galadriel1010 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
galadriel1010) wrote2010-09-15 11:44 am
galadriel1010) wrote2010-09-15 11:44 am
Entry tags:
Schmoop Bingo fills 16-20
Prompt: Love Letter
Wordcount: 899
Summary: Jack finds that the written word is more powerful than the spoken one. Ianto agrees.
Jack had pulled one of the little end tables over to the edge of the bed and put his pen and paper down on it. It wobbled slightly, but he could work with it for now. Next to him, Ianto was sprawled out across the bed, snoring into the pillow, thoroughly worn out. They'd extended their stay to make the most of Jack's sexual exploration, and had tried things that Ianto assured him they'd never even contemplated before, but begged him to repeat when they got home. Either Ianto brought out the kinky in him, or he'd not given Ianto's own kinkiness enough credit before, and he thought that it was probably the latter.
He'd taken over for the night, determined to find every little thing that drove Ianto mad. With his focus so completely on his partner, Jack had been able to hold out for hours and turn him into a gibbering, shaking puddle under his hands, begging for release. When Jack finally granted it, Ianto had passed out completely, and swatted Jack away when he woke him, nearly frantic with worry.
One all, as they said in football.
It had given him the opportunity he'd been looking for to get his feelings down on paper, whilst Ianto wasn't there to get him tongue-tied and doey-eyed. 'I love you' was all well enough, and easy to say by now, but the Victorian in him loved the elegance and formality of a letter, the fact that it was there on paper to be read and reread in dark moments. He knew that Ianto kept things like this in the bottom of his wardrobe, and hoped that he'd be able to find it when he was alone again, to remind him of just how good this had been.
He brushed at his eyes and blinked a few times to clear them before bending to his task again and putting pen to paper.
“Dear Ianto,
(You're going to accuse me of being a soppy fool when you read this, but I'll have you know that, whilst I write it, you're passed out on the bed next to me, thoroughly shagged. It brings out the romantic in me.)
I want you to know that I'm glad that I have you. If there's been a darker time in my life than this, I don't want the memories back; but when I look back on this time in the future, it won't be the darkness I think of, it will be you. You caring for me and looking after me, protecting me and loving me, and making love to me with last night's storm around us, feeling like we were the only people in the world. You make me feel so cherished, so special, so loved, and I hope that I can give you at least a fraction of that feeling in return.
You know that my memory's not what it used to be, but I'm glad of that, in a way. I don't know if there ever was someone, but I don't remember anyone who ever made me feel like you do, like my heart's going to burst out of my chest just because you're in the room with me, like I can do anything and be anyone.
I could never ask you this out loud, and I don't know if I want to know the answer, but I feel like you're the one person who loves me enough that, if I asked, you'd give up your mortality for me. I'm not asking you to do that, even if it were possible. I would never wish that on my worst enemy, much less the man I adore (you, in case you were wondering). But knowing that I think you'd do that for me makes me glow inside, so bright I can almost see it. What makes it better is that I think you know how much that means to me – how can anyone know me so well?
You make me feel like I'm worth it; like I'm the hero people seem to want me to be. Whenever I doubt myself, you're there in my mind encouraging me. I'd give you the moon and the stars if you asked for them, but you've never even asked for my heart. I gave you that anyway; moon and starts coming up.
Always and forever yours,
Jack
Ianto span him around and shoved him against the hall wall, stealing his breath with a kiss that left him weak at the knees and clinging on to Ianto for support. “Ianto?”
Cupping his face, Ianto brushed their lips together more softly, licking at his lower lip to soothe away the bruising caused by his enthusiastic greeting. “I got your letter,” he muttered against Jack's lips.
Jack smiled and wrapped his arms tighter around Ianto, ducking his head to suck at Ianto's pulse point. “You liked it?”
Ianto's fingers combed through his hair and dug into his scalp, urging him on, and one of his legs wrapped around Jack's waist. “Jack,” he whimpered.
“God, I love you,” he moaned against Ianto's clavicle, tugging his shirt open and out of the way. “Mine.”
“Yours,” Ianto agreed, rubbing against him and using his heel to press Jack even closer. “Yours forever.”
Jack sobbed and crushed their lips together again, sealing the promise.
Prompt: Autumn Festival
Wordcount: 2448
Summary: When unusual goings-on at a Harvest fair are brought to Torchwood's attention, Jack and Ianto experience the darker side of church life and Jack recalls autumn in his childhood, which leads to a very Torchwood exchange of vows.
“Mr Dalton's pumpkin just ate Mrs Schofield's terrier!” Angie announced as she burst through the cog door. She stared between them, whilst they watched her in bemusement, pens still in hands or fingers hovering over keyboards. “What?”
“First things first,” Jack said slowly. “When did you start working here? Second, say that again?”
“Whilst you and Ianto were shagging each other's brains out,” she answered the first first, beaming. “I caught a Weevil! And, um... Mr Dalton's pumpkin just ate Mrs Schofield's terrier.”
“I thought that was what you said.” He put his pen down and reached for his gun, whilst Jack fetched his coat. “Thanks, Ianto. Where is it, and what, exactly, happened?”
“It's at St Winifred's church,” she fell into step with them and waved to Gwen, who stayed where she was on the phone to the council. “They're having their harvest festival, and everyone thought that Mr Dalton's pumpkin was a bit big. Apparently he usually wins, but this one is just incredible. That's what Sandra said, Ms Parkes, I mean.”
“And it ate a terrier?”
“Yes, just before they awarded the prizes. Of course, he was disqualified, so Mr Adams won instead,” she explained.
“Of course,” Ianto murmured, deliberately avoiding catching Jack's eye. “It's cheating to enter a carnivorous pumpkin, gives you an unfair advantage.”
“You know what this means, though, don't you?” she asked, then yelped, “Shotgun!”
“No, and no,” Ianto glared at her and she sighed. “What does it mean?”
“It means we're in a Jasper Fforde book.” Her expression was exactly colon capital D.
Jack and Ianto finally met each other's eyes and burst out laughing.
They pulled up outside the church and unbuckled their seatbelts. “Right, Angie, look curious. We'll go in pretending to be investigative journalists, okay?”
She nodded, and Jack turned to Ianto. “Good reporter, bad reporter?”
“Works for me,” he agreed.
They made their way into the church and were brought up short by a shrill cry of, “Captain Harkness, thank G- goodness you've come!” A blonde-haired woman in her late twenties with a little girl on her hip swept towards him and took his arm to guide him into the church. “I called the police and asked for Torchwood, but they told me that Torchwood didn't exist, wouldn't listen when I told them that everyone knows Torchwood exists these days. I was about to drive down there and get you. Is that nice young man still in your front office?”
Jack looked back at Ianto and made puppy-dog eyes at him. “He's still with us, but he's not in the office.”
She looked back the way Jack was looking and beamed in delight. “Ianto! How lovely to see you. I'll just get the Captain set up with Diedre, and then you and I need to have a good catch-up. Oh, is this your young lady?” her eyes narrowed on Angie.
Jack tugged on her arm to get her back on subject. “No, Ianto is my young man.”
“I'm just his fag hag,” Angie added, as if it were the best thing in the world to be. “You must be Sandra?”
“Oh! Angie, who I spoke to on the phone? Well... you could have told me, you know.”
“Sandra,” Jack steered her back on track. “We'll all go for coffee once this is dealt with, how's that?”
“Oh, of course. Poor Kiki,” she switched to demure and sad instantly. “Such a lovely little dog, and poor Diedre. Kiki was her only companion since Martin... moved on.”
“He died?”
“No, ran off with a student from Manchester. They were living in Bristol last I heard,” she tutted. “Terrible thing. Anyway... Diedre, this is Captain Harkness, I told you that he'd be able to invest...”
“Yes, I know who Captain Harkness is,” a middle-aged woman snapped at her, dabbing at her kohled eyes theatrically. “Oh Captain, is there any chance for poor Kiki?”
Sandra disengaged herself from Jack and swept back towards Ianto and Angie. “Dreadful old witch,” she hissed. “Thinks she runs the church, just because she babysat for Malcolm and David's kids one time. Once! I've babysat them more times than I can count, and they return the favour.”
“Malcolm and...” Ianto asked, before he realised that he probably didn't want to know.
“Oh, Malcolm's our vicar,” she squeaked in delight and laid a hand on his arm. “Oh you must meet them, you'd get on so well. Come on, Malcolm's over here, and I think I saw David... David, here.”
Ianto was dragged towards the vicar, who was standing at the front of the church and watching proceedings with a put-upon air, and appeared to be considering making a run for it. His partner came to the rescue, but not quite as successfully as Millie, Sandra's little girl, who started wailing and forced Sandra to beat a retreat. Ianto held out a hand. “Ianto Jones. Torchwood. Apparently it's gay men together.”
Malcolm and David shook his hand. “Ianto, do you go to church?”
He groaned internally. “No, I haven't had the time for years, Torchwood doesn't really leave space.”
David clapped him on the shoulder. “Wise man. Can I offer you some of the communion wine?”
“I thought you'd never ask,” he grinned.
Jack joined them in the vicar's vestry some time later, looking rather shell-shocked and with smudges of lipstick on his cheek. “Ianto, do you think that wiping a year's worth of memories is a bit extreme for using alien Miracle Grow?”
Ianto blinked at him and offered him the communion chalice. “You look like you need a drink.”
“Thanks,” he took a sip and pulled a face. “What is that?”
“Holy Communion wine,” Malcolm said seriously.
David held his hand out for the chalice. “Asda's cheapest port. You get used to the flavour eventually.”
Jack shook his head. “Rather you than me. Anyway, I think we're finished here,” his tone held a hint of rebuke for Ianto. “We'll just take the pumpkin with us and put it in the hothouse and...” he sighed, “accept the fact that everyone knows who we are.”
Ianto stood up and kissed him. “Sorry, dear. I'll help you get it out to the car. Hang on, though.” He scribbled his phone number and email address onto a post-it note and attached it to Malcolm's chest. “We'll go for a drink of something that doesn't taste like shit sometime, yeah?”
“Ianto Jones, swearing in the house of the Lord?” Malcolm tutted.
Ianto raised an eyebrow. “That was merely stating a fact, surely?”
“Granted. Have a nice day.”
Out in the nave, Angie was tickling the pumpkin and giggling when it tried to snap at her. “I'm going to call it Gerald,” she announced as they approached.
Jack nodded his agreement. “Okay. Mind if we put you in charge of the hothouse?”
“Not at all,” she poked Gerald again and straightened up with one final pat. “We're taking him with us?”
“Well, it's either that or leave it here,” Jack pointed out. “Can you navigate whilst Ianto and I carry?”
“Sure.”
They got Gerald out to the SUV and settled in the boot, and Ianto drove him back to the Hub carefully. Angie disappeared as soon as they got there to add Sandra to her database of 'useful contacts', leaving Ianto and Jack to get Gerald settled into the hothouse. Ianto took the opportunity to water the other residents, and Jack sat back to play with a sentient orchid whilst he worked. “I've not been to a harvest festival since I left home,” Ianto said at last. “I used to love them.”
“Even the carnivorous pumpkins?” Jack asked, amused.
“There weren't so many of those at Mum's church,” he admitted. “Lots of tins of Spam and slightly battered boxes of biscuits several months past their sell-by dates.”
“And that one person who brings a properly amazing hamper, every year, but never puts anything into the collection?” Jack guessed.
“Yeah. Diedre,” he pointed out.
Jack chuckled. “Yeah, Diedre. Poor Diedre, losing her husband like that, and then Kiki too.”
“Kiki was a horrible little dog who bit the church children, and Diedre's husband might not have left if she hadn't been having it away with Mr Jones at the butcher's, no relation,” Ianto told him. “Or so Malcolm told me.”
“Hmm, you seemed to get quite chummy,” Jack murmured, reaching out and pulling Ianto into his lap when he walked past. “Say hello to Flora.”
“Hello to Flora,” Ianto repeated dutifully, but tickled her anyway. “If I water you, will you grow?”
Jack laughed and squeezed his waist. “Am I not big enough for you?”
Ianto sighed and slapped him. “If you're not thinking with your dick, you're thinking about it.”
“Yep, that's about it.” Jack wrapped his arms around Ianto's waist and rested his chin on his shoulder. “We used to have a harvest festival, back home. I hadn't thought about it in years.”
“Memories all shook up?” Ianto guessed, turning to kiss him.
“Yeah, I guess so. For the spring festival, all the town's children would stand in the middle of this square, with houses on each side, and the adults would all gather in the windows and throw water out on us, to make us grow,” he smiled into Ianto's neck. “And then we'd run down the beach into the lake and have a huge water fight, all of us. Even the adults.”
“No Easter Bunny?” Ianto asked.
“No... but there were these flowers that grew in the dunes, and the buds were sweet. The adults would pick them in the weeks before the festival and coat them with sugar, or something, I never quite understood it, and they'd tie them to the spring tree for us to pick them and eat them. And in return, we went into the dunes, all wet from the lake, and collect bunches and bunches of wild flowers to wind into garlands to decorate the town. When we came back with them, we'd be all covered with sand that had stuck to us, so we'd have to run down to the lake again to wash it all off.”
“What about the harvest?” Ianto asked softly, winding his fingers through Jack's hair.
“It was a time of gathering, preparing for the storms that came in the winter. We wouldn't celebrate until we'd filled the stores with prepared food. Every day, the older residents, and anyone who wasn't fit enough to go out in the field and on the lake, would prepare the food we'd brought in the previous day, making soups and cheeses and stripping animal carcases to the bone, hanging the seaweed from the roof of the stores to keep, making everything as compact as possible, and ready to eat. The rest of us, the adults went out into the fields to harvest the crops, or onto the lake to catch fish, and a few of them would watch over us. We'd comb for miles around the lake each day, and never got close to seeing the other side, although we always hoped we would; it was our job to bring in the seaweed and shellfish that we could collect from the shallows, and the roots and berries that grew in the dunes and in the woodland a bit further down the coast of the lake.
“And then, when we'd collected enough to get through the winter, we stopped for a day and celebrated. All the excess food we'd brought in so far, we ate it that day in a huge party,” Jack squeezed Ianto's waist and looked up at him. “That was one of the days that you bonded to your partner, if you chose to. Anyone who wanted to spend the next season with one person, or more, you made a vow for that season.”
“Just for one season?” Ianto asked.
“You could repeat it,” he pointed out. “But it was better than promising to be true forever, because it was an unbreakable vow.”
“No divorce?”
“No divorce. It all happened in public too, so everyone knew who was bound to who.” His lips drifted closer to Ianto's. “And then you took them back home and, whilst the rest of the town danced to celebrate your vows, you made love to them by the light of the autumn moon.”
Ianto touched his lips to Jack's gently. “What was the vow?”
Jack licked his lips and closed his eyes. “I, Jack Harkness, vow to be yours, and that you are mine, for this turning of the year. That as long as this Autumn moon shines on us, we will be one. I will be your light during the dark days of the year.”
Ianto's breath caught. “I, Ianto Jones,” he started to repeat it, and Jack's eyes slammed open, but he didn't interrupt, “vow to be yours, and that you are mine, for this turning of the year. That as long as this Autumn moon shines on us, we will be one. I will be your light during the dark days of the year.”
They both fell silent, breathing in synchrony and waiting for the moment to be broken. Jack was the first to lean forwards, and their lips met and moved together, soft and warm. “Thank you,” he whispered at last.
Ianto smiled and framed his face with both hands. “Is there a vow to say, to hope to repeat your vows for the next season?”
Nodding, Jack took his hand and crossed it with his own, perpendicular and with their palms pressed together. “I'd paint my love in the stars, so let the turning of the year carry us on together 'til those stars go dark.”
Ianto squeezed his hand. “I'd paint my love in the stars, so let the turning of the year carry us on together 'til those stars go dark.”
Jack kissed the back of his hand and swallowed hard. “And now the sex bit.”
“I think we can manage that,” Ianto smiled.
Prompt: Pregnancy: First Ultrasound
Wordcount: 1986
Summary: Children of Earth fixit. Ianto wakes up in hospital and finds out what's been happening whilst he was in a coma, and Jack uses the facilities to check on a suspicion.
Time passed, as it often did. Autumn faded into Winter, Ianto snuck up on Jack under the mistletoe and made him repeat their vows, the anniversary of Tosh and Owen's deaths came and went with a public memorial for those lost, Easter came with a giant chocolate egg with the script for the next set of vows in it, Angie got herself a boyfriend at last, who was a doctor and a consideration for the vacant post at Torchwood, the weatehr finally warmed up and Jack and Ianto did their fourth set of vows in a speedboat in the middle of the Bay, the boyfriend turned out to be spying on her and on them, got Jack killed and a bomb planted in his stomach, the Hub blew up, and then Ianto died in Jack's arms, glad that he'd nearly made it to say one of each of the vows to Jack, at least.
And then time kept moving on, and Ianto woke up in hospital in the company of a cheerful nurse and with a 40-a-day smoker's cough. She chattered on at him, but he couldn't really hear her properly, and fed him ice chips to cool his throat. As soon as he could, he croaked out, “Jack?”
She rested a hand on his shoulder to keep him down and nodded. “He won't be far away. I'll go and get him and Doctor Jones.”
He grunted his acceptance and forced his eyes to stay open, even though they wanted to close and never open again. His reward was the sight of Jack careening into the doorway, relief flooding his face and warming Ianto through with its intensity. “Hey.” He put his hands in his pockets, but not before Ianto could see that they were shaking, and sidled into the room. “Nice of you to rejoin us.”
“I aim to please,” he croaked. “Jack...”
“Ianto?”
He sighed and coughed, and Jack's expression turned worried, but he still didn't move. When he could speak through his coughing, he choked out, “Hug me?”
“Oh.” Apparently Jack now needed to be invited, because he came over instantly, sat down on the bed next to Ianto and gathered him up, kissing his hair and his forehead and clutching him tightly. “Ianto, God...”
Ianto clung on as tightly as he could in his weakened state and burrowed his face into Jack's chest. “I'm sorry I scared you,” he whispered.
Jack stroked across Ianto's back with gentle fingers, rocked them both slowly and buried his face in Ianto's hair. “I thought I'd lost you. It's over now, though,” his voice broke and his grip on Ianto tightened. “It's over.”
Ianto nodded and tried to curl even more into Jack, nuzzling against his chest and trying not to cough to break the moment. Unfortunately, and much to his chagrin, someone else did it for him, and Jack pulled back so that they could both look at the newcomer. Ianto smiled tiredly and rested his head on Jack's shoulder, keeping his arms around Jack's waist. “Martha, I thought you might be the Doctor Jones in question.”
She smiled tiredly and approached them, reaching out to brush his hair back. “I came back as soon as I heard about the explosion in Cardiff, just in time to swan in here and take control of your care when you were brought in.”
He nodded and snuggled in against Jack. “I don't want to sound ungrateful, but why am I alive?”
“It was one of Torchwood One's standard immunisations,” Jack told him quietly, his hands brushing against the scars on Ianto's back from the Battle. “The virus induced unconsciousness and then a coma; you've been fighting it off for three days.”
“And you...” Ianto looked up at him, but couldn't ask the question.
Jack's smile was brittle, lacking any of its usual brilliance, and there was a heavy grief behind his eyes that spoke of more pains than just his fear of losing Ianto. “Succumbed with the rest pretty quickly. It was fatal within twelve hours.”
Martha stepped closer. “I'm sorry, Jack, but I need to check him over. I'll get it done, then I can leave you to talk.”
He nodded and pulled back from Ianto. “Sure.”
Ianto sat still whilst she ran the scan over him and half-listened whilst she talked about letting his lungs recover, about his throat being sore because he'd been on a respirator. How awful must that have been for Jack, to see him like that? Jack's touch didn't stay away for long; his arms soon crept around Ianto's waist again, just holding him lightly, and Martha let him stay there. When she nodded and made to leave, telling them that he just needed bed-rest and attention, Jack stopped her. “Martha, can I borrow that scanner?”
She hesitated, but held it out to him. “If I need it...”
“Just come and get it,” he removed his arms from around Ianto to take it from her and turned it over in his hands. “I won't break it.”
“I know you won't,” she smiled. “Don't keep him up too long.”
He nodded and she left, looking worried. As the door closed behind her, Ianto put his arms around Jack and held on again. “What's the matter?” he asked, gentling his touch and his words.
Jack swallowed and brought his arms back around Ianto almost reluctantly. “They murdered Steven.”
Ianto didn't gasp, knowing that Jack would worry, and tightened his arms. Jack's grip shifted, he dropped the scanner to the bed, and he clung to Ianto. “Bastards,” Ianto whispered, shocked to his core.
Where he was resting his cheek against Jack's, Ianto could feel the first tears as they slipped down Jack's face cheek. “I told you that they arrested Alice? Well... Oh shit,” for some reason, Jack swearing so violently was almost the most shocking thing about the situation. “Sorry. They... they figured out that they could use the same wavelength that the 456 were broadcasting on and send it back to them, crank up the volume and...”
“Overload their systems,” Ianto guessed. “Fry their computers?”
Jack shuddered against him. “UNIT had to disintegrate their ship over Oxfordshire, it plunged out of orbit...”
Realisation slammed into Ianto and he shuddered. “And to send the signal back, they had to...”
“Yeah,” Jack buried his face in Ianto's neck and sobbed. “He was ten, for fuck's sake. And I wasn't there.”
Ianto cradled the back of Jack's head and tried to shush him. He didn't need to ask where Jack had been. “There was nothing you could have done,” he reassured him. “They knew you couldn't die; they would have shot you to stop you if you'd protested.” He shuddered again, guessing that they would have shot him even if they hadn't known he couldn't stay dead. “What about Alice?”
“She... She's safe. They're going to press charges, reveal it all as an alien invasion and make Frobisher, Johnson and Dekker scapegoats. Frobisher will carry the brunt.”
“Why?” Ianto asked, guessing at the answer.
“He's dead. And his family. Murder-suicide,” Jack told him, pulling back to wipe at his red eyes. “They were going to give his daughters to the 456, he would have been the only person who knew what his children were going to.”
Like Alice surely did, Ianto thought, but didn't say. He snuggled closer to Jack, playing with his hair and pressing them as close together as possible to provide as much comfort as he could. “I'm sorry I wasn't here for you,” he whispered against Jack's neck. “I should have been here.”
“You were,” Jack joked feebly. ”You were just out of it. I cried into your shoulder when they told me.”
“Well,” he curled his hand around the back of Jack's neck and sighed. “I'm glad I was of some comfort.”
They clung to each other for a while longer, both trembling with the hideous shock of the last week: the loss of the Hub and the brutal way it had been destroyed, their lives ripped apart and nearly lost in Ianto's case, followed by the murder of an innocent child who was part of their family. It was all too much, especially for Jack, and Ianto felt him coming apart in his arms. Ianto stroked his hands down Jack's back, over his shoulders and through his hair, crushing and cradling him ever closer in an attempt at holding him together. When Jack finally drew back he looked like a mess, but he'd pulled his walls back together and was wearing his beautifully damaged mask. “I think there's something else you need to know.”
Ianto just nodded. He didn't know if he could take many more surprises, but he could always pass out and blame it on his illness if it all got too much. “Something to do with that scanner?” he guessed.
Jack picked it up carefully and nodded. “Well, this will tell me if I'm right or not. I've been... exhausted,” he confessed. “And irritable, and hungry. And I thought it was all because... because of...”
Ianto nodded and caught his vaguely waving hand, held it between both of his own and kissed his fingers. “Are you okay?” he asked worriedly. “You're not ill?”
“I... something like that.” He took his hand back gently to operate the scanner, and focussed his attention in it to avoid looking at Ianto. “I think I'm pregnant.”
“You think you're...” he ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “You got blown up.” Jack froze and his fingers tightened on the scanner, so Ianto continued. “You had to...” he swallowed bile. “And so... reset. Your hormone levels would go back to normal.”
“My body stops thinking I'm pregnant and lets me get pregnant,” he agreed quietly. “Are you going to be mad if it turns out we're right?”
He shook his head fiercely and wrapped his arms tight around Jack, pressing one hand to his stomach. “I wouldn't know if I were putting my hand in the right place on a woman,” he confessed, “so I have no clue right now. But... is having a baby going to threaten your health?”
Jack shook his head. “I've done it before,” he admitted softly. “A long time ago.”
Ianto rested their foreheads together. “Then... how could I be mad that you're having our baby? It's a surprise... understatement of the year,” he smiled and Jack chuckled. “But it's a nice surprise, for once.”
Nodding, Jack pulled back to look at the device and activated it. Ianto covered his hand on it and, between them, they ran it over Jack's stomach and then brought it up between them again, and Jack pressed the button to play back the scan. There, on a blue and green screen – for whatever reason – was a strange image of Jack's insides, looking like something out of a late nineties computer game. And there, nestled low down so that they could only see it for a few seconds, was a darker green blob. “It must be the size of a pea,” Ianto realised in shock. “If that. And this can...”
“Identify it as being not-me,” Jack told him. “That's it. He won't have form or... anything for ages. He might be a she... He's not either at the moment.”
Jack was looking as shell-shocked as Ianto felt, so Ianto did the only thing he could think of. He kissed him.
Prompt: Proposal
Wordcount: 961
Summary: With the world watching on, Jack and Ianto are working on rebuilding Torchwood, and Ianto proposes to legally confirm what they've known for a while.
They were planning to make their autumn vows bigger and more public, a true celebration of their relationship and a commitment to each other and to the future in the presence of their family and friends, and the inevitable crowd of journalists. Torchwood was out of the closet, aliens had been unveiled on the not-exactly-unsuspecting public and Jack and Ianto had been lauded as the romantic and tragic heroes of the fight, who had lost so much and so many over the years, but came back stronger each time, holding onto each other. Jack, in particular, was the press favourite, proof positive of an alien who wasn't there as a threat to Earth, but to protect it; a romantic fool who came seeking a refuge and stayed for the little planet he'd made his home and the man who'd stolen his heart.
Of course, that was mostly bollocks, but it had raised interesting questions among religious and moral campaigners about whether he should be able to marry a human, much less a human male. So they were going to do their vows in public, and let the press romanticise it out of all proportion.
Ianto rested one hand and then both on Jack's waist, then slid them around to press against his stomach. He still wasn't showing much, just enough of a swell to be obvious if you knew him. “Hey,” he greeted softly against the back of Jack's neck. “What are you up to?”
“Plans for the new Hub,” he lifted them to show him. “The architects dropped them off whilst you were in the shower.”
“Oh yeah?” he leaned into Jack more to look over his shoulder. “Any good?”
“It's shaped like a dragon.”
“So... that's a no, then?” Ianto guessed.
“It's a no,” Jack agreed. “Why can't they just listen and design us a nice, practical base with everything we need and nothing we don't need? It should be so simple, but they're just...”
Ianto made a noise of agreement and wrapped his arms around Jack's waist properly. “It's not like we're asking them to build it into a volcano or anything.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” Jack asked sharply.
“Just trying to make you smile,” Ianto sighed, and turned Jack around to face him. “You're stressing out too much, and it's worrying me.”
“Because of the baby?” Jack asked, with a certain level of rancour.
Ianto cupped Jack's face with his hands. “Because you never used to get this stressed about things. I worry, it's what I'm here for.” He leaned in and kissed him. “I'm also here to present the solution. Let me have a look?”
Jack sighed and stepped aside. “Be my guest. Can we taser them?”
“No, Jack,” he chided absently. “It's frowned upon. You know, we could make it more complicated for them?”
“What do you mean?” Jack leaned forwards.
“Like... we gave them a really wide brief, and they gave us dragons and planets and God knows what else,” he gestured to the pile of discarded plans. “What if we tightened it down, so that we'd get something we want?”
“Like...”
“Like...” he grabbed a pen and paper and started sketching. “Like in the shape of the Torchwood hexagon. A lower level like this, with an open area in the T, stairs here above it, and offices or a medical suite or things here. Archives leading off the stem of the T out the bottom... And on the upper level, walkway around there, and two more rooms up there. Maybe the conference room? I liked having the conference room on an upper level.”
Jack grinned, his good humour fully returned. “It's better for conference table sex with glass walls.” Ianto sighed but didn't deny it. “But you're right, it's just better up there.” He picked up Ianto's pen and started making annotations to his scribbled drawing. “We could have the armoury there, labs down there... computer suite would be best in there. And we should get a proper suite set up, with a kitchen and bathroom and a sitting room, as well as a bedroom.” He looked up and realised that Ianto was staring at him again. “What?”
Licking his lips, Ianto ducked his gaze and ran his hand through his hair again. “Marry me.”
“I... pardon?”
“I said 'marry me',” Ianto repeated, refusing to meet Jack's gaze. “I mean I know we... well I think we are but... the law doesn't, and I'd like to... Help?”
“You want to make it legally official?” Jack checked. “Like... proper legal real?”
“Um, yep,” he huffed and turned away even more. “You know, with the baby on the way, and the public eye on us, and we have the chance, which we didn't even five years ago,” he looked up at Jack with wide eyes. “I just... feel like...”
Jack took his hands and squeezed them. “Ianto, is this something you feel we should do, or do you want it?”
“Yes,” he said in a shocked tone. “Yes... yes, I want it. I want to be your...” he scrunched up his nose, “Civil Partner.”
“Husband,” Jack corrected quietly.
Ianto blushed and chanced a glance up to Jack's eyes and away again. “I've been calling myself that for a while, even if not out loud.”
“You...” Jack cursed his own hormones and threw himself into Ianto's arms. “I love you.”
Ianto held him tight and kissed him. “Was that, by any chance, a yes?”
It was a yes.
Prompt: Baby Shower
Wordcount: 1052
Summary: Jack and Gwen discuss baby showers, traditions, the paparazzi and sex whilst pregnant.
Gwen and Jack sat side-by-side on the sofa in the new Hub, watching the busy work going on around them. As Jack had got bigger and less mobile, increasingly pained by cramps and nearly intolerable pressure, he'd had to take a step back from the preparations for reinvigorating Torchwood and trust Ianto to do everything with Angie to help, whilst he spent more days in bed or on the sofa than he did mobile. For his part, Ianto did his best to spend as much time with Jack as possible to provide a distraction and helpful massages when required, setting up his computer in their bedroom or the living room, wherever Jack wanted to be.
Today was a better day, though; Jack had been showing signs of cabin fever for a week, during which time it had thrown it down with everything the Welsh weather could produce, including the occasional clatter of hailstones as the Winter blew itself out, but it had finally cleared enough that Ianto had seized his chance and dragged Jack out of the house to sit on a different sofa, and persuaded Gwen to join them to watch him and Angie working.
Jack rested his hands, fingers laced together loosely, on the swell of his stomach, laughing softly when Gwen mirrored his pose exactly and nudged him with her elbow. “When did Ianto take over?” she asked, grinning.
He huffed and shook his head. “I think it was turning 26 that did it to him.”
She was silent for a second, and broke it by swearing softly and dropping her head back. “I forgot he was so young. Do you think he's had the chance to be young properly?”
“I think he has,” Jack murmured, dropping his voice in response to Ianto's return. “Not enough, but he went to university, after all. And Torchwood One wasn't a bad environment to work in if you avoided the politics.”
“Just us, then,” Gwen surmised sadly.
Jack shook his head and watched his husband cross the floor with another box of archive folders. “He lived through the Battle. Seeing that, it changes you. And then us.”
Their hands, almost in synchrony, flattened protectively, fingers splaying wider. Jack smiled at the action and tipped his head back. “I just want to be a normal dad. Drop my kids at school in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon, play football with them after school, feed them ice cream so that they're hyper and their tad glares at me but doesn't really mean it, spend the evening cuddled up on the sofa with him whilst they play on the floor. And then they'd get embarrassed when they get older. I think she's going to be an only child, though. And...”
She reached out and covered his hand with her much smaller one, squeezing gently. “You could, you know. You could retire whilst you have them and come back after, have another kid or two...” he shot her a dark, devastated look and she sighed, dropping her head back to match his. “Yeah, me neither. You'll look after Rhys and Catherine, won't you?”
“As long as they'll look after me and Concept,” he promised.
One eyebrow raised in an imitation of Ianto's expression when he'd first heard the name. “You've chosen a name? It's... different.”
“I've chosen a name,” he explained. “Ianto hasn't. Ianto doesn't even want to know if it's a boy or a girl, so... she's just a concept.”
“She? Definitely...”
He nodded and chuckled slightly. “We're going to have the name argument when she's here.”
“And he doesn't...” she squeaked in excitement and squeezed his hand even tighter. “So, are you having a baby shower?”
“A what?” he raised his head enough to blink at her.
“A baby shower. You don't know what a baby shower is?” He shook his head and she slapped the back of his hand. “It's a big party, thrown for expectant parents for people to give them gifts to help with raising the baby. No one's doing you one?”
“No,” he replied cautiously, feeling like this was about to change. “Ruth's organising a family christening, and then we'll take her to the beach to do the tradition from my home with just the two of us and Ruth.”
She frowned slightly. “You need to have a party for it. Everyone wants to celebrate with you.”
“That's... just it, Gwen,” he sighed and raised one hand to rub at his eyes. “Everyone wants to know exactly what's going on with our lives and... we just want it to be a private affair. After the wedding, we can't put a child through that, can we?” She shook her head and grimaced. “We're just looking forwards to getting her home safely.”
“Of course,” she said softly. “I'm sorry, pet.”
“That's okay.” He shook his head and sighed. “Do you enjoy being pregnant?”
Gwen giggled. “You miss Ianto sitting in your lap, don't you?”
“Yes,” he was too serious in response to her teasing question. “I miss holding him, and having him sprawl on top of me in the night, and sex...”
“Oh honey,” she pressed her fingers to her lips and tried not to laugh. “Is it...”
“Really awkward,” he agreed. “And painful, and dangerous. I mean... we're not celibate.”
“Well, no.” She agreed, for something to say in the face of the potential for unprecedented amounts of information about her boss's (or possibly bosses's by this stage) sex life. Unprecedented, but not unwelcome.
“And he has the imagination to make up for it,” Jack continued, “and it's fantastic but... long story cut short for our current audience,” he patted his stomach, “Owen owes Tosh a tenner.”
Gwen blinked past the regret and pain, forcing her mind back to discussions of the sexual activities of the two co-amorous members of the team and a bet. She nodded thoughtfully. “Yep, I had a feeling she'd be right.” Patting his leg she tried to hide her smile again. “Fortunate, really. 'Cos Ianto is definitely a top.”
Next section: here
Wordcount: 899
Summary: Jack finds that the written word is more powerful than the spoken one. Ianto agrees.
Jack had pulled one of the little end tables over to the edge of the bed and put his pen and paper down on it. It wobbled slightly, but he could work with it for now. Next to him, Ianto was sprawled out across the bed, snoring into the pillow, thoroughly worn out. They'd extended their stay to make the most of Jack's sexual exploration, and had tried things that Ianto assured him they'd never even contemplated before, but begged him to repeat when they got home. Either Ianto brought out the kinky in him, or he'd not given Ianto's own kinkiness enough credit before, and he thought that it was probably the latter.
He'd taken over for the night, determined to find every little thing that drove Ianto mad. With his focus so completely on his partner, Jack had been able to hold out for hours and turn him into a gibbering, shaking puddle under his hands, begging for release. When Jack finally granted it, Ianto had passed out completely, and swatted Jack away when he woke him, nearly frantic with worry.
One all, as they said in football.
It had given him the opportunity he'd been looking for to get his feelings down on paper, whilst Ianto wasn't there to get him tongue-tied and doey-eyed. 'I love you' was all well enough, and easy to say by now, but the Victorian in him loved the elegance and formality of a letter, the fact that it was there on paper to be read and reread in dark moments. He knew that Ianto kept things like this in the bottom of his wardrobe, and hoped that he'd be able to find it when he was alone again, to remind him of just how good this had been.
He brushed at his eyes and blinked a few times to clear them before bending to his task again and putting pen to paper.
“Dear Ianto,
(You're going to accuse me of being a soppy fool when you read this, but I'll have you know that, whilst I write it, you're passed out on the bed next to me, thoroughly shagged. It brings out the romantic in me.)
I want you to know that I'm glad that I have you. If there's been a darker time in my life than this, I don't want the memories back; but when I look back on this time in the future, it won't be the darkness I think of, it will be you. You caring for me and looking after me, protecting me and loving me, and making love to me with last night's storm around us, feeling like we were the only people in the world. You make me feel so cherished, so special, so loved, and I hope that I can give you at least a fraction of that feeling in return.
You know that my memory's not what it used to be, but I'm glad of that, in a way. I don't know if there ever was someone, but I don't remember anyone who ever made me feel like you do, like my heart's going to burst out of my chest just because you're in the room with me, like I can do anything and be anyone.
I could never ask you this out loud, and I don't know if I want to know the answer, but I feel like you're the one person who loves me enough that, if I asked, you'd give up your mortality for me. I'm not asking you to do that, even if it were possible. I would never wish that on my worst enemy, much less the man I adore (you, in case you were wondering). But knowing that I think you'd do that for me makes me glow inside, so bright I can almost see it. What makes it better is that I think you know how much that means to me – how can anyone know me so well?
You make me feel like I'm worth it; like I'm the hero people seem to want me to be. Whenever I doubt myself, you're there in my mind encouraging me. I'd give you the moon and the stars if you asked for them, but you've never even asked for my heart. I gave you that anyway; moon and starts coming up.
Always and forever yours,
Jack
Ianto span him around and shoved him against the hall wall, stealing his breath with a kiss that left him weak at the knees and clinging on to Ianto for support. “Ianto?”
Cupping his face, Ianto brushed their lips together more softly, licking at his lower lip to soothe away the bruising caused by his enthusiastic greeting. “I got your letter,” he muttered against Jack's lips.
Jack smiled and wrapped his arms tighter around Ianto, ducking his head to suck at Ianto's pulse point. “You liked it?”
Ianto's fingers combed through his hair and dug into his scalp, urging him on, and one of his legs wrapped around Jack's waist. “Jack,” he whimpered.
“God, I love you,” he moaned against Ianto's clavicle, tugging his shirt open and out of the way. “Mine.”
“Yours,” Ianto agreed, rubbing against him and using his heel to press Jack even closer. “Yours forever.”
Jack sobbed and crushed their lips together again, sealing the promise.
Prompt: Autumn Festival
Wordcount: 2448
Summary: When unusual goings-on at a Harvest fair are brought to Torchwood's attention, Jack and Ianto experience the darker side of church life and Jack recalls autumn in his childhood, which leads to a very Torchwood exchange of vows.
“Mr Dalton's pumpkin just ate Mrs Schofield's terrier!” Angie announced as she burst through the cog door. She stared between them, whilst they watched her in bemusement, pens still in hands or fingers hovering over keyboards. “What?”
“First things first,” Jack said slowly. “When did you start working here? Second, say that again?”
“Whilst you and Ianto were shagging each other's brains out,” she answered the first first, beaming. “I caught a Weevil! And, um... Mr Dalton's pumpkin just ate Mrs Schofield's terrier.”
“I thought that was what you said.” He put his pen down and reached for his gun, whilst Jack fetched his coat. “Thanks, Ianto. Where is it, and what, exactly, happened?”
“It's at St Winifred's church,” she fell into step with them and waved to Gwen, who stayed where she was on the phone to the council. “They're having their harvest festival, and everyone thought that Mr Dalton's pumpkin was a bit big. Apparently he usually wins, but this one is just incredible. That's what Sandra said, Ms Parkes, I mean.”
“And it ate a terrier?”
“Yes, just before they awarded the prizes. Of course, he was disqualified, so Mr Adams won instead,” she explained.
“Of course,” Ianto murmured, deliberately avoiding catching Jack's eye. “It's cheating to enter a carnivorous pumpkin, gives you an unfair advantage.”
“You know what this means, though, don't you?” she asked, then yelped, “Shotgun!”
“No, and no,” Ianto glared at her and she sighed. “What does it mean?”
“It means we're in a Jasper Fforde book.” Her expression was exactly colon capital D.
Jack and Ianto finally met each other's eyes and burst out laughing.
They pulled up outside the church and unbuckled their seatbelts. “Right, Angie, look curious. We'll go in pretending to be investigative journalists, okay?”
She nodded, and Jack turned to Ianto. “Good reporter, bad reporter?”
“Works for me,” he agreed.
They made their way into the church and were brought up short by a shrill cry of, “Captain Harkness, thank G- goodness you've come!” A blonde-haired woman in her late twenties with a little girl on her hip swept towards him and took his arm to guide him into the church. “I called the police and asked for Torchwood, but they told me that Torchwood didn't exist, wouldn't listen when I told them that everyone knows Torchwood exists these days. I was about to drive down there and get you. Is that nice young man still in your front office?”
Jack looked back at Ianto and made puppy-dog eyes at him. “He's still with us, but he's not in the office.”
She looked back the way Jack was looking and beamed in delight. “Ianto! How lovely to see you. I'll just get the Captain set up with Diedre, and then you and I need to have a good catch-up. Oh, is this your young lady?” her eyes narrowed on Angie.
Jack tugged on her arm to get her back on subject. “No, Ianto is my young man.”
“I'm just his fag hag,” Angie added, as if it were the best thing in the world to be. “You must be Sandra?”
“Oh! Angie, who I spoke to on the phone? Well... you could have told me, you know.”
“Sandra,” Jack steered her back on track. “We'll all go for coffee once this is dealt with, how's that?”
“Oh, of course. Poor Kiki,” she switched to demure and sad instantly. “Such a lovely little dog, and poor Diedre. Kiki was her only companion since Martin... moved on.”
“He died?”
“No, ran off with a student from Manchester. They were living in Bristol last I heard,” she tutted. “Terrible thing. Anyway... Diedre, this is Captain Harkness, I told you that he'd be able to invest...”
“Yes, I know who Captain Harkness is,” a middle-aged woman snapped at her, dabbing at her kohled eyes theatrically. “Oh Captain, is there any chance for poor Kiki?”
Sandra disengaged herself from Jack and swept back towards Ianto and Angie. “Dreadful old witch,” she hissed. “Thinks she runs the church, just because she babysat for Malcolm and David's kids one time. Once! I've babysat them more times than I can count, and they return the favour.”
“Malcolm and...” Ianto asked, before he realised that he probably didn't want to know.
“Oh, Malcolm's our vicar,” she squeaked in delight and laid a hand on his arm. “Oh you must meet them, you'd get on so well. Come on, Malcolm's over here, and I think I saw David... David, here.”
Ianto was dragged towards the vicar, who was standing at the front of the church and watching proceedings with a put-upon air, and appeared to be considering making a run for it. His partner came to the rescue, but not quite as successfully as Millie, Sandra's little girl, who started wailing and forced Sandra to beat a retreat. Ianto held out a hand. “Ianto Jones. Torchwood. Apparently it's gay men together.”
Malcolm and David shook his hand. “Ianto, do you go to church?”
He groaned internally. “No, I haven't had the time for years, Torchwood doesn't really leave space.”
David clapped him on the shoulder. “Wise man. Can I offer you some of the communion wine?”
“I thought you'd never ask,” he grinned.
Jack joined them in the vicar's vestry some time later, looking rather shell-shocked and with smudges of lipstick on his cheek. “Ianto, do you think that wiping a year's worth of memories is a bit extreme for using alien Miracle Grow?”
Ianto blinked at him and offered him the communion chalice. “You look like you need a drink.”
“Thanks,” he took a sip and pulled a face. “What is that?”
“Holy Communion wine,” Malcolm said seriously.
David held his hand out for the chalice. “Asda's cheapest port. You get used to the flavour eventually.”
Jack shook his head. “Rather you than me. Anyway, I think we're finished here,” his tone held a hint of rebuke for Ianto. “We'll just take the pumpkin with us and put it in the hothouse and...” he sighed, “accept the fact that everyone knows who we are.”
Ianto stood up and kissed him. “Sorry, dear. I'll help you get it out to the car. Hang on, though.” He scribbled his phone number and email address onto a post-it note and attached it to Malcolm's chest. “We'll go for a drink of something that doesn't taste like shit sometime, yeah?”
“Ianto Jones, swearing in the house of the Lord?” Malcolm tutted.
Ianto raised an eyebrow. “That was merely stating a fact, surely?”
“Granted. Have a nice day.”
Out in the nave, Angie was tickling the pumpkin and giggling when it tried to snap at her. “I'm going to call it Gerald,” she announced as they approached.
Jack nodded his agreement. “Okay. Mind if we put you in charge of the hothouse?”
“Not at all,” she poked Gerald again and straightened up with one final pat. “We're taking him with us?”
“Well, it's either that or leave it here,” Jack pointed out. “Can you navigate whilst Ianto and I carry?”
“Sure.”
They got Gerald out to the SUV and settled in the boot, and Ianto drove him back to the Hub carefully. Angie disappeared as soon as they got there to add Sandra to her database of 'useful contacts', leaving Ianto and Jack to get Gerald settled into the hothouse. Ianto took the opportunity to water the other residents, and Jack sat back to play with a sentient orchid whilst he worked. “I've not been to a harvest festival since I left home,” Ianto said at last. “I used to love them.”
“Even the carnivorous pumpkins?” Jack asked, amused.
“There weren't so many of those at Mum's church,” he admitted. “Lots of tins of Spam and slightly battered boxes of biscuits several months past their sell-by dates.”
“And that one person who brings a properly amazing hamper, every year, but never puts anything into the collection?” Jack guessed.
“Yeah. Diedre,” he pointed out.
Jack chuckled. “Yeah, Diedre. Poor Diedre, losing her husband like that, and then Kiki too.”
“Kiki was a horrible little dog who bit the church children, and Diedre's husband might not have left if she hadn't been having it away with Mr Jones at the butcher's, no relation,” Ianto told him. “Or so Malcolm told me.”
“Hmm, you seemed to get quite chummy,” Jack murmured, reaching out and pulling Ianto into his lap when he walked past. “Say hello to Flora.”
“Hello to Flora,” Ianto repeated dutifully, but tickled her anyway. “If I water you, will you grow?”
Jack laughed and squeezed his waist. “Am I not big enough for you?”
Ianto sighed and slapped him. “If you're not thinking with your dick, you're thinking about it.”
“Yep, that's about it.” Jack wrapped his arms around Ianto's waist and rested his chin on his shoulder. “We used to have a harvest festival, back home. I hadn't thought about it in years.”
“Memories all shook up?” Ianto guessed, turning to kiss him.
“Yeah, I guess so. For the spring festival, all the town's children would stand in the middle of this square, with houses on each side, and the adults would all gather in the windows and throw water out on us, to make us grow,” he smiled into Ianto's neck. “And then we'd run down the beach into the lake and have a huge water fight, all of us. Even the adults.”
“No Easter Bunny?” Ianto asked.
“No... but there were these flowers that grew in the dunes, and the buds were sweet. The adults would pick them in the weeks before the festival and coat them with sugar, or something, I never quite understood it, and they'd tie them to the spring tree for us to pick them and eat them. And in return, we went into the dunes, all wet from the lake, and collect bunches and bunches of wild flowers to wind into garlands to decorate the town. When we came back with them, we'd be all covered with sand that had stuck to us, so we'd have to run down to the lake again to wash it all off.”
“What about the harvest?” Ianto asked softly, winding his fingers through Jack's hair.
“It was a time of gathering, preparing for the storms that came in the winter. We wouldn't celebrate until we'd filled the stores with prepared food. Every day, the older residents, and anyone who wasn't fit enough to go out in the field and on the lake, would prepare the food we'd brought in the previous day, making soups and cheeses and stripping animal carcases to the bone, hanging the seaweed from the roof of the stores to keep, making everything as compact as possible, and ready to eat. The rest of us, the adults went out into the fields to harvest the crops, or onto the lake to catch fish, and a few of them would watch over us. We'd comb for miles around the lake each day, and never got close to seeing the other side, although we always hoped we would; it was our job to bring in the seaweed and shellfish that we could collect from the shallows, and the roots and berries that grew in the dunes and in the woodland a bit further down the coast of the lake.
“And then, when we'd collected enough to get through the winter, we stopped for a day and celebrated. All the excess food we'd brought in so far, we ate it that day in a huge party,” Jack squeezed Ianto's waist and looked up at him. “That was one of the days that you bonded to your partner, if you chose to. Anyone who wanted to spend the next season with one person, or more, you made a vow for that season.”
“Just for one season?” Ianto asked.
“You could repeat it,” he pointed out. “But it was better than promising to be true forever, because it was an unbreakable vow.”
“No divorce?”
“No divorce. It all happened in public too, so everyone knew who was bound to who.” His lips drifted closer to Ianto's. “And then you took them back home and, whilst the rest of the town danced to celebrate your vows, you made love to them by the light of the autumn moon.”
Ianto touched his lips to Jack's gently. “What was the vow?”
Jack licked his lips and closed his eyes. “I, Jack Harkness, vow to be yours, and that you are mine, for this turning of the year. That as long as this Autumn moon shines on us, we will be one. I will be your light during the dark days of the year.”
Ianto's breath caught. “I, Ianto Jones,” he started to repeat it, and Jack's eyes slammed open, but he didn't interrupt, “vow to be yours, and that you are mine, for this turning of the year. That as long as this Autumn moon shines on us, we will be one. I will be your light during the dark days of the year.”
They both fell silent, breathing in synchrony and waiting for the moment to be broken. Jack was the first to lean forwards, and their lips met and moved together, soft and warm. “Thank you,” he whispered at last.
Ianto smiled and framed his face with both hands. “Is there a vow to say, to hope to repeat your vows for the next season?”
Nodding, Jack took his hand and crossed it with his own, perpendicular and with their palms pressed together. “I'd paint my love in the stars, so let the turning of the year carry us on together 'til those stars go dark.”
Ianto squeezed his hand. “I'd paint my love in the stars, so let the turning of the year carry us on together 'til those stars go dark.”
Jack kissed the back of his hand and swallowed hard. “And now the sex bit.”
“I think we can manage that,” Ianto smiled.
Prompt: Pregnancy: First Ultrasound
Wordcount: 1986
Summary: Children of Earth fixit. Ianto wakes up in hospital and finds out what's been happening whilst he was in a coma, and Jack uses the facilities to check on a suspicion.
Time passed, as it often did. Autumn faded into Winter, Ianto snuck up on Jack under the mistletoe and made him repeat their vows, the anniversary of Tosh and Owen's deaths came and went with a public memorial for those lost, Easter came with a giant chocolate egg with the script for the next set of vows in it, Angie got herself a boyfriend at last, who was a doctor and a consideration for the vacant post at Torchwood, the weatehr finally warmed up and Jack and Ianto did their fourth set of vows in a speedboat in the middle of the Bay, the boyfriend turned out to be spying on her and on them, got Jack killed and a bomb planted in his stomach, the Hub blew up, and then Ianto died in Jack's arms, glad that he'd nearly made it to say one of each of the vows to Jack, at least.
And then time kept moving on, and Ianto woke up in hospital in the company of a cheerful nurse and with a 40-a-day smoker's cough. She chattered on at him, but he couldn't really hear her properly, and fed him ice chips to cool his throat. As soon as he could, he croaked out, “Jack?”
She rested a hand on his shoulder to keep him down and nodded. “He won't be far away. I'll go and get him and Doctor Jones.”
He grunted his acceptance and forced his eyes to stay open, even though they wanted to close and never open again. His reward was the sight of Jack careening into the doorway, relief flooding his face and warming Ianto through with its intensity. “Hey.” He put his hands in his pockets, but not before Ianto could see that they were shaking, and sidled into the room. “Nice of you to rejoin us.”
“I aim to please,” he croaked. “Jack...”
“Ianto?”
He sighed and coughed, and Jack's expression turned worried, but he still didn't move. When he could speak through his coughing, he choked out, “Hug me?”
“Oh.” Apparently Jack now needed to be invited, because he came over instantly, sat down on the bed next to Ianto and gathered him up, kissing his hair and his forehead and clutching him tightly. “Ianto, God...”
Ianto clung on as tightly as he could in his weakened state and burrowed his face into Jack's chest. “I'm sorry I scared you,” he whispered.
Jack stroked across Ianto's back with gentle fingers, rocked them both slowly and buried his face in Ianto's hair. “I thought I'd lost you. It's over now, though,” his voice broke and his grip on Ianto tightened. “It's over.”
Ianto nodded and tried to curl even more into Jack, nuzzling against his chest and trying not to cough to break the moment. Unfortunately, and much to his chagrin, someone else did it for him, and Jack pulled back so that they could both look at the newcomer. Ianto smiled tiredly and rested his head on Jack's shoulder, keeping his arms around Jack's waist. “Martha, I thought you might be the Doctor Jones in question.”
She smiled tiredly and approached them, reaching out to brush his hair back. “I came back as soon as I heard about the explosion in Cardiff, just in time to swan in here and take control of your care when you were brought in.”
He nodded and snuggled in against Jack. “I don't want to sound ungrateful, but why am I alive?”
“It was one of Torchwood One's standard immunisations,” Jack told him quietly, his hands brushing against the scars on Ianto's back from the Battle. “The virus induced unconsciousness and then a coma; you've been fighting it off for three days.”
“And you...” Ianto looked up at him, but couldn't ask the question.
Jack's smile was brittle, lacking any of its usual brilliance, and there was a heavy grief behind his eyes that spoke of more pains than just his fear of losing Ianto. “Succumbed with the rest pretty quickly. It was fatal within twelve hours.”
Martha stepped closer. “I'm sorry, Jack, but I need to check him over. I'll get it done, then I can leave you to talk.”
He nodded and pulled back from Ianto. “Sure.”
Ianto sat still whilst she ran the scan over him and half-listened whilst she talked about letting his lungs recover, about his throat being sore because he'd been on a respirator. How awful must that have been for Jack, to see him like that? Jack's touch didn't stay away for long; his arms soon crept around Ianto's waist again, just holding him lightly, and Martha let him stay there. When she nodded and made to leave, telling them that he just needed bed-rest and attention, Jack stopped her. “Martha, can I borrow that scanner?”
She hesitated, but held it out to him. “If I need it...”
“Just come and get it,” he removed his arms from around Ianto to take it from her and turned it over in his hands. “I won't break it.”
“I know you won't,” she smiled. “Don't keep him up too long.”
He nodded and she left, looking worried. As the door closed behind her, Ianto put his arms around Jack and held on again. “What's the matter?” he asked, gentling his touch and his words.
Jack swallowed and brought his arms back around Ianto almost reluctantly. “They murdered Steven.”
Ianto didn't gasp, knowing that Jack would worry, and tightened his arms. Jack's grip shifted, he dropped the scanner to the bed, and he clung to Ianto. “Bastards,” Ianto whispered, shocked to his core.
Where he was resting his cheek against Jack's, Ianto could feel the first tears as they slipped down Jack's face cheek. “I told you that they arrested Alice? Well... Oh shit,” for some reason, Jack swearing so violently was almost the most shocking thing about the situation. “Sorry. They... they figured out that they could use the same wavelength that the 456 were broadcasting on and send it back to them, crank up the volume and...”
“Overload their systems,” Ianto guessed. “Fry their computers?”
Jack shuddered against him. “UNIT had to disintegrate their ship over Oxfordshire, it plunged out of orbit...”
Realisation slammed into Ianto and he shuddered. “And to send the signal back, they had to...”
“Yeah,” Jack buried his face in Ianto's neck and sobbed. “He was ten, for fuck's sake. And I wasn't there.”
Ianto cradled the back of Jack's head and tried to shush him. He didn't need to ask where Jack had been. “There was nothing you could have done,” he reassured him. “They knew you couldn't die; they would have shot you to stop you if you'd protested.” He shuddered again, guessing that they would have shot him even if they hadn't known he couldn't stay dead. “What about Alice?”
“She... She's safe. They're going to press charges, reveal it all as an alien invasion and make Frobisher, Johnson and Dekker scapegoats. Frobisher will carry the brunt.”
“Why?” Ianto asked, guessing at the answer.
“He's dead. And his family. Murder-suicide,” Jack told him, pulling back to wipe at his red eyes. “They were going to give his daughters to the 456, he would have been the only person who knew what his children were going to.”
Like Alice surely did, Ianto thought, but didn't say. He snuggled closer to Jack, playing with his hair and pressing them as close together as possible to provide as much comfort as he could. “I'm sorry I wasn't here for you,” he whispered against Jack's neck. “I should have been here.”
“You were,” Jack joked feebly. ”You were just out of it. I cried into your shoulder when they told me.”
“Well,” he curled his hand around the back of Jack's neck and sighed. “I'm glad I was of some comfort.”
They clung to each other for a while longer, both trembling with the hideous shock of the last week: the loss of the Hub and the brutal way it had been destroyed, their lives ripped apart and nearly lost in Ianto's case, followed by the murder of an innocent child who was part of their family. It was all too much, especially for Jack, and Ianto felt him coming apart in his arms. Ianto stroked his hands down Jack's back, over his shoulders and through his hair, crushing and cradling him ever closer in an attempt at holding him together. When Jack finally drew back he looked like a mess, but he'd pulled his walls back together and was wearing his beautifully damaged mask. “I think there's something else you need to know.”
Ianto just nodded. He didn't know if he could take many more surprises, but he could always pass out and blame it on his illness if it all got too much. “Something to do with that scanner?” he guessed.
Jack picked it up carefully and nodded. “Well, this will tell me if I'm right or not. I've been... exhausted,” he confessed. “And irritable, and hungry. And I thought it was all because... because of...”
Ianto nodded and caught his vaguely waving hand, held it between both of his own and kissed his fingers. “Are you okay?” he asked worriedly. “You're not ill?”
“I... something like that.” He took his hand back gently to operate the scanner, and focussed his attention in it to avoid looking at Ianto. “I think I'm pregnant.”
“You think you're...” he ran a hand through his hair and shook his head. “You got blown up.” Jack froze and his fingers tightened on the scanner, so Ianto continued. “You had to...” he swallowed bile. “And so... reset. Your hormone levels would go back to normal.”
“My body stops thinking I'm pregnant and lets me get pregnant,” he agreed quietly. “Are you going to be mad if it turns out we're right?”
He shook his head fiercely and wrapped his arms tight around Jack, pressing one hand to his stomach. “I wouldn't know if I were putting my hand in the right place on a woman,” he confessed, “so I have no clue right now. But... is having a baby going to threaten your health?”
Jack shook his head. “I've done it before,” he admitted softly. “A long time ago.”
Ianto rested their foreheads together. “Then... how could I be mad that you're having our baby? It's a surprise... understatement of the year,” he smiled and Jack chuckled. “But it's a nice surprise, for once.”
Nodding, Jack pulled back to look at the device and activated it. Ianto covered his hand on it and, between them, they ran it over Jack's stomach and then brought it up between them again, and Jack pressed the button to play back the scan. There, on a blue and green screen – for whatever reason – was a strange image of Jack's insides, looking like something out of a late nineties computer game. And there, nestled low down so that they could only see it for a few seconds, was a darker green blob. “It must be the size of a pea,” Ianto realised in shock. “If that. And this can...”
“Identify it as being not-me,” Jack told him. “That's it. He won't have form or... anything for ages. He might be a she... He's not either at the moment.”
Jack was looking as shell-shocked as Ianto felt, so Ianto did the only thing he could think of. He kissed him.
Prompt: Proposal
Wordcount: 961
Summary: With the world watching on, Jack and Ianto are working on rebuilding Torchwood, and Ianto proposes to legally confirm what they've known for a while.
They were planning to make their autumn vows bigger and more public, a true celebration of their relationship and a commitment to each other and to the future in the presence of their family and friends, and the inevitable crowd of journalists. Torchwood was out of the closet, aliens had been unveiled on the not-exactly-unsuspecting public and Jack and Ianto had been lauded as the romantic and tragic heroes of the fight, who had lost so much and so many over the years, but came back stronger each time, holding onto each other. Jack, in particular, was the press favourite, proof positive of an alien who wasn't there as a threat to Earth, but to protect it; a romantic fool who came seeking a refuge and stayed for the little planet he'd made his home and the man who'd stolen his heart.
Of course, that was mostly bollocks, but it had raised interesting questions among religious and moral campaigners about whether he should be able to marry a human, much less a human male. So they were going to do their vows in public, and let the press romanticise it out of all proportion.
Ianto rested one hand and then both on Jack's waist, then slid them around to press against his stomach. He still wasn't showing much, just enough of a swell to be obvious if you knew him. “Hey,” he greeted softly against the back of Jack's neck. “What are you up to?”
“Plans for the new Hub,” he lifted them to show him. “The architects dropped them off whilst you were in the shower.”
“Oh yeah?” he leaned into Jack more to look over his shoulder. “Any good?”
“It's shaped like a dragon.”
“So... that's a no, then?” Ianto guessed.
“It's a no,” Jack agreed. “Why can't they just listen and design us a nice, practical base with everything we need and nothing we don't need? It should be so simple, but they're just...”
Ianto made a noise of agreement and wrapped his arms around Jack's waist properly. “It's not like we're asking them to build it into a volcano or anything.”
“Are you being sarcastic?” Jack asked sharply.
“Just trying to make you smile,” Ianto sighed, and turned Jack around to face him. “You're stressing out too much, and it's worrying me.”
“Because of the baby?” Jack asked, with a certain level of rancour.
Ianto cupped Jack's face with his hands. “Because you never used to get this stressed about things. I worry, it's what I'm here for.” He leaned in and kissed him. “I'm also here to present the solution. Let me have a look?”
Jack sighed and stepped aside. “Be my guest. Can we taser them?”
“No, Jack,” he chided absently. “It's frowned upon. You know, we could make it more complicated for them?”
“What do you mean?” Jack leaned forwards.
“Like... we gave them a really wide brief, and they gave us dragons and planets and God knows what else,” he gestured to the pile of discarded plans. “What if we tightened it down, so that we'd get something we want?”
“Like...”
“Like...” he grabbed a pen and paper and started sketching. “Like in the shape of the Torchwood hexagon. A lower level like this, with an open area in the T, stairs here above it, and offices or a medical suite or things here. Archives leading off the stem of the T out the bottom... And on the upper level, walkway around there, and two more rooms up there. Maybe the conference room? I liked having the conference room on an upper level.”
Jack grinned, his good humour fully returned. “It's better for conference table sex with glass walls.” Ianto sighed but didn't deny it. “But you're right, it's just better up there.” He picked up Ianto's pen and started making annotations to his scribbled drawing. “We could have the armoury there, labs down there... computer suite would be best in there. And we should get a proper suite set up, with a kitchen and bathroom and a sitting room, as well as a bedroom.” He looked up and realised that Ianto was staring at him again. “What?”
Licking his lips, Ianto ducked his gaze and ran his hand through his hair again. “Marry me.”
“I... pardon?”
“I said 'marry me',” Ianto repeated, refusing to meet Jack's gaze. “I mean I know we... well I think we are but... the law doesn't, and I'd like to... Help?”
“You want to make it legally official?” Jack checked. “Like... proper legal real?”
“Um, yep,” he huffed and turned away even more. “You know, with the baby on the way, and the public eye on us, and we have the chance, which we didn't even five years ago,” he looked up at Jack with wide eyes. “I just... feel like...”
Jack took his hands and squeezed them. “Ianto, is this something you feel we should do, or do you want it?”
“Yes,” he said in a shocked tone. “Yes... yes, I want it. I want to be your...” he scrunched up his nose, “Civil Partner.”
“Husband,” Jack corrected quietly.
Ianto blushed and chanced a glance up to Jack's eyes and away again. “I've been calling myself that for a while, even if not out loud.”
“You...” Jack cursed his own hormones and threw himself into Ianto's arms. “I love you.”
Ianto held him tight and kissed him. “Was that, by any chance, a yes?”
It was a yes.
Prompt: Baby Shower
Wordcount: 1052
Summary: Jack and Gwen discuss baby showers, traditions, the paparazzi and sex whilst pregnant.
Gwen and Jack sat side-by-side on the sofa in the new Hub, watching the busy work going on around them. As Jack had got bigger and less mobile, increasingly pained by cramps and nearly intolerable pressure, he'd had to take a step back from the preparations for reinvigorating Torchwood and trust Ianto to do everything with Angie to help, whilst he spent more days in bed or on the sofa than he did mobile. For his part, Ianto did his best to spend as much time with Jack as possible to provide a distraction and helpful massages when required, setting up his computer in their bedroom or the living room, wherever Jack wanted to be.
Today was a better day, though; Jack had been showing signs of cabin fever for a week, during which time it had thrown it down with everything the Welsh weather could produce, including the occasional clatter of hailstones as the Winter blew itself out, but it had finally cleared enough that Ianto had seized his chance and dragged Jack out of the house to sit on a different sofa, and persuaded Gwen to join them to watch him and Angie working.
Jack rested his hands, fingers laced together loosely, on the swell of his stomach, laughing softly when Gwen mirrored his pose exactly and nudged him with her elbow. “When did Ianto take over?” she asked, grinning.
He huffed and shook his head. “I think it was turning 26 that did it to him.”
She was silent for a second, and broke it by swearing softly and dropping her head back. “I forgot he was so young. Do you think he's had the chance to be young properly?”
“I think he has,” Jack murmured, dropping his voice in response to Ianto's return. “Not enough, but he went to university, after all. And Torchwood One wasn't a bad environment to work in if you avoided the politics.”
“Just us, then,” Gwen surmised sadly.
Jack shook his head and watched his husband cross the floor with another box of archive folders. “He lived through the Battle. Seeing that, it changes you. And then us.”
Their hands, almost in synchrony, flattened protectively, fingers splaying wider. Jack smiled at the action and tipped his head back. “I just want to be a normal dad. Drop my kids at school in the morning, pick them up in the afternoon, play football with them after school, feed them ice cream so that they're hyper and their tad glares at me but doesn't really mean it, spend the evening cuddled up on the sofa with him whilst they play on the floor. And then they'd get embarrassed when they get older. I think she's going to be an only child, though. And...”
She reached out and covered his hand with her much smaller one, squeezing gently. “You could, you know. You could retire whilst you have them and come back after, have another kid or two...” he shot her a dark, devastated look and she sighed, dropping her head back to match his. “Yeah, me neither. You'll look after Rhys and Catherine, won't you?”
“As long as they'll look after me and Concept,” he promised.
One eyebrow raised in an imitation of Ianto's expression when he'd first heard the name. “You've chosen a name? It's... different.”
“I've chosen a name,” he explained. “Ianto hasn't. Ianto doesn't even want to know if it's a boy or a girl, so... she's just a concept.”
“She? Definitely...”
He nodded and chuckled slightly. “We're going to have the name argument when she's here.”
“And he doesn't...” she squeaked in excitement and squeezed his hand even tighter. “So, are you having a baby shower?”
“A what?” he raised his head enough to blink at her.
“A baby shower. You don't know what a baby shower is?” He shook his head and she slapped the back of his hand. “It's a big party, thrown for expectant parents for people to give them gifts to help with raising the baby. No one's doing you one?”
“No,” he replied cautiously, feeling like this was about to change. “Ruth's organising a family christening, and then we'll take her to the beach to do the tradition from my home with just the two of us and Ruth.”
She frowned slightly. “You need to have a party for it. Everyone wants to celebrate with you.”
“That's... just it, Gwen,” he sighed and raised one hand to rub at his eyes. “Everyone wants to know exactly what's going on with our lives and... we just want it to be a private affair. After the wedding, we can't put a child through that, can we?” She shook her head and grimaced. “We're just looking forwards to getting her home safely.”
“Of course,” she said softly. “I'm sorry, pet.”
“That's okay.” He shook his head and sighed. “Do you enjoy being pregnant?”
Gwen giggled. “You miss Ianto sitting in your lap, don't you?”
“Yes,” he was too serious in response to her teasing question. “I miss holding him, and having him sprawl on top of me in the night, and sex...”
“Oh honey,” she pressed her fingers to her lips and tried not to laugh. “Is it...”
“Really awkward,” he agreed. “And painful, and dangerous. I mean... we're not celibate.”
“Well, no.” She agreed, for something to say in the face of the potential for unprecedented amounts of information about her boss's (or possibly bosses's by this stage) sex life. Unprecedented, but not unwelcome.
“And he has the imagination to make up for it,” Jack continued, “and it's fantastic but... long story cut short for our current audience,” he patted his stomach, “Owen owes Tosh a tenner.”
Gwen blinked past the regret and pain, forcing her mind back to discussions of the sexual activities of the two co-amorous members of the team and a bet. She nodded thoughtfully. “Yep, I had a feeling she'd be right.” Patting his leg she tried to hide her smile again. “Fortunate, really. 'Cos Ianto is definitely a top.”
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