New fic! Torchwood, Jack/Ianto
Still spamming! This time, though, with Torchwood slash. ;-)
Title: Sun in the Sky
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Torchwood
Spoilers: This is a wallow for eps 1.4 through 1.8
Note: 5500 words. Probably about an R rating. Thanks to misspamela and cesperanza for looking this over!
Ianto falls asleep during the long drive back and wakes up when they're parking at the Hub. He's very stiff and uncomfortable, having slept straight up, his hands curled on his thighs. His head is swimming. Everyone else is moving; Owen helps Gwen out of the SUV, and Jack lends Tosh a hand, guides her stumbling and sleepy toward the door.
For a moment, Ianto just sits still. There seems to be a very real chance that he's been forgotten and it occurs to him to wonder if he was rescued at all. Perhaps this isn't really him watching Owen half-carry a breathless Gwen, watching Jack bend his head to rest his cheek against Tosh's hair. Someone had untied him and a medic had looked him over, but those moments are foggy and unclear in his mind; perhaps they never happened and the real him is dead in that village. His ghost would follow this team back to Cardiff, for lack of better orders.
And then Jack looks over his shoulder. "You can sleep there if you want, Ianto," he says, his voice echoing softly in the garage. "But you'll regret it later."
Ianto considers this dispassionately. He's not dead then; that's something of a relief. On to other problems. The SUV is comfortable enough for a regular trip but his legs would quickly have gotten cramped under normal circumstances, and his current bruised and battered condition can hardly be considered normal. There's his head to think of as well. The spinning world and rolling nausea promise to make walking a misery, but the very thought of sleeping straight up, so far from a pillow, makes it all worse.
Right, then.
"Coming, sir," he says, and fumbles himself out of the SUV, wincing as the door closes behind him. He straightens himself as best he can, aware of Owen's eyes on him, narrowed, observant, and of Jack's eyes sliding away. One hand on the cool tile wall serves as an anchor, and he follows the rest of Torchwood out of the garage and into the Hub, doing a damn fine job of faking equilibrium all the way.
*
"He shouldn't be left alone," Owen says, frowning.
Ianto pushes at Owen's hand, trying to brush it away. Owen has been shining lights into his eyes for what seems an awfully long time while he argues that Ianto can't go home, and it's passed annoying. "He is not unconscious," Ianto says and tries to rise; two sets of hands clamp down on him, fingertips pushing into a few bruises. Ianto gasps before he can help it and Owen's hands fall away.
Jack's hands do not.
Jack frowns at Owen over Ianto's head as his hands shift, fingers gentling but spreading wide over Ianto's shoulders. "He can stay here. There are beds, there's food; he even has a spare suit or three stashed away in case of emergency."
"There's no need--"
"He'll have to be woken every few hours," Owen says, narrowing his eyes. "Watched carefully, you know."
"I am not--"
"I know what to do," Jack says, nodding.
Owen snorts, leans back over Ianto. "Stop it," he says, shaking a finger in Ianto's face. "You took a few good hits to that rock hard head of yours, and Tosh and Gwen would feel badly if you died alone in your bed." The waving finger points at Jack. "He's better than nothing."
"I can find someone to--"
"There isn't a soul in the world you'd ask to watch over you," Owen says and Ianto sucks in a hard breath; more for the sudden pressure of Jack's fingers against a bruise than anything else, he's certain, although he must admit that Owen is right. There's no one now, not for this.
Owen's expression goes awkwardly sympathetic and he pats Ianto on the knee, then pushes himself away. "Right, girls," he says loudly, and Toshiko stirs half-awake, careful to keep Gwen braced against her on the couch where they've curled up. "I'm calling it a day. Shall I take you both home to my bed for the night and apply a little tender, loving care?"
Ianto watches Gwen silently watch Owen, her eyes heavy-lidded and gleaming, a fog of painkillers that looks like something else. Toshiko is flushed, shakes her head no. She gathers her coat and bag as Owen carefully helps Gwen up, and Ianto feels the pressure of Jack's hands on him and considers asking her if she needs to stay, too. If she would be better off nearby. Not alone.
"Let Tosh go," Jack says in his ear. "She has some wounds she needs to deal with in private, I think. It'd be kinder."
"You are the expert on kindness," Ianto says, and is somehow not surprised to feel Jack smile against his skin before his thumbs push across the nape of Ianto's neck, just firmly enough to relax the muscles there.
"You say that like you don't mean it," Jack says, voice rich with that dark laugh of his. He straightens, but leaves his hands where they were. "Take tomorrow off, guys. And Gwen, if you need more time, don't be afraid to let me know."
"I won't, Jack," Gwen says, voice dreamy, and Owen wraps an arm carefully around her to help her out of the Hub. Tosh smiles in Jack's general direction before fleeing before them, coat fluttering, hair hiding her face.
Ianto and Jack watch them go, and then Jack leans back down to Ianto's ear and says, "Alone with the monster, Ianto. Whatever shall you do?"
Ianto has a thousand answers to that question. He doesn't say anything at all.
*
He eats the toast Jack fixes for him, takes the pills and drinks the tea. It feels odd to sit and have Jack hand him the plate and cup but he's so tired. He doesn't argue, and he doesn't protest after, when Jack leads him down into his own small rooms.
He's been here twice before. The first time, he'd just begun to work for Jack. He'd been settling Lisa in and come up for a snack, a drink, a break from Lisa's low moans though he could hardly admit it, and he'd found Jack pacing restlessly.
"I told you to go home hours ago," Jack had said, and Ianto had stupidly replied, "I couldn't leave." Jack misinterpreted as he would, and Ianto soon found himself back against the wall, Jack's mouth hot on his, Jack hot on him. That restless energy of Jack's had focused, and Ianto didn't fight it. He found almost to his surprise that he welcomed it, welcomed it all; the touch of warm skin with no metal, Jack's grinning mouth and the hands that guided him into the dark, warm hideaway where Jack stripped him naked and fucked him open.
After, he went back to Lisa, who said, "I hurt, Ianto," and not a word about how long he'd been gone, or the state in which he returned; a rebuke far more effective than tears or a slap could ever have been.
The second time, after Lisa was dead, Jack had stripped him efficiently and laid him down, then climbed between his thighs fully clothed and pinned his forearms to the bedding with hard hands. "I'm kind of hard to kill, Ianto," Jack said in the darkness, warm breath on Ianto's ear. "Though you're welcome to try."
"I don't intend to try," Ianto said, closing his eyes and turning his head away when Jack laughed.
"You intend to succeed? Somehow, I believe that. And you know, Ianto, I think I'm going to be sad for you when you fail?" Jack kissed his ear, his temple, his neck, random scattered kisses wherever he could catch skin, ignoring how Ianto moved to avoid him. "I'm going to be sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry," Jack said, and kissed his mouth; Ianto didn't move away again, and knew that Jack was safe from him.
This third time, he finds himself leaning against the wall for support as he's stripped carefully, each item of clothing folded and set aside, all of his scrapes and bruises catalogued and examined. He allows it and although part of him thinks, that's the loin they tenderized, and that's the breast, his body seems to recognize Jack's touch as something else. He stirs, and Jack touches him much more gently than he had the previous times they've come together, smiles.
"Owen would kill us both if we got you too excited," he says, and leaves off touching Ianto's cock to kneel and push his trousers aside, brush his fingers down the outsides of Ianto's thighs, the backs of his knees, wrap long fingers around his ankles and strip off his socks. Ianto grips Jack's shoulder to stay steady, and finds himself weaving on his feet as Jack rises. Jack braces him with an arm around his waist, and then the spinning world is anchored only by Jack's body where it touches Ianto's. He closes his eyes against waves of dizziness until he feels the pillow cool behind his head.
"All right?" Jack asks, an arm under him, a hand behind his head, and Ianto fights the vertigo and nods. He spreads his legs for Jack to lie between. Jack half-laughs and says, "No, not that, Ianto," and slides away from him, settles blankets over him, tucks them down gently. "Sleep."
It's a surprise. Ianto cracks one eye open a little and there's Jack, dressed to the braces and cufflinks, resting comfortably at his side but not touching him. He smiles when he catches Ianto looking. "I have a book," he says, and indeed he does; Stephen King of all things. "Go to sleep. I'll keep watch."
Ianto holds his gaze for a long moment, but Jack is just smiling; a cheerfully inscrutable sphinx. He never gives away anything with those smiles of his. Ianto sighs a little and turns his face into Jack's pillow, closes his eyes. He falls asleep just like that, between one breath and the next, naked and warm in Jack's bed.
*
He sleeps restlessly, falling in and out of dreams. Jack wakes him every few hours, as ordered, and asks him stupid questions like, "Ianto, are they all going to die at the end of this story?" and "Ianto, are you sure they're not all going to die?" and "Is there a movie version?" and "How do you keep red wine from staining when it spills? I never did figure that out."
The fifth time Jack wakes him, Ianto is so tired, so aggravated. He could sleep forever, if only Jack would stop. "I don't have a concussion," he says sharply, which makes his head pound. He curls tighter around Jack's pillow, and feels Jack's hand on his shoulder, comforting. "Even if I did, needing to wake someone with a concussion is just an old wives' tale. There's no need, Jack, really."
"I don't know about old wives, I'm just doing as ordered by our attractive young physician," Jack says. "But that was the last time, Ianto, I promise. Go back to sleep now."
"I should be so lucky," he says, but he is, closes his eyes again and is asleep almost instantly.
His flashes of dream get more strange. He dreams that he's inside a cloud, and then that he's throwing sticks for a very large, fanged dog, which he thinks in his dream is probably not a dog at all.
And he dreams that he's lying in Jack's bed, the blankets pooled low on his hips, Jack's hand flat on the small of his back. Jack is reading. Lisa is sitting on the ground in the corner of the room with Ianto in her arms, a cleaver at his throat. She's sobbing. Her hands are metal. Ianto is standing behind her, looking at himself in her arms, at himself on Jack's bed, at the cleaver in his own bloody hands.
Ianto's subconscious used to be more subtle.
"Just a dream," Jack says to the Ianto in the bed, without looking up from his book. His hand rubs slow circles on Ianto's back. Ianto watches, transfixed, until he can almost feel the pressure, until he's the Ianto in the bed again, asleep.
*
In the morning, Jack is already up and gone when Ianto wakes. Ianto struggles to sit and finds that although his head aches, a grinding pain, he doesn't feel quite so disconnected any longer. His body is sore, but nothing was broken. He'll be all right. He's slept for almost sixteen hours.
He dresses in his clothes from the day before, though they smell and he doesn't really want to touch them. He does have a few spare suits tucked away and could easily shower, don one, but all he's wanted for so many hours is his own bed, his own pillows, his own space where he's alone. It doesn't seem worth the effort.
When he walks out into the Hub, Jack is walking towards him, carefully carrying a small tray with two cups. His hair is mussed, and he too is wearing yesterday's clothes. He doesn't look tired though he must've been up all night.
"Sir," Ianto says, and Jack is obviously surprised, though he doesn't so much as twitch.
"Ianto," he says. "Up already?"
"And heading home, sir, thank you." Ianto ignores the flash of Jack's eyes; it could hardly be disappointment, could it?
"Eager to feed your plants?" Jack says. Ianto nods, though he has no plants. He has nothing at home, really. He's lived in Torchwood for nearly as long as Jack, nearly as many hours of the day and night, although no one knew. "Do you need a ride?"
"I've called a cab," Ianto says, which is also a lie. He'll call one from his office upstairs, maybe, or walk; he doubts Jack will watch him go on the CCTV.
"Ah." Jack hesitates, then sets down the coffee tray and crosses his arms over his chest. "All right. Same as everyone else, I expect you in tomorrow, Ianto. Let me know if you need more time."
Ianto nods and passes him on the walkway, keeps his head down. Jack doesn't move to give him more room. He rarely does; deliberate intimidation or no consideration for personal space, Ianto wouldn't be surprised to know it's either or both.
He gets to the door before Jack stops him, says, "Ianto."
He hesitates, then turns, keeps his face carefully expressionless. "Yes, sir?"
"You did very well out there," Jack says. "You should know that."
Ianto searches his gaze, but Jack does deadpan as well as he does. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Feel better." Jack turns away and picks up the coffee tray, bringing it back up to the kitchenette, and Ianto nods, confused, and makes his escape.
*
Strangely, it's Jack's caretaking that digs at Ianto later. When he stumbles into his own shower, he touches his bruises and remembers Jack's hands following the same path more vividly than he remembers the punches and kicks. He goes to his bed with his hair still wet, too tired to stay on his feet any longer. The pillows smell of detergent. His sheets are cold.
Eventually, he falls asleep. He stays under for a long time and wakes slowly, with the dream of Lisa on his mind. When he opens his eyes, he half-expects to see Jack's broad shoulders, careless hands, the smile that shouldn't be so reassuring, toothy as it is, but he's alone. He's sore from head to toe, and inside. His stomach aches like an ulcer. He climbs out of his bed like a very old man, treats the ulcer with coffee and toast, showers and puts on a fresh suit.
When he straightens his shoulders and looks at himself in the mirror, he looks as calm and pleasant as any mid-level accountant, but for a bit of visible bruising. The aches fade. His stomach hurts distantly, like it's no longer a part of him.
He smiles wryly at his reflection. "Clark Kent should be so lucky," he says, and goes back to work.
*
They all spend the day quiet and contemplative. Jack keeps them in the Hub and watches over them like a brood of chicks. Ianto watches him as he fusses over Gwen, who seems all right, although her eyes rarely leave Owen and never lose the fogged glitter from the other day. He barks orders at Owen, who delights in barking back, and gently teases Tosh, who warms under his attention.
He's aware of Jack watching him as intently as he's watching Jack, and can feel his movements being analyzed and catalogued; pained, restrained, ordinary. Jack touches him twice. His fingertips against Ianto's wrist are nothing unusual and Ianto brushes that aside. But Jack's hand on his back, an echo of Ianto's dream, catches him by surprise. When he turns his head and Jack is looking at him, calm, expressionless but intense, his stomach twists. He slips away, follows the sound of voices to the morgue, and stands quietly at the top of the stairs until Gwen and Owen take notice of him long moments later.
"It's nearly time for supper," he says, ignoring the fact that it isn't, ignoring their bemusement, and collects their orders.
They all eat together, herded to the conference room by Jack. This is not abnormal; Ianto has thought since the beginning that Jack is more lonely than he'll let on, and the familial nature of meals taken together simply makes him happy. As they settle in, Ianto finds Jack's hands on him again, that touch at the wrist, the solid weight of Jack's hand on his back. He can hardly walk away from supper without causing a stir, and the rest of the team are settling into a rhythm that feels too much like normal. He avoids Jack's gaze, settles in his habitual spot to Jack's left, and eats quietly while everyone laughs and jokes around him.
Jack laughingly squashes a food fight between Owen and Tosh and gets up to get a drink, rests his hand on the nape of Ianto's neck as he passes. "All right, Ianto?" he asks casually, and squeezes when Ianto jerks a startled nod, aware of the others watching. "Mind the children while I'm gone, then. I don't want to come back to a mess."
"We'll be good," Gwen promises, and the moment the door is shut behind Jack she's leaning forward, eyes locked on Ianto's face. "Is he trying to seduce you?" she asks, incredulous, delighted, jealous, and Owen pushes her back in her seat with a brisk warning about her wounds, his hands possessive.
"He's not," Ianto says, which isn't a lie. He isn't sure exactly what Jack is doing, but it's hardly a seduction--Jack's already had him twice, and knows as well as Ianto does that all he needs to do is beckon and he can have Ianto again.
"I think he's trying to make amends," Tosh says and Owen snorts, rakes Ianto with a dismissive glance.
"Amends for what? Ianto's mistakes? Hardly likely, is it? Oww!"
"Kicking under the table isn't nice," Jack says as he comes back in. He doesn't touch Ianto again as he brushes past, but smiles at him as he sits back down.
"It was well-deserved though," Ianto says. "Thank you, Toshiko."
"Any time," Tosh says, and they all turn back to their dinners, Owen grumbling, under Jack's watchful and amused gaze.
*
"Stay," Jack says, when Gwen has finally gone home to Rhys, and Owen, miserable, has dragged Tosh out for drinks. Ianto is finishing the last of the locking up.
Ianto hesitates, thinking of his cold bed and the pillows that don't smell like anything, of Jack's hands more caring than he expected.
Jack smiles when Ianto looks up. Ianto thinks his answer must be written all over his face but before he can open his mouth, Jack folds his hands and says, like it's important, like Ianto's answer really matters, "Please?"
"Yes, sir," Ianto says, as he meant to say all along, and he follows Jack down to his rooms.
*
It's his first opportunity to explore. He knew that Jack was uncut but is somehow surprised to discover that he has few scars, no tattoos, tidy body hair that highlights what it ought to highlight. Elsewhere, his skin is very smooth. His muscles are strong but padded in a way that Ianto's aren't, round where Ianto is angular; at the shoulder, hip and thigh, in particular.
Ianto feels out of proportion in comparison, like his legs are too long and his ribcage too narrow, his skin too white. Jack doesn't seem to notice. He's focused on Ianto's hands and mouth mapping his body, which is absurdly gratifying. But apparently even Jack Harkness can only take so much, and eventually he tugs at Ianto's hair.
"You plan to stay down there all night?" he asks, his smile crooked across his face. Ianto smiles back and crawls up the mattress, straddles him and runs his fingers down the solid muscle of his belly. Jack's hands close tight on Ianto's hips, squeeze.
"I could," Ianto says. He cups his fingers over the wet head of Jack's cock, enjoying the thrust of Jack's hips into his hand. "Would that be a problem, sir?"
"No problem, Ianto." Jack is near laughter, even as his thighs move against Ianto's. "Do whatever you like. I just thought there might be something you'd like better."
Ianto tightens his grip and Jack gasps, those smiling lips gone a little slack, his whole body pushing powerfully upwards. "I can't imagine, sir," he says, and isn't surprised at all to find himself flipped over, pressed into the mattress, Jack's heavy body a weight he unfolds to welcome.
"I'll have to show you what I was thinking of," Jack says against his mouth, and it's Ianto's turn to say, "Please."
*
This time, when Lisa appears, he knows he isn't dreaming. He's tucked into Jack's bed with Jack curled up around him, warm and relaxed. Jack's hand is on his back, short nails scratching gentle circles between his shoulder blades.
Lisa stands in the corner, a ghost of metal, flesh and blood. But her eyes are not the eyes of the Cyberwoman; they're wide and wondering and hurt.
"Sir?"
Jack stirs, opens his eyes, then turns his head to follow Ianto's gaze. He doesn't tense up, keeps his hand moving slowly on Ianto's skin. "Just an echo," he says quietly. "The leftover energy of grief, I think."
"Is it my grief, sir, or hers?" Ianto asks, and Jack doesn't answer, just closes his eyes again and tucks his forehead against Ianto's neck, breathing warm against his skin. Ianto watches the echo of Lisa for a long time, until she seems to fade, and he falls asleep with the memory of her eyes and the feel of Jack's skin on his mind.
*
To no one's surprise, Torchwood has specific forms that need to be filled out when an operative gains/abuses/loses the ability to read/manipulate/destroy the minds of teammates. Jack is still angry, Ianto can read it in every line of his body, so he takes the binder and Toshiko's elbow, and gently guides her away to privacy.
"Did you at any time use your ability to blackmail a member of the Torchwood organization?" he asks her quietly, and she shakes her head, no. "A member of the general public?" No. "Did you at any time use your ability to initiate a sexual encounter?"
Toshiko's eyes fill with tears, and Ianto sighs. "She manipulated you," he says gently, touching her hand. "And it seemed--Tosh, she seemed to feel for you."
Tosh smiles at him, wipes the tears away. "It's not that," she says. "It's something else. It's--Ianto, do you have any idea what people are really thinking? What they're thinking of you?"
Ianto looks away, and catches Jack's eye. Jack is watching them through the glass, his face expressionless, his arms crossed over his chest. "No," Ianto says. "I have no idea."
"You're better off that way, believe me," Tosh says, and he looks at her. Her voice is calm enough, but she's shattered somewhere, he can feel it.
"Well, I think the world of you, Toshiko," he says. He pats her hand lightly and smiles. "Believe me."
"You--you were thinking of your own pain." Tosh looks at him, leans forward. "I didn't mean to pry, Ianto, honestly, but it was there and I couldn't help but know and I just--I wanted to tell you that it ends. The pain ends, Ianto." She pauses. "Doesn't it?"
"I suppose we'll find out," Ianto says, and closes the binder, looking away. Tosh takes that for what it is, and leaves him to sit alone.
*
He hesitates on the threshold of Jack's office. "Sir?"
"Ianto." Jack looks up, leans back in his seat and stretches his arms behind his head. "I thought you'd gone home. I did the locking up myself."
"No sir, sorry." Ianto takes a step closer. "I'm wondering, sir, if Tosh--if she's going to be allowed to remember what she learned."
Jack's eyes harden. "Embarrassed by what you were thinking, Ianto?"
In a way, he is. That Tosh heard nothing from him but a subconscious ramble-on about his own pain, it seems absurdly self-centered. But his embarrassment is mild, really. It's the shattered look in Tosh's eyes that he's thinking of now. "She's very hurt, sir."
Jack stares at him and he allows it, looking back until Jack's eyes soften again and he smiles a little. "I've talked to Tosh, she'll be fine," he says. "A bit disillusioned, yes, but nothing she won't get over. Don't worry so much--and that's an order, Ianto."
Ianto's lips twitch at the very idea and he shakes his head; that's all it takes to make Jack's eyes gleam, devilish, pleased with himself. "Tell me to fuck off," he invites. "I give you permission to tell me where to shove my orders."
"Later, perhaps," Ianto murmurs, and Jack laughs, pushes his chair back from his desk.
"If I begged you very nicely to come here and sit with me, Contrary Ianto, would you do that?" he asks, and Ianto eyes him, the chair, the cluttered desk. One wrong move and they'd be busy for weeks reorganizing Jack's piles, at best; at worst they'd be on the floor with a broken chair and broken bones.
"I think not, sir," he says. "But if you begged very nicely for something else, you might be surprised."
Jack's eyes go wide and dark in a heartbeat. "Interesting," he says, and stands, pushing his braces down as he casually ambles around his desk. "Very interesting. Care to continue this discussion somewhere a little more comfortable, Ianto?"
"Lead on, sir," Ianto says, and Jack does, leads him on with a gentle tug at his tie and a devilish grin. Ianto follows with a grin of his own and thinks maybe, Tosh. Maybe it ends, after all.
*
He stirs because Jack is talking. "You're a damn annoying ghost, you know that?" Jack says quietly. Ianto doesn't open his eyes, drifts, mostly asleep. Jack's hand is cupping the back of his neck, and it slides up to the base of his skull, holds him still against Jack's chest. "He's trying to let you go, can't you see? Can't you stop?"
Lisa doesn't answer.
"Well, you can't make me feel guilty about this," Jack mutters. "Stand there as many nights as you want. See if I care." His hands are tight on Ianto, uncomfortably so, but he stays limp and lets Jack hold him, lets his eyes stay shut. He takes slow, deep breaths, full of Jack's smell, the warmth of him, and eventually Jack sighs. His breathing evens out, steady like Ianto's. His body relaxes, even his hands.
He says, "Or maybe it's not you who's holding on, hmm? Poor Lisa," and his voice is gone drowsy. He kisses Ianto's temple and sighs and Ianto lets himself drift back to sleep, strangely both comforted and disturbed.
*
"You're so late," Jack says. He's swirling liquid in a glass, something clear. His braces are down, his shirt unbuttoned.
Ianto smiles, charmed that Jack has waited for him so eagerly, impatiently. "A fact I deeply regret, sir," he says, and he means it.
Jack tosses back his drink, stalks forward, smiling too. "It's all right," he says. His hand skims Ianto's shoulder, settles against his neck, and he kisses Ianto, three times, quick and nearly chaste. "You're forgiven."
*
After their game, Jack tosses the stopwatch into Lisa's corner; deliberately or not, Ianto doesn't know. But he wakes hours later to find her there, staring at the stopwatch that lies at her feet. He says, "Oh, Lee," and sits up on the edge of the bed.
She looks fully human, fully herself again. When she moves across the room, though, it's not like walking. The hair rises on Ianto's arms, but he doesn't feel threatened.
"Ianto," she says, from far away. It's the first time he's heard her since the first night, when she wept; it's the first time in so long that he's heard her real voice, without the shadow of the Cyberwoman. "Ianto, love."
"Lisa--"
She shivers, like a flickering image on a television screen. "I think it's time."
"I know," he says. He wants to reach out, touch her, but can't move. "Are you ready to go, darling?"
Lisa shivers again and around the edges, she looks a little vague. "I think so. Are you ready to let me?"
Ianto smiles. "No."
"Oh, well, that's all right," Lisa says, so much like his girl in that moment that his throat closes. "If I wait for you to be ready, I'll be waiting forever, won't I?"
"Forever," Ianto agrees.
"Silly boy," Lisa says. She shivers again. "I loved you, back when I really knew what love was."
Ianto chokes on a sob, a laugh. "I loved you too; then, and long after."
"So silly," Lisa says, and laughs, and begins to disappear.
The sound Ianto makes then embarrasses him, and he covers his mouth with his hand, hoping that somehow Jack has slept through Lisa's last visit. But Jack is curling around him, warm, awake and aware, and the weight of him against Ianto's back looses something inside him. Pain rips through his stomach, his chest; he says, "Lisa--" knowing somehow that he can keep her. He can pin this pain down and keep the ghost of Lisa with him always, the spirit of her, around as long as he should live.
"She loved you," Jack whispers in his ear, fierce, ferocious. "How can you--"
"I can't," Ianto says, and he lets her go.
*
"Tosh, do you need--no? All right?" Ianto looks past her to Gwen and Owen, limping through the door, covered in mud and something green, foul-smelling. They're grinning fiercely, arms wrapped around each other as they whoop breathless laughter. Toshiko came in with a little more dignity, but she too smells foul, and she's sliding in her own slime-trail. "I take it you caught the Florisigatter?"
"We caught it," Jack says, walking in behind the rest of the team. He's green head to toe, and Ianto feels his eyes widen. He keeps a straight face only through years of practice. "We caught it, and caught it, and caught it."
"Owen's solution exploded it," Gwen says. "Oh God, I've got to sit." She collapses bonelessly against the wall. "Oh, Ianto, you should've seen it--a good soaking and the thing just went poof! And there we were in the line of fire, suddenly soaked, and Jack said--Jack said--"
"Something we're not going to repeat," Jack says, and strides past them all. He smells so foul that Ianto recoils, which Jack notices immediately. He reaches out one slimey green hand and snags Ianto round the back of the neck. "Think I'm going to need a hand cleaning up!"
Ianto tries to struggle free, but Jack's grip is implacable, for all that it's slick. "Sir," he says, trying to resist the urge to grin, trying to breathe, "Shouldn't someone help you who is, perhaps, already filthy?"
"Oh no," Jack says. "That wouldn't do at all. You know how I keep saying you need more field experience, Ianto? Well, this will count."
"Thank you, sir," Ianto says, and gives in gracefully in hopes of saving his suit. "I didn't think you meant I needed experience with the field, but all right, I suppose."
Jack turns his head to grin, and Ianto can't keep his straight face anymore, grins back. "There's all kinds of field experience," Jack says with a wink. "What do you say we get me clean, get the kids some supper and send them home, then I'll teach you all about one of the other sorts?"
"Sounds like a brilliant plan, sir," Ianto says, and laughs.
Title: Sun in the Sky
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Torchwood
Spoilers: This is a wallow for eps 1.4 through 1.8
Note: 5500 words. Probably about an R rating. Thanks to misspamela and cesperanza for looking this over!
Ianto falls asleep during the long drive back and wakes up when they're parking at the Hub. He's very stiff and uncomfortable, having slept straight up, his hands curled on his thighs. His head is swimming. Everyone else is moving; Owen helps Gwen out of the SUV, and Jack lends Tosh a hand, guides her stumbling and sleepy toward the door.
For a moment, Ianto just sits still. There seems to be a very real chance that he's been forgotten and it occurs to him to wonder if he was rescued at all. Perhaps this isn't really him watching Owen half-carry a breathless Gwen, watching Jack bend his head to rest his cheek against Tosh's hair. Someone had untied him and a medic had looked him over, but those moments are foggy and unclear in his mind; perhaps they never happened and the real him is dead in that village. His ghost would follow this team back to Cardiff, for lack of better orders.
And then Jack looks over his shoulder. "You can sleep there if you want, Ianto," he says, his voice echoing softly in the garage. "But you'll regret it later."
Ianto considers this dispassionately. He's not dead then; that's something of a relief. On to other problems. The SUV is comfortable enough for a regular trip but his legs would quickly have gotten cramped under normal circumstances, and his current bruised and battered condition can hardly be considered normal. There's his head to think of as well. The spinning world and rolling nausea promise to make walking a misery, but the very thought of sleeping straight up, so far from a pillow, makes it all worse.
Right, then.
"Coming, sir," he says, and fumbles himself out of the SUV, wincing as the door closes behind him. He straightens himself as best he can, aware of Owen's eyes on him, narrowed, observant, and of Jack's eyes sliding away. One hand on the cool tile wall serves as an anchor, and he follows the rest of Torchwood out of the garage and into the Hub, doing a damn fine job of faking equilibrium all the way.
*
"He shouldn't be left alone," Owen says, frowning.
Ianto pushes at Owen's hand, trying to brush it away. Owen has been shining lights into his eyes for what seems an awfully long time while he argues that Ianto can't go home, and it's passed annoying. "He is not unconscious," Ianto says and tries to rise; two sets of hands clamp down on him, fingertips pushing into a few bruises. Ianto gasps before he can help it and Owen's hands fall away.
Jack's hands do not.
Jack frowns at Owen over Ianto's head as his hands shift, fingers gentling but spreading wide over Ianto's shoulders. "He can stay here. There are beds, there's food; he even has a spare suit or three stashed away in case of emergency."
"There's no need--"
"He'll have to be woken every few hours," Owen says, narrowing his eyes. "Watched carefully, you know."
"I am not--"
"I know what to do," Jack says, nodding.
Owen snorts, leans back over Ianto. "Stop it," he says, shaking a finger in Ianto's face. "You took a few good hits to that rock hard head of yours, and Tosh and Gwen would feel badly if you died alone in your bed." The waving finger points at Jack. "He's better than nothing."
"I can find someone to--"
"There isn't a soul in the world you'd ask to watch over you," Owen says and Ianto sucks in a hard breath; more for the sudden pressure of Jack's fingers against a bruise than anything else, he's certain, although he must admit that Owen is right. There's no one now, not for this.
Owen's expression goes awkwardly sympathetic and he pats Ianto on the knee, then pushes himself away. "Right, girls," he says loudly, and Toshiko stirs half-awake, careful to keep Gwen braced against her on the couch where they've curled up. "I'm calling it a day. Shall I take you both home to my bed for the night and apply a little tender, loving care?"
Ianto watches Gwen silently watch Owen, her eyes heavy-lidded and gleaming, a fog of painkillers that looks like something else. Toshiko is flushed, shakes her head no. She gathers her coat and bag as Owen carefully helps Gwen up, and Ianto feels the pressure of Jack's hands on him and considers asking her if she needs to stay, too. If she would be better off nearby. Not alone.
"Let Tosh go," Jack says in his ear. "She has some wounds she needs to deal with in private, I think. It'd be kinder."
"You are the expert on kindness," Ianto says, and is somehow not surprised to feel Jack smile against his skin before his thumbs push across the nape of Ianto's neck, just firmly enough to relax the muscles there.
"You say that like you don't mean it," Jack says, voice rich with that dark laugh of his. He straightens, but leaves his hands where they were. "Take tomorrow off, guys. And Gwen, if you need more time, don't be afraid to let me know."
"I won't, Jack," Gwen says, voice dreamy, and Owen wraps an arm carefully around her to help her out of the Hub. Tosh smiles in Jack's general direction before fleeing before them, coat fluttering, hair hiding her face.
Ianto and Jack watch them go, and then Jack leans back down to Ianto's ear and says, "Alone with the monster, Ianto. Whatever shall you do?"
Ianto has a thousand answers to that question. He doesn't say anything at all.
*
He eats the toast Jack fixes for him, takes the pills and drinks the tea. It feels odd to sit and have Jack hand him the plate and cup but he's so tired. He doesn't argue, and he doesn't protest after, when Jack leads him down into his own small rooms.
He's been here twice before. The first time, he'd just begun to work for Jack. He'd been settling Lisa in and come up for a snack, a drink, a break from Lisa's low moans though he could hardly admit it, and he'd found Jack pacing restlessly.
"I told you to go home hours ago," Jack had said, and Ianto had stupidly replied, "I couldn't leave." Jack misinterpreted as he would, and Ianto soon found himself back against the wall, Jack's mouth hot on his, Jack hot on him. That restless energy of Jack's had focused, and Ianto didn't fight it. He found almost to his surprise that he welcomed it, welcomed it all; the touch of warm skin with no metal, Jack's grinning mouth and the hands that guided him into the dark, warm hideaway where Jack stripped him naked and fucked him open.
After, he went back to Lisa, who said, "I hurt, Ianto," and not a word about how long he'd been gone, or the state in which he returned; a rebuke far more effective than tears or a slap could ever have been.
The second time, after Lisa was dead, Jack had stripped him efficiently and laid him down, then climbed between his thighs fully clothed and pinned his forearms to the bedding with hard hands. "I'm kind of hard to kill, Ianto," Jack said in the darkness, warm breath on Ianto's ear. "Though you're welcome to try."
"I don't intend to try," Ianto said, closing his eyes and turning his head away when Jack laughed.
"You intend to succeed? Somehow, I believe that. And you know, Ianto, I think I'm going to be sad for you when you fail?" Jack kissed his ear, his temple, his neck, random scattered kisses wherever he could catch skin, ignoring how Ianto moved to avoid him. "I'm going to be sorry. Sorry, sorry, sorry," Jack said, and kissed his mouth; Ianto didn't move away again, and knew that Jack was safe from him.
This third time, he finds himself leaning against the wall for support as he's stripped carefully, each item of clothing folded and set aside, all of his scrapes and bruises catalogued and examined. He allows it and although part of him thinks, that's the loin they tenderized, and that's the breast, his body seems to recognize Jack's touch as something else. He stirs, and Jack touches him much more gently than he had the previous times they've come together, smiles.
"Owen would kill us both if we got you too excited," he says, and leaves off touching Ianto's cock to kneel and push his trousers aside, brush his fingers down the outsides of Ianto's thighs, the backs of his knees, wrap long fingers around his ankles and strip off his socks. Ianto grips Jack's shoulder to stay steady, and finds himself weaving on his feet as Jack rises. Jack braces him with an arm around his waist, and then the spinning world is anchored only by Jack's body where it touches Ianto's. He closes his eyes against waves of dizziness until he feels the pillow cool behind his head.
"All right?" Jack asks, an arm under him, a hand behind his head, and Ianto fights the vertigo and nods. He spreads his legs for Jack to lie between. Jack half-laughs and says, "No, not that, Ianto," and slides away from him, settles blankets over him, tucks them down gently. "Sleep."
It's a surprise. Ianto cracks one eye open a little and there's Jack, dressed to the braces and cufflinks, resting comfortably at his side but not touching him. He smiles when he catches Ianto looking. "I have a book," he says, and indeed he does; Stephen King of all things. "Go to sleep. I'll keep watch."
Ianto holds his gaze for a long moment, but Jack is just smiling; a cheerfully inscrutable sphinx. He never gives away anything with those smiles of his. Ianto sighs a little and turns his face into Jack's pillow, closes his eyes. He falls asleep just like that, between one breath and the next, naked and warm in Jack's bed.
*
He sleeps restlessly, falling in and out of dreams. Jack wakes him every few hours, as ordered, and asks him stupid questions like, "Ianto, are they all going to die at the end of this story?" and "Ianto, are you sure they're not all going to die?" and "Is there a movie version?" and "How do you keep red wine from staining when it spills? I never did figure that out."
The fifth time Jack wakes him, Ianto is so tired, so aggravated. He could sleep forever, if only Jack would stop. "I don't have a concussion," he says sharply, which makes his head pound. He curls tighter around Jack's pillow, and feels Jack's hand on his shoulder, comforting. "Even if I did, needing to wake someone with a concussion is just an old wives' tale. There's no need, Jack, really."
"I don't know about old wives, I'm just doing as ordered by our attractive young physician," Jack says. "But that was the last time, Ianto, I promise. Go back to sleep now."
"I should be so lucky," he says, but he is, closes his eyes again and is asleep almost instantly.
His flashes of dream get more strange. He dreams that he's inside a cloud, and then that he's throwing sticks for a very large, fanged dog, which he thinks in his dream is probably not a dog at all.
And he dreams that he's lying in Jack's bed, the blankets pooled low on his hips, Jack's hand flat on the small of his back. Jack is reading. Lisa is sitting on the ground in the corner of the room with Ianto in her arms, a cleaver at his throat. She's sobbing. Her hands are metal. Ianto is standing behind her, looking at himself in her arms, at himself on Jack's bed, at the cleaver in his own bloody hands.
Ianto's subconscious used to be more subtle.
"Just a dream," Jack says to the Ianto in the bed, without looking up from his book. His hand rubs slow circles on Ianto's back. Ianto watches, transfixed, until he can almost feel the pressure, until he's the Ianto in the bed again, asleep.
*
In the morning, Jack is already up and gone when Ianto wakes. Ianto struggles to sit and finds that although his head aches, a grinding pain, he doesn't feel quite so disconnected any longer. His body is sore, but nothing was broken. He'll be all right. He's slept for almost sixteen hours.
He dresses in his clothes from the day before, though they smell and he doesn't really want to touch them. He does have a few spare suits tucked away and could easily shower, don one, but all he's wanted for so many hours is his own bed, his own pillows, his own space where he's alone. It doesn't seem worth the effort.
When he walks out into the Hub, Jack is walking towards him, carefully carrying a small tray with two cups. His hair is mussed, and he too is wearing yesterday's clothes. He doesn't look tired though he must've been up all night.
"Sir," Ianto says, and Jack is obviously surprised, though he doesn't so much as twitch.
"Ianto," he says. "Up already?"
"And heading home, sir, thank you." Ianto ignores the flash of Jack's eyes; it could hardly be disappointment, could it?
"Eager to feed your plants?" Jack says. Ianto nods, though he has no plants. He has nothing at home, really. He's lived in Torchwood for nearly as long as Jack, nearly as many hours of the day and night, although no one knew. "Do you need a ride?"
"I've called a cab," Ianto says, which is also a lie. He'll call one from his office upstairs, maybe, or walk; he doubts Jack will watch him go on the CCTV.
"Ah." Jack hesitates, then sets down the coffee tray and crosses his arms over his chest. "All right. Same as everyone else, I expect you in tomorrow, Ianto. Let me know if you need more time."
Ianto nods and passes him on the walkway, keeps his head down. Jack doesn't move to give him more room. He rarely does; deliberate intimidation or no consideration for personal space, Ianto wouldn't be surprised to know it's either or both.
He gets to the door before Jack stops him, says, "Ianto."
He hesitates, then turns, keeps his face carefully expressionless. "Yes, sir?"
"You did very well out there," Jack says. "You should know that."
Ianto searches his gaze, but Jack does deadpan as well as he does. "Thank you."
"You're welcome. Feel better." Jack turns away and picks up the coffee tray, bringing it back up to the kitchenette, and Ianto nods, confused, and makes his escape.
*
Strangely, it's Jack's caretaking that digs at Ianto later. When he stumbles into his own shower, he touches his bruises and remembers Jack's hands following the same path more vividly than he remembers the punches and kicks. He goes to his bed with his hair still wet, too tired to stay on his feet any longer. The pillows smell of detergent. His sheets are cold.
Eventually, he falls asleep. He stays under for a long time and wakes slowly, with the dream of Lisa on his mind. When he opens his eyes, he half-expects to see Jack's broad shoulders, careless hands, the smile that shouldn't be so reassuring, toothy as it is, but he's alone. He's sore from head to toe, and inside. His stomach aches like an ulcer. He climbs out of his bed like a very old man, treats the ulcer with coffee and toast, showers and puts on a fresh suit.
When he straightens his shoulders and looks at himself in the mirror, he looks as calm and pleasant as any mid-level accountant, but for a bit of visible bruising. The aches fade. His stomach hurts distantly, like it's no longer a part of him.
He smiles wryly at his reflection. "Clark Kent should be so lucky," he says, and goes back to work.
*
They all spend the day quiet and contemplative. Jack keeps them in the Hub and watches over them like a brood of chicks. Ianto watches him as he fusses over Gwen, who seems all right, although her eyes rarely leave Owen and never lose the fogged glitter from the other day. He barks orders at Owen, who delights in barking back, and gently teases Tosh, who warms under his attention.
He's aware of Jack watching him as intently as he's watching Jack, and can feel his movements being analyzed and catalogued; pained, restrained, ordinary. Jack touches him twice. His fingertips against Ianto's wrist are nothing unusual and Ianto brushes that aside. But Jack's hand on his back, an echo of Ianto's dream, catches him by surprise. When he turns his head and Jack is looking at him, calm, expressionless but intense, his stomach twists. He slips away, follows the sound of voices to the morgue, and stands quietly at the top of the stairs until Gwen and Owen take notice of him long moments later.
"It's nearly time for supper," he says, ignoring the fact that it isn't, ignoring their bemusement, and collects their orders.
They all eat together, herded to the conference room by Jack. This is not abnormal; Ianto has thought since the beginning that Jack is more lonely than he'll let on, and the familial nature of meals taken together simply makes him happy. As they settle in, Ianto finds Jack's hands on him again, that touch at the wrist, the solid weight of Jack's hand on his back. He can hardly walk away from supper without causing a stir, and the rest of the team are settling into a rhythm that feels too much like normal. He avoids Jack's gaze, settles in his habitual spot to Jack's left, and eats quietly while everyone laughs and jokes around him.
Jack laughingly squashes a food fight between Owen and Tosh and gets up to get a drink, rests his hand on the nape of Ianto's neck as he passes. "All right, Ianto?" he asks casually, and squeezes when Ianto jerks a startled nod, aware of the others watching. "Mind the children while I'm gone, then. I don't want to come back to a mess."
"We'll be good," Gwen promises, and the moment the door is shut behind Jack she's leaning forward, eyes locked on Ianto's face. "Is he trying to seduce you?" she asks, incredulous, delighted, jealous, and Owen pushes her back in her seat with a brisk warning about her wounds, his hands possessive.
"He's not," Ianto says, which isn't a lie. He isn't sure exactly what Jack is doing, but it's hardly a seduction--Jack's already had him twice, and knows as well as Ianto does that all he needs to do is beckon and he can have Ianto again.
"I think he's trying to make amends," Tosh says and Owen snorts, rakes Ianto with a dismissive glance.
"Amends for what? Ianto's mistakes? Hardly likely, is it? Oww!"
"Kicking under the table isn't nice," Jack says as he comes back in. He doesn't touch Ianto again as he brushes past, but smiles at him as he sits back down.
"It was well-deserved though," Ianto says. "Thank you, Toshiko."
"Any time," Tosh says, and they all turn back to their dinners, Owen grumbling, under Jack's watchful and amused gaze.
*
"Stay," Jack says, when Gwen has finally gone home to Rhys, and Owen, miserable, has dragged Tosh out for drinks. Ianto is finishing the last of the locking up.
Ianto hesitates, thinking of his cold bed and the pillows that don't smell like anything, of Jack's hands more caring than he expected.
Jack smiles when Ianto looks up. Ianto thinks his answer must be written all over his face but before he can open his mouth, Jack folds his hands and says, like it's important, like Ianto's answer really matters, "Please?"
"Yes, sir," Ianto says, as he meant to say all along, and he follows Jack down to his rooms.
*
It's his first opportunity to explore. He knew that Jack was uncut but is somehow surprised to discover that he has few scars, no tattoos, tidy body hair that highlights what it ought to highlight. Elsewhere, his skin is very smooth. His muscles are strong but padded in a way that Ianto's aren't, round where Ianto is angular; at the shoulder, hip and thigh, in particular.
Ianto feels out of proportion in comparison, like his legs are too long and his ribcage too narrow, his skin too white. Jack doesn't seem to notice. He's focused on Ianto's hands and mouth mapping his body, which is absurdly gratifying. But apparently even Jack Harkness can only take so much, and eventually he tugs at Ianto's hair.
"You plan to stay down there all night?" he asks, his smile crooked across his face. Ianto smiles back and crawls up the mattress, straddles him and runs his fingers down the solid muscle of his belly. Jack's hands close tight on Ianto's hips, squeeze.
"I could," Ianto says. He cups his fingers over the wet head of Jack's cock, enjoying the thrust of Jack's hips into his hand. "Would that be a problem, sir?"
"No problem, Ianto." Jack is near laughter, even as his thighs move against Ianto's. "Do whatever you like. I just thought there might be something you'd like better."
Ianto tightens his grip and Jack gasps, those smiling lips gone a little slack, his whole body pushing powerfully upwards. "I can't imagine, sir," he says, and isn't surprised at all to find himself flipped over, pressed into the mattress, Jack's heavy body a weight he unfolds to welcome.
"I'll have to show you what I was thinking of," Jack says against his mouth, and it's Ianto's turn to say, "Please."
*
This time, when Lisa appears, he knows he isn't dreaming. He's tucked into Jack's bed with Jack curled up around him, warm and relaxed. Jack's hand is on his back, short nails scratching gentle circles between his shoulder blades.
Lisa stands in the corner, a ghost of metal, flesh and blood. But her eyes are not the eyes of the Cyberwoman; they're wide and wondering and hurt.
"Sir?"
Jack stirs, opens his eyes, then turns his head to follow Ianto's gaze. He doesn't tense up, keeps his hand moving slowly on Ianto's skin. "Just an echo," he says quietly. "The leftover energy of grief, I think."
"Is it my grief, sir, or hers?" Ianto asks, and Jack doesn't answer, just closes his eyes again and tucks his forehead against Ianto's neck, breathing warm against his skin. Ianto watches the echo of Lisa for a long time, until she seems to fade, and he falls asleep with the memory of her eyes and the feel of Jack's skin on his mind.
*
To no one's surprise, Torchwood has specific forms that need to be filled out when an operative gains/abuses/loses the ability to read/manipulate/destroy the minds of teammates. Jack is still angry, Ianto can read it in every line of his body, so he takes the binder and Toshiko's elbow, and gently guides her away to privacy.
"Did you at any time use your ability to blackmail a member of the Torchwood organization?" he asks her quietly, and she shakes her head, no. "A member of the general public?" No. "Did you at any time use your ability to initiate a sexual encounter?"
Toshiko's eyes fill with tears, and Ianto sighs. "She manipulated you," he says gently, touching her hand. "And it seemed--Tosh, she seemed to feel for you."
Tosh smiles at him, wipes the tears away. "It's not that," she says. "It's something else. It's--Ianto, do you have any idea what people are really thinking? What they're thinking of you?"
Ianto looks away, and catches Jack's eye. Jack is watching them through the glass, his face expressionless, his arms crossed over his chest. "No," Ianto says. "I have no idea."
"You're better off that way, believe me," Tosh says, and he looks at her. Her voice is calm enough, but she's shattered somewhere, he can feel it.
"Well, I think the world of you, Toshiko," he says. He pats her hand lightly and smiles. "Believe me."
"You--you were thinking of your own pain." Tosh looks at him, leans forward. "I didn't mean to pry, Ianto, honestly, but it was there and I couldn't help but know and I just--I wanted to tell you that it ends. The pain ends, Ianto." She pauses. "Doesn't it?"
"I suppose we'll find out," Ianto says, and closes the binder, looking away. Tosh takes that for what it is, and leaves him to sit alone.
*
He hesitates on the threshold of Jack's office. "Sir?"
"Ianto." Jack looks up, leans back in his seat and stretches his arms behind his head. "I thought you'd gone home. I did the locking up myself."
"No sir, sorry." Ianto takes a step closer. "I'm wondering, sir, if Tosh--if she's going to be allowed to remember what she learned."
Jack's eyes harden. "Embarrassed by what you were thinking, Ianto?"
In a way, he is. That Tosh heard nothing from him but a subconscious ramble-on about his own pain, it seems absurdly self-centered. But his embarrassment is mild, really. It's the shattered look in Tosh's eyes that he's thinking of now. "She's very hurt, sir."
Jack stares at him and he allows it, looking back until Jack's eyes soften again and he smiles a little. "I've talked to Tosh, she'll be fine," he says. "A bit disillusioned, yes, but nothing she won't get over. Don't worry so much--and that's an order, Ianto."
Ianto's lips twitch at the very idea and he shakes his head; that's all it takes to make Jack's eyes gleam, devilish, pleased with himself. "Tell me to fuck off," he invites. "I give you permission to tell me where to shove my orders."
"Later, perhaps," Ianto murmurs, and Jack laughs, pushes his chair back from his desk.
"If I begged you very nicely to come here and sit with me, Contrary Ianto, would you do that?" he asks, and Ianto eyes him, the chair, the cluttered desk. One wrong move and they'd be busy for weeks reorganizing Jack's piles, at best; at worst they'd be on the floor with a broken chair and broken bones.
"I think not, sir," he says. "But if you begged very nicely for something else, you might be surprised."
Jack's eyes go wide and dark in a heartbeat. "Interesting," he says, and stands, pushing his braces down as he casually ambles around his desk. "Very interesting. Care to continue this discussion somewhere a little more comfortable, Ianto?"
"Lead on, sir," Ianto says, and Jack does, leads him on with a gentle tug at his tie and a devilish grin. Ianto follows with a grin of his own and thinks maybe, Tosh. Maybe it ends, after all.
*
He stirs because Jack is talking. "You're a damn annoying ghost, you know that?" Jack says quietly. Ianto doesn't open his eyes, drifts, mostly asleep. Jack's hand is cupping the back of his neck, and it slides up to the base of his skull, holds him still against Jack's chest. "He's trying to let you go, can't you see? Can't you stop?"
Lisa doesn't answer.
"Well, you can't make me feel guilty about this," Jack mutters. "Stand there as many nights as you want. See if I care." His hands are tight on Ianto, uncomfortably so, but he stays limp and lets Jack hold him, lets his eyes stay shut. He takes slow, deep breaths, full of Jack's smell, the warmth of him, and eventually Jack sighs. His breathing evens out, steady like Ianto's. His body relaxes, even his hands.
He says, "Or maybe it's not you who's holding on, hmm? Poor Lisa," and his voice is gone drowsy. He kisses Ianto's temple and sighs and Ianto lets himself drift back to sleep, strangely both comforted and disturbed.
*
"You're so late," Jack says. He's swirling liquid in a glass, something clear. His braces are down, his shirt unbuttoned.
Ianto smiles, charmed that Jack has waited for him so eagerly, impatiently. "A fact I deeply regret, sir," he says, and he means it.
Jack tosses back his drink, stalks forward, smiling too. "It's all right," he says. His hand skims Ianto's shoulder, settles against his neck, and he kisses Ianto, three times, quick and nearly chaste. "You're forgiven."
*
After their game, Jack tosses the stopwatch into Lisa's corner; deliberately or not, Ianto doesn't know. But he wakes hours later to find her there, staring at the stopwatch that lies at her feet. He says, "Oh, Lee," and sits up on the edge of the bed.
She looks fully human, fully herself again. When she moves across the room, though, it's not like walking. The hair rises on Ianto's arms, but he doesn't feel threatened.
"Ianto," she says, from far away. It's the first time he's heard her since the first night, when she wept; it's the first time in so long that he's heard her real voice, without the shadow of the Cyberwoman. "Ianto, love."
"Lisa--"
She shivers, like a flickering image on a television screen. "I think it's time."
"I know," he says. He wants to reach out, touch her, but can't move. "Are you ready to go, darling?"
Lisa shivers again and around the edges, she looks a little vague. "I think so. Are you ready to let me?"
Ianto smiles. "No."
"Oh, well, that's all right," Lisa says, so much like his girl in that moment that his throat closes. "If I wait for you to be ready, I'll be waiting forever, won't I?"
"Forever," Ianto agrees.
"Silly boy," Lisa says. She shivers again. "I loved you, back when I really knew what love was."
Ianto chokes on a sob, a laugh. "I loved you too; then, and long after."
"So silly," Lisa says, and laughs, and begins to disappear.
The sound Ianto makes then embarrasses him, and he covers his mouth with his hand, hoping that somehow Jack has slept through Lisa's last visit. But Jack is curling around him, warm, awake and aware, and the weight of him against Ianto's back looses something inside him. Pain rips through his stomach, his chest; he says, "Lisa--" knowing somehow that he can keep her. He can pin this pain down and keep the ghost of Lisa with him always, the spirit of her, around as long as he should live.
"She loved you," Jack whispers in his ear, fierce, ferocious. "How can you--"
"I can't," Ianto says, and he lets her go.
*
"Tosh, do you need--no? All right?" Ianto looks past her to Gwen and Owen, limping through the door, covered in mud and something green, foul-smelling. They're grinning fiercely, arms wrapped around each other as they whoop breathless laughter. Toshiko came in with a little more dignity, but she too smells foul, and she's sliding in her own slime-trail. "I take it you caught the Florisigatter?"
"We caught it," Jack says, walking in behind the rest of the team. He's green head to toe, and Ianto feels his eyes widen. He keeps a straight face only through years of practice. "We caught it, and caught it, and caught it."
"Owen's solution exploded it," Gwen says. "Oh God, I've got to sit." She collapses bonelessly against the wall. "Oh, Ianto, you should've seen it--a good soaking and the thing just went poof! And there we were in the line of fire, suddenly soaked, and Jack said--Jack said--"
"Something we're not going to repeat," Jack says, and strides past them all. He smells so foul that Ianto recoils, which Jack notices immediately. He reaches out one slimey green hand and snags Ianto round the back of the neck. "Think I'm going to need a hand cleaning up!"
Ianto tries to struggle free, but Jack's grip is implacable, for all that it's slick. "Sir," he says, trying to resist the urge to grin, trying to breathe, "Shouldn't someone help you who is, perhaps, already filthy?"
"Oh no," Jack says. "That wouldn't do at all. You know how I keep saying you need more field experience, Ianto? Well, this will count."
"Thank you, sir," Ianto says, and gives in gracefully in hopes of saving his suit. "I didn't think you meant I needed experience with the field, but all right, I suppose."
Jack turns his head to grin, and Ianto can't keep his straight face anymore, grins back. "There's all kinds of field experience," Jack says with a wink. "What do you say we get me clean, get the kids some supper and send them home, then I'll teach you all about one of the other sorts?"
"Sounds like a brilliant plan, sir," Ianto says, and laughs.