sam_storyteller (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 02:10 pm
sam_storyteller) wrote2005-07-17 02:10 pm
Entry tags:
The Theory of Two Centres 3/8
Title: The Theory of Two Centres
Pairings: Canon. Set post-S2.
Summary: "And I miss it so fucking much," Jack said brokenly. "And I have for so long -- "
Notes: Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
la_rainette, adina_atl, and spiderine for advice on fighting, firearms, italics, titles, eggs, and grammar. All are important!
Chapter Three
Ianto overslept without an alarm and, in the end, what woke him was a dinosaur trying to eat him.
Well, all right, not trying to eat him per se, but Myfanwy was standing over him and prodding his belly with her beak, making soft cooing noises that didn't fool him for one second.
"G'wan, you giant chicken," he said, smacking her beak aside gently. She crowed and smacked back, which hurt. "No," he ordered. To his shock, she hopped back a few feet. Then she grabbed a sadly deflated, much-chewed basketball in her mouth and flung it at his head.
God, what had his life come to?
He carried the ball out into the main Hub and tossed it up as hard as he could. Myfanwy took off, screaming joyfully, and whacked it with a huge-taloned foot, rebounding it off the fountain in a shower of water before snatching it in her jaws and carrying it back to her nest. Apparently even dinosaurs liked to play a bit of fetch once in a while. For a limited definition of "fetch" that did not actually include fetching the ball back to him.
He could hear strange beeps and clanks coming from the cells where they'd stashed the egg, but his hair was sticking out every which way and he still smelled like dirt and grease. His back, true to Harkness's prediction, twinged when he walked. This was hardly the way to start the working day. Hot water would help, and he'd seen a long row of shower-heads off the locker room near the morgue.
By the time he'd washed and dressed and given up on finding a razor to shave with, Gwen and Harkness were at the tech desk, studying readouts.
"There he is," Gwen said, beaming. "You scrunch your nose when you sleep."
"You almost let a dinosaur eat me," he replied.
"Aww, where's our chipper morning Ianto?" Harkness asked.
"He died when you woke him at dawn to dig an alien artefact out of the Cardiff suburbs," Ianto replied. "Coffee?"
"Yes, please."
He had to admit that he felt better after a few gulps of liquid caffeine. It still tasted terrible, but it got the job done.
"Change in plans," Harkness said, blowing on his coffee to cool it. "The egg's cycling energy. I need to take some readings and neither of you are qualified to use that technology. It'll be a couple of hours. Gwen'll take you out to the island with Brandon. She can explain it to you on the way. And you'll need these," he added, reaching into his pocket and tossing a small, white carton through the air. Ianto caught it and frowned.
"I don't smoke," he said, holding up the pack of cigarettes.
"Neither do I. You'll know what to do with them when the time comes," Harkness replied. Gwen, Ianto noticed, was looking distinctly unhappy. "Still up for hunting tonight?"
"How could I say no?" he asked, and went to fetch his coat.
Half an hour found him and Gwen leaning on the railings at the quay, waiting for the hospital van and listening to the shouts of sailors as they readied a small ferryboat nearby. Gwen did not look any happier. She looked, in fact, like she was dreading whatever was coming next.
Ianto had done a little research on Flat Holm island, just in case it proved relevant. All he'd really been able to dig up was that it had a lighthouse, and had once been used as a sanatorium for cholera patients. It had gun emplacements that dated back as far as the 19th century, and was privately owned. Apparently, by Torchwood.
"So," he said, nudging Gwen with an elbow. "What's this about an island, then? Harkness said you'd explain."
"There's the hospital van," Gwen replied, pointing to a dark blue car that was pulling into the quay. "Tell you about it on the boat."
Ianto hovered and watched as Gwen helped the driver get Brandon, who looked more lucid but not any healthier, into a wheelchair. She kept up a steady stream of chatter about how much he'd enjoy watching the boats come and go until the driver was gone, and then wheeled him smartly onto the ferry.
Apparently Harkness had already told Brandon what was going on. He sat placidly, hands folded in his lap, and didn't talk at all. Ianto retreated to the bow as they cast off, and waited for Gwen to join him. When she did, she sat down on an empty crate and hunched forward, studying the deck intently.
"Now?" Ianto prompted gently.
"Now," she agreed, sighing. "When Jack took over Torchwood -- no..." she stopped herself. "It starts earlier than that. The Rift doesn't just leave things. Sometimes it takes things, and people. It transports them to other places, maybe other times. Some of them live, some probably don't. We don't know much about it. Jack liked to keep it that way for a while. But sometimes after people go missing...it brings them back."
"Like Brandon."
"Yep."
She was silent for a while. Ianto listened to the scream of gulls and the roar of the engine until she was ready to continue.
"It dumps them back here, damaged or sick or mad, and Jack...takes care of them. Torchwood takes care of them. Used to be that meant shooting them or locking them in the cells. That's what Jack says, anyway. When he took over Torchwood he decided he wanted something more for them."
"When was that?"
"Dunno. Early two thousand, I think. Tosh looked it up once."
"Something more being...a boat ride? An island?"
"Flat Holm island. He uses it as a sort of refuge for them."
"Like a hospital."
"More like a hospice. You don't come back from Flat Holm. The people we take there...they die there. There are nurses to care for them, Jack feeds them some story about failed medical experiments. I doubt they buy it but they're good people, they don't ask too many questions. Not like me," she added bitterly.
"When did you find out about it? You said..." Ianto gestured at the man in the wheelchair, who still hadn't moved. "You said he was your first."
"Oh yes. Well, sort of. First time I've taken anyone to Flat Holm myself."
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I guess I'll see it for myself," he said.
"No, you should know this. I...started looking into all the disappearances. I didn't know about the island. You did, but I don't know when Jack told you. You must have known for a while anyway. Probably so you could help order supplies, or take people there, or something. You tipped me off that the island existed, didn't tell me what was there. I ran over like an idiot and got the wrong idea, thought Jack was...torturing people or something. It was a bloody great cock-up for me from start to end, really."
"I'm sorry, Gwen."
"Not your fault. Even Jack said later that you did the right thing. I don't go over much, I don't like it; when someone had to be taken there or they had to run supplies over it was your job or Jack's."
"Did the others know?"
"Jack told them, after I found out. I think maybe Owen went once, to have a look at the medical side."
Ianto lifted his head into the wind. From here he could already see the island approaching in the distance. Not a long ride.
"I'd say you could stay on the boat, but I don't know what to do once we get there," he said.
"It won't take long. Jack said I should let you have a look around if you liked, but that I didn't have to stay."
"Kind of him."
"I'll never really understand that," Gwen blurted. "He is kind, he cares about people, but he's so hard sometimes too. I couldn't do it, lock them up on an island, even when I know it's right. I couldn't, Ianto."
"Good thing he's the captain then, I suppose," Ianto said absently. "How many are there?"
"Seventeen or eighteen. Most of them don't live all that long, he says. You can tell when one of them dies, he comes back..." she shrugged and straightened. "Hollow-looking. Sits in his office for the afternoon and broods."
"Bet he's good at that."
"World-class."
There was a woman waiting for them at the tiny, rickety dock on the island. She looked happy to see Ianto, gave him a hug and kissed his cheek, shook hands with Gwen (who called her Helen) and greeted Brandon with a warm smile and a reassuring monologue about getting him "settled in" and finding him a nice hot meal. Really all that they had to do was trail along behind her as she pushed his wheelchair over the hard-packed dirt path, to a ramp sunk in the ground and a heavy steel roll-door.
"We've been looking forward to your visit," she said to Ianto, as they entered a long narrow hallway. "They always ask after the Captain but a fair few ask after you as well."
"That's...nice," Ianto said.
His first thought was that it smelled like Providence Park, not as antiseptic as a hospital but with strong overtones of bleach and laundry soap. Underneath, a sort of burnt-metal odour, something he knew intellectually he couldn't really smell but which stood in for the fear and sickness that were intangible and always there. The grim wire cages around the televisions, the round edges of all the furniture, the barred-over glass -- a dingy sort of place, despite the scrupulous cleanliness, trying very hard to be cheerful and failing very badly.
Ah. So that was what Harkness had meant. His reactions wouldn't change, because his sense of the madhouse had been honed to a point long before he came to Torchwood.
He hadn't been anywhere like this since he was thirteen, but he remembered. It made him ache, but it wasn't a bad ache -- there was a certain amount of pride involved. Dad's doing, he supposed. Never be ashamed to be kind to the ill, Dad had told him. Every bloody Sunday after church.
Brandon was shown to a private room, bare and plain, with no mirrors (glass could be broken and used as a weapon) and cages around the light-bulbs. Ianto could see, in other rooms, that posters had been hung, personal effects laid out. In one of them, a young woman with long blonde hair wept and rocked. In the hall, a scrawny man beamed at him and raised a hand in greeting. Ianto, remembering his manners, smiled back and gave him a noncommittal nod.
"I'm going back up," Gwen said, as soon as Brandon was settled in the room. "When you're done, come find me, yeah?"
"Sure."
"Take your time," she added, and gave his arm a squeeze before she left.
"She acts as if you've never been here," Helen said, amused. "As if you're the one who's high strung about it, not her."
"I'm used to it," Ianto replied.
"Come have some tea, then. Prakhar will want to see you."
Prakhar turned out to be a perfectly healthy-looking man in his thirties, with a shock of thick dark hair and a smile that was slightly manic, slightly too wide to be real. He bounded up to Ianto as they walked into the small dining room.
"Ianto Jones, Jones Ianto Jones," Prakhar said. "Hi!"
"Hallo, Prakhar," Ianto said, guessing. The man bobbed his head. "How's life on the island?"
"Brilliant, Jones. Oh yes. Peonies coming up lovely. Dragonflies as big as your fist."
Ianto glanced at Helen, who shrugged and looked sadly at him.
"The acid snow'll take care of them though," Prakhar continued. "Eat away the island until it's the end of the world."
"Well, winter's a good ways off," Ianto answered. Prakhar sidled up close to him.
"Did you bring them?" he asked in a very loud whisper.
"Bring what?" Ianto whispered back.
"You know." Prakhar put two fingers to his lips and inhaled.
Oh, good god.
"Ah," he fumbled. "Yeah. I did. Compliments of Captain Harkness," he added, palming the pack of cigarettes into Prakhar's questing hand.
"You're a gentleman, Ianto Jones. I'll bring you a dragonfly. Good eating on them, you know."
He hurried away, presumably to find a quiet place to smoke -- god knew if they let the man have a lighter -- and Ianto turned back to Helen.
"He knows he's not supposed to send the boy cigarettes," she said. "But...he knows we'll always forgive him."
"Got to have some pleasures in life," Ianto replied. "Erm...is there anyone else I ought to specially see?"
Helen bit her lip. "Nicole. We don't think she'll be with us much longer, and you know how much she likes your vowels."
He smiled as if he understood, and after a cup of tea he found himself sitting in a bright yellow room with an elderly woman in it, reading to her from -- of all things -- an advanced medical journal. Occasionally she'd grunt or make a comment about the text, which he didn't even pretend to understand.
"And now you have to go," she said finally. "Jack will be getting impatient for you."
"I'll be back soon," he said.
"I'll be dead, I'm afraid," she replied.
Ianto set the book on the bed and left the room.
Gwen was sitting on a rock outcrop near the door, watching the waves lick at the beach below. He settled next to her and, on impulse, put his arm around her shoulders. Creepy, considering how little he'd wanted contact before now, but she seemed to need it. She snaked an arm around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder.
"Jack said you wouldn't even be upset," she said.
"I think that's an overstatement," he replied.
"But you're not. Not like I was. Don't you find it horrible?"
He considered it. "Objectively, yes. But they can't help it."
"I want to care about them. It's just so hard to be near them. They're so full of pain and there's nothing to be done. Not even for their families."
He made a wordless noise that could have been agreement or objection, because he didn't know what to tell her.
"I reckon I know why he told me and not you," he said finally. "He must have read up on me."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"My mum was in Providence Park," he said.
"What?"
"Severely schizophrenic. Profoundly unstable," he said.
"Oh, my god, Ianto -- "
"She had her first psychotic break when I was three. By the time I was five she was a long-term resident. So I know a bit about places like this."
"You'd think it would make you even more upset."
"No, not so much. They could look after her properly there, and Dad didn't have to worry. We visited her on Sundays. She was pretty catatonic. Maybe sedated heavily. I never asked. She died when I was thirteen." He glanced down at her. "Did I never tell you?"
"I doubt you told anyone. But you're right, Jack probably knew. Jack mostly does."
"Wonder why I never told you, though. Seems the kind of thing you'd get out of me sooner or later."
Gwen laughed a little. "Shows what you know."
"Oh yeah?"
"Well, I think...I dunno, but it makes sense a bit. After...I mean...you hadn't anyone or much of anything when you came to Cardiff. Except Lisa, really. And then we took her away from you too. You must have wanted something that was yours, just yours. Jack was as surprised as I was when you said you had perfect recall, so you couldn't have told him either. You wanted a secret or two. I can understand that." She pulled away gently. "There's the boat. We should go."
"Don't tell Captain Harkness," he said suddenly, as she stood. She turned, looking perplexed.
"But if he already knows..."
"Don't tell him I told you. It's in the past, it doesn't matter now. I don't want it...discussed. You talk about me enough already," he said. "Please, Gwen."
"All right," she said. "If you want it that way." And then, lightly, "Lunch when we get back?"
"Yeah, sounds good."
He stood at the rear of the boat the whole way back, watching Flat Holm fade into the distance until it was just a low, thick line on the horizon. He wondered how many more secrets Harkness was keeping from him. And how many he was keeping from Harkness.
***
Then
"I only know them from stories," Jack said, pacing back and forth in front of the cell. It was an unusual place to have a team meeting, but Ianto wouldn't be moved. Gwen and Martha sat on the floor, Gwen leaning up against the other side of the glass from where Ianto sat, Martha across from her. "They say they used to walk like gods. They get inside your head. Mess with your memories, make you believe what they want you to believe."
"God," Gwen said.
"They were just fairy tales for children."
"So were fairies," Gwen pointed out.
"This won't end that way."
"But if it's in Ianto..."
"I can feel him," Ianto said, startling her. She looked through the glass at him. "Now that I know. I can feel him. He digs around. He knows Lisa. He knows about London. He's learning my memories."
"We lost two days once," Gwen said.
"Maybe it wasn't your choice," Martha suggested.
"Maybe I did it to you," Ianto replied.
"You didn't do anything. It did. If we can chase it down..." Jack rubbed his jaw, fell silent.
"If we kill what it feeds on," Martha said. Jack gave her a sharp look. "Memory. Scorched earth. If we track it back as far as it goes, starve it out, it'll at least mean Ianto's free."
***
Now
To his surprise, once they were back on the mainland, Gwen called Jack to let him know they'd returned and then took Ianto back to her flat for lunch.
"Rhys made soup yesterday," she said, taking a large plastic tub out of the fridge and dumping the contents into a pot on the stove. "He always makes loads. I thought, soup and bread."
"Sounds fine," Ianto replied, seating himself at the little bar between the kitchen and living room and trying to look at everything without actually looking like he was looking at everything. "What sort of soup?"
"Spicy vegetable," she replied, glancing at him. He made a face. "You'll like it, promise. Rhys is a good cook. Better than me by a long shot."
She turned on the heat and went about getting down bowls and plates. "You know, I don't think you've ever been to my flat before."
"Can't have had much reason."
"You'd be surprised. Still, Rhys didn't find out what I really did until a few months ago -- about a year now actually. I had a huge row with Jack over that. He wanted me to Retcon him after he'd found out."
"Retcon, that's the little pills, the ones that make you forget."
Gwen looked stricken. "Oh -- sorry -- "
"It's fine," Ianto assured her. "Just making sure I know all the terminology."
"Partners aren't supposed to know what we do, but Rhys can keep his mouth shut. He has done, anyway. He likes to hear about the aliens. And once in a while it's helpful, when we need to haul something large. He can lend out a lorry without too many questions asked."
"Do he and I get on?" Ianto asked.
"I think so. You don't see much of each other, but he asks after you. Especially now, after Owen and Tosh."
"That's good of him." Ianto mulled this over as Gwen stirred the soup. "Harkness was right. Seems like you're our connection to the outside world. Rhys, the Davidson bloke..." he gestured at the pot. "Soup."
"Part of why he hired me," she said. "The woman before me -- "
"Suzie. I read the reports. She became obsessive. Started killing people to give her an opportunity to use the glove."
"Not so much the kind of person you want as your second in command," Gwen said. "And there I was, with this burning belief that we could help people, that we ought to help people, totally naive. But...well, human, and pretty bright. And not unattractive, which is a major consideration for Jack."
"You don't mind what he says, all the time, about sex?"
"Why, do you?"
"No, but I'm not a woman, am I?"
"What's that got to do with it?" she laughed. "He's Jack, Ianto. Sex isn't demeaning or shameful for him. He's not trying to belittle or objectify anyone. He might check out your arse but that doesn't mean he isn't seeing you as a whole person. It's a...culture clash, I suppose. He lives by different rules than the people he lives among."
"He must be very lonely," Ianto murmured. Gwen dipped out a bowl of soup and passed it across the counter to him, smiling.
"Not so lonely as you might think," she said.
***
As Harkness had promised, they spent the afternoon repairing alien technology. Ianto sometimes found himself wanting to laugh about this for no reason he could fathom -- it was just so absurd. Him, with a screwdriver, deep in the bowels of an alien device, trying to pry up a small metal flange so that he could rewire what Harkness called 'the thing that makes it beep'. Not that this wasn't his forte -- he'd done a course in electrics in school, and his mates always made him be the one to set up stereos and videogames and things. He wasn't terribly interested in videogames in their own right, but it was good to have useful skills.
Harkness, working on a different machine across the desk, occasionally walked him through the next step or explained to him the function of each part. Again, he wanted to ask how he knew it all, though at least he was a little closer to the answer now. Harkness hadn't been born on Earth and couldn't die. All that time in Torchwood, regardless of any other experience, ought to make a person quite the expert.
And it was fun, really, working like this, like solving puzzles or playing games. Gwen was nearby, monitoring the Rift and trying to make sense of the readings Harkness had taken while they were out on Flat Holm. Harkness had asked Ianto, on their return, what Ianto thought they should call the thing. Ianto had jokingly replied "The Bacon Beacon" which had elicited a roar of pleased laughter. The name that stuck, however, was The Egg.
He found he wanted to please Harkness. It was hard not to want to. Gwen obviously did. Myfanwy was the only one who seemed impervious to his charms and he was sure, if Harkness really put in the effort, he could charm her too.
"So, what I'm getting from this," Gwen said, coming over to the workbench and holding a stack of printouts, "Is that the Egg wasn't even using all the energy it was pulling up. And how was it getting energy from dirt, exactly?"
"I don't know," Harkness said, leaning back. "It's not something I've seen before, and that's saying a lot."
Ianto triumphantly pulled a wire out, smiled at it, and began stripping the strange, gooey coating off one end.
"But it was definitely carrying a message on that beam," Gwen said. "How high up do you think the light got?"
"Satellites..." Harkness leaned over languidly and tapped a few keys on the computer. "It made it into space. Royal Observatory seems to think it was an instrument glitch on their end. Coded pulses, though. Huh. Communication with light frequency. Maybe whoever invented it communicates using light instead of sound."
"What's it doing now?" Ianto asked, wiping the goo on a rag and twisting the alien wire around a piece of good old-fashioned Earth-made copper wire.
"It's putting out faint pulses of heat energy -- not cold anymore," Harkness said. "I think it's some kind of standby signal."
"Like a light on a laptop when you put it in sleep mode," Gwen said.
"Or a low-power version of the beam," Ianto said.
"Either-or. We should be ready for someone to come looking for it," Harkness replied. "Step up the frequency of satellite reports. I want as much warning as possible. A race that could invent this kind of power-conversion technology is going to be pretty advanced."
Ianto, plugging the copper wire into a socket in the Beeping Thing, shouted and jerked back in surprise as it sparked. It sizzled for a minute, then started to beep.
"Good job," Harkness said, and reached over to pull the wire out using a pair of rubber grips. "You get a gold star, Ianto Jones."
"I'll stick it on my wall next to my kitten posters," Ianto drawled.
"Funny. Come on. Gwen, get the satellites set up and then go home. Ianto and I have a date with a Weevil."
"Hunt well," Gwen gave Harkness a significant look as she bent back to her work. Ianto stood and lifted Harkness's coat from the hook, helping him on with it before he donned his own jacket. Harkness raided a box near the door.
"Weevil spray," he tossed an aerosol can to Ianto. "Got your sidearm?"
Ianto pulled his coat back to show the holster on his belt. Harkness leered a little.
"I'm also happy to see you, sir," Ianto remarked, and Harkness looked shocked for a moment before he laughed.
"I'm obvious but fun," he said. "G'night Gwen!"
"Night Jack, night Ianto," Gwen called.
***
Ianto felt adrenaline seeping into his bloodstream as they drove through the dark Cardiff streets, just like it had the half-dozen times he'd stolen from shops, the dozen-odd times he'd got up to mischief late at night. Less than a month ago, for him; four years ago, for everyone else.
His hand clenched tight on the can of spray, his mind only half-absorbing what Harkness was saying. Spray it in the face, get it calmed down, get a hood over it, plastic ties at wrists and ankles. Spray doesn't always work, or it takes more than usual, but once it's down it'll be down for a few hours. Time enough to do the job right, so don't slack on binding it up. Watch the claws. Definitely watch the teeth. Don't let one get on top of you.
"Captain," Ianto said, over the hum of Harkness's voice.
"What?"
"I see one."
A hunched figure shambling along -- were they made for gravity as heavy as Earth's? -- with its arms dragging low, a ragged jumpsuit concealing the shape of its body. He could almost hear the thing snort and snuffle, like the one Harkness kept in the cells for whatever reason. It was already pretty far from anywhere a car could go, moving deeper into a wooded park with every passing second. Harkness pulled the SUV around and up onto the pavement, only stopping when the trees made it impossible to drive further. He was out of the car before Ianto even had his seatbelt unbuckled.
Chasing it down wasn't hard. It couldn't run very fast. The question was what to do with it once they'd caught up to it, both of them circling like dogs, pulling back whenever it lunged out.
"I'm going to draw it off," Harkness said. "Get behind it. Reach an arm around, empty the can into its face. You only get one shot like that so make it count."
"Yessir," Ianto answered breathlessly. He inched forward as Harkness began taunting the Weevil, stepping up and then back, pulling all its attention.
Which of course was when everything went to hell.
It turned and lashed out at Ianto, who was just barely out of claws-range. He stumbled backwards and fell, then remembered the admonishment not to get trapped underneath one and rolled as fast as he could, losing the spray in the chaos of sharp roots and clumps of weeds. It lunged again and he rolled in the other direction as something stung its way across his chest. When he scrambled to his feet he felt blood welling up and into his shirt, sticking it down.
Harkness was -- he was fistfighting the thing.
Ianto cast a look around and then, unable to find the spray, dove back in, kicking the Weevil's legs out from under it and then giving it a swift boot to the head. It roared, but Harkness was getting a foot on its chest and holding it down as he emptied the spray can up its nose. After a second, it subsided into little twitches and moans.
Ianto inhaled to let out a triumphant shout -- bagged it! -- and felt a hand clamp over his mouth, stopping him. His vision filled with Harkness, one foot still on the Weevil's chest, face inches from his.
"These are a secret, remember?" he hissed. His other hand was on the back of Ianto's neck, holding him in place. They were pressed together, hip and shoulder, and he wanted to warn the captain that it was likely he was getting Ianto's blood on his coat. "You want to tell the whole damn town we're here?"
Ianto shook his head. Harkness eased back, looking down.
"You're hurt," he said.
"S'not much, hardly got me," Ianto replied. "That was brilliant though, wasn't it?"
"Par for the course," Harkness said, brushing aside his enthusiasm. He bent to fit a hood over the unconscious Weevil. Ianto knelt and drew a handful of plastic ties out of his pocket, looping one around its wrist and linking another through it before pulling it tight around the Weevil's other arm. He did it without thinking, then wondered how he'd known how to do that.
"Come on, Harkness, that was pretty great. You went up against that thing like a boxer." Ianto moved to its legs, tied those as well.
"Don't call me Harkness," he said, lifting the body and slinging it over his shoulder. "Come get patched up."
"This shirt'll have to go," Ianto observed, pulling shredded bits of cotton away from his skin. He could see the scratches weren't deep, but there were more than he'd thought. It must have gone for him with both claws. Bit of a blur, really, in the heat of the moment, but a brilliant rush when it was done. Much better than shoplifting.
Harkness dumped the Weevil in the boot of the SUV and took out a first-aid kit before he closed it. Ianto shrugged out of his jacket and pulled the shirt off over his head, leaning against the car. He held out his hand for the kit, but Harkness opened a bottle of disinfectant and poured it onto a pad, blotting it along the lines of the scratches. Ianto hissed.
"You're right, they're not bad," Harkness said. "Won't scar. They hurt?"
"They do now you're pouring that stuff in them."
"Never know what kind of alien bugs you might get. Weevils aren't known for cleaning under their fingernails."
Ianto laughed. He felt almost dizzy, and definitely high. Endorphines, probably.
Harkness finished cleaning him up and then painted something clear and cold over the wounds, sealing them, before covering each scratch with a strip of medical tape. Ianto considered him, head bent to his task, eyes narrowed in concentration.
"So, what do I call you, then?" he asked.
"What?" Harkness said.
"You said don't call you Harkness. What do I call you? Jack? Seems a bit informal. I'm not Gwen."
Harkness straightened and set the kit down on the fender. There was a certain sensation of Ianto's personal space having been invaded, and not for the first time since he'd come to Torchwood. But, on the other hand...also a dim sense that if Harkness had asked, yeah, he would have invited him to step right up.
A warm hand was pressed to his chest, gently. Harkness inhaled, exhaled again. Controlling himself.
And suddenly it clicked into place -- the kid-glove treatment, the refusal to give him all the information at once, the way he touched him, the way when they made contact it held just a trifle too long. The reason he'd woken up in his strange flat with Harkness's coat spread over him. Gwen's reluctance to tell him who he'd been with in the sixteen months since his girlfriend's death, and her insistence that Harkness tell him. The way he instinctively trusted the man without the slightest reason and with several good reasons not to.
"You and I," Ianto said slowly. "We aren't just boss and employee."
"We are now," Harkness said.
"But not always."
"We were more, once."
"What, were we shagging? That's not something I normally do with -- " Ianto began, trying to blow it off, but Harkness pressed lightly and he gasped -- half pain, half surprise.
"You want to know what you call me?" Harkness said, and there was an odd anger in his face. "When we're at work, you call me Sir, unless you forget yourself and call me Jack. Which is what I want you to call me, because you say it like it's some kind of goddamned blessing, something a man your age shouldn't even know how to do. That's what you say when you slip up. That's what you call me when we're alone, in the dark. That's what you call me when you're in my bed. You call me Jack."
Ianto gaped at him, even as their bodies pressed together, even as he felt a reaction rise in him -- lust, yes, unexpected and unusual, but also a deeply possessive urge. Like he wanted to claim any little part of Jack Harkness he could.
"And I miss it so fucking much," Jack said brokenly. "And I have for so long -- "
Ianto arched his back and leaned up and kissed him.
It was like breaking down a dam; Jack surged forward, pinning him, god, not giving him enough space to breathe, let alone move. He could feel hands hitching up his hips, warm palms on his skin, fingers working their way under the waistband of his jeans. Jack wouldn't release his mouth, just kept pushing, brilliant, dangerous, all his tightly-wound control evaporating. Ianto hooked one leg around Jack's thigh, enjoying being on eye-level with him as they kissed --
"Going to have me right against the car in a public park?" he asked, laughing. Jack nipped sharp bites along his throat.
"Would if you'd let me," Jack said, hips thrusting against him. He slid one hand down and got it under Ianto's arse, lifting slightly for better leverage. Ianto moaned.
"Who's stopping you?" he asked, though he was hazy on the mechanics of all this. Anyway if Jack kept licking between his clavicles they could work out the more complicated positions some other time.
"You. Always did," Jack grunted.
"Not stopping you now," Ianto caught his breath in his throat. "God, you're strange."
"You have no idea," Jack's breathing was ragged.
"Show me," Ianto said, and Jack lifted his head and gave him an incandescent, electric-blue stare, his grin wide and filthy. One of his hands slipped down between them, searching and stroking. Ianto tipped his head back, stared up at the hazy stars over Cardiff. Jack's hand was doing amazing things, even through the stiff denim, and once he got his zip down the noises he was making were distilled sex. He could feel Jack's erection as well, slid his thigh over to press against it, and heard Jack cry out, muffled against his skin.
The stars overhead blurred, dizzyingly, as he concentrated on Jack's body against his, Jack's hands and mouth, the frantic thrust of his hips. Ianto felt himself hit the edge, felt that final touch that pushed him over, and whited out for a minute.
He dropped back into his body to discover that he was sticky and breathless and felt like he'd found something he wasn't even aware he'd been missing. Jack was staring at him, breathing heavy as well.
"I take it that's new," Ianto said, trying for casual after the best shag of his young life. And failing miserably.
"Weevil-hunting," Jack managed. "Gets things flowing."
"You're a bit sort of kinky," Ianto observed.
"Hey, this wasn't a solo performance."
"I dunno, I didn't do much more than try and hang on."
"That could be fixed," Jack said, but there was a hesitance in his tone.
Ianto nodded. "Got no problem with that."
That earned him a smile which lit up Jack's face.
"Car," he said, stepping back and regrouping. He offered Ianto a handkerchief, of all things. Ianto cleaned himself up, did up his zip and found his coat, circled to climb into the car.
"One good thing to come out of this," Jack was saying, as he started the engine. "I got two first-times with you."
"I hope last time wasn't up against a car. I mean, variety and all," Ianto said, "but I'd like to think at least once was in a bed or something."
"Quite the possibility," Jack murmured.
"We can dump the Weevil at the Hub -- go back to mine?" Ianto asked. "Or yours, if you want, I'm not fussed."
Jack pulled back onto the street. "I forgot to tell you that."
"What?"
"I live at the Hub."
"What, really?" Ianto asked. Jack nodded as he steered towards the bay. "You don't think maybe the term 'workaholic' might come to mind when people think of you, do you?"
Jack just laughed. "I try not to care too much what people think of me, most of the time."
At the Hub, Ianto slipped away to clean himself up a bit more while Jack was still dealing with the Weevil. He stole a clean scrub shirt out of the stock in the medical bay, pulled it over his head, and wondered if he should go see what he could do to help.
As it turned out, he didn't have to. When he emerged from the medical bay Jack was standing by the door in clean clothes, waiting patiently for him.
Some advantages to living at the Hub, then, Ianto supposed. He'd have to start keeping spare clothes there as well.
They were silent as Jack pulled them back out into the night streets and turned in the direction of his flat. After about five minutes of trying not to think about what he was doing, Ianto caved.
"I've never slept with a man before," he said. Jack glanced at him briefly. "I mean, all right, obviously..." he gestured at Jack. "But I don't remember it, is the point."
"Mm. Given what you've remembered without having to relearn it so far, I wouldn't be so quick to say that," Jack replied. "Muscle memory. Beautiful thing."
"Jesus, how much sex did we have?"
Jack grinned. "A lot. Does that bother you?"
Ianto thought about it. He had only vague sketch outlines of how gay men had sex to start with, and he recalled thinking it couldn't be pleasant, but -- well, obviously he'd enjoyed it. Or he'd been so in Jack's thrall he hadn't cared. And he'd had a good time just now, in the park...
"No," he decided. "Not yet anyway."
"Does anything bother you?" Jack asked. There was a slight edge to his voice.
Ianto shrugged.
When they reached the building, he let them in and led the way up the stairs -- oh god, he was bringing someone home for sex, he was bringing a man home for sex, he was bringing Captain Jack Harkness home for sex. He forestalled these thoughts neatly by pivoting once he was through the door and pushing Jack up against it, kissing him.
"Nice," Jack breathed against his mouth, going with it, one arm around his waist to hold him there. "See? You're remembering already."
Ianto concentrated on trying to shut him up, but apparently Jack Harkness was a talker. He pushed away from the door and walked Ianto backwards, still talking, hands sliding his scrub shirt up and off, reaching for his belt buckle.
"I planned this to be a little less intense," he said, and god, Ianto was hard again already. Jack was too, from the feel of it. This could be a very interesting night.
"Mm?" Ianto encouraged, lowering his head to nose his way along Jack's jaw, get the scent of him.
"I thought I'd buy you a drink, sit with you..." Jack hooked his thumbs in Ianto's waistband again, shoving his jeans down. Ianto staggered a little and laughed. "Explain all this to you calmly."
"That sounds like you," Ianto taunted, untangling himself, getting his shoes and socks off in the process. He reached for Jack's shirt, fumbling with the buttons and the braces. "You wear too many clothes."
"Usually I'm saying that to you," Jack replied, shrugging out of the braces at least. "I was going to say we didn't have to keep on -- "
"Oh, let's," Ianto moaned, finally getting his hands on warm bare skin, pushing Jack's shirt over his head.
" -- and we could go slow if you wanted -- "
"Not interested."
Harkness, belt undone, trousers half-off, stopped them in the bedroom doorway and cupped Ianto's chin, lifting it up so their eyes were level again.
"You said something about a bed," he said gently.
Ianto stepped aside, pulling him into the room.
"Best laid plans," Jack said, stripping off the rest of his clothing. He got his arm around Ianto's waist again and pulled him over, half-falling with him onto the bed. Ianto crawled up him and kissed him, trying to ignore the familiar-unfamiliar sensations -- a flat muscled chest, thick thighs, another man's cock pressing against the hollow of his hip. He bucked a little, listened to a deep moan, smiled.
He did feel like he half-remembered this, which made it easier right up until Jack got a good steady grip and flipped him onto his back, holding him there deftly. And then he kissed his throat and his chest and the edge of a bandage, kissed the sensitive flat of his ribcage. It took Ianto far too long, not until he was biting gently on his stomach, to realise --
He wasn't sure what he'd assumed, in the spare few minutes he might have had to think about this, but it was not that charming, powerful, dominating Captain Harkness would be sucking his cock.
Certainly Jack didn't mess about with pretence, just wet his lips and took him, tongue working against his skin, tighthotwet oh Christ, Jack's hair soft under his hand, Jack's own hands holding him down. Ianto writhed and moaned, tried to keep still when one of Jack's hands left his skin --
There was a strange pressure, a caressing touch and then a push and Ianto yelped and jerked away, scrambling backwards.
Jack, lips damp and swollen, was looking at him from under his brows, cautious.
"Okay?" he asked slowly. Ianto blinked.
"That was, ah -- "
"My finger in your ass, yeah," Jack said. "I was there."
"Sorry, just, fingers in unexpected places." Ianto hesitated. "Do I...like that?"
"Well, you haven't complained before. Not the kind of complaining where it means you actually want me to stop, anyway." Jack moved forward slowly, cupped a hand on Ianto's cheek. "I forgot, okay? I'm sorry. Nothing you don't want, I swear -- I just -- I've missed you."
Ianto kissed him (taste of salt on his lips, taste of his own skin) and trailed fingers helplessly down his body, uncertain.
"Do you trust me, Ianto?" Jack asked softly.
"God knows why," Ianto managed. "Yes, I do, it just...startled me."
"I'm sorry."
"You can't forget, Jack, because I can't remember." Ianto kissed him again. "Okay -- okay -- do we -- how do I...just...please," he said, not even sure what he was asking.
"What do you want?"
"That, I do, it's fine...slowly," Ianto breathed.
Jack, pleasingly, chuckled. "Oh, now he wants to go slow."
"Hey! Surprise fingers!" Ianto retorted. "Your bed manners..."
Jack laughed even more at this and leaned over to kiss his throat, even as one arm stretched out to pull the drawer on the bedside table. Ianto hadn't looked around much in the bedroom. If he'd found the lubricant in the nightstand a lot of things might have come clearer a lot sooner. He watched Jack's bicep flex and relax, fascinated. Jack shut the drawer again.
Their bodies were barely touching, just Jack's forehead pressed to his shoulder and then, raising, Jack's mouth on his. A slick hand trailing up his thigh, touch and pressure again --
"Breathe, it's easy," Jack said into his mouth, and Ianto was trying to formulate a reply when the pressure increased. This was -- he was so exposed, Jack could do anything to him and he'd really only known him three days. But in some dark place in his head he didn't even care.
Jack Harkness, a familiar name, like a word on the tip of his tongue he couldn't quite search out.
And then he realised Jack was smiling at him in approval, with affection.
"Better," he said, in a low voice that made Ianto gasp even as the sense of pressure and fullness increased. Oh god, two fingers, and they were moving, pushing gently inside him.
Part of him wanted it, was embarrassed he'd run from this even momentarily. Slowly he drew one leg up, maneuvering their bodies, making it easier, and earned himself another pleased look from Jack.
And a curl of his fingers oh god what was that how did it sweet Jesus --
Jack looked utterly smug. "And that's why I get no complaints," he said, and did it again. Ianto tried to remember how to breathe.
"What -- are you -- " he panted.
"Anatomy lessons later," Jack replied, kissing him quiet. He took his hand away, moved his body forward. Gripped the headboard with one hand, over Ianto's shoulder, and kissed him again. Apparently kissing was the way he distracted people and Ianto had to admit it worked until an impossible thickness pushed against him, pushed inside him, and Ianto choked down on a second surprised yelp.
"Got you," Jack said urgently, his other hand holding Ianto's hip hard enough to bruise. "It's okay, got you."
Ianto tipped his head back. "Still just holding on," he managed. Jack shifted his weight. Pleasure like fire, with a tang of pain attached, raced straight up his spine.
"You're so...sometimes..." Jack whispered incoherently, interrupted every few words by a hitch of breath or a moan of pleasure as he rocked into him. "Everything. You take everything. Even things I shouldn't, I try not to, you take -- please, Ianto, please."
Ianto could hardly figure out how to move, but he managed to get his arms around Jack's shoulders, pull him closer. Jack had stilled, was waiting for something, and even so neither of them were going to take their time about this. Jack drifted one hand over his stomach, stroked his cock almost as an afterthought, started moving again.
Small, erratic twitches evened out, became solid thrusts, faster and faster until they broke down again and it hurt, there was no denying that, but it was background noise to the sheer pleasure of having Jack. Of seeing the captain come unwound and knowing he'd caused that. Knowing it was for him, that his possessive urge hadn't been misplaced.
"You," Ianto said, as Jack latched teeth hard in his shoulder and came. "You're for me, Jack."
***
It was definitely messy.
Then again, in one way or another, all sex was. And Jack might not have the best bed manners, but he was a gentleman: he let Ianto rest, found a washcloth and wetted it with warm water, smoothed it over his own skin and Ianto's before Ianto pulled him into a kiss again.
"So?" Jack said, grinning down at him. "I was right, wasn't I."
"Bastard," Ianto breathed. "I won't be able to move tomorrow."
"It's Saturday. You won't have to."
"I'm fairly certain that's not how Torchwood works."
"I'll give you the day off."
"Nice to know I get all the usual perks of shagging the boss." Ianto yawned. Jack lowered himself down, resting a hand on Ianto's stomach, his head on Ianto's chest, careful of the strips of tape protecting the shallow cuts from earlier. Ianto curled a hand in his hair, rubbed the shell of his ear. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yhhg," Jack answered.
"Before -- in the park, you said you'd missed me. You made it sound like I'd been gone for months. It can't have been more than a few days," Ianto observed. "Or should I expect this sort of thing to be an hourly occurrence?"
"That's beyond even me," Jack replied, voice muffled against his skin.
"So what did you mean, then?"
Jack's fingers tightened possessively over his skin. "It's complicated."
"Oh, I'm shocked. Something to do with Torchwood is complicated? Notify the newspapers."
"It's not the story I want to tell tonight," Jack replied. Ianto felt a twinge of shame.
"What story do you want to tell?" he asked. Jack was silent. "Listen, I know this makes me the girl in the relationship, but I think there are some extenuating circumstances here. What the hell are we to each other?"
Jack lifted his head. "What?"
"Well, are we shagging, or dating, or what? Gwen didn't want me asking someone else out on a date, but you don't seem the type to demand exclusivity. Or offer it."
Jack studied his face. "We never put a name to it."
"That's helpful."
"I don't like labels."
"I'd noticed. Do we see other people? Is this a Weevil-hunting thing? Help me out, Jack, I don't know what's going to scare you off or make you angry. I don't need a name, just a few guidelines."
Jack lowered his head again, pressing his face into Ianto's throat.
"Let me tell you more about the Beacons," he said softly. "It might help."
"All right."
"Five weeks after you came back to us -- nothing changed, not really. You were still this...thing, there to provide food and clean up and look nice. Gwen and Tosh at least tried. Owen didn't. You'd think he would, but...Owen was an asshole a lot of the time."
"I got that sense, yes."
"I thought if we could take you out to the field, the team would see you were a person and remember to treat you like one a little more often. And then we got there and those...they were monsters. Things masquerading as human beings. They told you that you weren't a person. They said you were just meat. That wasn't what I wanted for you."
Ianto let his head tip back against the headboard, closing his eyes.
"Gwen wouldn't let me kill them," Jack added. "I wanted to. They'd hurt my people. They didn't deserve mercy. I still think they don't."
"Where are they now?"
"Oh, prison," and a hateful joy filled Jack's voice. "Prison for a very long time. Down in a dark hole, each of them alone. And they don't get meat. Torchwood had a word with the penitentiary. Vegetarian only. It's not summary execution, but it's enough." Jack shifted, mouth brushing Ianto's throat, and for a minute he wondered if Jack would bite. "You read the report. I took you all to A&E in Cardiff. Tosh and Gwen got out first, Owen said he'd take them home. I waited for you. You wanted to go back to the Hub, said something about unloading the SUV."
"I think you should know," Ianto said slowly, "that my work ethic may have suffered when you rebooted me. I'm fairly sure that sounds completely mad."
"You were on a lot of painkillers. You didn't actually notice when I took you home instead." Jack sat up, looked him in the eye. "There was a point in my life when I wouldn't have cared that someone was high and had two cracked ribs if they said they wanted to fuck, but that hasn't been true in a long time. You kissed me, said you wanted to be sure you were alive. I said no."
"I don't know why I fucking go on, Jack. I really don't. In Torchwood. I don't know why I'm still here."
"Because you work, here. Because you want to protect just a little bit more than you want to hide. You must have thought about this. Can't you draw any conclusions?"
"Decent of you."
"Yeah, well. I stayed on your couch."
"I don't think I'd begrudge you that."
"It's pay. And -- it's penance. And then there's you."
"Me?"
"You."
"And I didn't say no the next morning," Jack murmured.
"Oh."
"You needed someone to take care of you. Sometimes I needed that too. That's what we were, just -- we looked after each other. That was all it was. No strings."
"But not anymore?"
"No."
"Then for how long?"
"Until I left. Well, until I came back. That wasn't enough anymore, not for me, and you wouldn't have had me on those terms anyway. You grew up so much -- you had to step up, because Gwen had to step up, because I wasn't there. Then I was there, and neither of us knew our places anymore. I made new places for us."
"And what were those?"
"You didn't look at anyone else. Even while I was gone. You told me that much. You could if you wanted, but I don't think you wanted to. I flirt, that's who I am, but I know how to say no. You were it, Ianto. Gwen -- she and I have something. I don't get it. I need it, but I don't understand it. And I try to be sure that whatever it is -- it doesn't come between us. At work, you do the work, you toe the line, you follow orders, you get hurt if that's what it takes. Work is bigger than us. Outside of Torchwood...I'd kill anyone who hurt you. In a heartbeat."
"Ah," Ianto said. "Well, that clears it up at least."
"That scares you."
"Yeah," Ianto agreed. "Terrifies me actually."
"Why?"
"Well, my last girlfriend, from where I stand, picked a sports car over me."
"What?"
"Dumped me for a bloke with an Audi. No great loss," Ianto shrugged. "She's the last one I remember. I'm not exactly used to the kill-for-you stage of a relationship."
Jack nodded. After a minute, he smiled.
"If it's any help, I already have a really cool car," he said.
Ianto laughed.
"I don't expect you to be where I am," Jack continued. "But you're right, you should know. I want this on any terms I can get it."
"You have it, then."
"Good." Jack tugged him down into the pillows. "And you should sleep, because I was lying about giving you the day off."
Ianto yawned and nodded, closing his eyes. Jack curled an arm around his shoulder, hand resting in the fine hair at the nape of his neck.
"Gwen'll be pleased," Ianto mumbled, and fell asleep to Jack's laughter in his ear.
***
Then
"We have to wipe his memory," Gwen said. "It's the only way."
"Unacceptable," Jack retorted.
"She's right," Ianto said. "It's the only way to get rid of it."
"I'm not going to kill you!"
"Why not?" Ianto asked. "They used to execute murderers all the time. Still do, in America."
"You're not a murderer," Jack snarled.
"It's not killing him, it's only four years," Gwen protested.
"I'm not taking four years of his life, Gwen! I'm not going to take Lisa away from him and -- "
" -- and you don't want me to forget you," Ianto finished for him.
Jack just looked at him. "You'd hate me for it later."
"Not if it was my choice."
***
Now
He woke, for the second time in as many days, to the sound of a mobile ringing.
Before he could even scrabble for his, there was a beep and someone else answered. Ianto rolled over, startled, to see Jack sitting up in the bed, his back broad and naked in the dim light, holding a phone to his ear.
"This had better be pretty goddamned important," Jack was saying. Ianto watched as he stood and walked away from the bed, standing at the curtains of the window where they gapped slightly to let in moonlight. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do," he said, in reply to a question on the other end. "It's called sleeping." He paused. "What?"
Ianto propped himself on one elbow. Jack glanced at him, a faintly worried look on his face. "Yeah, we had one show up last night. Well, ours lit up like a searchlight. I sent you the Royal Observatory data." Beat. "Where did it land?"
There was a long pause. Ianto heard someone faintly say "You still there?" over the phone.
"Did it land in dirt?" Jack asked. "Because I want to know, that's why." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No. No. Listen, just dig it up, okay? I'm not going to make my team drive to London before sunrise. They're exhausted, Colonel. We're at half-strength and one of my people just had a pretty serious injury."
Ianto glanced down at the tape on his chest. Jack shook his head -- oh.
He was talking about the lost time.
"Dig it up. Dust it off. Put it on a truck and ship it to Cardiff if you want, we'll take care of it. If you don't want to ship it to Cardiff we'll come out there but not at three in the morning. Oh, no you don't, don't pull the Official Secrets act bullshit on me. You've got at least two squads stationed in London. I've been more than helpful to you, I've sent you copies of -- do you want me to call up the Brig and have a chat with him? I'm perfectly willing to get him out of bed and tell him you want to talk to him. We're old pals, the Brig and me."
He winked at Ianto.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. So, make up your mind. Oh it did? So you were digging it out. So you called me for no reason." A long pause. "Okay. Keep a heat monitor on it. I'll see you at ten. Have the paperwork waiting."
He hung up the phone and threw it on the bed, scrubbing his hands through his hair.
"Another Egg?" Ianto hazarded. Jack nodded.
"That was UNIT," he said, sitting down again. "About twenty minutes ago an Egg dropped out of the sky in London."
"The sky this time."
"Yeah. It landed in a park near the river. They wanted me to come out and consult, immediately. Said they couldn't send me any information because of Official Secrets. Morons."
"Who's the Brig?"
"Old military buddy. He's retired. He rules UNIT with an iron fist, but only when I ask him nicely." Jack grinned a little. "The upshot is, we leave for London at seven. You can go back to sleep if you want. I need to get some stuff from the Hub."
"I'll come along," Ianto said, sliding stiffly to his feet. Jack's grin widened. "Do we have time to shower?"
"Only if we shower together," Jack said, sliding a hand down his spine.
Ianto rolled his eyes. "Did that line ever work on me before?"
"You invented that line."
"Liar," Ianto said, and Jack grabbed his shoulders and kissed him. And didn't stop kissing him, really, not even when he stumbled under the hot water in the shower and pushed Ianto up against the tiles.
Twenty minutes later, Jack rested his wet forehead against Ianto's while Ianto tried to stay upright in the small shower cubicle.
He said, "Canary Wharf."
"Huh?" Ianto managed, because as post-orgasmic pillow-talk went, it was fairly random. And only a very few of his own brain-cells were firing.
"The Egg. It came down at Canary Wharf. In the memorial park," Jack said, running his fingers through the hair plastered to Ianto's scalp, "for the victims of the Torchwood Tower disaster."
"The Torchwood...oh," Ianto said, as Jack pushed away and actually made use of the water for washing, instead of an excuse to lick Ianto anywhere he felt like it. "I was there."
"Yes, you were."
"But I don't remember, it doesn't matter to me."
"It does to me," Jack said.
"I didn't think the Rift went as far as London."
"It doesn't, but there's a pressure point there. It's what caused -- everything, two years ago." He stepped out of the shower and Ianto moved forward, rinsing away sweat and -- well, and Jack -- scrubbing shampoo through his hair. Jack was drying himself with one of the admittedly really great towels that reassured Ianto of his other self's taste in some things, at least.
Good taste in men too, Ianto decided, eyeing Jack's arse.
"We'll give Gwen until six, then call," Jack said. "Leave by seven, get to London by nine."
"I thought you said ten," Ianto answered, ducking his head under the spray and then turning the water off.
"Yeah. I like to make a dramatic early entrance," Jack passed him the towel. It was weirdly intimate, but Jack wasn't paying attention -- he was back in the bedroom already, digging in Ianto's wardrobe. Pulling on clothing.
"You left clothes in my wardrobe?" Ianto asked, as Jack tossed him a pair of boxers.
"I'm an eternal optimist," Jack replied. "Besides, we're almost the same size. You wouldn't have noticed. When you showed up on our doorstep you were wearing one of my shirts."
"The -- the white t-shirt," Ianto said.
"Yeah."
Ianto reached out slowly and took the shirt Jack was holding from his hand. Jack looked at him. Ianto pulled it on. Plain white t-shirt, perfectly presentable. Jack's eyes were dark and wide.
"Okay to wear when meeting UNIT?" Ianto asked innocently. Jack slowly eased a blue dress shirt over his own shoulders.
"Yeah," he said hoarsely. "Do that."
They loaded the SUV with sensors and supplies and boxes that Ianto didn't know the function of, inbetween Jack begging him for one cup of decent coffee and Ianto making sure the Hub was secure. When they finally reached Gwen's flat at ten past seven, Jack sent him up to get her.
"Aren't you coming?" Ianto asked.
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because she wants to ask you about last night and that's less awkward if I'm not around," Jack said with a grin.
"What do I tell her?"
"Whatever you want. It's not a secret. I don't care if she knows the details. She's seen you naked, by the way."
"What?"
"Okay, half-naked. She walked in on us once."
"And you had to tell me this now?"
Jack shoved him gently. "Go get her. Tell her as much or as little as you want."
Gwen answered the door in a flurry of movement and didn't actually stay in the doorway. Ianto peered through, then stepped inside.
"Five minutes, I'll be five minutes," she said, running into another room and back out with a thick black wallet. "Hi, by the way. Do you see my coat anywhere?"
Ianto glanced around. "No?"
"Bugger."
"There's no rush -- Jack told them we'd be there at ten."
"Oh?"
"He wants to make an early arrival."
"AHA!" Gwen reached under a pile of laundry on the edge of the sofa and tugged. A slightly crumpled coat appeared. "Well, nice of him to tell me that. Did he get you up at dawn too?"
Ianto unfocused for a minute. "Yeah."
Gwen stopped moving.
"Did you...talk last night?" she asked cautiously.
"Erm. Well, a bit." Ianto sketched a vague shape in the air. Gwen squeaked and hugged him. God, what was with the hugging?
"I'm so glad. He's missed you."
"So he said. Repeatedly," he answered, as she darted away again.
"Earrings, earrings, earrings -- okay. Wallet, gun, earrings, coat, shoes. Right!"
"Ready?" he asked, following as she brushed past him out the still-open door, closing it behind them. "H -- Jack said -- "
She laughed. "You're calling him Jack again!"
"He said they'd feed us in London when we got there."
"Brilliant. So," she added, taking his arm as they walked down the hallway. "Weevil-hunting. Did you have...fun?"
He stopped and looked down at her.
"Fun," he repeated.
"Yeah," she said, a wicked look in her eye. "Did you have...fun."
He considered it.
"Three times," he said. "We -- we had fun up against the SUV."
"Oh my god," she burst out laughing.
"Too much information, sorry -- "
"No! I think it's brilliant."
A car horn blew outside. Someone shouted an obscenity back at it.
"That's Jack," she sighed. "Come on. You can tell me about the fun later."
***
Chapter Four
Pairings: Canon. Set post-S2.
Summary: "And I miss it so fucking much," Jack said brokenly. "And I have for so long -- "
Notes: Thanks to
la_rainette, adina_atl, and spiderine for advice on fighting, firearms, italics, titles, eggs, and grammar. All are important! Chapter Three
Ianto overslept without an alarm and, in the end, what woke him was a dinosaur trying to eat him.
Well, all right, not trying to eat him per se, but Myfanwy was standing over him and prodding his belly with her beak, making soft cooing noises that didn't fool him for one second.
"G'wan, you giant chicken," he said, smacking her beak aside gently. She crowed and smacked back, which hurt. "No," he ordered. To his shock, she hopped back a few feet. Then she grabbed a sadly deflated, much-chewed basketball in her mouth and flung it at his head.
God, what had his life come to?
He carried the ball out into the main Hub and tossed it up as hard as he could. Myfanwy took off, screaming joyfully, and whacked it with a huge-taloned foot, rebounding it off the fountain in a shower of water before snatching it in her jaws and carrying it back to her nest. Apparently even dinosaurs liked to play a bit of fetch once in a while. For a limited definition of "fetch" that did not actually include fetching the ball back to him.
He could hear strange beeps and clanks coming from the cells where they'd stashed the egg, but his hair was sticking out every which way and he still smelled like dirt and grease. His back, true to Harkness's prediction, twinged when he walked. This was hardly the way to start the working day. Hot water would help, and he'd seen a long row of shower-heads off the locker room near the morgue.
By the time he'd washed and dressed and given up on finding a razor to shave with, Gwen and Harkness were at the tech desk, studying readouts.
"There he is," Gwen said, beaming. "You scrunch your nose when you sleep."
"You almost let a dinosaur eat me," he replied.
"Aww, where's our chipper morning Ianto?" Harkness asked.
"He died when you woke him at dawn to dig an alien artefact out of the Cardiff suburbs," Ianto replied. "Coffee?"
"Yes, please."
He had to admit that he felt better after a few gulps of liquid caffeine. It still tasted terrible, but it got the job done.
"Change in plans," Harkness said, blowing on his coffee to cool it. "The egg's cycling energy. I need to take some readings and neither of you are qualified to use that technology. It'll be a couple of hours. Gwen'll take you out to the island with Brandon. She can explain it to you on the way. And you'll need these," he added, reaching into his pocket and tossing a small, white carton through the air. Ianto caught it and frowned.
"I don't smoke," he said, holding up the pack of cigarettes.
"Neither do I. You'll know what to do with them when the time comes," Harkness replied. Gwen, Ianto noticed, was looking distinctly unhappy. "Still up for hunting tonight?"
"How could I say no?" he asked, and went to fetch his coat.
Half an hour found him and Gwen leaning on the railings at the quay, waiting for the hospital van and listening to the shouts of sailors as they readied a small ferryboat nearby. Gwen did not look any happier. She looked, in fact, like she was dreading whatever was coming next.
Ianto had done a little research on Flat Holm island, just in case it proved relevant. All he'd really been able to dig up was that it had a lighthouse, and had once been used as a sanatorium for cholera patients. It had gun emplacements that dated back as far as the 19th century, and was privately owned. Apparently, by Torchwood.
"So," he said, nudging Gwen with an elbow. "What's this about an island, then? Harkness said you'd explain."
"There's the hospital van," Gwen replied, pointing to a dark blue car that was pulling into the quay. "Tell you about it on the boat."
Ianto hovered and watched as Gwen helped the driver get Brandon, who looked more lucid but not any healthier, into a wheelchair. She kept up a steady stream of chatter about how much he'd enjoy watching the boats come and go until the driver was gone, and then wheeled him smartly onto the ferry.
Apparently Harkness had already told Brandon what was going on. He sat placidly, hands folded in his lap, and didn't talk at all. Ianto retreated to the bow as they cast off, and waited for Gwen to join him. When she did, she sat down on an empty crate and hunched forward, studying the deck intently.
"Now?" Ianto prompted gently.
"Now," she agreed, sighing. "When Jack took over Torchwood -- no..." she stopped herself. "It starts earlier than that. The Rift doesn't just leave things. Sometimes it takes things, and people. It transports them to other places, maybe other times. Some of them live, some probably don't. We don't know much about it. Jack liked to keep it that way for a while. But sometimes after people go missing...it brings them back."
"Like Brandon."
"Yep."
She was silent for a while. Ianto listened to the scream of gulls and the roar of the engine until she was ready to continue.
"It dumps them back here, damaged or sick or mad, and Jack...takes care of them. Torchwood takes care of them. Used to be that meant shooting them or locking them in the cells. That's what Jack says, anyway. When he took over Torchwood he decided he wanted something more for them."
"When was that?"
"Dunno. Early two thousand, I think. Tosh looked it up once."
"Something more being...a boat ride? An island?"
"Flat Holm island. He uses it as a sort of refuge for them."
"Like a hospital."
"More like a hospice. You don't come back from Flat Holm. The people we take there...they die there. There are nurses to care for them, Jack feeds them some story about failed medical experiments. I doubt they buy it but they're good people, they don't ask too many questions. Not like me," she added bitterly.
"When did you find out about it? You said..." Ianto gestured at the man in the wheelchair, who still hadn't moved. "You said he was your first."
"Oh yes. Well, sort of. First time I've taken anyone to Flat Holm myself."
"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to. I guess I'll see it for myself," he said.
"No, you should know this. I...started looking into all the disappearances. I didn't know about the island. You did, but I don't know when Jack told you. You must have known for a while anyway. Probably so you could help order supplies, or take people there, or something. You tipped me off that the island existed, didn't tell me what was there. I ran over like an idiot and got the wrong idea, thought Jack was...torturing people or something. It was a bloody great cock-up for me from start to end, really."
"I'm sorry, Gwen."
"Not your fault. Even Jack said later that you did the right thing. I don't go over much, I don't like it; when someone had to be taken there or they had to run supplies over it was your job or Jack's."
"Did the others know?"
"Jack told them, after I found out. I think maybe Owen went once, to have a look at the medical side."
Ianto lifted his head into the wind. From here he could already see the island approaching in the distance. Not a long ride.
"I'd say you could stay on the boat, but I don't know what to do once we get there," he said.
"It won't take long. Jack said I should let you have a look around if you liked, but that I didn't have to stay."
"Kind of him."
"I'll never really understand that," Gwen blurted. "He is kind, he cares about people, but he's so hard sometimes too. I couldn't do it, lock them up on an island, even when I know it's right. I couldn't, Ianto."
"Good thing he's the captain then, I suppose," Ianto said absently. "How many are there?"
"Seventeen or eighteen. Most of them don't live all that long, he says. You can tell when one of them dies, he comes back..." she shrugged and straightened. "Hollow-looking. Sits in his office for the afternoon and broods."
"Bet he's good at that."
"World-class."
There was a woman waiting for them at the tiny, rickety dock on the island. She looked happy to see Ianto, gave him a hug and kissed his cheek, shook hands with Gwen (who called her Helen) and greeted Brandon with a warm smile and a reassuring monologue about getting him "settled in" and finding him a nice hot meal. Really all that they had to do was trail along behind her as she pushed his wheelchair over the hard-packed dirt path, to a ramp sunk in the ground and a heavy steel roll-door.
"We've been looking forward to your visit," she said to Ianto, as they entered a long narrow hallway. "They always ask after the Captain but a fair few ask after you as well."
"That's...nice," Ianto said.
His first thought was that it smelled like Providence Park, not as antiseptic as a hospital but with strong overtones of bleach and laundry soap. Underneath, a sort of burnt-metal odour, something he knew intellectually he couldn't really smell but which stood in for the fear and sickness that were intangible and always there. The grim wire cages around the televisions, the round edges of all the furniture, the barred-over glass -- a dingy sort of place, despite the scrupulous cleanliness, trying very hard to be cheerful and failing very badly.
Ah. So that was what Harkness had meant. His reactions wouldn't change, because his sense of the madhouse had been honed to a point long before he came to Torchwood.
He hadn't been anywhere like this since he was thirteen, but he remembered. It made him ache, but it wasn't a bad ache -- there was a certain amount of pride involved. Dad's doing, he supposed. Never be ashamed to be kind to the ill, Dad had told him. Every bloody Sunday after church.
Brandon was shown to a private room, bare and plain, with no mirrors (glass could be broken and used as a weapon) and cages around the light-bulbs. Ianto could see, in other rooms, that posters had been hung, personal effects laid out. In one of them, a young woman with long blonde hair wept and rocked. In the hall, a scrawny man beamed at him and raised a hand in greeting. Ianto, remembering his manners, smiled back and gave him a noncommittal nod.
"I'm going back up," Gwen said, as soon as Brandon was settled in the room. "When you're done, come find me, yeah?"
"Sure."
"Take your time," she added, and gave his arm a squeeze before she left.
"She acts as if you've never been here," Helen said, amused. "As if you're the one who's high strung about it, not her."
"I'm used to it," Ianto replied.
"Come have some tea, then. Prakhar will want to see you."
Prakhar turned out to be a perfectly healthy-looking man in his thirties, with a shock of thick dark hair and a smile that was slightly manic, slightly too wide to be real. He bounded up to Ianto as they walked into the small dining room.
"Ianto Jones, Jones Ianto Jones," Prakhar said. "Hi!"
"Hallo, Prakhar," Ianto said, guessing. The man bobbed his head. "How's life on the island?"
"Brilliant, Jones. Oh yes. Peonies coming up lovely. Dragonflies as big as your fist."
Ianto glanced at Helen, who shrugged and looked sadly at him.
"The acid snow'll take care of them though," Prakhar continued. "Eat away the island until it's the end of the world."
"Well, winter's a good ways off," Ianto answered. Prakhar sidled up close to him.
"Did you bring them?" he asked in a very loud whisper.
"Bring what?" Ianto whispered back.
"You know." Prakhar put two fingers to his lips and inhaled.
Oh, good god.
"Ah," he fumbled. "Yeah. I did. Compliments of Captain Harkness," he added, palming the pack of cigarettes into Prakhar's questing hand.
"You're a gentleman, Ianto Jones. I'll bring you a dragonfly. Good eating on them, you know."
He hurried away, presumably to find a quiet place to smoke -- god knew if they let the man have a lighter -- and Ianto turned back to Helen.
"He knows he's not supposed to send the boy cigarettes," she said. "But...he knows we'll always forgive him."
"Got to have some pleasures in life," Ianto replied. "Erm...is there anyone else I ought to specially see?"
Helen bit her lip. "Nicole. We don't think she'll be with us much longer, and you know how much she likes your vowels."
He smiled as if he understood, and after a cup of tea he found himself sitting in a bright yellow room with an elderly woman in it, reading to her from -- of all things -- an advanced medical journal. Occasionally she'd grunt or make a comment about the text, which he didn't even pretend to understand.
"And now you have to go," she said finally. "Jack will be getting impatient for you."
"I'll be back soon," he said.
"I'll be dead, I'm afraid," she replied.
Ianto set the book on the bed and left the room.
Gwen was sitting on a rock outcrop near the door, watching the waves lick at the beach below. He settled next to her and, on impulse, put his arm around her shoulders. Creepy, considering how little he'd wanted contact before now, but she seemed to need it. She snaked an arm around his waist and rested her head against his shoulder.
"Jack said you wouldn't even be upset," she said.
"I think that's an overstatement," he replied.
"But you're not. Not like I was. Don't you find it horrible?"
He considered it. "Objectively, yes. But they can't help it."
"I want to care about them. It's just so hard to be near them. They're so full of pain and there's nothing to be done. Not even for their families."
He made a wordless noise that could have been agreement or objection, because he didn't know what to tell her.
"I reckon I know why he told me and not you," he said finally. "He must have read up on me."
"What's that got to do with anything?"
"My mum was in Providence Park," he said.
"What?"
"Severely schizophrenic. Profoundly unstable," he said.
"Oh, my god, Ianto -- "
"She had her first psychotic break when I was three. By the time I was five she was a long-term resident. So I know a bit about places like this."
"You'd think it would make you even more upset."
"No, not so much. They could look after her properly there, and Dad didn't have to worry. We visited her on Sundays. She was pretty catatonic. Maybe sedated heavily. I never asked. She died when I was thirteen." He glanced down at her. "Did I never tell you?"
"I doubt you told anyone. But you're right, Jack probably knew. Jack mostly does."
"Wonder why I never told you, though. Seems the kind of thing you'd get out of me sooner or later."
Gwen laughed a little. "Shows what you know."
"Oh yeah?"
"Well, I think...I dunno, but it makes sense a bit. After...I mean...you hadn't anyone or much of anything when you came to Cardiff. Except Lisa, really. And then we took her away from you too. You must have wanted something that was yours, just yours. Jack was as surprised as I was when you said you had perfect recall, so you couldn't have told him either. You wanted a secret or two. I can understand that." She pulled away gently. "There's the boat. We should go."
"Don't tell Captain Harkness," he said suddenly, as she stood. She turned, looking perplexed.
"But if he already knows..."
"Don't tell him I told you. It's in the past, it doesn't matter now. I don't want it...discussed. You talk about me enough already," he said. "Please, Gwen."
"All right," she said. "If you want it that way." And then, lightly, "Lunch when we get back?"
"Yeah, sounds good."
He stood at the rear of the boat the whole way back, watching Flat Holm fade into the distance until it was just a low, thick line on the horizon. He wondered how many more secrets Harkness was keeping from him. And how many he was keeping from Harkness.
***
Then
"I only know them from stories," Jack said, pacing back and forth in front of the cell. It was an unusual place to have a team meeting, but Ianto wouldn't be moved. Gwen and Martha sat on the floor, Gwen leaning up against the other side of the glass from where Ianto sat, Martha across from her. "They say they used to walk like gods. They get inside your head. Mess with your memories, make you believe what they want you to believe."
"God," Gwen said.
"They were just fairy tales for children."
"So were fairies," Gwen pointed out.
"This won't end that way."
"But if it's in Ianto..."
"I can feel him," Ianto said, startling her. She looked through the glass at him. "Now that I know. I can feel him. He digs around. He knows Lisa. He knows about London. He's learning my memories."
"We lost two days once," Gwen said.
"Maybe it wasn't your choice," Martha suggested.
"Maybe I did it to you," Ianto replied.
"You didn't do anything. It did. If we can chase it down..." Jack rubbed his jaw, fell silent.
"If we kill what it feeds on," Martha said. Jack gave her a sharp look. "Memory. Scorched earth. If we track it back as far as it goes, starve it out, it'll at least mean Ianto's free."
***
Now
To his surprise, once they were back on the mainland, Gwen called Jack to let him know they'd returned and then took Ianto back to her flat for lunch.
"Rhys made soup yesterday," she said, taking a large plastic tub out of the fridge and dumping the contents into a pot on the stove. "He always makes loads. I thought, soup and bread."
"Sounds fine," Ianto replied, seating himself at the little bar between the kitchen and living room and trying to look at everything without actually looking like he was looking at everything. "What sort of soup?"
"Spicy vegetable," she replied, glancing at him. He made a face. "You'll like it, promise. Rhys is a good cook. Better than me by a long shot."
She turned on the heat and went about getting down bowls and plates. "You know, I don't think you've ever been to my flat before."
"Can't have had much reason."
"You'd be surprised. Still, Rhys didn't find out what I really did until a few months ago -- about a year now actually. I had a huge row with Jack over that. He wanted me to Retcon him after he'd found out."
"Retcon, that's the little pills, the ones that make you forget."
Gwen looked stricken. "Oh -- sorry -- "
"It's fine," Ianto assured her. "Just making sure I know all the terminology."
"Partners aren't supposed to know what we do, but Rhys can keep his mouth shut. He has done, anyway. He likes to hear about the aliens. And once in a while it's helpful, when we need to haul something large. He can lend out a lorry without too many questions asked."
"Do he and I get on?" Ianto asked.
"I think so. You don't see much of each other, but he asks after you. Especially now, after Owen and Tosh."
"That's good of him." Ianto mulled this over as Gwen stirred the soup. "Harkness was right. Seems like you're our connection to the outside world. Rhys, the Davidson bloke..." he gestured at the pot. "Soup."
"Part of why he hired me," she said. "The woman before me -- "
"Suzie. I read the reports. She became obsessive. Started killing people to give her an opportunity to use the glove."
"Not so much the kind of person you want as your second in command," Gwen said. "And there I was, with this burning belief that we could help people, that we ought to help people, totally naive. But...well, human, and pretty bright. And not unattractive, which is a major consideration for Jack."
"You don't mind what he says, all the time, about sex?"
"Why, do you?"
"No, but I'm not a woman, am I?"
"What's that got to do with it?" she laughed. "He's Jack, Ianto. Sex isn't demeaning or shameful for him. He's not trying to belittle or objectify anyone. He might check out your arse but that doesn't mean he isn't seeing you as a whole person. It's a...culture clash, I suppose. He lives by different rules than the people he lives among."
"He must be very lonely," Ianto murmured. Gwen dipped out a bowl of soup and passed it across the counter to him, smiling.
"Not so lonely as you might think," she said.
***
As Harkness had promised, they spent the afternoon repairing alien technology. Ianto sometimes found himself wanting to laugh about this for no reason he could fathom -- it was just so absurd. Him, with a screwdriver, deep in the bowels of an alien device, trying to pry up a small metal flange so that he could rewire what Harkness called 'the thing that makes it beep'. Not that this wasn't his forte -- he'd done a course in electrics in school, and his mates always made him be the one to set up stereos and videogames and things. He wasn't terribly interested in videogames in their own right, but it was good to have useful skills.
Harkness, working on a different machine across the desk, occasionally walked him through the next step or explained to him the function of each part. Again, he wanted to ask how he knew it all, though at least he was a little closer to the answer now. Harkness hadn't been born on Earth and couldn't die. All that time in Torchwood, regardless of any other experience, ought to make a person quite the expert.
And it was fun, really, working like this, like solving puzzles or playing games. Gwen was nearby, monitoring the Rift and trying to make sense of the readings Harkness had taken while they were out on Flat Holm. Harkness had asked Ianto, on their return, what Ianto thought they should call the thing. Ianto had jokingly replied "The Bacon Beacon" which had elicited a roar of pleased laughter. The name that stuck, however, was The Egg.
He found he wanted to please Harkness. It was hard not to want to. Gwen obviously did. Myfanwy was the only one who seemed impervious to his charms and he was sure, if Harkness really put in the effort, he could charm her too.
"So, what I'm getting from this," Gwen said, coming over to the workbench and holding a stack of printouts, "Is that the Egg wasn't even using all the energy it was pulling up. And how was it getting energy from dirt, exactly?"
"I don't know," Harkness said, leaning back. "It's not something I've seen before, and that's saying a lot."
Ianto triumphantly pulled a wire out, smiled at it, and began stripping the strange, gooey coating off one end.
"But it was definitely carrying a message on that beam," Gwen said. "How high up do you think the light got?"
"Satellites..." Harkness leaned over languidly and tapped a few keys on the computer. "It made it into space. Royal Observatory seems to think it was an instrument glitch on their end. Coded pulses, though. Huh. Communication with light frequency. Maybe whoever invented it communicates using light instead of sound."
"What's it doing now?" Ianto asked, wiping the goo on a rag and twisting the alien wire around a piece of good old-fashioned Earth-made copper wire.
"It's putting out faint pulses of heat energy -- not cold anymore," Harkness said. "I think it's some kind of standby signal."
"Like a light on a laptop when you put it in sleep mode," Gwen said.
"Or a low-power version of the beam," Ianto said.
"Either-or. We should be ready for someone to come looking for it," Harkness replied. "Step up the frequency of satellite reports. I want as much warning as possible. A race that could invent this kind of power-conversion technology is going to be pretty advanced."
Ianto, plugging the copper wire into a socket in the Beeping Thing, shouted and jerked back in surprise as it sparked. It sizzled for a minute, then started to beep.
"Good job," Harkness said, and reached over to pull the wire out using a pair of rubber grips. "You get a gold star, Ianto Jones."
"I'll stick it on my wall next to my kitten posters," Ianto drawled.
"Funny. Come on. Gwen, get the satellites set up and then go home. Ianto and I have a date with a Weevil."
"Hunt well," Gwen gave Harkness a significant look as she bent back to her work. Ianto stood and lifted Harkness's coat from the hook, helping him on with it before he donned his own jacket. Harkness raided a box near the door.
"Weevil spray," he tossed an aerosol can to Ianto. "Got your sidearm?"
Ianto pulled his coat back to show the holster on his belt. Harkness leered a little.
"I'm also happy to see you, sir," Ianto remarked, and Harkness looked shocked for a moment before he laughed.
"I'm obvious but fun," he said. "G'night Gwen!"
"Night Jack, night Ianto," Gwen called.
***
Ianto felt adrenaline seeping into his bloodstream as they drove through the dark Cardiff streets, just like it had the half-dozen times he'd stolen from shops, the dozen-odd times he'd got up to mischief late at night. Less than a month ago, for him; four years ago, for everyone else.
His hand clenched tight on the can of spray, his mind only half-absorbing what Harkness was saying. Spray it in the face, get it calmed down, get a hood over it, plastic ties at wrists and ankles. Spray doesn't always work, or it takes more than usual, but once it's down it'll be down for a few hours. Time enough to do the job right, so don't slack on binding it up. Watch the claws. Definitely watch the teeth. Don't let one get on top of you.
"Captain," Ianto said, over the hum of Harkness's voice.
"What?"
"I see one."
A hunched figure shambling along -- were they made for gravity as heavy as Earth's? -- with its arms dragging low, a ragged jumpsuit concealing the shape of its body. He could almost hear the thing snort and snuffle, like the one Harkness kept in the cells for whatever reason. It was already pretty far from anywhere a car could go, moving deeper into a wooded park with every passing second. Harkness pulled the SUV around and up onto the pavement, only stopping when the trees made it impossible to drive further. He was out of the car before Ianto even had his seatbelt unbuckled.
Chasing it down wasn't hard. It couldn't run very fast. The question was what to do with it once they'd caught up to it, both of them circling like dogs, pulling back whenever it lunged out.
"I'm going to draw it off," Harkness said. "Get behind it. Reach an arm around, empty the can into its face. You only get one shot like that so make it count."
"Yessir," Ianto answered breathlessly. He inched forward as Harkness began taunting the Weevil, stepping up and then back, pulling all its attention.
Which of course was when everything went to hell.
It turned and lashed out at Ianto, who was just barely out of claws-range. He stumbled backwards and fell, then remembered the admonishment not to get trapped underneath one and rolled as fast as he could, losing the spray in the chaos of sharp roots and clumps of weeds. It lunged again and he rolled in the other direction as something stung its way across his chest. When he scrambled to his feet he felt blood welling up and into his shirt, sticking it down.
Harkness was -- he was fistfighting the thing.
Ianto cast a look around and then, unable to find the spray, dove back in, kicking the Weevil's legs out from under it and then giving it a swift boot to the head. It roared, but Harkness was getting a foot on its chest and holding it down as he emptied the spray can up its nose. After a second, it subsided into little twitches and moans.
Ianto inhaled to let out a triumphant shout -- bagged it! -- and felt a hand clamp over his mouth, stopping him. His vision filled with Harkness, one foot still on the Weevil's chest, face inches from his.
"These are a secret, remember?" he hissed. His other hand was on the back of Ianto's neck, holding him in place. They were pressed together, hip and shoulder, and he wanted to warn the captain that it was likely he was getting Ianto's blood on his coat. "You want to tell the whole damn town we're here?"
Ianto shook his head. Harkness eased back, looking down.
"You're hurt," he said.
"S'not much, hardly got me," Ianto replied. "That was brilliant though, wasn't it?"
"Par for the course," Harkness said, brushing aside his enthusiasm. He bent to fit a hood over the unconscious Weevil. Ianto knelt and drew a handful of plastic ties out of his pocket, looping one around its wrist and linking another through it before pulling it tight around the Weevil's other arm. He did it without thinking, then wondered how he'd known how to do that.
"Come on, Harkness, that was pretty great. You went up against that thing like a boxer." Ianto moved to its legs, tied those as well.
"Don't call me Harkness," he said, lifting the body and slinging it over his shoulder. "Come get patched up."
"This shirt'll have to go," Ianto observed, pulling shredded bits of cotton away from his skin. He could see the scratches weren't deep, but there were more than he'd thought. It must have gone for him with both claws. Bit of a blur, really, in the heat of the moment, but a brilliant rush when it was done. Much better than shoplifting.
Harkness dumped the Weevil in the boot of the SUV and took out a first-aid kit before he closed it. Ianto shrugged out of his jacket and pulled the shirt off over his head, leaning against the car. He held out his hand for the kit, but Harkness opened a bottle of disinfectant and poured it onto a pad, blotting it along the lines of the scratches. Ianto hissed.
"You're right, they're not bad," Harkness said. "Won't scar. They hurt?"
"They do now you're pouring that stuff in them."
"Never know what kind of alien bugs you might get. Weevils aren't known for cleaning under their fingernails."
Ianto laughed. He felt almost dizzy, and definitely high. Endorphines, probably.
Harkness finished cleaning him up and then painted something clear and cold over the wounds, sealing them, before covering each scratch with a strip of medical tape. Ianto considered him, head bent to his task, eyes narrowed in concentration.
"So, what do I call you, then?" he asked.
"What?" Harkness said.
"You said don't call you Harkness. What do I call you? Jack? Seems a bit informal. I'm not Gwen."
Harkness straightened and set the kit down on the fender. There was a certain sensation of Ianto's personal space having been invaded, and not for the first time since he'd come to Torchwood. But, on the other hand...also a dim sense that if Harkness had asked, yeah, he would have invited him to step right up.
A warm hand was pressed to his chest, gently. Harkness inhaled, exhaled again. Controlling himself.
And suddenly it clicked into place -- the kid-glove treatment, the refusal to give him all the information at once, the way he touched him, the way when they made contact it held just a trifle too long. The reason he'd woken up in his strange flat with Harkness's coat spread over him. Gwen's reluctance to tell him who he'd been with in the sixteen months since his girlfriend's death, and her insistence that Harkness tell him. The way he instinctively trusted the man without the slightest reason and with several good reasons not to.
"You and I," Ianto said slowly. "We aren't just boss and employee."
"We are now," Harkness said.
"But not always."
"We were more, once."
"What, were we shagging? That's not something I normally do with -- " Ianto began, trying to blow it off, but Harkness pressed lightly and he gasped -- half pain, half surprise.
"You want to know what you call me?" Harkness said, and there was an odd anger in his face. "When we're at work, you call me Sir, unless you forget yourself and call me Jack. Which is what I want you to call me, because you say it like it's some kind of goddamned blessing, something a man your age shouldn't even know how to do. That's what you say when you slip up. That's what you call me when we're alone, in the dark. That's what you call me when you're in my bed. You call me Jack."
Ianto gaped at him, even as their bodies pressed together, even as he felt a reaction rise in him -- lust, yes, unexpected and unusual, but also a deeply possessive urge. Like he wanted to claim any little part of Jack Harkness he could.
"And I miss it so fucking much," Jack said brokenly. "And I have for so long -- "
Ianto arched his back and leaned up and kissed him.
It was like breaking down a dam; Jack surged forward, pinning him, god, not giving him enough space to breathe, let alone move. He could feel hands hitching up his hips, warm palms on his skin, fingers working their way under the waistband of his jeans. Jack wouldn't release his mouth, just kept pushing, brilliant, dangerous, all his tightly-wound control evaporating. Ianto hooked one leg around Jack's thigh, enjoying being on eye-level with him as they kissed --
"Going to have me right against the car in a public park?" he asked, laughing. Jack nipped sharp bites along his throat.
"Would if you'd let me," Jack said, hips thrusting against him. He slid one hand down and got it under Ianto's arse, lifting slightly for better leverage. Ianto moaned.
"Who's stopping you?" he asked, though he was hazy on the mechanics of all this. Anyway if Jack kept licking between his clavicles they could work out the more complicated positions some other time.
"You. Always did," Jack grunted.
"Not stopping you now," Ianto caught his breath in his throat. "God, you're strange."
"You have no idea," Jack's breathing was ragged.
"Show me," Ianto said, and Jack lifted his head and gave him an incandescent, electric-blue stare, his grin wide and filthy. One of his hands slipped down between them, searching and stroking. Ianto tipped his head back, stared up at the hazy stars over Cardiff. Jack's hand was doing amazing things, even through the stiff denim, and once he got his zip down the noises he was making were distilled sex. He could feel Jack's erection as well, slid his thigh over to press against it, and heard Jack cry out, muffled against his skin.
The stars overhead blurred, dizzyingly, as he concentrated on Jack's body against his, Jack's hands and mouth, the frantic thrust of his hips. Ianto felt himself hit the edge, felt that final touch that pushed him over, and whited out for a minute.
He dropped back into his body to discover that he was sticky and breathless and felt like he'd found something he wasn't even aware he'd been missing. Jack was staring at him, breathing heavy as well.
"I take it that's new," Ianto said, trying for casual after the best shag of his young life. And failing miserably.
"Weevil-hunting," Jack managed. "Gets things flowing."
"You're a bit sort of kinky," Ianto observed.
"Hey, this wasn't a solo performance."
"I dunno, I didn't do much more than try and hang on."
"That could be fixed," Jack said, but there was a hesitance in his tone.
Ianto nodded. "Got no problem with that."
That earned him a smile which lit up Jack's face.
"Car," he said, stepping back and regrouping. He offered Ianto a handkerchief, of all things. Ianto cleaned himself up, did up his zip and found his coat, circled to climb into the car.
"One good thing to come out of this," Jack was saying, as he started the engine. "I got two first-times with you."
"I hope last time wasn't up against a car. I mean, variety and all," Ianto said, "but I'd like to think at least once was in a bed or something."
"Quite the possibility," Jack murmured.
"We can dump the Weevil at the Hub -- go back to mine?" Ianto asked. "Or yours, if you want, I'm not fussed."
Jack pulled back onto the street. "I forgot to tell you that."
"What?"
"I live at the Hub."
"What, really?" Ianto asked. Jack nodded as he steered towards the bay. "You don't think maybe the term 'workaholic' might come to mind when people think of you, do you?"
Jack just laughed. "I try not to care too much what people think of me, most of the time."
At the Hub, Ianto slipped away to clean himself up a bit more while Jack was still dealing with the Weevil. He stole a clean scrub shirt out of the stock in the medical bay, pulled it over his head, and wondered if he should go see what he could do to help.
As it turned out, he didn't have to. When he emerged from the medical bay Jack was standing by the door in clean clothes, waiting patiently for him.
Some advantages to living at the Hub, then, Ianto supposed. He'd have to start keeping spare clothes there as well.
They were silent as Jack pulled them back out into the night streets and turned in the direction of his flat. After about five minutes of trying not to think about what he was doing, Ianto caved.
"I've never slept with a man before," he said. Jack glanced at him briefly. "I mean, all right, obviously..." he gestured at Jack. "But I don't remember it, is the point."
"Mm. Given what you've remembered without having to relearn it so far, I wouldn't be so quick to say that," Jack replied. "Muscle memory. Beautiful thing."
"Jesus, how much sex did we have?"
Jack grinned. "A lot. Does that bother you?"
Ianto thought about it. He had only vague sketch outlines of how gay men had sex to start with, and he recalled thinking it couldn't be pleasant, but -- well, obviously he'd enjoyed it. Or he'd been so in Jack's thrall he hadn't cared. And he'd had a good time just now, in the park...
"No," he decided. "Not yet anyway."
"Does anything bother you?" Jack asked. There was a slight edge to his voice.
Ianto shrugged.
When they reached the building, he let them in and led the way up the stairs -- oh god, he was bringing someone home for sex, he was bringing a man home for sex, he was bringing Captain Jack Harkness home for sex. He forestalled these thoughts neatly by pivoting once he was through the door and pushing Jack up against it, kissing him.
"Nice," Jack breathed against his mouth, going with it, one arm around his waist to hold him there. "See? You're remembering already."
Ianto concentrated on trying to shut him up, but apparently Jack Harkness was a talker. He pushed away from the door and walked Ianto backwards, still talking, hands sliding his scrub shirt up and off, reaching for his belt buckle.
"I planned this to be a little less intense," he said, and god, Ianto was hard again already. Jack was too, from the feel of it. This could be a very interesting night.
"Mm?" Ianto encouraged, lowering his head to nose his way along Jack's jaw, get the scent of him.
"I thought I'd buy you a drink, sit with you..." Jack hooked his thumbs in Ianto's waistband again, shoving his jeans down. Ianto staggered a little and laughed. "Explain all this to you calmly."
"That sounds like you," Ianto taunted, untangling himself, getting his shoes and socks off in the process. He reached for Jack's shirt, fumbling with the buttons and the braces. "You wear too many clothes."
"Usually I'm saying that to you," Jack replied, shrugging out of the braces at least. "I was going to say we didn't have to keep on -- "
"Oh, let's," Ianto moaned, finally getting his hands on warm bare skin, pushing Jack's shirt over his head.
" -- and we could go slow if you wanted -- "
"Not interested."
Harkness, belt undone, trousers half-off, stopped them in the bedroom doorway and cupped Ianto's chin, lifting it up so their eyes were level again.
"You said something about a bed," he said gently.
Ianto stepped aside, pulling him into the room.
"Best laid plans," Jack said, stripping off the rest of his clothing. He got his arm around Ianto's waist again and pulled him over, half-falling with him onto the bed. Ianto crawled up him and kissed him, trying to ignore the familiar-unfamiliar sensations -- a flat muscled chest, thick thighs, another man's cock pressing against the hollow of his hip. He bucked a little, listened to a deep moan, smiled.
He did feel like he half-remembered this, which made it easier right up until Jack got a good steady grip and flipped him onto his back, holding him there deftly. And then he kissed his throat and his chest and the edge of a bandage, kissed the sensitive flat of his ribcage. It took Ianto far too long, not until he was biting gently on his stomach, to realise --
He wasn't sure what he'd assumed, in the spare few minutes he might have had to think about this, but it was not that charming, powerful, dominating Captain Harkness would be sucking his cock.
Certainly Jack didn't mess about with pretence, just wet his lips and took him, tongue working against his skin, tighthotwet oh Christ, Jack's hair soft under his hand, Jack's own hands holding him down. Ianto writhed and moaned, tried to keep still when one of Jack's hands left his skin --
There was a strange pressure, a caressing touch and then a push and Ianto yelped and jerked away, scrambling backwards.
Jack, lips damp and swollen, was looking at him from under his brows, cautious.
"Okay?" he asked slowly. Ianto blinked.
"That was, ah -- "
"My finger in your ass, yeah," Jack said. "I was there."
"Sorry, just, fingers in unexpected places." Ianto hesitated. "Do I...like that?"
"Well, you haven't complained before. Not the kind of complaining where it means you actually want me to stop, anyway." Jack moved forward slowly, cupped a hand on Ianto's cheek. "I forgot, okay? I'm sorry. Nothing you don't want, I swear -- I just -- I've missed you."
Ianto kissed him (taste of salt on his lips, taste of his own skin) and trailed fingers helplessly down his body, uncertain.
"Do you trust me, Ianto?" Jack asked softly.
"God knows why," Ianto managed. "Yes, I do, it just...startled me."
"I'm sorry."
"You can't forget, Jack, because I can't remember." Ianto kissed him again. "Okay -- okay -- do we -- how do I...just...please," he said, not even sure what he was asking.
"What do you want?"
"That, I do, it's fine...slowly," Ianto breathed.
Jack, pleasingly, chuckled. "Oh, now he wants to go slow."
"Hey! Surprise fingers!" Ianto retorted. "Your bed manners..."
Jack laughed even more at this and leaned over to kiss his throat, even as one arm stretched out to pull the drawer on the bedside table. Ianto hadn't looked around much in the bedroom. If he'd found the lubricant in the nightstand a lot of things might have come clearer a lot sooner. He watched Jack's bicep flex and relax, fascinated. Jack shut the drawer again.
Their bodies were barely touching, just Jack's forehead pressed to his shoulder and then, raising, Jack's mouth on his. A slick hand trailing up his thigh, touch and pressure again --
"Breathe, it's easy," Jack said into his mouth, and Ianto was trying to formulate a reply when the pressure increased. This was -- he was so exposed, Jack could do anything to him and he'd really only known him three days. But in some dark place in his head he didn't even care.
Jack Harkness, a familiar name, like a word on the tip of his tongue he couldn't quite search out.
And then he realised Jack was smiling at him in approval, with affection.
"Better," he said, in a low voice that made Ianto gasp even as the sense of pressure and fullness increased. Oh god, two fingers, and they were moving, pushing gently inside him.
Part of him wanted it, was embarrassed he'd run from this even momentarily. Slowly he drew one leg up, maneuvering their bodies, making it easier, and earned himself another pleased look from Jack.
And a curl of his fingers oh god what was that how did it sweet Jesus --
Jack looked utterly smug. "And that's why I get no complaints," he said, and did it again. Ianto tried to remember how to breathe.
"What -- are you -- " he panted.
"Anatomy lessons later," Jack replied, kissing him quiet. He took his hand away, moved his body forward. Gripped the headboard with one hand, over Ianto's shoulder, and kissed him again. Apparently kissing was the way he distracted people and Ianto had to admit it worked until an impossible thickness pushed against him, pushed inside him, and Ianto choked down on a second surprised yelp.
"Got you," Jack said urgently, his other hand holding Ianto's hip hard enough to bruise. "It's okay, got you."
Ianto tipped his head back. "Still just holding on," he managed. Jack shifted his weight. Pleasure like fire, with a tang of pain attached, raced straight up his spine.
"You're so...sometimes..." Jack whispered incoherently, interrupted every few words by a hitch of breath or a moan of pleasure as he rocked into him. "Everything. You take everything. Even things I shouldn't, I try not to, you take -- please, Ianto, please."
Ianto could hardly figure out how to move, but he managed to get his arms around Jack's shoulders, pull him closer. Jack had stilled, was waiting for something, and even so neither of them were going to take their time about this. Jack drifted one hand over his stomach, stroked his cock almost as an afterthought, started moving again.
Small, erratic twitches evened out, became solid thrusts, faster and faster until they broke down again and it hurt, there was no denying that, but it was background noise to the sheer pleasure of having Jack. Of seeing the captain come unwound and knowing he'd caused that. Knowing it was for him, that his possessive urge hadn't been misplaced.
"You," Ianto said, as Jack latched teeth hard in his shoulder and came. "You're for me, Jack."
***
It was definitely messy.
Then again, in one way or another, all sex was. And Jack might not have the best bed manners, but he was a gentleman: he let Ianto rest, found a washcloth and wetted it with warm water, smoothed it over his own skin and Ianto's before Ianto pulled him into a kiss again.
"So?" Jack said, grinning down at him. "I was right, wasn't I."
"Bastard," Ianto breathed. "I won't be able to move tomorrow."
"It's Saturday. You won't have to."
"I'm fairly certain that's not how Torchwood works."
"I'll give you the day off."
"Nice to know I get all the usual perks of shagging the boss." Ianto yawned. Jack lowered himself down, resting a hand on Ianto's stomach, his head on Ianto's chest, careful of the strips of tape protecting the shallow cuts from earlier. Ianto curled a hand in his hair, rubbed the shell of his ear. "Can I ask you something?"
"Yhhg," Jack answered.
"Before -- in the park, you said you'd missed me. You made it sound like I'd been gone for months. It can't have been more than a few days," Ianto observed. "Or should I expect this sort of thing to be an hourly occurrence?"
"That's beyond even me," Jack replied, voice muffled against his skin.
"So what did you mean, then?"
Jack's fingers tightened possessively over his skin. "It's complicated."
"Oh, I'm shocked. Something to do with Torchwood is complicated? Notify the newspapers."
"It's not the story I want to tell tonight," Jack replied. Ianto felt a twinge of shame.
"What story do you want to tell?" he asked. Jack was silent. "Listen, I know this makes me the girl in the relationship, but I think there are some extenuating circumstances here. What the hell are we to each other?"
Jack lifted his head. "What?"
"Well, are we shagging, or dating, or what? Gwen didn't want me asking someone else out on a date, but you don't seem the type to demand exclusivity. Or offer it."
Jack studied his face. "We never put a name to it."
"That's helpful."
"I don't like labels."
"I'd noticed. Do we see other people? Is this a Weevil-hunting thing? Help me out, Jack, I don't know what's going to scare you off or make you angry. I don't need a name, just a few guidelines."
Jack lowered his head again, pressing his face into Ianto's throat.
"Let me tell you more about the Beacons," he said softly. "It might help."
"All right."
"Five weeks after you came back to us -- nothing changed, not really. You were still this...thing, there to provide food and clean up and look nice. Gwen and Tosh at least tried. Owen didn't. You'd think he would, but...Owen was an asshole a lot of the time."
"I got that sense, yes."
"I thought if we could take you out to the field, the team would see you were a person and remember to treat you like one a little more often. And then we got there and those...they were monsters. Things masquerading as human beings. They told you that you weren't a person. They said you were just meat. That wasn't what I wanted for you."
Ianto let his head tip back against the headboard, closing his eyes.
"Gwen wouldn't let me kill them," Jack added. "I wanted to. They'd hurt my people. They didn't deserve mercy. I still think they don't."
"Where are they now?"
"Oh, prison," and a hateful joy filled Jack's voice. "Prison for a very long time. Down in a dark hole, each of them alone. And they don't get meat. Torchwood had a word with the penitentiary. Vegetarian only. It's not summary execution, but it's enough." Jack shifted, mouth brushing Ianto's throat, and for a minute he wondered if Jack would bite. "You read the report. I took you all to A&E in Cardiff. Tosh and Gwen got out first, Owen said he'd take them home. I waited for you. You wanted to go back to the Hub, said something about unloading the SUV."
"I think you should know," Ianto said slowly, "that my work ethic may have suffered when you rebooted me. I'm fairly sure that sounds completely mad."
"You were on a lot of painkillers. You didn't actually notice when I took you home instead." Jack sat up, looked him in the eye. "There was a point in my life when I wouldn't have cared that someone was high and had two cracked ribs if they said they wanted to fuck, but that hasn't been true in a long time. You kissed me, said you wanted to be sure you were alive. I said no."
"I don't know why I fucking go on, Jack. I really don't. In Torchwood. I don't know why I'm still here."
"Because you work, here. Because you want to protect just a little bit more than you want to hide. You must have thought about this. Can't you draw any conclusions?"
"Decent of you."
"Yeah, well. I stayed on your couch."
"I don't think I'd begrudge you that."
"It's pay. And -- it's penance. And then there's you."
"Me?"
"You."
"And I didn't say no the next morning," Jack murmured.
"Oh."
"You needed someone to take care of you. Sometimes I needed that too. That's what we were, just -- we looked after each other. That was all it was. No strings."
"But not anymore?"
"No."
"Then for how long?"
"Until I left. Well, until I came back. That wasn't enough anymore, not for me, and you wouldn't have had me on those terms anyway. You grew up so much -- you had to step up, because Gwen had to step up, because I wasn't there. Then I was there, and neither of us knew our places anymore. I made new places for us."
"And what were those?"
"You didn't look at anyone else. Even while I was gone. You told me that much. You could if you wanted, but I don't think you wanted to. I flirt, that's who I am, but I know how to say no. You were it, Ianto. Gwen -- she and I have something. I don't get it. I need it, but I don't understand it. And I try to be sure that whatever it is -- it doesn't come between us. At work, you do the work, you toe the line, you follow orders, you get hurt if that's what it takes. Work is bigger than us. Outside of Torchwood...I'd kill anyone who hurt you. In a heartbeat."
"Ah," Ianto said. "Well, that clears it up at least."
"That scares you."
"Yeah," Ianto agreed. "Terrifies me actually."
"Why?"
"Well, my last girlfriend, from where I stand, picked a sports car over me."
"What?"
"Dumped me for a bloke with an Audi. No great loss," Ianto shrugged. "She's the last one I remember. I'm not exactly used to the kill-for-you stage of a relationship."
Jack nodded. After a minute, he smiled.
"If it's any help, I already have a really cool car," he said.
Ianto laughed.
"I don't expect you to be where I am," Jack continued. "But you're right, you should know. I want this on any terms I can get it."
"You have it, then."
"Good." Jack tugged him down into the pillows. "And you should sleep, because I was lying about giving you the day off."
Ianto yawned and nodded, closing his eyes. Jack curled an arm around his shoulder, hand resting in the fine hair at the nape of his neck.
"Gwen'll be pleased," Ianto mumbled, and fell asleep to Jack's laughter in his ear.
***
Then
"We have to wipe his memory," Gwen said. "It's the only way."
"Unacceptable," Jack retorted.
"She's right," Ianto said. "It's the only way to get rid of it."
"I'm not going to kill you!"
"Why not?" Ianto asked. "They used to execute murderers all the time. Still do, in America."
"You're not a murderer," Jack snarled.
"It's not killing him, it's only four years," Gwen protested.
"I'm not taking four years of his life, Gwen! I'm not going to take Lisa away from him and -- "
" -- and you don't want me to forget you," Ianto finished for him.
Jack just looked at him. "You'd hate me for it later."
"Not if it was my choice."
***
Now
He woke, for the second time in as many days, to the sound of a mobile ringing.
Before he could even scrabble for his, there was a beep and someone else answered. Ianto rolled over, startled, to see Jack sitting up in the bed, his back broad and naked in the dim light, holding a phone to his ear.
"This had better be pretty goddamned important," Jack was saying. Ianto watched as he stood and walked away from the bed, standing at the curtains of the window where they gapped slightly to let in moonlight. "Yes, as a matter of fact, I do," he said, in reply to a question on the other end. "It's called sleeping." He paused. "What?"
Ianto propped himself on one elbow. Jack glanced at him, a faintly worried look on his face. "Yeah, we had one show up last night. Well, ours lit up like a searchlight. I sent you the Royal Observatory data." Beat. "Where did it land?"
There was a long pause. Ianto heard someone faintly say "You still there?" over the phone.
"Did it land in dirt?" Jack asked. "Because I want to know, that's why." He rubbed the bridge of his nose. "No. No. Listen, just dig it up, okay? I'm not going to make my team drive to London before sunrise. They're exhausted, Colonel. We're at half-strength and one of my people just had a pretty serious injury."
Ianto glanced down at the tape on his chest. Jack shook his head -- oh.
He was talking about the lost time.
"Dig it up. Dust it off. Put it on a truck and ship it to Cardiff if you want, we'll take care of it. If you don't want to ship it to Cardiff we'll come out there but not at three in the morning. Oh, no you don't, don't pull the Official Secrets act bullshit on me. You've got at least two squads stationed in London. I've been more than helpful to you, I've sent you copies of -- do you want me to call up the Brig and have a chat with him? I'm perfectly willing to get him out of bed and tell him you want to talk to him. We're old pals, the Brig and me."
He winked at Ianto.
"Yeah, that's what I thought. So, make up your mind. Oh it did? So you were digging it out. So you called me for no reason." A long pause. "Okay. Keep a heat monitor on it. I'll see you at ten. Have the paperwork waiting."
He hung up the phone and threw it on the bed, scrubbing his hands through his hair.
"Another Egg?" Ianto hazarded. Jack nodded.
"That was UNIT," he said, sitting down again. "About twenty minutes ago an Egg dropped out of the sky in London."
"The sky this time."
"Yeah. It landed in a park near the river. They wanted me to come out and consult, immediately. Said they couldn't send me any information because of Official Secrets. Morons."
"Who's the Brig?"
"Old military buddy. He's retired. He rules UNIT with an iron fist, but only when I ask him nicely." Jack grinned a little. "The upshot is, we leave for London at seven. You can go back to sleep if you want. I need to get some stuff from the Hub."
"I'll come along," Ianto said, sliding stiffly to his feet. Jack's grin widened. "Do we have time to shower?"
"Only if we shower together," Jack said, sliding a hand down his spine.
Ianto rolled his eyes. "Did that line ever work on me before?"
"You invented that line."
"Liar," Ianto said, and Jack grabbed his shoulders and kissed him. And didn't stop kissing him, really, not even when he stumbled under the hot water in the shower and pushed Ianto up against the tiles.
Twenty minutes later, Jack rested his wet forehead against Ianto's while Ianto tried to stay upright in the small shower cubicle.
He said, "Canary Wharf."
"Huh?" Ianto managed, because as post-orgasmic pillow-talk went, it was fairly random. And only a very few of his own brain-cells were firing.
"The Egg. It came down at Canary Wharf. In the memorial park," Jack said, running his fingers through the hair plastered to Ianto's scalp, "for the victims of the Torchwood Tower disaster."
"The Torchwood...oh," Ianto said, as Jack pushed away and actually made use of the water for washing, instead of an excuse to lick Ianto anywhere he felt like it. "I was there."
"Yes, you were."
"But I don't remember, it doesn't matter to me."
"It does to me," Jack said.
"I didn't think the Rift went as far as London."
"It doesn't, but there's a pressure point there. It's what caused -- everything, two years ago." He stepped out of the shower and Ianto moved forward, rinsing away sweat and -- well, and Jack -- scrubbing shampoo through his hair. Jack was drying himself with one of the admittedly really great towels that reassured Ianto of his other self's taste in some things, at least.
Good taste in men too, Ianto decided, eyeing Jack's arse.
"We'll give Gwen until six, then call," Jack said. "Leave by seven, get to London by nine."
"I thought you said ten," Ianto answered, ducking his head under the spray and then turning the water off.
"Yeah. I like to make a dramatic early entrance," Jack passed him the towel. It was weirdly intimate, but Jack wasn't paying attention -- he was back in the bedroom already, digging in Ianto's wardrobe. Pulling on clothing.
"You left clothes in my wardrobe?" Ianto asked, as Jack tossed him a pair of boxers.
"I'm an eternal optimist," Jack replied. "Besides, we're almost the same size. You wouldn't have noticed. When you showed up on our doorstep you were wearing one of my shirts."
"The -- the white t-shirt," Ianto said.
"Yeah."
Ianto reached out slowly and took the shirt Jack was holding from his hand. Jack looked at him. Ianto pulled it on. Plain white t-shirt, perfectly presentable. Jack's eyes were dark and wide.
"Okay to wear when meeting UNIT?" Ianto asked innocently. Jack slowly eased a blue dress shirt over his own shoulders.
"Yeah," he said hoarsely. "Do that."
They loaded the SUV with sensors and supplies and boxes that Ianto didn't know the function of, inbetween Jack begging him for one cup of decent coffee and Ianto making sure the Hub was secure. When they finally reached Gwen's flat at ten past seven, Jack sent him up to get her.
"Aren't you coming?" Ianto asked.
"Nope."
"Why not?"
"Because she wants to ask you about last night and that's less awkward if I'm not around," Jack said with a grin.
"What do I tell her?"
"Whatever you want. It's not a secret. I don't care if she knows the details. She's seen you naked, by the way."
"What?"
"Okay, half-naked. She walked in on us once."
"And you had to tell me this now?"
Jack shoved him gently. "Go get her. Tell her as much or as little as you want."
Gwen answered the door in a flurry of movement and didn't actually stay in the doorway. Ianto peered through, then stepped inside.
"Five minutes, I'll be five minutes," she said, running into another room and back out with a thick black wallet. "Hi, by the way. Do you see my coat anywhere?"
Ianto glanced around. "No?"
"Bugger."
"There's no rush -- Jack told them we'd be there at ten."
"Oh?"
"He wants to make an early arrival."
"AHA!" Gwen reached under a pile of laundry on the edge of the sofa and tugged. A slightly crumpled coat appeared. "Well, nice of him to tell me that. Did he get you up at dawn too?"
Ianto unfocused for a minute. "Yeah."
Gwen stopped moving.
"Did you...talk last night?" she asked cautiously.
"Erm. Well, a bit." Ianto sketched a vague shape in the air. Gwen squeaked and hugged him. God, what was with the hugging?
"I'm so glad. He's missed you."
"So he said. Repeatedly," he answered, as she darted away again.
"Earrings, earrings, earrings -- okay. Wallet, gun, earrings, coat, shoes. Right!"
"Ready?" he asked, following as she brushed past him out the still-open door, closing it behind them. "H -- Jack said -- "
She laughed. "You're calling him Jack again!"
"He said they'd feed us in London when we got there."
"Brilliant. So," she added, taking his arm as they walked down the hallway. "Weevil-hunting. Did you have...fun?"
He stopped and looked down at her.
"Fun," he repeated.
"Yeah," she said, a wicked look in her eye. "Did you have...fun."
He considered it.
"Three times," he said. "We -- we had fun up against the SUV."
"Oh my god," she burst out laughing.
"Too much information, sorry -- "
"No! I think it's brilliant."
A car horn blew outside. Someone shouted an obscenity back at it.
"That's Jack," she sighed. "Come on. You can tell me about the fun later."
***
Chapter Four
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