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DW/TW Fic: Harbour [Part 2]
Title: Harbour
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Ten + appearances by TW Team
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rm & kalichan
Rating/Warning: NC-17, slash, some hints of d/s, toys, romance, angst.
Summary: Everything happens only a certain number of times.
Wordcount: ~30,000 words, posted in 4 parts.
Authors' Notes: This is the final installment of our series, I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling. Next up (eventually): some digressions and interludes, and a dvd commentary! Also, we'll be bringing you a new 'verse, with our as-yet-untitled Jenny/Ianto/Jack fic. Thank you all for coming on this journey with us. We've had a brilliant time.
Previous installments:
1. A Strange Fashion of Forsaking | 2. Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny | 3. To Learn This Holding and the Holding Back | 4. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World | 5. I Imagine You Now in That Other City | 6. Many of My Favorite Things Are Broken | 6.5 Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Truth, Beauty: or, A Child's Guide to Modern Physics | 7. In Our Bedroom After the War | 8. And I Cannot Know How Long She Has Dreamed of All of You [Jack/Nine/Rose] | 9. The Spectacular Catastrophe of Your Endless Childhood [Ianto/OFCs, Ianto/Lisa] | 10. There Are Some Men Who Should Have Mountains To Bear Their Names To Time
Harbour, Part 1
The shower was strange, hewn, Ianto thought, out of the same odd material as the Tardis itself. It reminded him of being in a very small cave, but there was a comfort to it, unlike the places he had visited with the Doctor, and he felt a bit like a cat, happy in a small box. Of course, that might have been because Jack was petting him.
They kissed under the water, all lazy tongues with no real intent, and Ianto thought that maybe he'd never been happier, even as he knew to laugh at himself. When there was time and space and a lack of carnivorous aliens and other assorted tragedies, Jack induced that feeling in him all the time.
After, Jack was giddy, and Ianto wondered whether it was natural or a forced response, a way to change gears in a life never interrupted by sleep. But he went along with it, getting dressed and even forgoing -- at Jack's insistence -- shoes and socks, a belt, his jacket and tie. There was no world here in the vortex for Ianto to button himself back into.
They padded through the ship barefoot -- Jack fondly giving Ianto a vague tour and even reaching back once to pull him along by the hand as if somehow they were children in the woods -- until they reached what seemed to Ianto to be the platonic ideal of libraries: all wood and wing-backed chairs, a leather sofa, small bar and fireplace. And the Doctor of course, curled up with a book, feet tucked under him like a child.
He looked up at them and smiled, beamed really, Ianto thought, even if it was more gentle than what he was beginning to think of as usual for him.
"Better?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes, thanks," Jack said, falling onto the leather couch -- that was new; it hadn't been that way before, Jack was positive he'd have remembered -- and tugging Ianto along with him, loving the feel of the stiff cotton of his shirt in his hand as he smoothed his other palm over the leather in memory. Maybe even this pinstriped Doctor missed that jacket, just a little.
The Doctor gave him a knowing look, but it wasn't unkind.
Jack grinned pointedly.
"Oh, you!" the Doctor said, clearly full of random joy.
Jack looked from the Doctor to Ianto and smiled, feeling proud. It wasn't a feeling he'd ever imagined indulging in such circumstances.
"So I'm thinking," the Doctor said slowly, in that way that made it clear that he'd already thought it out in extraordinary detail and that it wasn't up for discussion in the least, "that tomorrow we are going shopping."
"Shopping," Ianto repeated, incredulous.
"Shopping! You know, that thing where you run about markets?"
"He really does mean run," Jack murmured, tipping his head so that his mouth was against Ianto's ear.
The Doctor laughed. "We need supplies, Jack. And I'm sure you'll be happy for a bit more variety than you have at home. I'll show Mr. Jones the sights. You can get into trouble. It'll be lovely."
Jack gave Ianto a hopeful but questioning look, and Ianto shrugged. If they weren't getting home anytime soon, he supposed there really wasn't anything wrong with shopping per se, although the whole proposition worried him. The Doctor, he was quite sure, always had a punchline, and going shopping with him on some alien planet while Jack ran off to cause havoc? Well, it was surely some sort of set up, not that he could really do anything about it.
"What time is it?" Ianto asked, as he fought off a yawn, realizing there was no light on the TARDIS that was designed to give him any sort of clue.
Jack chuckled.
The Doctor grinned. "Time vortex! Absence of time! No time! It's any time you want, Ianto Jones, although anything you choose would technically be wrong."
"Why isn't there ever a simple answer?" he asked Jack, putting his head down on his shoulder.
"Because it keeps getting weirder," Jack said softly as he rested a hand on the top of Ianto's head.
"Ah," Ianto noted, as if that was somehow enough.
"You've worn him out, Jack," the Doctor said.
"I try," Jack said lightly.
Ianto snorted against his shoulder, eyes closed and content as Jack scratched his fingers though the hair at the back of his neck.
The Doctor made a thoughtful sound then, and Ianto couldn't help but bask in the quiet, thinking it was odd, how this ship didn't hum.
After a long silence, the Doctor spoke again, and it was enough to startle Ianto into opening his eyes.
"You should put him to bed, Jack. He looks tired," the Doctor said, as if it was somehow the saddest thing in the world.
Ianto supposed, blearily, that perhaps the Doctor was as addicted to company as Jack, hence his relentless hijacking of people.
He felt Jack nod against him, but make no further effort to move. "I'll come back, and we'll talk."
The Doctor shook his head and met Ianto's eyes with an odd fierceness. "No, you should be with him. We can talk later."
"Have we decided it's nighttime then?" Ianto asked, lifting his head from Jack's shoulder.
"Just for you," the Doctor said, and picked up his book again, dismissing them, it seemed from his thoughts.
Jack, for his part, just shrugged.
~*~
The next day -- or what Ianto wanted to call the next day, but of course wasn't -- it was all bustling about, and the Doctor running frantically around the console room, banging on gears with a mallet, pulling levers, and altogether looking, Ianto thought, like a mad porcupine on speed. But then he and Jack were pressed into duty, holding things, and keeping strings and cables taut, none of which he understood, but left remarkably little time for sardonic commentary, mental or otherwise.
And then it seemed they had arrived. Opening the TARDIS door, Ianto looked out on what appeared to be a sunny, busy marketplace -- stalls and everything, slightly Asian in flavor, with banners flying, and people moving about, all in a hurry, all completely ignoring the blue police box parked in an alleyway off what looked like a main drag. The market, he reflected, would have looked old-fashioned, except for what looked like a dockyard full of what must have been either missiles or spaceships looming off in the horizon and little hovercraft zooming about in the distance.
"Where are we?" he asked, noting that a couple of children -- a human child, and a small gorgon-like creature with hissing snake-like things instead of hair – were playing nearby. The small human seemed unphased. So did her companion, though presumably -- he? she? it? -- had had enough time to get used to the situation, having been born or hatched that way.
"Galaxy? Solar system? Continent? Century? Be more specific," the Doctor answered.
"Any will do," Ianto returned.
"Andromeda, near the edge, planet called Kyllios. It's about the 42nd century, I believe, as you'd reckon it. And it's market day."
"I can see that."
"Well, everyday's market day here. It's really a merchant planet. People set up stalls; they're hereditary. You get different stuff by district. It's quite nice. I often drop in when I'm low on supplies."
"Need you get low on supplies? What I mean is, well, can't the ship just... make stuff?"
"It's not magic, you know. Things don't just appear out of thin air," the Doctor said, sounding almost offended.
"No, I suppose not," Ianto agreed, though he didn't really see the difference between that, and apparently creating rooms for people.
Jack came up next to them in the doorway, and Ianto thought he could see his eyes brighten at the alien landscape. Of course. This must seem so much more familiar to him than what Ianto thought of as home. If he'd been anxious for them to invent driving and air-travel, how much more impatient must he be to see humans take to the stars.
The Doctor led them out into the world, and Ianto took a deep breath, feeling giddy about the whole trip for almost the first time. Because it seemed that nothing was chasing them for once, and they were chasing nothing more alarming than some tins of biscuits, and here he was, in the future, nice ordinary Ianto Jones, who'd studied film at Cardiff University and taken a job as a secretary in London because he couldn't find anything better to settle down to.
He smiled brightly at the Doctor, wanting for once to thank him, and noticed that for some reason, his eyes seemed unveiled and full of some ancient sadness.
Then he grinned back at Ianto, the melancholy almost physically shoved aside, and it was as if shutters had suddenly dropped down somewhere behind his eyes. Ianto filed the look away for later examination.
"Shall we wander?" the Doctor suggested, and Ianto nodded.
"Money?" Jack asked expectantly.
"You're asking me for money?"
"Well, I don't have any with me, and you disabled my vortex manipulator, so..."
"You're with me," the Doctor grumbled. "And you're a con-man. What d'you need money for?"
"I see how it is, now all of a sudden you're okay with me conning my way into things. Only the blondes get cash, is that how it works?"
Ianto laughed.
"What?" Jack and the Doctor said in unison.
"You sound like he's your dad or something," Ianto said to Jack.
Jack stared at him in horror. Then he turned to the Doctor. "You know I'm older than you now, right? By at least a thousand years if not more."
"Does it count if it's underground?" Ianto couldn't stop himself from asking pointedly.
"Who's side are you on anyway?" Jack said, glaring at him, but Ianto could tell he wasn't really angry.
The Doctor pulled a chip out of his pocket, and did something to it with a blue flashy object. "Don't spend it all in one place," he said, and handed it to Jack.
Jack grinned. "Thanks," he said.
"What is that?" Ianto asked, pointing to it.
"It's a sonic screwdriver," Jack told him.
"A sonic screwdriver?" he repeated blankly.
"Don't ask," Jack said, with a long suffering sigh.
"Less insulting me and my tools, thanks. You go and have a wander, Jack. Been a while since you traveled at leisure. Ianto and I will do the necessary. It'll all be new to him anyway."
"But I always -- "
"You are not a tour guide for beginners," the Doctor said, cutting him off as he shoved him playfully. "Get whatever it is out of your system; I'll get Ianto used to all of this, and, if you're good, next time you can play guide."
Ianto looked at Jack and shrugged. What could you do?
"Yes, Dad," Jack said in mock compliance and then winked at Ianto before leaning in for a kiss. "I'll see you later."
"Yes, sir," Ianto said with a poorly suppressed smile. It seemed to satisfy Jack who trotted off and disappeared quickly into the crowds. Ianto shook his head. It was all so absurd.
"So. Holding up okay?" the Doctor asked as they began walking
"Much easier than last time," Ianto said awkwardly. It wasn't something they'd had a chance to discuss as he hadn't dared to raise the topic around Jack any more than had been strictly necessary for their own domestic concerns.
"Last time?"
"Ah... giant hazelenut, creepy temple, big giant head, cute priest?" Ianto said with a shaky laugh. Surely the Doctor couldn't have forgot the whole thing!
"Creepy temple, giant head... Crafe Tec Heydra?" he asked.
"Well, yes," Ianto said, confusedly.
The Doctor frowned consideringly. "Tell you a secret? Hasn't happened for me yet."
Ianto stared at him blankly.
"Oh, come on, don't you love it when things get timey-wimey?" he added with relish. "Anything else I need to know or is that enough of a clue?"
"I... I don't know," Ianto said helplessly.
The Doctor pursed his lips for a moment and bobbed his head back and forth, as if the motion of his neck was somehow powering his very odd brain. Then, abruptly, he laughed with delight.
"You know what this means, don't you?" he said, "I'll see you again! That's wonderful!" and Ianto couldn't help but admire the way he chewed the words, like they were a particularly doughy and delightful bread.
Ianto chuckled nervously, feeling out of his depth when it came to the niceties of non-linear temporal social relationships. He'd have to ask Jack about it; there were probably rules.
But right now, he didn't care. Alien planet, distant future, strange sun. Ianto Jones, science fiction novel hero instead of science fiction novel throwaway character destined to get shot in the first three chapters at long last. He smiled and tilted his head back. This was glorious.
"I love this part," the Doctor said.
"What part?" Ianto asked returning his focus to the other man.
"This!" the Doctor exclaimed, gesturing and flapping his hands about at Ianto and the market around them. "You... humans! Just, taking it all in! It's one of my favourite things in several galaxies and nearly every century. Hands down."
Ianto didn't know what to say and merely stuttered for a moment, before replying with a simple yes.
~*~
Jack had a plan. Actually, Jack had two plans. Well, two and a half, maybe three, depending on who was counting. Ianto would call it three plans. The Doctor would probably give it to him at two and a half.
The first plan was potatoes. Because what Ianto and the people of 21st century earth called potatoes? Perfectly decent fried, mashed or otherwise abused properly, but most things were. But they weren't potatoes like those of his childhood or most markets in pretty much every galaxy for a good 2,000 year stretch, and he wanted real potatoes, not these stupid stunted earth things that when they even bothered to be red were only so on the outside. Jack didn't approve in the least.
Which led to plan one and a half, which was that Jack was going to cook dinner. Nothing fancy, of course, but he figured the Doctor wouldn't object, and food like he understood it, that was something he assumed he could show Ianto without the Doctor upstaging him again. That was getting a bit annoying, truth be told, other people were not supposed to be usurping his opportunities to impress his boyfriend, but then the Doctor had never had any tact. Which, of course, had always been one of the reasons Jack liked him.
Plan two or three, depending on who was counting, was sex toys. Strange ports meant strange flavours and if Jack was going to be a good boy and not run straight off to a brothel while also assuming that was not the shopping trip the Doctor was taking Ianto on (and wouldn't that be hot and weird, he couldn't help but think), he had to find himself a taste of something out here. And 42nd century? That was a great century for sex tech. With any luck and the Doctor's generous and fraudulent credit limit, the TARDIS was going to get a workout when it came to her soundproofing skills, very, very soon.
Jack chuckled smugly. Let the Doctor try to upstage that.
~*~
Ianto was quickly discovering that shopping with the Doctor meant keeping his arms out when the Doctor dumped parcels and products into them while nodding randomly at the constant stream of not always logical stream narration that went with each purchase.
"We should have brought a bag," Ianto eventually noted.
"Bag. Right! Sorry. Humans, only two hands, and those tiny, tiny pockets. Look, there!" he said, pointing at a stall that clearly had some, and darting over to procure one as Ianto tried not to drop alien sausages, inappropriately sized eggs and several tins of biscuits and teas onto the dusty ground. It was strange, he thought, that the future had dust; as a child, he'd always assumed it would be spotless, but he supposed that the older the universe got, so too there were more old, run-down and ill-tended things in it.
When the Doctor came back and set what was less a bag and more a wicker-like hamper with straps down in front of him, Ianto was happy to tumble everything into it. Except the eggs. He was careful with those.
As he knelt down to latch it up and shift it onto his back, because of course the Doctor wasn't going to do any actual work, he caught sight of the children they had seen earlier again, but this time, they had found their friends, and Ianto couldn't help but grin as the pack of them chased each other about, shrieking. Only a few of them were recognizable as human, and Ianto had been told enough to know that even they might not be.
The Doctor caught his smile.
"Fond of kids then, yeah?" he asked, following Ianto's gaze.
He shrugged. "Fond enough."
"Ever think of having any of your own?"
"I..." Ianto paused, taken aback. "That's not the sort of thing that would fit into my life now," he said.
"Oh, now," the Doctor said, shoving his hands in his pockets, "you're a young man, plenty of time."
The Doctor's voice caught on these last words, and Ianto grit his teeth at the small talk and insincerity of it all. He turned his head to shoot a sharp glance at the Doctor, but when he caught his eye, the Doctor looked away, almost frightened and definitely ashamed.
For a moment Ianto wanted to bask in the victory of it, to be before this man who had the run of the universe and to have made him ashamed. But shame wasn't a good look on anyone, even people who deserved to feel that way. Ianto had learned that from Jack, and it had been a good lesson.
Ianto searched for something to say to diffuse the moment, but could think of nothing. He wet his lips absently and looked at the children again and felt his stomach flip over in a strange fear, as the Doctor walked, head down beside him.
When they arrived back at the TARDIS, and the Doctor unlocked the door, Ianto noted that he seemed to perk up, like a dog picking up a scent. "Jack's back," he announced.
"How do you know?" Ianto said, panting a little, overburdened with all the groceries.
The Doctor simply winked at him.
"How did he get in?"
"He's got a key."
Ianto blinked. "When did you give it to him?"
"Oh, he's always had one. Since the first time round. Shall we go find him then?" Without waiting for his answer, the Doctor strode off towards the inner part of the ship, and Ianto started to follow him.
"Bring those things with you, there's a good lad," the Doctor called back to him. "He's in the kitchen." Rolling his eyes at the man's apparently herculean ability to avoid work of all kinds, Ianto obediently went back to pick up the hamper and staggered with it after him.
When he arrived in the kitchen, he saw the Doctor sitting on the counter idly swinging his long legs, and munching an apple-like fruit while Jack seemed to be busily wielding a knife of some kind and chopping some red objects.
"Thought for sure you'd be back later than us," the Doctor was saying to Jack. "Did you have trouble locating the disreputable parts of town?"
"This from the man for whom I am, out of the kindness of my heart, making dinner? I'm wounded."
"You're not making it for me, you're making it for him."
"That's true," Jack agreed cheerfully. "And if you're not nice to me, you don't get any."
"It's my kitchen," the Doctor argued.
"Sucks to be you, doesn't it?"
From the doorway, Ianto laughed and set the hamper down. Someone else could unpack it. "What are you doing?"
"Making food," Jack said, and turned to smile at him.
"You're cooking?" Ianto said, still unable to quite believe it.
"Yeah," Jack said. "Why, didn't you think I could?"
"Well, you never do, so I had assumed--"
Jack grinned. "Fully educated, remember?"
"Will it be edible?"
Jack threw a bit of peel at him. "Just wait."
"What are those anyway?" Ianto said, coming up behind him and poking dubiously at the red things that Jack was chopping.
"Potatoes," the Doctor said.
"Real potatoes," Jack said with relish. "It'll spoil you for the ones back where you... we came from."
Smiling to himself at the correction, Ianto asked, "Is that a good idea? I mean, I don't want to be dissatisfied with potatoes forever."
Jack laughed. "So careful."
"Don't worry," the Doctor chimed in again. "They're quite different really. Red, for one thing. Richer. And nuttier. Just think of them as a new vegetable."
"Did you bring back any eggs?" Jack asked. "I forgot to get some."
"This is why you need a list," the Doctor said.
"You took Ianto; I was flying on my own."
Ianto shook his head. "Of course we got eggs," he said, and handed them to him.
Dinner was not precisely like anything Ianto had ever tasted before, though there was something that seemed oddly familiar about it.
It was a stew of some kind, with the red potatoes and hard-cooked eggs in a rich gravy. With it, there was some spongy, slightly sour bread that Ianto had watched Jack make -- the motions seeming nearly instinctive -- and suddenly he was flooded with an almost visceral memory of that first meal in that temple so far and long away. Oh, he thought. Right. Of course. A shiver down his spine made him twitch.
"You look sad," Jack remarked. "Don't you like it?"
"No, of course I do," Ianto said, startled out of his reverie. "It's great." He handed his bowl back for another helping. "Now that I know you can do this," he added, "you're not getting away with free loading like you do any more, never doing a hand's turn in the kitchen. What kind of wife are you?"
Jack arched an eyebrow at him. "I'm never the wife," he said lazily. "Might wear a dress, but I'm never the wife."
"Too much information," the Doctor said.
"That? Come on, Doctor," Jack said. "You weren't always such a prude. Now if I told you about this one time with Gwen's--"
"And that's quite enough of that," Ianto said, cutting him off, knowing he was about to blush.
Jack was fairly pleased with the way dinner had turned out, although for some reason, some of it had seemed to make Ianto melancholy. Maybe it was his imagination, since if he were honest, he'd have to admit that the taste of it had made him slightly homesick too, but he pushed the feeling aside.
After the meal, they'd gathered again in the library, and Ianto had made a beeline for the bookshelves that he'd been too sleepy to notice the last time they'd been in there. The Doctor had pointed him towards the shelves that held English language books, and he seemed mesmerized by evidence of the Doctor's eclectic taste in reading material.
"You've got Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens and Michael Moorcock?" Ianto asked disbelievingly. "On the same shelf?"
"Yup," the Doctor said. "That's the authors I've met shelf. Luckily, the shelves are bigger than they look or I'd never have room."
"You read sci fi?" Ianto asked, somehow finding the whole prospect very improbable.
"I read everything. So?" the Doctor asked.
Jack laughed. "You read that stuff too," he said to Ianto.
"Yeah, but that's different. I'm not an alien."
"Matter of perspective, isn't it?" the Doctor said with a grin.
"Anyway," Jack said to the Doctor, cheerfully giving away Ianto's secret, "he doesn't really read them. Just makes notes in the margins when they've got things all wrong."
The Doctor burst into delighted laughter, while Ianto blushed. "You don't really, do you? Go on," he cried. "That's too perfect. With a red pen?"
"Of course," Jack said, with malicious glee. "What else?"
Clearly attempting to gather the shreds of his dignity around him, Ianto pulled out his stopwatch from his breast-pocket. "I have decided that to avoid time-lag, I should attempt to stick to something that at least slightly resembles an Earth diurnal cycle," he announced. "Which means, I should retire soon, I think. I need at least six earth hours per twenty four, or I'll be in trouble."
Making what Jack could see was a valiant effort to straighten his face, the Doctor nodded. "Clearly," he agreed politely, without even commenting on the abrupt subject change. "That's a beautiful watch, by the way," he added, and Jack grinned to himself, remembering all the various filthy uses they'd put the thing to.
"I'm fond of it," Ianto replied.
"Can I have a look?"
"Certainly."
As the Doctor turned the timepiece over again in his hands, relishing the feel of it, Ianto smiled proudly.
"It's lovely," the Doctor said admiringly, and handed it back to him. "And you've taken excellent care of it."
"It was given to me," Ianto told him. "Long time ago. In Berlin."
Jack blinked. In all the years they'd been together, it'd never occurred to him to ask. If he'd thought about it at all, he'd imagined it given to Ianto by his father, or grandfather, or something like that. Perhaps as a present when he'd left school.
The Doctor looked interested, and Ianto amplified. "Bloke named Jens," he said.
"Jens," the Doctor repeated, putting emphasis on the first "y" sound. "And Ianto. Meant to be, I'd say, from the sound of it."
"Why would he give you something like that?" Jack asked suspiciously. Meant to be. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
Ianto turned to him and raised an eyebrow. "He must've fancied me, I suppose."
"Fancied you?" Jack said. This was just not adding up. "And when were you in Berlin by they way?"
"Before Rome and Paris, and after Amsterdam," Ianto answered him.
"What?"
"You should have read my records more carefully," Ianto said maddeningly. "It's all there. Torchwood One was much better at quizzing me on my past, I have to say, Jack."
Jack wasn't sure what to shout about first -- that Ianto was comparing him, unfavorably to Torchwood One in front of the Doctor who was sitting there smirking, damn him, or the fact that after so many years, it seemed that Ianto still had fucking secret lives unfolding out of him, like a fucking puzzle box. Now apparently he'd been all over the world, with people Jack had never even heard of, like this fucking Jens guy, and somehow had never managed to mention it. What the fuck?
"So you and this Jens, you were a thing?" he asked, trying not to visibly grit his teeth.
"Define thing," Ianto said, and smiled pointedly.
"I thought..." Jack didn't want to sound like some kind of antiquated 21st century asshole, but really, he'd been pretty sure that he was the first man in Ianto's bed. But maybe not. "You hadn't..."
"Are you going to finish any of those sentences?" Ianto asked. "I'm not a mind reader."
Jack was starting to lose the battle on keeping his temper, when the Doctor cleared his throat ostentatiously. He spun to look at him, and saw that he was rolling his eyes, probably because he and Ianto had practically forgotten anyone else was even there. "Oh, Jack," he said. "Don't be ridiculous. He was waiting for you!"
Into the silence that descended on the room, Ianto said, very softly, "I was." And then he walked very deliberately over to the Doctor, kissed him on the cheek and walked out of the room.
The Doctor beamed at Jack.
Jack stared. And kept staring, not sure whether to laugh or cry or scream or simply sit there, slack-jawed and dumbfounded, which was what he seemed to be doing.
"What the fuck was that?" he finally said.
At that, the Doctor just started laughing, tickled superiority sticking out all over him. "Are you perfectly serious? He's lovely, Jack, but really."
Jack glared, and said, through his teeth, "You know, it's really unattractive when you do that."
"Do what? Know what I'm talking about? You should try it some time."
"No, when you try to sound all like you're so above it all and wise and all that bullshit. I really, really hate it."
"No, you don't."
And as he was storming from the room, because after that, what else was there to do? He heard the Doctor call after him, infuriatingly smug, "And you don't find it unattractive either!"
When he got back to his room -- irritatingly, it seemed as if the TARDIS had changed the shape of the hallways, because of course, everyone was aligned against him -- he found Ianto already curled up on the bed, clearly naked under a sheet.
"What the fuck was that?" Jack repeated for his benefit as he entered the room.
Ianto looked up at him innocently. "What do you mean?"
"That little song and dance about Berlin and Rome and Paris. And the watch. And Jens. You never told me any of that!"
"You never asked," Ianto said reasonably.
"I didn't know there was anything to ask."
Ianto shrugged. "All right, so."
"You should have told me," Jack said, again.
He looked down at Ianto, and suddenly wanted him, fiercely. Because with all of this totally justified frustration, he just kept surprising him. Every time, every time Jack thought he had him all figured out, there turned out to be another layer, with who knew what beneath its surface.
Ianto pulled back the sheet. "Come here," he suggested, and Jack didn't have to be asked twice.
Then Jack was kissing him, feeling the bristle from Ianto's cheek chafe sharply against his mouth, biting Ianto's neck, wanting to leave a mark, wanting to bruise. Not to hurt necessarily, but to let him know that he belonged to Jack. All his secrets, even the ones Jack hadn't found out yet. Everything.
Jack ran his hands up and over Ianto's chest, scraping over his nipples, making him moan. And then he slid down, kissed Ianto's stomach, his thighs, pulled at the hair between his legs, and felt him shiver. He smiled against his thigh and took Ianto's cock into his mouth, sucking it into his throat with one easy, practiced motion, and felt its half-hardness begin to swell as he did.
Ianto bucked up into his mouth, and Jack began rubbing at the underside of his cock with his tongue. He kept going till Ianto was all the way hard, and then he let him slide out of his mouth, even though he moaned in protest. Nope, no way this was going to be that quick. He was going to draw this out, till he was gagging for it, till every inch of him was crying out for Jack.
Ianto knew he was in for it when he saw Jack's grin, the lazy, dangerous one that always made him shiver reflexively with arousal. Actually he'd known it even while the scene in the library was going on; it'd been half the reason he continued on with it. Utterly worth it, though, every second, for the look on Jack's face then, and for the one on his face now, which was sending lightning flashes of heat prickling up and down his spine.
But then Jack surprised him.
As Jack bent to kiss him again, Ianto felt one of Jack's hands go around his throat, as the other one snaked down to fist his cock. Oh he thought. God. So this was what it was like.
As Jack squeezed tighter, making it more and more difficult to breathe, Ianto began to feel a strange floating sensation.
It was beautiful, the ache of arousal in his groin, the painful band of pressure at his throat, the distant, hazy, buoyant feeling in his head, as if he might just drift away. And the inconsistent feeling of being inexplicably safe. Anchored.
He closed his eyes.
"Mine," Jack muttered hoarsely in his ear. "You know that, right? Mine."
Yours, he thought. He tried to nod, but Jack apparently read that as struggling to breathe, and immediately eased off on the pressure. Ianto was oddly disappointed.
At the concerned look on his face, Ianto couldn't help dissolving into laughter. Only Jack, who'd greeted being strangled to death with an insousciant grin, and a 'let's do it again!' would look at him with such unconscious worry at this infinitesimal amount of role-reversal.
"You're laughing at me now?" Jack said, and Ianto, without stopping, reached up to press kisses on every part of his face he could reach.
"I love you," he said, still laughing. "I love you."
For a moment, Jack couldn't breathe. Sure, he knew; Ianto had said it to him before, after all, and even if he hadn't, it was pretty obvious, but like that... well Jack hadn't heard it come out of someone's mouth like that in a couple of decades at least, and while there was no one he'd ever admit it to, it sure felt like a privilege, like one of those joys that wouldn't end in tears, except for the part where that was the definition of joy, that it had to.
Jack smiled. "You do, don't you?" he asked quietly, his grin big enough to hurt his face just a little.
"I do," Ianto said, still laughing and shaking his head. "I do, I do."
Jack wondered if he was repeating the syllables because of all the contexts in which they would never serve him, not now, not after everything, not after Torchwood.
"Good. I'm glad," Jack said, the smile twisting a little. "Now suck my cock," he added just as gently, as he fisted his hand hard in Ianto's hair and dragged him down the bed while he fumbled his trousers open.
This was the sort of thing, Ianto knew, that if he ever tried to explain to anyone else -- not that he had a hope of ever being that type of shameless -- would come off as completely different than it really was. His emotional declaration met by Jack being sexually demanding meant Ianto would look pathetic and Jack just sort of crass and cruel, but it wasn't like that at all, although Ianto knew adding that observation to a story he would never tell would only serve make it sound even more like denial.
What Ianto needed from Jack, even if so much of everything at the beginning had been about hiding from the man in plain sight, was to be seen and heard, and his easy heart taken with good grace. After all, what could a declaration from Jack mean when scale and language and culture made anything anyone might expect him to say to Ianto irrelevant?
As far as Ianto was concerned this was better, clearer. And besides, he liked the world sharp.
"That's good," Jack said, shoving his head down roughly enough so that Ianto choked, even as the praise made him hum.
Jack let out a rich chuckle. "Oh you would get off on this," he marveled. "My Ianto and all his secrets, just wants to be told what a good cocksucker he is."
Ianto made a sound that sounded like shared amusement, and Jack scratched up and down the back of his neck, less rough now that he had figured out just what Jack expected of his throat.
"That's right. Just relax. You're exactly where you need to be right now."
Ianto made a noise of agreement and squirmed, Jack thought, to try to rub himself off against the bed.
"Oh no," he said. "Get your knees up under you. I don't want your cock touching anything right now."
Ianto whimpered, and Jack tightened his grip in his hair, pulling Ianto off him for a moment. He winced, as his prick slipped out of Ianto's mouth, almost annoyed with himself that he needed a vaguely clear mind to make this ridiculous little speech.
"Here's how this is going to work. You're going to behave and get on with things, so I can get off here. Then I'm going to torment you. Possibly all night. Because I don't need to rest and teasing you breaks up the monotony of reading," Jack said. "Besides," he added, lowering his voice as if confiding a conspiracy, "I think you'd be amazing, not quite able to sleep, no way to get off and begging me."
"Jack," Ianto said desperately.
"Yeah?"
"Please."
"Please what?"
"Please, sir," Ianto panted.
"I meant," Jack said, laughing, "please yes or please no?"
"I don't know," Ianto gasped, trying to twist his head out of Jack's grasp to rub his face against the man's cock. "I don't know."
Jack let his hand slip out of Ianto's hair and cupped the side of his face instead. He felt his cock jump as he rubbed a thumb across Ianto's swollen lips.
"So good," Jack breathed at him. "Maybe I'll even decide to have some mercy on you," he teased, before pinching Ianto's bottom lip hard and directing him back to his cock.
Ianto decided not to think, because that was one of the things sucking cock was for, not thinking, and making Jack forget about forgetting, and getting to listen to the way he breathed roughly when he was too close for commentary or strategy and had only abandon left to him.
It was one of Ianto's favorite sounds in the whole world, in part because he suspected it was one of the few things Jack hadn't noticed about himself. It might have been Jack's sound, but it was Ianto's secret, and he was glad to draw it out of him and glad at the way Jack cradled his head when he came, like Ianto had somehow broken him into something briefly soft.
When Jack came back to himself, he pulled Ianto up into his arms in a manner that would have been sleepy on anyone else and stroked his prick.
"Tell me about Jens," he said softly, smiling like a shark.
"Jack," Ianto breathed, so grateful for contact.
"You keep talking, I keep stroking. Very simple. And we both get what we want."
"Jens too," Ianto said.
"What?" Jack asked, knowing to smile somehow even before it was explained.
"He never got to sleep with me."
"And now he does," he said with a laugh as he grasped Ianto's odd logic. Jack couldn't help but be pleased. "Now, I believe you were supposed to be speaking?" he said, stopping his hand.
"I took a gap year," Ianto said, trembling and wrung out and amused. And so happy there, in Jack's arms.
Jack started stroking again. "Hey, grab us the lube. This is too easy. I want to hear what the story sounds like when I've got three fingers inside you."
Ianto groaned and stretched over the side of the bed, taking a moment as his head hung down to close his eyes and smile that this whole business of secrets had always served him so oddly well.
Continue to Part 3
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Ten + appearances by TW Team
Authors:
rm & kalichanRating/Warning: NC-17, slash, some hints of d/s, toys, romance, angst.
Summary: Everything happens only a certain number of times.
Wordcount: ~30,000 words, posted in 4 parts.
Authors' Notes: This is the final installment of our series, I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling. Next up (eventually): some digressions and interludes, and a dvd commentary! Also, we'll be bringing you a new 'verse, with our as-yet-untitled Jenny/Ianto/Jack fic. Thank you all for coming on this journey with us. We've had a brilliant time.
Previous installments:
1. A Strange Fashion of Forsaking | 2. Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny | 3. To Learn This Holding and the Holding Back | 4. The Most Beautiful Girl in the World | 5. I Imagine You Now in That Other City | 6. Many of My Favorite Things Are Broken | 6.5 Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Truth, Beauty: or, A Child's Guide to Modern Physics | 7. In Our Bedroom After the War | 8. And I Cannot Know How Long She Has Dreamed of All of You [Jack/Nine/Rose] | 9. The Spectacular Catastrophe of Your Endless Childhood [Ianto/OFCs, Ianto/Lisa] | 10. There Are Some Men Who Should Have Mountains To Bear Their Names To Time
Harbour, Part 1
The shower was strange, hewn, Ianto thought, out of the same odd material as the Tardis itself. It reminded him of being in a very small cave, but there was a comfort to it, unlike the places he had visited with the Doctor, and he felt a bit like a cat, happy in a small box. Of course, that might have been because Jack was petting him.
They kissed under the water, all lazy tongues with no real intent, and Ianto thought that maybe he'd never been happier, even as he knew to laugh at himself. When there was time and space and a lack of carnivorous aliens and other assorted tragedies, Jack induced that feeling in him all the time.
After, Jack was giddy, and Ianto wondered whether it was natural or a forced response, a way to change gears in a life never interrupted by sleep. But he went along with it, getting dressed and even forgoing -- at Jack's insistence -- shoes and socks, a belt, his jacket and tie. There was no world here in the vortex for Ianto to button himself back into.
They padded through the ship barefoot -- Jack fondly giving Ianto a vague tour and even reaching back once to pull him along by the hand as if somehow they were children in the woods -- until they reached what seemed to Ianto to be the platonic ideal of libraries: all wood and wing-backed chairs, a leather sofa, small bar and fireplace. And the Doctor of course, curled up with a book, feet tucked under him like a child.
He looked up at them and smiled, beamed really, Ianto thought, even if it was more gentle than what he was beginning to think of as usual for him.
"Better?" the Doctor asked.
"Yes, thanks," Jack said, falling onto the leather couch -- that was new; it hadn't been that way before, Jack was positive he'd have remembered -- and tugging Ianto along with him, loving the feel of the stiff cotton of his shirt in his hand as he smoothed his other palm over the leather in memory. Maybe even this pinstriped Doctor missed that jacket, just a little.
The Doctor gave him a knowing look, but it wasn't unkind.
Jack grinned pointedly.
"Oh, you!" the Doctor said, clearly full of random joy.
Jack looked from the Doctor to Ianto and smiled, feeling proud. It wasn't a feeling he'd ever imagined indulging in such circumstances.
"So I'm thinking," the Doctor said slowly, in that way that made it clear that he'd already thought it out in extraordinary detail and that it wasn't up for discussion in the least, "that tomorrow we are going shopping."
"Shopping," Ianto repeated, incredulous.
"Shopping! You know, that thing where you run about markets?"
"He really does mean run," Jack murmured, tipping his head so that his mouth was against Ianto's ear.
The Doctor laughed. "We need supplies, Jack. And I'm sure you'll be happy for a bit more variety than you have at home. I'll show Mr. Jones the sights. You can get into trouble. It'll be lovely."
Jack gave Ianto a hopeful but questioning look, and Ianto shrugged. If they weren't getting home anytime soon, he supposed there really wasn't anything wrong with shopping per se, although the whole proposition worried him. The Doctor, he was quite sure, always had a punchline, and going shopping with him on some alien planet while Jack ran off to cause havoc? Well, it was surely some sort of set up, not that he could really do anything about it.
"What time is it?" Ianto asked, as he fought off a yawn, realizing there was no light on the TARDIS that was designed to give him any sort of clue.
Jack chuckled.
The Doctor grinned. "Time vortex! Absence of time! No time! It's any time you want, Ianto Jones, although anything you choose would technically be wrong."
"Why isn't there ever a simple answer?" he asked Jack, putting his head down on his shoulder.
"Because it keeps getting weirder," Jack said softly as he rested a hand on the top of Ianto's head.
"Ah," Ianto noted, as if that was somehow enough.
"You've worn him out, Jack," the Doctor said.
"I try," Jack said lightly.
Ianto snorted against his shoulder, eyes closed and content as Jack scratched his fingers though the hair at the back of his neck.
The Doctor made a thoughtful sound then, and Ianto couldn't help but bask in the quiet, thinking it was odd, how this ship didn't hum.
After a long silence, the Doctor spoke again, and it was enough to startle Ianto into opening his eyes.
"You should put him to bed, Jack. He looks tired," the Doctor said, as if it was somehow the saddest thing in the world.
Ianto supposed, blearily, that perhaps the Doctor was as addicted to company as Jack, hence his relentless hijacking of people.
He felt Jack nod against him, but make no further effort to move. "I'll come back, and we'll talk."
The Doctor shook his head and met Ianto's eyes with an odd fierceness. "No, you should be with him. We can talk later."
"Have we decided it's nighttime then?" Ianto asked, lifting his head from Jack's shoulder.
"Just for you," the Doctor said, and picked up his book again, dismissing them, it seemed from his thoughts.
Jack, for his part, just shrugged.
The next day -- or what Ianto wanted to call the next day, but of course wasn't -- it was all bustling about, and the Doctor running frantically around the console room, banging on gears with a mallet, pulling levers, and altogether looking, Ianto thought, like a mad porcupine on speed. But then he and Jack were pressed into duty, holding things, and keeping strings and cables taut, none of which he understood, but left remarkably little time for sardonic commentary, mental or otherwise.
And then it seemed they had arrived. Opening the TARDIS door, Ianto looked out on what appeared to be a sunny, busy marketplace -- stalls and everything, slightly Asian in flavor, with banners flying, and people moving about, all in a hurry, all completely ignoring the blue police box parked in an alleyway off what looked like a main drag. The market, he reflected, would have looked old-fashioned, except for what looked like a dockyard full of what must have been either missiles or spaceships looming off in the horizon and little hovercraft zooming about in the distance.
"Where are we?" he asked, noting that a couple of children -- a human child, and a small gorgon-like creature with hissing snake-like things instead of hair – were playing nearby. The small human seemed unphased. So did her companion, though presumably -- he? she? it? -- had had enough time to get used to the situation, having been born or hatched that way.
"Galaxy? Solar system? Continent? Century? Be more specific," the Doctor answered.
"Any will do," Ianto returned.
"Andromeda, near the edge, planet called Kyllios. It's about the 42nd century, I believe, as you'd reckon it. And it's market day."
"I can see that."
"Well, everyday's market day here. It's really a merchant planet. People set up stalls; they're hereditary. You get different stuff by district. It's quite nice. I often drop in when I'm low on supplies."
"Need you get low on supplies? What I mean is, well, can't the ship just... make stuff?"
"It's not magic, you know. Things don't just appear out of thin air," the Doctor said, sounding almost offended.
"No, I suppose not," Ianto agreed, though he didn't really see the difference between that, and apparently creating rooms for people.
Jack came up next to them in the doorway, and Ianto thought he could see his eyes brighten at the alien landscape. Of course. This must seem so much more familiar to him than what Ianto thought of as home. If he'd been anxious for them to invent driving and air-travel, how much more impatient must he be to see humans take to the stars.
The Doctor led them out into the world, and Ianto took a deep breath, feeling giddy about the whole trip for almost the first time. Because it seemed that nothing was chasing them for once, and they were chasing nothing more alarming than some tins of biscuits, and here he was, in the future, nice ordinary Ianto Jones, who'd studied film at Cardiff University and taken a job as a secretary in London because he couldn't find anything better to settle down to.
He smiled brightly at the Doctor, wanting for once to thank him, and noticed that for some reason, his eyes seemed unveiled and full of some ancient sadness.
Then he grinned back at Ianto, the melancholy almost physically shoved aside, and it was as if shutters had suddenly dropped down somewhere behind his eyes. Ianto filed the look away for later examination.
"Shall we wander?" the Doctor suggested, and Ianto nodded.
"Money?" Jack asked expectantly.
"You're asking me for money?"
"Well, I don't have any with me, and you disabled my vortex manipulator, so..."
"You're with me," the Doctor grumbled. "And you're a con-man. What d'you need money for?"
"I see how it is, now all of a sudden you're okay with me conning my way into things. Only the blondes get cash, is that how it works?"
Ianto laughed.
"What?" Jack and the Doctor said in unison.
"You sound like he's your dad or something," Ianto said to Jack.
Jack stared at him in horror. Then he turned to the Doctor. "You know I'm older than you now, right? By at least a thousand years if not more."
"Does it count if it's underground?" Ianto couldn't stop himself from asking pointedly.
"Who's side are you on anyway?" Jack said, glaring at him, but Ianto could tell he wasn't really angry.
The Doctor pulled a chip out of his pocket, and did something to it with a blue flashy object. "Don't spend it all in one place," he said, and handed it to Jack.
Jack grinned. "Thanks," he said.
"What is that?" Ianto asked, pointing to it.
"It's a sonic screwdriver," Jack told him.
"A sonic screwdriver?" he repeated blankly.
"Don't ask," Jack said, with a long suffering sigh.
"Less insulting me and my tools, thanks. You go and have a wander, Jack. Been a while since you traveled at leisure. Ianto and I will do the necessary. It'll all be new to him anyway."
"But I always -- "
"You are not a tour guide for beginners," the Doctor said, cutting him off as he shoved him playfully. "Get whatever it is out of your system; I'll get Ianto used to all of this, and, if you're good, next time you can play guide."
Ianto looked at Jack and shrugged. What could you do?
"Yes, Dad," Jack said in mock compliance and then winked at Ianto before leaning in for a kiss. "I'll see you later."
"Yes, sir," Ianto said with a poorly suppressed smile. It seemed to satisfy Jack who trotted off and disappeared quickly into the crowds. Ianto shook his head. It was all so absurd.
"So. Holding up okay?" the Doctor asked as they began walking
"Much easier than last time," Ianto said awkwardly. It wasn't something they'd had a chance to discuss as he hadn't dared to raise the topic around Jack any more than had been strictly necessary for their own domestic concerns.
"Last time?"
"Ah... giant hazelenut, creepy temple, big giant head, cute priest?" Ianto said with a shaky laugh. Surely the Doctor couldn't have forgot the whole thing!
"Creepy temple, giant head... Crafe Tec Heydra?" he asked.
"Well, yes," Ianto said, confusedly.
The Doctor frowned consideringly. "Tell you a secret? Hasn't happened for me yet."
Ianto stared at him blankly.
"Oh, come on, don't you love it when things get timey-wimey?" he added with relish. "Anything else I need to know or is that enough of a clue?"
"I... I don't know," Ianto said helplessly.
The Doctor pursed his lips for a moment and bobbed his head back and forth, as if the motion of his neck was somehow powering his very odd brain. Then, abruptly, he laughed with delight.
"You know what this means, don't you?" he said, "I'll see you again! That's wonderful!" and Ianto couldn't help but admire the way he chewed the words, like they were a particularly doughy and delightful bread.
Ianto chuckled nervously, feeling out of his depth when it came to the niceties of non-linear temporal social relationships. He'd have to ask Jack about it; there were probably rules.
But right now, he didn't care. Alien planet, distant future, strange sun. Ianto Jones, science fiction novel hero instead of science fiction novel throwaway character destined to get shot in the first three chapters at long last. He smiled and tilted his head back. This was glorious.
"I love this part," the Doctor said.
"What part?" Ianto asked returning his focus to the other man.
"This!" the Doctor exclaimed, gesturing and flapping his hands about at Ianto and the market around them. "You... humans! Just, taking it all in! It's one of my favourite things in several galaxies and nearly every century. Hands down."
Ianto didn't know what to say and merely stuttered for a moment, before replying with a simple yes.
Jack had a plan. Actually, Jack had two plans. Well, two and a half, maybe three, depending on who was counting. Ianto would call it three plans. The Doctor would probably give it to him at two and a half.
The first plan was potatoes. Because what Ianto and the people of 21st century earth called potatoes? Perfectly decent fried, mashed or otherwise abused properly, but most things were. But they weren't potatoes like those of his childhood or most markets in pretty much every galaxy for a good 2,000 year stretch, and he wanted real potatoes, not these stupid stunted earth things that when they even bothered to be red were only so on the outside. Jack didn't approve in the least.
Which led to plan one and a half, which was that Jack was going to cook dinner. Nothing fancy, of course, but he figured the Doctor wouldn't object, and food like he understood it, that was something he assumed he could show Ianto without the Doctor upstaging him again. That was getting a bit annoying, truth be told, other people were not supposed to be usurping his opportunities to impress his boyfriend, but then the Doctor had never had any tact. Which, of course, had always been one of the reasons Jack liked him.
Plan two or three, depending on who was counting, was sex toys. Strange ports meant strange flavours and if Jack was going to be a good boy and not run straight off to a brothel while also assuming that was not the shopping trip the Doctor was taking Ianto on (and wouldn't that be hot and weird, he couldn't help but think), he had to find himself a taste of something out here. And 42nd century? That was a great century for sex tech. With any luck and the Doctor's generous and fraudulent credit limit, the TARDIS was going to get a workout when it came to her soundproofing skills, very, very soon.
Jack chuckled smugly. Let the Doctor try to upstage that.
Ianto was quickly discovering that shopping with the Doctor meant keeping his arms out when the Doctor dumped parcels and products into them while nodding randomly at the constant stream of not always logical stream narration that went with each purchase.
"We should have brought a bag," Ianto eventually noted.
"Bag. Right! Sorry. Humans, only two hands, and those tiny, tiny pockets. Look, there!" he said, pointing at a stall that clearly had some, and darting over to procure one as Ianto tried not to drop alien sausages, inappropriately sized eggs and several tins of biscuits and teas onto the dusty ground. It was strange, he thought, that the future had dust; as a child, he'd always assumed it would be spotless, but he supposed that the older the universe got, so too there were more old, run-down and ill-tended things in it.
When the Doctor came back and set what was less a bag and more a wicker-like hamper with straps down in front of him, Ianto was happy to tumble everything into it. Except the eggs. He was careful with those.
As he knelt down to latch it up and shift it onto his back, because of course the Doctor wasn't going to do any actual work, he caught sight of the children they had seen earlier again, but this time, they had found their friends, and Ianto couldn't help but grin as the pack of them chased each other about, shrieking. Only a few of them were recognizable as human, and Ianto had been told enough to know that even they might not be.
The Doctor caught his smile.
"Fond of kids then, yeah?" he asked, following Ianto's gaze.
He shrugged. "Fond enough."
"Ever think of having any of your own?"
"I..." Ianto paused, taken aback. "That's not the sort of thing that would fit into my life now," he said.
"Oh, now," the Doctor said, shoving his hands in his pockets, "you're a young man, plenty of time."
The Doctor's voice caught on these last words, and Ianto grit his teeth at the small talk and insincerity of it all. He turned his head to shoot a sharp glance at the Doctor, but when he caught his eye, the Doctor looked away, almost frightened and definitely ashamed.
For a moment Ianto wanted to bask in the victory of it, to be before this man who had the run of the universe and to have made him ashamed. But shame wasn't a good look on anyone, even people who deserved to feel that way. Ianto had learned that from Jack, and it had been a good lesson.
Ianto searched for something to say to diffuse the moment, but could think of nothing. He wet his lips absently and looked at the children again and felt his stomach flip over in a strange fear, as the Doctor walked, head down beside him.
When they arrived back at the TARDIS, and the Doctor unlocked the door, Ianto noted that he seemed to perk up, like a dog picking up a scent. "Jack's back," he announced.
"How do you know?" Ianto said, panting a little, overburdened with all the groceries.
The Doctor simply winked at him.
"How did he get in?"
"He's got a key."
Ianto blinked. "When did you give it to him?"
"Oh, he's always had one. Since the first time round. Shall we go find him then?" Without waiting for his answer, the Doctor strode off towards the inner part of the ship, and Ianto started to follow him.
"Bring those things with you, there's a good lad," the Doctor called back to him. "He's in the kitchen." Rolling his eyes at the man's apparently herculean ability to avoid work of all kinds, Ianto obediently went back to pick up the hamper and staggered with it after him.
When he arrived in the kitchen, he saw the Doctor sitting on the counter idly swinging his long legs, and munching an apple-like fruit while Jack seemed to be busily wielding a knife of some kind and chopping some red objects.
"Thought for sure you'd be back later than us," the Doctor was saying to Jack. "Did you have trouble locating the disreputable parts of town?"
"This from the man for whom I am, out of the kindness of my heart, making dinner? I'm wounded."
"You're not making it for me, you're making it for him."
"That's true," Jack agreed cheerfully. "And if you're not nice to me, you don't get any."
"It's my kitchen," the Doctor argued.
"Sucks to be you, doesn't it?"
From the doorway, Ianto laughed and set the hamper down. Someone else could unpack it. "What are you doing?"
"Making food," Jack said, and turned to smile at him.
"You're cooking?" Ianto said, still unable to quite believe it.
"Yeah," Jack said. "Why, didn't you think I could?"
"Well, you never do, so I had assumed--"
Jack grinned. "Fully educated, remember?"
"Will it be edible?"
Jack threw a bit of peel at him. "Just wait."
"What are those anyway?" Ianto said, coming up behind him and poking dubiously at the red things that Jack was chopping.
"Potatoes," the Doctor said.
"Real potatoes," Jack said with relish. "It'll spoil you for the ones back where you... we came from."
Smiling to himself at the correction, Ianto asked, "Is that a good idea? I mean, I don't want to be dissatisfied with potatoes forever."
Jack laughed. "So careful."
"Don't worry," the Doctor chimed in again. "They're quite different really. Red, for one thing. Richer. And nuttier. Just think of them as a new vegetable."
"Did you bring back any eggs?" Jack asked. "I forgot to get some."
"This is why you need a list," the Doctor said.
"You took Ianto; I was flying on my own."
Ianto shook his head. "Of course we got eggs," he said, and handed them to him.
Dinner was not precisely like anything Ianto had ever tasted before, though there was something that seemed oddly familiar about it.
It was a stew of some kind, with the red potatoes and hard-cooked eggs in a rich gravy. With it, there was some spongy, slightly sour bread that Ianto had watched Jack make -- the motions seeming nearly instinctive -- and suddenly he was flooded with an almost visceral memory of that first meal in that temple so far and long away. Oh, he thought. Right. Of course. A shiver down his spine made him twitch.
"You look sad," Jack remarked. "Don't you like it?"
"No, of course I do," Ianto said, startled out of his reverie. "It's great." He handed his bowl back for another helping. "Now that I know you can do this," he added, "you're not getting away with free loading like you do any more, never doing a hand's turn in the kitchen. What kind of wife are you?"
Jack arched an eyebrow at him. "I'm never the wife," he said lazily. "Might wear a dress, but I'm never the wife."
"Too much information," the Doctor said.
"That? Come on, Doctor," Jack said. "You weren't always such a prude. Now if I told you about this one time with Gwen's--"
"And that's quite enough of that," Ianto said, cutting him off, knowing he was about to blush.
Jack was fairly pleased with the way dinner had turned out, although for some reason, some of it had seemed to make Ianto melancholy. Maybe it was his imagination, since if he were honest, he'd have to admit that the taste of it had made him slightly homesick too, but he pushed the feeling aside.
After the meal, they'd gathered again in the library, and Ianto had made a beeline for the bookshelves that he'd been too sleepy to notice the last time they'd been in there. The Doctor had pointed him towards the shelves that held English language books, and he seemed mesmerized by evidence of the Doctor's eclectic taste in reading material.
"You've got Agatha Christie, Charles Dickens and Michael Moorcock?" Ianto asked disbelievingly. "On the same shelf?"
"Yup," the Doctor said. "That's the authors I've met shelf. Luckily, the shelves are bigger than they look or I'd never have room."
"You read sci fi?" Ianto asked, somehow finding the whole prospect very improbable.
"I read everything. So?" the Doctor asked.
Jack laughed. "You read that stuff too," he said to Ianto.
"Yeah, but that's different. I'm not an alien."
"Matter of perspective, isn't it?" the Doctor said with a grin.
"Anyway," Jack said to the Doctor, cheerfully giving away Ianto's secret, "he doesn't really read them. Just makes notes in the margins when they've got things all wrong."
The Doctor burst into delighted laughter, while Ianto blushed. "You don't really, do you? Go on," he cried. "That's too perfect. With a red pen?"
"Of course," Jack said, with malicious glee. "What else?"
Clearly attempting to gather the shreds of his dignity around him, Ianto pulled out his stopwatch from his breast-pocket. "I have decided that to avoid time-lag, I should attempt to stick to something that at least slightly resembles an Earth diurnal cycle," he announced. "Which means, I should retire soon, I think. I need at least six earth hours per twenty four, or I'll be in trouble."
Making what Jack could see was a valiant effort to straighten his face, the Doctor nodded. "Clearly," he agreed politely, without even commenting on the abrupt subject change. "That's a beautiful watch, by the way," he added, and Jack grinned to himself, remembering all the various filthy uses they'd put the thing to.
"I'm fond of it," Ianto replied.
"Can I have a look?"
"Certainly."
As the Doctor turned the timepiece over again in his hands, relishing the feel of it, Ianto smiled proudly.
"It's lovely," the Doctor said admiringly, and handed it back to him. "And you've taken excellent care of it."
"It was given to me," Ianto told him. "Long time ago. In Berlin."
Jack blinked. In all the years they'd been together, it'd never occurred to him to ask. If he'd thought about it at all, he'd imagined it given to Ianto by his father, or grandfather, or something like that. Perhaps as a present when he'd left school.
The Doctor looked interested, and Ianto amplified. "Bloke named Jens," he said.
"Jens," the Doctor repeated, putting emphasis on the first "y" sound. "And Ianto. Meant to be, I'd say, from the sound of it."
"Why would he give you something like that?" Jack asked suspiciously. Meant to be. What the fuck was that supposed to mean?
Ianto turned to him and raised an eyebrow. "He must've fancied me, I suppose."
"Fancied you?" Jack said. This was just not adding up. "And when were you in Berlin by they way?"
"Before Rome and Paris, and after Amsterdam," Ianto answered him.
"What?"
"You should have read my records more carefully," Ianto said maddeningly. "It's all there. Torchwood One was much better at quizzing me on my past, I have to say, Jack."
Jack wasn't sure what to shout about first -- that Ianto was comparing him, unfavorably to Torchwood One in front of the Doctor who was sitting there smirking, damn him, or the fact that after so many years, it seemed that Ianto still had fucking secret lives unfolding out of him, like a fucking puzzle box. Now apparently he'd been all over the world, with people Jack had never even heard of, like this fucking Jens guy, and somehow had never managed to mention it. What the fuck?
"So you and this Jens, you were a thing?" he asked, trying not to visibly grit his teeth.
"Define thing," Ianto said, and smiled pointedly.
"I thought..." Jack didn't want to sound like some kind of antiquated 21st century asshole, but really, he'd been pretty sure that he was the first man in Ianto's bed. But maybe not. "You hadn't..."
"Are you going to finish any of those sentences?" Ianto asked. "I'm not a mind reader."
Jack was starting to lose the battle on keeping his temper, when the Doctor cleared his throat ostentatiously. He spun to look at him, and saw that he was rolling his eyes, probably because he and Ianto had practically forgotten anyone else was even there. "Oh, Jack," he said. "Don't be ridiculous. He was waiting for you!"
Into the silence that descended on the room, Ianto said, very softly, "I was." And then he walked very deliberately over to the Doctor, kissed him on the cheek and walked out of the room.
The Doctor beamed at Jack.
Jack stared. And kept staring, not sure whether to laugh or cry or scream or simply sit there, slack-jawed and dumbfounded, which was what he seemed to be doing.
"What the fuck was that?" he finally said.
At that, the Doctor just started laughing, tickled superiority sticking out all over him. "Are you perfectly serious? He's lovely, Jack, but really."
Jack glared, and said, through his teeth, "You know, it's really unattractive when you do that."
"Do what? Know what I'm talking about? You should try it some time."
"No, when you try to sound all like you're so above it all and wise and all that bullshit. I really, really hate it."
"No, you don't."
And as he was storming from the room, because after that, what else was there to do? He heard the Doctor call after him, infuriatingly smug, "And you don't find it unattractive either!"
When he got back to his room -- irritatingly, it seemed as if the TARDIS had changed the shape of the hallways, because of course, everyone was aligned against him -- he found Ianto already curled up on the bed, clearly naked under a sheet.
"What the fuck was that?" Jack repeated for his benefit as he entered the room.
Ianto looked up at him innocently. "What do you mean?"
"That little song and dance about Berlin and Rome and Paris. And the watch. And Jens. You never told me any of that!"
"You never asked," Ianto said reasonably.
"I didn't know there was anything to ask."
Ianto shrugged. "All right, so."
"You should have told me," Jack said, again.
He looked down at Ianto, and suddenly wanted him, fiercely. Because with all of this totally justified frustration, he just kept surprising him. Every time, every time Jack thought he had him all figured out, there turned out to be another layer, with who knew what beneath its surface.
Ianto pulled back the sheet. "Come here," he suggested, and Jack didn't have to be asked twice.
Then Jack was kissing him, feeling the bristle from Ianto's cheek chafe sharply against his mouth, biting Ianto's neck, wanting to leave a mark, wanting to bruise. Not to hurt necessarily, but to let him know that he belonged to Jack. All his secrets, even the ones Jack hadn't found out yet. Everything.
Jack ran his hands up and over Ianto's chest, scraping over his nipples, making him moan. And then he slid down, kissed Ianto's stomach, his thighs, pulled at the hair between his legs, and felt him shiver. He smiled against his thigh and took Ianto's cock into his mouth, sucking it into his throat with one easy, practiced motion, and felt its half-hardness begin to swell as he did.
Ianto bucked up into his mouth, and Jack began rubbing at the underside of his cock with his tongue. He kept going till Ianto was all the way hard, and then he let him slide out of his mouth, even though he moaned in protest. Nope, no way this was going to be that quick. He was going to draw this out, till he was gagging for it, till every inch of him was crying out for Jack.
Ianto knew he was in for it when he saw Jack's grin, the lazy, dangerous one that always made him shiver reflexively with arousal. Actually he'd known it even while the scene in the library was going on; it'd been half the reason he continued on with it. Utterly worth it, though, every second, for the look on Jack's face then, and for the one on his face now, which was sending lightning flashes of heat prickling up and down his spine.
But then Jack surprised him.
As Jack bent to kiss him again, Ianto felt one of Jack's hands go around his throat, as the other one snaked down to fist his cock. Oh he thought. God. So this was what it was like.
As Jack squeezed tighter, making it more and more difficult to breathe, Ianto began to feel a strange floating sensation.
It was beautiful, the ache of arousal in his groin, the painful band of pressure at his throat, the distant, hazy, buoyant feeling in his head, as if he might just drift away. And the inconsistent feeling of being inexplicably safe. Anchored.
He closed his eyes.
"Mine," Jack muttered hoarsely in his ear. "You know that, right? Mine."
Yours, he thought. He tried to nod, but Jack apparently read that as struggling to breathe, and immediately eased off on the pressure. Ianto was oddly disappointed.
At the concerned look on his face, Ianto couldn't help dissolving into laughter. Only Jack, who'd greeted being strangled to death with an insousciant grin, and a 'let's do it again!' would look at him with such unconscious worry at this infinitesimal amount of role-reversal.
"You're laughing at me now?" Jack said, and Ianto, without stopping, reached up to press kisses on every part of his face he could reach.
"I love you," he said, still laughing. "I love you."
For a moment, Jack couldn't breathe. Sure, he knew; Ianto had said it to him before, after all, and even if he hadn't, it was pretty obvious, but like that... well Jack hadn't heard it come out of someone's mouth like that in a couple of decades at least, and while there was no one he'd ever admit it to, it sure felt like a privilege, like one of those joys that wouldn't end in tears, except for the part where that was the definition of joy, that it had to.
Jack smiled. "You do, don't you?" he asked quietly, his grin big enough to hurt his face just a little.
"I do," Ianto said, still laughing and shaking his head. "I do, I do."
Jack wondered if he was repeating the syllables because of all the contexts in which they would never serve him, not now, not after everything, not after Torchwood.
"Good. I'm glad," Jack said, the smile twisting a little. "Now suck my cock," he added just as gently, as he fisted his hand hard in Ianto's hair and dragged him down the bed while he fumbled his trousers open.
This was the sort of thing, Ianto knew, that if he ever tried to explain to anyone else -- not that he had a hope of ever being that type of shameless -- would come off as completely different than it really was. His emotional declaration met by Jack being sexually demanding meant Ianto would look pathetic and Jack just sort of crass and cruel, but it wasn't like that at all, although Ianto knew adding that observation to a story he would never tell would only serve make it sound even more like denial.
What Ianto needed from Jack, even if so much of everything at the beginning had been about hiding from the man in plain sight, was to be seen and heard, and his easy heart taken with good grace. After all, what could a declaration from Jack mean when scale and language and culture made anything anyone might expect him to say to Ianto irrelevant?
As far as Ianto was concerned this was better, clearer. And besides, he liked the world sharp.
"That's good," Jack said, shoving his head down roughly enough so that Ianto choked, even as the praise made him hum.
Jack let out a rich chuckle. "Oh you would get off on this," he marveled. "My Ianto and all his secrets, just wants to be told what a good cocksucker he is."
Ianto made a sound that sounded like shared amusement, and Jack scratched up and down the back of his neck, less rough now that he had figured out just what Jack expected of his throat.
"That's right. Just relax. You're exactly where you need to be right now."
Ianto made a noise of agreement and squirmed, Jack thought, to try to rub himself off against the bed.
"Oh no," he said. "Get your knees up under you. I don't want your cock touching anything right now."
Ianto whimpered, and Jack tightened his grip in his hair, pulling Ianto off him for a moment. He winced, as his prick slipped out of Ianto's mouth, almost annoyed with himself that he needed a vaguely clear mind to make this ridiculous little speech.
"Here's how this is going to work. You're going to behave and get on with things, so I can get off here. Then I'm going to torment you. Possibly all night. Because I don't need to rest and teasing you breaks up the monotony of reading," Jack said. "Besides," he added, lowering his voice as if confiding a conspiracy, "I think you'd be amazing, not quite able to sleep, no way to get off and begging me."
"Jack," Ianto said desperately.
"Yeah?"
"Please."
"Please what?"
"Please, sir," Ianto panted.
"I meant," Jack said, laughing, "please yes or please no?"
"I don't know," Ianto gasped, trying to twist his head out of Jack's grasp to rub his face against the man's cock. "I don't know."
Jack let his hand slip out of Ianto's hair and cupped the side of his face instead. He felt his cock jump as he rubbed a thumb across Ianto's swollen lips.
"So good," Jack breathed at him. "Maybe I'll even decide to have some mercy on you," he teased, before pinching Ianto's bottom lip hard and directing him back to his cock.
Ianto decided not to think, because that was one of the things sucking cock was for, not thinking, and making Jack forget about forgetting, and getting to listen to the way he breathed roughly when he was too close for commentary or strategy and had only abandon left to him.
It was one of Ianto's favorite sounds in the whole world, in part because he suspected it was one of the few things Jack hadn't noticed about himself. It might have been Jack's sound, but it was Ianto's secret, and he was glad to draw it out of him and glad at the way Jack cradled his head when he came, like Ianto had somehow broken him into something briefly soft.
When Jack came back to himself, he pulled Ianto up into his arms in a manner that would have been sleepy on anyone else and stroked his prick.
"Tell me about Jens," he said softly, smiling like a shark.
"Jack," Ianto breathed, so grateful for contact.
"You keep talking, I keep stroking. Very simple. And we both get what we want."
"Jens too," Ianto said.
"What?" Jack asked, knowing to smile somehow even before it was explained.
"He never got to sleep with me."
"And now he does," he said with a laugh as he grasped Ianto's odd logic. Jack couldn't help but be pleased. "Now, I believe you were supposed to be speaking?" he said, stopping his hand.
"I took a gap year," Ianto said, trembling and wrung out and amused. And so happy there, in Jack's arms.
Jack started stroking again. "Hey, grab us the lube. This is too easy. I want to hear what the story sounds like when I've got three fingers inside you."
Ianto groaned and stretched over the side of the bed, taking a moment as his head hung down to close his eyes and smile that this whole business of secrets had always served him so oddly well.
Continue to Part 3