![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fictionalTitle: To Learn This Holding And The Holding Back
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Tosh, Gwen, Owen
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rm & kalichan
Rating/Warning: NC-17, mostly plot this time, with a serving of porn for dessert.
Summary: With every night, a morning after. Jack and Ianto try to cope.
Author's Notes: Concludes the triptych begun with A Strange Fashion of Forsaking and Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny; takes place after those two stories somewhere in between 2x05: Adam and 2x06: Reset. Title adapted from a poem by Lucie Brock-Broido. The next story in this 'verse will be coming soon; it will pick up after 2x09: Something Borrowed. 3rd installment of I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling
Wordcount: ~16,700 [divided into three sections because LJ is stupid.]
Tosh winced as the Hub door rolled back with its usual accompaniment of claxons and flashing lights. It was a bit much this early in the morning, even if she had already been awake for a couple of hours and had even managed to get in a quick run before heading over to the Hub. The running was something Jack had encouraged. She wasn't particularly great at it and probably never would be, but it was freedom, and it was methodical, and she needed that reminder sometimes without a gun in her hand.
She glanced towards Jack's office. The lights were off, and he didn't seem to be around, but it was hard to know. When he did rest at all it was usually around dawn. Tosh had groggily run into him trying to make his own coffee at this hour more than once. Often though, he was just up reading, and he'd usually emerge from the cubby under his office long enough to say hello. The third option, which she'd seen decidedly less of since his little walkabout, was that he'd saunter in after a night of who knows what, or rather who knows who, around six.
Tosh loved the Hub in the early morning. It was easier to concentrate then than during the proper day, and it hummed and whispered and seem to talk to her in a language all its own. One of beauty and mechanism, cold stone, water, gears, and the turning of an age, as opposed to the drudgery and stories of horror that so often obscured the magic during normal business hours, not that Torchwood could be considered to ever really conduct normal business.
She liked her early morning chats with Jack too. Sometimes just a greeting. Sometimes more. In a lot of ways they'd never be equals or friends. They couldn't be. She owed him her life and, more than that, her self. Also she was small and shy and awkward, nothing at all like anything Jack valued in himself or the world. But in other ways she knew him down to his bones. He trusted her, because she'd been there so long and had so much to lose. He never questioned her about the odd hours or her need for quiet and seemed to almost understand her relationship with the space, clearly having one of his own. They kept secrets for each other, and while they weren't secrets that mattered, the keeping of them did.
As she shrugged off her coat, Tosh punched in at her workstation, brought up the Rift monitor, the weather tracking data that Ianto had compiled for the last six months, and this week's forecasts. Weather forecasts were based on a simple premise -- extrapolating by considering what had previously transpired what percentage of the time on days with certain sets of variables. It was her hope that she could eventually generate the same sort of reasonably reliable information for the Rift, even if making inexact predictions based on other inexact predictions didn't entirely strike her as the best plan. Still, it was a place to start.
As she started cross mapping the data, she noticed the Rift activity monitor spike. Reflexively, she jumped back from it, even though it was just a representation on a screen. Rift activity didn't necessarily mean something was crossing in to or out of it, but it was always a possibility that had to be investigated.
She pulled up an aerial map of Cardiff and was relieved to see no freakishly localized weather patterns. One concern down, although that didn't actually comfort her that much. Everything she ruled out made whatever it was she needed to find that much harder to track down.
She looked at the clock in the corner of her screen. 6:27. More than late enough for overhead traffic coverage. Sometimes she didn't need to be any more high tech than watching the television.
She popped the window up and groaned. A nine-car pile up on Albany Road, pedestrians hit, victims injured beyond recognition, victims who in a closeup on a leg clearly looked like Weevils.
Damn.
She picked up her cellphone and punched in Jack's number. Even if he was in the Hub, this was faster. And while the only person he ever entertained there was Ianto, she still tried to respect his privacy.
***
Jack was dozing. Well, what he called dozing. He wasn't, strictly speaking, unconscious, but he was dreaming. This happened when he was really tired. He'd need to close his eyes for a few minutes and then realize that while he was perfectly aware of what was going on in the environment around him, his mind was putting it together in ways that were strange and nonsensical, sometimes adding appearances by people and things he hadn't seen in years. It was frequently, but not always, disturbing, although he had some gratitude for the fact that he could do it at all. Jack could still remember sleep, hadn't really stopped needing it until his second time through the Forties, and he liked to think it wasn't lost to him entirely, even though he was pretty sure that one day it probably would be. At least, for now, he could still drift.
Ianto was curled next to him, duvet half covering his face, snoring, mostly softly, but not always, and somehow that didn't surprise Jack. After all, Ianto had to get his grace from trying to compensate for something. It was oddly comforting, listening to Ianto's snuffling breaths, as if each one were a little communication, informing him that Ianto was still there, still alive, still human.
Except it wasn't Ianto that had to worry about still being human, was it? Jack remembered what it felt like to be divorced from his body, leaving it behind for unconsciousness, but he hadn't had that feeling in so long. He had always loved his body, loved throwing it at everything he could possibly find, but now it held him like a prison, without changing, without surprise. He knew it so well now, knew the edges of his skin so perfectly that he could feel each separate air current moving next to him like little tentacles, and found himself trying to count them as small children used to be told to count sheep. Like seaweed, in the water of a far away peninsula, he thought. Floating. Sand. I wonder if it's still there. Or has happened yet? How much does seaweed evolve? He drifted further, as the early morning sounds of Ianto's house settled around him into a strange, continuous music –- the hum of the computer, the water in the pipes, and Jack almost thought he could hear voices in it, but he wasn't sure what they were saying.
He shifted closer to Ianto to lean his head against the man's back, to be closer to his breathing, to be closer to the possibility that he'd know the answer to all those little sounds in the dark. They were exactly the sort of thing Ianto would be the master of, small and seemingly innocuous but the secret foundations of the universe, the tiny truths that added up into a life. A different century -- and it wasn't fair, was it? – and he'd build cities and breathe them into being, but in this one, he was just a boy in the dark, in bed. One who listened very well, Jack thought as Ianto rolled in the unconscious attempt to cling and almost smothered him with the blanket. It made Jack sad to know that no one would ever fall for him the same wayover such small antics ever again. People had once, he was fairly certain, when there wasn't just the smile, wasn't just the scale. Every time he'd been injured in training at the Agency he'd been fussed over with such amazing charm. It had served him well in the wars, Earth's wars, to know how wounded soldiers got the girls.
More sounds as the city started to wake. The hum of Ianto's boiler shutting off, stocked as it was with the hot water for his morning ablutions. A garage door opening, the metallic thwack of a bicycle padlock against a street lamp. Cars, televisions, airplanes, dogs -- dogs weren't kept back home, Jack's wandering thoughts supplied -- children, telephones.
He winced. Who would be enough of an asshole to call anyone at this hour? No one wanted to do business before work or buy anything or have a lie-in with their lover interrup-- shit, his phone and he forced himself to jerk into full consciousness, earning an annoyed and dismayed sound from Ianto.
"Sshhhhh," Jack said, trying to settle him back down into sleep before he dashed for the phone in the other room. With any luck, Ianto wouldn't think he was being abandoned at dawn and with any luck Jack wouldn't have to do just that.
Jack cursed in a fashion he tried only to use when he was alone, otherwise he'd have to tell people it was some earth dialect from some far flung place, and he'd had this whore there once...it wasn't entirely untrue if he didn't think about it too hard, but it was a real hassle to make up a good tale when all one really wanted to do was curse a blue streak.
After some furious scrabbling around on his hands and knees through the discarded detritus of the night before (he couldn't believe he'd left his phone and his gun so far away from his person), Jack was finally able to locate his mobile. As he answered it, he was conscious of a sudden, wrenching fear; that he'd taken the one night off, and of course now they were under attack, that he'd been caught unawares and royally screwed for his pains. But really, if he were honest, on some level, he'd probably been expecting it. Leaving the Hub, that was like a challenge, wasn't it? A "try it, I dare you," to the universe that seemed to take such pleasure in taking things away from him that he hadn't even known he wanted to hang on to.
He clicked the button on the phone. “Yeah?”
“Jack? It's Toshiko.” Her voice sounded a little stressed, but not too bad. “Where are you?”
“Out,” he said. “What's going on?”
“We've had a Rift spike, and it seems to have dumped, oh I'd say, about a dozen or so weevils down on Albany Road. There's a nine car pileup, and from the CCTV it looks as though we've definitely got some fatalities.”
“Humans or weevils?”
“Um, both?” Tosh said. “We'll need to do a clean-up, and quickly. Oh, and it looks like the police have just arrived.”
"Just great,” Jack said with a grimace. “Chaos on the loose, a legal system to subvert and who knows what else came though, right? Exactly my type of Thursday, Tosh."
She was silent, expecting him, of course, to come up with a plan.
He considered for a moment. “Okay,” he said finally. “Grab your laptop, take the SUV and roust Owen out of bed. I'm not hauling weevil carcasses on my own. You can meet me there. Leave a message for Gwen so she can work from the Hub when she gets in.”
“Shouldn't we pick you up too?” Tosh asked.
“No, just do as I say, okay?” he said wearily. “I'll be there in twenty.”
“Fine,” she replied, and hung up.
"Fuck," Jack hissed and started throwing on his wrinkled clothes. This was entirely not how he'd wanted to start the day. And if he was displeased, Ianto would probably be miserable. On the other hand, at least they'd be spared an awkward morning after, even if Jack had hoped for a not-awkward and very dirty one instead.
He ran a hand through his hair as his mind finally seized on the oh so many problems at hand. First, there were yesterday's clothes followed by the fact that he reeked of sex and there was only so much that a bit of washing up in Ianto's kitchen sink was going to do for that. Then there was the matter of getting to Albany Road. Calling a car was out of the question – he wasn't going to show up as Torchwood in a taxi- and let's face it, bus transportation? Slow and beneath him. And then there was Ianto, who wasn't going to be happy about this at all.
Jack padded over to the kitchen and found the stack of index cards Ianto apparently used for his grocery lists and scrawled a quick note.
He thought for a moment, and then added:
Charming, casual, to the point. That would do, right?
He left the note on the coffee machine where Ianto would be sure to see it. Then he slipped his gun into his holster and shrugged on his coat. He grabbed the car keys from where he'd flung them the night before, thought about going back into the bedroom to kiss Ianto, but concluded it'd be kinder to let him sleep. Anyway, he was in a hurry.
He closed the door gently on his way out, and took the stairs down three at a time, his mind racing ahead to the job in front of him.
***
Ianto woke up with a jerk to the harsh buzz of his alarm going off. His hand reached out for it instinctively to slam it into silence; it was only when he did so that he realized he had been sleeping with all the covers pulled around his neck like a noose while the rest of him was completely bare. Had he been sleeping like that all night? Where was Jack? He looked around the room, puzzled, as his brain slowly came on line.
Where was Jack? Ianto distinctly remembered falling asleep with the other man in the bed next to him. Had he got bored and gone out to the sitting room for another book? Ianto got up, pulled his dressing gown off of its hook and went out to look for him.
Really though, he knew Jack wouldn't be there before he even looked. Jack loved physical contact too much - even when it was casual, hand on the shoulder, good job at a meeting - to stray far from a bed with another person in it unless he was departing entirely. At least, so Ianto assumed.
Apparently spending the night meant leaving at the crack of dawn. Graceless, Ianto thought with some irritation, and padded into the kitchen to switch on the coffee maker.
Oh. He had left a note. How quaint.
Ianto frowned as he read it, having to read it twice to make any sense out of the amazing amount of ridiculous information contained in fifty words or less.
There were weevils crashing around Cardiff in broad daylight and Jack had decided he should sleep in? And taken his car?!
While in truth Ianto had had no idea how last night's date was supposed to end and certainly hadn't been expecting a domestic drive into work with a thermos of coffee, he was utterly certain he wasn't expecting this. He swore angrily to himself when he realized that he also had no cash at all in the house besides some spare change.
Among other things, it meant if he wanted to kill Captain Jack Harkness, he was going to have to take the bus.
***
When Ianto finally arrived at the garage entrance to the Hub, slightly damp (because it was, of course, raining) and vaguely panting from having trudged the long way from the stop, he was in an even worse mood than he had started out in.
This was not alleviated at all by a large black SUV coming to a screeching halt close by. His car, Ianto noted, was nowhere in sight. He watched Jack bound out of the SUV and headed for the entrance. Ianto waited for him with his arms crossed over his chest.
“What are you doing here?” Jack said, as he caught sight of Ianto standing there. “I thought I gave you the morning off.”
“Oh yes?” Ianto said, from between grit teeth.
“Well, now that you're here, why don't you help Owen?” Jack suggested airily, nodding over to where Owen had got the back open. Ianto could see various weevil-sized, bagged bodies piled up inside, and he grimaced.
“Where is my car?” Ianto said, keeping himself from shouting only by a gargantuan effort, but Jack had already breezed by him and was gone.
It was almost like being invisible. Ianto existed, but clearly any details beyond that were simply beneath Jack's notice. He walked over to Owen and half shoved him out of the way to drag one of the body bags out of the SUV.
"Oi! None of that," Owen said indignantly. "You got to have a lie-in."
"Hardly. Do you know what Jack did with my car?"
"Sent Tosh 'round to fetch you," Owen said as he hefted a weevil of his own and walked past Ianto.
"What?” he asked, throwing his own weevil over his shoulder and lamenting the difficulty in running to keep up with someone for casual conversation while toting a body.
"Yeah, I bet she'll be thrilled," Owen muttered darkly.
Ianto rolled his eyes. As if Tosh was possibly the person having the worst day. And as if to prove it, Owen asked for coffee before they'd even finished shoving the last of the weevils into the morgue holding area.
Ianto ignored him and took the stairs up to Jack's office two at a time instead. He entered just as Jack was emerging from the hatch down to his room in fresh clothes.
"Ianto," Jack said, beaming. "What's up? Do you need me for something?"
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"I don't know, the Doctor's still working on that. What got you up on the wrong side of the bed?"
"You."
"I seem to remember letting you sleep in and missing a spectacular hit and run comedy on one of Cardiff's central arteries. Very bloody too, did I mention that? Would have done a number on that nice suit of yours."
"It's not your job to protect me from my job, Jack."
Jack looked confused. "Wasn't dangerous. I wasn't protecting you from anything. I was trying to be nice. You can't tell me you wanted to be out of bed at 6:30 in the morning to deal with this level of petty bullshit?"
"It sure got you out of bed quickly enough," Ianto snarled.
"I left a note!"
"You should have woken me."
"Okay," Jack said holding up his hands. "You're a masochist, by the way."
"Also, where the hell is my car?"
“I sent Tosh from the scene to get you. If you'd just followed my directions, you wouldn't be so-”
“You can't be serious. Your directions?!”
“What has gotten into-”
Ianto lost the battle with himself to keep his voice down. “You sneak out of my house, STEAL my car, and leave me an incredibly pathetic note about it. Then when I finally arrive here, after having to take the fucking bus, you calmly instruct me to dispose of your weevils – thanks for helping, by the way - and inform me that you've given my car away to Toshiko – again without bloody asking? Have I left anything out?”
Jack just stared at him.
“What did you imagine I was going to do, Jack? Cry? What the fuck were you so afraid of? Two seconds to come in there and tell me you were leaving, and you couldn't spare it?”
“You seem to be operating under some kind of misconception. Let me clear things up for you," Jack said, in the good humoured tone that meant he was really starting to get angry. "I make the decisions around here, Ianto. When I want your opinion about them, trust me, I'll ask for it.”
Ianto wanted to hit him so badly his hands had actually started to shake. “You are a class-one bastard, you know that? Do you ever think for a second about someone other than yourself?”
***
"You'd think people would learn how to drive in the rain considering we're in Cardiff," Tosh said as she stalked into the Hub and headed for the stairs to Jack's office.
"I wouldn't go in -- " Gwen started but Owen waved her off.
"Oh let her. The rest of us have had the misfortune of walking in on it often enough."
***
Jack was saved, such as it was, from yelling back at Ianto and escalating the situation even further by a soft knock and the appearance of Tosh.
"He wasn't th- sorry!" she said and immediately backed out of the office and closed the door.
“Answer me, Jack!” Ianto shouted.
"This is not the time or the place for this," Jack said flatly. “There's a line, and you've crossed it.”
Ianto had opened his mouth to reply when the door opened again.
"Car keys. Sorry," Tosh said, darting in to set them on Jack's desk and darting back out.
"Actually, sir,” Ianto spat out, “it is the time and the place considering the degree to which your actions impeded the smooth functioning of this organization. And directions? Would have actually included some."
"I'm not having this discussion with you now,” Jack said coldly, “so why don't you go make us all some coffee?”
Ianto said nothing, merely picked up his car keys, turned on his heel and walked out of Jack's office slamming the door behind him. The only thing worse than an angry Jack Harkness was a condescending one.
"Ianto, you all right?' Gwen asked.
Ianto ignored her.
"Bitch fight. Who knew?" Owen said.
"Owen!" Tosh scolded.
"What? Seriously? Door slamming? Is that all he's got?"
“How very witty,” Ianto spat out, while the girls, damn them, tried to hide their smiles. “Have you thought about taking that show on the road? Do something useful for a change?” Despite not wanting to give them the satisfaction, Ianto found himself glaring at Owen furiously, before making his way to the coffee machine, in a calm, unruffled manner. Well, he wanted to believe it was anyway; he was a little concerned it read more like storming off in a sulk, which it most definitely was not.
***
The atmosphere in the Hub was distinctly frostier than usual throughout the rest of the morning. Ianto retreated into the archives after making everyone their coffee; he supposed that he still had to do his job, irrespective of the fact that everyone he worked for was a complete tit. Jack naturally, went without. He could make his own sodding coffee, Ianto thought vindictively.
After cataloging the Rift activity data from the morning, running some equations for Toshiko, ringing up the police to get the “hit and run” drivers released to Torchwood's custody (he told them they were on a terrorism watch list and therefore needed to be checked out under the radar; a few doses of retcon, some “lost” paperwork, and at least that particular mess would be well on its way to being mopped up), and making another round of coffee, it was time for lunch.
Armed with a choice of menus and projecting an air of imperturbability (or so he hoped), he marched into the main office area, and asked unceremoniously, “Curry, pizza or Chinese?”
"Whichever one's hardest for you to poison," Owen said with malicious cheer.
Ianto looked at the girls. Tosh mumbled some sort of reply, and Ianto almost felt bad about his fury at her. Which left Gwen to give an actual answer.
"Curry?" she asked hopefully.
"Curry it is then."
"Aren't you going to ask Jack?" she tried, hoping somehow to settle their feud or at least dial back the level of rage and drama.
"He can get his own," Ianto said neutrally, but the intent was clear. "Everyone's usual all right?"
Unsurprisingly, everyone was absolutely fine with that.
Gwen saved her eye-roll until he turned his back to head up to the tourist office, which other than as a disguise for Torchwood had its main purpose as the takeway drop point.
"How long do you think this is going to go on?" Tosh hissed at her once Ianto was safely gone.
"Dunno. Not even entirely sure what happened."
"I didn't know they were serious enough to have a fight this bad."
"Serious?" Owen added, not having the same sense to keep his voice down. "Fuck serious. Jack stole his car. Any man would be upset about that. Highly justified, if badly handled."
"Owen --" Tosh started and then stopped herself.
"What?!"
"I don't think it's really about the car."
They all looked up as Jack's voice rang out from the landing by his office. "Oh trust me, kids, it's definitely about the car. Where is our fair archivist anyway?"
"Ordering us lunch," Gwen said.
Jack frowned. "What are we having?"
"We're having curry," Tosh said hesitantly.
"Ianto said you could order your own," Gwen finished for her.
Jack snorted, and while the rest of the team could see the humour in the nature of the spat, none of them really thought Jack being bemused by Ianto's pettiness was likely to improve things.
As Jack turned and disappeared back into his office, Gwen and Tosh looked at each other quizzically.
"What should we do?" Gwen said, finally.
Toshiko shook her head. "I've no idea. But you should have seen them glaring at each other over Jack's desk. It was actually rather frightening."
"Didn't you overhear anything else?"
"Are you kidding? I wasn't going to stick around to get my head bitten off, thanks."
"Point taken. I'm worried though," Gwen said. "I mean, Jack...I'm not sure he really understands the kind of effect he has on people."
Owen, who could obviously no longer restrain himself, exhaled with exasperation. "Ladies, if I may, what the hell are you on about? Are you perfectly serious, Gwen? Jack completely gets the effect he has on people. It's his stock in trade, right? Like taking candy from a baby, it must be, working here. And you lot just sit there and plot like a bunch of ruddy matchmakers."
Gwen didn't dignify that with a response, but went on. "I'm worried he's...I mean, you don't think Ianto wants a relationship, do you? ...God, it even sounds stupid when I say it out loud."
"You think Jack doesn't?" Tosh said.
"Well...but it's Jack...."
"They looked pretty intense up there, is all I'm saying."
Owen snorted. "How could you tell? You were only in there for a second."
"I'm observant," Tosh snapped.
"Then that's even more cause for worry," Gwen said firmly, over their squabbling. "I'm sure Jack has no idea how to negotiate that. Grand gestures, sure. This, not so much."
"And thank god for that," Owen said. "The only thing worse catching them shagging all the time would be having to listen to them cooing over each other like love birds."
Gwen started to respond and then thought the better of it. This would not be a pleasant argument with Owen under any circumstances. When combined with Jack and Ianto's presence in the Hub and her past history with him, it was positively suicidal.
"Ignore him, Gwen, it's all we can do," Tosh said, but she sounded strained.
When the food arrived, Ianto carried it down to the main work area with an approximation of his usual cheer and distributed the various cartons and utensils before taking his own and retreating to the kitchenette.
Gwen and Tosh exchanged looks, Gwen jerking her head in Ianto's direction before taking her own carton and heading up towards Jack's office.
"Oi, who am I going to eat with?" Owen asked.
"Weevils," Tosh and Gwen called nearly simultaneously.
***
Gwen knocked softly on Jack's door before opening it.
"Hey,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, Jack gave her a stern look, as it was probably pretty easy for him to guess why she'd come up. On the other hand, he couldn't really hide the fact that he was glad to see her. Civil company wouldn't be entirely unappreciated no matter how foul his mood.
"Want some?" she asked, holding out her takeaway container.
Jack smiled briefly as if at some private joke. "Better not."
Gwen sat down on his couch. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"He's so young, Jack. And he's been through so much. You need to be careful with him --"
"I do not need to be careful with Ianto. Ianto is more than capable of standing up for himself, as Tosh surely told you. So just stop. Please." He sounded pained.
"Okay," Gwen said. She managed to eat her food in silence for approximately one minute before she just couldn't help herself any longer.
“Just one thing, Jack?”
“What?” he said, wearily.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Haven't you heard?”
“Amazingly, no. Come on, tell me,” she coaxed.
Jack sighed. “I borrowed his car.”
“Borrowed?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “He's annoyed because you borrowed his car?”
Jack didn't say anything.
“By borrowed, do you perhaps mean, stole?”
“Borrowed without asking,” Jack said. At Gwen's look, he added, defensively, “I left a note!”
Gwen shook her head. “After you spent the night, I take it. You're going to be drinking that Caffe Nero swill for weeks.”
“He'll get over it.”
“He probably will,” Gwen said. “But what kind of message are you sending? That he should be happy with whatever you choose to dish out? That whoever lov- cares for you should be pleased to be treated as inconsequential, except when you're in the mood to pay them some attention?”
Jack winced. “I can't always...there was work to do, Gwen. It's work. It's important. I can't always be worried about people's feelings.”
“It was weevils, Jack. Not exactly the end of the world."
She looked at him consideringly and then went over to sit on his desk, before saying seriously, “Jack. Think very carefully about what you want to have happen here. You're larger than life, and people get swept away. You should be sure as to what you're sweeping them towards.”
“I always knew you were impressed by my...size.”
“Oh, you!” Gwen said, and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Seriously though, if it were me, I'd be thinking up some way to make it up to him.”
***
Tosh felt bad creeping up on Ianto, but the whole thing had rattled her so much she couldn't help but tread what was perhaps excessively lightly.
"I'm sorry for my part in whatever this is," she said quietly, perfectly prepared to flee back to a lunch spent with Owen and a dead weevil or two.
"I'm relatively sure it wasn't your fault, Tosh, although you should have called before driving over to my place. Is my car okay?" he asked flatly.
"Think so," she said.
"Well that's good."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Ianto shook his head.
"Why the hell did Jack have your car anyway?" she asked.
"He was at my house. And then I fell asleep. And then he took it."
"Oh," she said dumbly. "Are you two --"
"What?"
"I don't know. I guess I didn't know he'd ever been over to your place."
"It was new," Ianto said sadly.
"Oh," Tosh said, getting it this time, and positively aching for him.
***
Owen stared at the weevil cadaver he was meant to be autopsying.
“What the hell am I dissecting you for? Cause of death: collision with lorry. QED. Am I back in sodding A&E?” he grumbled. To himself. Because there was no one left in the room beside him and a stiffening weevil corpse.
“Can't believe they left me here by myself to go minister to two people who sodding well deserve to be left to die bitter and alone. Fucking soft touches, both of them. Sad really. Meanwhile here I am. Left to eat with you.” He lifted a forkful of curry in a sardonic salute. “Here's to you and me, mate."
***
That night, Ianto's bed still smelled of Jack, and as furious as it made him and as often as cleaning and organization were his responses to rage, he couldn't bring himself to rip the sheets off the bed and throw them in the wash. Instead he sunk down into them, dragging the bedding up so that it covered most of his face and jerked off furiously before falling into a fitful sleep.
Ianto hated him. He really did. And he hated himself for letting it all get like this and feel like this and be like this.
Continue to Part 2
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Tosh, Gwen, Owen
Authors:
rm & kalichanRating/Warning: NC-17, mostly plot this time, with a serving of porn for dessert.
Summary: With every night, a morning after. Jack and Ianto try to cope.
Author's Notes: Concludes the triptych begun with A Strange Fashion of Forsaking and Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny; takes place after those two stories somewhere in between 2x05: Adam and 2x06: Reset. Title adapted from a poem by Lucie Brock-Broido. The next story in this 'verse will be coming soon; it will pick up after 2x09: Something Borrowed. 3rd installment of I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling
Wordcount: ~16,700 [divided into three sections because LJ is stupid.]
Tosh winced as the Hub door rolled back with its usual accompaniment of claxons and flashing lights. It was a bit much this early in the morning, even if she had already been awake for a couple of hours and had even managed to get in a quick run before heading over to the Hub. The running was something Jack had encouraged. She wasn't particularly great at it and probably never would be, but it was freedom, and it was methodical, and she needed that reminder sometimes without a gun in her hand.
She glanced towards Jack's office. The lights were off, and he didn't seem to be around, but it was hard to know. When he did rest at all it was usually around dawn. Tosh had groggily run into him trying to make his own coffee at this hour more than once. Often though, he was just up reading, and he'd usually emerge from the cubby under his office long enough to say hello. The third option, which she'd seen decidedly less of since his little walkabout, was that he'd saunter in after a night of who knows what, or rather who knows who, around six.
Tosh loved the Hub in the early morning. It was easier to concentrate then than during the proper day, and it hummed and whispered and seem to talk to her in a language all its own. One of beauty and mechanism, cold stone, water, gears, and the turning of an age, as opposed to the drudgery and stories of horror that so often obscured the magic during normal business hours, not that Torchwood could be considered to ever really conduct normal business.
She liked her early morning chats with Jack too. Sometimes just a greeting. Sometimes more. In a lot of ways they'd never be equals or friends. They couldn't be. She owed him her life and, more than that, her self. Also she was small and shy and awkward, nothing at all like anything Jack valued in himself or the world. But in other ways she knew him down to his bones. He trusted her, because she'd been there so long and had so much to lose. He never questioned her about the odd hours or her need for quiet and seemed to almost understand her relationship with the space, clearly having one of his own. They kept secrets for each other, and while they weren't secrets that mattered, the keeping of them did.
As she shrugged off her coat, Tosh punched in at her workstation, brought up the Rift monitor, the weather tracking data that Ianto had compiled for the last six months, and this week's forecasts. Weather forecasts were based on a simple premise -- extrapolating by considering what had previously transpired what percentage of the time on days with certain sets of variables. It was her hope that she could eventually generate the same sort of reasonably reliable information for the Rift, even if making inexact predictions based on other inexact predictions didn't entirely strike her as the best plan. Still, it was a place to start.
As she started cross mapping the data, she noticed the Rift activity monitor spike. Reflexively, she jumped back from it, even though it was just a representation on a screen. Rift activity didn't necessarily mean something was crossing in to or out of it, but it was always a possibility that had to be investigated.
She pulled up an aerial map of Cardiff and was relieved to see no freakishly localized weather patterns. One concern down, although that didn't actually comfort her that much. Everything she ruled out made whatever it was she needed to find that much harder to track down.
She looked at the clock in the corner of her screen. 6:27. More than late enough for overhead traffic coverage. Sometimes she didn't need to be any more high tech than watching the television.
She popped the window up and groaned. A nine-car pile up on Albany Road, pedestrians hit, victims injured beyond recognition, victims who in a closeup on a leg clearly looked like Weevils.
Damn.
She picked up her cellphone and punched in Jack's number. Even if he was in the Hub, this was faster. And while the only person he ever entertained there was Ianto, she still tried to respect his privacy.
Jack was dozing. Well, what he called dozing. He wasn't, strictly speaking, unconscious, but he was dreaming. This happened when he was really tired. He'd need to close his eyes for a few minutes and then realize that while he was perfectly aware of what was going on in the environment around him, his mind was putting it together in ways that were strange and nonsensical, sometimes adding appearances by people and things he hadn't seen in years. It was frequently, but not always, disturbing, although he had some gratitude for the fact that he could do it at all. Jack could still remember sleep, hadn't really stopped needing it until his second time through the Forties, and he liked to think it wasn't lost to him entirely, even though he was pretty sure that one day it probably would be. At least, for now, he could still drift.
Ianto was curled next to him, duvet half covering his face, snoring, mostly softly, but not always, and somehow that didn't surprise Jack. After all, Ianto had to get his grace from trying to compensate for something. It was oddly comforting, listening to Ianto's snuffling breaths, as if each one were a little communication, informing him that Ianto was still there, still alive, still human.
Except it wasn't Ianto that had to worry about still being human, was it? Jack remembered what it felt like to be divorced from his body, leaving it behind for unconsciousness, but he hadn't had that feeling in so long. He had always loved his body, loved throwing it at everything he could possibly find, but now it held him like a prison, without changing, without surprise. He knew it so well now, knew the edges of his skin so perfectly that he could feel each separate air current moving next to him like little tentacles, and found himself trying to count them as small children used to be told to count sheep. Like seaweed, in the water of a far away peninsula, he thought. Floating. Sand. I wonder if it's still there. Or has happened yet? How much does seaweed evolve? He drifted further, as the early morning sounds of Ianto's house settled around him into a strange, continuous music –- the hum of the computer, the water in the pipes, and Jack almost thought he could hear voices in it, but he wasn't sure what they were saying.
He shifted closer to Ianto to lean his head against the man's back, to be closer to his breathing, to be closer to the possibility that he'd know the answer to all those little sounds in the dark. They were exactly the sort of thing Ianto would be the master of, small and seemingly innocuous but the secret foundations of the universe, the tiny truths that added up into a life. A different century -- and it wasn't fair, was it? – and he'd build cities and breathe them into being, but in this one, he was just a boy in the dark, in bed. One who listened very well, Jack thought as Ianto rolled in the unconscious attempt to cling and almost smothered him with the blanket. It made Jack sad to know that no one would ever fall for him the same wayover such small antics ever again. People had once, he was fairly certain, when there wasn't just the smile, wasn't just the scale. Every time he'd been injured in training at the Agency he'd been fussed over with such amazing charm. It had served him well in the wars, Earth's wars, to know how wounded soldiers got the girls.
More sounds as the city started to wake. The hum of Ianto's boiler shutting off, stocked as it was with the hot water for his morning ablutions. A garage door opening, the metallic thwack of a bicycle padlock against a street lamp. Cars, televisions, airplanes, dogs -- dogs weren't kept back home, Jack's wandering thoughts supplied -- children, telephones.
He winced. Who would be enough of an asshole to call anyone at this hour? No one wanted to do business before work or buy anything or have a lie-in with their lover interrup-- shit, his phone and he forced himself to jerk into full consciousness, earning an annoyed and dismayed sound from Ianto.
"Sshhhhh," Jack said, trying to settle him back down into sleep before he dashed for the phone in the other room. With any luck, Ianto wouldn't think he was being abandoned at dawn and with any luck Jack wouldn't have to do just that.
Jack cursed in a fashion he tried only to use when he was alone, otherwise he'd have to tell people it was some earth dialect from some far flung place, and he'd had this whore there once...it wasn't entirely untrue if he didn't think about it too hard, but it was a real hassle to make up a good tale when all one really wanted to do was curse a blue streak.
After some furious scrabbling around on his hands and knees through the discarded detritus of the night before (he couldn't believe he'd left his phone and his gun so far away from his person), Jack was finally able to locate his mobile. As he answered it, he was conscious of a sudden, wrenching fear; that he'd taken the one night off, and of course now they were under attack, that he'd been caught unawares and royally screwed for his pains. But really, if he were honest, on some level, he'd probably been expecting it. Leaving the Hub, that was like a challenge, wasn't it? A "try it, I dare you," to the universe that seemed to take such pleasure in taking things away from him that he hadn't even known he wanted to hang on to.
He clicked the button on the phone. “Yeah?”
“Jack? It's Toshiko.” Her voice sounded a little stressed, but not too bad. “Where are you?”
“Out,” he said. “What's going on?”
“We've had a Rift spike, and it seems to have dumped, oh I'd say, about a dozen or so weevils down on Albany Road. There's a nine car pileup, and from the CCTV it looks as though we've definitely got some fatalities.”
“Humans or weevils?”
“Um, both?” Tosh said. “We'll need to do a clean-up, and quickly. Oh, and it looks like the police have just arrived.”
"Just great,” Jack said with a grimace. “Chaos on the loose, a legal system to subvert and who knows what else came though, right? Exactly my type of Thursday, Tosh."
She was silent, expecting him, of course, to come up with a plan.
He considered for a moment. “Okay,” he said finally. “Grab your laptop, take the SUV and roust Owen out of bed. I'm not hauling weevil carcasses on my own. You can meet me there. Leave a message for Gwen so she can work from the Hub when she gets in.”
“Shouldn't we pick you up too?” Tosh asked.
“No, just do as I say, okay?” he said wearily. “I'll be there in twenty.”
“Fine,” she replied, and hung up.
"Fuck," Jack hissed and started throwing on his wrinkled clothes. This was entirely not how he'd wanted to start the day. And if he was displeased, Ianto would probably be miserable. On the other hand, at least they'd be spared an awkward morning after, even if Jack had hoped for a not-awkward and very dirty one instead.
He ran a hand through his hair as his mind finally seized on the oh so many problems at hand. First, there were yesterday's clothes followed by the fact that he reeked of sex and there was only so much that a bit of washing up in Ianto's kitchen sink was going to do for that. Then there was the matter of getting to Albany Road. Calling a car was out of the question – he wasn't going to show up as Torchwood in a taxi- and let's face it, bus transportation? Slow and beneath him. And then there was Ianto, who wasn't going to be happy about this at all.
Jack padded over to the kitchen and found the stack of index cards Ianto apparently used for his grocery lists and scrawled a quick note.
Tosh called. Weevil/car pile-up on Albany Road. Have to run.
Sleep in, you probably need it. See you at the Hub later.
-Jack
He thought for a moment, and then added:
P.S. -- I'll take good care of your car. Promise.
Charming, casual, to the point. That would do, right?
He left the note on the coffee machine where Ianto would be sure to see it. Then he slipped his gun into his holster and shrugged on his coat. He grabbed the car keys from where he'd flung them the night before, thought about going back into the bedroom to kiss Ianto, but concluded it'd be kinder to let him sleep. Anyway, he was in a hurry.
He closed the door gently on his way out, and took the stairs down three at a time, his mind racing ahead to the job in front of him.
Ianto woke up with a jerk to the harsh buzz of his alarm going off. His hand reached out for it instinctively to slam it into silence; it was only when he did so that he realized he had been sleeping with all the covers pulled around his neck like a noose while the rest of him was completely bare. Had he been sleeping like that all night? Where was Jack? He looked around the room, puzzled, as his brain slowly came on line.
Where was Jack? Ianto distinctly remembered falling asleep with the other man in the bed next to him. Had he got bored and gone out to the sitting room for another book? Ianto got up, pulled his dressing gown off of its hook and went out to look for him.
Really though, he knew Jack wouldn't be there before he even looked. Jack loved physical contact too much - even when it was casual, hand on the shoulder, good job at a meeting - to stray far from a bed with another person in it unless he was departing entirely. At least, so Ianto assumed.
Apparently spending the night meant leaving at the crack of dawn. Graceless, Ianto thought with some irritation, and padded into the kitchen to switch on the coffee maker.
Oh. He had left a note. How quaint.
Ianto frowned as he read it, having to read it twice to make any sense out of the amazing amount of ridiculous information contained in fifty words or less.
There were weevils crashing around Cardiff in broad daylight and Jack had decided he should sleep in? And taken his car?!
While in truth Ianto had had no idea how last night's date was supposed to end and certainly hadn't been expecting a domestic drive into work with a thermos of coffee, he was utterly certain he wasn't expecting this. He swore angrily to himself when he realized that he also had no cash at all in the house besides some spare change.
Among other things, it meant if he wanted to kill Captain Jack Harkness, he was going to have to take the bus.
When Ianto finally arrived at the garage entrance to the Hub, slightly damp (because it was, of course, raining) and vaguely panting from having trudged the long way from the stop, he was in an even worse mood than he had started out in.
This was not alleviated at all by a large black SUV coming to a screeching halt close by. His car, Ianto noted, was nowhere in sight. He watched Jack bound out of the SUV and headed for the entrance. Ianto waited for him with his arms crossed over his chest.
“What are you doing here?” Jack said, as he caught sight of Ianto standing there. “I thought I gave you the morning off.”
“Oh yes?” Ianto said, from between grit teeth.
“Well, now that you're here, why don't you help Owen?” Jack suggested airily, nodding over to where Owen had got the back open. Ianto could see various weevil-sized, bagged bodies piled up inside, and he grimaced.
“Where is my car?” Ianto said, keeping himself from shouting only by a gargantuan effort, but Jack had already breezed by him and was gone.
It was almost like being invisible. Ianto existed, but clearly any details beyond that were simply beneath Jack's notice. He walked over to Owen and half shoved him out of the way to drag one of the body bags out of the SUV.
"Oi! None of that," Owen said indignantly. "You got to have a lie-in."
"Hardly. Do you know what Jack did with my car?"
"Sent Tosh 'round to fetch you," Owen said as he hefted a weevil of his own and walked past Ianto.
"What?” he asked, throwing his own weevil over his shoulder and lamenting the difficulty in running to keep up with someone for casual conversation while toting a body.
"Yeah, I bet she'll be thrilled," Owen muttered darkly.
Ianto rolled his eyes. As if Tosh was possibly the person having the worst day. And as if to prove it, Owen asked for coffee before they'd even finished shoving the last of the weevils into the morgue holding area.
Ianto ignored him and took the stairs up to Jack's office two at a time instead. He entered just as Jack was emerging from the hatch down to his room in fresh clothes.
"Ianto," Jack said, beaming. "What's up? Do you need me for something?"
"What the fuck is wrong with you?"
"I don't know, the Doctor's still working on that. What got you up on the wrong side of the bed?"
"You."
"I seem to remember letting you sleep in and missing a spectacular hit and run comedy on one of Cardiff's central arteries. Very bloody too, did I mention that? Would have done a number on that nice suit of yours."
"It's not your job to protect me from my job, Jack."
Jack looked confused. "Wasn't dangerous. I wasn't protecting you from anything. I was trying to be nice. You can't tell me you wanted to be out of bed at 6:30 in the morning to deal with this level of petty bullshit?"
"It sure got you out of bed quickly enough," Ianto snarled.
"I left a note!"
"You should have woken me."
"Okay," Jack said holding up his hands. "You're a masochist, by the way."
"Also, where the hell is my car?"
“I sent Tosh from the scene to get you. If you'd just followed my directions, you wouldn't be so-”
“You can't be serious. Your directions?!”
“What has gotten into-”
Ianto lost the battle with himself to keep his voice down. “You sneak out of my house, STEAL my car, and leave me an incredibly pathetic note about it. Then when I finally arrive here, after having to take the fucking bus, you calmly instruct me to dispose of your weevils – thanks for helping, by the way - and inform me that you've given my car away to Toshiko – again without bloody asking? Have I left anything out?”
Jack just stared at him.
“What did you imagine I was going to do, Jack? Cry? What the fuck were you so afraid of? Two seconds to come in there and tell me you were leaving, and you couldn't spare it?”
“You seem to be operating under some kind of misconception. Let me clear things up for you," Jack said, in the good humoured tone that meant he was really starting to get angry. "I make the decisions around here, Ianto. When I want your opinion about them, trust me, I'll ask for it.”
Ianto wanted to hit him so badly his hands had actually started to shake. “You are a class-one bastard, you know that? Do you ever think for a second about someone other than yourself?”
"You'd think people would learn how to drive in the rain considering we're in Cardiff," Tosh said as she stalked into the Hub and headed for the stairs to Jack's office.
"I wouldn't go in -- " Gwen started but Owen waved her off.
"Oh let her. The rest of us have had the misfortune of walking in on it often enough."
Jack was saved, such as it was, from yelling back at Ianto and escalating the situation even further by a soft knock and the appearance of Tosh.
"He wasn't th- sorry!" she said and immediately backed out of the office and closed the door.
“Answer me, Jack!” Ianto shouted.
"This is not the time or the place for this," Jack said flatly. “There's a line, and you've crossed it.”
Ianto had opened his mouth to reply when the door opened again.
"Car keys. Sorry," Tosh said, darting in to set them on Jack's desk and darting back out.
"Actually, sir,” Ianto spat out, “it is the time and the place considering the degree to which your actions impeded the smooth functioning of this organization. And directions? Would have actually included some."
"I'm not having this discussion with you now,” Jack said coldly, “so why don't you go make us all some coffee?”
Ianto said nothing, merely picked up his car keys, turned on his heel and walked out of Jack's office slamming the door behind him. The only thing worse than an angry Jack Harkness was a condescending one.
"Ianto, you all right?' Gwen asked.
Ianto ignored her.
"Bitch fight. Who knew?" Owen said.
"Owen!" Tosh scolded.
"What? Seriously? Door slamming? Is that all he's got?"
“How very witty,” Ianto spat out, while the girls, damn them, tried to hide their smiles. “Have you thought about taking that show on the road? Do something useful for a change?” Despite not wanting to give them the satisfaction, Ianto found himself glaring at Owen furiously, before making his way to the coffee machine, in a calm, unruffled manner. Well, he wanted to believe it was anyway; he was a little concerned it read more like storming off in a sulk, which it most definitely was not.
The atmosphere in the Hub was distinctly frostier than usual throughout the rest of the morning. Ianto retreated into the archives after making everyone their coffee; he supposed that he still had to do his job, irrespective of the fact that everyone he worked for was a complete tit. Jack naturally, went without. He could make his own sodding coffee, Ianto thought vindictively.
After cataloging the Rift activity data from the morning, running some equations for Toshiko, ringing up the police to get the “hit and run” drivers released to Torchwood's custody (he told them they were on a terrorism watch list and therefore needed to be checked out under the radar; a few doses of retcon, some “lost” paperwork, and at least that particular mess would be well on its way to being mopped up), and making another round of coffee, it was time for lunch.
Armed with a choice of menus and projecting an air of imperturbability (or so he hoped), he marched into the main office area, and asked unceremoniously, “Curry, pizza or Chinese?”
"Whichever one's hardest for you to poison," Owen said with malicious cheer.
Ianto looked at the girls. Tosh mumbled some sort of reply, and Ianto almost felt bad about his fury at her. Which left Gwen to give an actual answer.
"Curry?" she asked hopefully.
"Curry it is then."
"Aren't you going to ask Jack?" she tried, hoping somehow to settle their feud or at least dial back the level of rage and drama.
"He can get his own," Ianto said neutrally, but the intent was clear. "Everyone's usual all right?"
Unsurprisingly, everyone was absolutely fine with that.
Gwen saved her eye-roll until he turned his back to head up to the tourist office, which other than as a disguise for Torchwood had its main purpose as the takeway drop point.
"How long do you think this is going to go on?" Tosh hissed at her once Ianto was safely gone.
"Dunno. Not even entirely sure what happened."
"I didn't know they were serious enough to have a fight this bad."
"Serious?" Owen added, not having the same sense to keep his voice down. "Fuck serious. Jack stole his car. Any man would be upset about that. Highly justified, if badly handled."
"Owen --" Tosh started and then stopped herself.
"What?!"
"I don't think it's really about the car."
They all looked up as Jack's voice rang out from the landing by his office. "Oh trust me, kids, it's definitely about the car. Where is our fair archivist anyway?"
"Ordering us lunch," Gwen said.
Jack frowned. "What are we having?"
"We're having curry," Tosh said hesitantly.
"Ianto said you could order your own," Gwen finished for her.
Jack snorted, and while the rest of the team could see the humour in the nature of the spat, none of them really thought Jack being bemused by Ianto's pettiness was likely to improve things.
As Jack turned and disappeared back into his office, Gwen and Tosh looked at each other quizzically.
"What should we do?" Gwen said, finally.
Toshiko shook her head. "I've no idea. But you should have seen them glaring at each other over Jack's desk. It was actually rather frightening."
"Didn't you overhear anything else?"
"Are you kidding? I wasn't going to stick around to get my head bitten off, thanks."
"Point taken. I'm worried though," Gwen said. "I mean, Jack...I'm not sure he really understands the kind of effect he has on people."
Owen, who could obviously no longer restrain himself, exhaled with exasperation. "Ladies, if I may, what the hell are you on about? Are you perfectly serious, Gwen? Jack completely gets the effect he has on people. It's his stock in trade, right? Like taking candy from a baby, it must be, working here. And you lot just sit there and plot like a bunch of ruddy matchmakers."
Gwen didn't dignify that with a response, but went on. "I'm worried he's...I mean, you don't think Ianto wants a relationship, do you? ...God, it even sounds stupid when I say it out loud."
"You think Jack doesn't?" Tosh said.
"Well...but it's Jack...."
"They looked pretty intense up there, is all I'm saying."
Owen snorted. "How could you tell? You were only in there for a second."
"I'm observant," Tosh snapped.
"Then that's even more cause for worry," Gwen said firmly, over their squabbling. "I'm sure Jack has no idea how to negotiate that. Grand gestures, sure. This, not so much."
"And thank god for that," Owen said. "The only thing worse catching them shagging all the time would be having to listen to them cooing over each other like love birds."
Gwen started to respond and then thought the better of it. This would not be a pleasant argument with Owen under any circumstances. When combined with Jack and Ianto's presence in the Hub and her past history with him, it was positively suicidal.
"Ignore him, Gwen, it's all we can do," Tosh said, but she sounded strained.
When the food arrived, Ianto carried it down to the main work area with an approximation of his usual cheer and distributed the various cartons and utensils before taking his own and retreating to the kitchenette.
Gwen and Tosh exchanged looks, Gwen jerking her head in Ianto's direction before taking her own carton and heading up towards Jack's office.
"Oi, who am I going to eat with?" Owen asked.
"Weevils," Tosh and Gwen called nearly simultaneously.
Gwen knocked softly on Jack's door before opening it.
"Hey,” she said.
Unsurprisingly, Jack gave her a stern look, as it was probably pretty easy for him to guess why she'd come up. On the other hand, he couldn't really hide the fact that he was glad to see her. Civil company wouldn't be entirely unappreciated no matter how foul his mood.
"Want some?" she asked, holding out her takeaway container.
Jack smiled briefly as if at some private joke. "Better not."
Gwen sat down on his couch. "Want to talk about it?"
"Not really."
"He's so young, Jack. And he's been through so much. You need to be careful with him --"
"I do not need to be careful with Ianto. Ianto is more than capable of standing up for himself, as Tosh surely told you. So just stop. Please." He sounded pained.
"Okay," Gwen said. She managed to eat her food in silence for approximately one minute before she just couldn't help herself any longer.
“Just one thing, Jack?”
“What?” he said, wearily.
“What the hell did you do?”
“Haven't you heard?”
“Amazingly, no. Come on, tell me,” she coaxed.
Jack sighed. “I borrowed his car.”
“Borrowed?” she asked, raising an eyebrow. “He's annoyed because you borrowed his car?”
Jack didn't say anything.
“By borrowed, do you perhaps mean, stole?”
“Borrowed without asking,” Jack said. At Gwen's look, he added, defensively, “I left a note!”
Gwen shook her head. “After you spent the night, I take it. You're going to be drinking that Caffe Nero swill for weeks.”
“He'll get over it.”
“He probably will,” Gwen said. “But what kind of message are you sending? That he should be happy with whatever you choose to dish out? That whoever lov- cares for you should be pleased to be treated as inconsequential, except when you're in the mood to pay them some attention?”
Jack winced. “I can't always...there was work to do, Gwen. It's work. It's important. I can't always be worried about people's feelings.”
“It was weevils, Jack. Not exactly the end of the world."
She looked at him consideringly and then went over to sit on his desk, before saying seriously, “Jack. Think very carefully about what you want to have happen here. You're larger than life, and people get swept away. You should be sure as to what you're sweeping them towards.”
“I always knew you were impressed by my...size.”
“Oh, you!” Gwen said, and punched him lightly on the shoulder. “Seriously though, if it were me, I'd be thinking up some way to make it up to him.”
Tosh felt bad creeping up on Ianto, but the whole thing had rattled her so much she couldn't help but tread what was perhaps excessively lightly.
"I'm sorry for my part in whatever this is," she said quietly, perfectly prepared to flee back to a lunch spent with Owen and a dead weevil or two.
"I'm relatively sure it wasn't your fault, Tosh, although you should have called before driving over to my place. Is my car okay?" he asked flatly.
"Think so," she said.
"Well that's good."
"Do you want to talk about it?"
Ianto shook his head.
"Why the hell did Jack have your car anyway?" she asked.
"He was at my house. And then I fell asleep. And then he took it."
"Oh," she said dumbly. "Are you two --"
"What?"
"I don't know. I guess I didn't know he'd ever been over to your place."
"It was new," Ianto said sadly.
"Oh," Tosh said, getting it this time, and positively aching for him.
Owen stared at the weevil cadaver he was meant to be autopsying.
“What the hell am I dissecting you for? Cause of death: collision with lorry. QED. Am I back in sodding A&E?” he grumbled. To himself. Because there was no one left in the room beside him and a stiffening weevil corpse.
“Can't believe they left me here by myself to go minister to two people who sodding well deserve to be left to die bitter and alone. Fucking soft touches, both of them. Sad really. Meanwhile here I am. Left to eat with you.” He lifted a forkful of curry in a sardonic salute. “Here's to you and me, mate."
That night, Ianto's bed still smelled of Jack, and as furious as it made him and as often as cleaning and organization were his responses to rage, he couldn't bring himself to rip the sheets off the bed and throw them in the wash. Instead he sunk down into them, dragging the bedding up so that it covered most of his face and jerked off furiously before falling into a fitful sleep.
Ianto hated him. He really did. And he hated himself for letting it all get like this and feel like this and be like this.
Continue to Part 2
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
typos
Date: 2008-07-21 11:33 am (UTC)rgat = that
end of the world. = end of the world."
Also, totally totally right and I'm now heading off to part 2.
Re: typos
Date: 2008-07-21 05:43 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-22 12:45 pm (UTC)And onwards~!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-22 05:32 pm (UTC)Also, can I just say, I love your icon.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-23 02:49 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-22 05:33 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-22 11:45 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-07-23 04:31 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-06 10:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-07 03:22 am (UTC)Our reasoning?
Thank you so much for reading and commenting! Hope you enjoy the rest of the series - we just posted the fifth part, called "I Imagine You Now in That Other City" and there'll be several more installments to come.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-07 07:06 pm (UTC)I mean if a boyfriend leaves a note, and lets you have a sleep in after a night of giving you mind blowing sex, you don't make such a fuss! Lol. You certainly don't undermine him at work and get so unprofessionally insulted, so Ianto confused and annoyed me a bit, and I don't quite think Jack has anything to apologize for (even if the other characters were insisting he should). But once again, am certainly loving this story, and eagerly awaiting all the installments. Bravo!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-24 04:28 pm (UTC)First, thank you.
Second, yes, Ianto is sort of being a freak. On the other hand, last time Jack took his car he helped someone commit suicide in it. So Ianto's issues have issues.
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-14 08:56 am (UTC)Except it wasn't Ianto that had to worry about still being human, was it? Jack remembered what it felt like to be divorced from his body, leaving it behind for unconsciousness, but he hadn't had that feeling in so long.
it seemed to me that Jack probably envied Ianto that, and was leaving him to something he was no longer capable of. Of course, maybe I just lack the whole male POV on cars :-)
(no subject)
Date: 2008-08-14 03:04 pm (UTC)- Ianto is really, really high strung, cybergirlfriend in the basement or not.
- Ianto is really, really into him in a very 21st century way.
- Ianto is still really, really pissed off about the demise of the first car.
So yeah, Ianto is being pretty nuts (and we think Ianto is pretty nuts -- because again? Cyberwoman in the basement? That's not just true love, that's obsessive and weird), but Jack really should be a little more sensitive to the needs of young and crazy mortals.
But, yes, we're even a tiny bit with Jack on the "wtf?"
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-28 05:10 am (UTC)All these themes strike a poignant chord (I used to teach biology, and life science is still a passion of mine). So now there is the allusion to Jack's evolution, which he must surely have considered often.
I remember when I first learned that I could recall and understand the structure of DNA down to the last atom. Then how that related to translation and the construction of proteins and how you could scale that up into a living thing. It was mind blowing. And I have often wondered (because there is no satisfactory biological way to explain immortality) how this is all working at a cellular level. Then I get bogged down in the physics of fixed points in space and time and how it could fit with that. And then I'm off on this weird trajectory and I end up having remind myself to come back to the story! See, something different to everybody. Ahhh, that's why it's called science FICTION!
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-28 05:40 am (UTC)And now that you've read Mountains, you can see that we were seeding the tentacles all along! *g*
(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 03:00 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 03:05 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-12-31 04:40 am (UTC)