“Don’t.
Go.” Jack raised his hand, his face
breaking into
a grin, eyes sparkling. “There’s someone
I want you to meet.”
The Doctor gave him a
half-smile and shrugged, leaning
oh-so-casually in the narrow doorway of the TARDIS where it stood in
the centre
of the colourfully lit Roald Dahl Place. “Okay.”
“Uh-hu.” Jack shook
his head. “You’ll vanish the moment I
turn my back, I know you.” He held out
his hand, palm up. “Give me your
screwdriver.”
The Doctor’s brows shot up.
“Can’t say I’ve ever heard it called that before.”
“Sonic
screwdriver.
Give. You never go anywhere
without it.” Rolling his eyes, the
Doctor reached into a pocket and pulled out the slim, silver device,
smacking
it sullenly into Jack’s open palm like a kid caught with cigarettes. Jack closed his fingers over it.
“Wait here.”
He turned and bounded off, running towards the water feature
that stood
over the Rift. The Doctor, for once, did
as he was told. He waited.
And hummed.
~
Jack
found Ianto
sleeping in his coat, in his bed. He’d
missed that coat, had left it behind in
their hurry to leave. Ianto looked good
in it, even if he was wearing it almost like a blanket – too big for
him as it
was – one of those itchy blankets, the sleeves covering his hands,
thick
material twisted around his legs. Jack
dropped down and crouched at the edge of the cot in the cramped space. “Ianto.”
Tired eyes opened, saw him,
and in the moment when Ianto
should have been all over him, he instead sat up, formal and awkward,
saying
something that sounded like... – oh, no, he did not just call Jack,
“Sir.” In the next moment Jack set things
right. He threw himself at Ianto,
wrapped one arm around his shoulders, the other around his waist,
snaking under
the heavy coat to pull him close and open his mouth against a hot,
salty throat.
“I
have missed you
so fucking much,” he confessed, pain and
passion in his voice, and it didn’t take much to rewind and undo the
staunch
front that Ianto had probably planned on keeping up for days, possibly
weeks. Strong arms surrounded Jack, wet
tears touched his neck and he held on tight.
“I’m sorry, I had to leave for a while but I’m back now, and I
swear,
Ianto, next time... next time I’ll take you with me.”
He lifted his head and stroked a large hand
over the thick black hair, staring into watery blue eyes.
They had a lot of catching up to do but Ianto
was already pulling away from him. “I’m
sorry I left you again.”
Ianto was swiping at his
tears with the sleeves of Jack’s
coat. “Sorry,” he was saying, voice low,
“I’m sorry.”
Jack
shook his head. “Don’t
be sorry. You’ve nothing to be sorry
for. I’ll tell you everything, I
promise, but I need you to come with me now. I
want you to meet someone.”
Ianto nodded, pushed
himself off the bed and followed Jack up
the ladder into his office. “Do you want
your coat back?”
Jack
glanced at him.
“Eventually, but you look kinda cute in it.”
He did.
He was wearing it over a crumpled red shirt and blue jeans,
about as
informal as Jack had seen him looking since that first time out in the
woods. The coat seemed to drown him and
Jack felt
the almost irresistible urge to hug them both.
He found Ianto’s hand and held it, leading him to the lift,
putting an
arm around his waist and holding him close as it took them up to the
pavement. It was dark, middle of the
night, but the TARDIS was clear on the other side of the bowl.
He heard Ianto ask, “Is
that your Doctor?” and really didn’t
know how to answer so he just nodded and kept his fingers splayed over
Ianto’s
hip, warm under the coat.
When
they were close
enough, the Doctor stepped out from the
shadow of the blue box, hand out-stretched.
“Ianto Jones! It’s an honour to
meet you, I’ve heard absolutely everything about you!”
~
His
handshake was
firm despite how nervous, how vulnerable he
looked, dragged out in the middle of the night, and the Doctor couldn’t
help
but wonder what was attracting Jack to this unassuming Welshman. More than attracting; Jack was falling in
love. He could tell it by the way Jack
had talked about this man incessantly, between fighting the bad guys,
dying a
couple of particularly nasty deaths and knocking back a large number of
Singapore
Slings in the best bar in the galaxy.
And he’d only tried to hit on the Doctor a couple of times; once
after
being forcibly resurrected following almost decapitation and waking in
the
Doctor’s arms (it seemed only fair, the decapitation having been meant
for him
and everything), and once in the bar after the seventh cocktail. Even then the Doctor had ended up being
compared to Torchwood’s tea boy.
Ianto was good for Jack;
grounded by the sounds of it,
balanced. He obviously thought the world
of their 51st century hero – which was good in one way, bad
in
another (Jack’s ego was big enough already, thank you very much). And he looked really, really good in Jack’s
familiar old coat, the one he’d complained about leaving behind almost
as much
as he’d talked about Ianto.
“I’ve
heard a lot
about you too.” Oh yes, the honey and
smoke in his voice, the
way his big eyes self-consciously slipped away from the Doctor’s...
Jack was a
moth drawn to a flame.
Ianto let go of his hand.
And suddenly the Doctor’s head was filled with screaming and he
saw Jack
crying and Ianto... dying.
He
grabbed Jack’s
sleeve, suddenly, startling both of them. “Get
in!”
“What?”
“Get
in the TARDIS.”
He watched Ianto’s hands bunch into fists and Jack’s arm around
his
middle tighten. “Both of you,” he
clarified hurriedly, rolling his eyes.
“Doctor....”
“Just do it!”
Ianto’s reaction to
stepping inside the ship was the exact
same as every other human who’d done so.
“Roomy, isn’t it?” He would have
smiled if he hadn’t just seen this lovely man die, sometime in the
future. He wasn’t given over to visions,
so when he
had one it was best of take notice. Jack
was watching him, waiting, but he needed context, needed to give them
more than
he’d seen and he wasn’t about to let Jack out of his sight until he had
done. Despite what he thought, his
feelings were reciprocated. The Doctor
just couldn’t act on them, could never act on any of them.
Only once he’d come close, only with Rose. He
couldn’t let Jack in like that. And
besides, for now he had formidable
competition.
An
hour later they
were still in the TARDIS. Jack and Ianto
were sitting on the
uncomfortable floor, leaning back on intertwined arms, leaning into one
another, talking quietly, Jack petting Ianto’s hair, Ianto touching
Jack’s
hand, getting closer and closer to sharing the briefest of kisses. And when their mouths finally met, Jack’s
tilted into a smile, the Doctor saw the vision of the future again, and
this
time he saw something else too. He saw
the Shilieonn.
“There’s a race,” he said
suddenly, and the two men broke
apart to look at him as if just remembering he was there.
He tried not to feel too insulted. “They’re
calling the Shilieonn
but you – here on Earth – you might call them something different. They need a toxic atmosphere to survive,
they... they look like sea monsters.”
Jack was shaking his head. “They’re...
drug addicts, parasites, bastards. But
when
they come, they’ll be in a big transparent box in a big, dark room...
Jack,
when you face them, don’t take Ianto with you.
You’ll want to, for whatever reason, you might need to, but you
can’t. If he faces them he’ll die. You’ll die.
But you’ll come back and he... he won’t.”
Ianto
sat forward,
suddenly formal, insisting, “I’m not
scared of doing my job, I’m not scared of dying.”
“I am,” the Doctor told him, “I’m scared of what you dying will do to
Jack. Please. For
my sake, don’t go.”
“And if it’s my time?”
“It
isn’t.” The Doctor
stressed that. “Promise me you’ll stay
behind.”
For the longest time Ianto
stared at him, then he nodded
slowly. “I promise.”
~
He was half-in the Porsche
when Jack put his arm across the
passenger seat and shook his head. “This
is it, Ianto, this is what he warned us about.”
“No...”
but he knew,
had known, as soon as he’d seen the box
in the video from the contact lenses.
“Sorry, Ianto.
You have
to sit this one out.” Jack’s hand
grasped his on the top of the door. “I
won’t take you to your death.”
It
took a few long
seconds, but Ianto nodded, squeezed Jack’s
hand and let him go. “Jack... I’ll be
there, when you come back. I’ll be
there.”
He kept his promise.
Peeling back the orange
plastic, he watched Jack take that
first, loud, aching breath. And then
Jack was in his arms, clutching at his shoulders, whispering, “I
thought I saw
you, in the darkness, I thought I heard you....”
Ianto
shook his head
and held on tight. “I’m here, Jack, here
and alive.”
“You would have died in there, at my side, and I wouldn’t...
couldn’t have saved you.”
“It’s okay.” It was
all he could say. “It’s okay.”
~
“This is the strangest fetish you’ve got, Jack,” Ianto
murmured softly and Jack chuckled. Ianto
was lying on top of him, naked except for Jack’s coat, on the cot
barely big
enough for the both of them in the cramped hole they affectionately
referred to
as Jack’s quarters. Ianto wearing his
coat had leapt to the top of his list of really hot things the night
he’d come
back, but tonight it had dropped to number two behind Ianto wearing
nothing but
his coat. He’d fucked him while he was
wearing it, slowly, for ages, dropping kisses to his mouth and his
neck,
sucking on his tongue, loving him.
“In the mornings it smells of you,” Jack told him, running
the tips of his fingers along his side, under the heavy material,
tracing a
line from his armpit to the back of his knee.
Ianto shuddered a little. “When
we’re running around Cardiff chasing aliens I can smell you.”
“Smell sweat and sex, you mean.”
And Jack grinned. “Like
I said. You. And
it’s more than sweat and sex; it’s your
aftershave and deodorant, that green shampoo you use and the soap in
your
shower.” He felt cool feet burrowing
between
his shins and gazed happily into Ianto’s eyes when he lifted his head.
“I’m going to die one day, Jack,” he said quietly and Jack’s
warm feelings cooled somewhat. He
flattened Ianto’s black hair, cradling his head against his palm
“Of old age,” Jack told him with a certainty he only wished
he felt, “and in my arms.”
“How many people have died that way?” He
sounded so sad that Jack lifted his head
and kissed him, prolonging it, deepening it, Ianto crawling further up
his body
when Jack’s neck gave out just to keep it up and when he finally bit
Jack’s
bottom lip gently, he said, “I love you, Jack,” at the same time
bringing a
hand up and touching his fingers to Jack’s lips. “Don’t
say anything. Just... know, okay?”
Jack nodded. He didn’t
know what to say anyway. He loved Ianto
but then again he’d loved lots of people. He
was big enough to admit he was in love with
the Doctor. But with Ianto?
He honestly didn’t know. He thought
maybe he was, because there was
nowhere else in the world where he wanted to be right now and when he’d
been
travelling all he’d been able to think about was this. He
took a deep breath and asked, “Can I spend
the rest of your life with you?” as if he was proposing.
For a moment Ianto didn’t say anything, then Jack thought he
caught moisture blossom in his blue eyes before he turned his head and
rested
it back on Jack’s chest. “If that’s what
you want,” he muttered, and Jack hugged him tight.
“Look at me,” he murmured,
and after the longest time Ianto raised his head
again, tears running down the side of his nose.
“I want,” he said, “I love.”
Ianto
blinked wet
eyes, a smile brightening his face. “Me
too.”
He dropped a sloppy kiss to Jack’s mouth.
“I hope you don’t want a ring,” Jack teased.
“God no.” He grinned
through more tears. “Maybe... matching
Vortex Manipulators...?”
fin
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