Late Night Loss Chapter 20

[galadriel1010]

The Improbability-proof control cabin of the Heart of Gold looked like a perfectly conventional spaceship except that it was perfectly clean because it was so new. Some of the control seats hadn’t had the plastic wrapping taken off yet. The cabin was mostly white, oblong, and about the size of a smallish restaurant. In fact it wasn't perfectly oblong: the two long walls were raked round in a slight parallel curve, and all the angles and corners were contoured in excitingly chunky shapes. The truth of the matter is that it would have been a great deal simpler and more practical to build the cabin as an ordinary three-dimensional oblong room, but then the designers would have got miserable. As it was the cabin looked excitingly purposeful, with large video screens ranged over the control and guidance system panels on the concave wall, and long banks of computers set into the convex wall. In one corner a robot sat humped, its gleaming brushed steel head hanging loosely between its gleaming brushed steel knees. It too was fairly new, but though it was beautifully constructed and polished it somehow looked as if the various parts of its more or less humanoid body didn't quite fit properly. In fact they fitted perfectly well, but something in it’s bearing suggested that they might have fitted better.

Two tall, dark haired men looked around the gleaming console room with evident childish delight, spotted the two occupants staring at them in surprise and ran giggling from the room, leaving Zaphod and Trillian to continue with the plot. Jack tugged Ianto through a door, which sighed happily as it opened and closed for them, and the young man found himself in a blank white room with sleeping berths set into the wall, “You know,” he looked around with a giddy grin, “This is exactly like I expected a spaceship to look like.”

“Well that’s because it’s your imagination that’s created it.” Jack pointed out, looking around with slight surprise, “What do you see?”

“White, everything’s white, and there are beds set into the walls. They’re bunk beds with dark blue blankets, two sets on that wall and two on that wall, and there’s a window at that end of the room. The beds have white curtains that can provide more privacy, but not much really.” He smirked, “Mind you, who’d find us? What about you, what do you see?”

Jack smiled sadly, “It’s one of the rooms in the TARDIS, where Jazz and I used to hide when we were playing hide-and-seek with Rose, or when we’d done something dumb and the Doctor was after us, or when…” He chuckled and shrugged, “Well, you can probably guess, we were pretty horny.”

“Were?” Ianto chuckled, “You’re both still horny, thank God, I don’t know how you’d cope with John and me if you weren’t. So what does this magic room of yours hold?”

Jack looked around him, “Close your eyes.” Ianto did as he was told, “Now, where you saw the window there’s a counter with a couple of pieces of science equipment tucked away neatly in the corners: test tubes in racks and a Bunsen burner at one end, a fume cupboard set into the wall beside the other end of the bench. You’re facing that now.” He’d turned him gently so that Ianto faced down the length of the room and now covered his hands with his eyes, although it wasn’t really neccesary, “On your left now there’s a sofa, we moved that in here ourselves. It’s big enough for two to squish together comfortably, and it’s orange, really really orange. And it’s pulled far enough away from the wall at the end furthest from the door that we could hide behind it when we were in trouble. Opposite that there’s a blank wall with these weird splodges and signs of explosions across it, I think the room actually used to be a science lab at one point, more than it was when we were there. There’s a picture on the wall as well, covering the biggest scorch mark. It’s one of the four of us posing heroically on a statue plinth in a photography museum on Valaxaron; they have a room full of photo opportunities, and you can get your photo taken in all sorts of weird situations by these camera robots. We got them all done: the plinth, the beach painting thing, the actual beach, Abbey Road, Jazz did a porno one even. But this one has the four of us together; the Doctor’s waving a banana, you know like the Enjolras pose from Les Miz? Rose has one hand on her hip and the other shading her eyes as she gazes in the opposite direction. I’m looking down at Jazz, who’s clinging to me and staring off in the same direction as the Doctor, and I’m being really ‘knight in shining armour’ over her.” He chuckled, “Just the horse missing really.”

Ianto laughed, putting his own hands on top of Jack’s covering his eyes, “I prefer your room to mine. I can’t really remember my room now.”

“OK, open your eyes then.” Jack brought their hands down and wrapped their arms around Ianto’s waist, resting their entwined hands against Ianto’s taught stomach.

Ianto turned to him with a smile and took a step towards where he could now see the sofa, pulling Jack with him until they fell together onto it, “I see it. Why did you see this room?”

Jack looked around fondly, “I suppose that I expected it, I was trying to get hidden and tugged you through a convenient doorway, so this was the first room I expected to see in that instance.”

“Why didn’t you show me when we were on the TARDIS?” The young man asked with a slight frown

His lover also frowned in confusion and sadness, “It had gone, I tried to find it but the TARDIS had been tidying up and filed it away somewhere. It would take days to explore the whole ship, and when you got back to the start you’d have to start again, because things would have changed. It’s like painting the Forth Bridge.”

Ianto laughed and sat up, looking around in excitement, “Well I’m glad I got to see it, so where are we?”

“We’re on the Heart of Gold, the fictional one.” Jack put his hands behind his head and leaned back, “In the original I’d guess. What?” He registered the look Ianto was giving him. “What did I say?”

“You’re been on the real Heart of Gold, haven’t you?”

“May have. I might be the actually inventor of the Pangalactic Gargle Blaster.” He pulled a face, “But come on, it’s the Pangalactic Gargle Blaster, you don’t expect us to remember who invented it, do you?”

Ianto shook his head, “I sometimes wonder what I’m going to do with you.”

“Kiss me, I hope.” He reached out and pulled Ianto close to him, “Because I reckon we’ve got maybe an hour before the plot wings its way onwards and we can introduce ourselves.”

“Captain, I like the way you think.”

---

Jack panted against Ianto’s chest and grinned broadly, full of the joy of life (and sex), “Fuck Yan.” He laughed and squeezed the young man softly, “You know, if this were a novel every chapter would have a section of us either breathing heavily or ripping each other’s clothes off, depending on how daring the author was feeling.”

Ianto laughed along and pulled him up to kiss him, nuzzling their noses together, “Are you complaining Captain?”

“Not in the slightest.” Jack kissed him again, slowly and leisurely, almost languorously; that was a good word, languorously, “What is happening to my head?” He asked suddenly, breaking away from the kiss with a confused but amused grin, “I’m thinking in English!”

“You’re thinking in English?” Ianto looked confused too now, “I thought you’d done that for years?” Jack had told him that when he’d first arrived on Earth at the start of his long stay he’d thought in his native language still, but over the years here he’d started speaking English rather than relying on it being translated for him by the TARDIS energies, then dreaming in English and finally speaking in English. He was just getting to the stage where his dreams were bilingual English and Welsh; the two were his first and second languages now.

Jack nodded, “Yeah, but I don’t normally spell it out. Or consider lexical choices.”

“Lol.”

“Did you really just say that?”

“Yes, yes I did. U gots problem wit dat?” Ianto looked up at him with a boyish grin, his blue eyes glowing brilliantly against his flushed skin, “OK, maybe even I’ve got a problem with that. I just said lol!”

“Yes, yes you did. I bet you feel silly now.” He sat up and flexed his shoulders, looking around the room lazily, “Erm two questions. One, where’s my shirt and two, where can I find a drink. Actually, there’s a third, what’s that monkey doing there?”

“What monkey?” Ianto followed his gaze, “Oh, that monkey. Well we’ve found your shirt. Now we’ve just got to get it back off him.”

---

One of Zaphod’s heads looked up as the door sighed open happily and one of his arms pointed excitedly, the other head coming up from his paper to look at the new arrivals too, “Look, we told you we saw them, we told you there was someone in the novel!”

Trillian’s eyes widened as she gave them a once over. She twiddled her glasses by one arm and cocked an eyebrow, “Wowee, tell me one of you is single at least?”

They exchanged amused and slightly possessive glances and raised their left hands simultaneously to show off their matching bands, “Spoken for.”

She sighed and put her glasses back on gloomily, but Arthur looked wary, “Who are you and what are you doing here? Trillian and Zaphod said you almost blundered into the plot earlier.”

“Only almost?” Jack flashed his megawatt grin and Trillian melted into her seat a little bit more, “We’re getting better at this Yan. I’m Jack Harkness, this is my partner Ianto Jones. I suppose you could say we’re tourists.”

“Tourists, well that’s a first. Which book are you from, and does Thursday know you’re out?”

“We’re not, but yes.” Jack tried to explain, “We’re outlanders, is that the word?”

“Don’t be stupid, outlanders can’t really cross over into fiction.” Ford insisted, “You must have come from a book. Actually, you look like the guy who’s been nominated for best Sci-Fi lead, you know, the new guy. Looking like knocking Emperor Zhark off his pedestal.”

Trillian sat up, “You say he looks like him?”

“Yeah, called Joe… Joe Borrogan?”

“Barrogan, wasn’t it? Or Borrowman?” Zaphod shook one of his heads, “I forget, but are you him, and his floozy, the Welsh one. You haven’t spoken yet, do you speak or are you just a bit part?”

Ianto raised an eyebrow icily, “I have no idea what you’re talking about but let me assure you, we’re real, from the outland.”

“Oooh, he’s offended, I’d tend to believe him.” Trillian commented

“You’d believe anything he told you to get him to smile at you.” Arthur grumbled, “He’s gay, give it up sister.”

“Bi, actually.” Ianto smiled at the only woman in the room and she nearly fell out of her seat, “And she’s so not your sister.”

“Damn straight she’s not.” He glared across at her, “So what are you doing here?”

“Like I said,” Jack tried to diffuse the situation, “We’re tourists. Got stuck in lord of the Rings for a while, fancied visiting here before we went home. I used to know Douglas Adams, Arthur Dent, call him what you will. The author anyway. And the real Zaphod Beeblebrox. The real all of you really.”

“How many of them did you sleep with?” Ianto asked slightly warily

Jack pulled a face and looked nervous and embarrassed, “Yan, we were busy inventing the Pangalactic Gargle Blaster, how many of them do you think I slept with?”

The young man took his partner’s hand with a smile, “Fair point. So erm… Anyone fancy a drink?”

Zaphod’s four eyes lit up, “I’ll say!”