Schmoop_Bingo fills 11-15
Sep. 15th, 2010 11:04 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
galadriel1010Start here
Prompt: Karaoke
Wordcount: 1082
Summary: Jack persuades the team into a post-wedding Hen night at a karaoke bar, and Tosh makes a request which Ianto benefits from.
“Mrs Williams,” Jack called out from his office doorway, startling all of them. His eyes were fixed on her with a undefinable intensity. “Do you know what I just realised?”
“That me being called Mrs Williams is really weird and I should stick with Cooper on the job?” she guessed.
He tilted his head slightly and the ghost of a smile appeared. “No, but that's noted. So, Mrs Cooper, do you know what I just realised?”
She smiled and turned around to face him fully. “No, Jack, what did you just realise?”
“We weren't invited to your hen night,” he stated seriously. “We didn't get to wave you off into married life.”
“Jack,” she drew his name out, dropping a warning tone into it as he got closer.
He grinned and came right up to her desk, propping his hip against it. “So tell, did you get drunk? Were there strippers?”
She pushed him away with a laugh, but he wasn't budging. Throwing her hands up, she gave in. “Yes, there was a stripper.”
“I love a stripper. Male or female?”
“Male,” she slapped his thigh, scandalised. “You would have liked him, he was definitely a bit of alright.”
“Now this is more like it. Mrs Cooper,” he chided her, shaking his head. “You've been keeping all the strippers to yourself.”
“We don't need strippers, Jack,” Owen pointed out, sounding bored. “We have the CCTV footage of you and Ianto. Free porn!”
Ianto managed to look annoyed and slightly proud. “It's a good job it's free, Owen, because you wouldn't be able to afford us.”
“Not now you stop him putting it on the company account,” Tosh added.
Jack just grinned at them and winked at Ianto. “We do put on one hell of a show. Anyway, Mrs Cooper.”
“Yes, Jack,” she said, exasperated. “What is it?”
“You need to have another hen party.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “We'll go out for drinks, scream a lot, and Ianto will strip.”
“No he won't,” Ianto corrected him firmly. “And neither will Jack.”
Jack laughed. “Spoil my fun, why don't you? Okay, so we'll go for drinks and all of us will keep our clothes on. How's that?”
“Just drinks?” she checked warily.
“Just drinks,” he promised. “The voice of reason has spoken.”
“Harkness, you promised 'just drinks',” Owen complained bitterly. “This is not 'just drinks'. This is 'drinks, plus karaoke'. This was not part of the deal.”
“Lighten up, Owen,” Jack chided, trying to ignore him rather than get annoyed. “No one's going to make you sing.”
“I might,” Gwen threatened, “if he doesn't cheer up.”
He flipped her off and carried on sulking. “Load of talentless wannabes, hoping to be 'spotted' and dragged from their dead-end jobs.”
“I don't think that you can talk about dead end jobs, Owen,” Ianto pointed out. “Not unless you're speaking from experience.”
“Owen, you don't have to stay if you don't want to,” Jack sighed, cutting in before Owen could bite back at Ianto. “I just thought it would be fun.”
“It is fun,” Tosh insisted. She was stirring her drink with her straw, and barely glanced up from it. “But Owen's right, the singers are awful.”
Jack studied her suspiciously. “Was that a hint, Toshiko?”
“Well...” she looked up at him through her hair and smiled. “We've all heard you sing, and it would be a nice change to have someone with a good voice up there for a change.”
“Miss Sato,” Jack tutted at her and shook his head. “Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“I'll burn you a DVD of that footage you had me delete,” she offered.
He grinned. “Sold! Any requests?”
“'Like A Virgin',” Owen suggested.
Tosh mimed slapping the back of his head and looked up at Jack, who had stood up. “Will you do 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight?', from the Lion King?”
“For you, Miss Sato, I'll do anything.”
“You're actually going to do this?” Ianto checked as Jack walked past him.
Jack shrugged and his grin softened. “Sure. Don't forget to applaud, my ego's a fragile thing.”
They watched his progress up to the small stage, and had to sit through a very drunken rendition of something modern by two girls who could barely stand up, much less hold a tune. When they finished, the compère took the microphone off them and gestured Jack up. “That was Katie and Dannii, guys, give them a big round of applause! Up next we have Jack, who's singing 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight' for Toshiko, isn't that sweet?”
Jack accepted the microphone and chuckled, whilst Tosh blushed. Ianto nudged her absently. “I'm going to have to make some grand possessive gesture now, aren't I? Stick my tongue down his ear or something.”
She giggled and Owen made sounds of disgust, and Jack's warm, rich voice filled the room over the PA system. The volume of conversation in the room dropped, and heads started turning towards the stage; most people wore expressions of surprise. “Oh look, it's Susan Boyle,” Owen joked dryly, to anyone who would listen.
Ianto couldn't take his eyes off Jack, and couldn't help but notice that Jack wasn't taking him eyes off him. The stage lighting was unflattering, casting shadows across Jack's face and in the creases of his shirt. His hair flopped across his forehead and into his eyes, and his teeth shone slightly blue. He looked faintly demonic, actually. But that barely registered, because for all that he was singing for Tosh, he was singing to Ianto. Her hand on his arm told him that she didn't mind..
When Jack finished, appreciative applause filled the room and he saluted his audience, then stepped down to work his way through the crowd. When he reached their table, he dragged Ianto out of his chair and kissed him thoroughly, dominating the embrace and seemingly trying to steal either Ianto's breath or his brain through it. “Just in case anyone wondered,” he told Ianto more gently when then finally broke apart, and Ianto grinned shyly and crushed their lips together again.
Prompt: First 'I Love You'
Wordcount: 1698
Summary: Jack tries to find the right moment to tell Ianto how he feels.
Jack was fairly sure that Ianto knew how he felt, just like he was fairly sure that he knew how Ianto felt. There were times, though, when he wondered; he couldn't know for certain that Ianto understood just how deep his feelings ran these days, just like he couldn't know just how Ianto felt about him in return. Those times were when he thought that he didn't want to know, because they were the times when he thought that he'd fallen too hard and too fast for someone who couldn't feel the same way. It was a conundrum that he thought was called 'being in love'.
Ianto was flomped on the bed next to him – and there really was no other term for it – with one leg hooked over one of Jack's and his face buried in the gap between the pillows. It was the closest that they got to using two pillows these days, as Ianto either used Jack's shoulder or shared pillow space with him, to facilitate snoring in his ear. The nights when they shared a pillow, Jack had no desire to tell Ianto how he felt – largely because the desire to smother him with the other pillow overruled it – and usually got up to escape it. On the nights when his head was on Jack's chest he didn't snore at all, probably because of the different angle or something, but it was too close and intimate, somehow, to confess his feelings.
And then there was the fact, like now, that he didn't know if it would be worse to say it and Ianto not hear, or for Ianto to wake up unexpectedly and be a party to what would surely be a garbled mess of words. So he kept quiet and just tipped his head to the side to watch Ianto's nose twitch and his snores flutter the label sticking out of the pillow case.
He nearly said it over breakfast, but the paper arrived before they got out of bed and by the time breakfast was ready to sit down and eat, Ianto had his head buried in the sport section and was grumbling about... something. Jack tuned him out and ruffled his hair affectionately whilst he went about serving around Ianto and his paper. A hand emerged to grab a fork and stab a sausage, then disappeared again with its precious cargo. The next thing to emerge was a series of swearwords, suggesting that Ianto had, yet again, dripped ketchup onto his paper. Jack left him to it, calling on years of experience to keep from laughing.
They spent the morning working hard, catching up on the paperwork that always got put aside when the Rift went bananas, as it had done in the week before. Saving the world took first priority, followed by sleep and food and showering, followed by clinging to whatever passed for normality – or each other, if you were Jack and Ianto – and then, if you had enough time and energy left over before the next crisis, you did the paperwork. Suffice it to say, Jack and Ianto had spent the night before clinging to each other, and the paperwork was just getting underway.
Owen had half a dozen autopsies to perform, Tosh had eight days of Rift data to comb through, Gwen had follow-up with the police and Retcon paperwork, Jack was doing the initial investigations on three artefacts that they'd found, which left Ianto with the everyday stuff – finding and preparing the forms they needed to fill in for each, filling out the requisition forms for Jack to sign over lunch, setting up the archive files for the reports and cross-referencing them where possible. His desk now faced towards Jack's office, and Jack relaxed his eyes from their close focus on the artefact currently occupying his attention by letting them rove over Ianto idly, flickering over the frown line between his eyes, his slightly rumpled hair and the way it contrasted with his neatly-done tie.
A chat box opened on his computer and he sighed, knowing without having to look that he was being told off.
Ianto: Jack, concentrate.
Ianto: I'd like to be able to go home tonight.
Jack grinned at the implication that Ianto wouldn't go without him and pulled his keyboard out from under the pile of report forms that Ianto had got ready for him.
Jack: Yes, sir. Just resting my eyes. They're not what they used to be.
He glanced up just in time to spot Ianto's smirk before it was smoothed away again.
Ianto: They used to be your ears?
Jack: Oooold joke.
Ianto: But still not as old as you. Sir.
Jack sighed and typed again. 'I love y' and backspaced quickly.
Jack: Touché. Lunch?
They ordered wraps, because they were hot and reasonably tidy for eating at desks. Jack ate his one-handed whilst the other drifted across the forms that had been placed on his desk to sign so far – more Retcon forms than he cared to count, a couple of excursion reports, three requisition forms so far... Ianto set a mug of coffee on the desk, within reach but away from the edge, and brushed his fingers through Jack's hair like he didn't know he was doing it. “Have you made any progress?”
Jack had closed his eyes and leaned into the touch, and sighed when the question made him think. “Some. It's giving me a headache,” he confessed.
Ianto's fingers became more determined, rubbing at his scalp through his gelled hair. “I wish you wouldn't gel your hair,” he chided. “It's all spiky and hard. It's probably what's giving you the headache.”
“Hello Mr Pot,” he rumbled, leaning further into the touch. “Please never stop?”
“I have to go and have my lunch,” Ianto pointed out reasonably. “But I can carry on later.”
“Mmm, what would I do without you?”
Ianto's lips pressed against his forehead and then his hands were gone. “Work, maybe?”
Jack opened his mouth to make his play, but Ianto had vanished with his hands and was, somehow, back at his desk already. “Sneaky wretch,” he muttered, turning his flagging attention back to the reports and his lunch.
Time dragged on in stits and farts, as someone once said to him. One time he looked up and found that only fine minutes had passed, then he removed one panel from the still-mysterious device and it took him half an hour. Eventually he looked up at an appropriate time for dinner, and pushed himself away from his desk. “People, go home,” he called out, striding out of his office. “Cook dinner for a change, watch whatever Auntie Beeb has for us tonight, read a book, I don't care.”
No one needed much encouragement; even Owen seemed eager to get out of there, but then he had been up to his elbows in aliens all day. Ianto made two neat piles of reports whilst Jack went over to lean against his desk, rubbing his thumb against Ianto's neck absently. “Home, then?” Ianto asked at last, once he was finished.
Jack made a non-committal noise. “I thought we could grab take-away and wander around to watch the sunset off the barrage? Should be a nice night for it.”
Ianto stilled. “Well aren't you the romantic? Fish and chips?”
“You read my mind.”
They ate as they walked, because cold fish and chips is a very sad thing, and fell into an easy pace around the edge of the Bay. There were a few other people around, couples walking their dogs with one eye on children running off their energy, bundled up against the cold, a group of probably-students lounging on the grass with bottles of cheap, nasty alcohol and smoking probably more than tobacco. In the end, they didn't make it to the barrage; instead they settled down on a bench, spreading the newspaper out next to them rather than in their laps, having learned that the hard way, and bumping shoulders gently. The sun looked warmer than it was, staining the sky in oranges and pinks as it sank behind Cardiff's skyline and glittered off the glass and steel amongst the concrete and stone.
“It's not bad, is it?” Ianto asked thoughtfully. “Good fish, too.” Jack made a noise of agreement. Nodding, Ianto broke off and ate another piece of fish and asked, apropos of nothing. “Does cod die out?”
Jack swallowed his chip. “That's haddock.”
“I know it's haddock,” Ianto shoved Jack's elbow with his own. “But they're all worried about the cod stocks dying out.”
“Oh... probably. I don't know... They rebuilt the stocks, though,” he popped another lump of fish in his mouth and shrugged. “Cloning.”
“They get there in the end, then?” Ianto asked, although it was rhetorical, or at least Jack thought it was. “Good to know.”
“The human race always got there fastest, even if not first.” He sucked his fingers clean, even though he was only halfway through his fish and would get them greasy pretty much instantly. “You know I love you, don't you?”
Ianto considered this. “Me specifically, or the human race?”
“Well... both, I suppose. But you specifically tonight,” he poked at his fish again and felt better for having said it.
Ianto made another of those contemplative noises. “That's a lot of people to share you with,” he pointed out. “You get me to yourself.”
“You may have a point,” he pretended to consider this. “What if I promise you Jack, and they can have the Captain bits?”
“I can cope with that.” Ianto turned and kissed his cheek, because it was all that was in reach. “I sort of knew, you know?”
“What gave it away?”
“You put up with my snoring.” Because they were leaning together, he felt Ianto's shrug. “And I put up with your sex drive, which really must be love.”
Prompt: Cuddling in Public
Wordcount: 1185
Summary: With Cardiff in a state of shock and Torchwood in a state of mourning, Jack and Ianto stand with their city in a small way.
One hundred and thirteen people died in the carnage, including Tosh and Owen. The morning after, when the Hub grew too close and oppressive for Jack, Ianto dragged him to the roof and held him. Smoke rose on the horizon and the city was utterly still and quiet, personifying the deep breath and the shocked pause of its inhabitants. By the time they left work in the evening, worn out by forty hours of hell and by crushing grief to a point somewhere so far beyond exhaustion that the world nearly made sense again, the mourning had begun.
People gathered on street corners, talking to the complete strangers they'd lived next door to for years, relieved to have made it through the night and grieving those who hadn't, even the ones they had never met. The Plass had become the focal point for it, the location for the spontaneous outpouring of communal pain. It was a sea of flowers and guttering candles already, building up in front of the Millennium Centre and spilling out towards the darkened light pillars. Ianto took Jack up by the lift to watch the steady procession of people arriving and departing again quickly, ushered home by the cold night. He pulled Jack off the step by his hand, refusing to let go of it, and took three Ikea tealights from his pocket. A group of students, bundled up against the cold, had set up a table with tea, coffee, soup and bread rolls, raising money for the victims, and he approached them. “Hi, have you got a light?” he asked, gesturing with his candles, whilst his other hand gripped Jack's.
“Sure.” One of the girls fumbled in a box with cold fingers and passed him a bright purple lighter. “You came prepared.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Here.” He detached his hand from Jack's and felt Jack's hand latch onto his coat instead, and pulled his gloves from his pockets to offer them to her. “You look like you need these.”
“Are you sure?” she asked gratefully, accepting them from him. “I didn't think to bring any.”
He nodded and started lighting the candles. “How long have you been here?”
“We got here about noon,” she answered, pulling his gloves on and rubbing her hands together. They were too big for her, but already warm from his pocket. “As soon as it went to shit last night we all got together at Kat's house – cos her housemates aren't back yet – and we'd got this planned by dawn. Then it was just a matter of getting the stuff. Ikea donated the candles and Tesco gave us the food things, so everything we get for them goes straight to the fund.” She pulled a hopeful face.
Ianto fished in his pocket for his wallet and gave her a twenty pound note. “Have you got a paypal account? Or a JustGiving site?”
“We're getting paypal organised tonight, we hope,” she shrugged. “As soon as the internet comes back online.”
Ianto grimaced and nodded. “Of course. Look, just let me deal with this and...”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she looked down at his candles, up at his face, and then to Jack behind him. “I'm sorry for your loss.”
“Th... thank you.” He picked up one of the candles and gave it to Jack, then took the other two himself and led Jack over to the edge of the memorial. They crouched, and he was glad that Jack didn't need to be told, and placed their candles carefully away from any of the bunches of flowers, at the edge of a cluster of candles which had clearly been put there with similar thoughts in mind. Using the borrowed lighter, he lit them from left to right. “Tosh. Owen.” He paused and bit his lip. “Gray.”
Jack sucked in a breath next to him, but said nothing, so Ianto focussed on relighting the candles that had been blown out by the wind. When he was done, he sat back on his heels and let out a shuddering sigh. “I turned off the life support,” he confessed quietly.
The wind was his only answer for a long while, so long that he didn't think he'd get an answer, and God he didn't want Jack to lose him as well tonight, but then Jack's fingers traced down his arm and touched against his palm. Ianto turned his hand to let Jack lace their fingers together. “I know. I saw.” He paused, and Ianto didn't look around. “You were right.”
“You need to be able to mourn him,” Ianto explained quietly. “You need to have closure.”
“I know.” Jack shuddered at last and Ianto pulled them both upright, turning to face Jack. “But... he...”
“He died a long time ago, Jack,” he curled his other hand around Jack's neck and rubbed his thumb against the skin behind his ear. When no answer was forthcoming, and he couldn't think of anything to say, he applied pressure to the back of Jack's neck and released his hand to wrap his arm around his waist, just holding onto him. Jack buried his face in Ianto's neck and clung to him, shaking in his arms. “I love you,” Ianto whispered into his hair. “I love you so much, and I thought I'd lost you.”
The night grew darker as Jack's flimsy walls broke at last, tears soaking into Ianto's coat and fingers scrabbling at it. People moved around them – fewer and fewer of them now as the night progressed – but the ones who came gave them space and nodded to Ianto, sharing in his grief and offering their support. When Jack finally pulled away, drying his tears away from red-raw eyes, Ianto leaned in and kissed him softly.
A chorus of 'aww's rose from the girls at the table and he rolled his eyes, pulling away from Jack and leading him back to the table. He fished in his pocket and pulled out the key to the tourist office. “This is for the TI office down on the boardwalk,” he told the girl he'd been talking to earlier. “If you get too cold you can go and hide in there. What's your name?”
“Angie,” she studied the key and looked up at him. “Yours?”
“Ianto, Ianto Jones.” Behind him, Jack made a noise that could have been a laugh, a sob or a hiccup, or possibly all three. “I need to take him home.”
“Yeah, of course.” She shrugged slightly. “There's not really an appropriate phrase for this, is there?”
He smiled and inclined his head. “Take care, Angie. I'll see you to get that key back off you.”
“Night, Ianto.”
He took Jack's hand again and tucked them both into one of Jack's pockets, leading Jack up the Plass, away from Torchwood and its raw grief, just for one night.
Prompt: Holiday
Wordcount: 1085
Summary: Ianto drags Jack away from Cardiff to give them both a chance at recovery.
“Jack,” he dropped his hands onto Jack's shoulders and started massaging gently, just enough to distract Jack from his paperwork. “You need a break.”
They'd been working non-stop for three weeks now, coordinating demolition and repair work, chasing disturbed weevils (well, more-disturbed-than-usual Weevils), negotiating back-up and cover with UNIT, searching for new staff... replacements. Ianto shuddered involuntarily and shook his head. He'd adopted the disaster fund as his personal project and was helping Angie to co-ordinate fund-raising right across the country, even across the world, whilst Gwen was helping the police to distribute it. Jack was sleeping more than Ianto had ever known him to – more than Ianto was, in fact – and his sleep was plagued by nightmares. When he was in the Hub, he threw himself into his work to distract himself from the claustrophobia caused by being underground, and every night ended up at Ianto's flat with the curtains open and Jack facing towards them, with Ianto wrapped against his back. Snoring.
Jack scribbled his signature onto a letter for the Prime Minister and turned around in his chair, taking Ianto's hands when they dropped from his shoulders. He kissed the pads of Ianto's thumbs and smirked. “A break? What did you have in mind?”
Ignoring the way his heart soared – apart from a life-affirming blowjob which had seemed to take Jack by surprise completely that first night, the contact between them had been chaste since The Night, and although it was nice to know that their relationship and their sanity could survive three weeks without sex, Ianto missed it – Ianto tugged one hand free and combed it through Jack's hair. “I mean a proper break, not five minutes in the archives.”
“It gets better. Did you have a location in mind?”
He thought about it. “Guernsey. Apparently it's nice at this time of year, although not particularly warm.”
Jack studied him, rubbing his thumbs in circles on Ianto's palms. “So when you said a break, you meant...”
“A weekend, maybe more,” he gestured vaguely to Jack's desk. “UNIT can and will cover it. We both need to stop, Jack. You especially.”
“I need to be able to help,” he protested. “I need to feel...”
“I know,” Ianto interrupted softly, silencing further protests by pressing his lips against Jack's. “But if we keep on like this, one of us is going to crash out and take the other with us.” It was a bit below the belt, suggesting that his own health was in Jack's hands, but it was the truth.
“Okay.” Jack kissed him again, more purposefully than before. “I'll call UNIT, you...”
“I'll call the hotel.” Ianto stepped back when Jack released his hands and grazed his fingers over Jack's cheek once more.
Hotels had always been Ianto's biggest luxury expense. Before Jack moved in with him, they had provided the occasional night of pampering and luxury, a change from the Ikea-neat lines of his flat, or the damp clutter of the Hub. It was better when Jack joined him, because of the extra bonus of not having to wash the sheets and not having to worry about his neighbours hearing them. Then, after Jack moved in with him and he was spending more nights at his own flat, and every night with Jack, they became a bunk-off, somewhere to run to when the Rift gave them a quiet night and they needed a break. They'd get in Jack's Jaguar, or Ianto's Aston Martin, and drive until they found somewhere they liked the look of that had vacancies. Sometimes they had to take the penthouse suite, because it was all that was vacant. Ianto loved tying Jack to four-poster beds, loved the trust it implied and the way that Jack came utterly undone when tied up.
The flight was only twenty minutes, so they didn't even get in-flight drinks, let alone chance for a fumble in the toilet, and a taxi was waiting for them at the airport, ready to whisk them away to Cobo and the hotel Ianto had booked. He'd gone for the penthouse again, liking the way it rose above its surrounding buildings by a floor, and the glass walls of the bedroom. Jack was sitting on the edge of the enormous bed – not a four-poster, sadly, and it even had a solid headboard, impossible to tie anything to – looking around the room in wonder. The wall behind the bed and the one to the right were both sheet glass, with a door leading onto the balcony in the corner. To the left, the wall was covered with floor-to ceiling mirrors, with a mirrored wardrobe door and bathroom door marked out only by a white border. Opposite the bed the wall was plain white, with a huge TV mounted above a chest of drawers and two side tables, which matched the cabinets next to the bed and the bed itself. A book of photos of Guernsey was on top of the chest of drawers, between two vases of Freesias, and a door next to one of the cabinets led into the entrance hall, which the sitting room led off.
Ianto straightened up from putting their things away in the chest of drawers and watched Jack. His gaze flickered around the room, but kept returning to the tempestuous sea visible through the huge windows. “Jack,” he called softly, dragging Jack's attention back to him as he sat next to him. Ianto smiled and cupped Jack's cheek, bringing their lips together softly. “You need to sleep,” he murmured. “I'll watch over you.”
Jack shook his head, but pulled his clothes off and dropped them in a pile next to the bed; Ianto couldn't bring himself to care. He raised his eyebrows when Jack started on the buttons of his shirt, especially as Jack had only stripped down to his boxers, but complied and dropped his clothes on top of Jack's. They tugged the quilt down between them and laid side-by-side, touching each other gently just to know that they were both there. “I hate myself for thinking it,” Jack whispered, “but I'm glad it wasn't you.”
Ianto didn't need him to explain; he surged forwards and pressed himself against Jack fully, trying to be there and alive as much as possible. “I won't leave you. I'm here and I won't leave you.”
Prompt: Making Love
Wordcount: 670
Summary: Ianto discovers one of the hidden losses from the destruction wrought by Gray and John, and sets about finding the silver lining.
Ianto drew back from the kiss and studied Jack closely, running his fingertips across his face and following them with his eyes. “Jack, what's the matter?”
Looking away from Ianto, Jack grinned, which struck Ianto as a sign that something was very wrong, and shrugged. “Nothing's the matter,” he denied, without meeting Ianto's eyes. “Why did you think that?”
He went back to nuzzling Jack's neck whilst he thought about it, trying to pinpoint what it was that had tipped him off. It was something in the kiss, in the way Jack was responding to him and touching him; he was clumsy and cautious, over-enthusiastic one moment and withdrawn the next, kissing like he'd never been kissed before, and touching like Ianto was completely new to him. “You don't remember,” he said at last, quietly, and Jack fell utterly still. “Why didn't you say anything?”
Jack tightened his arms around Ianto slowly. “I... I should know. This is me, Ianto. Intergalactic playboy. It's what everyone expects,” he almost spat it out, sounding bitter about it, then added more softly, “I hoped you wouldn't notice.”
Ianto sighed and flattened his palm on Jack's shoulder to push him back onto the bed. “Jack... I know you inside and out,” and that wasn't an exaggeration, although it could have been a euphemism. “I love you. Of course I noticed.”
“Yeah, well,” Jack said in a flat, dead voice. “Now you know.”
“You don't though, do you?” he asked, planting his hands on either side of Jack's head and raising himself above Jack. “You don't know what this means.”
Jack's Adam's apple bobbed, and he finally met Ianto's eyes again. “I thought I did. I'm not so sure now, though.”
“Did you think I'd leave you?” he asked, and Jack nodded jerkily. “Oh Jack...” he closed his eyes and rested their foreheads together. “Never. And definitely not for something like this. This is... you were my first. The only one,” he added firmly, opening his eyes. “Have you been looking it up on the internet?”
Jack nodded. “I hoped it would jog my memory. I still can't remember it, though.”
“What can't you remember?”
Jack's tongue darted out to moisten his lips. “What it feels like. It... I can't believe it doesn't hurt and it's... You're laughing at me,” he said accusingly.
“No, I'm not.” Ianto kissed him again to reassure him. “I'm excited.”
“I can tell,” Jack joked, glancing down.
“You were excited, when I told you. You said that you were glad I warned you, because you could make it perfect.” He lifted himself higher and nudged his nose against Jack's, not quite kissing him. “I want to make it perfect for you.”
“It will be perfect,” Jack told him, with a trace of bravado. “You're here.”
“Sap.” He brushed their lips together, then pulled away to kiss Jack's eyelids, loving the feel of his eyelashes fluttering against his lips. “The first night we slept together, it was at my flat, and you brought red silk bed linen especially, you said that you wanted me to feel silk sheets and your mouth around my cock, to see me flushing so that I clashed with the covers – that was when you decided that red is my colour. You laid me out in the middle of the bed,” he mouthed down to Jack's ear and dropped his voice to a whisper, “and made love to me all night, until I couldn't remember my name. But I screamed yours when you finally fucked into me.”
He pulled back to look down at Jack, and saw that his eyes were already dark with want, but suspiciously shiny. “I want to remember it,” he whispered.
Ianto kissed his lips again and shushed him, lowering his head to Jack's neck. “Let me remind you.”
Next section here
Prompt: Karaoke
Wordcount: 1082
Summary: Jack persuades the team into a post-wedding Hen night at a karaoke bar, and Tosh makes a request which Ianto benefits from.
“Mrs Williams,” Jack called out from his office doorway, startling all of them. His eyes were fixed on her with a undefinable intensity. “Do you know what I just realised?”
“That me being called Mrs Williams is really weird and I should stick with Cooper on the job?” she guessed.
He tilted his head slightly and the ghost of a smile appeared. “No, but that's noted. So, Mrs Cooper, do you know what I just realised?”
She smiled and turned around to face him fully. “No, Jack, what did you just realise?”
“We weren't invited to your hen night,” he stated seriously. “We didn't get to wave you off into married life.”
“Jack,” she drew his name out, dropping a warning tone into it as he got closer.
He grinned and came right up to her desk, propping his hip against it. “So tell, did you get drunk? Were there strippers?”
She pushed him away with a laugh, but he wasn't budging. Throwing her hands up, she gave in. “Yes, there was a stripper.”
“I love a stripper. Male or female?”
“Male,” she slapped his thigh, scandalised. “You would have liked him, he was definitely a bit of alright.”
“Now this is more like it. Mrs Cooper,” he chided her, shaking his head. “You've been keeping all the strippers to yourself.”
“We don't need strippers, Jack,” Owen pointed out, sounding bored. “We have the CCTV footage of you and Ianto. Free porn!”
Ianto managed to look annoyed and slightly proud. “It's a good job it's free, Owen, because you wouldn't be able to afford us.”
“Not now you stop him putting it on the company account,” Tosh added.
Jack just grinned at them and winked at Ianto. “We do put on one hell of a show. Anyway, Mrs Cooper.”
“Yes, Jack,” she said, exasperated. “What is it?”
“You need to have another hen party.” She opened her mouth to protest, but he cut her off. “We'll go out for drinks, scream a lot, and Ianto will strip.”
“No he won't,” Ianto corrected him firmly. “And neither will Jack.”
Jack laughed. “Spoil my fun, why don't you? Okay, so we'll go for drinks and all of us will keep our clothes on. How's that?”
“Just drinks?” she checked warily.
“Just drinks,” he promised. “The voice of reason has spoken.”
“Harkness, you promised 'just drinks',” Owen complained bitterly. “This is not 'just drinks'. This is 'drinks, plus karaoke'. This was not part of the deal.”
“Lighten up, Owen,” Jack chided, trying to ignore him rather than get annoyed. “No one's going to make you sing.”
“I might,” Gwen threatened, “if he doesn't cheer up.”
He flipped her off and carried on sulking. “Load of talentless wannabes, hoping to be 'spotted' and dragged from their dead-end jobs.”
“I don't think that you can talk about dead end jobs, Owen,” Ianto pointed out. “Not unless you're speaking from experience.”
“Owen, you don't have to stay if you don't want to,” Jack sighed, cutting in before Owen could bite back at Ianto. “I just thought it would be fun.”
“It is fun,” Tosh insisted. She was stirring her drink with her straw, and barely glanced up from it. “But Owen's right, the singers are awful.”
Jack studied her suspiciously. “Was that a hint, Toshiko?”
“Well...” she looked up at him through her hair and smiled. “We've all heard you sing, and it would be a nice change to have someone with a good voice up there for a change.”
“Miss Sato,” Jack tutted at her and shook his head. “Flattery will get you nowhere.”
“I'll burn you a DVD of that footage you had me delete,” she offered.
He grinned. “Sold! Any requests?”
“'Like A Virgin',” Owen suggested.
Tosh mimed slapping the back of his head and looked up at Jack, who had stood up. “Will you do 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight?', from the Lion King?”
“For you, Miss Sato, I'll do anything.”
“You're actually going to do this?” Ianto checked as Jack walked past him.
Jack shrugged and his grin softened. “Sure. Don't forget to applaud, my ego's a fragile thing.”
They watched his progress up to the small stage, and had to sit through a very drunken rendition of something modern by two girls who could barely stand up, much less hold a tune. When they finished, the compère took the microphone off them and gestured Jack up. “That was Katie and Dannii, guys, give them a big round of applause! Up next we have Jack, who's singing 'Can You Feel The Love Tonight' for Toshiko, isn't that sweet?”
Jack accepted the microphone and chuckled, whilst Tosh blushed. Ianto nudged her absently. “I'm going to have to make some grand possessive gesture now, aren't I? Stick my tongue down his ear or something.”
She giggled and Owen made sounds of disgust, and Jack's warm, rich voice filled the room over the PA system. The volume of conversation in the room dropped, and heads started turning towards the stage; most people wore expressions of surprise. “Oh look, it's Susan Boyle,” Owen joked dryly, to anyone who would listen.
Ianto couldn't take his eyes off Jack, and couldn't help but notice that Jack wasn't taking him eyes off him. The stage lighting was unflattering, casting shadows across Jack's face and in the creases of his shirt. His hair flopped across his forehead and into his eyes, and his teeth shone slightly blue. He looked faintly demonic, actually. But that barely registered, because for all that he was singing for Tosh, he was singing to Ianto. Her hand on his arm told him that she didn't mind..
When Jack finished, appreciative applause filled the room and he saluted his audience, then stepped down to work his way through the crowd. When he reached their table, he dragged Ianto out of his chair and kissed him thoroughly, dominating the embrace and seemingly trying to steal either Ianto's breath or his brain through it. “Just in case anyone wondered,” he told Ianto more gently when then finally broke apart, and Ianto grinned shyly and crushed their lips together again.
Prompt: First 'I Love You'
Wordcount: 1698
Summary: Jack tries to find the right moment to tell Ianto how he feels.
Jack was fairly sure that Ianto knew how he felt, just like he was fairly sure that he knew how Ianto felt. There were times, though, when he wondered; he couldn't know for certain that Ianto understood just how deep his feelings ran these days, just like he couldn't know just how Ianto felt about him in return. Those times were when he thought that he didn't want to know, because they were the times when he thought that he'd fallen too hard and too fast for someone who couldn't feel the same way. It was a conundrum that he thought was called 'being in love'.
Ianto was flomped on the bed next to him – and there really was no other term for it – with one leg hooked over one of Jack's and his face buried in the gap between the pillows. It was the closest that they got to using two pillows these days, as Ianto either used Jack's shoulder or shared pillow space with him, to facilitate snoring in his ear. The nights when they shared a pillow, Jack had no desire to tell Ianto how he felt – largely because the desire to smother him with the other pillow overruled it – and usually got up to escape it. On the nights when his head was on Jack's chest he didn't snore at all, probably because of the different angle or something, but it was too close and intimate, somehow, to confess his feelings.
And then there was the fact, like now, that he didn't know if it would be worse to say it and Ianto not hear, or for Ianto to wake up unexpectedly and be a party to what would surely be a garbled mess of words. So he kept quiet and just tipped his head to the side to watch Ianto's nose twitch and his snores flutter the label sticking out of the pillow case.
He nearly said it over breakfast, but the paper arrived before they got out of bed and by the time breakfast was ready to sit down and eat, Ianto had his head buried in the sport section and was grumbling about... something. Jack tuned him out and ruffled his hair affectionately whilst he went about serving around Ianto and his paper. A hand emerged to grab a fork and stab a sausage, then disappeared again with its precious cargo. The next thing to emerge was a series of swearwords, suggesting that Ianto had, yet again, dripped ketchup onto his paper. Jack left him to it, calling on years of experience to keep from laughing.
They spent the morning working hard, catching up on the paperwork that always got put aside when the Rift went bananas, as it had done in the week before. Saving the world took first priority, followed by sleep and food and showering, followed by clinging to whatever passed for normality – or each other, if you were Jack and Ianto – and then, if you had enough time and energy left over before the next crisis, you did the paperwork. Suffice it to say, Jack and Ianto had spent the night before clinging to each other, and the paperwork was just getting underway.
Owen had half a dozen autopsies to perform, Tosh had eight days of Rift data to comb through, Gwen had follow-up with the police and Retcon paperwork, Jack was doing the initial investigations on three artefacts that they'd found, which left Ianto with the everyday stuff – finding and preparing the forms they needed to fill in for each, filling out the requisition forms for Jack to sign over lunch, setting up the archive files for the reports and cross-referencing them where possible. His desk now faced towards Jack's office, and Jack relaxed his eyes from their close focus on the artefact currently occupying his attention by letting them rove over Ianto idly, flickering over the frown line between his eyes, his slightly rumpled hair and the way it contrasted with his neatly-done tie.
A chat box opened on his computer and he sighed, knowing without having to look that he was being told off.
Ianto: Jack, concentrate.
Ianto: I'd like to be able to go home tonight.
Jack grinned at the implication that Ianto wouldn't go without him and pulled his keyboard out from under the pile of report forms that Ianto had got ready for him.
Jack: Yes, sir. Just resting my eyes. They're not what they used to be.
He glanced up just in time to spot Ianto's smirk before it was smoothed away again.
Ianto: They used to be your ears?
Jack: Oooold joke.
Ianto: But still not as old as you. Sir.
Jack sighed and typed again. 'I love y' and backspaced quickly.
Jack: Touché. Lunch?
They ordered wraps, because they were hot and reasonably tidy for eating at desks. Jack ate his one-handed whilst the other drifted across the forms that had been placed on his desk to sign so far – more Retcon forms than he cared to count, a couple of excursion reports, three requisition forms so far... Ianto set a mug of coffee on the desk, within reach but away from the edge, and brushed his fingers through Jack's hair like he didn't know he was doing it. “Have you made any progress?”
Jack had closed his eyes and leaned into the touch, and sighed when the question made him think. “Some. It's giving me a headache,” he confessed.
Ianto's fingers became more determined, rubbing at his scalp through his gelled hair. “I wish you wouldn't gel your hair,” he chided. “It's all spiky and hard. It's probably what's giving you the headache.”
“Hello Mr Pot,” he rumbled, leaning further into the touch. “Please never stop?”
“I have to go and have my lunch,” Ianto pointed out reasonably. “But I can carry on later.”
“Mmm, what would I do without you?”
Ianto's lips pressed against his forehead and then his hands were gone. “Work, maybe?”
Jack opened his mouth to make his play, but Ianto had vanished with his hands and was, somehow, back at his desk already. “Sneaky wretch,” he muttered, turning his flagging attention back to the reports and his lunch.
Time dragged on in stits and farts, as someone once said to him. One time he looked up and found that only fine minutes had passed, then he removed one panel from the still-mysterious device and it took him half an hour. Eventually he looked up at an appropriate time for dinner, and pushed himself away from his desk. “People, go home,” he called out, striding out of his office. “Cook dinner for a change, watch whatever Auntie Beeb has for us tonight, read a book, I don't care.”
No one needed much encouragement; even Owen seemed eager to get out of there, but then he had been up to his elbows in aliens all day. Ianto made two neat piles of reports whilst Jack went over to lean against his desk, rubbing his thumb against Ianto's neck absently. “Home, then?” Ianto asked at last, once he was finished.
Jack made a non-committal noise. “I thought we could grab take-away and wander around to watch the sunset off the barrage? Should be a nice night for it.”
Ianto stilled. “Well aren't you the romantic? Fish and chips?”
“You read my mind.”
They ate as they walked, because cold fish and chips is a very sad thing, and fell into an easy pace around the edge of the Bay. There were a few other people around, couples walking their dogs with one eye on children running off their energy, bundled up against the cold, a group of probably-students lounging on the grass with bottles of cheap, nasty alcohol and smoking probably more than tobacco. In the end, they didn't make it to the barrage; instead they settled down on a bench, spreading the newspaper out next to them rather than in their laps, having learned that the hard way, and bumping shoulders gently. The sun looked warmer than it was, staining the sky in oranges and pinks as it sank behind Cardiff's skyline and glittered off the glass and steel amongst the concrete and stone.
“It's not bad, is it?” Ianto asked thoughtfully. “Good fish, too.” Jack made a noise of agreement. Nodding, Ianto broke off and ate another piece of fish and asked, apropos of nothing. “Does cod die out?”
Jack swallowed his chip. “That's haddock.”
“I know it's haddock,” Ianto shoved Jack's elbow with his own. “But they're all worried about the cod stocks dying out.”
“Oh... probably. I don't know... They rebuilt the stocks, though,” he popped another lump of fish in his mouth and shrugged. “Cloning.”
“They get there in the end, then?” Ianto asked, although it was rhetorical, or at least Jack thought it was. “Good to know.”
“The human race always got there fastest, even if not first.” He sucked his fingers clean, even though he was only halfway through his fish and would get them greasy pretty much instantly. “You know I love you, don't you?”
Ianto considered this. “Me specifically, or the human race?”
“Well... both, I suppose. But you specifically tonight,” he poked at his fish again and felt better for having said it.
Ianto made another of those contemplative noises. “That's a lot of people to share you with,” he pointed out. “You get me to yourself.”
“You may have a point,” he pretended to consider this. “What if I promise you Jack, and they can have the Captain bits?”
“I can cope with that.” Ianto turned and kissed his cheek, because it was all that was in reach. “I sort of knew, you know?”
“What gave it away?”
“You put up with my snoring.” Because they were leaning together, he felt Ianto's shrug. “And I put up with your sex drive, which really must be love.”
Prompt: Cuddling in Public
Wordcount: 1185
Summary: With Cardiff in a state of shock and Torchwood in a state of mourning, Jack and Ianto stand with their city in a small way.
One hundred and thirteen people died in the carnage, including Tosh and Owen. The morning after, when the Hub grew too close and oppressive for Jack, Ianto dragged him to the roof and held him. Smoke rose on the horizon and the city was utterly still and quiet, personifying the deep breath and the shocked pause of its inhabitants. By the time they left work in the evening, worn out by forty hours of hell and by crushing grief to a point somewhere so far beyond exhaustion that the world nearly made sense again, the mourning had begun.
People gathered on street corners, talking to the complete strangers they'd lived next door to for years, relieved to have made it through the night and grieving those who hadn't, even the ones they had never met. The Plass had become the focal point for it, the location for the spontaneous outpouring of communal pain. It was a sea of flowers and guttering candles already, building up in front of the Millennium Centre and spilling out towards the darkened light pillars. Ianto took Jack up by the lift to watch the steady procession of people arriving and departing again quickly, ushered home by the cold night. He pulled Jack off the step by his hand, refusing to let go of it, and took three Ikea tealights from his pocket. A group of students, bundled up against the cold, had set up a table with tea, coffee, soup and bread rolls, raising money for the victims, and he approached them. “Hi, have you got a light?” he asked, gesturing with his candles, whilst his other hand gripped Jack's.
“Sure.” One of the girls fumbled in a box with cold fingers and passed him a bright purple lighter. “You came prepared.”
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Here.” He detached his hand from Jack's and felt Jack's hand latch onto his coat instead, and pulled his gloves from his pockets to offer them to her. “You look like you need these.”
“Are you sure?” she asked gratefully, accepting them from him. “I didn't think to bring any.”
He nodded and started lighting the candles. “How long have you been here?”
“We got here about noon,” she answered, pulling his gloves on and rubbing her hands together. They were too big for her, but already warm from his pocket. “As soon as it went to shit last night we all got together at Kat's house – cos her housemates aren't back yet – and we'd got this planned by dawn. Then it was just a matter of getting the stuff. Ikea donated the candles and Tesco gave us the food things, so everything we get for them goes straight to the fund.” She pulled a hopeful face.
Ianto fished in his pocket for his wallet and gave her a twenty pound note. “Have you got a paypal account? Or a JustGiving site?”
“We're getting paypal organised tonight, we hope,” she shrugged. “As soon as the internet comes back online.”
Ianto grimaced and nodded. “Of course. Look, just let me deal with this and...”
“Oh, yeah, sure,” she looked down at his candles, up at his face, and then to Jack behind him. “I'm sorry for your loss.”
“Th... thank you.” He picked up one of the candles and gave it to Jack, then took the other two himself and led Jack over to the edge of the memorial. They crouched, and he was glad that Jack didn't need to be told, and placed their candles carefully away from any of the bunches of flowers, at the edge of a cluster of candles which had clearly been put there with similar thoughts in mind. Using the borrowed lighter, he lit them from left to right. “Tosh. Owen.” He paused and bit his lip. “Gray.”
Jack sucked in a breath next to him, but said nothing, so Ianto focussed on relighting the candles that had been blown out by the wind. When he was done, he sat back on his heels and let out a shuddering sigh. “I turned off the life support,” he confessed quietly.
The wind was his only answer for a long while, so long that he didn't think he'd get an answer, and God he didn't want Jack to lose him as well tonight, but then Jack's fingers traced down his arm and touched against his palm. Ianto turned his hand to let Jack lace their fingers together. “I know. I saw.” He paused, and Ianto didn't look around. “You were right.”
“You need to be able to mourn him,” Ianto explained quietly. “You need to have closure.”
“I know.” Jack shuddered at last and Ianto pulled them both upright, turning to face Jack. “But... he...”
“He died a long time ago, Jack,” he curled his other hand around Jack's neck and rubbed his thumb against the skin behind his ear. When no answer was forthcoming, and he couldn't think of anything to say, he applied pressure to the back of Jack's neck and released his hand to wrap his arm around his waist, just holding onto him. Jack buried his face in Ianto's neck and clung to him, shaking in his arms. “I love you,” Ianto whispered into his hair. “I love you so much, and I thought I'd lost you.”
The night grew darker as Jack's flimsy walls broke at last, tears soaking into Ianto's coat and fingers scrabbling at it. People moved around them – fewer and fewer of them now as the night progressed – but the ones who came gave them space and nodded to Ianto, sharing in his grief and offering their support. When Jack finally pulled away, drying his tears away from red-raw eyes, Ianto leaned in and kissed him softly.
A chorus of 'aww's rose from the girls at the table and he rolled his eyes, pulling away from Jack and leading him back to the table. He fished in his pocket and pulled out the key to the tourist office. “This is for the TI office down on the boardwalk,” he told the girl he'd been talking to earlier. “If you get too cold you can go and hide in there. What's your name?”
“Angie,” she studied the key and looked up at him. “Yours?”
“Ianto, Ianto Jones.” Behind him, Jack made a noise that could have been a laugh, a sob or a hiccup, or possibly all three. “I need to take him home.”
“Yeah, of course.” She shrugged slightly. “There's not really an appropriate phrase for this, is there?”
He smiled and inclined his head. “Take care, Angie. I'll see you to get that key back off you.”
“Night, Ianto.”
He took Jack's hand again and tucked them both into one of Jack's pockets, leading Jack up the Plass, away from Torchwood and its raw grief, just for one night.
Prompt: Holiday
Wordcount: 1085
Summary: Ianto drags Jack away from Cardiff to give them both a chance at recovery.
“Jack,” he dropped his hands onto Jack's shoulders and started massaging gently, just enough to distract Jack from his paperwork. “You need a break.”
They'd been working non-stop for three weeks now, coordinating demolition and repair work, chasing disturbed weevils (well, more-disturbed-than-usual Weevils), negotiating back-up and cover with UNIT, searching for new staff... replacements. Ianto shuddered involuntarily and shook his head. He'd adopted the disaster fund as his personal project and was helping Angie to co-ordinate fund-raising right across the country, even across the world, whilst Gwen was helping the police to distribute it. Jack was sleeping more than Ianto had ever known him to – more than Ianto was, in fact – and his sleep was plagued by nightmares. When he was in the Hub, he threw himself into his work to distract himself from the claustrophobia caused by being underground, and every night ended up at Ianto's flat with the curtains open and Jack facing towards them, with Ianto wrapped against his back. Snoring.
Jack scribbled his signature onto a letter for the Prime Minister and turned around in his chair, taking Ianto's hands when they dropped from his shoulders. He kissed the pads of Ianto's thumbs and smirked. “A break? What did you have in mind?”
Ignoring the way his heart soared – apart from a life-affirming blowjob which had seemed to take Jack by surprise completely that first night, the contact between them had been chaste since The Night, and although it was nice to know that their relationship and their sanity could survive three weeks without sex, Ianto missed it – Ianto tugged one hand free and combed it through Jack's hair. “I mean a proper break, not five minutes in the archives.”
“It gets better. Did you have a location in mind?”
He thought about it. “Guernsey. Apparently it's nice at this time of year, although not particularly warm.”
Jack studied him, rubbing his thumbs in circles on Ianto's palms. “So when you said a break, you meant...”
“A weekend, maybe more,” he gestured vaguely to Jack's desk. “UNIT can and will cover it. We both need to stop, Jack. You especially.”
“I need to be able to help,” he protested. “I need to feel...”
“I know,” Ianto interrupted softly, silencing further protests by pressing his lips against Jack's. “But if we keep on like this, one of us is going to crash out and take the other with us.” It was a bit below the belt, suggesting that his own health was in Jack's hands, but it was the truth.
“Okay.” Jack kissed him again, more purposefully than before. “I'll call UNIT, you...”
“I'll call the hotel.” Ianto stepped back when Jack released his hands and grazed his fingers over Jack's cheek once more.
Hotels had always been Ianto's biggest luxury expense. Before Jack moved in with him, they had provided the occasional night of pampering and luxury, a change from the Ikea-neat lines of his flat, or the damp clutter of the Hub. It was better when Jack joined him, because of the extra bonus of not having to wash the sheets and not having to worry about his neighbours hearing them. Then, after Jack moved in with him and he was spending more nights at his own flat, and every night with Jack, they became a bunk-off, somewhere to run to when the Rift gave them a quiet night and they needed a break. They'd get in Jack's Jaguar, or Ianto's Aston Martin, and drive until they found somewhere they liked the look of that had vacancies. Sometimes they had to take the penthouse suite, because it was all that was vacant. Ianto loved tying Jack to four-poster beds, loved the trust it implied and the way that Jack came utterly undone when tied up.
The flight was only twenty minutes, so they didn't even get in-flight drinks, let alone chance for a fumble in the toilet, and a taxi was waiting for them at the airport, ready to whisk them away to Cobo and the hotel Ianto had booked. He'd gone for the penthouse again, liking the way it rose above its surrounding buildings by a floor, and the glass walls of the bedroom. Jack was sitting on the edge of the enormous bed – not a four-poster, sadly, and it even had a solid headboard, impossible to tie anything to – looking around the room in wonder. The wall behind the bed and the one to the right were both sheet glass, with a door leading onto the balcony in the corner. To the left, the wall was covered with floor-to ceiling mirrors, with a mirrored wardrobe door and bathroom door marked out only by a white border. Opposite the bed the wall was plain white, with a huge TV mounted above a chest of drawers and two side tables, which matched the cabinets next to the bed and the bed itself. A book of photos of Guernsey was on top of the chest of drawers, between two vases of Freesias, and a door next to one of the cabinets led into the entrance hall, which the sitting room led off.
Ianto straightened up from putting their things away in the chest of drawers and watched Jack. His gaze flickered around the room, but kept returning to the tempestuous sea visible through the huge windows. “Jack,” he called softly, dragging Jack's attention back to him as he sat next to him. Ianto smiled and cupped Jack's cheek, bringing their lips together softly. “You need to sleep,” he murmured. “I'll watch over you.”
Jack shook his head, but pulled his clothes off and dropped them in a pile next to the bed; Ianto couldn't bring himself to care. He raised his eyebrows when Jack started on the buttons of his shirt, especially as Jack had only stripped down to his boxers, but complied and dropped his clothes on top of Jack's. They tugged the quilt down between them and laid side-by-side, touching each other gently just to know that they were both there. “I hate myself for thinking it,” Jack whispered, “but I'm glad it wasn't you.”
Ianto didn't need him to explain; he surged forwards and pressed himself against Jack fully, trying to be there and alive as much as possible. “I won't leave you. I'm here and I won't leave you.”
Prompt: Making Love
Wordcount: 670
Summary: Ianto discovers one of the hidden losses from the destruction wrought by Gray and John, and sets about finding the silver lining.
Ianto drew back from the kiss and studied Jack closely, running his fingertips across his face and following them with his eyes. “Jack, what's the matter?”
Looking away from Ianto, Jack grinned, which struck Ianto as a sign that something was very wrong, and shrugged. “Nothing's the matter,” he denied, without meeting Ianto's eyes. “Why did you think that?”
He went back to nuzzling Jack's neck whilst he thought about it, trying to pinpoint what it was that had tipped him off. It was something in the kiss, in the way Jack was responding to him and touching him; he was clumsy and cautious, over-enthusiastic one moment and withdrawn the next, kissing like he'd never been kissed before, and touching like Ianto was completely new to him. “You don't remember,” he said at last, quietly, and Jack fell utterly still. “Why didn't you say anything?”
Jack tightened his arms around Ianto slowly. “I... I should know. This is me, Ianto. Intergalactic playboy. It's what everyone expects,” he almost spat it out, sounding bitter about it, then added more softly, “I hoped you wouldn't notice.”
Ianto sighed and flattened his palm on Jack's shoulder to push him back onto the bed. “Jack... I know you inside and out,” and that wasn't an exaggeration, although it could have been a euphemism. “I love you. Of course I noticed.”
“Yeah, well,” Jack said in a flat, dead voice. “Now you know.”
“You don't though, do you?” he asked, planting his hands on either side of Jack's head and raising himself above Jack. “You don't know what this means.”
Jack's Adam's apple bobbed, and he finally met Ianto's eyes again. “I thought I did. I'm not so sure now, though.”
“Did you think I'd leave you?” he asked, and Jack nodded jerkily. “Oh Jack...” he closed his eyes and rested their foreheads together. “Never. And definitely not for something like this. This is... you were my first. The only one,” he added firmly, opening his eyes. “Have you been looking it up on the internet?”
Jack nodded. “I hoped it would jog my memory. I still can't remember it, though.”
“What can't you remember?”
Jack's tongue darted out to moisten his lips. “What it feels like. It... I can't believe it doesn't hurt and it's... You're laughing at me,” he said accusingly.
“No, I'm not.” Ianto kissed him again to reassure him. “I'm excited.”
“I can tell,” Jack joked, glancing down.
“You were excited, when I told you. You said that you were glad I warned you, because you could make it perfect.” He lifted himself higher and nudged his nose against Jack's, not quite kissing him. “I want to make it perfect for you.”
“It will be perfect,” Jack told him, with a trace of bravado. “You're here.”
“Sap.” He brushed their lips together, then pulled away to kiss Jack's eyelids, loving the feel of his eyelashes fluttering against his lips. “The first night we slept together, it was at my flat, and you brought red silk bed linen especially, you said that you wanted me to feel silk sheets and your mouth around my cock, to see me flushing so that I clashed with the covers – that was when you decided that red is my colour. You laid me out in the middle of the bed,” he mouthed down to Jack's ear and dropped his voice to a whisper, “and made love to me all night, until I couldn't remember my name. But I screamed yours when you finally fucked into me.”
He pulled back to look down at Jack, and saw that his eyes were already dark with want, but suspiciously shiny. “I want to remember it,” he whispered.
Ianto kissed his lips again and shushed him, lowering his head to Jack's neck. “Let me remind you.”
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