Fic: Never Have I Ever (Torchwood)
Title: Never Have I Ever
Author: Ivy ivy03
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: R (for language)
Length: 3,800 words
Warnings: Spoilers up through Doctor Who "Journey's End" and Torchwood "Exit Wounds."
Summary: Egregious application of both whisky and scotch, and way too much information. Alternate ending to "Journey's End," if (highlight for episode spoilers) the time-lock had not conveniently opened.
A/N: I started this back in July, immediately after watching "Journey's End." With the new season of Torchwood on the horizon, it was time to polish the thing off and finally post it. It was originally part of a five things fic, which never quite made it to five things. This is the best section, anyway.
~*~
They spent the first week researching the time lock. Ianto had quickly assured Gwen that they had plenty of food. The Hub was built to survive everything short of the total destruction of the planet. He'd been very careful to guarantee the supply of food, had even worked out a rationing plan, though he'd had to adjust that from five people down to two.
Two days in, they'd heard from the Doctor. It had been thrilling there for a bit, helping tow the Earth back to its place in the firmament. They'd heard the celebrations on the Tardis, saw a glimpse of Jack, talked to that elusive right kind of Doctor, then the Doctor had signed off. They'd expected the time lock to break then and Jack to come strolling in.
It didn't.
"But if we heard from the Doctor," Gwen reasoned for the hundredth time. "That means that we can't be stopped in time. Time has to be passing in here."
"Yes," Ianto grunted half-heartedly from the couch. "Then what's that still doing there?" He gestured at the open door with its Dalek sculpture. "Jack said all the Daleks were destroyed. So time can't be moving there."
"It's just-if time is moving in here, and time is moving out there, but there's just a thin shell of stopped time around us-how does that work? I'm not a physicist, but that makes no bloody sense at all." Gwen paced in front of the computer again. "And how was the Doctor able to communicate to us? And why hasn't anyone else?"
"Magic."
"It's not magic," Gwen said derisively. "Tosh managed it, I'm sure we can as well."
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Ianto heaved a sigh.
"Then why are we still stuck!" She heaved a container of pencils at the door. This had become her favorite way to vent, lately. There was already a coffee cup with a spray of coffee, three staplers, a pad of post-it notes and a box of thumb tacks suspended in the doorway. And the bullets. Ianto resolved to make her clean up the mess when they finally reached their targets.
They spent the second week drinking their way through Jack's liquor. Ianto knew some of the spots he had it hidden, but it was amazing how many bottles of expensive aged whisky Jack had squirreled around the base. They turned it into a scavenger hunt. The winner got to get drunk on the proceeds. So did the loser.
"I never…" Ianto said, head lolling back against the couch. He was sprawled on the floor, propped up against the couch, with Gwen lying nearby, head on a stolen cushion. "I never had sex outside."
"Boring," Gwen said, then threw back a shot. Ianto refilled both their glasses. "I never had a threesome."
"Hmm," Ianto pondered. "Girl-girl-boy, or boy-girl-boy?"
"Or boy-boy-boy?" Gwen said with an eyebrow waggle.
"Fair enough," Ianto took a sip.
"Do I even want to know who?" Gwen said, sitting up further.
"Well, you can take a fairly good guess as to who two of the people were. And I didn't notice you drinking anything. Should I ask-girl-girl-girl?"
"Well, it depends on what your definition of sex is."
"If you're going to get semantic on me, you have to take the drink. Okay. I never had sex in the autopsy bay."
Gwen took her drink then looked at Ianto. "Really? You haven't?"
"It's creepy in there. I always feel like Owen's watching me. Even before he died. Either time."
Gwen paused for a moment. "I never had sex in the greenhouse."
"Oh, that's not fair. You caught us."
"You need to catch up with me, so drink up."
Ianto choked on his drink, turning a little red in the face as he coughed.
"I never had sex on one of the desks in here." She gestured in front of them.
"That's two in a row!" Ianto gasped when he could. "You can't do that."
"I don't see you denying it," she said with a grin, then squinted her eyes. "It wasn't my desk was it? It was! God! I'll never write a memo again!"
Ianto looked sheepish.
"Jack shagging you on my desk." She blew out a breath, hoping Ianto didn't notice her squirming a little. "There's an image."
Ianto pushed himself up straighter, looking seriously at Gwen. When he spoke, his words only slurred slightly. "You want to shag my boyfriend."
"All of Wales wants to shag your boyfriend. Half of them probably have," Gwen said, matter-of-factly.
"Have you?" Ianto asked, looking too earnest, given the subject. "Shagged him, I mean?"
Gwen's eyes darted to the side. "No. No."
Ianto humphed. "Well, he wants to shag you. I can tell."
Gwen kept staring at the floor, part of her elated at the realization that shagging Jack wasn't just idle fantasy, but an actual possibility. But most of her was overwhelmed by guilt that she was thinking that while sitting here with Ianto. Fortunately, Ianto's attention seemed to have wandered from the subject.
"Jack's the best shag I've ever had," Ianto said mournfully.
Gwen snorted, still thinking of the newly concrete possibility of her and Jack. "Well, he should be. All that practice…"
"But the reverse isn't true." Ianto continued as if she hadn't spoken, clearly caught up in this train of thought. "It can't be. He's had, what, hundreds of lovers?"
"Thousands."
"Right. Thousands. I can't be the best. There's no way. I mean, I don't have tentacles, I'm not identical twins, I'm not even particularly flexible. He's had better shags. So what is he doing with me?" He finally looked at Gwen, eyes taking a moment to focus.
"Well, he likes you." Gwen cringed inwardly.
"Or I'm just convenient. Oh, god, just listen to me. I sound-"
"Completely pissed."
"Not completely yet. Give that over." He reached feebly towards the bottle, which Gwen helpfully pushed into his fingers. He'd slumped downwards by this point, so he was more lying on the floor with his head against the couch at an odd angle than sitting. He gave a half-hearted attempt to sit up, as if trying to get on firmer ground, physically and mentally. "I shouldn't be so bloody insecure. He told me he loved me."
Gwen hated that she felt a little pang of jealousy at that. She shouldn't, she knew, she had Rhys, but still. "He did? Well, there you go. That's why he comes back."
"Well," Ianto drew the word out. "He told me that if he'd stayed on his own planet he'd never have loved people that he loved, but he was looking at me at the time."
Gwen started in outrage. "That's bollocks! That wasn't an 'I love you,' that was complete rubbish. 'If he'd stayed at home he wouldn't have loved people'? I mean-people? How vague can you get?"
"But it's close, right?"
"No. When Rhys told me he loved me, he looked me right in the eyes and said it. 'I love you.' Course, I laughed at him," she added. "You need to hold out till he actually says it. Don't let him fuck with your head like that."
"What, I'm just supposed to ask him?" Ianto sounded like that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.
"Yeah."
He took a long look at his glass in one hand and the bottle in the other. He decided just to swig from the bottle. "I did, once."
"Really? What did he say?"
Ianto turned bright red, then spoke under his breath. "He said… He said 'I love your cock up my ass.'"
Quiet as he'd been, Gwen heard that quite clearly. She guffawed. "Oh, god. Real romantic. What did he say when you told him."
"Told him what?"
"Told him you loved him! What did he say?"
"I, uh. Haven't actually told him."
"Oh, god, the two of you." Gwen said, affronted. "Men! Bitch all you want about how women always want to talk about their feelings, but jesus, if you put two men in a relationship you never talk about bloody anything." She grabbed the bottle back from Ianto. "My turn!"
"Really? I think it's my turn."
"Okay, shoot."
"Um…" Ianto said, wishing that his neurons would fire just a little faster.
"Right. My turn." Gwen thought for a moment, then decided she was just pissed enough to ask, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer. "I never cheated on someone I was with."
She hastily took a sip. Ianto didn't move. "What, never?" Ianto shook his head. "But Jack-"
"We have an 'open relationship.'" Ianto made quotation marks with his fingers.
"Oh," Gwen said, relieved. "So you've been with someone else, but it's not cheating."
"No, haven't. Jack does, but I don't. Didn't on Lisa, either." It had been said without rancor, but Gwen still felt embarrassed for bringing it up. "You," Ianto said. "Owen, right?"
"God. It's embarrassing. Did everybody know?"
"You weren't very subtle. Besides, you seemed not to notice how often I go down to the archives."
"It's just-it was a mistake," Gwen rushed to say. "It wouldn't have happened, but I'd just started here and I couldn't tell Rhys anything, and there was all this new stuff, and then there was Owen, and he might not look it, but he really just-"
"Stop!" Ianto said, making a "T" gesture with his hands. "It's okay, you don't have to explain it to me. Especially not to me," he rolled his eyes in silent acknowledgment of his own mistakes.
"I don't know why, but I feel like I should."
"Was Owen…" Ianto trailed often.
"Oh, he was definitely the only one. I don't know. I felt so awful-I never want to feel like that again. I don't ever want to make Rhys feel like that." She stopped for a moment, the words choking in her mouth, afraid that she'd said too much. But Ianto just nodded sympathetically-he didn't know. Of course he didn't know. There were some secrets she had managed to keep.
She continued after a moment. "But sometimes I think-this is it? Just him, for the rest of my life? It's so depressing. Can't I just have a little bit of fun, just a little release, and have it not ruin everything?"
"You'd have to ask Rhys that, but I don't think that's how it works."
Gwen didn't want to talk about her and Rhys anymore. "But you and Jack-that's hardly fair. He gets to shag anyone he wants and you can't?"
Ianto sighed. "I don't have the energy. He wears me out. The man has the libido of a bunny rabbit. If he didn't shag other people he'd either spend all his time wanking or I'd never be able to sit down again."
"See, that's what I mean," Gwen said, her indignation building. "People just aren't meant for monogamy. It's unnatural. Why should society say that one person has to meet all your needs? Why should you throw away a good thing just because of a few rough patches?"
"It is nice, though. Monogamy. … He flirts with everything that moves. It's like-sometimes it's thrilling to know everyone wants what I've got. And sometimes I know I haven't got him." Ianto stared wistfully into space. "Times like that-it just-it makes you feel like you're nothing."
Gwen took another sip of her drink, not tasting it. There didn't seem to be much to say after that.
~*~
They were forced to sober up in the third week, as they had run through all the alcohol. "God," Ianto said, clutching his head, thankful that there were at least plenty of painkillers. "Maybe we should have rationed that, too."
"Shhh!" Gwen called, from her position on the couch.
"Oh god," she said, sometime later, "are you sure time is passing in here? Cause I've had this bloody headache for my entire bloody life." When she shifted from complaining about the headache to worrying about Rhys and the rest of the world (Ianto tried to reassure her that the Doctor had fixed it, everyone but them was fine, but even he had a hard time after a fortnight of nothing), Ianto pulled out Jack's personnel file.
Jack had buried it, of course, but Ianto had managed to find it ages ago, misfiled in a section of the secure archives. There was a time, of course, when knowing everything about Jack was vital to the survival of someone he loved.
He'd never showed it to anyone else, though. Given how much the others speculated on their leader, he wondered why. For all the file said, though, Ianto had found the most burning questions were left unanswered.
Gwen stared at the file box Ianto placed on the conference table. It was filled with hanging folders, labeled by decade, with mission reports, performance reviews, and various other bits of paperwork stuck haphazardly inside. Ianto had been tempted to organize it when he'd first found files, but decided against it in case Jack ever checked them.
"Christ, that's a lot." Gwen muttered.
"It's actually surprisingly little, considering how long he's been here, and his tendency to find trouble."
"Does it have the report for that carnival undercover job?"
Ianto smiled. He'd gone looking himself after their encounter with the Night Travelers. "No. Given that Jack's idea of undercover involves publicly killing himself over and over, I doubt he got approval."
Gwen pulled a folder out of the 1950s. "'Shows exemplary bravery in dangerous situations, but must be deployed with utmost caution,'" Gwen read, her eyebrows raising. She continued. "'Harkness is capable of making difficult decisions when needed, but, perhaps because of his unique situation, is too ready to sacrifice the few for the good of the many. An essential tool, but tends to see everything as a nail.' I wonder what that means."
Ianto smirked. "Could be a euphemism. They were awfully prudish in the fifties."
"'Must be deployed with utmost caution,'" Gwen repeated. "Huh. I guess he wasn't always head of Torchwood Three. I assumed he'd been in charge for ages."
"He's actually only been head a few years." Ianto crossed to the box, and pulled out something from the extremely thin folder that corresponded to the current decade. A short note on official stationery deputizing Jack as second-in-command, signed by Alex Ross, the head of Torchwood Three. And right afterward, Jack's official report on the events of the millennium eve-an alien virus had infected Ross, leading him to murder the rest of the team. The threat was neutralized when Alex took his own life. Then came the notice of the closure of Torchwood Three, the arrest warrant for Jack, and the report from the official inquest that cleared Jack of all charges and instated him as leader of Torchwood Three with a directive to rebuild it.
"Christ," Gwen muttered as she finished. She pushed the pages away from her. "That's horrible."
"Jack was never meant to be our leader. He only got promoted when there was literally no one else left." Ianto said contemplatively.
Gwen's attention snapped to him. "What do you mean he was never supposed to be our leader? Is that your way of bucking for his job?"
"God, no." Ianto slumped into a chair, a rare moment without his usual facade. "I don't think Jack really knows what he's doing, but he knows a hell of a lot more than any of us. I mean either of us." Ianto sighed.
Gwen played with the edge of the folder, worrying it until the corner was soft. "I can't imagine that-finding that your leader had killed your entire team and you couldn't save any of them. It sounds like…he was there. I don't know how he can keep on doing this, after losing his team like that."
"It's happened many times over," Ianto said. He couldn't help remembering the team members he had lost-not just Tosh and Owen, but Suzie, Lisa, everyone at Canary Wharf. "This won't be the last. For Jack, I mean."
"There's a thought."
"I don't think they ever intended to put Jack in charge. They certainly didn't train him for it. Just look at who he got for his new team-Suzie, me… Tosh and Owen, too, all screwed up in our own ways."
"What do you mean Tosh and Owen?"
Ianto waved his hand, realizing he'd just admitted to snooping in their files as well. Maybe this was the moment for sharing, but he didn't feel it was his place to reveal those old secrets. "I just mean, you're the only thing on this team even close to normal."
Gwen smiled, as Ianto knew she would. "What do you mean close? Besides, we all know Jack hired you because he fancied you."
"And that's a brilliant way to make personnel decisions. Just look how it turned out." He grimaced.
"I don't know," Gwen said, leaning forward to take his hand. "I think it turned out all right."
Ianto jerked up, shaking away the melancholy mood. "If you want a laugh, look at how he was recruited." Ianto pulled out the yellowed handwritten pages detailing the story he'd found so amusing the first time-two ballsy Torchwood women dragging Jack in, finally, after another bar-room brawl ended in his public death.
After that, Ianto returned the file to its hiding place. He headed down to the archives, easing the melancholy the way he always did, by slowly teasing order from the chaos. Three weeks was a long time to spend with just one person. He was beginning to worry that they were well and truly trapped here, that his emaciated corpse would be picked clean by a ravenous pterodactyl and his bones trapped outside of time forever. But he'd waited for Jack for four months the last time he had disappeared. He could give his captain a little longer.
~*~
Ianto didn't see much of Gwen the next few days, both of them avoiding each other by some unspoken agreement. That's why Ianto was surprised when Gwen came down to find him in the archives at the beginning of the fourth week.
"This is your job?" Gwen said as she rounded the corner. "I've spent a half hour wandering around trying to find you. How big are the archives?"
"Big enough to keep me occupied for a very long time. Which we now have," he said grimly.
"I've just remembered something," Gwen said with a smile. "Well, come on!" She waved at him and headed back the direction she'd come. Then she turned right, which Ianto knew led to the "might be of ancient earth origin and not alien at all" section of the archives. Ianto caught up and led her back to the stairs.
Gwen headed silently for the autopsy bay, Ianto following dutifully, then opened one of the doors to the morgue refrigerator. Ianto felt uneasy standing there-he'd been avoiding this part of the base ever since Gray. He felt even more uneasy when Gwen crawled in.
"Owen saved something for special occasions." Gwen's voice came back muffled. Then she backed out, holding a bottle of Glenmorangie triumphantly.
"In the morgue?" Ianto asked skeptically. "And you knew exactly which drawer?" He was surprised when Gwen blushed.
"Well, it's refrigerated. And it's not like anyone would go poking around in there."
"True."
She set the scotch down on the metal autopsy table, and they both regarded the amber liquid. "We should really ration it," Ianto said.
"Uh huh," Gwen agreed.
~*~
Gwen refilled the glass and handed it down to Ianto, lying flat on his back in the bottom of the bay.
"To Owen!" he said.
"To Tosh!" Gwen responded, clinking their glasses before subsiding back on the table.
Ianto curled himself upward to try to drink the scotch without spilling. He was mostly successful. They'd been toasting their friends through half the bottle so far. It seemed a fitting memorial.
"If they were both still here we could play Hearts," Ianto said mournfully.
"I don't know how to play Hearts," Gwen objected, then started giggling.
"Then I'd make you play with Owen. I get Tosh." Ianto snorted, eventually curling on his side, gasping for breath.
"He was really good."
"At Hearts?"
"He'd do this thing with his tongue…"
"Oh, god, Gwen, stop!" Ianto forced out between giggles.
Ianto could barely catch his breath through laughter for a while. He was startled into silence, though, by a crash, a cry, and a thud from the front of the Hub. He and Gwen both rushed up the stairs. Ianto only tripped twice.
It turned out the crash was the Dalek exploding, the cry was Jack being hit simultaneously by a dozen bullets, a handful of pencils and thumbtacks, and a cup of scalding coffee, and the thud was him hitting the floor. Ianto looked at his boss, spread-eagle on the floor, covered in coffee and blood, and was momentarily overwhelmed with relief that they were finally rescued and anger that it had taken so long. Then he snorted.
Gwen joined him, her laugh hee-hawing in a way that sounded almost painful. They would have fallen over, had Gwen not stumbled into a desk and Ianto into her.
Martha and a young man Ianto vaguely recognized rushed in, worry written all over their faces. "Did it work?" the man asked.
Somehow, the thought that, had it not been Jack on the threshold, their four-week-old bullets might have killed Martha or the young man was unbearably funny. Ianto and Gwen were still laughing manically when Jack came around.
"Are you two alright?" Jack looked concerned.
Ianto couldn't force a breath to speak, so he just waved vaguely at the bottle Gwen was for some reason still clutching.
"Oh," Gwen said, straightening up. "What time is it? Rhys!" She pushed away from Ianto and made it halfway across the Hub before face-planting. Jack quickly rushed to retrieve her from the floor and put her on the couch instead.
"That's just great," Jack said, huffing. "We've spent a month struggling to get you out, and you've just been in here partying." He turned away from Gwen. "Tell me you at least got her to take her top off. If I couldn't be in on the fun, you owe me that much."
Ianto tried to make a joke about laundry and lack of change of clothes, but all that came out was a hiccupping laugh.
Jack straightened up as a thought occurred to him. He narrowed his eyes at Ianto. "Where did you get the booze?"
Ianto's laughter subsided into a snicker, and Jack rushed to his side before he, too, hit the floor. Ianto slumped against him, enjoying the smell of Jack's cologne and the feel of the wool overcoat against his cheek, even if it was damp with coffee and stuck with the odd thumb tack.
"It's good to see you, sir," he said, then his eyes slipped shut.
Read on AO3.
Author: Ivy ivy03
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: R (for language)
Length: 3,800 words
Warnings: Spoilers up through Doctor Who "Journey's End" and Torchwood "Exit Wounds."
Summary: Egregious application of both whisky and scotch, and way too much information. Alternate ending to "Journey's End," if (highlight for episode spoilers) the time-lock had not conveniently opened.
A/N: I started this back in July, immediately after watching "Journey's End." With the new season of Torchwood on the horizon, it was time to polish the thing off and finally post it. It was originally part of a five things fic, which never quite made it to five things. This is the best section, anyway.
~*~
They spent the first week researching the time lock. Ianto had quickly assured Gwen that they had plenty of food. The Hub was built to survive everything short of the total destruction of the planet. He'd been very careful to guarantee the supply of food, had even worked out a rationing plan, though he'd had to adjust that from five people down to two.
Two days in, they'd heard from the Doctor. It had been thrilling there for a bit, helping tow the Earth back to its place in the firmament. They'd heard the celebrations on the Tardis, saw a glimpse of Jack, talked to that elusive right kind of Doctor, then the Doctor had signed off. They'd expected the time lock to break then and Jack to come strolling in.
It didn't.
"But if we heard from the Doctor," Gwen reasoned for the hundredth time. "That means that we can't be stopped in time. Time has to be passing in here."
"Yes," Ianto grunted half-heartedly from the couch. "Then what's that still doing there?" He gestured at the open door with its Dalek sculpture. "Jack said all the Daleks were destroyed. So time can't be moving there."
"It's just-if time is moving in here, and time is moving out there, but there's just a thin shell of stopped time around us-how does that work? I'm not a physicist, but that makes no bloody sense at all." Gwen paced in front of the computer again. "And how was the Doctor able to communicate to us? And why hasn't anyone else?"
"Magic."
"It's not magic," Gwen said derisively. "Tosh managed it, I'm sure we can as well."
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Ianto heaved a sigh.
"Then why are we still stuck!" She heaved a container of pencils at the door. This had become her favorite way to vent, lately. There was already a coffee cup with a spray of coffee, three staplers, a pad of post-it notes and a box of thumb tacks suspended in the doorway. And the bullets. Ianto resolved to make her clean up the mess when they finally reached their targets.
They spent the second week drinking their way through Jack's liquor. Ianto knew some of the spots he had it hidden, but it was amazing how many bottles of expensive aged whisky Jack had squirreled around the base. They turned it into a scavenger hunt. The winner got to get drunk on the proceeds. So did the loser.
"I never…" Ianto said, head lolling back against the couch. He was sprawled on the floor, propped up against the couch, with Gwen lying nearby, head on a stolen cushion. "I never had sex outside."
"Boring," Gwen said, then threw back a shot. Ianto refilled both their glasses. "I never had a threesome."
"Hmm," Ianto pondered. "Girl-girl-boy, or boy-girl-boy?"
"Or boy-boy-boy?" Gwen said with an eyebrow waggle.
"Fair enough," Ianto took a sip.
"Do I even want to know who?" Gwen said, sitting up further.
"Well, you can take a fairly good guess as to who two of the people were. And I didn't notice you drinking anything. Should I ask-girl-girl-girl?"
"Well, it depends on what your definition of sex is."
"If you're going to get semantic on me, you have to take the drink. Okay. I never had sex in the autopsy bay."
Gwen took her drink then looked at Ianto. "Really? You haven't?"
"It's creepy in there. I always feel like Owen's watching me. Even before he died. Either time."
Gwen paused for a moment. "I never had sex in the greenhouse."
"Oh, that's not fair. You caught us."
"You need to catch up with me, so drink up."
Ianto choked on his drink, turning a little red in the face as he coughed.
"I never had sex on one of the desks in here." She gestured in front of them.
"That's two in a row!" Ianto gasped when he could. "You can't do that."
"I don't see you denying it," she said with a grin, then squinted her eyes. "It wasn't my desk was it? It was! God! I'll never write a memo again!"
Ianto looked sheepish.
"Jack shagging you on my desk." She blew out a breath, hoping Ianto didn't notice her squirming a little. "There's an image."
Ianto pushed himself up straighter, looking seriously at Gwen. When he spoke, his words only slurred slightly. "You want to shag my boyfriend."
"All of Wales wants to shag your boyfriend. Half of them probably have," Gwen said, matter-of-factly.
"Have you?" Ianto asked, looking too earnest, given the subject. "Shagged him, I mean?"
Gwen's eyes darted to the side. "No. No."
Ianto humphed. "Well, he wants to shag you. I can tell."
Gwen kept staring at the floor, part of her elated at the realization that shagging Jack wasn't just idle fantasy, but an actual possibility. But most of her was overwhelmed by guilt that she was thinking that while sitting here with Ianto. Fortunately, Ianto's attention seemed to have wandered from the subject.
"Jack's the best shag I've ever had," Ianto said mournfully.
Gwen snorted, still thinking of the newly concrete possibility of her and Jack. "Well, he should be. All that practice…"
"But the reverse isn't true." Ianto continued as if she hadn't spoken, clearly caught up in this train of thought. "It can't be. He's had, what, hundreds of lovers?"
"Thousands."
"Right. Thousands. I can't be the best. There's no way. I mean, I don't have tentacles, I'm not identical twins, I'm not even particularly flexible. He's had better shags. So what is he doing with me?" He finally looked at Gwen, eyes taking a moment to focus.
"Well, he likes you." Gwen cringed inwardly.
"Or I'm just convenient. Oh, god, just listen to me. I sound-"
"Completely pissed."
"Not completely yet. Give that over." He reached feebly towards the bottle, which Gwen helpfully pushed into his fingers. He'd slumped downwards by this point, so he was more lying on the floor with his head against the couch at an odd angle than sitting. He gave a half-hearted attempt to sit up, as if trying to get on firmer ground, physically and mentally. "I shouldn't be so bloody insecure. He told me he loved me."
Gwen hated that she felt a little pang of jealousy at that. She shouldn't, she knew, she had Rhys, but still. "He did? Well, there you go. That's why he comes back."
"Well," Ianto drew the word out. "He told me that if he'd stayed on his own planet he'd never have loved people that he loved, but he was looking at me at the time."
Gwen started in outrage. "That's bollocks! That wasn't an 'I love you,' that was complete rubbish. 'If he'd stayed at home he wouldn't have loved people'? I mean-people? How vague can you get?"
"But it's close, right?"
"No. When Rhys told me he loved me, he looked me right in the eyes and said it. 'I love you.' Course, I laughed at him," she added. "You need to hold out till he actually says it. Don't let him fuck with your head like that."
"What, I'm just supposed to ask him?" Ianto sounded like that was the most ridiculous thing he'd ever heard.
"Yeah."
He took a long look at his glass in one hand and the bottle in the other. He decided just to swig from the bottle. "I did, once."
"Really? What did he say?"
Ianto turned bright red, then spoke under his breath. "He said… He said 'I love your cock up my ass.'"
Quiet as he'd been, Gwen heard that quite clearly. She guffawed. "Oh, god. Real romantic. What did he say when you told him."
"Told him what?"
"Told him you loved him! What did he say?"
"I, uh. Haven't actually told him."
"Oh, god, the two of you." Gwen said, affronted. "Men! Bitch all you want about how women always want to talk about their feelings, but jesus, if you put two men in a relationship you never talk about bloody anything." She grabbed the bottle back from Ianto. "My turn!"
"Really? I think it's my turn."
"Okay, shoot."
"Um…" Ianto said, wishing that his neurons would fire just a little faster.
"Right. My turn." Gwen thought for a moment, then decided she was just pissed enough to ask, though she was pretty sure she already knew the answer. "I never cheated on someone I was with."
She hastily took a sip. Ianto didn't move. "What, never?" Ianto shook his head. "But Jack-"
"We have an 'open relationship.'" Ianto made quotation marks with his fingers.
"Oh," Gwen said, relieved. "So you've been with someone else, but it's not cheating."
"No, haven't. Jack does, but I don't. Didn't on Lisa, either." It had been said without rancor, but Gwen still felt embarrassed for bringing it up. "You," Ianto said. "Owen, right?"
"God. It's embarrassing. Did everybody know?"
"You weren't very subtle. Besides, you seemed not to notice how often I go down to the archives."
"It's just-it was a mistake," Gwen rushed to say. "It wouldn't have happened, but I'd just started here and I couldn't tell Rhys anything, and there was all this new stuff, and then there was Owen, and he might not look it, but he really just-"
"Stop!" Ianto said, making a "T" gesture with his hands. "It's okay, you don't have to explain it to me. Especially not to me," he rolled his eyes in silent acknowledgment of his own mistakes.
"I don't know why, but I feel like I should."
"Was Owen…" Ianto trailed often.
"Oh, he was definitely the only one. I don't know. I felt so awful-I never want to feel like that again. I don't ever want to make Rhys feel like that." She stopped for a moment, the words choking in her mouth, afraid that she'd said too much. But Ianto just nodded sympathetically-he didn't know. Of course he didn't know. There were some secrets she had managed to keep.
She continued after a moment. "But sometimes I think-this is it? Just him, for the rest of my life? It's so depressing. Can't I just have a little bit of fun, just a little release, and have it not ruin everything?"
"You'd have to ask Rhys that, but I don't think that's how it works."
Gwen didn't want to talk about her and Rhys anymore. "But you and Jack-that's hardly fair. He gets to shag anyone he wants and you can't?"
Ianto sighed. "I don't have the energy. He wears me out. The man has the libido of a bunny rabbit. If he didn't shag other people he'd either spend all his time wanking or I'd never be able to sit down again."
"See, that's what I mean," Gwen said, her indignation building. "People just aren't meant for monogamy. It's unnatural. Why should society say that one person has to meet all your needs? Why should you throw away a good thing just because of a few rough patches?"
"It is nice, though. Monogamy. … He flirts with everything that moves. It's like-sometimes it's thrilling to know everyone wants what I've got. And sometimes I know I haven't got him." Ianto stared wistfully into space. "Times like that-it just-it makes you feel like you're nothing."
Gwen took another sip of her drink, not tasting it. There didn't seem to be much to say after that.
~*~
They were forced to sober up in the third week, as they had run through all the alcohol. "God," Ianto said, clutching his head, thankful that there were at least plenty of painkillers. "Maybe we should have rationed that, too."
"Shhh!" Gwen called, from her position on the couch.
"Oh god," she said, sometime later, "are you sure time is passing in here? Cause I've had this bloody headache for my entire bloody life." When she shifted from complaining about the headache to worrying about Rhys and the rest of the world (Ianto tried to reassure her that the Doctor had fixed it, everyone but them was fine, but even he had a hard time after a fortnight of nothing), Ianto pulled out Jack's personnel file.
Jack had buried it, of course, but Ianto had managed to find it ages ago, misfiled in a section of the secure archives. There was a time, of course, when knowing everything about Jack was vital to the survival of someone he loved.
He'd never showed it to anyone else, though. Given how much the others speculated on their leader, he wondered why. For all the file said, though, Ianto had found the most burning questions were left unanswered.
Gwen stared at the file box Ianto placed on the conference table. It was filled with hanging folders, labeled by decade, with mission reports, performance reviews, and various other bits of paperwork stuck haphazardly inside. Ianto had been tempted to organize it when he'd first found files, but decided against it in case Jack ever checked them.
"Christ, that's a lot." Gwen muttered.
"It's actually surprisingly little, considering how long he's been here, and his tendency to find trouble."
"Does it have the report for that carnival undercover job?"
Ianto smiled. He'd gone looking himself after their encounter with the Night Travelers. "No. Given that Jack's idea of undercover involves publicly killing himself over and over, I doubt he got approval."
Gwen pulled a folder out of the 1950s. "'Shows exemplary bravery in dangerous situations, but must be deployed with utmost caution,'" Gwen read, her eyebrows raising. She continued. "'Harkness is capable of making difficult decisions when needed, but, perhaps because of his unique situation, is too ready to sacrifice the few for the good of the many. An essential tool, but tends to see everything as a nail.' I wonder what that means."
Ianto smirked. "Could be a euphemism. They were awfully prudish in the fifties."
"'Must be deployed with utmost caution,'" Gwen repeated. "Huh. I guess he wasn't always head of Torchwood Three. I assumed he'd been in charge for ages."
"He's actually only been head a few years." Ianto crossed to the box, and pulled out something from the extremely thin folder that corresponded to the current decade. A short note on official stationery deputizing Jack as second-in-command, signed by Alex Ross, the head of Torchwood Three. And right afterward, Jack's official report on the events of the millennium eve-an alien virus had infected Ross, leading him to murder the rest of the team. The threat was neutralized when Alex took his own life. Then came the notice of the closure of Torchwood Three, the arrest warrant for Jack, and the report from the official inquest that cleared Jack of all charges and instated him as leader of Torchwood Three with a directive to rebuild it.
"Christ," Gwen muttered as she finished. She pushed the pages away from her. "That's horrible."
"Jack was never meant to be our leader. He only got promoted when there was literally no one else left." Ianto said contemplatively.
Gwen's attention snapped to him. "What do you mean he was never supposed to be our leader? Is that your way of bucking for his job?"
"God, no." Ianto slumped into a chair, a rare moment without his usual facade. "I don't think Jack really knows what he's doing, but he knows a hell of a lot more than any of us. I mean either of us." Ianto sighed.
Gwen played with the edge of the folder, worrying it until the corner was soft. "I can't imagine that-finding that your leader had killed your entire team and you couldn't save any of them. It sounds like…he was there. I don't know how he can keep on doing this, after losing his team like that."
"It's happened many times over," Ianto said. He couldn't help remembering the team members he had lost-not just Tosh and Owen, but Suzie, Lisa, everyone at Canary Wharf. "This won't be the last. For Jack, I mean."
"There's a thought."
"I don't think they ever intended to put Jack in charge. They certainly didn't train him for it. Just look at who he got for his new team-Suzie, me… Tosh and Owen, too, all screwed up in our own ways."
"What do you mean Tosh and Owen?"
Ianto waved his hand, realizing he'd just admitted to snooping in their files as well. Maybe this was the moment for sharing, but he didn't feel it was his place to reveal those old secrets. "I just mean, you're the only thing on this team even close to normal."
Gwen smiled, as Ianto knew she would. "What do you mean close? Besides, we all know Jack hired you because he fancied you."
"And that's a brilliant way to make personnel decisions. Just look how it turned out." He grimaced.
"I don't know," Gwen said, leaning forward to take his hand. "I think it turned out all right."
Ianto jerked up, shaking away the melancholy mood. "If you want a laugh, look at how he was recruited." Ianto pulled out the yellowed handwritten pages detailing the story he'd found so amusing the first time-two ballsy Torchwood women dragging Jack in, finally, after another bar-room brawl ended in his public death.
After that, Ianto returned the file to its hiding place. He headed down to the archives, easing the melancholy the way he always did, by slowly teasing order from the chaos. Three weeks was a long time to spend with just one person. He was beginning to worry that they were well and truly trapped here, that his emaciated corpse would be picked clean by a ravenous pterodactyl and his bones trapped outside of time forever. But he'd waited for Jack for four months the last time he had disappeared. He could give his captain a little longer.
~*~
Ianto didn't see much of Gwen the next few days, both of them avoiding each other by some unspoken agreement. That's why Ianto was surprised when Gwen came down to find him in the archives at the beginning of the fourth week.
"This is your job?" Gwen said as she rounded the corner. "I've spent a half hour wandering around trying to find you. How big are the archives?"
"Big enough to keep me occupied for a very long time. Which we now have," he said grimly.
"I've just remembered something," Gwen said with a smile. "Well, come on!" She waved at him and headed back the direction she'd come. Then she turned right, which Ianto knew led to the "might be of ancient earth origin and not alien at all" section of the archives. Ianto caught up and led her back to the stairs.
Gwen headed silently for the autopsy bay, Ianto following dutifully, then opened one of the doors to the morgue refrigerator. Ianto felt uneasy standing there-he'd been avoiding this part of the base ever since Gray. He felt even more uneasy when Gwen crawled in.
"Owen saved something for special occasions." Gwen's voice came back muffled. Then she backed out, holding a bottle of Glenmorangie triumphantly.
"In the morgue?" Ianto asked skeptically. "And you knew exactly which drawer?" He was surprised when Gwen blushed.
"Well, it's refrigerated. And it's not like anyone would go poking around in there."
"True."
She set the scotch down on the metal autopsy table, and they both regarded the amber liquid. "We should really ration it," Ianto said.
"Uh huh," Gwen agreed.
~*~
Gwen refilled the glass and handed it down to Ianto, lying flat on his back in the bottom of the bay.
"To Owen!" he said.
"To Tosh!" Gwen responded, clinking their glasses before subsiding back on the table.
Ianto curled himself upward to try to drink the scotch without spilling. He was mostly successful. They'd been toasting their friends through half the bottle so far. It seemed a fitting memorial.
"If they were both still here we could play Hearts," Ianto said mournfully.
"I don't know how to play Hearts," Gwen objected, then started giggling.
"Then I'd make you play with Owen. I get Tosh." Ianto snorted, eventually curling on his side, gasping for breath.
"He was really good."
"At Hearts?"
"He'd do this thing with his tongue…"
"Oh, god, Gwen, stop!" Ianto forced out between giggles.
Ianto could barely catch his breath through laughter for a while. He was startled into silence, though, by a crash, a cry, and a thud from the front of the Hub. He and Gwen both rushed up the stairs. Ianto only tripped twice.
It turned out the crash was the Dalek exploding, the cry was Jack being hit simultaneously by a dozen bullets, a handful of pencils and thumbtacks, and a cup of scalding coffee, and the thud was him hitting the floor. Ianto looked at his boss, spread-eagle on the floor, covered in coffee and blood, and was momentarily overwhelmed with relief that they were finally rescued and anger that it had taken so long. Then he snorted.
Gwen joined him, her laugh hee-hawing in a way that sounded almost painful. They would have fallen over, had Gwen not stumbled into a desk and Ianto into her.
Martha and a young man Ianto vaguely recognized rushed in, worry written all over their faces. "Did it work?" the man asked.
Somehow, the thought that, had it not been Jack on the threshold, their four-week-old bullets might have killed Martha or the young man was unbearably funny. Ianto and Gwen were still laughing manically when Jack came around.
"Are you two alright?" Jack looked concerned.
Ianto couldn't force a breath to speak, so he just waved vaguely at the bottle Gwen was for some reason still clutching.
"Oh," Gwen said, straightening up. "What time is it? Rhys!" She pushed away from Ianto and made it halfway across the Hub before face-planting. Jack quickly rushed to retrieve her from the floor and put her on the couch instead.
"That's just great," Jack said, huffing. "We've spent a month struggling to get you out, and you've just been in here partying." He turned away from Gwen. "Tell me you at least got her to take her top off. If I couldn't be in on the fun, you owe me that much."
Ianto tried to make a joke about laundry and lack of change of clothes, but all that came out was a hiccupping laugh.
Jack straightened up as a thought occurred to him. He narrowed his eyes at Ianto. "Where did you get the booze?"
Ianto's laughter subsided into a snicker, and Jack rushed to his side before he, too, hit the floor. Ianto slumped against him, enjoying the smell of Jack's cologne and the feel of the wool overcoat against his cheek, even if it was damp with coffee and stuck with the odd thumb tack.
"It's good to see you, sir," he said, then his eyes slipped shut.
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