added cheerily, dropping the shears and pulling the long cloak off. He threw it at Jack. "Put that on. I won't have you wandering naked."

"Even though you know you want me to." Jack muttered with a hint of his normal attitude. He put on the cloak almost reluctantly. "'Cause I'm just that sexy!' he added cheekily.

"Oh, get over yourself!" the Doctor groaned, checking the corridor outside. "C'mon."

"I think you owe me a Hyper-Vodka or six for scaring the shit out of me like that." Jack hissed in the Time Lord's ear as they set off carefully down the corridor.

The guards were in the middle of shift -- an early one because Martha had sped up the clocks by an hour -- so the Doctor and Jack snuck back to the TARDIS without getting caught. Or at least, that's what they would've liked. They were chased the last quarter-mile by angry guards because the duo had failed to notice the security cameras.

"Right!" The Doctor quickly sent the TARDIS into the time vortex before the locals could start shooting. He moved in front of the monitor. "What was that planet called again?"

"Araza VI." Martha supplied. She peered at the Gallifreyian text across the screen. "What's that?"

"Places I'm either banned from or should never visit again for whatever unpleasant reason." the Doctor explained. He frowned. "I'm banned from the Zetta-Yelsh system? When did that happen?"

"Probably when you were too drunk to remember." Jack said.

They looked at him.

The cloak was on the floor.

It was difficult to look away. For Martha.

"Get some clothes on, Jack." the Doctor said languidly, staring at the monitor, his expression changing vaguely as he looked down the list of places he shouldn't return to.

"I think Martha likes what she sees." Jack said, grinning and winking at the med-student, who blushed a bright shade of crimson.

"I left the kettle on." Martha said without preamble and left the control room as fast as she could without making it look like she was running away. Jack sniggered and followed her into the twisting corridors beyond the control room. Almost immediately, the corridors shuffled around and the TARDIS shoved Jack's bedroom door right under his nose.

He went in, heaving a theatrical sigh.

Evidently, the TARDIS didn't appreciate his dead-sexiness either.