fic: Smother
Title: Smother
Rating: pg-13
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Characters: Team, Flat Holm residents
Genre: angst, wet
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Adrift, death, brooding
My faithful betas, aztiluna13 and senry.
Summary: “The sky blazed clear and blue as bottle glass, unbroken by cloud and baking hot.”
One March night, when all was finally quiet and still, Ianto lay in his bed and dreamt about the time his mother almost killed him. How she’d rolled over on top of him while reading, and didn’t realize until his father came in from the yard and saw her, hunchbacked on the sofa. He couldn’t remember it, being only a very little infant, but he could recall in the years after whenever his parents would argue, how the unspoken accusation hung in the air. Painful and obvious, like the way a living child would feel pressed beneath your shoulder blade.
When he woke in the morning the air was thick and stifling. For days the wind over the bay had been t nonexistent. The sky blazed clear and blue as bottle glass, unbroken by cloud and baking hot. In the harbor the little flags hung limp on every mast. The weatherman was calling it an early heat wave, but to Ianto it felt like an inhalation, sucking up the air before a scream. All day people had avoided going outside, and fights broke out in the cafés and bars where they took shelter. Evenings proved to be no better.
He took a long shower, letting the spray beat down on his aching body. Ianto had spent another night apart from Jack, and the loss was keenly felt. The long, hot days had left them both too tired and cross for more than a goodnight kiss. The thought of sharing a bed, and just a bed, with another baking, sweating body was unbearable. But he was so used to nights at the Hub that his own flat felt too big. Ianto dressed briskly, determined to get the day over with and then he and Jack were going out together, somehow.
By the time Ianto reached the Hub, his mood had not improved. When he’d stepped out from his flat onto the street the cloying air almost shoved him back through the door. The rest of the team, sitting around the conference table while he handed out water, looked equally harried. Gwen was lank and pale, as was Tosh, and they eagerly accepted the proffered water bottles without much gratitude or acknowledgement of Ianto. He found himself getting angry, but the thick air smothered any remarks he could have made before they got out. His mind felt stuffed with cotton linter.
The only one who didn’t seemed to be bothered by the conditions was Owen. The doctor, free from senses of touch and feeling, lounged in his seat watching the others with a bemused expression. For once, he’d come out on top in the whole living verse the dead debate.
“I don’t see why you’re all complaining. Turn the air conditioning on if you’re so hot; we do have it.”
“It is on,” Ianto dropped heavily into his seat.
“It’s not that,” Gwen snapped, “I don’t feel hot. I’m just… uncomfortable. My skin feels like its crawling.”
“Mine too,” Tosh whispered.
Jack led them through a tedious and disappointingly banter-free briefing that Ianto couldn’t bring himself to focus on. Besides Owen no-one else seemed much inclined, and it was a relief when Jack finally let them go. As the others slunk back to their desks Ianto pretended to tidy up. Jack was sorting through his files. It took a moment for him to recognize Ianto lingering patiently behind his chair but when he did, he drew the younger man to him with a soft exhalation and wrapped his arms around him. They clung together silently for a while before Ianto spoke.
“Missed you, last night. I couldn’t sleep.”
Jack's broad hands were leaving hot, damp patches on Ianto’s sides. The expected suggestive reply never came and Ianto felt oddly grateful. It wasn’t often that he could talk about the thing between them, the strange dependency they seemed to both have and not have, and it made Ianto feel good, wondering if the captain might sometimes be lonely - and not just bored - without him. Jack’s mobile suddenly rang, and the moment ended. Ianto felt him shift awkwardly; he turned his face down for a kiss, which Jack obligingly gave, and let him get back to work.
As he left, Ianto recalled Gwen’s remark before the briefing. Curious, he ran a diagnostic on Tosh’s computer, checking the Hub’s climate and life support systems. To his surprise he found that everything was working perfectly. The regulators were pumping air into and out of the Hub at efficiency, and the temperature controls reported everything stabilized. He turned the temperature down as far as was safely possible - too chilly and it was bad for the resident aliens as well as the mainframe - but he had the feeling it would do little to alleviate the smothering, crawling discomfort they felt.
Or was it just the feeling of someone standing much too close? Jack had come up behind him and was now waiting expectantly for attention. Ianto could feel the waves of heat rolling off the captain; normally, he’d make a quip about not being a mind reader and why it’s important to use your words, but he just didn’t have the strength today. Apparently, neither did Jack.
“That was Helen, on the phone. There’s been a death on the island.”
Shit.
“I’ll tell the team we’re going weevil hunting. They won’t argue with that.”
They made berth little more than an hour later. The bay was a smooth as glass, so still and flat it seemed you could almost walk across it all the way back to Mermaid Quay. Jack had delivered each resident of Flat Holm to the island personally, and received regular updated about their care. He was closely involved in the running of the care facilities, which mean Ianto by default was too. He had come over the months to know every patient and care giver, so when they disembarked to find Helen already waiting on the dock, he knew something was wrong. Her round face was puffy and her eyes red, although the line of her back and the set of her shoulders was as straight and purposeful as ever.
“This way.”
Helen led them up to the care facility, where to no-one’s surprise even in the underground bunker complex, where pipes were always leaking and cold seeping in through the concrete walls, felt like the inside of a kiln. In a small side room used for clinical evaluations and quiet time, the sad, bare body of a disfigured young girl was laid out on the table. Ianto recognized her as one of the regular trouble-makers, a mousy schoolgirl who’d come back from the rift a shell-shocked warrior who didn’t think she needed to take advice from anyone.
“What happened?”
“Heat stroke, we think. We got everyone confined to the facility because of the weather, but as usual she managed to find her way outside. The ferryman spotted her down on the beach as he was coming ‘round with the week’s supplies.” Helen sighed “Probably tried to go swimming.”
Jack stroked the girl’s scarred cheek with his thumb. Ianto knew he wasn’t mad - with dozens equally ill patients and only a handful of staff, there was no way to look after everyone individually, especially the ones who wander - but he was blaming himself, as he always did.
They spoke to the other nurses while Helen brought them the paperwork to fill out for the girl’s death. The facility had turned into a bucket brigade. Busy attendants were collecting empty water bottles and melted icepacks and racing back to the kitchens, while another group right behind them handing out fresh packs and refilled bottles to the calmer patients clustered in the television room; the less calm had been confined to the showers, where the constantly running spray kept them cool without them having to interact with the staff.
“We’re at our wits’ end, Jack.” Helen was saying, “I’ve got the air controls down almost to zero and it hasn’t made any difference. And the computer says everything is working fine.”
“The same thing is happening at the Hub,” said Ianto. Jack scowled, “Why wasn’t I told this?”
Helen grasped the Captain’s arm urgently, “Something is wrong - this isn’t natural.”
The fortified bunker blocked most transmissions, so they hurried aboveground. Outside the clear sky was light blue, the color you paint an infant’s room. The wind had picked up finally, but instead of bringing relief the hot air just blasted them. Jack was already pulling out his mobile, before he could dial he found he’d already missed five calls from the Hub. Ianto had too.
It was a seriously irritated Owen who answered the phone.
“Where the fuck have you been?” his pissy voice echoed over the speakerphone. “Next time you two need to pop out for a quick shag can you just do it in the tourist office like everyone else? At least then we can shout down the passage when we need you if you’re not going to answer your phones.”
“What’s happening, Owen?” Jack growled cutting off the blather and fending off Ianto, who was trying to grab the phone and demand who the “everyone else” was that had chosen his office as the local love shack.
“Increase in rift activity, off the charts. It’s been gradual not a spike, that’s why the computer didn’t register it until it reached the danger level. Tosh traced it back and it’s been building for a couple’a days.”
“Anything dangerous coming through?”
“No sign, but Jack - this energy, whatever it is, it’s big.”
Instantly, the island became a swarm of activity. Helen ordered the nurses to return patients to their rooms while aides went about shutting doors and instigated lockdown procedures. Huddled in the entrance to the facility, Ianto watched in alarm as the pale sky of the baby lighted even further, lightened so that it seemed totally white. Jack was bellowing orders into the phone, but Ianto could hardly hear him. Dragon’s breath, the hot wind was roaring now, whipping around the island, making the green grass wave and the ocean churn.
Suddenly, Ianto felt as through something had seized his chest in with monstrous grip. Although his chest rose and fell he couldn’t pull any air into his lungs. Beside him, Jack staggered back against the doors, grasping the front of his shirt. Every inhalation felt like breathing through cotton. Desperate, his head swimming, Ianto grasped his captain to him as they toppled together to the ground. If he was going to die here, his oxygen-starved mind reeled, let it be like this…
There was a crack, like an almighty roar that shook the empty white sky above them and then,
it rained.
Pure, blessed rain. The sky burst open and the heavens came tumbling down. Ianto took a choking gasp and found he could breathe again. They lay, he and Jack, in the doorway of the care facility, panting like racehorses while the rain flooded down and turned the ground to mud around them.
Later that evening, after making sure everything on the island was secured and there were no serious injuries, Ianto and Jack took the ferry home. The rain poured down in fits and starts across the water and Jack was brooding, staring out the window of their cabin at the dark bay. Ianto stood silently beside him, wrapped in a blanket, and waited.
“If the rain had come sooner,” Jack said finally. “She wouldn’t have died.”
“It wasn’t anyone fault,” Ianto said. "We know what to look for, next time."
That was the worst part, the randomness of their lives. Who knew why things happened? The unpredictable rift throwing strife and chaos at them every day; despite their best intentions, their helpless inability to protect everyone that strife came in contact with. Ianto laid a hand on the captain’s shoulder and Jack, ever tactile, leaned into him, his touch no-longer burning where their bodies pressed together. The rift energy had returned to normal. Tosh had checked and double-checked the readings and announced that, beyond sucking up a solar storm from somewhere across space, there was no explanation for any of it. They would be back at the Hub soon, and there would be hell trying to explain where they were to the rest of the team. It was still bucketing down, and they were filthy with mud and freezing cold. But there in the private little cabin with Jack solid against him, Ianto couldn’t help feeling something akin to relief.
Rating: pg-13
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Characters: Team, Flat Holm residents
Genre: angst, wet
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for Adrift, death, brooding
My faithful betas, aztiluna13 and senry.
Summary: “The sky blazed clear and blue as bottle glass, unbroken by cloud and baking hot.”
One March night, when all was finally quiet and still, Ianto lay in his bed and dreamt about the time his mother almost killed him. How she’d rolled over on top of him while reading, and didn’t realize until his father came in from the yard and saw her, hunchbacked on the sofa. He couldn’t remember it, being only a very little infant, but he could recall in the years after whenever his parents would argue, how the unspoken accusation hung in the air. Painful and obvious, like the way a living child would feel pressed beneath your shoulder blade.
When he woke in the morning the air was thick and stifling. For days the wind over the bay had been t nonexistent. The sky blazed clear and blue as bottle glass, unbroken by cloud and baking hot. In the harbor the little flags hung limp on every mast. The weatherman was calling it an early heat wave, but to Ianto it felt like an inhalation, sucking up the air before a scream. All day people had avoided going outside, and fights broke out in the cafés and bars where they took shelter. Evenings proved to be no better.
He took a long shower, letting the spray beat down on his aching body. Ianto had spent another night apart from Jack, and the loss was keenly felt. The long, hot days had left them both too tired and cross for more than a goodnight kiss. The thought of sharing a bed, and just a bed, with another baking, sweating body was unbearable. But he was so used to nights at the Hub that his own flat felt too big. Ianto dressed briskly, determined to get the day over with and then he and Jack were going out together, somehow.
By the time Ianto reached the Hub, his mood had not improved. When he’d stepped out from his flat onto the street the cloying air almost shoved him back through the door. The rest of the team, sitting around the conference table while he handed out water, looked equally harried. Gwen was lank and pale, as was Tosh, and they eagerly accepted the proffered water bottles without much gratitude or acknowledgement of Ianto. He found himself getting angry, but the thick air smothered any remarks he could have made before they got out. His mind felt stuffed with cotton linter.
The only one who didn’t seemed to be bothered by the conditions was Owen. The doctor, free from senses of touch and feeling, lounged in his seat watching the others with a bemused expression. For once, he’d come out on top in the whole living verse the dead debate.
“I don’t see why you’re all complaining. Turn the air conditioning on if you’re so hot; we do have it.”
“It is on,” Ianto dropped heavily into his seat.
“It’s not that,” Gwen snapped, “I don’t feel hot. I’m just… uncomfortable. My skin feels like its crawling.”
“Mine too,” Tosh whispered.
Jack led them through a tedious and disappointingly banter-free briefing that Ianto couldn’t bring himself to focus on. Besides Owen no-one else seemed much inclined, and it was a relief when Jack finally let them go. As the others slunk back to their desks Ianto pretended to tidy up. Jack was sorting through his files. It took a moment for him to recognize Ianto lingering patiently behind his chair but when he did, he drew the younger man to him with a soft exhalation and wrapped his arms around him. They clung together silently for a while before Ianto spoke.
“Missed you, last night. I couldn’t sleep.”
Jack's broad hands were leaving hot, damp patches on Ianto’s sides. The expected suggestive reply never came and Ianto felt oddly grateful. It wasn’t often that he could talk about the thing between them, the strange dependency they seemed to both have and not have, and it made Ianto feel good, wondering if the captain might sometimes be lonely - and not just bored - without him. Jack’s mobile suddenly rang, and the moment ended. Ianto felt him shift awkwardly; he turned his face down for a kiss, which Jack obligingly gave, and let him get back to work.
As he left, Ianto recalled Gwen’s remark before the briefing. Curious, he ran a diagnostic on Tosh’s computer, checking the Hub’s climate and life support systems. To his surprise he found that everything was working perfectly. The regulators were pumping air into and out of the Hub at efficiency, and the temperature controls reported everything stabilized. He turned the temperature down as far as was safely possible - too chilly and it was bad for the resident aliens as well as the mainframe - but he had the feeling it would do little to alleviate the smothering, crawling discomfort they felt.
Or was it just the feeling of someone standing much too close? Jack had come up behind him and was now waiting expectantly for attention. Ianto could feel the waves of heat rolling off the captain; normally, he’d make a quip about not being a mind reader and why it’s important to use your words, but he just didn’t have the strength today. Apparently, neither did Jack.
“That was Helen, on the phone. There’s been a death on the island.”
Shit.
“I’ll tell the team we’re going weevil hunting. They won’t argue with that.”
They made berth little more than an hour later. The bay was a smooth as glass, so still and flat it seemed you could almost walk across it all the way back to Mermaid Quay. Jack had delivered each resident of Flat Holm to the island personally, and received regular updated about their care. He was closely involved in the running of the care facilities, which mean Ianto by default was too. He had come over the months to know every patient and care giver, so when they disembarked to find Helen already waiting on the dock, he knew something was wrong. Her round face was puffy and her eyes red, although the line of her back and the set of her shoulders was as straight and purposeful as ever.
“This way.”
Helen led them up to the care facility, where to no-one’s surprise even in the underground bunker complex, where pipes were always leaking and cold seeping in through the concrete walls, felt like the inside of a kiln. In a small side room used for clinical evaluations and quiet time, the sad, bare body of a disfigured young girl was laid out on the table. Ianto recognized her as one of the regular trouble-makers, a mousy schoolgirl who’d come back from the rift a shell-shocked warrior who didn’t think she needed to take advice from anyone.
“What happened?”
“Heat stroke, we think. We got everyone confined to the facility because of the weather, but as usual she managed to find her way outside. The ferryman spotted her down on the beach as he was coming ‘round with the week’s supplies.” Helen sighed “Probably tried to go swimming.”
Jack stroked the girl’s scarred cheek with his thumb. Ianto knew he wasn’t mad - with dozens equally ill patients and only a handful of staff, there was no way to look after everyone individually, especially the ones who wander - but he was blaming himself, as he always did.
They spoke to the other nurses while Helen brought them the paperwork to fill out for the girl’s death. The facility had turned into a bucket brigade. Busy attendants were collecting empty water bottles and melted icepacks and racing back to the kitchens, while another group right behind them handing out fresh packs and refilled bottles to the calmer patients clustered in the television room; the less calm had been confined to the showers, where the constantly running spray kept them cool without them having to interact with the staff.
“We’re at our wits’ end, Jack.” Helen was saying, “I’ve got the air controls down almost to zero and it hasn’t made any difference. And the computer says everything is working fine.”
“The same thing is happening at the Hub,” said Ianto. Jack scowled, “Why wasn’t I told this?”
Helen grasped the Captain’s arm urgently, “Something is wrong - this isn’t natural.”
The fortified bunker blocked most transmissions, so they hurried aboveground. Outside the clear sky was light blue, the color you paint an infant’s room. The wind had picked up finally, but instead of bringing relief the hot air just blasted them. Jack was already pulling out his mobile, before he could dial he found he’d already missed five calls from the Hub. Ianto had too.
It was a seriously irritated Owen who answered the phone.
“Where the fuck have you been?” his pissy voice echoed over the speakerphone. “Next time you two need to pop out for a quick shag can you just do it in the tourist office like everyone else? At least then we can shout down the passage when we need you if you’re not going to answer your phones.”
“What’s happening, Owen?” Jack growled cutting off the blather and fending off Ianto, who was trying to grab the phone and demand who the “everyone else” was that had chosen his office as the local love shack.
“Increase in rift activity, off the charts. It’s been gradual not a spike, that’s why the computer didn’t register it until it reached the danger level. Tosh traced it back and it’s been building for a couple’a days.”
“Anything dangerous coming through?”
“No sign, but Jack - this energy, whatever it is, it’s big.”
Instantly, the island became a swarm of activity. Helen ordered the nurses to return patients to their rooms while aides went about shutting doors and instigated lockdown procedures. Huddled in the entrance to the facility, Ianto watched in alarm as the pale sky of the baby lighted even further, lightened so that it seemed totally white. Jack was bellowing orders into the phone, but Ianto could hardly hear him. Dragon’s breath, the hot wind was roaring now, whipping around the island, making the green grass wave and the ocean churn.
Suddenly, Ianto felt as through something had seized his chest in with monstrous grip. Although his chest rose and fell he couldn’t pull any air into his lungs. Beside him, Jack staggered back against the doors, grasping the front of his shirt. Every inhalation felt like breathing through cotton. Desperate, his head swimming, Ianto grasped his captain to him as they toppled together to the ground. If he was going to die here, his oxygen-starved mind reeled, let it be like this…
There was a crack, like an almighty roar that shook the empty white sky above them and then,
it rained.
Pure, blessed rain. The sky burst open and the heavens came tumbling down. Ianto took a choking gasp and found he could breathe again. They lay, he and Jack, in the doorway of the care facility, panting like racehorses while the rain flooded down and turned the ground to mud around them.
Later that evening, after making sure everything on the island was secured and there were no serious injuries, Ianto and Jack took the ferry home. The rain poured down in fits and starts across the water and Jack was brooding, staring out the window of their cabin at the dark bay. Ianto stood silently beside him, wrapped in a blanket, and waited.
“If the rain had come sooner,” Jack said finally. “She wouldn’t have died.”
“It wasn’t anyone fault,” Ianto said. "We know what to look for, next time."
That was the worst part, the randomness of their lives. Who knew why things happened? The unpredictable rift throwing strife and chaos at them every day; despite their best intentions, their helpless inability to protect everyone that strife came in contact with. Ianto laid a hand on the captain’s shoulder and Jack, ever tactile, leaned into him, his touch no-longer burning where their bodies pressed together. The rift energy had returned to normal. Tosh had checked and double-checked the readings and announced that, beyond sucking up a solar storm from somewhere across space, there was no explanation for any of it. They would be back at the Hub soon, and there would be hell trying to explain where they were to the rest of the team. It was still bucketing down, and they were filthy with mud and freezing cold. But there in the private little cabin with Jack solid against him, Ianto couldn’t help feeling something akin to relief.