TW fic: "Priapus ex Machina" 8,064 words, NC-17, Jack+Ianto+Toshiko
Title: Priapus ex Machina
Author: kayliemalinza
Word count: 8,064
Rating: NC-17 for sexual content
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Toshiko
Setting: During Season 2
Spoilers: None
Summary: Toshiko's invented a sex machine. Jack asks her to teach Ianto the controls.
Content Advisory: mild BDSM, tentative polyamory, a sex machine with Rift-improved e-stim, power struggles, present tense, and two persons remain fully clothed.
Teaser: "It's important to have these parameters set before going at this in earnest," Tosh mutters as she draws a small line near the middle of a clicker wheel embedded in the control box. "This is what you asked me to do, Jack. I'm really sick of people asking me to show them things and then not listening." Her voice is tight and coiled at the end, defined best by what it lacks: she is not loud, she is not screeching. She is restraining herself.
Priapus ex Machina
Ianto kicks his flat door closed behind him and tosses his car keys. They clank in the metal bowl by the door but underneath that is an unfamiliar clicking down the hallway. He turns, coat shrugged halfway off one shoulder, to see Toshiko coming from the shadows. It's her heels against his hardwood floor that go click-click.
"Er, hullo," he says.
Toshiko's smile falls right off her face, leaving her mouth hanging slightly open. "You didn't know I was going to be here," she says.
Ianto blinks at her, then pulls his coat properly off his shoulders to hang it on the rack. "I did not," he says, "but of course you're welcome. Shall I put on the kettle?" His voice is rising cheerily and it's not that forced, he finds. He's unsettled somewhat to have someone besides Jack against the muted colours of his flat, but Tosh's clean-cut presence is complementary to the sharp lines of his skirting boards. Besides, his mother taught him all the rules of hospitality. It would do him good to keep in practice.
Toshiko follows him to the kitchen and when Ianto looks back, she's got her hands tucked against her waist as if she's afraid she'll be so rude as to trail a finger on his wallpaper and leave a grease mark. "I apologize, Ianto," she's saying. "I thought you knew what was happening this afternoon. I would never just barge in."
She looks mortified, so Ianto warms her with his softest smile. "Of course not," he assures her. "I assume Jack let you in?" The cupboard clatters when he reaches for the teabags.
"He told me to come here," Tosh says. She adds ruefully, already certain of the answer: "He didn't tell you."
Ianto pulls out a chair at the table and indicates with the touch of a fingertip against her shoulder blade that she should sit in it. "He probably assumed that I would eventually return to my own flat without having to be told." His tone is light and he winks at Tosh before he turns his attention to the electric kettle.
Toshiko has a smile in her voice when she dryly clarifies, "I meant he didn't tell you that I was coming. Or why."
"Unfortunately, no. I could've gotten your favorite biscuits," Ianto says. He reaches up to pull a box from the cupboard and wave it at her. "Will Jaffa Cakes suffice?"
Tosh, easing into the kitchen chair with a nervous skitter lurking in her eyes, nods 'yes' then pops right back out of the chair as Jack walks into the kitchen. Jack, as ever, is a solid wall of Here-I-Am: all brash and broad and sculpted well.
He's also naked.
Toshiko turns to face the other wall with one hand clamped across her mouth.
Ianto blinks and clutches the box of Jaffa Cakes against his chest. Naked Jack is surprising and demands attention, certainly, but Ianto notices that Jack is not precisely wearing nothing. "What is that… contraption?" he asks.
Jack grins. "Toshiko invented a sex machine!" he says proudly.
"Of course she did," says Ianto.
The electric kettle, with suspiscious timing, goes ping and the water falls silent off the boil.
"I really should be going," Toshiko says, voice muffled by her hand. She swivels to go out the door but Jack is still nakedly blocking the way so she swivels back, her cheeks flushed dusky red.
The state of affairs seems stable for the moment, relatively speaking, so Ianto peers more scrupulously at the ostensible sex machine. It looks, in the simplest glance, like two metal cuffs wrapped around Jack's thighs with spidery rods criss-crossing between them. The cuffs ride high and fit too snugly to be metal, now that Ianto considers it. Jack turns to the side, almost as if he is posing, and Ianto spies the tell-tale gleam of bio-steel.
"He wasn't naked when I left him," Toshiko says. She's blinking rapidly at Ianto's top jacket button. "I just came by to drop it off. I didn't think he would wear it." She is more embarrassed, it seems, at having seen her boss (and Ianto's boyfriend) in the nude than at having smuggled Rift-given materials out from the Hub.
Ianto finds this reasonable.
"I had to make sure I could put it on right," Jack says, eyebrows raised as if he honestly thinks this excuse will be accepted. He grins just deep enough to show his dimple and adds, "Anyway, Toshiko, since you're the brilliant inventor, don't you want to demonstrate how it works?"
"No!" Toshiko blurts. "I-Jack." She stares at him in shock for some moments, eyes round and skittish.
"It comes with a remote control," Jack informs Ianto.
"I see," says Ianto. He peers between Jack's legs again. Jack is standing with them slightly parted, offering the shadowed crannies of his thighs and pelvis for their viewing pleasure. The silver rods reach upward into the snuggly recesses. Jack catches him looking and does a careful turn. He sets a hand upon the wall and leans forward at a subtle yet beguiling angle.
What passes as subtle for Jack, at any rate. Ianto glimpses a disc, gleaming like the cuffs around his thighs, and seated firmly on that disc (itself supported by the rods, which bend and jitter when Jack moves) is a familiar flash of red. Jack's favorite dildo, translucent ruby with gold swirls, scalloped at the tip.
"It accommodates my every move," Jack says over his shoulder. His posterior, possibly, wriggles. "A sophisticated and finely-tuned instrument of unbelievable fun," he says smugly, as if he has invented it instead of Toshiko.
"I'll draw up an instruction manual," Toshiko says shortly, and makes her escape while Jack is paying more attention to the wall than the doorway.
"But manuals have so many words," Jack complains. "I think a physical demonstration would be much more-Toshiko?" He looks about for Toshiko and soon realizes what must have happened. He stares accusingly at the empty doorway.
"Jack," Ianto says sharply, but Jack is unmindful and hares after Toshiko down the hallway.
After the briefest conflicted glance at the untidiness he has left on the counter, Ianto follows.
"This is entirely inappropriate!" Toshiko is saying, quite loudly. She is standing with her back to the front door and pointing a finger at Jack.
Jack is holding his palms held up and outwards, but he is still naked. Anyone else would look vulnerable but nudity on Jack is aggressive. "It's a perfectly legitimate tech support request!" he says. "You people are so-"
"Jack," Ianto says, more loudly than before. "You are being very rude."
Jack opens his mouth to protest but reconsiders at the tilt of Ianto's head and instead looks faintly aggrieved. His nod to Toshiko is not quite an apology, but nonetheless a gesture of respect. He steps back several spaces.
Toshiko settles herself. "'Perfectly legitimate tech support request,'" she repeats.
"Yes ma'am," Jack says. "It's a very sophisticated piece of equipment, and we need proper training. I mean, we would just push random buttons and see what happens, but you get upset when we do that." He gives a smile just short of wheedling but does restrain himself from sidling closer. "And you know how an instruction manual can't really explain the wonders of a machine like this. I'm sure there's all kinds of tricks and idiosyncrasies Ianto should know about."
Tosh stares at him like she knows she shouldn't be falling for this, but her very essence is split between propagating correct procedure and not being in the same room as her rather nude boss.
Then Jack puts his hands together and says, "Please?"
Toshiko sighs and puts her fingers to her forehead. "Ianto, what is your opinion?" she asks, waiting until she has finished speaking to look over.
Ianto mulls it over a moment. "I would like to be trained properly," he says finally. "But only if you are comfortable."
"I'm not going to take my clothes off," Toshiko says sternly.
"No one has to get naked but me," Jack promises.
"Very well," says Toshiko. She picks up her bag from the floor and click-clicks past both of them, back toward the bedroom. "But I want to be very clear that I am doing this for Ianto's benefit."
"Do you like him more than me, or something?" Jack seems wounded, yet his enthusiasm is undimmed as he grabs Ianto's hand to lead him after her.
In the bedroom, Jack flops decadently across the bed.
Toshiko has set her bag in the corner and is holding a box, clean-lined and grey, with colored switches on the top. "Alright, let's begin," she says and her voice is what she uses when giving a lecture in the conference room and is not sure that Owen and Gwen will pay attention. She waits for Ianto and once he has shuffled into place beside her, she throws back her shoulders, all business.
"This is the remote box," she says. "I am working on a smaller, more streamlined version, for common use, but for now we'll have to make do with the master control. It contains every available function." She holds it out for Ianto to inspect, but he declines to touch; he is impressed and baffled by the numerous controls, color-coded but unlabelled.
"Seems quite complicated," he says, not without trepidation.
"I'll just start with the basics," Tosh assures him. "Are you ready, Jack?"
Jack wriggles to get comfy and gives the thumbs-up signal.
Toshiko's got a gleam in her eyes. Ianto feels like his rib-cage is lifting in the corner of her smirk as she twists the yellow button slowly to the middle notch. "This is the oscillator control," she says over the sudden gasp and rustle coming from the bed.
Ianto spares an eye to watch her sharp-nailed fingers stroking round the edges of the button. Behind that, in an out-of-focus blur, Jack stretches flat onto his belly and begins to purr.
"This dial controls the speed, but if you want to vary the radius of the oscillations that's this dial directly next to it," Tosh continues. She points at a small grey dial next to the yellow one, glancing at Ianto to make sure he's paying attention.
Ianto is paying attention as well as he is able. Jack is rolling back and forth, frog-legged, thrusting slightly against the mattress. His moans are soft and sound like afterthoughts, as if he's concentrating on sensation rather than performance.
"Ianto," Tosh says quietly.
"Ah," says Ianto. "Sorry, I-" he stops, because how can he and why need he explain? Tosh is looking at him searchingly, eyes clicking back and forth across his face with a sort of wonder and a smile as if she's found a puzzle piece that fits. Ianto feels his neck and cheekbones flush because he knows what he must look like. Sometimes arousal is like falling off a cliff and Jack can stop him at the edge with one foot dangling.
(But how do you know, Ianto once asked petulantly, and Jack had laughed and set him at the mirror to see the flush, the wide eyes, the way that Ianto's mouth fell open. There's a vein in your neck that starts to jump, Jack said, then closed his teeth down over it.)
"Are you listening?" Tosh asks teasingly. She gives the yellow button a quick wobble without even looking and Jack stutters, presses his face into the pillow with his backside jolting up.
"Yes," says Ianto, and pulls himself together. "What do you mean by radius?"
"Right now it's set at point zero," Toshiko says. "Basically, it's just vibrating. If I set it at one point five...." She twists the grey dial and Jack shouts suddenly, rearing up and gripping the headboard. He settles back on his heels, the silver spokes of machinery gliding into a new configuration as he spreads his legs. The red jelly end of the dildo is working between the curves of his buttocks. "It moves the base in a circle," Toshiko explains, "and makes it seem larger. Let's dial this down before he overexerts himself," she adds, and smirks as Jack's back muscles clench and relax, synchronized to the flex of her fingers. "Are you alright there, Jack?" she calls.
"I'm doing great," he answers heartily, forehead resting on the slick wood top of the headboard. He's got a thread of cheerful insolence in his voice, but he's breathing heavily on top of it and his back is still bunching up. The pillows are no match for bone and burnished muscle rocking into them and are completely squashed beneath his knees. Ianto wonders how long he could keep Jack like that, the yellow dial set just too low to give Jack what he wants. Already Jack is glancing impatiently at them over his shoulder and leaning back like he's going to find a new position if nothing happens soon.
Tosh is feeling kind or is just pushing ahead in the tutorial. "You can link the radius to the speed and control them both with the yellow dial," she says, "but it's a lot more fun to vary them independently." Ianto expects her to sit down and rest the control on her lap but instead she splays her hand out over both controls, index finger hooked around the grey while her thumb sends yellow up and down the scale.
Jack hums happily and slides down the headboard in a boneless slop that leaves him half curled up, one hand gripping the side of his thigh. His face rests in the crook of his elbow for just a moment before he's rolling across the bed again, dipping and bucking at the whims of Toshiko's fingers.
Tosh is watching him every moment, fingers working blindly at the dials. Her mouth is hard with concentration but she's holding herself differently. Ianto sees her left knee propped out just slightly and imagines that's because she's got her thighs pressed close together, sealed tight at the proper angle to intensify the throbbing and the heat.
Jack nearly topples over the foot of the bed, head and one hand hanging off. His toes are curling in the sheets and he rasps out, "Almost there.... just gun it. Push me over."
Toshiko's shaking her head. "I'm not finished with the demonstration," she says.
"Fuck the demonstration," Jack says. "Give him an instruction manual later, just finish me off now!"
Tosh gets a hard, flashing look on her face that makes Ianto want to take Jack's trousers from the chair, pull his belt from the loops, and hand it to Tosh to see what happens next. The air is crackling, tense and brittle. The machine whirs on, just too soft to push Jack over and too strong to let him settle. Jack still clings to the edge of the bed with his hips and buttocks arching upward in short, unhappy jerks.
Tosh, silent and unmoving, twists the dials. She peaks and varies the controls, easing Jack down from his high-strung precipice, and he echoes every movement in the pitch and volume of his voice. He ends on a sharp-edged moan and glares at Tosh.
"Turn it back on," he says.
"No," says Tosh, with so much force that Ianto almost steps away.
Jack's face turns dark. "That's an order," he growls.
Ianto clears his throat hurriedly. "I should point out that this is outside working hours, and hardly official business," he says.
Jack's shaking his head, eyes and mouth still hard, maybe angry with himself because he knows he's breaking a major rule. "I'm still the boss," he says.
"And I'm the one holding the controls," Tosh says tartly. She purses her lips, head tilted to the side expectantly. Ianto is sure she intended it to be a joke, but her fingers are twitching for the buttons with a touch of desperation.
Jack's lower jaw pushes out stubbornly as he stares her down, arse still in the air and hands still clutching tightly at the sheets.
Tosh lifts her chin and glares back at him for a long moment before she suddenly smiles, Kewpie and disarming. "I haven't even shown you all the special features," she says, and flicks a red and black striped toggle at the top.
Jack's face goes slack suddenly and he pitches halfway off the bed. The machine is crackling, almost loud enough to cover Jack's thin and helpless whine. His right arm is trembling with the strain of holding his weight from falling completely to the floor.
Tosh flicks the toggle back and waits. Jack pushes himself up from the edge of the bed and slinks, slow and careful like a lizard on a cold day, for the middle. His entire body deflates an inch or two into the mattress.
"I don't-I don't even know what that was," he stammers, mouth half open and eyes unfocused.
"E-stim," Tosh says simply. "Did it hurt? I'm not sure what your tolerance is, so I skewed low."
"E-stim?" Ianto says, worried that he knows exactly what she's talking about.
"Electrical stimulation," Tosh supplies, then quirks a self-effacing smile. "It's not electricity, actually; I used some things I'd learned from Rift technology. It's much safer," she adds brightly.
"It's also," Jack says, still slightly breathless, "a clear violation of-" he bites off the rest when Toshiko makes an adjustment and flicks the red and black toggle again.
"Did that hurt this time?" Tosh asks, pure concern. "It's important that you answer carefully, Jack. I need to determine your threshold."
"I-I-" Jack shakes his head helplessly so Toshiko goes for the toggle, leaves him twitching and tensely arched for several long seconds. "I don't know," Jack strangles out, and digs his fists into the bed.
Tosh studies him for a moment, head cocked to the side. "Let's say that's the edge for you, then. Ianto, if you could fetch a grease pencil from my bag?" she asks.
Ianto goes immediately, feeling the prickle of Jack's hard and hazy gaze on his back. He slips a glance as he presses the pencil into Tosh's palm and Jack's eyes are saying traitor traitor traitor. Jack's eyes are also saying push me and I need.
"It's important to have these parameters set before going at this in earnest," Tosh mutters as she draws a small line near the middle of an embedded clicker wheel. "This is what you asked me to do, Jack. I'm really sick of people asking me to show them things and then not listening." Her voice is tight and coiled at the end, defined best by what it lacks: she is not loud, she is not screeching. She is restraining herself.
"I'm listening," Ianto murmurs.
Toshiko gives him a sudden soft glance and smiles. "I know," she says. "Jack is the problem."
Ianto knows that isn't true-he's seen Toshiko slit her eyes at Gwen, and Owen is most often the target of her tongue-but Jack is the problem in this room, right now, and that's what matters. That is the scope of inquiry.
Jack is staring at the sheets, not speaking. His back hunches defensively and it's not the wanton arch that Ianto is familiar with, the arch he shapes and deepens with the flat of his palm.
"Are you going to let me finish showing Ianto the controls?" asks Tosh.
"Fine. Whatever," Jack mutters, and that's interesting, Ianto thinks. It's interesting because Jack could growl or bluster or laugh it off but Tosh has made him sulky and that's a step to something else. Like Ianto, he has no problem pretending to be submissive when it's needed. Actually submitting is a different game.
Toshiko isn't doing anything. Jack holds himself tautly, belly flexing, until the silence draws out too long and he slides a glance at her. "What do you want me to do?" he snaps, irritated.
"You could be more polite, for starters," Tosh answers sourly.
"Call her 'Miss,'" says Ianto. He did not intend to let that out. It's barely louder than a whisper but there's no other noise to cover it and now Tosh is looking at him, eyes startled, and Jack's sharp blues are glinting from the bed. Ianto blinks rapidly. "I just think that would be-" he clears his throat quietly, hyper-aware of the weight of his jacket as he shifts. "Appropriate," he finishes. There are rules about the bedroom and the Hub, conflicting roles and interactions, and how else to strengthen the differentiation between locations than a separation of title and address? That's the sliver of reasoning he's using, floating in an ocean of impulsive want.
Ianto looks at Jack because he's not sure of what he'll see if he looks at Tosh.
Jack is grinning, almost grateful. He can see the lines of demarcation too, the careful strategies and labels to keep them safe and sure. Jack will bend and quiver on command but when the guns are out he has to be obeyed. "'Miss?'" he says to try it out, hips rolling slightly like he's getting back into the saddle, and he is, because Jack isn't Jack unless he's going at life full gallop.
Tosh is soft and stammering. "I don't-it's not necessary," she says. "I just wanted you to be a little nicer." She shoots a helpless glance at Ianto, eyes flicking away almost immediately. "This doesn't have to be a thing."
"You got toppy first," Jack points out with cheerful resentment.
"Only because there was no other way to get you to listen!" Tosh cries.
Jack smirks. "Maybe you should have talked louder."
Ianto gives him a warning look and tries to clear his throat because, for all that Jack can be as patient as a glacier when he feels like it, he tends to want too much too fast. Now is not the time for pulling pigtails; not when the three of them are sliding down a slope they cannot see, not when the treaty has been so newly drawn and not yet signed by all the parties.
Jack ignores the warning look and paints a challenge on his face. The glint of teeth is visible behind his smile. "Sometimes we're not ignoring you, we just don't even realize you're there," he drawls. "You know, Tosh, you're so mousy sometimes."
Tosh looks shocked, unsure, so Ianto steps more closely into her range of vision and says, "Jack is getting a little out of hand, don't you think?" He doesn't know how casual he sounds but he's got his hands in his pockets and his head tipped down like this is an ordinary thing.
Tosh sets her wide eyes on him, breathes, and gathers herself together. Ianto can see that she's not altogether set on what she's doing but her fingers go without her; they smooth the clicker wheel up past the pencil line.
"I don't like raising my voice," she says, and flicks the toggle.
Ianto hasn't heard Jack whimper in a while. Jack's torso drops like an anchor to the mattress, fingers curling up, hips almost out of joint as he arches them higher and the machine crackles like a burning log. The joints and pistons clack softly from his trembling thighs.
Tosh cuts off the stim and watches Jack collapse, hips easing down and ribs expanding raggedly. Ianto is careful to look at Jack's hands, to see that they are unfurling as they should and pressing tentatively against the sheet. Jack's smiling crookedly. This is par for the course, Ianto thinks to himself. This is how it goes when Jack has bowed his head to Ianto. Fun and within boundaries.
Tosh speaks up unexpectedly. "I also," she says with a tensile whip-thin rod beneath her voice, "don't like being goaded."
She hits the toggle again.
Jack cries outright this time, jerking sideways as if he can escape, but the machine just snicks and bends and re-aligns itself, unmerciful.
"Say you're sorry," Toshiko calls above the buzz and Jack's unmuffled whine. "Apologize!"
Jack stutters out before he intended to: "I'm s-s-sorry!" Ianto is sure that Jack would like to have drawn that out, to have hesitated just enough to make his submission suspect. He falls to the mattress in the sudden silence, knees pulled up protectively. Ianto can see the shell-shock in his eyes and the reluctant shift of headspace.
"That's better," Tosh says quietly. "You forgot to call me 'Miss,' though."
Jack looks first at Ianto, checking that Ianto is there and keeping watch. Jack is apprehensive, but not jittery. He's... settled, as if there is a very large hand pressing down on him and he's waiting to see what it will think of doing next.
Ianto doesn't think he is very reassuring, not with his mouth falling open and the vein in his neck pulsing hard. Jack glints at that at least, gives Ianto a sympathetic half-grin as if they were clutched together in the archives trying to tug one off before the next emergency. He draws in a few uneven breaths before he looks at Tosh. "Yes, Miss," he says.
"That's better," Tosh says. "Honestly, Jack, you're so pushy sometimes."
"Bad habit, Miss," Jack says contritely. He closes his eyes for just a moment and presses his forehead to the mattress. "I won't do it again, Miss."
"Let's hope not," says Tosh warningly. She has her shoulders canted in an unfamiliar slant and Ianto wonders if she's made a new compartment for this occasion in her mind: a mental isolation room where she is 'Miss' and not 'Toshiko,' where the naked, squirming Jack and silent Ianto standing next to her are coloured notions, nothing more. He wonders if she is capable of that or if all parts of her are intertwined and he will see this moment lurking in the bottom of her eyes come Monday morning. He doesn't know how her brain is put together. He'll investigate that later, he decides, when he is not surrendering his faculties to the slope of hip and thigh and the line of Toshiko's bra beneath her shirt.
Tosh has surrendered nothing, it seems. She isn't stern or breathless or lascivious; she looks like she's sitting at her desk with bits of tech spread out. "Let's see what this feels like on the lower levels, shall we?" she asks, giving Jack a musing glance and prodding at the clicker wheel. "Since you apologized so nicely."
Jack nods and pulls himself to his elbows and knees again. Out of the corner of his eye, Ianto sees Toshiko tweak the toggle. Jack twitches for a moment then melts into a position more stable, elbows spaced apart. "Miss?" he says, deferential, and he's asking questions: Am I as you want me? What do you desire of me next? It's the same way that Ianto would say 'Sir?' in his first few months and he's embarrassed, suddenly, that he addressed Jack so frequently with a sex-coloured term and didn't realize it. Much.
"Tell me when you like it best," is all Tosh asks, and then she clicks the toggle on again.
Jack breathes quietly into the sheets, eyes falling shut as the crackling starts much softer than before. Toshiko clicks the wheel up bit by bit and Jack spreads his knees farther apart, twitching lightly. At about a quarter strength Jack starts to moan. Tosh pulls the grease pencil from behind her ear to mark the level with a dot.
"Is that good?" she asks, as if she were wondering if her alteration to the code had made a program run more smoothly.
"Yes, yes," Jack murmurs, rubbing his face against the sheets. "More?"
Toshiko smiles her Kewpie smile. "You can also program it to adjust the intensity in a rhythm pattern," she says and Ianto doesn't realize for a moment that she's talking to him. He's startled that he's visible at all; he thought he had turned into a curl of fog inside a suit.
"It works for the oscillator, too," Toshiko adds and Jack's eyebrows do something interesting.
"Oh," Ianto says, voice cracking.
Tosh taps a row of small black buttons near the top. "These are the preset buttons-it's just like a car radio, really," she says, and Ianto's brain has trouble wrapping itself around the idea. His brain is overexerting itself, he thinks, and will be sore in the morning.
Toshiko presses the button second from the left then reaches for the wheel. At her mark, a five-beat syncopated measure repeats itself in zaps and buzzes. Jack lets out a peculiar manly warble and then is spasming across on the bed, muscles bunching, lips slack and wet against the corner of the pillow. Ianto looks past Jack's thigh and the metal strap around it to see the tip of his prick jutting out: dark-tipped, wet, quirking up and down.
"The rhythm controls adjust the intensity relative to the manual setting so you can keep it a very light touch or something with more oomph," Toshiko says. She prods the clicker wheel one more time and Jack hisses.
"That was a touch too far," Tosh murmurs. She skews it down until Jack is stuttering again and makes a careful line to mark the level. "Is that enough information for you?" she asks Ianto solicitously.
Ianto, dry-mouthed, can only nod. He wants, bizarrely, for Tosh to tie him hand and foot to Jack so he can feel the quivers and the jerks, so he can press his mouth against the juncture of Jack's neck and shoulder and suckle there.
Toshiko nods back at him and slides the clicker wheel all the way to zero, accompanied by Jack's unhappy sigh. "Don't worry, we're moving on to something else as soon as you calm down," she says.
Jack perks his head up. "Are you going to-sorry, Miss," he interrupts himself, unsure if he is allowed to speak. He is still breathless from the e-stim and the words expel themselves half-voiced.
"Go ahead," Tosh says distractedly, pulling a stylus from the side of the control box to poke at the small, rectangular screen at the top. Ianto recognizes the stylus and screen-it's from a wireless pad from the conference room that broke a few months ago-and feels dizzy. He's not going to look at PDAs the same way again. He's not going to look at Toshiko the same way again. He has seven layers in his brain and the thirdmost one-the one that flashes skin and mouths and half-way uttered moans against the pinstriped backdrop of work and public and propriety-that layer of his brain will be pulsing double-time for weeks. Good thing he learned to maintain a bland and thoughtful face despite his mental pornography while he was still in O levels.
Jack settles back on his heels, fingers rubbing eagerly against his thighs. "Are you going to show him the thrust setting, Miss?" he says, trying for deference but unable to hide the eagerness in his voice.
"There's a thrust setting," Ianto mumbles. "Of course there's a thrust setting." Tosh turns to look at him and Ianto is gaping. "You're brilliant," he says, whisper-soft and fervently.
"Oh," breathes Tosh, and ducks her head. "I wanted to be thorough," she says as if she needs to give an excuse.
"Believe me," Jack drawls, "it's thorough."
"Jack," Tosh warns.
Jack freezes for a moment, looking sheepish. "Sorry, Miss. I didn't mean to be flip," he says lamely.
"Do you want me to use the thrust setting?" Tosh asks sharply.
Jack mutely nods his head. He rolls his shoulders forward, trying to look small and meek. His prick, unmindful of this, is arching thickly across his left thigh.
"Then ask me nicely," says Tosh. She presses her lips into a hard line. She's trying to look stern but Ianto can tell that she's amused by Jack and calling him a rascal in her head.
"Please, Miss," says Jack, barely pretending to hide a grin. He lowers his shoulders down to the bed, arse perched in the air. "Please fuck me," he adds, just to be saucy.
Tosh cuts a sideways glance at Ianto and the corners of their mouths are mirrored, curling up.
"He did say please," Ianto points out, and hopes the flush of lust-affection isn't visible across his cheeks. He feels warped and silly, like Jack and now Toshiko are stretching him into a different shape. Toshiko cants her head at him and Ianto feels exposed and obvious. Toshiko's smile is reassuring but still, he's grateful when she turns her attention back to Jack.
"I suppose you've been good enough," she says. "Lie down on your back. You look ridiculous like that. Ianto, watch me do this."
Jack moves without hesitation or complaint and flips over. The machine, slips of metal and dark leather, clacks softly as it rearranges all its gears and pistons thin as silver wires. Jack drums his fingers on his hipbones. He's completely immodest and unconcerned about his prick curved out, half-hard, for anyone to see. Toshiko nods approvingly and pushes the yellow dial (the oscillator control, Ianto reminds himself) up to a comfortable level. The prick quivers and firms up again but Ianto pulls his gaze away from that-Jack is preening, dammit, extending all his limbs for a precise allure-and concentrates on the control display, the heat from Tosh's back, the way he has to stand this close to her so she can teach him.
She shoots Ianto a sudden smile. "This is the G-spot targeting system," she announces proudly, angling her shoulders back so Ianto has a better view. The control screen shows a 3D wire frame of some lumpy channel-Ianto realizes with a start that it's an interior view of Jack-with a swelling in the flesh lit up. "When it's just oscillating the system doesn't do much, so let's add some thrust to this. Speed and depth," she says, pointing to each of twin levers in turn. "The rhythm pattern can apply to the thrust setting, but let's leave it off for now." Tosh presses the pornographic preset button. She only nudges 'speed' a fraction but pushes 'depth' up all the way.
Ianto hears the subtle clanking again and watches, rapt, as the silver rods collapse to pull the dildo slowly out of Jack. The red jelly glimmers against his corded thighs then pushes inexorably back in until nothing can be seen except a sliver of the base. Jack draws both legs up, knees bent, and presses his face to the side. He sucks a long breath between his teeth and his belly roils as the machine pulls out of him again.
The diagram has changed; it's a series of concentric circles like a bull's eye, centered on a lit-up swelling. Toshiko drags the stylus on the screen and it's followed by a small green cross-hair. She double-taps the cross on the outer ring of the bull's eye and it stays there when she pulls the stylus tip away. "That aims it a fair bit away from the prostate," she says. "Not completely off the mark, since it's still within the central circle, but enough to apply an indirect pressure." She nods to the bed where Jack is cocking his hips oddly to the side with a look of concentration on his face. "You're not going to trick it into hitting closer," she says smugly.
"Can't help it," Jack mumbles in frustration. He turns his head to the side, pressed hard into the pillows. His fingers dig into the crease between his thigh and hipbone and Ianto knows he's struggling not to touch his prick. His left knee wavers up, down, up again; flexing as if the way his heel is sliding on the sheets will scratch an itch.
"Alright, let's double-tap this and aim it nearer to the center," Tosh says. She flicks just a few glances at her control screen, mostly keeping her eyes on Jack. Ianto looks at the screen because he's supposed to be learning the controls; if he looks too much at Jack he won't learn anything except the timbre of Jack's moans and the darkness of his body's creases. Tosh makes the adjustment in a too-brief moment, though, and Ianto has to look at Jack.
Jack licks his lips and then his mouth falls open. The left knee pops up with purpose and Jack curls his fingers around the back of his thigh, dimpling deep into the flesh. The machine whickers at oblique angles and the jelly sinks and disappears, then trundles out again. Red and silver, red and silver, red and skin deep dusky brown.
Tosh cocks her head to the side. "Shall we take this all the way?" she asks.
"Yes," Jack says instantly. "Please, Miss. God, Toshiko, please."
Tosh studies him a moment. Her stylus hovers above the center dot and Ianto glances at her face, wonders what she's thinking in the space behind her round black eyes. Suddenly she turns and holds the control box out. "How about you do it?" she asks.
"I-no, no," Ianto stammers. "I don't know the controls. You-"
"You know enough of them. You're a quick study," she says, pressing the box into his chest. "Give it a go." Ianto stares dumbly-he wishes he could deal with these things better, wishes he didn't break down into a pair of eyeballs and a mouth for heavy breathing-so Toshiko pulls his left hand gently from his side and cups it underneath the box. "I'll be right here watching," she says quietly, fingers pressed against the tendons of his hand. "I'll be right here."
Ianto finds himself nodding but surely it's not consent, it's just him saying yes to the fingertips as smooth and silky as his favorite tie. It's just him saying yes to anything she asks.
Tosh smiles brilliantly at him-she smiles like she's relieved-and edges Ianto to the bed. "You should sit and rest the control board on your lap," she explains. "It will be a lot easier."
Ianto sits half cross-legged near the headboard while Toshiko slips her steady presence in behind him. Jack's eyes are half-lidded but still so blue and he smiles at both of them, winks reassuringly for Ianto. His hips are rolling to the deliberate sliding of the thing inside him. "Please?" he asks, and Ianto nods.
Ianto tries to fit his fingers to the controls. They are slightly large for Toshiko's hand but small for his and Ianto feels enormous, thick and clumsy. He isn't sure what he's jostled but Jack sniffs quick and deep. His neck arches back and his hand is gripping Ianto's knee then sliding up, then slipping under Ianto's jacket to clutch and crinkle his red shirt.
"Jack-" Ianto bites his lip, trying to ease the yellow slightly up. It jerks, Jack twists, and the fingers over Ianto's heart convulse. "Jack, stop that, you're distracting me." The control board wobbles because Ianto is consumed and focused on Jack's broad hot hand.
"Jack, hands away," Tosh says. "Put them up there, on the headboard." Jack's fingers hesitate and Ianto hopes Jack will cooperate and not yank his head against the reins. Then Tosh is saying Jack's name again, half sharp and half understanding, and Jack is slitting open two gauzy eyes. With a frown of intense concentration he pulls his hand away from Ianto to join the other hand, white knuckles wrapped around the cherry wood.
"Thank you," Ianto murmurs. Toshiko is just a black fringed shadow in the corner of his eye but he sees her bob her head. Her chest is grazing against his back.
Ianto breathes deeply and sets himself to one dial at a time. Jack licks his lips again, a signal Ianto knows, so Ianto clicks the thrust-speed to go faster. Jack's lips curl back from his white sharp teeth. His dimple is showing in the stretch of his cheeks and his moans are thick and deeper than before, crawling from cellar of his throat and up the stairs of his tongue. Ianto double-taps the lime-green crosshair to the center of the bull's eye and Jack's teeth click together. Both his knees are bending up; the right one is pressing hard to Ianto's shoulder and Ianto leans just as hard against it, counterbalance, ballast, keeping himself anchored. Then Jack is saying his name, he's saying Tosh's name, he's melding their names together into Iantoshiko and Toshianto.
Ianto is caught up in the cinematic splash of teeth and tongue and forgets that he's responsible. He stares until Jack's face goes slack, then twinges, and Toshiko slips her arm around his waist-no, she's reaching for the master dial, palm grazing Ianto's knuckles, and powering the whole thing down.
Jack sinks into the bed, eyes closed. He swallows slowly.
Toshiko's hand stays where it is.
Ianto wants to lie on top of Jack and press his teeth just lightly to the round moment of bone at the corner of Jack's jaw. He wants to lie on Jack but he's tangled in the electric wire sparking where Toshiko's hand is curled around his own. Her arm is snug against his waist and he wishes just this once that his suits were not so well made, so thick and tailored to protect. His fingers seem over-large and spare compared to Toshiko's glossy nails and the pads of flesh that plump from one knuckle to the other. He's just working up the nerve to lace his fingertips through hers when she lets out a sigh and slides away.
"I ought to go," she says softly into Ianto's ear.
"No," he says, turning quickly to face her. He shoves the control board by instinct safely underneath a pillow and tells her, "Stay a bit."
She leans back from him, eyes wary and uncertain. "There's nothing else to do here," she says. "You've got a good idea of the controls, and it looks like Jack is worn out."
Jack makes a low noise. "Just give me a few minutes," he mumbles, and lets out a contented sigh.
Tosh smiles tightly over at Jack. "I'll just leave both of you to it," she whispers to Ianto, and smiles again. "See you Monday morning, alright?"
Ianto is shaking his head when she shifts to stand. He makes a noise, a faint and desperate breath, and nudges forward to press his nose against the curve of her jaw. He slides his face slightly upwards and to the side, lips resting next to hers but not against them because he doesn't want to presume, but he will respectfully and with such fervent hope suggest that perhaps they could....
Toshiko freezes, breathes hot and soft across his face, and then she's dipping down and their mouths are together, his still slightly open because he can't help it. She's tasting just the edges of him and Ianto is leaning back, plucking at her shirt sleeve. Toshiko puts her hands on his shoulders, maybe just to steady herself, but Ianto lets a whimper trickle out. He wants her to press harder. Jack got all of her attention today but Ianto is better; he is more appreciative and well behaved.
He pulls at her sleeves again, just the lightest tug, and then Tosh is bearing down on top of him. He falls backwards onto Jack and Tosh's knee is sliding between his legs. Ianto moans and Tosh moans back and Jack's hand curls firmly around Ianto's, moving it from his helpless flutter in the air to mold itself to Tosh's ribcage. Jack slides their hands (thumb pressing into Ianto's wrist, so steady and assuring) into the dip of waist and hip and then farther, floating softly to press their fingertips into the crease where Toshiko's thigh bends up. Ianto is breathing heavily around the twists and slithers of her tongue.
She pushes herself up suddenly and the heels of her hands almost hurt, digging into Ianto's collarbones. "I can't-" Her eyes skitter wildly from side to side. "This is a bad idea."
"No it's not," says Ianto and his voice is rough.
The stare that Toshiko gives him is far away and coiled up inside herself but Ianto's got her weight; he's throbbing beneath the pain-points of her hands and the heavy softness of her rump against his knee. "It's too fast, then," she says finally.
"No, no, please, just-" Ianto sucks in a breath and wants to dig his fingers into Toshiko's hip but Jack is holding his hand tight and won't let him. "Miss," he says, a wild try. "Please, Miss-"
Toshiko shakes her head and clambers off of him decisively. "Give me some time. For God's sake, Ianto, I've never even considered this before." She clicks over to her bag and bends at the knees to heft the strap over her shoulder, looking at the floor and away from them. "I'll let myself out," she says quietly and just like that is gone, leaving Ianto to struggle against the forces of gravity and Jack to follow her.
"Ianto, Ianto, shh," Jack is crooning, sitting up and wrapping his arms around Ianto's waist and chest and pressing his fingers hard into the skin. "You've got to let her think this through, ok?" he murmurs right into Ianto's ear, loud enough to be heard above the huffs and guttered moans. "She has to turn the idea over in her brain and examine it from every angle. Just be patient."
"Easy for you to say," Ianto snaps. He bucks against the hurtful prison arms. "You already got what you wanted."
Jack is silent for a moment, tightening his grip on Ianto and pressing his forehead to the curve of Ianto's neck. "Yes," he says at last. "I got what I wanted but I had to wait for it. You have to think everything through, too. I had to wait so long for you," he says. "And you'll be glad she walked out when she did, as soon as you're thinking straight again," Jack adds, and Ianto can feel the smile against his skin. "You'll get the chance to court her."
Ianto's hands go motionless in the middle of clawing at the edge of the mattress and at Jack. He stares at the floor. "That isn't-I couldn't-" He shakes his head because the tangle of his thoughts for Jack and the newly growing knot of thoughts for Tosh are crowding the space inside his ribs. He feels dizzy, face split and turned in two directions. Jack has pockets in his heart, he has grottoes and volcanic burps of lava and he has a thousand trees with nests and curling branches: Jack has the room to love everyone he's ever met and hate them too, but Ianto's heart is like an arrow. Singular and pointed; he loves fiercely and with razor focus.
He puts his cheek against Jack's and tries to calm himself. Jack draws him back, lets Ianto lean against him.
"Tosh'll come round," Jack says warmly. "You're too gorgeous for her not to. You are," he adds forcefully when Ianto snorts and tries to disagree. There is so much that Ianto must disagree with, but he's tangled up in lust and cannot articulate. "In the meantime, I've got you," Jack is saying. "I'll take care of you. Do you want that?" he murmurs with his lips on Ianto's ear and his fingers trailing down. He slips his hand beneath the waistband of Ianto's trousers. "Do you want me to take care of this for you?"
"Yeah," pants Ianto. "Yes, please," because that is easier than unfurling all the wants and questions throbbing in his chest. He hears the clinking of the machine when Jack shifts and it echoes the slow and teasing way that Jack is unbuckling his belt. Ianto lets the soles of his dress shoes slide across the floor when he parts his legs and pleads for Jack to help him.
He thinks of the hem of Toshiko's skirt and her fingers curled around a dial and it feels good, it does, but mostly what he feels is that it hurts.
Author: kayliemalinza
Word count: 8,064
Rating: NC-17 for sexual content
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Toshiko
Setting: During Season 2
Spoilers: None
Summary: Toshiko's invented a sex machine. Jack asks her to teach Ianto the controls.
Content Advisory: mild BDSM, tentative polyamory, a sex machine with Rift-improved e-stim, power struggles, present tense, and two persons remain fully clothed.
Teaser: "It's important to have these parameters set before going at this in earnest," Tosh mutters as she draws a small line near the middle of a clicker wheel embedded in the control box. "This is what you asked me to do, Jack. I'm really sick of people asking me to show them things and then not listening." Her voice is tight and coiled at the end, defined best by what it lacks: she is not loud, she is not screeching. She is restraining herself.
Priapus ex Machina
Ianto kicks his flat door closed behind him and tosses his car keys. They clank in the metal bowl by the door but underneath that is an unfamiliar clicking down the hallway. He turns, coat shrugged halfway off one shoulder, to see Toshiko coming from the shadows. It's her heels against his hardwood floor that go click-click.
"Er, hullo," he says.
Toshiko's smile falls right off her face, leaving her mouth hanging slightly open. "You didn't know I was going to be here," she says.
Ianto blinks at her, then pulls his coat properly off his shoulders to hang it on the rack. "I did not," he says, "but of course you're welcome. Shall I put on the kettle?" His voice is rising cheerily and it's not that forced, he finds. He's unsettled somewhat to have someone besides Jack against the muted colours of his flat, but Tosh's clean-cut presence is complementary to the sharp lines of his skirting boards. Besides, his mother taught him all the rules of hospitality. It would do him good to keep in practice.
Toshiko follows him to the kitchen and when Ianto looks back, she's got her hands tucked against her waist as if she's afraid she'll be so rude as to trail a finger on his wallpaper and leave a grease mark. "I apologize, Ianto," she's saying. "I thought you knew what was happening this afternoon. I would never just barge in."
She looks mortified, so Ianto warms her with his softest smile. "Of course not," he assures her. "I assume Jack let you in?" The cupboard clatters when he reaches for the teabags.
"He told me to come here," Tosh says. She adds ruefully, already certain of the answer: "He didn't tell you."
Ianto pulls out a chair at the table and indicates with the touch of a fingertip against her shoulder blade that she should sit in it. "He probably assumed that I would eventually return to my own flat without having to be told." His tone is light and he winks at Tosh before he turns his attention to the electric kettle.
Toshiko has a smile in her voice when she dryly clarifies, "I meant he didn't tell you that I was coming. Or why."
"Unfortunately, no. I could've gotten your favorite biscuits," Ianto says. He reaches up to pull a box from the cupboard and wave it at her. "Will Jaffa Cakes suffice?"
Tosh, easing into the kitchen chair with a nervous skitter lurking in her eyes, nods 'yes' then pops right back out of the chair as Jack walks into the kitchen. Jack, as ever, is a solid wall of Here-I-Am: all brash and broad and sculpted well.
He's also naked.
Toshiko turns to face the other wall with one hand clamped across her mouth.
Ianto blinks and clutches the box of Jaffa Cakes against his chest. Naked Jack is surprising and demands attention, certainly, but Ianto notices that Jack is not precisely wearing nothing. "What is that… contraption?" he asks.
Jack grins. "Toshiko invented a sex machine!" he says proudly.
"Of course she did," says Ianto.
The electric kettle, with suspiscious timing, goes ping and the water falls silent off the boil.
"I really should be going," Toshiko says, voice muffled by her hand. She swivels to go out the door but Jack is still nakedly blocking the way so she swivels back, her cheeks flushed dusky red.
The state of affairs seems stable for the moment, relatively speaking, so Ianto peers more scrupulously at the ostensible sex machine. It looks, in the simplest glance, like two metal cuffs wrapped around Jack's thighs with spidery rods criss-crossing between them. The cuffs ride high and fit too snugly to be metal, now that Ianto considers it. Jack turns to the side, almost as if he is posing, and Ianto spies the tell-tale gleam of bio-steel.
"He wasn't naked when I left him," Toshiko says. She's blinking rapidly at Ianto's top jacket button. "I just came by to drop it off. I didn't think he would wear it." She is more embarrassed, it seems, at having seen her boss (and Ianto's boyfriend) in the nude than at having smuggled Rift-given materials out from the Hub.
Ianto finds this reasonable.
"I had to make sure I could put it on right," Jack says, eyebrows raised as if he honestly thinks this excuse will be accepted. He grins just deep enough to show his dimple and adds, "Anyway, Toshiko, since you're the brilliant inventor, don't you want to demonstrate how it works?"
"No!" Toshiko blurts. "I-Jack." She stares at him in shock for some moments, eyes round and skittish.
"It comes with a remote control," Jack informs Ianto.
"I see," says Ianto. He peers between Jack's legs again. Jack is standing with them slightly parted, offering the shadowed crannies of his thighs and pelvis for their viewing pleasure. The silver rods reach upward into the snuggly recesses. Jack catches him looking and does a careful turn. He sets a hand upon the wall and leans forward at a subtle yet beguiling angle.
What passes as subtle for Jack, at any rate. Ianto glimpses a disc, gleaming like the cuffs around his thighs, and seated firmly on that disc (itself supported by the rods, which bend and jitter when Jack moves) is a familiar flash of red. Jack's favorite dildo, translucent ruby with gold swirls, scalloped at the tip.
"It accommodates my every move," Jack says over his shoulder. His posterior, possibly, wriggles. "A sophisticated and finely-tuned instrument of unbelievable fun," he says smugly, as if he has invented it instead of Toshiko.
"I'll draw up an instruction manual," Toshiko says shortly, and makes her escape while Jack is paying more attention to the wall than the doorway.
"But manuals have so many words," Jack complains. "I think a physical demonstration would be much more-Toshiko?" He looks about for Toshiko and soon realizes what must have happened. He stares accusingly at the empty doorway.
"Jack," Ianto says sharply, but Jack is unmindful and hares after Toshiko down the hallway.
After the briefest conflicted glance at the untidiness he has left on the counter, Ianto follows.
"This is entirely inappropriate!" Toshiko is saying, quite loudly. She is standing with her back to the front door and pointing a finger at Jack.
Jack is holding his palms held up and outwards, but he is still naked. Anyone else would look vulnerable but nudity on Jack is aggressive. "It's a perfectly legitimate tech support request!" he says. "You people are so-"
"Jack," Ianto says, more loudly than before. "You are being very rude."
Jack opens his mouth to protest but reconsiders at the tilt of Ianto's head and instead looks faintly aggrieved. His nod to Toshiko is not quite an apology, but nonetheless a gesture of respect. He steps back several spaces.
Toshiko settles herself. "'Perfectly legitimate tech support request,'" she repeats.
"Yes ma'am," Jack says. "It's a very sophisticated piece of equipment, and we need proper training. I mean, we would just push random buttons and see what happens, but you get upset when we do that." He gives a smile just short of wheedling but does restrain himself from sidling closer. "And you know how an instruction manual can't really explain the wonders of a machine like this. I'm sure there's all kinds of tricks and idiosyncrasies Ianto should know about."
Tosh stares at him like she knows she shouldn't be falling for this, but her very essence is split between propagating correct procedure and not being in the same room as her rather nude boss.
Then Jack puts his hands together and says, "Please?"
Toshiko sighs and puts her fingers to her forehead. "Ianto, what is your opinion?" she asks, waiting until she has finished speaking to look over.
Ianto mulls it over a moment. "I would like to be trained properly," he says finally. "But only if you are comfortable."
"I'm not going to take my clothes off," Toshiko says sternly.
"No one has to get naked but me," Jack promises.
"Very well," says Toshiko. She picks up her bag from the floor and click-clicks past both of them, back toward the bedroom. "But I want to be very clear that I am doing this for Ianto's benefit."
"Do you like him more than me, or something?" Jack seems wounded, yet his enthusiasm is undimmed as he grabs Ianto's hand to lead him after her.
In the bedroom, Jack flops decadently across the bed.
Toshiko has set her bag in the corner and is holding a box, clean-lined and grey, with colored switches on the top. "Alright, let's begin," she says and her voice is what she uses when giving a lecture in the conference room and is not sure that Owen and Gwen will pay attention. She waits for Ianto and once he has shuffled into place beside her, she throws back her shoulders, all business.
"This is the remote box," she says. "I am working on a smaller, more streamlined version, for common use, but for now we'll have to make do with the master control. It contains every available function." She holds it out for Ianto to inspect, but he declines to touch; he is impressed and baffled by the numerous controls, color-coded but unlabelled.
"Seems quite complicated," he says, not without trepidation.
"I'll just start with the basics," Tosh assures him. "Are you ready, Jack?"
Jack wriggles to get comfy and gives the thumbs-up signal.
Toshiko's got a gleam in her eyes. Ianto feels like his rib-cage is lifting in the corner of her smirk as she twists the yellow button slowly to the middle notch. "This is the oscillator control," she says over the sudden gasp and rustle coming from the bed.
Ianto spares an eye to watch her sharp-nailed fingers stroking round the edges of the button. Behind that, in an out-of-focus blur, Jack stretches flat onto his belly and begins to purr.
"This dial controls the speed, but if you want to vary the radius of the oscillations that's this dial directly next to it," Tosh continues. She points at a small grey dial next to the yellow one, glancing at Ianto to make sure he's paying attention.
Ianto is paying attention as well as he is able. Jack is rolling back and forth, frog-legged, thrusting slightly against the mattress. His moans are soft and sound like afterthoughts, as if he's concentrating on sensation rather than performance.
"Ianto," Tosh says quietly.
"Ah," says Ianto. "Sorry, I-" he stops, because how can he and why need he explain? Tosh is looking at him searchingly, eyes clicking back and forth across his face with a sort of wonder and a smile as if she's found a puzzle piece that fits. Ianto feels his neck and cheekbones flush because he knows what he must look like. Sometimes arousal is like falling off a cliff and Jack can stop him at the edge with one foot dangling.
(But how do you know, Ianto once asked petulantly, and Jack had laughed and set him at the mirror to see the flush, the wide eyes, the way that Ianto's mouth fell open. There's a vein in your neck that starts to jump, Jack said, then closed his teeth down over it.)
"Are you listening?" Tosh asks teasingly. She gives the yellow button a quick wobble without even looking and Jack stutters, presses his face into the pillow with his backside jolting up.
"Yes," says Ianto, and pulls himself together. "What do you mean by radius?"
"Right now it's set at point zero," Toshiko says. "Basically, it's just vibrating. If I set it at one point five...." She twists the grey dial and Jack shouts suddenly, rearing up and gripping the headboard. He settles back on his heels, the silver spokes of machinery gliding into a new configuration as he spreads his legs. The red jelly end of the dildo is working between the curves of his buttocks. "It moves the base in a circle," Toshiko explains, "and makes it seem larger. Let's dial this down before he overexerts himself," she adds, and smirks as Jack's back muscles clench and relax, synchronized to the flex of her fingers. "Are you alright there, Jack?" she calls.
"I'm doing great," he answers heartily, forehead resting on the slick wood top of the headboard. He's got a thread of cheerful insolence in his voice, but he's breathing heavily on top of it and his back is still bunching up. The pillows are no match for bone and burnished muscle rocking into them and are completely squashed beneath his knees. Ianto wonders how long he could keep Jack like that, the yellow dial set just too low to give Jack what he wants. Already Jack is glancing impatiently at them over his shoulder and leaning back like he's going to find a new position if nothing happens soon.
Tosh is feeling kind or is just pushing ahead in the tutorial. "You can link the radius to the speed and control them both with the yellow dial," she says, "but it's a lot more fun to vary them independently." Ianto expects her to sit down and rest the control on her lap but instead she splays her hand out over both controls, index finger hooked around the grey while her thumb sends yellow up and down the scale.
Jack hums happily and slides down the headboard in a boneless slop that leaves him half curled up, one hand gripping the side of his thigh. His face rests in the crook of his elbow for just a moment before he's rolling across the bed again, dipping and bucking at the whims of Toshiko's fingers.
Tosh is watching him every moment, fingers working blindly at the dials. Her mouth is hard with concentration but she's holding herself differently. Ianto sees her left knee propped out just slightly and imagines that's because she's got her thighs pressed close together, sealed tight at the proper angle to intensify the throbbing and the heat.
Jack nearly topples over the foot of the bed, head and one hand hanging off. His toes are curling in the sheets and he rasps out, "Almost there.... just gun it. Push me over."
Toshiko's shaking her head. "I'm not finished with the demonstration," she says.
"Fuck the demonstration," Jack says. "Give him an instruction manual later, just finish me off now!"
Tosh gets a hard, flashing look on her face that makes Ianto want to take Jack's trousers from the chair, pull his belt from the loops, and hand it to Tosh to see what happens next. The air is crackling, tense and brittle. The machine whirs on, just too soft to push Jack over and too strong to let him settle. Jack still clings to the edge of the bed with his hips and buttocks arching upward in short, unhappy jerks.
Tosh, silent and unmoving, twists the dials. She peaks and varies the controls, easing Jack down from his high-strung precipice, and he echoes every movement in the pitch and volume of his voice. He ends on a sharp-edged moan and glares at Tosh.
"Turn it back on," he says.
"No," says Tosh, with so much force that Ianto almost steps away.
Jack's face turns dark. "That's an order," he growls.
Ianto clears his throat hurriedly. "I should point out that this is outside working hours, and hardly official business," he says.
Jack's shaking his head, eyes and mouth still hard, maybe angry with himself because he knows he's breaking a major rule. "I'm still the boss," he says.
"And I'm the one holding the controls," Tosh says tartly. She purses her lips, head tilted to the side expectantly. Ianto is sure she intended it to be a joke, but her fingers are twitching for the buttons with a touch of desperation.
Jack's lower jaw pushes out stubbornly as he stares her down, arse still in the air and hands still clutching tightly at the sheets.
Tosh lifts her chin and glares back at him for a long moment before she suddenly smiles, Kewpie and disarming. "I haven't even shown you all the special features," she says, and flicks a red and black striped toggle at the top.
Jack's face goes slack suddenly and he pitches halfway off the bed. The machine is crackling, almost loud enough to cover Jack's thin and helpless whine. His right arm is trembling with the strain of holding his weight from falling completely to the floor.
Tosh flicks the toggle back and waits. Jack pushes himself up from the edge of the bed and slinks, slow and careful like a lizard on a cold day, for the middle. His entire body deflates an inch or two into the mattress.
"I don't-I don't even know what that was," he stammers, mouth half open and eyes unfocused.
"E-stim," Tosh says simply. "Did it hurt? I'm not sure what your tolerance is, so I skewed low."
"E-stim?" Ianto says, worried that he knows exactly what she's talking about.
"Electrical stimulation," Tosh supplies, then quirks a self-effacing smile. "It's not electricity, actually; I used some things I'd learned from Rift technology. It's much safer," she adds brightly.
"It's also," Jack says, still slightly breathless, "a clear violation of-" he bites off the rest when Toshiko makes an adjustment and flicks the red and black toggle again.
"Did that hurt this time?" Tosh asks, pure concern. "It's important that you answer carefully, Jack. I need to determine your threshold."
"I-I-" Jack shakes his head helplessly so Toshiko goes for the toggle, leaves him twitching and tensely arched for several long seconds. "I don't know," Jack strangles out, and digs his fists into the bed.
Tosh studies him for a moment, head cocked to the side. "Let's say that's the edge for you, then. Ianto, if you could fetch a grease pencil from my bag?" she asks.
Ianto goes immediately, feeling the prickle of Jack's hard and hazy gaze on his back. He slips a glance as he presses the pencil into Tosh's palm and Jack's eyes are saying traitor traitor traitor. Jack's eyes are also saying push me and I need.
"It's important to have these parameters set before going at this in earnest," Tosh mutters as she draws a small line near the middle of an embedded clicker wheel. "This is what you asked me to do, Jack. I'm really sick of people asking me to show them things and then not listening." Her voice is tight and coiled at the end, defined best by what it lacks: she is not loud, she is not screeching. She is restraining herself.
"I'm listening," Ianto murmurs.
Toshiko gives him a sudden soft glance and smiles. "I know," she says. "Jack is the problem."
Ianto knows that isn't true-he's seen Toshiko slit her eyes at Gwen, and Owen is most often the target of her tongue-but Jack is the problem in this room, right now, and that's what matters. That is the scope of inquiry.
Jack is staring at the sheets, not speaking. His back hunches defensively and it's not the wanton arch that Ianto is familiar with, the arch he shapes and deepens with the flat of his palm.
"Are you going to let me finish showing Ianto the controls?" asks Tosh.
"Fine. Whatever," Jack mutters, and that's interesting, Ianto thinks. It's interesting because Jack could growl or bluster or laugh it off but Tosh has made him sulky and that's a step to something else. Like Ianto, he has no problem pretending to be submissive when it's needed. Actually submitting is a different game.
Toshiko isn't doing anything. Jack holds himself tautly, belly flexing, until the silence draws out too long and he slides a glance at her. "What do you want me to do?" he snaps, irritated.
"You could be more polite, for starters," Tosh answers sourly.
"Call her 'Miss,'" says Ianto. He did not intend to let that out. It's barely louder than a whisper but there's no other noise to cover it and now Tosh is looking at him, eyes startled, and Jack's sharp blues are glinting from the bed. Ianto blinks rapidly. "I just think that would be-" he clears his throat quietly, hyper-aware of the weight of his jacket as he shifts. "Appropriate," he finishes. There are rules about the bedroom and the Hub, conflicting roles and interactions, and how else to strengthen the differentiation between locations than a separation of title and address? That's the sliver of reasoning he's using, floating in an ocean of impulsive want.
Ianto looks at Jack because he's not sure of what he'll see if he looks at Tosh.
Jack is grinning, almost grateful. He can see the lines of demarcation too, the careful strategies and labels to keep them safe and sure. Jack will bend and quiver on command but when the guns are out he has to be obeyed. "'Miss?'" he says to try it out, hips rolling slightly like he's getting back into the saddle, and he is, because Jack isn't Jack unless he's going at life full gallop.
Tosh is soft and stammering. "I don't-it's not necessary," she says. "I just wanted you to be a little nicer." She shoots a helpless glance at Ianto, eyes flicking away almost immediately. "This doesn't have to be a thing."
"You got toppy first," Jack points out with cheerful resentment.
"Only because there was no other way to get you to listen!" Tosh cries.
Jack smirks. "Maybe you should have talked louder."
Ianto gives him a warning look and tries to clear his throat because, for all that Jack can be as patient as a glacier when he feels like it, he tends to want too much too fast. Now is not the time for pulling pigtails; not when the three of them are sliding down a slope they cannot see, not when the treaty has been so newly drawn and not yet signed by all the parties.
Jack ignores the warning look and paints a challenge on his face. The glint of teeth is visible behind his smile. "Sometimes we're not ignoring you, we just don't even realize you're there," he drawls. "You know, Tosh, you're so mousy sometimes."
Tosh looks shocked, unsure, so Ianto steps more closely into her range of vision and says, "Jack is getting a little out of hand, don't you think?" He doesn't know how casual he sounds but he's got his hands in his pockets and his head tipped down like this is an ordinary thing.
Tosh sets her wide eyes on him, breathes, and gathers herself together. Ianto can see that she's not altogether set on what she's doing but her fingers go without her; they smooth the clicker wheel up past the pencil line.
"I don't like raising my voice," she says, and flicks the toggle.
Ianto hasn't heard Jack whimper in a while. Jack's torso drops like an anchor to the mattress, fingers curling up, hips almost out of joint as he arches them higher and the machine crackles like a burning log. The joints and pistons clack softly from his trembling thighs.
Tosh cuts off the stim and watches Jack collapse, hips easing down and ribs expanding raggedly. Ianto is careful to look at Jack's hands, to see that they are unfurling as they should and pressing tentatively against the sheet. Jack's smiling crookedly. This is par for the course, Ianto thinks to himself. This is how it goes when Jack has bowed his head to Ianto. Fun and within boundaries.
Tosh speaks up unexpectedly. "I also," she says with a tensile whip-thin rod beneath her voice, "don't like being goaded."
She hits the toggle again.
Jack cries outright this time, jerking sideways as if he can escape, but the machine just snicks and bends and re-aligns itself, unmerciful.
"Say you're sorry," Toshiko calls above the buzz and Jack's unmuffled whine. "Apologize!"
Jack stutters out before he intended to: "I'm s-s-sorry!" Ianto is sure that Jack would like to have drawn that out, to have hesitated just enough to make his submission suspect. He falls to the mattress in the sudden silence, knees pulled up protectively. Ianto can see the shell-shock in his eyes and the reluctant shift of headspace.
"That's better," Tosh says quietly. "You forgot to call me 'Miss,' though."
Jack looks first at Ianto, checking that Ianto is there and keeping watch. Jack is apprehensive, but not jittery. He's... settled, as if there is a very large hand pressing down on him and he's waiting to see what it will think of doing next.
Ianto doesn't think he is very reassuring, not with his mouth falling open and the vein in his neck pulsing hard. Jack glints at that at least, gives Ianto a sympathetic half-grin as if they were clutched together in the archives trying to tug one off before the next emergency. He draws in a few uneven breaths before he looks at Tosh. "Yes, Miss," he says.
"That's better," Tosh says. "Honestly, Jack, you're so pushy sometimes."
"Bad habit, Miss," Jack says contritely. He closes his eyes for just a moment and presses his forehead to the mattress. "I won't do it again, Miss."
"Let's hope not," says Tosh warningly. She has her shoulders canted in an unfamiliar slant and Ianto wonders if she's made a new compartment for this occasion in her mind: a mental isolation room where she is 'Miss' and not 'Toshiko,' where the naked, squirming Jack and silent Ianto standing next to her are coloured notions, nothing more. He wonders if she is capable of that or if all parts of her are intertwined and he will see this moment lurking in the bottom of her eyes come Monday morning. He doesn't know how her brain is put together. He'll investigate that later, he decides, when he is not surrendering his faculties to the slope of hip and thigh and the line of Toshiko's bra beneath her shirt.
Tosh has surrendered nothing, it seems. She isn't stern or breathless or lascivious; she looks like she's sitting at her desk with bits of tech spread out. "Let's see what this feels like on the lower levels, shall we?" she asks, giving Jack a musing glance and prodding at the clicker wheel. "Since you apologized so nicely."
Jack nods and pulls himself to his elbows and knees again. Out of the corner of his eye, Ianto sees Toshiko tweak the toggle. Jack twitches for a moment then melts into a position more stable, elbows spaced apart. "Miss?" he says, deferential, and he's asking questions: Am I as you want me? What do you desire of me next? It's the same way that Ianto would say 'Sir?' in his first few months and he's embarrassed, suddenly, that he addressed Jack so frequently with a sex-coloured term and didn't realize it. Much.
"Tell me when you like it best," is all Tosh asks, and then she clicks the toggle on again.
Jack breathes quietly into the sheets, eyes falling shut as the crackling starts much softer than before. Toshiko clicks the wheel up bit by bit and Jack spreads his knees farther apart, twitching lightly. At about a quarter strength Jack starts to moan. Tosh pulls the grease pencil from behind her ear to mark the level with a dot.
"Is that good?" she asks, as if she were wondering if her alteration to the code had made a program run more smoothly.
"Yes, yes," Jack murmurs, rubbing his face against the sheets. "More?"
Toshiko smiles her Kewpie smile. "You can also program it to adjust the intensity in a rhythm pattern," she says and Ianto doesn't realize for a moment that she's talking to him. He's startled that he's visible at all; he thought he had turned into a curl of fog inside a suit.
"It works for the oscillator, too," Toshiko adds and Jack's eyebrows do something interesting.
"Oh," Ianto says, voice cracking.
Tosh taps a row of small black buttons near the top. "These are the preset buttons-it's just like a car radio, really," she says, and Ianto's brain has trouble wrapping itself around the idea. His brain is overexerting itself, he thinks, and will be sore in the morning.
Toshiko presses the button second from the left then reaches for the wheel. At her mark, a five-beat syncopated measure repeats itself in zaps and buzzes. Jack lets out a peculiar manly warble and then is spasming across on the bed, muscles bunching, lips slack and wet against the corner of the pillow. Ianto looks past Jack's thigh and the metal strap around it to see the tip of his prick jutting out: dark-tipped, wet, quirking up and down.
"The rhythm controls adjust the intensity relative to the manual setting so you can keep it a very light touch or something with more oomph," Toshiko says. She prods the clicker wheel one more time and Jack hisses.
"That was a touch too far," Tosh murmurs. She skews it down until Jack is stuttering again and makes a careful line to mark the level. "Is that enough information for you?" she asks Ianto solicitously.
Ianto, dry-mouthed, can only nod. He wants, bizarrely, for Tosh to tie him hand and foot to Jack so he can feel the quivers and the jerks, so he can press his mouth against the juncture of Jack's neck and shoulder and suckle there.
Toshiko nods back at him and slides the clicker wheel all the way to zero, accompanied by Jack's unhappy sigh. "Don't worry, we're moving on to something else as soon as you calm down," she says.
Jack perks his head up. "Are you going to-sorry, Miss," he interrupts himself, unsure if he is allowed to speak. He is still breathless from the e-stim and the words expel themselves half-voiced.
"Go ahead," Tosh says distractedly, pulling a stylus from the side of the control box to poke at the small, rectangular screen at the top. Ianto recognizes the stylus and screen-it's from a wireless pad from the conference room that broke a few months ago-and feels dizzy. He's not going to look at PDAs the same way again. He's not going to look at Toshiko the same way again. He has seven layers in his brain and the thirdmost one-the one that flashes skin and mouths and half-way uttered moans against the pinstriped backdrop of work and public and propriety-that layer of his brain will be pulsing double-time for weeks. Good thing he learned to maintain a bland and thoughtful face despite his mental pornography while he was still in O levels.
Jack settles back on his heels, fingers rubbing eagerly against his thighs. "Are you going to show him the thrust setting, Miss?" he says, trying for deference but unable to hide the eagerness in his voice.
"There's a thrust setting," Ianto mumbles. "Of course there's a thrust setting." Tosh turns to look at him and Ianto is gaping. "You're brilliant," he says, whisper-soft and fervently.
"Oh," breathes Tosh, and ducks her head. "I wanted to be thorough," she says as if she needs to give an excuse.
"Believe me," Jack drawls, "it's thorough."
"Jack," Tosh warns.
Jack freezes for a moment, looking sheepish. "Sorry, Miss. I didn't mean to be flip," he says lamely.
"Do you want me to use the thrust setting?" Tosh asks sharply.
Jack mutely nods his head. He rolls his shoulders forward, trying to look small and meek. His prick, unmindful of this, is arching thickly across his left thigh.
"Then ask me nicely," says Tosh. She presses her lips into a hard line. She's trying to look stern but Ianto can tell that she's amused by Jack and calling him a rascal in her head.
"Please, Miss," says Jack, barely pretending to hide a grin. He lowers his shoulders down to the bed, arse perched in the air. "Please fuck me," he adds, just to be saucy.
Tosh cuts a sideways glance at Ianto and the corners of their mouths are mirrored, curling up.
"He did say please," Ianto points out, and hopes the flush of lust-affection isn't visible across his cheeks. He feels warped and silly, like Jack and now Toshiko are stretching him into a different shape. Toshiko cants her head at him and Ianto feels exposed and obvious. Toshiko's smile is reassuring but still, he's grateful when she turns her attention back to Jack.
"I suppose you've been good enough," she says. "Lie down on your back. You look ridiculous like that. Ianto, watch me do this."
Jack moves without hesitation or complaint and flips over. The machine, slips of metal and dark leather, clacks softly as it rearranges all its gears and pistons thin as silver wires. Jack drums his fingers on his hipbones. He's completely immodest and unconcerned about his prick curved out, half-hard, for anyone to see. Toshiko nods approvingly and pushes the yellow dial (the oscillator control, Ianto reminds himself) up to a comfortable level. The prick quivers and firms up again but Ianto pulls his gaze away from that-Jack is preening, dammit, extending all his limbs for a precise allure-and concentrates on the control display, the heat from Tosh's back, the way he has to stand this close to her so she can teach him.
She shoots Ianto a sudden smile. "This is the G-spot targeting system," she announces proudly, angling her shoulders back so Ianto has a better view. The control screen shows a 3D wire frame of some lumpy channel-Ianto realizes with a start that it's an interior view of Jack-with a swelling in the flesh lit up. "When it's just oscillating the system doesn't do much, so let's add some thrust to this. Speed and depth," she says, pointing to each of twin levers in turn. "The rhythm pattern can apply to the thrust setting, but let's leave it off for now." Tosh presses the pornographic preset button. She only nudges 'speed' a fraction but pushes 'depth' up all the way.
Ianto hears the subtle clanking again and watches, rapt, as the silver rods collapse to pull the dildo slowly out of Jack. The red jelly glimmers against his corded thighs then pushes inexorably back in until nothing can be seen except a sliver of the base. Jack draws both legs up, knees bent, and presses his face to the side. He sucks a long breath between his teeth and his belly roils as the machine pulls out of him again.
The diagram has changed; it's a series of concentric circles like a bull's eye, centered on a lit-up swelling. Toshiko drags the stylus on the screen and it's followed by a small green cross-hair. She double-taps the cross on the outer ring of the bull's eye and it stays there when she pulls the stylus tip away. "That aims it a fair bit away from the prostate," she says. "Not completely off the mark, since it's still within the central circle, but enough to apply an indirect pressure." She nods to the bed where Jack is cocking his hips oddly to the side with a look of concentration on his face. "You're not going to trick it into hitting closer," she says smugly.
"Can't help it," Jack mumbles in frustration. He turns his head to the side, pressed hard into the pillows. His fingers dig into the crease between his thigh and hipbone and Ianto knows he's struggling not to touch his prick. His left knee wavers up, down, up again; flexing as if the way his heel is sliding on the sheets will scratch an itch.
"Alright, let's double-tap this and aim it nearer to the center," Tosh says. She flicks just a few glances at her control screen, mostly keeping her eyes on Jack. Ianto looks at the screen because he's supposed to be learning the controls; if he looks too much at Jack he won't learn anything except the timbre of Jack's moans and the darkness of his body's creases. Tosh makes the adjustment in a too-brief moment, though, and Ianto has to look at Jack.
Jack licks his lips and then his mouth falls open. The left knee pops up with purpose and Jack curls his fingers around the back of his thigh, dimpling deep into the flesh. The machine whickers at oblique angles and the jelly sinks and disappears, then trundles out again. Red and silver, red and silver, red and skin deep dusky brown.
Tosh cocks her head to the side. "Shall we take this all the way?" she asks.
"Yes," Jack says instantly. "Please, Miss. God, Toshiko, please."
Tosh studies him a moment. Her stylus hovers above the center dot and Ianto glances at her face, wonders what she's thinking in the space behind her round black eyes. Suddenly she turns and holds the control box out. "How about you do it?" she asks.
"I-no, no," Ianto stammers. "I don't know the controls. You-"
"You know enough of them. You're a quick study," she says, pressing the box into his chest. "Give it a go." Ianto stares dumbly-he wishes he could deal with these things better, wishes he didn't break down into a pair of eyeballs and a mouth for heavy breathing-so Toshiko pulls his left hand gently from his side and cups it underneath the box. "I'll be right here watching," she says quietly, fingers pressed against the tendons of his hand. "I'll be right here."
Ianto finds himself nodding but surely it's not consent, it's just him saying yes to the fingertips as smooth and silky as his favorite tie. It's just him saying yes to anything she asks.
Tosh smiles brilliantly at him-she smiles like she's relieved-and edges Ianto to the bed. "You should sit and rest the control board on your lap," she explains. "It will be a lot easier."
Ianto sits half cross-legged near the headboard while Toshiko slips her steady presence in behind him. Jack's eyes are half-lidded but still so blue and he smiles at both of them, winks reassuringly for Ianto. His hips are rolling to the deliberate sliding of the thing inside him. "Please?" he asks, and Ianto nods.
Ianto tries to fit his fingers to the controls. They are slightly large for Toshiko's hand but small for his and Ianto feels enormous, thick and clumsy. He isn't sure what he's jostled but Jack sniffs quick and deep. His neck arches back and his hand is gripping Ianto's knee then sliding up, then slipping under Ianto's jacket to clutch and crinkle his red shirt.
"Jack-" Ianto bites his lip, trying to ease the yellow slightly up. It jerks, Jack twists, and the fingers over Ianto's heart convulse. "Jack, stop that, you're distracting me." The control board wobbles because Ianto is consumed and focused on Jack's broad hot hand.
"Jack, hands away," Tosh says. "Put them up there, on the headboard." Jack's fingers hesitate and Ianto hopes Jack will cooperate and not yank his head against the reins. Then Tosh is saying Jack's name again, half sharp and half understanding, and Jack is slitting open two gauzy eyes. With a frown of intense concentration he pulls his hand away from Ianto to join the other hand, white knuckles wrapped around the cherry wood.
"Thank you," Ianto murmurs. Toshiko is just a black fringed shadow in the corner of his eye but he sees her bob her head. Her chest is grazing against his back.
Ianto breathes deeply and sets himself to one dial at a time. Jack licks his lips again, a signal Ianto knows, so Ianto clicks the thrust-speed to go faster. Jack's lips curl back from his white sharp teeth. His dimple is showing in the stretch of his cheeks and his moans are thick and deeper than before, crawling from cellar of his throat and up the stairs of his tongue. Ianto double-taps the lime-green crosshair to the center of the bull's eye and Jack's teeth click together. Both his knees are bending up; the right one is pressing hard to Ianto's shoulder and Ianto leans just as hard against it, counterbalance, ballast, keeping himself anchored. Then Jack is saying his name, he's saying Tosh's name, he's melding their names together into Iantoshiko and Toshianto.
Ianto is caught up in the cinematic splash of teeth and tongue and forgets that he's responsible. He stares until Jack's face goes slack, then twinges, and Toshiko slips her arm around his waist-no, she's reaching for the master dial, palm grazing Ianto's knuckles, and powering the whole thing down.
Jack sinks into the bed, eyes closed. He swallows slowly.
Toshiko's hand stays where it is.
Ianto wants to lie on top of Jack and press his teeth just lightly to the round moment of bone at the corner of Jack's jaw. He wants to lie on Jack but he's tangled in the electric wire sparking where Toshiko's hand is curled around his own. Her arm is snug against his waist and he wishes just this once that his suits were not so well made, so thick and tailored to protect. His fingers seem over-large and spare compared to Toshiko's glossy nails and the pads of flesh that plump from one knuckle to the other. He's just working up the nerve to lace his fingertips through hers when she lets out a sigh and slides away.
"I ought to go," she says softly into Ianto's ear.
"No," he says, turning quickly to face her. He shoves the control board by instinct safely underneath a pillow and tells her, "Stay a bit."
She leans back from him, eyes wary and uncertain. "There's nothing else to do here," she says. "You've got a good idea of the controls, and it looks like Jack is worn out."
Jack makes a low noise. "Just give me a few minutes," he mumbles, and lets out a contented sigh.
Tosh smiles tightly over at Jack. "I'll just leave both of you to it," she whispers to Ianto, and smiles again. "See you Monday morning, alright?"
Ianto is shaking his head when she shifts to stand. He makes a noise, a faint and desperate breath, and nudges forward to press his nose against the curve of her jaw. He slides his face slightly upwards and to the side, lips resting next to hers but not against them because he doesn't want to presume, but he will respectfully and with such fervent hope suggest that perhaps they could....
Toshiko freezes, breathes hot and soft across his face, and then she's dipping down and their mouths are together, his still slightly open because he can't help it. She's tasting just the edges of him and Ianto is leaning back, plucking at her shirt sleeve. Toshiko puts her hands on his shoulders, maybe just to steady herself, but Ianto lets a whimper trickle out. He wants her to press harder. Jack got all of her attention today but Ianto is better; he is more appreciative and well behaved.
He pulls at her sleeves again, just the lightest tug, and then Tosh is bearing down on top of him. He falls backwards onto Jack and Tosh's knee is sliding between his legs. Ianto moans and Tosh moans back and Jack's hand curls firmly around Ianto's, moving it from his helpless flutter in the air to mold itself to Tosh's ribcage. Jack slides their hands (thumb pressing into Ianto's wrist, so steady and assuring) into the dip of waist and hip and then farther, floating softly to press their fingertips into the crease where Toshiko's thigh bends up. Ianto is breathing heavily around the twists and slithers of her tongue.
She pushes herself up suddenly and the heels of her hands almost hurt, digging into Ianto's collarbones. "I can't-" Her eyes skitter wildly from side to side. "This is a bad idea."
"No it's not," says Ianto and his voice is rough.
The stare that Toshiko gives him is far away and coiled up inside herself but Ianto's got her weight; he's throbbing beneath the pain-points of her hands and the heavy softness of her rump against his knee. "It's too fast, then," she says finally.
"No, no, please, just-" Ianto sucks in a breath and wants to dig his fingers into Toshiko's hip but Jack is holding his hand tight and won't let him. "Miss," he says, a wild try. "Please, Miss-"
Toshiko shakes her head and clambers off of him decisively. "Give me some time. For God's sake, Ianto, I've never even considered this before." She clicks over to her bag and bends at the knees to heft the strap over her shoulder, looking at the floor and away from them. "I'll let myself out," she says quietly and just like that is gone, leaving Ianto to struggle against the forces of gravity and Jack to follow her.
"Ianto, Ianto, shh," Jack is crooning, sitting up and wrapping his arms around Ianto's waist and chest and pressing his fingers hard into the skin. "You've got to let her think this through, ok?" he murmurs right into Ianto's ear, loud enough to be heard above the huffs and guttered moans. "She has to turn the idea over in her brain and examine it from every angle. Just be patient."
"Easy for you to say," Ianto snaps. He bucks against the hurtful prison arms. "You already got what you wanted."
Jack is silent for a moment, tightening his grip on Ianto and pressing his forehead to the curve of Ianto's neck. "Yes," he says at last. "I got what I wanted but I had to wait for it. You have to think everything through, too. I had to wait so long for you," he says. "And you'll be glad she walked out when she did, as soon as you're thinking straight again," Jack adds, and Ianto can feel the smile against his skin. "You'll get the chance to court her."
Ianto's hands go motionless in the middle of clawing at the edge of the mattress and at Jack. He stares at the floor. "That isn't-I couldn't-" He shakes his head because the tangle of his thoughts for Jack and the newly growing knot of thoughts for Tosh are crowding the space inside his ribs. He feels dizzy, face split and turned in two directions. Jack has pockets in his heart, he has grottoes and volcanic burps of lava and he has a thousand trees with nests and curling branches: Jack has the room to love everyone he's ever met and hate them too, but Ianto's heart is like an arrow. Singular and pointed; he loves fiercely and with razor focus.
He puts his cheek against Jack's and tries to calm himself. Jack draws him back, lets Ianto lean against him.
"Tosh'll come round," Jack says warmly. "You're too gorgeous for her not to. You are," he adds forcefully when Ianto snorts and tries to disagree. There is so much that Ianto must disagree with, but he's tangled up in lust and cannot articulate. "In the meantime, I've got you," Jack is saying. "I'll take care of you. Do you want that?" he murmurs with his lips on Ianto's ear and his fingers trailing down. He slips his hand beneath the waistband of Ianto's trousers. "Do you want me to take care of this for you?"
"Yeah," pants Ianto. "Yes, please," because that is easier than unfurling all the wants and questions throbbing in his chest. He hears the clinking of the machine when Jack shifts and it echoes the slow and teasing way that Jack is unbuckling his belt. Ianto lets the soles of his dress shoes slide across the floor when he parts his legs and pleads for Jack to help him.
He thinks of the hem of Toshiko's skirt and her fingers curled around a dial and it feels good, it does, but mostly what he feels is that it hurts.