Fic: Fun and Games
Title: FUN AND GAMES
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Tosh, General Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: Open
Spoilers: Minor, for series
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to the BBC.
Summary: Sometimes tactical manoeuvring can be a lot of fun…
There was a light tap on the door and Jack looked up to see Ianto hovering. “What’s up?” he asked curiously, seeing the smirk on the younger man’s face.
“UNIT’s trying to break though our defences,” Ianto explained, his smirk broadening into something perilously close to a grin.
“No!” Jack stared at him in amazement. “It’s only been, what, two months since the last attempt?”
Ianto chuckled. “This is a special team, it seems, created specifically to ‘deal with us’.”
“Oh, Lord,” Jack said ruefully. “How’s Tosh taking it?”
“She hasn’t quite got to the cackling maniacally stage but she is rubbing her hands together,” Ianto informed him solemnly as he backed up to let Jack out of his office and then followed him down the stairs.
“Gleefully?”
Ianto considered that. “I think I can safely say that there is an element of glee involved,” he agreed.
Jack sighed and shook his head, making a beeline for where Tosh was seated at her computer, fairly vibrating with emotion. “Tosh…” he said warningly.
She immediately turned her best beseeching look on him. “Please, Jack! I’ve been very, very good,” she pointed out, batting her eyelashes outrageously, “and Ianto has been, as well. Please let us.”
Jack shook his head as he folded his arms and gave her as stern a look as he could manage under the circumstances. He could see Ianto attempting to look meek and mild and completely deserving of any treats that might be handed out and he had to laugh when he knew just how far from meek and mild that man really was. “You have to promise to play with them nicely,” he warned. He flicked a glance from one to the other. “Both of you.”
Tosh was nodding vigorously even as she pulled her keyboard towards her. “We will,” she assured him blithely.
“Fine, but no breaking them, remember,” Jack warned. “They always yell when that happens.”
Ianto had grabbed Gwen’s chair and was settling down in front of her computer before he had finished speaking. Jack knew that the pair of them would be synchronising battle tactics and prodding Mainframe to full waking mode before he had got back to his office. He was torn between amused disbelief and exasperation as he sat back down behind his desk. He really did wonder about the computer geeks at UNIT sometimes. In addition to Tosh being a genius she also had serious issues with UNIT and Ianto had a wide streak of territorial devilment in him when pushed. They had left a trail of devastation in the wake of every attempt by UNIT to hack into the Torchwood database.
“Oh, well,” Jack sighed. “Maybe they’ll learn something this time.” Then he went back to completing the budget reports for the last quarter, entertaining himself by reading the outraged comments Ianto had pencilled into the margins of Owen’s expenses claim.
OOO
“Well?” General Lethbridge Stewart asked when his aide came back.
“It’s done,” Captain Tony Jamieson said in satisfaction as he settled into the chair Lethbridge-Stewart indicated. “Went just the way you said it would.”
“Of course it did,” Alistair said with a smile. “I just wish that once in a while they’d do something to surprise me.”
Jamieson snorted, having long since learned that Lethbridge-Stewart valued honesty over blind obedience. “Nothing surprises you, sir. After working with the Doctor for so long you’re pretty much bomb-proof.”
Lethbridge-Stewart chuckled, appreciating the sentiment and acknowledging that it was pretty much true. “Those were the days,” he said, then laughed. “Not that I appreciated that at the time and not that I would want to go back to fending off an alien invasion every alternate Tuesday. What was it about Tuesday, anyway?” he wondered.
“Hell of a way to find out that Tuesday is cosmically significant,” Jamieson agreed. “Anyway, I’d better get back to Project Tinder and make sure they’re all right. Last time I went through, four of their techs were in tears and another one was having to be sedated. Kept screaming something about witchcraft.”
Lethbridge-Stewart growled. “And they have the gall to look me in the eye and tell me that they’re better equipped to take on an alien invasion than my ‘antiquated methods’! Hah! I break out in a cold sweat when I think of this lot having to cope with some of the lunatics we crossed paths with. Still, this might have taught them a lesson.”
“I doubt it, sir,” Jamieson said wryly as he went to leave. “Hope springs eternal, especially in the minds of idiots.”
Lethbridge-Stewart chuckled, then sighed and shook his head. He knew he was old school but the cockiness of the current generation of UNIT leaders frightened the wits out of him. There hadn’t been a genuinely worrying invasion attempt since the Battle of Canary Wharf and they had had the Doctor around to stop that before it got completely out of control. What scared Lethbridge-Stewart most was how quickly everyone forgot how close that incident had come to total disaster. The one thing he had learned beyond any chance of forgetting was the fact that complacency handed the battle over to your enemy in nothing flat. One of these days the Earth was going to be targeted by something bigger and more organised than some stray group of megalomaniacal aliens and when that day happened UNIT had better be prepared to stand up and be counted. And shot at, of course, but that came with the territory.
In the meantime he had a call to make.
Fishing out a mobile phone from a locked drawer, he called one of the only two numbers stored in it. It was answered within three rings.
“Hey, Alistair,” Jack said cheerfully. “Ready to come over to the Dark Side?”
Alistair grinned at the long-standing joke, remembering that there had been a time when he hadn’t a clue what Jack was talking about. “And have to watch you sexually terrorise the population of Cardiff on a regular basis? I don’t think so.”
“We have chocolate.”
“I hate to break this to you, Jack, but we have chocolate in England.”
“We also have coffee,” Jack pointed out with an air of triumph. “And you won’t have coffee like this in England.”
Lethbridge-Stewart smiled broadly. “Ah, that would be the near-mystical skills of Mr Jones. Truly the Force is strong in him.”
Jack went into a peal of unselfconscious laughter and Alistair’s smile became an echoing chuckle. He always counted it as a bonus if he could get Jack to forget his burdens, even if it was only briefly. Unlike many others, he had taken the time to get to know the enigmatic Director of Torchwood 3, and by and large he rather liked the man. Apart from the incessant flirting - and the fact Doris still showed an alarming tendency to flirt right back.
“Everyone knows about my Ianto’s coffee-making skills,” Jack said proudly. “Even aliens have been known to show up and ask for a cup.”
Lethbridge-Stewart raised an eyebrow at the possessive ‘my’ but didn’t say anything. It was about time Jack stopped drifting. “I’ll not comment on the hair-raising prospect of aliens high as kites on caffeine,” he said mildly, “although if it happens that regularly it would explain why Cardiff seems able to cope with anything and everything that happens with a sang froid one can only admire.”
“London goes into meltdown, Cardiff bitches about the litter the aliens have left,” Jack agreed. “There’s just something about the Welsh. And the Scots,” he added hastily when Alistair cleared his throat noisily.
“That’s better. Anyway, I was calling to thank you for doing your bit for UNIT training,” he said cheerfully.
“And people talk about my being the mean one,” Jack said with a laugh. “Lambs to the slaughter, every last one of them, and all of them absolutely certain that they’ll be the one to crack Fortress Torchwood and completely unaware that you are setting them up.”
“Complacency kills, Jack, as you well know. I don’t want those young idiots thinking that they’re ready to take on aliens just because they’ve hacked a few terrestrial systems. The Pentagon or MI6 is one thing, the Daleks quite another. If one of them can get past Tosh then I’ll take them seriously. Until then they can just learn what it’s like to be a tiny fish in a Jurassic pond.” He paused before continuing carefully. “How is Tosh?”
There was a moment of silence before Jack sighed softly. “Better, much better. She’s had a rough time of it but she’s getting there. It helps that she’s got Ianto to talk to now. Mind you, that’s a bit of a double-edged sword at times.”
“Do they sit with their heads together and whisper before looking at you and snickering?” Alistair asked.
“Yeah.”
“Tough. Suck it up and take it on the chin,” Alistair ordered. “The last thing you need is someone to hang on your every word and gaze at you adoringly. You’re insufferable enough as it is.”
“I love you too, Alistair,” Jack said dryly.
“Of course you do, but you’re still not getting me into bed,” Alistair retorted, long since inured to Jack’s ways.
Jack heaved an over-the-top sigh. “You just don’t know what you’re missing, Alistair. Hey, I even have references!”
“Any of them in a human language?” Lethbridge-Stewart shot back.
“Oooh, cutting! I’m not going to talk to you if you’re going to be mean.”
“I’ll take that to mean that none of them are in a human language.”
“We-ell… Does it have to be a living language? Only there was this Roman guy-“
Lethbridge-Stewart gave up and started laughing, with Jack joining in. “You are incorrigible,” he said fondly when he recovered. “Give my love to Tosh and to your Ianto and maybe I’ll see you at one of those dratted conferences they keep planning.”
“Only if I can’t come up with a foolproof reason why I can’t attend,” Jack said promptly. “Listen, why don’t you come up to Cardiff some time and I can introduce you to Tosh? She still wants to thank you for letting me know about her.”
Lethbridge-Stewart paused and seriously considered the idea. He was fed up of sitting behind a desk and attending meetings. One thing he knew for certain about Torchwood Three was that it was neither boring nor bureaucratic.
“I’m sensing hesitation, Alistair,” Jack said hopefully. “Come on. Just for a few days. You can sell it to your idiot subordinates by telling them you want to study the enemy.”
“I don’t have idiot subordinates, Jack. I get rid of them as soon as they’re foisted on me. Well, all except Colonel Danby’s cretinous nephew. I don’t know anyone I dislike enough to hand him on to.”
“Bring him down and we’ll ‘accidentally’ feed him to a Weevil,” Jack suggested. “If you’re talking about the Danby I think you’re talking about it will probably take him a few months to realise he’s one down on that herd of nephews and nieces he has.”
Alistair suppressed a snort of agreement, hating nepotism in all its forms, but he couldn’t quite shake off the lure of a long weekend in Cardiff. It would be nice to talk with someone who understood what he meant when he spoke of his affection and exasperation about the Doctor and Jack was a battle-hardened veteran who was a font of fascinating stories when the mood took him. Good company and good coffee… it was an irresistible combination.
“I could say you’d requested my presence because you thought there had been an attempt to breach your database,” he said slowly.
“I can ring up and be all outraged about it,” Jack offered cheerfully. “How does the week beginning the 18th suit you?”
Lethbridge-Stewart eyed his calendar and sighed. “She’s already checked, hasn’t she?”
“She’s checked and Ianto’s booked you into the hotel and I’ve made reservations at a really good restaurant,” Jack told him.
Lethbridge-Stewart raised his eyes to Heaven. “I’d better get organised then, hadn’t I?”
“You do that, and I’ll get Ianto to hoover the red carpet.”
OOO
Jack terminated the call and grinned at Tosh and Ianto. “He’s coming,” he announced.
Tosh clapped her hands together, and smiled broadly. She had been stunned when Jack had told her that General Lethbridge Stewart had been the one to tell him of her existence and that he had leaned ever so slightly on the powers-that-be to make them more amenable to Jack’s poaching. It had helped her a great deal when it came to coming to terms with what had happened but she had never had the chance to thank the man directly.
Ianto raised an eyebrow and gave Jack an old-fashioned look. “And what makes you think I need to hoover the red carpet?” he demanded.
Jack paused. “You mean we have a red carpet?” he asked in surprise.
“Of course we do!” Ianto said in exasperation. “It’s what’s used every time the reigning monarch visits.”
This time it was Tosh’s turn to look surprised. “The Queen visits us?”
“Only the once,” Ianto explained. “It’s the custom for newly crowned monarchs to go to all the Torchwoods and get acquainted. Queen Elizabeth only came the once but Princess Margaret visited several times.” He flicked an eyebrow at Jack. “And don’t think I haven’t read the files and know what you were doing when she did, sir!”
“Oh, she was a hellion, that one!” Jack said reminiscently. “Smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish and took down a Weevil with a rolled up umbrella. Good in bed, too”
“Oh, you didn’t!” Tosh said in scandalised tones. Jack’s grin just broadened and she shook her head as she turned to leave. “You really are impossible at times, do you know that?”
“I certainly hope so!” Jack said, chuckling. He gave Ianto a cautious look and was relieved to see nothing but amusement in the younger man’s eyes. “It wasn’t ever going to be serious. She was looking for adventure and I was trying to forget Estelle,” he finished a little sadly.
“You never forgot her,” Ianto said softly, resting a hand on one of Jack’s shoulders for a moment. “You just tried to persuade yourself you had.”
Jack huffed a laugh and nodded, knowing that Ianto did not resent any of the lovers who had come before him. Well, except John Hart and to be fair that was mostly because Hart was a murderous, treacherous troublemaker. “Yeah, I guess. Anyway, we’d best get ready for Alistair’s visit. I want everything to be perfect.”
Ianto rolled his eyes. “You realise you’ve just guaranteed that nothing will go right, all manner of aliens will invade and we’ll be fending off mad scientists by the lorry-load?”
Jack flashed him his most outrageous smile. “Like I said: perfect!”
OOO
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Tosh, General Alistair Lethbridge-Stewart
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: Open
Spoilers: Minor, for series
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to the BBC.
Summary: Sometimes tactical manoeuvring can be a lot of fun…
There was a light tap on the door and Jack looked up to see Ianto hovering. “What’s up?” he asked curiously, seeing the smirk on the younger man’s face.
“UNIT’s trying to break though our defences,” Ianto explained, his smirk broadening into something perilously close to a grin.
“No!” Jack stared at him in amazement. “It’s only been, what, two months since the last attempt?”
Ianto chuckled. “This is a special team, it seems, created specifically to ‘deal with us’.”
“Oh, Lord,” Jack said ruefully. “How’s Tosh taking it?”
“She hasn’t quite got to the cackling maniacally stage but she is rubbing her hands together,” Ianto informed him solemnly as he backed up to let Jack out of his office and then followed him down the stairs.
“Gleefully?”
Ianto considered that. “I think I can safely say that there is an element of glee involved,” he agreed.
Jack sighed and shook his head, making a beeline for where Tosh was seated at her computer, fairly vibrating with emotion. “Tosh…” he said warningly.
She immediately turned her best beseeching look on him. “Please, Jack! I’ve been very, very good,” she pointed out, batting her eyelashes outrageously, “and Ianto has been, as well. Please let us.”
Jack shook his head as he folded his arms and gave her as stern a look as he could manage under the circumstances. He could see Ianto attempting to look meek and mild and completely deserving of any treats that might be handed out and he had to laugh when he knew just how far from meek and mild that man really was. “You have to promise to play with them nicely,” he warned. He flicked a glance from one to the other. “Both of you.”
Tosh was nodding vigorously even as she pulled her keyboard towards her. “We will,” she assured him blithely.
“Fine, but no breaking them, remember,” Jack warned. “They always yell when that happens.”
Ianto had grabbed Gwen’s chair and was settling down in front of her computer before he had finished speaking. Jack knew that the pair of them would be synchronising battle tactics and prodding Mainframe to full waking mode before he had got back to his office. He was torn between amused disbelief and exasperation as he sat back down behind his desk. He really did wonder about the computer geeks at UNIT sometimes. In addition to Tosh being a genius she also had serious issues with UNIT and Ianto had a wide streak of territorial devilment in him when pushed. They had left a trail of devastation in the wake of every attempt by UNIT to hack into the Torchwood database.
“Oh, well,” Jack sighed. “Maybe they’ll learn something this time.” Then he went back to completing the budget reports for the last quarter, entertaining himself by reading the outraged comments Ianto had pencilled into the margins of Owen’s expenses claim.
OOO
“Well?” General Lethbridge Stewart asked when his aide came back.
“It’s done,” Captain Tony Jamieson said in satisfaction as he settled into the chair Lethbridge-Stewart indicated. “Went just the way you said it would.”
“Of course it did,” Alistair said with a smile. “I just wish that once in a while they’d do something to surprise me.”
Jamieson snorted, having long since learned that Lethbridge-Stewart valued honesty over blind obedience. “Nothing surprises you, sir. After working with the Doctor for so long you’re pretty much bomb-proof.”
Lethbridge-Stewart chuckled, appreciating the sentiment and acknowledging that it was pretty much true. “Those were the days,” he said, then laughed. “Not that I appreciated that at the time and not that I would want to go back to fending off an alien invasion every alternate Tuesday. What was it about Tuesday, anyway?” he wondered.
“Hell of a way to find out that Tuesday is cosmically significant,” Jamieson agreed. “Anyway, I’d better get back to Project Tinder and make sure they’re all right. Last time I went through, four of their techs were in tears and another one was having to be sedated. Kept screaming something about witchcraft.”
Lethbridge-Stewart growled. “And they have the gall to look me in the eye and tell me that they’re better equipped to take on an alien invasion than my ‘antiquated methods’! Hah! I break out in a cold sweat when I think of this lot having to cope with some of the lunatics we crossed paths with. Still, this might have taught them a lesson.”
“I doubt it, sir,” Jamieson said wryly as he went to leave. “Hope springs eternal, especially in the minds of idiots.”
Lethbridge-Stewart chuckled, then sighed and shook his head. He knew he was old school but the cockiness of the current generation of UNIT leaders frightened the wits out of him. There hadn’t been a genuinely worrying invasion attempt since the Battle of Canary Wharf and they had had the Doctor around to stop that before it got completely out of control. What scared Lethbridge-Stewart most was how quickly everyone forgot how close that incident had come to total disaster. The one thing he had learned beyond any chance of forgetting was the fact that complacency handed the battle over to your enemy in nothing flat. One of these days the Earth was going to be targeted by something bigger and more organised than some stray group of megalomaniacal aliens and when that day happened UNIT had better be prepared to stand up and be counted. And shot at, of course, but that came with the territory.
In the meantime he had a call to make.
Fishing out a mobile phone from a locked drawer, he called one of the only two numbers stored in it. It was answered within three rings.
“Hey, Alistair,” Jack said cheerfully. “Ready to come over to the Dark Side?”
Alistair grinned at the long-standing joke, remembering that there had been a time when he hadn’t a clue what Jack was talking about. “And have to watch you sexually terrorise the population of Cardiff on a regular basis? I don’t think so.”
“We have chocolate.”
“I hate to break this to you, Jack, but we have chocolate in England.”
“We also have coffee,” Jack pointed out with an air of triumph. “And you won’t have coffee like this in England.”
Lethbridge-Stewart smiled broadly. “Ah, that would be the near-mystical skills of Mr Jones. Truly the Force is strong in him.”
Jack went into a peal of unselfconscious laughter and Alistair’s smile became an echoing chuckle. He always counted it as a bonus if he could get Jack to forget his burdens, even if it was only briefly. Unlike many others, he had taken the time to get to know the enigmatic Director of Torchwood 3, and by and large he rather liked the man. Apart from the incessant flirting - and the fact Doris still showed an alarming tendency to flirt right back.
“Everyone knows about my Ianto’s coffee-making skills,” Jack said proudly. “Even aliens have been known to show up and ask for a cup.”
Lethbridge-Stewart raised an eyebrow at the possessive ‘my’ but didn’t say anything. It was about time Jack stopped drifting. “I’ll not comment on the hair-raising prospect of aliens high as kites on caffeine,” he said mildly, “although if it happens that regularly it would explain why Cardiff seems able to cope with anything and everything that happens with a sang froid one can only admire.”
“London goes into meltdown, Cardiff bitches about the litter the aliens have left,” Jack agreed. “There’s just something about the Welsh. And the Scots,” he added hastily when Alistair cleared his throat noisily.
“That’s better. Anyway, I was calling to thank you for doing your bit for UNIT training,” he said cheerfully.
“And people talk about my being the mean one,” Jack said with a laugh. “Lambs to the slaughter, every last one of them, and all of them absolutely certain that they’ll be the one to crack Fortress Torchwood and completely unaware that you are setting them up.”
“Complacency kills, Jack, as you well know. I don’t want those young idiots thinking that they’re ready to take on aliens just because they’ve hacked a few terrestrial systems. The Pentagon or MI6 is one thing, the Daleks quite another. If one of them can get past Tosh then I’ll take them seriously. Until then they can just learn what it’s like to be a tiny fish in a Jurassic pond.” He paused before continuing carefully. “How is Tosh?”
There was a moment of silence before Jack sighed softly. “Better, much better. She’s had a rough time of it but she’s getting there. It helps that she’s got Ianto to talk to now. Mind you, that’s a bit of a double-edged sword at times.”
“Do they sit with their heads together and whisper before looking at you and snickering?” Alistair asked.
“Yeah.”
“Tough. Suck it up and take it on the chin,” Alistair ordered. “The last thing you need is someone to hang on your every word and gaze at you adoringly. You’re insufferable enough as it is.”
“I love you too, Alistair,” Jack said dryly.
“Of course you do, but you’re still not getting me into bed,” Alistair retorted, long since inured to Jack’s ways.
Jack heaved an over-the-top sigh. “You just don’t know what you’re missing, Alistair. Hey, I even have references!”
“Any of them in a human language?” Lethbridge-Stewart shot back.
“Oooh, cutting! I’m not going to talk to you if you’re going to be mean.”
“I’ll take that to mean that none of them are in a human language.”
“We-ell… Does it have to be a living language? Only there was this Roman guy-“
Lethbridge-Stewart gave up and started laughing, with Jack joining in. “You are incorrigible,” he said fondly when he recovered. “Give my love to Tosh and to your Ianto and maybe I’ll see you at one of those dratted conferences they keep planning.”
“Only if I can’t come up with a foolproof reason why I can’t attend,” Jack said promptly. “Listen, why don’t you come up to Cardiff some time and I can introduce you to Tosh? She still wants to thank you for letting me know about her.”
Lethbridge-Stewart paused and seriously considered the idea. He was fed up of sitting behind a desk and attending meetings. One thing he knew for certain about Torchwood Three was that it was neither boring nor bureaucratic.
“I’m sensing hesitation, Alistair,” Jack said hopefully. “Come on. Just for a few days. You can sell it to your idiot subordinates by telling them you want to study the enemy.”
“I don’t have idiot subordinates, Jack. I get rid of them as soon as they’re foisted on me. Well, all except Colonel Danby’s cretinous nephew. I don’t know anyone I dislike enough to hand him on to.”
“Bring him down and we’ll ‘accidentally’ feed him to a Weevil,” Jack suggested. “If you’re talking about the Danby I think you’re talking about it will probably take him a few months to realise he’s one down on that herd of nephews and nieces he has.”
Alistair suppressed a snort of agreement, hating nepotism in all its forms, but he couldn’t quite shake off the lure of a long weekend in Cardiff. It would be nice to talk with someone who understood what he meant when he spoke of his affection and exasperation about the Doctor and Jack was a battle-hardened veteran who was a font of fascinating stories when the mood took him. Good company and good coffee… it was an irresistible combination.
“I could say you’d requested my presence because you thought there had been an attempt to breach your database,” he said slowly.
“I can ring up and be all outraged about it,” Jack offered cheerfully. “How does the week beginning the 18th suit you?”
Lethbridge-Stewart eyed his calendar and sighed. “She’s already checked, hasn’t she?”
“She’s checked and Ianto’s booked you into the hotel and I’ve made reservations at a really good restaurant,” Jack told him.
Lethbridge-Stewart raised his eyes to Heaven. “I’d better get organised then, hadn’t I?”
“You do that, and I’ll get Ianto to hoover the red carpet.”
OOO
Jack terminated the call and grinned at Tosh and Ianto. “He’s coming,” he announced.
Tosh clapped her hands together, and smiled broadly. She had been stunned when Jack had told her that General Lethbridge Stewart had been the one to tell him of her existence and that he had leaned ever so slightly on the powers-that-be to make them more amenable to Jack’s poaching. It had helped her a great deal when it came to coming to terms with what had happened but she had never had the chance to thank the man directly.
Ianto raised an eyebrow and gave Jack an old-fashioned look. “And what makes you think I need to hoover the red carpet?” he demanded.
Jack paused. “You mean we have a red carpet?” he asked in surprise.
“Of course we do!” Ianto said in exasperation. “It’s what’s used every time the reigning monarch visits.”
This time it was Tosh’s turn to look surprised. “The Queen visits us?”
“Only the once,” Ianto explained. “It’s the custom for newly crowned monarchs to go to all the Torchwoods and get acquainted. Queen Elizabeth only came the once but Princess Margaret visited several times.” He flicked an eyebrow at Jack. “And don’t think I haven’t read the files and know what you were doing when she did, sir!”
“Oh, she was a hellion, that one!” Jack said reminiscently. “Smoked like a chimney, drank like a fish and took down a Weevil with a rolled up umbrella. Good in bed, too”
“Oh, you didn’t!” Tosh said in scandalised tones. Jack’s grin just broadened and she shook her head as she turned to leave. “You really are impossible at times, do you know that?”
“I certainly hope so!” Jack said, chuckling. He gave Ianto a cautious look and was relieved to see nothing but amusement in the younger man’s eyes. “It wasn’t ever going to be serious. She was looking for adventure and I was trying to forget Estelle,” he finished a little sadly.
“You never forgot her,” Ianto said softly, resting a hand on one of Jack’s shoulders for a moment. “You just tried to persuade yourself you had.”
Jack huffed a laugh and nodded, knowing that Ianto did not resent any of the lovers who had come before him. Well, except John Hart and to be fair that was mostly because Hart was a murderous, treacherous troublemaker. “Yeah, I guess. Anyway, we’d best get ready for Alistair’s visit. I want everything to be perfect.”
Ianto rolled his eyes. “You realise you’ve just guaranteed that nothing will go right, all manner of aliens will invade and we’ll be fending off mad scientists by the lorry-load?”
Jack flashed him his most outrageous smile. “Like I said: perfect!”
OOO