Fic: And The Weather Will Hold
Title: And The Weather Will Hold
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Spoilers/Warnings: spoilers through Exit Wounds; some language
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4,500
Summary: A post-Exit Wounds weevil hunting expedition gone wrong, an admirable but slightly misguided clean-up effort by Ianto and later, a realization.
Notes: I'm horrible at summaries, but this is sort of a commentary on the state of Ianto and Torchwood after Exit Wounds, I think. It starts off a bit dark, but gets better. ;) And the title is from a song called The Gymnast, High Above the Ground, by the Decemberists, which I LOVE, and which sort of inspired the fic, though I'm not sure I could really tell you why anymore. >_>
Through the tarlatan holes
You've been slipping, been slipping away
And the weather will hold
It's been ever so, ever so grey
**
Ianto looks up at the darkening sky, a silent plea on his lips for the rain to hold off.
Not forever -- he’s reasonable, after all -- but just until he can clean all of this up. That’s all he asks.
He’d done the math, once. Roughly four kilos, give or take -- that’s what the water adds to the weight of a weevil’s body. And this would be the tipping point for him, today, he's sure of it, so he releases his plea again to the universe, to the clouds, to the weather system brewing up there in the early morning sky.
He tells it to wait -- an hour, two at the most -- and so far, it has listened.
Ianto stares forward, swallows. Then he puts one foot in front of the other. He needs to find the path again, through the small wooded area, to the place where the weevils had led them.
There’s a scream that wants to escape from his throat, but he ignores it. He ignores the urge to kick something, too -- the tires of the SUV, the trunks and roots of the looming trees, anything to release this frustration, this anger. Because really, it was anger now.
That the rift couldn’t stay quiet long enough for any of them to catch their breath, ever, that there had been so many weevils this morning, that Jack was like this, again.
That Jack had bled out on the ground there between those two huge ash trees, and that there had been nothing for Ianto to do except watch.
He’s so angry his hands are shaking, but his face barely twitches. He has a job to do.
He should have stunned them, he thinks as he wraps his arms around the neck of the second weevil, trying to find the best position, the best hold. This was the one that'd finally gotten Jack; Ianto recognizes her, though he has no idea how, because looking at her now, her features are identical to all the others.
He tightens his grip around her broad chest, walking backwards, because he doesn’t have the strength in his arms anymore to lift this one over his back like he had the last one. He tilts his head over his shoulder, trying to stay alert just in case there are more. Large, bare weevil feet drag across the grass, thumping over tree roots and broken limbs.
Jack always said that it was easier to transport them alive. They always had plenty of cell space, too, so why not? Morality never even entered into the equation. Ianto had been appalled at first, but it’s not part of his equation now either. He understands.
The process is slow going. He keeps tripping over branches; he feels clumsy, his legs like lead with all this weight in front of him at such an awkward angle.
Eventually, they make it. Ianto swears under his breath as his shoulder catches the sharp edge of the back door before he hefts the weevil into the back of the SUV. He glances for a brief moment at the passenger window, and then averts his eyes quickly. He’s done this enough times; he knows that he doesn't really have time to think about Jack right now.
Jack’s body, he corrects. Because if he knows anything about anything, he knows that when Jack stops breathing, that thing called Jack’s body is just a body. Just flesh and bone and blood, not Jack.
The sky keeps darkening. The wind is picking up around him too, rustling the branches of the trees over his head. Fucking spring, Ianto thinks, as he wraps his arms around Number Three’s torso, and prepares for the long haul.
They’re halfway to the SUV when he stumbles, losing his grip a little. He lets the weevil fall against his legs, and wipes the blood covering his hands over his jacket without a second thought, deep streaks of crimson slashed across what yesterday had been a really nice, Gieves & Hawkes ensemble, bought on his last trip to London.
It’s ruined. His blood, Jack's, the weevil's. He can’t tell the difference anymore. Not that it matters in the least when it’s splattered all over his clothes like this.
The stains will never come out, he thinks, staring down at his trousers. There’s a three-inch horizontal tear across his right thigh. It’s ridiculous. He's running out of suits and has no idea when he’ll ever find the time to shop for anything new now. Not when they're down two team members, including their bloody medic, and their technician, both of whom, really, were worth a hell of a lot more than he was, and yet somehow, he's still here.
Jack keeps saying he's recruiting, but he's not. Ianto knows he's not, because he knows everything that Jack does, practically every second of every day, and he knows that Jack's not recruiting.
Ianto realizes with a start that he's stopped moving. That he's slumped against a tree, breathing heavily, and that the weight of the weevil in his arms is pressing his back into a thick knot that’s poking uncomfortably into his spine. He curses under his breath in Welsh, and propels himself forward. He knows he can't rest here. There could be more of them, who knew what the hell was going on with these packs anymore, and he's in no condition to fight anything else off alone.
He has to keep moving.
He should have stunned them.
Then he wouldn't be here, dragging all this dead weight into the SUV -- even stunned and tranquilized, they’d still be able to help him out a little. He wouldn't have to explain to Jack later why he'd done this, either, why he'd just kind of snapped, after he'd looked back, and realized that no, Jack's ankle was worse than he’d admitted; it was slowing him down, and there really wasn’t anything Ianto could do to help him now, because she was already on top of him, already tearing into Jack’s flesh like he was a piece of meat.
And really, if there was one thing, just one thing that Ianto could choose to never, ever witness again, he thinks it might be this.
He smiles a little, at the ridiculousness of that thought as he starts forward again with Number Three, ignoring the pull of his muscles, ignoring the throbbing behind his temples, the pain in his lower back, ignoring all of it. It’s kind of funny, really, in an ironic sort of way that Jack has managed to get taken down so many times by something as simple as a bloody weevil.
He laughs, but the sound is weird, and wrong, and he shivers for a second, as if realizing for the first time that he's alone out here in the middle of nowhere, and that he has no idea how many more of them there could be, or what he would do if he was attacked. He’d be dead, like Jack, he figures. Wouldn’t that make for a surprise, when their captain finally joined them again.
But right now, he reminds himself, he just has to make it to the SUV. Jack would never even think about just leaving the bodies out here. It was risky. Sloppy.
He throws Number Three on top of Number Two, and Number Two's head lolls sickeningly, swiveling on its axis. A trickle of blood runs from the bullet hole in its head, onto the floor of the SUV. He hadn't taken the time to line the floor with plastic, something Jack always insisted on. It would take forever to clean like this. He wouldn't have time. His eyes cloud over, just for a second at the thought of the impossible mess he was making. And there were still three more.
**
It feels like it takes him forever to get the last of them in, but when Ianto finally sinks into the driver's seat, Jack still isn't breathing. Ianto closes his eyes, and feels the shadow of sleep hovering right there in the darkness, so close, tempting him. He knows that they have to get back to the hub though. There could be more where these came from. They could swarm the van. It could get messy. He could use Jack's Webley as back-up, but even then, he might run out of bullets. He has to drive.
And then he’s driving, and he glances over at Jack, and for a second, all he can see is blood--Jack’s blood, everywhere, all over the leather seats, everywhere. He wonders if he should have thrown Jack’s body back there with the weevils -- Jack had actually instructed him to do this, after the last time, in his stern, no-nonsense, I’m-in-charge voice, but... It was just blood, after all. Just Jack’s blood, pooling into every single crack and crevice of the SUV, where Ianto knows he’ll never be able to get it out.
He’d hire a professional cleaning service, maybe. If Jack would let him.
It feels like Jack has been dead a long time, and the realization makes Ianto’s stomach twist into knots as he speeds along the A470.
The silence in the SUV is deafening. There’s no noise from the weevils, of course, because he'd killed them, all of them. Six quick, efficient shots to the head, no wasted movement. And so of course there’s no noise from the back of the SUV. Because everyone else in the SUV, other than Ianto is dead.
It’s so fucking quiet; Ianto thinks he can hear his blood pumping through his veins.
The weather has held so far, but it's looking more and more like rain every second, and Ianto almost wishes it would, now -- the rain would be a distraction, would keep him focused.
Ianto hasn’t seen a single soul on the road since he started driving. It’s early, he supposes. They’d taken the call at what, 3AM, and it was just gone seven now. He wonders if it’s Saturday.
Ianto hazards a brief glance at Jack again, wondering what on earth is taking him so long, and immediately regrets it as his stomach lurches into his throat. He’s never really had a particular problem with blood before, but right now...
He screeches the SUV to a halt over on the road’s wide shoulder, just before they reach the other side of an overpass, gravel grinding under the tires.
When they stop moving, the unnatural silence creeps back in, out of hiding. Ianto closes his eyes, just breathing, and then opens the driver's side door, just in case. He bends over at the waist and heaves, but nothing comes out.
He straightens, running a hand through his hair.
Then he looks at Jack again. Really looks at him. At the bloody gouge in his throat. At the unnatural tilt of his head. At the blood seeping into the fabric of the seat belt where it’s resting close against Jack’s neck.
He wants to scream, can feel it rising up inside of him again, but instead he just pounds his fists on the steering wheel once, hard, so hard that it jerks the car. Then he does it again, for good measure. His heart is pounding. He leans his head back against the headrest.
Then he feels it. That strange stillness in the air before Jack is about to come back... The air is still, but charged, somehow, with an energy that Ianto can’t put his finger on, but he recognizes it--it’s the same every time.
And then Jack does come back, and it's the most fucking glorious thing Ianto's ever seen, and Jack is blinking at him, and reaching for his hand, and when he feels those fingers moving against his skin, seeking out contact, he lets out a long breath in relief. His heart steadies, but his eyes cloud over anyway, so he closes them.
"Ianto," Jack says finally, and then clears his throat. "Is everything okay? Why are we stopped?"
Ianto opens his eyes, blinks. It feels like forever since he's heard Jack's voice. It’s beautiful, even like this, even with that tiny hint of uncertainty that his first words always seem to have, after.
"Ianto?"
"Sorry," he says, and he lets go of Jack's hand, reaching for the keys in the ignition. "We should go."
"Wait," Jack says, urgently, his voice gaining strength. Wounds healing. "Just wait a second."
"Yeah, okay, I'll just--" And his hand is still on the keys in the ignition, as he stares at Jack.
"Ianto, stop," Jack says, softly. "Give me the keys."
Ianto hands them over, but then realizes he doesn't have any idea why Jack asked for them, because clearly, he’s supposed to be driving on this mission. They take turns now, and it was his turn. Jack had driven last time.
"What happened?" Jack is saying, and he's facing Ianto now, has his hand on Ianto's shoulder, studying him. Jack’s looking at him like he’s about to crack into a million pieces, and Ianto realizes that there must be some reason for that, and so he tries to arrange his features into something less brittle, less weak, less himself.
"No," Jack says calmly, his hand at the base of Ianto's neck, now, holding him in place and looking him straight in the eye. "Don't do that. Talk to me."
"Sorry," Ianto says automatically. He takes a breath. Right. Jack needed a report. Of course he did.
"There were six of them,” he starts, “but we only saw three at first, and they surrounded us too quickly. You twisted your ankle. I swear I heard it snap, but you told me-- You swore at me, and told me to go ahead, and I did, because I thought it would heal before anything happened. But it didn't, and I came back and you were already--"
"Ianto," Jack says, leaning over the console, and pressing his forehead to Ianto's for a moment. Their noses brush together. “It’s okay,” Jack says, and something inside of Ianto twists because he knows that it’s really not.
It’s out of control, and it’s threadbare, and it’s not okay at all.
Jack’s breath is warm though, and that’s kind of nice. Ianto closes his eyes. Breathes.
Then Jack sinks back into the passenger seat and his expression changes, hardens a little. It’s Jack, taking charge, Jack assessing the situation. Ianto wonders what he’ll find.
"Then what happened?"
"I shot them. All of them. I had the tranquilizer, and the spray, but the bigger one, the female, already had hold of you, and the rest of them were closing in. I didn’t know what else to do. Sir," he adds as an afterthought, and Jack smiles a little.
It’s a comforting smile, and it’s completely false. Ianto smiles back.
"Where are the bodies?"
"In the back."
“All of them?”
“Of course.”
Jack pauses, furrows his brow. "You dragged them all in here yourself? We must have been more than 500 meters from the SUV when I got taken down."
Ianto doesn't say anything. After a moment he hears Jack sigh, and then curse under his breath. When he looks over at him again, Jack looks almost apologetic, and Ianto has no idea why.
"You must be exhausted," Jack says, and he reaches a hand over to Ianto's shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze. "Good work."
Ianto squeezes his eyes shut tight. He can feel his cheeks warming.
When he opens his eyes again, Jack has gotten out, has circled in front of the SUV, and is opening the driver’s side door, looking down at him. His shirt is covered in blood, but his throat has healed. It’s all Ianto can do to stop himself from reaching out and touching the mark as it fades from Jack’s skin.
Jack's holding his hand out, and Ianto accepts it without thinking.
"I'll drive back," Jack says, and he wraps his arm around Ianto's shoulders as he steps down and out of the car.
"I'm sorry," Ianto says, "I should have--"
"Shh," Jack is saying into his ear, and suddenly Ianto is pulled into a tight hug. Everything hurts, his muscles, his back, his neck, but he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t make a sound, just lets Jack wrap his arms around his back and pull him close.
"I forget, sometimes," Jack says. "I'm sorry."
Ianto doesn't know what to say to that, so he just clings to Jack, breathing him in, marveling at the solid weight of his body, and how different it feels from the last time he’d wrapped his arms around Jack’s torso, when he was all dead weight and blood.
“Forget what?” Ianto asks finally, his face buried in Jack’s neck. He presses his lips to the skin there, and tastes sweat and the bitter metallic tang of blood. Ianto thinks it’s the most amazing thing in the world right now, so he presses his lips there again, feeling Jack’s pulse moving under his lips, his tongue.
“This,” Jack says. “I forget to do this.”
**
They drive back to the hub in silence. When they get there, Ianto immediately goes round to the back of the SUV, but Jack stops him, wraps his fingers around Ianto’s elbow, and steers him away from the blood and the bodies. Jack assures him that it can wait, and even though Ianto knows that this isn’t true, that by tomorrow, the smell will be so bad that there won’t be anything he can do to remove it, he just nods at Jack, and follows him into the hub.
They head down to the shower in Jack's quarters, and Jack helps him out of his suit, one leg at a time. Where the fabric is sticking to Ianto’s skin, he pulls it off carefully.
Ianto showers alone, and when he comes out, Jack is waiting for him with a towel, and a glass of scotch, and some of Owen’s painkillers, the ones that he used to keep behind lock and key. Jack’s changed his shirt, and removed his braces, and it’s like the whole night/morning never even happened.
They sit there, shoulder to shoulder on Jack's tiny bed, and drink their scotch together, and Jack believes Ianto when he says he doesn’t need stitches. He doesn’t insist on taking him to get checked out by county. They talk a little about Owen, about how impossible it will be to find his replacement, and when Ianto’s head starts to get fuzzy and he lies down, Jack doesn’t just tuck the covers around him like usual, he lies down next to him, and wraps his arms around Ianto’s chest, so close that Ianto can feel his every breath. He falls asleep like this, surrounded by Jack’s warmth.
When he wakes up, Jack is gone, and he’s sure it’s only been a few hours, but he feels well-rested, and not as sore as he probably should be. He figures he can thank Owen for that, and he does for a moment, silently.
Then he gets dressed -- Jack has laid out his spare suit. He has no idea what’s become of the old one; there’s not a trace of it anywhere. His shoes have been shined. He climbs the ladder up into the hub, and realizes by the smell that Jack has made coffee.
It’s pretty damn good, too, but not as good as his, of course, Ianto thinks, as he leans against the doorway to Jack’s office, and asks him what they’re going to do about the SUV, and the bodies.
Jack just shakes his head. “Already taken care of.”
Ianto raises an eyebrow. “That’s not possible.”
“Take a look for yourself.”
And so Ianto does, and he can’t believe it, but the SUV is spotless. There’s not a trace of blood anywhere. The bodies have vanished.
It shouldn’t be possible, but it’s Jack, and sometimes he has his ways, so Ianto lets it go, doesn’t probe.
Three hours later -- well past lunch time, though who was really keeping track anymore -- Gwen arrives in a flurry of apologies, with a rushed story about Rhys and how something or other had gone missing, and she’d had to make it right.
Two hours after that, an alert comes in that multiple weevils have been spotted outside the city, not too far from where he and Jack had ended up the previous day.
Ianto starts to grab Jack’s coat from behind his office door.
"No," Jack says, and doesn't move from his chair. “We’re sitting this one out. It’s far enough from the city. We can get away without responding.”
"But sir," he says. Jack frowns at the ‘sir’, but Ianto can’t help it. He fucked up, yesterday, so much, and somehow, that tiny little word provides him the distance that he needs. From Jack, from his judgment, which Ianto will accept at some point soon, just not right this second.
“They’re not just going to go away,” Ianto continues. “If we leave them there today, we’ll only have to--”
"New policy,” Jack says fixing Ianto with a stern look. “We're only three people. We can't fix everything."
And then Jack turns his attention back to the papers on his desk, and the conversation is over.
**
Two days later, Ianto is straightening up the brochures in the lobby of the tourist office, when the door opens.
It’s a delivery with his name on it, but he’s confused, because he didn’t order anything, certainly not anything from Savile Row, in London. And so he’s standing there, politely informing the delivery person that there must be some mistake, and could he please check his records again, when Jack appears from downstairs.
“Aren’t you going to sign for it,” Jack says, nodding toward the package.
“Well, I would, except that I generally like to know the contents of things addressed to me before I accept them,” he says, frowning. “There’s a policy on that, you know.”
“Now I know why Tosh always said you were impossible to shop for,” Jack says with a smirk.
The delivery person is still standing in front of them, looking impatient, and so Ianto signs his name quickly, his face flushing a little.
After the man in uniform leaves, Ianto sets the box on the table, and looks to Jack.
“Sorry,” he says a little sheepishly. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know,” Jack says. “It’s called a surprise.”
Ianto bites his lip a little to stop the smile from spreading across his face, as Jack wraps an arm around his waist, staring over his shoulder at the package.
“Open it,” Jack instructs, and Ianto nods, grabbing his keys from behind the desk.
His breath catches in his throat when he sees what’s inside.
His chest tightens a little too, when he thinks of Jack, disposing of his clothes after that nightmare earlier in the week, and then Jack, suddenly appearing at his flat the next evening, poking his head around in his closet. He’d said he was curious. They had a semi-formal UNIT function coming up, and Jack thought maybe he could borrow something. Which of course didn’t make any sense, now that he thought about it? It had been suspicious. Of course it had been. Almost as suspicious as Jack’s magical super-cleaning of the SUV had been.
He feels a pang of guilt, thinking of all those weevils. He’d been so out of sorts that day, exhausted, and not thinking clearly, and really Jack should have been furious with him for the risks he’d taken. For driving the SUV in that state, for not using the spray when he could have, for all of it. He’d fucked up, and Jack had just let it go, he hadn’t said a word, and Ianto wished he could understand why.
“Jack, I can’t--”
“You’ve been going through them pretty quickly these days,” Jack interrupts, “so I just thought you could use a few more options.”
Ianto moves aside the layer of tissue paper from the top of the box, and rubs the soft fabric of a pair of trousers between his fingers. Methodically, he pulls each article of the box, smoothing the jackets and ties into neat piles on the desk. His fingers linger on the button of a waistcoat, black and shiny.
The three suits in the box are nearly identical to the ones he’s ruined over the past month or so, to the letter, really.
“I had a few alterations made based on what I knew from the tailor at Gieves but you might have to--”
“They’re perfect,” Ianto says, turning to face Jack. “Really perfect,” he says softly. “Even if I don’t deserve them.”
Then he turns away again, because his face, his eyes are betraying him right now. Jack just grabs him by the waist though, pulling him back against him. He wraps his arms around Ianto’s chest from behind. Ianto finds himself closing his eyes, as his hands wrap around Jack’s knuckles, squeezing tightly.
“Three,” Ianto says after a moment, leaning his head back against Jack’s shoulder. “Four ties. Five dress shirts. In one month.”
Jack chuckles a little, and places a kiss against Ianto’s ear. “I know,” he says. “I’ve been counting, too.”
Jack’s fingers come to rest on the bump on Ianto’s head, just above his left temple. It’s still turning colors, spreading out from under the bandage -- he looks a bit like he’s been in a nasty bar fight and lost.
“You’re sure you don’t need stitches?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Where's Owen when you need him,” Jack says, sadly. “But actually, I’ve been on the phone with UNIT all morning. They’ve got some interesting candidates, physicians, that I was able to persuade them to share with me.”
Jack just grins at the shocked look on Ianto’s face. Then he plants a firm kiss on Ianto’s lips, one that lingers a little longer than strictly necessary. Ianto’s not quite sure whose fault that is, but he thinks it might be his.
“Want me to fill you in on the details over lunch?” Jack asks, hopefully. “Say, at that little Italian place down by the water, my treat?”
And Jack looks so happy, so pleased with himself, and for the first time in a long time, Ianto finds himself thinking that maybe this isn’t the beginning of the end, after all. That they just might pull through this.
While Jack goes off to grab his coat from his office, Ianto moves the opened box behind the desk. He straightens a silk tie, the fabric soft and textured, under his fingers. Then he drapes it over the back of the chair behind the desk, and thinks of the weather.
He opens the door to the tourist office for a moment, flipping the sign over so that it reads back in a few moments (a gross understatement, if ever there was one) and while he's there, he looks up at the sky.
The forecast this morning had called for rain, again, but…
He decides against an umbrella anyway, just this once.
***
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Spoilers/Warnings: spoilers through Exit Wounds; some language
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: ~4,500
Summary: A post-Exit Wounds weevil hunting expedition gone wrong, an admirable but slightly misguided clean-up effort by Ianto and later, a realization.
Notes: I'm horrible at summaries, but this is sort of a commentary on the state of Ianto and Torchwood after Exit Wounds, I think. It starts off a bit dark, but gets better. ;) And the title is from a song called The Gymnast, High Above the Ground, by the Decemberists, which I LOVE, and which sort of inspired the fic, though I'm not sure I could really tell you why anymore. >_>
Through the tarlatan holes
You've been slipping, been slipping away
And the weather will hold
It's been ever so, ever so grey
**
Ianto looks up at the darkening sky, a silent plea on his lips for the rain to hold off.
Not forever -- he’s reasonable, after all -- but just until he can clean all of this up. That’s all he asks.
He’d done the math, once. Roughly four kilos, give or take -- that’s what the water adds to the weight of a weevil’s body. And this would be the tipping point for him, today, he's sure of it, so he releases his plea again to the universe, to the clouds, to the weather system brewing up there in the early morning sky.
He tells it to wait -- an hour, two at the most -- and so far, it has listened.
Ianto stares forward, swallows. Then he puts one foot in front of the other. He needs to find the path again, through the small wooded area, to the place where the weevils had led them.
There’s a scream that wants to escape from his throat, but he ignores it. He ignores the urge to kick something, too -- the tires of the SUV, the trunks and roots of the looming trees, anything to release this frustration, this anger. Because really, it was anger now.
That the rift couldn’t stay quiet long enough for any of them to catch their breath, ever, that there had been so many weevils this morning, that Jack was like this, again.
That Jack had bled out on the ground there between those two huge ash trees, and that there had been nothing for Ianto to do except watch.
He’s so angry his hands are shaking, but his face barely twitches. He has a job to do.
He should have stunned them, he thinks as he wraps his arms around the neck of the second weevil, trying to find the best position, the best hold. This was the one that'd finally gotten Jack; Ianto recognizes her, though he has no idea how, because looking at her now, her features are identical to all the others.
He tightens his grip around her broad chest, walking backwards, because he doesn’t have the strength in his arms anymore to lift this one over his back like he had the last one. He tilts his head over his shoulder, trying to stay alert just in case there are more. Large, bare weevil feet drag across the grass, thumping over tree roots and broken limbs.
Jack always said that it was easier to transport them alive. They always had plenty of cell space, too, so why not? Morality never even entered into the equation. Ianto had been appalled at first, but it’s not part of his equation now either. He understands.
The process is slow going. He keeps tripping over branches; he feels clumsy, his legs like lead with all this weight in front of him at such an awkward angle.
Eventually, they make it. Ianto swears under his breath as his shoulder catches the sharp edge of the back door before he hefts the weevil into the back of the SUV. He glances for a brief moment at the passenger window, and then averts his eyes quickly. He’s done this enough times; he knows that he doesn't really have time to think about Jack right now.
Jack’s body, he corrects. Because if he knows anything about anything, he knows that when Jack stops breathing, that thing called Jack’s body is just a body. Just flesh and bone and blood, not Jack.
The sky keeps darkening. The wind is picking up around him too, rustling the branches of the trees over his head. Fucking spring, Ianto thinks, as he wraps his arms around Number Three’s torso, and prepares for the long haul.
They’re halfway to the SUV when he stumbles, losing his grip a little. He lets the weevil fall against his legs, and wipes the blood covering his hands over his jacket without a second thought, deep streaks of crimson slashed across what yesterday had been a really nice, Gieves & Hawkes ensemble, bought on his last trip to London.
It’s ruined. His blood, Jack's, the weevil's. He can’t tell the difference anymore. Not that it matters in the least when it’s splattered all over his clothes like this.
The stains will never come out, he thinks, staring down at his trousers. There’s a three-inch horizontal tear across his right thigh. It’s ridiculous. He's running out of suits and has no idea when he’ll ever find the time to shop for anything new now. Not when they're down two team members, including their bloody medic, and their technician, both of whom, really, were worth a hell of a lot more than he was, and yet somehow, he's still here.
Jack keeps saying he's recruiting, but he's not. Ianto knows he's not, because he knows everything that Jack does, practically every second of every day, and he knows that Jack's not recruiting.
Ianto realizes with a start that he's stopped moving. That he's slumped against a tree, breathing heavily, and that the weight of the weevil in his arms is pressing his back into a thick knot that’s poking uncomfortably into his spine. He curses under his breath in Welsh, and propels himself forward. He knows he can't rest here. There could be more of them, who knew what the hell was going on with these packs anymore, and he's in no condition to fight anything else off alone.
He has to keep moving.
He should have stunned them.
Then he wouldn't be here, dragging all this dead weight into the SUV -- even stunned and tranquilized, they’d still be able to help him out a little. He wouldn't have to explain to Jack later why he'd done this, either, why he'd just kind of snapped, after he'd looked back, and realized that no, Jack's ankle was worse than he’d admitted; it was slowing him down, and there really wasn’t anything Ianto could do to help him now, because she was already on top of him, already tearing into Jack’s flesh like he was a piece of meat.
And really, if there was one thing, just one thing that Ianto could choose to never, ever witness again, he thinks it might be this.
He smiles a little, at the ridiculousness of that thought as he starts forward again with Number Three, ignoring the pull of his muscles, ignoring the throbbing behind his temples, the pain in his lower back, ignoring all of it. It’s kind of funny, really, in an ironic sort of way that Jack has managed to get taken down so many times by something as simple as a bloody weevil.
He laughs, but the sound is weird, and wrong, and he shivers for a second, as if realizing for the first time that he's alone out here in the middle of nowhere, and that he has no idea how many more of them there could be, or what he would do if he was attacked. He’d be dead, like Jack, he figures. Wouldn’t that make for a surprise, when their captain finally joined them again.
But right now, he reminds himself, he just has to make it to the SUV. Jack would never even think about just leaving the bodies out here. It was risky. Sloppy.
He throws Number Three on top of Number Two, and Number Two's head lolls sickeningly, swiveling on its axis. A trickle of blood runs from the bullet hole in its head, onto the floor of the SUV. He hadn't taken the time to line the floor with plastic, something Jack always insisted on. It would take forever to clean like this. He wouldn't have time. His eyes cloud over, just for a second at the thought of the impossible mess he was making. And there were still three more.
**
It feels like it takes him forever to get the last of them in, but when Ianto finally sinks into the driver's seat, Jack still isn't breathing. Ianto closes his eyes, and feels the shadow of sleep hovering right there in the darkness, so close, tempting him. He knows that they have to get back to the hub though. There could be more where these came from. They could swarm the van. It could get messy. He could use Jack's Webley as back-up, but even then, he might run out of bullets. He has to drive.
And then he’s driving, and he glances over at Jack, and for a second, all he can see is blood--Jack’s blood, everywhere, all over the leather seats, everywhere. He wonders if he should have thrown Jack’s body back there with the weevils -- Jack had actually instructed him to do this, after the last time, in his stern, no-nonsense, I’m-in-charge voice, but... It was just blood, after all. Just Jack’s blood, pooling into every single crack and crevice of the SUV, where Ianto knows he’ll never be able to get it out.
He’d hire a professional cleaning service, maybe. If Jack would let him.
It feels like Jack has been dead a long time, and the realization makes Ianto’s stomach twist into knots as he speeds along the A470.
The silence in the SUV is deafening. There’s no noise from the weevils, of course, because he'd killed them, all of them. Six quick, efficient shots to the head, no wasted movement. And so of course there’s no noise from the back of the SUV. Because everyone else in the SUV, other than Ianto is dead.
It’s so fucking quiet; Ianto thinks he can hear his blood pumping through his veins.
The weather has held so far, but it's looking more and more like rain every second, and Ianto almost wishes it would, now -- the rain would be a distraction, would keep him focused.
Ianto hasn’t seen a single soul on the road since he started driving. It’s early, he supposes. They’d taken the call at what, 3AM, and it was just gone seven now. He wonders if it’s Saturday.
Ianto hazards a brief glance at Jack again, wondering what on earth is taking him so long, and immediately regrets it as his stomach lurches into his throat. He’s never really had a particular problem with blood before, but right now...
He screeches the SUV to a halt over on the road’s wide shoulder, just before they reach the other side of an overpass, gravel grinding under the tires.
When they stop moving, the unnatural silence creeps back in, out of hiding. Ianto closes his eyes, just breathing, and then opens the driver's side door, just in case. He bends over at the waist and heaves, but nothing comes out.
He straightens, running a hand through his hair.
Then he looks at Jack again. Really looks at him. At the bloody gouge in his throat. At the unnatural tilt of his head. At the blood seeping into the fabric of the seat belt where it’s resting close against Jack’s neck.
He wants to scream, can feel it rising up inside of him again, but instead he just pounds his fists on the steering wheel once, hard, so hard that it jerks the car. Then he does it again, for good measure. His heart is pounding. He leans his head back against the headrest.
Then he feels it. That strange stillness in the air before Jack is about to come back... The air is still, but charged, somehow, with an energy that Ianto can’t put his finger on, but he recognizes it--it’s the same every time.
And then Jack does come back, and it's the most fucking glorious thing Ianto's ever seen, and Jack is blinking at him, and reaching for his hand, and when he feels those fingers moving against his skin, seeking out contact, he lets out a long breath in relief. His heart steadies, but his eyes cloud over anyway, so he closes them.
"Ianto," Jack says finally, and then clears his throat. "Is everything okay? Why are we stopped?"
Ianto opens his eyes, blinks. It feels like forever since he's heard Jack's voice. It’s beautiful, even like this, even with that tiny hint of uncertainty that his first words always seem to have, after.
"Ianto?"
"Sorry," he says, and he lets go of Jack's hand, reaching for the keys in the ignition. "We should go."
"Wait," Jack says, urgently, his voice gaining strength. Wounds healing. "Just wait a second."
"Yeah, okay, I'll just--" And his hand is still on the keys in the ignition, as he stares at Jack.
"Ianto, stop," Jack says, softly. "Give me the keys."
Ianto hands them over, but then realizes he doesn't have any idea why Jack asked for them, because clearly, he’s supposed to be driving on this mission. They take turns now, and it was his turn. Jack had driven last time.
"What happened?" Jack is saying, and he's facing Ianto now, has his hand on Ianto's shoulder, studying him. Jack’s looking at him like he’s about to crack into a million pieces, and Ianto realizes that there must be some reason for that, and so he tries to arrange his features into something less brittle, less weak, less himself.
"No," Jack says calmly, his hand at the base of Ianto's neck, now, holding him in place and looking him straight in the eye. "Don't do that. Talk to me."
"Sorry," Ianto says automatically. He takes a breath. Right. Jack needed a report. Of course he did.
"There were six of them,” he starts, “but we only saw three at first, and they surrounded us too quickly. You twisted your ankle. I swear I heard it snap, but you told me-- You swore at me, and told me to go ahead, and I did, because I thought it would heal before anything happened. But it didn't, and I came back and you were already--"
"Ianto," Jack says, leaning over the console, and pressing his forehead to Ianto's for a moment. Their noses brush together. “It’s okay,” Jack says, and something inside of Ianto twists because he knows that it’s really not.
It’s out of control, and it’s threadbare, and it’s not okay at all.
Jack’s breath is warm though, and that’s kind of nice. Ianto closes his eyes. Breathes.
Then Jack sinks back into the passenger seat and his expression changes, hardens a little. It’s Jack, taking charge, Jack assessing the situation. Ianto wonders what he’ll find.
"Then what happened?"
"I shot them. All of them. I had the tranquilizer, and the spray, but the bigger one, the female, already had hold of you, and the rest of them were closing in. I didn’t know what else to do. Sir," he adds as an afterthought, and Jack smiles a little.
It’s a comforting smile, and it’s completely false. Ianto smiles back.
"Where are the bodies?"
"In the back."
“All of them?”
“Of course.”
Jack pauses, furrows his brow. "You dragged them all in here yourself? We must have been more than 500 meters from the SUV when I got taken down."
Ianto doesn't say anything. After a moment he hears Jack sigh, and then curse under his breath. When he looks over at him again, Jack looks almost apologetic, and Ianto has no idea why.
"You must be exhausted," Jack says, and he reaches a hand over to Ianto's shoulder, giving it a quick squeeze. "Good work."
Ianto squeezes his eyes shut tight. He can feel his cheeks warming.
When he opens his eyes again, Jack has gotten out, has circled in front of the SUV, and is opening the driver’s side door, looking down at him. His shirt is covered in blood, but his throat has healed. It’s all Ianto can do to stop himself from reaching out and touching the mark as it fades from Jack’s skin.
Jack's holding his hand out, and Ianto accepts it without thinking.
"I'll drive back," Jack says, and he wraps his arm around Ianto's shoulders as he steps down and out of the car.
"I'm sorry," Ianto says, "I should have--"
"Shh," Jack is saying into his ear, and suddenly Ianto is pulled into a tight hug. Everything hurts, his muscles, his back, his neck, but he doesn’t flinch, doesn’t make a sound, just lets Jack wrap his arms around his back and pull him close.
"I forget, sometimes," Jack says. "I'm sorry."
Ianto doesn't know what to say to that, so he just clings to Jack, breathing him in, marveling at the solid weight of his body, and how different it feels from the last time he’d wrapped his arms around Jack’s torso, when he was all dead weight and blood.
“Forget what?” Ianto asks finally, his face buried in Jack’s neck. He presses his lips to the skin there, and tastes sweat and the bitter metallic tang of blood. Ianto thinks it’s the most amazing thing in the world right now, so he presses his lips there again, feeling Jack’s pulse moving under his lips, his tongue.
“This,” Jack says. “I forget to do this.”
**
They drive back to the hub in silence. When they get there, Ianto immediately goes round to the back of the SUV, but Jack stops him, wraps his fingers around Ianto’s elbow, and steers him away from the blood and the bodies. Jack assures him that it can wait, and even though Ianto knows that this isn’t true, that by tomorrow, the smell will be so bad that there won’t be anything he can do to remove it, he just nods at Jack, and follows him into the hub.
They head down to the shower in Jack's quarters, and Jack helps him out of his suit, one leg at a time. Where the fabric is sticking to Ianto’s skin, he pulls it off carefully.
Ianto showers alone, and when he comes out, Jack is waiting for him with a towel, and a glass of scotch, and some of Owen’s painkillers, the ones that he used to keep behind lock and key. Jack’s changed his shirt, and removed his braces, and it’s like the whole night/morning never even happened.
They sit there, shoulder to shoulder on Jack's tiny bed, and drink their scotch together, and Jack believes Ianto when he says he doesn’t need stitches. He doesn’t insist on taking him to get checked out by county. They talk a little about Owen, about how impossible it will be to find his replacement, and when Ianto’s head starts to get fuzzy and he lies down, Jack doesn’t just tuck the covers around him like usual, he lies down next to him, and wraps his arms around Ianto’s chest, so close that Ianto can feel his every breath. He falls asleep like this, surrounded by Jack’s warmth.
When he wakes up, Jack is gone, and he’s sure it’s only been a few hours, but he feels well-rested, and not as sore as he probably should be. He figures he can thank Owen for that, and he does for a moment, silently.
Then he gets dressed -- Jack has laid out his spare suit. He has no idea what’s become of the old one; there’s not a trace of it anywhere. His shoes have been shined. He climbs the ladder up into the hub, and realizes by the smell that Jack has made coffee.
It’s pretty damn good, too, but not as good as his, of course, Ianto thinks, as he leans against the doorway to Jack’s office, and asks him what they’re going to do about the SUV, and the bodies.
Jack just shakes his head. “Already taken care of.”
Ianto raises an eyebrow. “That’s not possible.”
“Take a look for yourself.”
And so Ianto does, and he can’t believe it, but the SUV is spotless. There’s not a trace of blood anywhere. The bodies have vanished.
It shouldn’t be possible, but it’s Jack, and sometimes he has his ways, so Ianto lets it go, doesn’t probe.
Three hours later -- well past lunch time, though who was really keeping track anymore -- Gwen arrives in a flurry of apologies, with a rushed story about Rhys and how something or other had gone missing, and she’d had to make it right.
Two hours after that, an alert comes in that multiple weevils have been spotted outside the city, not too far from where he and Jack had ended up the previous day.
Ianto starts to grab Jack’s coat from behind his office door.
"No," Jack says, and doesn't move from his chair. “We’re sitting this one out. It’s far enough from the city. We can get away without responding.”
"But sir," he says. Jack frowns at the ‘sir’, but Ianto can’t help it. He fucked up, yesterday, so much, and somehow, that tiny little word provides him the distance that he needs. From Jack, from his judgment, which Ianto will accept at some point soon, just not right this second.
“They’re not just going to go away,” Ianto continues. “If we leave them there today, we’ll only have to--”
"New policy,” Jack says fixing Ianto with a stern look. “We're only three people. We can't fix everything."
And then Jack turns his attention back to the papers on his desk, and the conversation is over.
**
Two days later, Ianto is straightening up the brochures in the lobby of the tourist office, when the door opens.
It’s a delivery with his name on it, but he’s confused, because he didn’t order anything, certainly not anything from Savile Row, in London. And so he’s standing there, politely informing the delivery person that there must be some mistake, and could he please check his records again, when Jack appears from downstairs.
“Aren’t you going to sign for it,” Jack says, nodding toward the package.
“Well, I would, except that I generally like to know the contents of things addressed to me before I accept them,” he says, frowning. “There’s a policy on that, you know.”
“Now I know why Tosh always said you were impossible to shop for,” Jack says with a smirk.
The delivery person is still standing in front of them, looking impatient, and so Ianto signs his name quickly, his face flushing a little.
After the man in uniform leaves, Ianto sets the box on the table, and looks to Jack.
“Sorry,” he says a little sheepishly. “I didn’t know.”
“Of course you didn’t know,” Jack says. “It’s called a surprise.”
Ianto bites his lip a little to stop the smile from spreading across his face, as Jack wraps an arm around his waist, staring over his shoulder at the package.
“Open it,” Jack instructs, and Ianto nods, grabbing his keys from behind the desk.
His breath catches in his throat when he sees what’s inside.
His chest tightens a little too, when he thinks of Jack, disposing of his clothes after that nightmare earlier in the week, and then Jack, suddenly appearing at his flat the next evening, poking his head around in his closet. He’d said he was curious. They had a semi-formal UNIT function coming up, and Jack thought maybe he could borrow something. Which of course didn’t make any sense, now that he thought about it? It had been suspicious. Of course it had been. Almost as suspicious as Jack’s magical super-cleaning of the SUV had been.
He feels a pang of guilt, thinking of all those weevils. He’d been so out of sorts that day, exhausted, and not thinking clearly, and really Jack should have been furious with him for the risks he’d taken. For driving the SUV in that state, for not using the spray when he could have, for all of it. He’d fucked up, and Jack had just let it go, he hadn’t said a word, and Ianto wished he could understand why.
“Jack, I can’t--”
“You’ve been going through them pretty quickly these days,” Jack interrupts, “so I just thought you could use a few more options.”
Ianto moves aside the layer of tissue paper from the top of the box, and rubs the soft fabric of a pair of trousers between his fingers. Methodically, he pulls each article of the box, smoothing the jackets and ties into neat piles on the desk. His fingers linger on the button of a waistcoat, black and shiny.
The three suits in the box are nearly identical to the ones he’s ruined over the past month or so, to the letter, really.
“I had a few alterations made based on what I knew from the tailor at Gieves but you might have to--”
“They’re perfect,” Ianto says, turning to face Jack. “Really perfect,” he says softly. “Even if I don’t deserve them.”
Then he turns away again, because his face, his eyes are betraying him right now. Jack just grabs him by the waist though, pulling him back against him. He wraps his arms around Ianto’s chest from behind. Ianto finds himself closing his eyes, as his hands wrap around Jack’s knuckles, squeezing tightly.
“Three,” Ianto says after a moment, leaning his head back against Jack’s shoulder. “Four ties. Five dress shirts. In one month.”
Jack chuckles a little, and places a kiss against Ianto’s ear. “I know,” he says. “I’ve been counting, too.”
Jack’s fingers come to rest on the bump on Ianto’s head, just above his left temple. It’s still turning colors, spreading out from under the bandage -- he looks a bit like he’s been in a nasty bar fight and lost.
“You’re sure you don’t need stitches?”
“Pretty sure, yeah.”
“Where's Owen when you need him,” Jack says, sadly. “But actually, I’ve been on the phone with UNIT all morning. They’ve got some interesting candidates, physicians, that I was able to persuade them to share with me.”
Jack just grins at the shocked look on Ianto’s face. Then he plants a firm kiss on Ianto’s lips, one that lingers a little longer than strictly necessary. Ianto’s not quite sure whose fault that is, but he thinks it might be his.
“Want me to fill you in on the details over lunch?” Jack asks, hopefully. “Say, at that little Italian place down by the water, my treat?”
And Jack looks so happy, so pleased with himself, and for the first time in a long time, Ianto finds himself thinking that maybe this isn’t the beginning of the end, after all. That they just might pull through this.
While Jack goes off to grab his coat from his office, Ianto moves the opened box behind the desk. He straightens a silk tie, the fabric soft and textured, under his fingers. Then he drapes it over the back of the chair behind the desk, and thinks of the weather.
He opens the door to the tourist office for a moment, flipping the sign over so that it reads back in a few moments (a gross understatement, if ever there was one) and while he's there, he looks up at the sky.
The forecast this morning had called for rain, again, but…
He decides against an umbrella anyway, just this once.
***