not to be a gay bitch on main, but i often hurt myself thinking about the torchwood team meeting boom town jack. it's your boss, your mysterious, often grim boss, and he looks pretty much the same except for the glow of youth about him and the lack of his signature outfit which you've never seen him without. and your boss is charismatic, yeah, but this man is fucking effervescent. he's so aggressively alive, so insistently present, and he looks delighted with everything he sees. his eyes light up when they fall on alien artifacts, and early 2000s phones, and the friends he's travelling with. he's so bright it's like staring down car headlights. and i know ianto and he weren't together, but imagine if they were. jack never seems as happy with me as he does with the blonde girl and the man in the leather jacket. jack never seems this happy.

i don't think jack ever asked whether the doctor abandoned him before or after regenerating, because if he doesn't know, then at least he can pretend there was one doctor out there who truly loved him