Torchwood; The Merits of Subtlety
Title: The Merits of Subtlety
Author: nieded
Fandom; Pairing: Whoniverse; Jack/Ianto
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I forgot to post this bit, oops. I am in no way affiliated with RTD or Beebs or anything else that's officially Torchwood. Yay!
Word Count: approx. 7,000
Summary: A cracky meta-fic. When Torchwood recruits a new member, only Ianto knows if she’s a friend or foe but has a difficulty remembering which.
The Merits of Subtlety
In retrospect, Jack realizes it was too surrealistic to just have been coincidence. It began innocently enough with a weevil hunt involving a civilian by the name Amber Sure - a hunt that should have ended like any other retcon textbook case had a retcon textbook existed. Of course, knowing Ianto, he was probably writing and illustrating it with detailed footnotes leading to his immaculately organized archives.
Jack discovered long ago that the Universe has a terrific sense of irony that generally he finds hilarious providing it doesn’t involve him. The ‘not involving him’ bit is exactly why he isn’t laughing because the Universe’s idea of a joke led to a passed-out, retconned Ianto on the sofa and Gwen leaving in tears. Oh yeah, and also the recruitment of Miss Wonderful, Magnificent, I-Can-Do-Anything Amber Sure. Definitely not funny, Jack decides testily. The How to Retcon Manual for Newbies and Gwen will never get written now.
Of course, the title needs to be amended to include And Jack before getting shipped off to the press because, honestly, it was his miscalculation that partially led to accidentally wiping the last six years of Ianto’s memory. On the positive side: the goose chase after Ianto to trigger his memories will be excellent, and it isn’t every day someone can declare they claimed someone’s anal virginity - twice. As long as he stays optimistic, Jack’s positive everything will be fine.
----
It began like this:
The sun shone brightly, the forget-me-nots scented the pollen infested air, and Amber Sure’s dulcet tones pierced Jack’s eardrums as she wailed pitifully about being nearly devoured by an ugly, squash-faced pit bull with very sharp canines and death breath.
“Oh my God. Will someone shut her up?” Ianto groaned under his breath. Only Jack could hear him because they huddled together behind the SUV after jamming the unconscious weevil in the back. Jack had one leg between Ianto’s - who protested minimally - while Gwen patted Amber’s shoulders soothingly up front by the headlights.
“Nrgh,” Jack sighed as he pressed forward, sliding his hands underneath Ianto’s jacket. He forewent the waistcoat that morning, allowing Jack’s hands to easily smooth over his skin through the luxurious fabric of his shirt.
“Hey-” Ianto said feebly, half-heartedly pushing against Jack with his hands (and hips). “Shouldn’t we be helping-” He trailed off as Jack slowly licked the inside of his ear.
He groaned softly. “God, if she starts wailing I’ll-”
“Oh my God!” the she lamented up front.
Ianto rolled his eyes and jerked Jack’s hips forward into his own. “Fucking Christ. You were right,” he conceded.
Jack gloated, “See? We’re much better back here.”
“Jack,” Gwen said in his ear. Simultaneously, he could hear her up front and there was a strange sort of delay that sounded like an inverse echo. “I think we should take her back to the Hub to calm her down.”
“Retcon? What happened to retconning people?” Jack asked as he wrapped his fingers around Ianto’s shirt.
“We’re out of Level 1 retcon in the SUV,” Ianto replied as he grabbed Jack’s hand and slid it over his waist. He tilted his head back to rest on the rear window and canted his hips forward.
“We’ll have to take her back,” Gwen said. In the background, Amber wailed, “Take me back? Take me back where?”
Jack ran a finger along the inseam of Ianto’s trouser slowly. “Fuck. I’m busy. Can’t we just hit her over the-”
Gwen - who seemed to be perpetually annoyed and possibly slightly jealous - snarled, “Oh, just get your hands out of his pants already.”
Ianto smirked. “Gwen’s lost her touch, don’t you think?”
Jack reluctantly let go of Ianto’s tie where he had crushed the smooth silk and adjusted his trousers, haughtily flicking his coat-tails behind him. “Fine,” he sniffed. “In the SUV; let’s go.” He pulled away reluctantly.
Amber continued to whine, “Isn’t it in there? You’re going to kill me. Oh my God. Oh my God.” She slumped into her seat dramatically, dragging her hand across her brow after Gwen and Ianto forcibly shoved her inside. Gwen reached over and buckled her seatbelt for her and patted her on head like a small child.
Jack looked expectantly at Ianto as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Chloroform?” he asked hopefully.
Ianto pulled a cylindrical flask from his pocket. “Always prepared, sir. There are cotton swabs in the first aid kit beneath your seat.”
“Talented Ianto,” Jack beamed. “Good work - Wait. That was in your pocket? The bottle?” Ianto’s smirk grew lavishly as the captain whined. “I thought-”
Behind them, Amber vomited in between her seat and Gwen’s, groaning as she leaned back. “I’m going to die.”
----
After arriving at the Hub, Gwen led Amber gingerly into the Jack’s office while she sobbed, so busy wallowing in all her misfortune that she didn’t even notice the shocking and ill-decorated design of the great and awesome underground lair. While Ianto hauled the weevil into the vaults, Jack galloped down into the medical bay in search of Torchwood’s additional retcon stores. He plucked the bottle off the shelf and slipped one pill into his trouser pocket, and then began to whistle inconspicuously. Of course, he wasn’t misbehaving nor were his actions suspicious to Gwen and Ianto, but he did enjoy a good role-play even by himself, especially if it led to a good smack on the arse later (also from himself. He prized his creativity).
Stopping on his way to his office, he grabbed two glasses of water and dissolved the pill in one, chanting, “Amber’s glass is in my left hand. Amber’s glass is in my left hand. My glass is in my - oh fuck,” all the way up the stairs. He set both glasses in front of Amber to be safe just as she whimpered weakly, and turned on his comm. “Ianto, could you bring up some biscuits for our guest to help calm her down?”
“Abso - lutely - Jack,” Ianto grunted. The weevil snarled in the background. Reliable Ianto, so efficient, Jack beamed.
He turned to the civilian, reclining in his chair with practiced ease. “We have everything under control,” he soothed. “This is Torchwood and we protect people from aliens.” She sniffled at him and he grinned beatifically. “Would you like to hear my spiel?”
Gwen nodded fervently beside him. “It’s quite good. I was hooked - until he wiped my mem-” Jack kicked her hard under the desk. “Ow. Um, I mean… I’d trust him completely.” Her expression took on a slightly glazed and manic look as a thought occurred to her and leaned over and whispered loudly in his ear, “Are you going to hire her too?” Amber began to keen as she dropped her purse onto the floor in front of the desk. She tucked her knees to her chest and stared at the two of them, too afraid to reach down and reclaim the fallen bag.
Ianto, with his impeccable timing as always, strolled up the stairs, balancing the tray of biscuits elegantly with one hand while wiping away remnants of weevil mucous from his trousers with an air of aristocratic grace. “Biscuits,” he announced. He picked up a cookie and delicately chewed it with a look of thoughtfulness as if to reassure their guest. Simultaneously, he stepped on her purse, tripping on the strap as he launched forward and the biscuits flew everywhere.
He began to choke on the morsel already in his mouth, the hard piece of food lodging itself in his throat. “Jesus, Jack!” Gwen gasped. “Give him CPR or something.”
Jack flailed helplessly. “Me?! I can only do that kiss thing!” He glanced at Ianto’s purpling face and scowled at her. “You’re the cop,” he accused.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Amber said, standing up. She grabbed Ianto around his middle from behind and bent him over, pushing swiftly against his abdomen. The chunk of food flew from Ianto’s mouth and he slumped forward onto the chair. The bit of biscuit covered in saliva clung to the front of Jack’s shirt, the victim of Ianto’s trajectory.
“You’re all hopeless,” Ianto rasped, bending over Jack’s desk as he rubbed his throat.
“You really are,” Amber nodded. Then she paused and spared them a meek glance, explaining to them, “I’m trained in CPR and first aid. I’m also a beauty queen and can hack into any computer mainframe.”
Jack and Gwen shared a look while Ianto flopped into the empty chair, still making strangled hacking noises.
“And I lied,” Amber continued, growing more confidence and steam. “My name isn’t Amber, it’s actually Mary. I just wanted to appear mysterious. Aren’t I perfect?” she giggled, flipping her hair.
“Is this the same person that got attacked by a weevil today?” Gwen whispered. Jack shook his head confusedly, unsure if he should thank her for saving one of his team’s life, or if he should break out the alien scanner. Ignoring them, Ianto groaned as he coughed raggedly and grabbed the glass of water. He downed it in one while the others still stared awestruck at Amber/Mary’s sudden and blinding magnificence. Then he grabbed the second glass, still retching reflexively.
“Do you need a job?” Jack asked dazedly.
“Oh no. I plan to make it on my own with sheer determination and good will.” She winked at Gwen.
Blinking, Gwen tried to shake of the sudden fogginess that overcame her. “Quit. You’re hired. We really need you here.”
Ianto slumped forward onto the desk, passed out.
----
The problem is that since Owen’s death, no one continues to restock the retcon. Jack knows how to make it - after all, he brought it from the Time Agency - but it was Owen’s job, and Jack can’t afford to be developing retcon when he has Better Things to Do, like shop, since there’s no conceivable way to sneak 30 quid worth of hair care product onto the Hub’s grocery list. But mainly he just forgets.
After, when they’ve moved Ianto to the couch to sleep off the effects of the retcon, Jack goes back into the medical bay to reread the label. To his amazement and dismay, he discovers it does not actually read “Retcon Level 1” in Owen’s messy scrawl, but “Retcon Level 7,” where the seven has been smudged over from grease. He always meant to scold Owen about eating crisps in a sterile environment but felt bad whenever Ianto scowled at the food bits he left on his own reports. And besides, he likes to live by the golden rule: “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” at least one third of the time, and no one likes petty bureaucracy. Jack knows he isn’t a good boss, but at least he’s well-liked.
When Jack reads the label, his stomach tightens and his face crumples unattractively. “Fuck,” he mutters. “Aw, fuck.” He jogs up the stairs and pauses to admire Ianto’s precious and sniveling expression while he sleeps.
“Amb - I mean, Mary?” Jack hollers. Amber/Mary bounds down the stairs, already seemingly comfortable in her surroundings. In the first hour getting acquainted in the Hub, her top few buttons have come undone. Behind her, Gwen stumbles in wiping a smear of lipstick off her neck.
“Yes, sir?” she asks, curtseying.
“I think I accidentally retconned the last six or so years from Ianto’s memory,” he says sullenly, swallowing against the sudden lump in his throat. He gingerly wipes a streak of drool from Ianto’s chin.
“Do you want me to set up a plausible history for him?”
Jack glowers at her, but the longer he stares at her pleasant expression, the less he feels angry. “No… I kind of want him to remember he worked for Torchwood,” he says weakly. He suddenly can’t remember why it was so important.
“Oh,” Amber/Mary says dejectedly. It pulls on Jack’s cold and tortured heartstrings. “Gwen told me Torchwood makes people sad. She also says you’re in love him.”
He blanches. “She said what?”
“If you do love him, don’t you want him to happy and Torchwood free?”
He finds himself nodding slowly, enraptured by her pleading eyes. “Yes,” he agrees. “I… think… you’re… right.”
She claps her hands zealously. “Great! I should also let you know that I’m a professional interior decorator. Wouldn’t it be great to redecorate his flat to match his great new start on life?”
“… You’re an interior decorator?” Gwen asks delightedly. She clasps her hands together.
“I wanted to let you know. I wouldn’t want to keep any secrets from you,” she coos. She whips out a palette of paint chips from behind the couch. “So what do you think? Baby’s breath or periwinkle for his walls? I vote periwinkle. Don’t you just love democracy?”
Jack glances repeatedly between the two options of paint. This is, after all, Ianto’s flat. He scratches his chin in a very serious manner, and behind him Mary shouts, “World peace!”
----
For the third day in a row, Ianto wakes up mid afternoon and runs to the front of the flat he does not own and reads the date on the paper he does not subscribe to still in his pajamas. It still reads 2008, which is funny because last week he was pretty sure it was 2002 and he was living with his mother in their two-story home. When he calls the house phone, the automated operator kindly informs him that the line has been disconnected, and when he walks out past the bay, he finds a tall office building where the house should have been. But he isn’t exactly perturbed by it. It could be that he got really really high and hallucinated it all. He could be dreaming still because if this actually happened, he’d be suffering from a massive hangover for sure. Even though he hasn’t experienced a three day hangover or hallucination before, he won’t consider it impossible. After all, here he is seemingly six years in the future.
In the flat he does not own, everything is blue. The walls aren’t so bad, he supposes, but the light blue plaid sofa and matching loveseat and the robin egg blue bookshelf and cerulean trimmed desk make him gnash his teeth together violently. Whatever he took that made him so incomprehensibly stoned to color coordinate needs to be destroyed immediately. How the hell is he supposed get laid in a place like this? No bachelor matches his pot holders with the hand towel and dish towel in the kitchen. No bachelor has dish towels. He uses paper towels.
Cardiff looks more or less like it did four days - six years - ago, but with more housing and development. He has a fully stocked refrigerator with strange expensive organic foods and the bathroom is clean. The closet has been organized by color. When the mail comes, he discovers he owns a small fortune of money and that his rent has already been paid for by an anonymous source. At about this time, he knows he should be more concerned, but instead he does the math. He could quite possibly go drinking every night for three months before seriously needing to consider getting a job. Math has always been his strong point - that and playing drunken croquet with hockey sticks.
However, despite the sudden benefits of being twenty-six, mildly wealthy, and not a stow-away in his mother’s house, there remains one mitigating factor. He frowns. Well, okay, there are several mitigating factors including the fact that he has no remaining connections to buy pot and he has no clue how to reach any family and friends he might have. He’s also conspicuously missing SIX YEARS of his life. But no, that’s not the real issue at hand.
Ianto peers out the window suspiciously as he catches the tail end of a flash of blue disappear from his line of sight. “Fuck,” he mutters, glaring outside. The real issue is that he’s somehow managed to acquire a stalker - a stalker without the capability to be sneaky and inconspicuous. Every time he looks out the window, the weirdo scurries behind a shrubbery or squeezes himself behind a tree as if his enormous shoulder pads won’t stick out. Ianto almost feels ashamed for the guy. He spent all of secondary peering behind lockers and sneaking glances at the other guys after gym so he at least knows a thing or two about Peeping Toms, and this guy has it all ballsed up. And now Ianto can’t leave because the stalker is out there all the time.
What Ianto really wants is to be able to get away from the garishly decorated bathroom with the lacy pink frills on the mat and go to Tesco where he can purchase real food to store in his fridge: sausage and nacho cheese and double fudge peanut butter ice cream. None of that vegetarian wholesome balls. Pizza. Why doesn’t he even own a single frozen pizza?
Ianto closes the curtain and grabs the phonebook, ripping through it until he reaches the yellow pages. He reads the top listing: Jubilee Pizza. Why not spend a bit of the money that magically made its way into his bank account? He dials their number while skimming the menu and his stomach grumbles hungrily.
“Thank you for calling Jubilee Pizza. Can I take your order?” somebody wheezes on the other line.
“Ah yes, I’d like the… large Meat Feast,” he orders.
“Name?”
“Jones, Ianto Jones.”
“And are you still living at 441, Heol-y-Gwent, Cathays, Cardiff?”
He pauses. Is that his address? He doesn’t even know. “I - um - yes.” He can hear in the background the random clacking of keys and 80’s pop music as the kid takes his time entering all the information.
“I see you haven’t ordered from us for a couple years. Any particular reason why?” the teenager drones. He adds, “I have to ask for customer service reasons. I don’t actually care what you tell me.”
A couple years? Ianto thinks. Maybe Jubilee Pizza is rubbish and that’s why it’s been so long. At least it gives him somewhat of an idea how long he’s been living here. “Um, just sampling all my dining options,” he answers. But God, if he’s been living in Cardiff for over two years, what if he never left? He’s turned into a townie, born and raised. “You are the best,” he adds.
The teenager snorts. “Your order will be there in forty minutes.”
Ianto sets down the phone and forages through his fridge to pass the time, rifling past the layers of lettuce, bok choy and spinach packages. He reaches into the back and grabs an apple, washing it in the sink before slicing and hollowing out the core. He leaves the paring knife and the scraps in the sink and on principle, unfolds that morning’s paper and dumps it on one half of the couch, propping his smelly feet on top of it.
On the tele, the nightly newscaster describes a sighting of a gruesome monster in the back alleyway of Cardiff. He stares at the dip of her cleavage as her chest heaves dramatically. Her bosom, trapped in an ugly fuzzy sweater sheared straight from an orangutan, disappears and is replaced with a picture of the so-called monster. He thinks it looks more like a stout, hunch-backed man in a mask, or maybe Rafiki from the Lion King after a run-in with the devil. He snorts, shoving a whole chunk of apple in his mouth as he chews indelicately.
“God, has the tele turned into the tabloids? Clever disguise though,” he muses while spraying fruit crumbs. The mask’s teeth protrude like a pair of ill-fitted dentures. The photo disappears and the news reporter and her heaving, dramatic breasts return, and Ianto relaxes into the couch. If only he had a beer.
A little over fifty minutes later, the doorbell finally rings. Ianto fishes out his wallet, but pauses halfway to the door. He glances out the window in search of the mysterious stalker, but can’t see anything. The front stoop is shrouded by a shadow, but the outline of the pizza box is clearly visible and he deems it safe. However, for safety’s sake he unplugs the table lamp - some chintzy modern art deco (God, what was he thinking when he bought that? Oh yeah - he can’t remember) in case he needs a weapon. He knows a person can never be too safe.
He opens the door, eyes settling on the pizza box as he inhales the heavenly smell of burnt cheese and greasy cardboard, but as he looks up he freezes. “Umm,” he says, blinking severely. “Well, that’s an interesting outfit for a delivery boy,” he mutters, hurriedly grabbing the pizza from the stranger outside as he begins to back away slowly. No sudden moves, he chants to himself.
“Jubilee Pizza’s new get-up. WWII memorabilia. We’re trying a new thing,” the man assures, smiling benevolently. His teeth glitter sharply like the monster on the television and his long greatcoat drapes around his calves delicately. The wind blows the coattails around his ankles cinematically and a shadow mysteriously covers one half of his face. Ianto sighs. If it isn’t real then this is the worst high ever.
Ianto’s palms begin to sweat as he balances the pizza box in one hand. “I have a lamp,” he threatens weakly, lifting it awkwardly. The ugly pea green and lime polka dotted lampshade tilts dejectedly, and the man reaches forward and straightens it, not-so subtly brushing his knuckles against Ianto’s forearm.
“Indeed you do have a lamp. I like it. Don’t you? It’s much better than that old thing you had.”
Ianto shivers. “Do I know you?”
The stranger hums pleasantly, rocking on his heels. “I paid for your pizza. Wanna make it a date?” He ignores the question easily.
“What? No! You-” Ianto sputters. Then it dawns on him. “You’re the man who hides outside my house! I know I’ve seen your chin before.”
He watches the stalker’s face fall slightly, smile slipping as he shifts uncomfortably. “You could see me?” he asks surprised.
“Of course I could see you. You’re only a six foot man in WWII regalia trying to hide your gigantic arse behind a bush every time I peek out the curtain.”
“Oh.”
“And were you eating curry last night on my front stoop? I could smell it from my bedroom window.”
“Hey!” the man yelped defensively. He strapped his arms across his chest sourly. “I was hungry. Being a stalker is hard work, and I’ve lost my touch. It’s been awhile, okay? Sheesh.”
“Well, you’re not very subtle,” Ianto scoffs, setting the pizza on the counter beside him. He braces the lamp again and waves it. The bottom of his t-shirt rises slightly and the man’s eyes drift slightly downward. Affronted, he yanks the hem back down. “Excuse me. Eyes up here,” he scowls, pointing at the ceiling. “Can you please leave? I mean, I was going to call the police because I thought you’d be scary or something, but you’re kind of pitiful. And I don’t like men.”
The stranger’s eyes widen and he grins, a savage hungry expression similar to the way Ianto feels about the rapidly cooling pizza behind him. “I have it on the best authority that you do.”
“No.” Ianto begins to shut the door, but the man jabs his foot in the doorway.
“Hey, wait. I bought you pizza,” he complains.
Ianto rolls his eyes. “Doubtful. You probably accosted the delivery person until he gave it up and ran away.”
“I’m… I’m wooing you. It was hard enough the first time.”
Ianto freezes midway through attempting to shut the door a second time. His stomach lurches into his throat. “Ah - what? The first time? There was another time before this? Where you succeeded?”
“Uh huh. So I was kind of hoping we could skip that tedious bit where we have angry, bitter sex and then I leave and come back and you make me work really hard at restraining myself from jumping you out of sheer desperation. Been there, done that and all.” He fishes in his coat pocket and Ianto flinches when he whips out a small plastic tube. “I even bought your favorite flavored lube. Raspberry, right?”
Ianto edges backwards, but the man follows as if it was an invitation. “I think you have the wrong person.”
“But you can’t be sure because you don’t remember.” The man leers at him, backing Ianto against the wall.
“I - I don’t even know your name.”
“Jack,” the stalker says as he takes Ianto’s hand and shakes it like a rag. Ianto lets him numbly. “We have sex. It’s hot. Pizza?”
“Urg. Put… that away.” Ianto waves at the lubricant warily.
Jack slides it into the front pocket of his trousers, winking in a way that he hopes is winningly and handsome. “We can save it for later,” he assures which Ianto doesn’t find reassuring at all. He hopes there won’t be a later. Then he brings the free hand up to rub Ianto’s fingers warmly in his palms. “Look, you don’t trust me, but that’s okay. You will once we trigger your memories.”
Ianto tries to pull away, alarmed. “You have my memories?” he asks. Jack prevents him from sliding away by bracing his hands on either side of shoulders on the wall.
“No,” he answers slowly. “They’re trapped in your head. I can help you remember them.”
“How?” Ianto forgets momentarily that he’s not supposed to encourage being raped and molested and fists his hands around the breast of the greatcoat excitedly.
Jack smirks and leans closer, his body hovering and his breath ghosting over Ianto’s ear. “I can think of a few ways,” he murmurs hotly. A rush of warmth spreads in his belly.
He swallows thickly and pushes his hands against Jack’s chest. “How-” he grunts fruitlessly as Jack steels himself against the pressure of being forced away. “How does having sex retrieve my memories? You really are the worst stalker ever. That’s not even believable.”
“No! No!” Jack argues. “I’m serious! It’s not the only way, but it’s certainly the most fun way.” Then he sighs and drops his hands sullenly. His voice sounds low and dejected, but also rehearsed. “But because I respect you, I won’t push for more.”
“You’ve said that before,” Ianto remarks, not really feeling sorry at all.
Jack’s face lights up. “You remember?”
“No. You just strike me as the kind of man who gets turned down a lot.”
“Excuse me!” Jack shrills, wagging a finger at him. I’m the Captain Jack Harkness! I could lay any person I wanted to.”
“Everyone knows that the people who flaunt it aren’t actually getting any.”
“I haven’t been getting any because for the last four days you haven’t remembered who you are, and therefore we haven't had sex! God,” he complains. “You are so. Much. Work.”
Ianto glowers darkly just as Jack's cell begins to ring. “I’ll remember you just said that,” he retorts hotly as Jack digs through his enormous pockets.
He flips open the phone with jerky hostile movements and snaps, “What?” Ianto slips away from his clutches and begins to reconsider ever believing one iota that at one point they had sex. Why would he ever sleep with someone so high maintenance?
“No - look - Gwen. I’m not at Ianto’s. I’m - What do you mean you’re tracking me?!”
Then again, Ianto muses as he scoots closer to the forgotten pizza box, who knows what he’s been up to for the past years? He picks up the discarded lamp, considers it momentarily, and then nonchalantly drops it behind the sofa. If he decorated his house with these little dolphin coasters, then no doubt he was keeping ill company as well.
“Jack?” he asks cautiously. Perhaps he might be able to explain the rainbow analog clock and the decorative poster of ponies frolicking in a hay field hanging on his walls.
“Don’t come here! Gwen! Don’t - I don’t care what Amber says! I don’t care that her real name is Mary!” Jack shouts angrily, waving a fist.
“Jack?”
“This is none of your business, Gwen Cooper-Williams! Mary is not the boss. I am the boss, and I hate her.” Definitely high maintenance, Ianto decides. When Jack finally hangs up the phone he looks at Ianto sadly. “I don’t actually hate her. I just wish I could.”
Ianto schools his features in what he hopes looks sympathetic, but he’s only a few inches from the pizza now, and that’s all that matters. He doesn’t want to think about another salad ever again.
“I can’t do our date now,” Jack says apologetically. “My team’s coming to get me, but - Hey! You could come with! Maybe it’d trigger something!”
“What?” Ianto sputters, his hand on top of the box. “Can’t it wait?”
“You said no sex, so this will probably be just as good. Well, as effective. Not as fun. You might die, but it’ll be alright,” Jack reassures, latching onto Ianto’s wrist. “Then sex after. The sooner we do this, the sooner I get laid.”
“But-”
“It’ll be just like our first time!” Jack hollers gleefully.
----
“What the fuck was that?” Ianto yells, scrambling inside the SUV. His fingernails rip out chunks of the leather seat in his frantic hurry.
Following him, Jack pummels into the side of the car, rapping at the window. “I think I got it!” he hollers cheerfully, smearing a bloody hand across the glass as he peers in at Ianto cheerfully. Behind him, a fierce brunette woman circles the front of the vehicle before climbing into the passenger seat. Her torn sleeve waggles as she motions for Jack to get in. Ianto clings desperately onto the door handle, unsure of whom to be more afraid of.
“What the fuck?” he rasps again.
Jack beams at him, a trickle of blood trailing down his cheek though there isn’t a visible wound. “Okay, so that wasn’t quite like our first time,” he concedes, still grinning wildly. “You were a bit more helpful the first time around but-”
“I can’t believe you brought him along,” the woman hisses. “He is considered a civilian.”
Ianto doesn’t know if he should be insulted or not. Sor-ry I’m not so special, he scowls internally. He wraps his fingers around the seat belt so tightly that his fingers purple from the strength of his grip.
“Gwen, it’s fine,” Jack tries to mollify. The woman named Gwen huffs and shakes her head angrily, the fringe of her hair swaying over her face like a sheltie. Jack refocuses the heat and intensity of his gaze on Ianto with a spark of hope. “Do you remember yet?”
Ianto wants to cry. “Remember what?”
“Me!” Jack declares petulantly. “Are you sure we can’t just shag? It’d be so much easier.”
Gwen jabs a finger into Jack’s chest. “Hello?” she waves at Jack. “There are more weevils we still have to round up that have been sighted on the Plass and I’m calling Mary for back up.”
“There’s more?” Ianto squeaks, reeling back into his seat.
“We don’t need Mary. She’s at the hub coordinating us! There’s three of us already,” Jack argues.
“Yeah well, that’d be fine and all except you’re too busy staring at Ianto’s arse while he runs off in the opposite direction.”
“But-”
“WILL YOU JUST DRIVE?” Gwen screams. “I WANT TO SEE MARY.” Her arms flail dangerously close to Jack’s head as he inches backwards. For a moment, even Ianto feels mollified by her yelling. He sinks into his seat like a guilty child before remembering he was dragged here by force in the first place. He shouldn’t even be on this crazed mission being chased by two-legged dwarf pit-bulls with malfunctioning tear-ducts. Of course he ran in the other fucking direction; he was terrified.
The more he thinks about it, the more he feels miffed about the entire situation. “Can I just go home?” he asks weakly.
Gwen snarls sharply, twisting to glare at him. “Shut up,” she hisses. “This is such a bad idea. You’ll stay. Jack, drive damnit.” Ianto recoils in his seat once more. Point taken.
Mary - who Gwen describes as some kind of super woman with gorgeous blond flowing locks and boobs to the steering wheel - meets them at a small hot dog stand on the Plass. Gwen climbs out of the SUV, fawning over her while Jack leans against the hood jealously. Ianto stumbles out behind him ungracefully and keeps an arm length between him and his stalker. He gazes slowly and appreciatively up the length of Mary’s legs and her pert bottom.
Jack scowls and then grabs his wrist a little too enthusiastically, jerking him closer. Ianto - who isn’t as broad or muscular but just as tall - squeezes uncomfortably against the other man’s body, and Jack smiles at him with a tinge of desperation. “We went on our first date here,” he says.
Ianto looks at his surroundings. At night, the Plass is more or less empty and the small kiosk looks worn and certifiably questionable. A Weiner dog wrapped in a bun smiles enthusiastically back at them, and it’s so typical it makes Ianto’s teeth set on edge. “A hotdog stand?” he asks unimpressed. He spares Jack a withering look before his eyes wander back towards the women, Gwen petting Mary’s hair with wide starry eyes.
Jack puffs up defensively. “We were crunched for time,” he argues.
“Lousy,” Ianto announces, forgetting the previously imminent danger of the squash-faced, canine monsters. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”
Jack sighs dejectedly. “We’re not friends,” he pouts before releasing his tight grip on Ianto to bark at Mary, assuming an air of authority that she ignores with a docile smile. She giggles and bounds over, her curling hair bouncing lightly on her shoulders. Gwen smiles with a smitten expression beside her. “This,” Jack says petulantly with a thrust of his finger, “Is Mary Sure.”
She takes Ianto’s hand and bats her eyes. “It’s actually Mary Sue,” she corrects. She leans forward and her blouse gaps.
Baffled, Jack asks, “What? You said it was S-U-R-E.”
“No, just Sue,” she answers sweetly. “It was a typo.”
“A typo,” Gwen repeats dreamily as she smoothes her hands down Mary Sure/Sue’s back.
Ianto goes cross-eyed as he looks at her with a level amount of skepticism. “You look awfully familiar,” he says. “Where do I remember you from?” Then it clicks in his head, and he groans. “Oh my God, it’s you.”
If possible, Jack scowls even more, slumping sullenly against the hood of the SUV. “You mean you remember her but not me?”
Ianto crosses his arms as all the memories click into place and seethes. “Of course I fucking remember her. You two were too busy fawning over her while I retconned myself with the water that was intended for her.”
“But-”
“You ignored me, again.”
“But-”
Ianto glares at Jack angrily. “And since when the hell was her name Mary? I thought it was Amber.”
Gwen sighs and squeezes Amber/Mary Sure/Sue in a hug, enveloping her sleek frame with her arms. “She wanted to be mysterious,” she replies softly, smelling her hair.
Ianto rolls his eyes, obviously unimpressed and turns back to look at Jack. Jack stares at him somewhat pitifully, but his expression widens into a lavish grin as Ianto approaches him and sneaks a hand inside the greatcoat. “Hello there,” he murmurs.
Ianto ignores him, reaching for the Webley and pulling it out in a single fluid movement. He twists his arm around Jack’s waist, hugging him close as he fires at a charging weevil sneaking around the back of the hot dog stand. The sudden gunshots stun everyone, and even Jack momentarily forgets Ianto’s still wrapped around his side. The weevil lets out a low wailing growl before slumping onto the ground, and Ianto holsters the gun once more all in the same breath as the others stare at the slumped over body ten feet away. He takes in Jack’s wide-eyed hungry stare and sighs, “Gwen’s right. You do spend too much time staring at my arse. We did come here because of reported weevil sightings.”
Jack leers at him and reaches around Ianto’s waist. “I lied, this is so much better than the first time we met.”
Behind them, Gwen is the only one to realize the really truly dire situation. “If Ianto has his memory back, can we still keep Mary?” she asks.
“I can’t believe you replaced me with her,” Ianto snaps, wriggling away to jab a rigid finger into Jack’s sternum.
Amber/Mary Sure/Sue smirks back at him with a gloating gleam. “I do make better coffee.”
“Not likely,” Ianto retorts. “And even if you do, I am the chief archivist. I designed that filing system.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “The weevils like me better. They cooperate when I feed them.”
“Of course they do. They relate to you because you’re just as abhorrent. Besides, even if that’s true, Myfanwy loves nobody the way she loves me.”
She glowers at him as she shifts her weight from hip to hip. “Well, I slept with Jack,” she bites ruefully.
“Hell yes we did - I mean… Um,” Jack mutters, tightening his hand still clasping Ianto’s waist. He falls silent and Gwen’s eyes dart between Mary, Ianto, and Jack with a frightened expression.
Ianto ignores everyone but Amber/Mary Sure/Sue. He looks momentarily affronted before crossing his arms prissily and stepping from Jack’s embrace. “You said you haven’t had sex,” he points at Jack. Then he glares at his opponent again. “But I give better head,” he snarls smugly. Jack’s expression glazes over fondly as he recalls the memories of his hot wet mouth, and Ianto sneers back at Mary as he has to wipe away the trail of drool sliding down Jack’s chin.
His opponent looks confused, shifting between the two men. “Oh,” is all she says. For a few seconds there is only silence as Ianto continues to smile winningly.
And then:
Amber/Mary Sure/Sue’s head explodes. Her cranial cavity blasts outwards, splattering Gwen from head to toe with rainbow colored sparkles tasting like candy floss on a perfect summer day.
For a moment no one speaks before Jack eloquently inquires, “What. The. FUCK?” He leans over and sniffs Gwen’s hair experimentally as the headless body crumples on to the sidewalk. “She’s an alien?!”
Ianto calmly brushes off flecks of sparkles from the sleeves of his pajamas primly. “An alien that is only capable of survival when it’s the most perfect being in the room. I recognized her immediately for what she was when he picked her up.”
“Wait - What? If you knew…” Gwen stutters, half between heartbreak and horror. The precious rosebuds plastered to her hair from the explosion complement her sheer disbelief as she stares longingly at the corpse.
“I didn’t want to raise alarm so I instead took it in my responsibility to scheme an elaborate plan to lure her into a sense of false security. Much easier to attack her when she’s off guard,” he explains. He stares at Jack and Gwen with a rather bored expression before fishing the SUV keys out of the greatcoat.
Jack blinks dazedly as Ianto plucks a pink feather from his hair and shakes the keys in front of him enticingly like a pet owner determined to get the dog to sit. “You… knew… she was… an alien? You retconned yourself in order to be brought back so you could outperform her with your ability to give head? And that made her brain explode?” he asks, his pitch rising continuously. He adds sorrowfully, “And why was there a lack of actual oral sex in this competition?”
“Well, it worked. And you already know I’m good,” Ianto says mildly.
“Well - yes - but…” Jack sputters. “How did you know?”
“You do moan a lot and there was that one time you actually fell of the desk. I took that as a good sign.”
“I - uh - that’s not what I meant,” Jack tries to backtrack. “About Amber -”
“-Mary-” Gwen interjects. Tears begin to stream from her eyes pitifully.
“-and that you knew she was an alien.”
Ianto looks momentarily bashful. “Oh, well,” he shrugs. Then he glowers at Gwen hotly. “She acted weak when we first encountered her in order to fool us into sympathizing with her.”
“But that doesn’t explain how you knew she was just acting and that she was a threat,” Jack argues. Gwen pats the body delicately as she inhales sharp, angry sniffles.
Ianto shifts his weight on his feet, bored already with the conversation. He rolls his eyes halfheartedly before smiling beguilingly. “It’s really simple actually, and I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed right away.”
Jack raises an eyebrow. “How so?”
“She smelled like sweetheart candies and happy childhoods. Duh.”
----
Back at the hub, Gwen commandeers the body and hauls it down to the autopsy bay, sobbing harder with each step, while Ianto heads toward the coffee machine to inspect if any damage had been done by that harlot he triumphantly defeated. Jack pursues him quietly, backing him into the counter of the kitchenette with a pliant, greedy mouth as Ianto halfheartedly protests. His hand catches on a knife left carelessly next to the sink as he tries to counteract the force of Jack’s weight.
“You’re brilliant,” Jack murmurs against his mouth, but he has already moved passed that day’s events and onto the low slung pajama bottoms around Ianto’s hips.
Ianto groans as he clenches the slice in his fist and pushes the knife into the sink with a loud clatter, Jack mistakenly and enthusiastically interpreting the source of the noise for pleasure as he slides a leg between Ianto’s thighs, pressing deeply and thoroughly with his tongue. Ianto hums quietly and with his unwounded hand, slithers his fingers over the back of Jack’s neck and urges their bodies closer together to distract him from his bleeding palm. He hides it behind his back as the glitter begins to the flood from the wound like sand and stardust. Squeezing his fingers tightly over the cut, he stops the fireworks and lullabies and the smell of newborn babies from spilling all over the floor.
End
----
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
1.) I BRANCHED OUT. Look, I didn't write something sad.
2.) Please don't take this seriously.
Author: nieded
Fandom; Pairing: Whoniverse; Jack/Ianto
Rating: R
Disclaimer: I forgot to post this bit, oops. I am in no way affiliated with RTD or Beebs or anything else that's officially Torchwood. Yay!
Word Count: approx. 7,000
Summary: A cracky meta-fic. When Torchwood recruits a new member, only Ianto knows if she’s a friend or foe but has a difficulty remembering which.
The Merits of Subtlety
In retrospect, Jack realizes it was too surrealistic to just have been coincidence. It began innocently enough with a weevil hunt involving a civilian by the name Amber Sure - a hunt that should have ended like any other retcon textbook case had a retcon textbook existed. Of course, knowing Ianto, he was probably writing and illustrating it with detailed footnotes leading to his immaculately organized archives.
Jack discovered long ago that the Universe has a terrific sense of irony that generally he finds hilarious providing it doesn’t involve him. The ‘not involving him’ bit is exactly why he isn’t laughing because the Universe’s idea of a joke led to a passed-out, retconned Ianto on the sofa and Gwen leaving in tears. Oh yeah, and also the recruitment of Miss Wonderful, Magnificent, I-Can-Do-Anything Amber Sure. Definitely not funny, Jack decides testily. The How to Retcon Manual for Newbies and Gwen will never get written now.
Of course, the title needs to be amended to include And Jack before getting shipped off to the press because, honestly, it was his miscalculation that partially led to accidentally wiping the last six years of Ianto’s memory. On the positive side: the goose chase after Ianto to trigger his memories will be excellent, and it isn’t every day someone can declare they claimed someone’s anal virginity - twice. As long as he stays optimistic, Jack’s positive everything will be fine.
----
It began like this:
The sun shone brightly, the forget-me-nots scented the pollen infested air, and Amber Sure’s dulcet tones pierced Jack’s eardrums as she wailed pitifully about being nearly devoured by an ugly, squash-faced pit bull with very sharp canines and death breath.
“Oh my God. Will someone shut her up?” Ianto groaned under his breath. Only Jack could hear him because they huddled together behind the SUV after jamming the unconscious weevil in the back. Jack had one leg between Ianto’s - who protested minimally - while Gwen patted Amber’s shoulders soothingly up front by the headlights.
“Nrgh,” Jack sighed as he pressed forward, sliding his hands underneath Ianto’s jacket. He forewent the waistcoat that morning, allowing Jack’s hands to easily smooth over his skin through the luxurious fabric of his shirt.
“Hey-” Ianto said feebly, half-heartedly pushing against Jack with his hands (and hips). “Shouldn’t we be helping-” He trailed off as Jack slowly licked the inside of his ear.
He groaned softly. “God, if she starts wailing I’ll-”
“Oh my God!” the she lamented up front.
Ianto rolled his eyes and jerked Jack’s hips forward into his own. “Fucking Christ. You were right,” he conceded.
Jack gloated, “See? We’re much better back here.”
“Jack,” Gwen said in his ear. Simultaneously, he could hear her up front and there was a strange sort of delay that sounded like an inverse echo. “I think we should take her back to the Hub to calm her down.”
“Retcon? What happened to retconning people?” Jack asked as he wrapped his fingers around Ianto’s shirt.
“We’re out of Level 1 retcon in the SUV,” Ianto replied as he grabbed Jack’s hand and slid it over his waist. He tilted his head back to rest on the rear window and canted his hips forward.
“We’ll have to take her back,” Gwen said. In the background, Amber wailed, “Take me back? Take me back where?”
Jack ran a finger along the inseam of Ianto’s trouser slowly. “Fuck. I’m busy. Can’t we just hit her over the-”
Gwen - who seemed to be perpetually annoyed and possibly slightly jealous - snarled, “Oh, just get your hands out of his pants already.”
Ianto smirked. “Gwen’s lost her touch, don’t you think?”
Jack reluctantly let go of Ianto’s tie where he had crushed the smooth silk and adjusted his trousers, haughtily flicking his coat-tails behind him. “Fine,” he sniffed. “In the SUV; let’s go.” He pulled away reluctantly.
Amber continued to whine, “Isn’t it in there? You’re going to kill me. Oh my God. Oh my God.” She slumped into her seat dramatically, dragging her hand across her brow after Gwen and Ianto forcibly shoved her inside. Gwen reached over and buckled her seatbelt for her and patted her on head like a small child.
Jack looked expectantly at Ianto as he slid into the driver’s seat. “Chloroform?” he asked hopefully.
Ianto pulled a cylindrical flask from his pocket. “Always prepared, sir. There are cotton swabs in the first aid kit beneath your seat.”
“Talented Ianto,” Jack beamed. “Good work - Wait. That was in your pocket? The bottle?” Ianto’s smirk grew lavishly as the captain whined. “I thought-”
Behind them, Amber vomited in between her seat and Gwen’s, groaning as she leaned back. “I’m going to die.”
----
After arriving at the Hub, Gwen led Amber gingerly into the Jack’s office while she sobbed, so busy wallowing in all her misfortune that she didn’t even notice the shocking and ill-decorated design of the great and awesome underground lair. While Ianto hauled the weevil into the vaults, Jack galloped down into the medical bay in search of Torchwood’s additional retcon stores. He plucked the bottle off the shelf and slipped one pill into his trouser pocket, and then began to whistle inconspicuously. Of course, he wasn’t misbehaving nor were his actions suspicious to Gwen and Ianto, but he did enjoy a good role-play even by himself, especially if it led to a good smack on the arse later (also from himself. He prized his creativity).
Stopping on his way to his office, he grabbed two glasses of water and dissolved the pill in one, chanting, “Amber’s glass is in my left hand. Amber’s glass is in my left hand. My glass is in my - oh fuck,” all the way up the stairs. He set both glasses in front of Amber to be safe just as she whimpered weakly, and turned on his comm. “Ianto, could you bring up some biscuits for our guest to help calm her down?”
“Abso - lutely - Jack,” Ianto grunted. The weevil snarled in the background. Reliable Ianto, so efficient, Jack beamed.
He turned to the civilian, reclining in his chair with practiced ease. “We have everything under control,” he soothed. “This is Torchwood and we protect people from aliens.” She sniffled at him and he grinned beatifically. “Would you like to hear my spiel?”
Gwen nodded fervently beside him. “It’s quite good. I was hooked - until he wiped my mem-” Jack kicked her hard under the desk. “Ow. Um, I mean… I’d trust him completely.” Her expression took on a slightly glazed and manic look as a thought occurred to her and leaned over and whispered loudly in his ear, “Are you going to hire her too?” Amber began to keen as she dropped her purse onto the floor in front of the desk. She tucked her knees to her chest and stared at the two of them, too afraid to reach down and reclaim the fallen bag.
Ianto, with his impeccable timing as always, strolled up the stairs, balancing the tray of biscuits elegantly with one hand while wiping away remnants of weevil mucous from his trousers with an air of aristocratic grace. “Biscuits,” he announced. He picked up a cookie and delicately chewed it with a look of thoughtfulness as if to reassure their guest. Simultaneously, he stepped on her purse, tripping on the strap as he launched forward and the biscuits flew everywhere.
He began to choke on the morsel already in his mouth, the hard piece of food lodging itself in his throat. “Jesus, Jack!” Gwen gasped. “Give him CPR or something.”
Jack flailed helplessly. “Me?! I can only do that kiss thing!” He glanced at Ianto’s purpling face and scowled at her. “You’re the cop,” he accused.
“Oh for fuck’s sake,” Amber said, standing up. She grabbed Ianto around his middle from behind and bent him over, pushing swiftly against his abdomen. The chunk of food flew from Ianto’s mouth and he slumped forward onto the chair. The bit of biscuit covered in saliva clung to the front of Jack’s shirt, the victim of Ianto’s trajectory.
“You’re all hopeless,” Ianto rasped, bending over Jack’s desk as he rubbed his throat.
“You really are,” Amber nodded. Then she paused and spared them a meek glance, explaining to them, “I’m trained in CPR and first aid. I’m also a beauty queen and can hack into any computer mainframe.”
Jack and Gwen shared a look while Ianto flopped into the empty chair, still making strangled hacking noises.
“And I lied,” Amber continued, growing more confidence and steam. “My name isn’t Amber, it’s actually Mary. I just wanted to appear mysterious. Aren’t I perfect?” she giggled, flipping her hair.
“Is this the same person that got attacked by a weevil today?” Gwen whispered. Jack shook his head confusedly, unsure if he should thank her for saving one of his team’s life, or if he should break out the alien scanner. Ignoring them, Ianto groaned as he coughed raggedly and grabbed the glass of water. He downed it in one while the others still stared awestruck at Amber/Mary’s sudden and blinding magnificence. Then he grabbed the second glass, still retching reflexively.
“Do you need a job?” Jack asked dazedly.
“Oh no. I plan to make it on my own with sheer determination and good will.” She winked at Gwen.
Blinking, Gwen tried to shake of the sudden fogginess that overcame her. “Quit. You’re hired. We really need you here.”
Ianto slumped forward onto the desk, passed out.
----
The problem is that since Owen’s death, no one continues to restock the retcon. Jack knows how to make it - after all, he brought it from the Time Agency - but it was Owen’s job, and Jack can’t afford to be developing retcon when he has Better Things to Do, like shop, since there’s no conceivable way to sneak 30 quid worth of hair care product onto the Hub’s grocery list. But mainly he just forgets.
After, when they’ve moved Ianto to the couch to sleep off the effects of the retcon, Jack goes back into the medical bay to reread the label. To his amazement and dismay, he discovers it does not actually read “Retcon Level 1” in Owen’s messy scrawl, but “Retcon Level 7,” where the seven has been smudged over from grease. He always meant to scold Owen about eating crisps in a sterile environment but felt bad whenever Ianto scowled at the food bits he left on his own reports. And besides, he likes to live by the golden rule: “Treat others the way you want to be treated,” at least one third of the time, and no one likes petty bureaucracy. Jack knows he isn’t a good boss, but at least he’s well-liked.
When Jack reads the label, his stomach tightens and his face crumples unattractively. “Fuck,” he mutters. “Aw, fuck.” He jogs up the stairs and pauses to admire Ianto’s precious and sniveling expression while he sleeps.
“Amb - I mean, Mary?” Jack hollers. Amber/Mary bounds down the stairs, already seemingly comfortable in her surroundings. In the first hour getting acquainted in the Hub, her top few buttons have come undone. Behind her, Gwen stumbles in wiping a smear of lipstick off her neck.
“Yes, sir?” she asks, curtseying.
“I think I accidentally retconned the last six or so years from Ianto’s memory,” he says sullenly, swallowing against the sudden lump in his throat. He gingerly wipes a streak of drool from Ianto’s chin.
“Do you want me to set up a plausible history for him?”
Jack glowers at her, but the longer he stares at her pleasant expression, the less he feels angry. “No… I kind of want him to remember he worked for Torchwood,” he says weakly. He suddenly can’t remember why it was so important.
“Oh,” Amber/Mary says dejectedly. It pulls on Jack’s cold and tortured heartstrings. “Gwen told me Torchwood makes people sad. She also says you’re in love him.”
He blanches. “She said what?”
“If you do love him, don’t you want him to happy and Torchwood free?”
He finds himself nodding slowly, enraptured by her pleading eyes. “Yes,” he agrees. “I… think… you’re… right.”
She claps her hands zealously. “Great! I should also let you know that I’m a professional interior decorator. Wouldn’t it be great to redecorate his flat to match his great new start on life?”
“… You’re an interior decorator?” Gwen asks delightedly. She clasps her hands together.
“I wanted to let you know. I wouldn’t want to keep any secrets from you,” she coos. She whips out a palette of paint chips from behind the couch. “So what do you think? Baby’s breath or periwinkle for his walls? I vote periwinkle. Don’t you just love democracy?”
Jack glances repeatedly between the two options of paint. This is, after all, Ianto’s flat. He scratches his chin in a very serious manner, and behind him Mary shouts, “World peace!”
----
For the third day in a row, Ianto wakes up mid afternoon and runs to the front of the flat he does not own and reads the date on the paper he does not subscribe to still in his pajamas. It still reads 2008, which is funny because last week he was pretty sure it was 2002 and he was living with his mother in their two-story home. When he calls the house phone, the automated operator kindly informs him that the line has been disconnected, and when he walks out past the bay, he finds a tall office building where the house should have been. But he isn’t exactly perturbed by it. It could be that he got really really high and hallucinated it all. He could be dreaming still because if this actually happened, he’d be suffering from a massive hangover for sure. Even though he hasn’t experienced a three day hangover or hallucination before, he won’t consider it impossible. After all, here he is seemingly six years in the future.
In the flat he does not own, everything is blue. The walls aren’t so bad, he supposes, but the light blue plaid sofa and matching loveseat and the robin egg blue bookshelf and cerulean trimmed desk make him gnash his teeth together violently. Whatever he took that made him so incomprehensibly stoned to color coordinate needs to be destroyed immediately. How the hell is he supposed get laid in a place like this? No bachelor matches his pot holders with the hand towel and dish towel in the kitchen. No bachelor has dish towels. He uses paper towels.
Cardiff looks more or less like it did four days - six years - ago, but with more housing and development. He has a fully stocked refrigerator with strange expensive organic foods and the bathroom is clean. The closet has been organized by color. When the mail comes, he discovers he owns a small fortune of money and that his rent has already been paid for by an anonymous source. At about this time, he knows he should be more concerned, but instead he does the math. He could quite possibly go drinking every night for three months before seriously needing to consider getting a job. Math has always been his strong point - that and playing drunken croquet with hockey sticks.
However, despite the sudden benefits of being twenty-six, mildly wealthy, and not a stow-away in his mother’s house, there remains one mitigating factor. He frowns. Well, okay, there are several mitigating factors including the fact that he has no remaining connections to buy pot and he has no clue how to reach any family and friends he might have. He’s also conspicuously missing SIX YEARS of his life. But no, that’s not the real issue at hand.
Ianto peers out the window suspiciously as he catches the tail end of a flash of blue disappear from his line of sight. “Fuck,” he mutters, glaring outside. The real issue is that he’s somehow managed to acquire a stalker - a stalker without the capability to be sneaky and inconspicuous. Every time he looks out the window, the weirdo scurries behind a shrubbery or squeezes himself behind a tree as if his enormous shoulder pads won’t stick out. Ianto almost feels ashamed for the guy. He spent all of secondary peering behind lockers and sneaking glances at the other guys after gym so he at least knows a thing or two about Peeping Toms, and this guy has it all ballsed up. And now Ianto can’t leave because the stalker is out there all the time.
What Ianto really wants is to be able to get away from the garishly decorated bathroom with the lacy pink frills on the mat and go to Tesco where he can purchase real food to store in his fridge: sausage and nacho cheese and double fudge peanut butter ice cream. None of that vegetarian wholesome balls. Pizza. Why doesn’t he even own a single frozen pizza?
Ianto closes the curtain and grabs the phonebook, ripping through it until he reaches the yellow pages. He reads the top listing: Jubilee Pizza. Why not spend a bit of the money that magically made its way into his bank account? He dials their number while skimming the menu and his stomach grumbles hungrily.
“Thank you for calling Jubilee Pizza. Can I take your order?” somebody wheezes on the other line.
“Ah yes, I’d like the… large Meat Feast,” he orders.
“Name?”
“Jones, Ianto Jones.”
“And are you still living at 441, Heol-y-Gwent, Cathays, Cardiff?”
He pauses. Is that his address? He doesn’t even know. “I - um - yes.” He can hear in the background the random clacking of keys and 80’s pop music as the kid takes his time entering all the information.
“I see you haven’t ordered from us for a couple years. Any particular reason why?” the teenager drones. He adds, “I have to ask for customer service reasons. I don’t actually care what you tell me.”
A couple years? Ianto thinks. Maybe Jubilee Pizza is rubbish and that’s why it’s been so long. At least it gives him somewhat of an idea how long he’s been living here. “Um, just sampling all my dining options,” he answers. But God, if he’s been living in Cardiff for over two years, what if he never left? He’s turned into a townie, born and raised. “You are the best,” he adds.
The teenager snorts. “Your order will be there in forty minutes.”
Ianto sets down the phone and forages through his fridge to pass the time, rifling past the layers of lettuce, bok choy and spinach packages. He reaches into the back and grabs an apple, washing it in the sink before slicing and hollowing out the core. He leaves the paring knife and the scraps in the sink and on principle, unfolds that morning’s paper and dumps it on one half of the couch, propping his smelly feet on top of it.
On the tele, the nightly newscaster describes a sighting of a gruesome monster in the back alleyway of Cardiff. He stares at the dip of her cleavage as her chest heaves dramatically. Her bosom, trapped in an ugly fuzzy sweater sheared straight from an orangutan, disappears and is replaced with a picture of the so-called monster. He thinks it looks more like a stout, hunch-backed man in a mask, or maybe Rafiki from the Lion King after a run-in with the devil. He snorts, shoving a whole chunk of apple in his mouth as he chews indelicately.
“God, has the tele turned into the tabloids? Clever disguise though,” he muses while spraying fruit crumbs. The mask’s teeth protrude like a pair of ill-fitted dentures. The photo disappears and the news reporter and her heaving, dramatic breasts return, and Ianto relaxes into the couch. If only he had a beer.
A little over fifty minutes later, the doorbell finally rings. Ianto fishes out his wallet, but pauses halfway to the door. He glances out the window in search of the mysterious stalker, but can’t see anything. The front stoop is shrouded by a shadow, but the outline of the pizza box is clearly visible and he deems it safe. However, for safety’s sake he unplugs the table lamp - some chintzy modern art deco (God, what was he thinking when he bought that? Oh yeah - he can’t remember) in case he needs a weapon. He knows a person can never be too safe.
He opens the door, eyes settling on the pizza box as he inhales the heavenly smell of burnt cheese and greasy cardboard, but as he looks up he freezes. “Umm,” he says, blinking severely. “Well, that’s an interesting outfit for a delivery boy,” he mutters, hurriedly grabbing the pizza from the stranger outside as he begins to back away slowly. No sudden moves, he chants to himself.
“Jubilee Pizza’s new get-up. WWII memorabilia. We’re trying a new thing,” the man assures, smiling benevolently. His teeth glitter sharply like the monster on the television and his long greatcoat drapes around his calves delicately. The wind blows the coattails around his ankles cinematically and a shadow mysteriously covers one half of his face. Ianto sighs. If it isn’t real then this is the worst high ever.
Ianto’s palms begin to sweat as he balances the pizza box in one hand. “I have a lamp,” he threatens weakly, lifting it awkwardly. The ugly pea green and lime polka dotted lampshade tilts dejectedly, and the man reaches forward and straightens it, not-so subtly brushing his knuckles against Ianto’s forearm.
“Indeed you do have a lamp. I like it. Don’t you? It’s much better than that old thing you had.”
Ianto shivers. “Do I know you?”
The stranger hums pleasantly, rocking on his heels. “I paid for your pizza. Wanna make it a date?” He ignores the question easily.
“What? No! You-” Ianto sputters. Then it dawns on him. “You’re the man who hides outside my house! I know I’ve seen your chin before.”
He watches the stalker’s face fall slightly, smile slipping as he shifts uncomfortably. “You could see me?” he asks surprised.
“Of course I could see you. You’re only a six foot man in WWII regalia trying to hide your gigantic arse behind a bush every time I peek out the curtain.”
“Oh.”
“And were you eating curry last night on my front stoop? I could smell it from my bedroom window.”
“Hey!” the man yelped defensively. He strapped his arms across his chest sourly. “I was hungry. Being a stalker is hard work, and I’ve lost my touch. It’s been awhile, okay? Sheesh.”
“Well, you’re not very subtle,” Ianto scoffs, setting the pizza on the counter beside him. He braces the lamp again and waves it. The bottom of his t-shirt rises slightly and the man’s eyes drift slightly downward. Affronted, he yanks the hem back down. “Excuse me. Eyes up here,” he scowls, pointing at the ceiling. “Can you please leave? I mean, I was going to call the police because I thought you’d be scary or something, but you’re kind of pitiful. And I don’t like men.”
The stranger’s eyes widen and he grins, a savage hungry expression similar to the way Ianto feels about the rapidly cooling pizza behind him. “I have it on the best authority that you do.”
“No.” Ianto begins to shut the door, but the man jabs his foot in the doorway.
“Hey, wait. I bought you pizza,” he complains.
Ianto rolls his eyes. “Doubtful. You probably accosted the delivery person until he gave it up and ran away.”
“I’m… I’m wooing you. It was hard enough the first time.”
Ianto freezes midway through attempting to shut the door a second time. His stomach lurches into his throat. “Ah - what? The first time? There was another time before this? Where you succeeded?”
“Uh huh. So I was kind of hoping we could skip that tedious bit where we have angry, bitter sex and then I leave and come back and you make me work really hard at restraining myself from jumping you out of sheer desperation. Been there, done that and all.” He fishes in his coat pocket and Ianto flinches when he whips out a small plastic tube. “I even bought your favorite flavored lube. Raspberry, right?”
Ianto edges backwards, but the man follows as if it was an invitation. “I think you have the wrong person.”
“But you can’t be sure because you don’t remember.” The man leers at him, backing Ianto against the wall.
“I - I don’t even know your name.”
“Jack,” the stalker says as he takes Ianto’s hand and shakes it like a rag. Ianto lets him numbly. “We have sex. It’s hot. Pizza?”
“Urg. Put… that away.” Ianto waves at the lubricant warily.
Jack slides it into the front pocket of his trousers, winking in a way that he hopes is winningly and handsome. “We can save it for later,” he assures which Ianto doesn’t find reassuring at all. He hopes there won’t be a later. Then he brings the free hand up to rub Ianto’s fingers warmly in his palms. “Look, you don’t trust me, but that’s okay. You will once we trigger your memories.”
Ianto tries to pull away, alarmed. “You have my memories?” he asks. Jack prevents him from sliding away by bracing his hands on either side of shoulders on the wall.
“No,” he answers slowly. “They’re trapped in your head. I can help you remember them.”
“How?” Ianto forgets momentarily that he’s not supposed to encourage being raped and molested and fists his hands around the breast of the greatcoat excitedly.
Jack smirks and leans closer, his body hovering and his breath ghosting over Ianto’s ear. “I can think of a few ways,” he murmurs hotly. A rush of warmth spreads in his belly.
He swallows thickly and pushes his hands against Jack’s chest. “How-” he grunts fruitlessly as Jack steels himself against the pressure of being forced away. “How does having sex retrieve my memories? You really are the worst stalker ever. That’s not even believable.”
“No! No!” Jack argues. “I’m serious! It’s not the only way, but it’s certainly the most fun way.” Then he sighs and drops his hands sullenly. His voice sounds low and dejected, but also rehearsed. “But because I respect you, I won’t push for more.”
“You’ve said that before,” Ianto remarks, not really feeling sorry at all.
Jack’s face lights up. “You remember?”
“No. You just strike me as the kind of man who gets turned down a lot.”
“Excuse me!” Jack shrills, wagging a finger at him. I’m the Captain Jack Harkness! I could lay any person I wanted to.”
“Everyone knows that the people who flaunt it aren’t actually getting any.”
“I haven’t been getting any because for the last four days you haven’t remembered who you are, and therefore we haven't had sex! God,” he complains. “You are so. Much. Work.”
Ianto glowers darkly just as Jack's cell begins to ring. “I’ll remember you just said that,” he retorts hotly as Jack digs through his enormous pockets.
He flips open the phone with jerky hostile movements and snaps, “What?” Ianto slips away from his clutches and begins to reconsider ever believing one iota that at one point they had sex. Why would he ever sleep with someone so high maintenance?
“No - look - Gwen. I’m not at Ianto’s. I’m - What do you mean you’re tracking me?!”
Then again, Ianto muses as he scoots closer to the forgotten pizza box, who knows what he’s been up to for the past years? He picks up the discarded lamp, considers it momentarily, and then nonchalantly drops it behind the sofa. If he decorated his house with these little dolphin coasters, then no doubt he was keeping ill company as well.
“Jack?” he asks cautiously. Perhaps he might be able to explain the rainbow analog clock and the decorative poster of ponies frolicking in a hay field hanging on his walls.
“Don’t come here! Gwen! Don’t - I don’t care what Amber says! I don’t care that her real name is Mary!” Jack shouts angrily, waving a fist.
“Jack?”
“This is none of your business, Gwen Cooper-Williams! Mary is not the boss. I am the boss, and I hate her.” Definitely high maintenance, Ianto decides. When Jack finally hangs up the phone he looks at Ianto sadly. “I don’t actually hate her. I just wish I could.”
Ianto schools his features in what he hopes looks sympathetic, but he’s only a few inches from the pizza now, and that’s all that matters. He doesn’t want to think about another salad ever again.
“I can’t do our date now,” Jack says apologetically. “My team’s coming to get me, but - Hey! You could come with! Maybe it’d trigger something!”
“What?” Ianto sputters, his hand on top of the box. “Can’t it wait?”
“You said no sex, so this will probably be just as good. Well, as effective. Not as fun. You might die, but it’ll be alright,” Jack reassures, latching onto Ianto’s wrist. “Then sex after. The sooner we do this, the sooner I get laid.”
“But-”
“It’ll be just like our first time!” Jack hollers gleefully.
----
“What the fuck was that?” Ianto yells, scrambling inside the SUV. His fingernails rip out chunks of the leather seat in his frantic hurry.
Following him, Jack pummels into the side of the car, rapping at the window. “I think I got it!” he hollers cheerfully, smearing a bloody hand across the glass as he peers in at Ianto cheerfully. Behind him, a fierce brunette woman circles the front of the vehicle before climbing into the passenger seat. Her torn sleeve waggles as she motions for Jack to get in. Ianto clings desperately onto the door handle, unsure of whom to be more afraid of.
“What the fuck?” he rasps again.
Jack beams at him, a trickle of blood trailing down his cheek though there isn’t a visible wound. “Okay, so that wasn’t quite like our first time,” he concedes, still grinning wildly. “You were a bit more helpful the first time around but-”
“I can’t believe you brought him along,” the woman hisses. “He is considered a civilian.”
Ianto doesn’t know if he should be insulted or not. Sor-ry I’m not so special, he scowls internally. He wraps his fingers around the seat belt so tightly that his fingers purple from the strength of his grip.
“Gwen, it’s fine,” Jack tries to mollify. The woman named Gwen huffs and shakes her head angrily, the fringe of her hair swaying over her face like a sheltie. Jack refocuses the heat and intensity of his gaze on Ianto with a spark of hope. “Do you remember yet?”
Ianto wants to cry. “Remember what?”
“Me!” Jack declares petulantly. “Are you sure we can’t just shag? It’d be so much easier.”
Gwen jabs a finger into Jack’s chest. “Hello?” she waves at Jack. “There are more weevils we still have to round up that have been sighted on the Plass and I’m calling Mary for back up.”
“There’s more?” Ianto squeaks, reeling back into his seat.
“We don’t need Mary. She’s at the hub coordinating us! There’s three of us already,” Jack argues.
“Yeah well, that’d be fine and all except you’re too busy staring at Ianto’s arse while he runs off in the opposite direction.”
“But-”
“WILL YOU JUST DRIVE?” Gwen screams. “I WANT TO SEE MARY.” Her arms flail dangerously close to Jack’s head as he inches backwards. For a moment, even Ianto feels mollified by her yelling. He sinks into his seat like a guilty child before remembering he was dragged here by force in the first place. He shouldn’t even be on this crazed mission being chased by two-legged dwarf pit-bulls with malfunctioning tear-ducts. Of course he ran in the other fucking direction; he was terrified.
The more he thinks about it, the more he feels miffed about the entire situation. “Can I just go home?” he asks weakly.
Gwen snarls sharply, twisting to glare at him. “Shut up,” she hisses. “This is such a bad idea. You’ll stay. Jack, drive damnit.” Ianto recoils in his seat once more. Point taken.
Mary - who Gwen describes as some kind of super woman with gorgeous blond flowing locks and boobs to the steering wheel - meets them at a small hot dog stand on the Plass. Gwen climbs out of the SUV, fawning over her while Jack leans against the hood jealously. Ianto stumbles out behind him ungracefully and keeps an arm length between him and his stalker. He gazes slowly and appreciatively up the length of Mary’s legs and her pert bottom.
Jack scowls and then grabs his wrist a little too enthusiastically, jerking him closer. Ianto - who isn’t as broad or muscular but just as tall - squeezes uncomfortably against the other man’s body, and Jack smiles at him with a tinge of desperation. “We went on our first date here,” he says.
Ianto looks at his surroundings. At night, the Plass is more or less empty and the small kiosk looks worn and certifiably questionable. A Weiner dog wrapped in a bun smiles enthusiastically back at them, and it’s so typical it makes Ianto’s teeth set on edge. “A hotdog stand?” he asks unimpressed. He spares Jack a withering look before his eyes wander back towards the women, Gwen petting Mary’s hair with wide starry eyes.
Jack puffs up defensively. “We were crunched for time,” he argues.
“Lousy,” Ianto announces, forgetting the previously imminent danger of the squash-faced, canine monsters. “Are you going to introduce me to your friend?”
Jack sighs dejectedly. “We’re not friends,” he pouts before releasing his tight grip on Ianto to bark at Mary, assuming an air of authority that she ignores with a docile smile. She giggles and bounds over, her curling hair bouncing lightly on her shoulders. Gwen smiles with a smitten expression beside her. “This,” Jack says petulantly with a thrust of his finger, “Is Mary Sure.”
She takes Ianto’s hand and bats her eyes. “It’s actually Mary Sue,” she corrects. She leans forward and her blouse gaps.
Baffled, Jack asks, “What? You said it was S-U-R-E.”
“No, just Sue,” she answers sweetly. “It was a typo.”
“A typo,” Gwen repeats dreamily as she smoothes her hands down Mary Sure/Sue’s back.
Ianto goes cross-eyed as he looks at her with a level amount of skepticism. “You look awfully familiar,” he says. “Where do I remember you from?” Then it clicks in his head, and he groans. “Oh my God, it’s you.”
If possible, Jack scowls even more, slumping sullenly against the hood of the SUV. “You mean you remember her but not me?”
Ianto crosses his arms as all the memories click into place and seethes. “Of course I fucking remember her. You two were too busy fawning over her while I retconned myself with the water that was intended for her.”
“But-”
“You ignored me, again.”
“But-”
Ianto glares at Jack angrily. “And since when the hell was her name Mary? I thought it was Amber.”
Gwen sighs and squeezes Amber/Mary Sure/Sue in a hug, enveloping her sleek frame with her arms. “She wanted to be mysterious,” she replies softly, smelling her hair.
Ianto rolls his eyes, obviously unimpressed and turns back to look at Jack. Jack stares at him somewhat pitifully, but his expression widens into a lavish grin as Ianto approaches him and sneaks a hand inside the greatcoat. “Hello there,” he murmurs.
Ianto ignores him, reaching for the Webley and pulling it out in a single fluid movement. He twists his arm around Jack’s waist, hugging him close as he fires at a charging weevil sneaking around the back of the hot dog stand. The sudden gunshots stun everyone, and even Jack momentarily forgets Ianto’s still wrapped around his side. The weevil lets out a low wailing growl before slumping onto the ground, and Ianto holsters the gun once more all in the same breath as the others stare at the slumped over body ten feet away. He takes in Jack’s wide-eyed hungry stare and sighs, “Gwen’s right. You do spend too much time staring at my arse. We did come here because of reported weevil sightings.”
Jack leers at him and reaches around Ianto’s waist. “I lied, this is so much better than the first time we met.”
Behind them, Gwen is the only one to realize the really truly dire situation. “If Ianto has his memory back, can we still keep Mary?” she asks.
“I can’t believe you replaced me with her,” Ianto snaps, wriggling away to jab a rigid finger into Jack’s sternum.
Amber/Mary Sure/Sue smirks back at him with a gloating gleam. “I do make better coffee.”
“Not likely,” Ianto retorts. “And even if you do, I am the chief archivist. I designed that filing system.”
She crosses her arms over her chest. “The weevils like me better. They cooperate when I feed them.”
“Of course they do. They relate to you because you’re just as abhorrent. Besides, even if that’s true, Myfanwy loves nobody the way she loves me.”
She glowers at him as she shifts her weight from hip to hip. “Well, I slept with Jack,” she bites ruefully.
“Hell yes we did - I mean… Um,” Jack mutters, tightening his hand still clasping Ianto’s waist. He falls silent and Gwen’s eyes dart between Mary, Ianto, and Jack with a frightened expression.
Ianto ignores everyone but Amber/Mary Sure/Sue. He looks momentarily affronted before crossing his arms prissily and stepping from Jack’s embrace. “You said you haven’t had sex,” he points at Jack. Then he glares at his opponent again. “But I give better head,” he snarls smugly. Jack’s expression glazes over fondly as he recalls the memories of his hot wet mouth, and Ianto sneers back at Mary as he has to wipe away the trail of drool sliding down Jack’s chin.
His opponent looks confused, shifting between the two men. “Oh,” is all she says. For a few seconds there is only silence as Ianto continues to smile winningly.
And then:
Amber/Mary Sure/Sue’s head explodes. Her cranial cavity blasts outwards, splattering Gwen from head to toe with rainbow colored sparkles tasting like candy floss on a perfect summer day.
For a moment no one speaks before Jack eloquently inquires, “What. The. FUCK?” He leans over and sniffs Gwen’s hair experimentally as the headless body crumples on to the sidewalk. “She’s an alien?!”
Ianto calmly brushes off flecks of sparkles from the sleeves of his pajamas primly. “An alien that is only capable of survival when it’s the most perfect being in the room. I recognized her immediately for what she was when he picked her up.”
“Wait - What? If you knew…” Gwen stutters, half between heartbreak and horror. The precious rosebuds plastered to her hair from the explosion complement her sheer disbelief as she stares longingly at the corpse.
“I didn’t want to raise alarm so I instead took it in my responsibility to scheme an elaborate plan to lure her into a sense of false security. Much easier to attack her when she’s off guard,” he explains. He stares at Jack and Gwen with a rather bored expression before fishing the SUV keys out of the greatcoat.
Jack blinks dazedly as Ianto plucks a pink feather from his hair and shakes the keys in front of him enticingly like a pet owner determined to get the dog to sit. “You… knew… she was… an alien? You retconned yourself in order to be brought back so you could outperform her with your ability to give head? And that made her brain explode?” he asks, his pitch rising continuously. He adds sorrowfully, “And why was there a lack of actual oral sex in this competition?”
“Well, it worked. And you already know I’m good,” Ianto says mildly.
“Well - yes - but…” Jack sputters. “How did you know?”
“You do moan a lot and there was that one time you actually fell of the desk. I took that as a good sign.”
“I - uh - that’s not what I meant,” Jack tries to backtrack. “About Amber -”
“-Mary-” Gwen interjects. Tears begin to stream from her eyes pitifully.
“-and that you knew she was an alien.”
Ianto looks momentarily bashful. “Oh, well,” he shrugs. Then he glowers at Gwen hotly. “She acted weak when we first encountered her in order to fool us into sympathizing with her.”
“But that doesn’t explain how you knew she was just acting and that she was a threat,” Jack argues. Gwen pats the body delicately as she inhales sharp, angry sniffles.
Ianto shifts his weight on his feet, bored already with the conversation. He rolls his eyes halfheartedly before smiling beguilingly. “It’s really simple actually, and I’m surprised you hadn’t noticed right away.”
Jack raises an eyebrow. “How so?”
“She smelled like sweetheart candies and happy childhoods. Duh.”
----
Back at the hub, Gwen commandeers the body and hauls it down to the autopsy bay, sobbing harder with each step, while Ianto heads toward the coffee machine to inspect if any damage had been done by that harlot he triumphantly defeated. Jack pursues him quietly, backing him into the counter of the kitchenette with a pliant, greedy mouth as Ianto halfheartedly protests. His hand catches on a knife left carelessly next to the sink as he tries to counteract the force of Jack’s weight.
“You’re brilliant,” Jack murmurs against his mouth, but he has already moved passed that day’s events and onto the low slung pajama bottoms around Ianto’s hips.
Ianto groans as he clenches the slice in his fist and pushes the knife into the sink with a loud clatter, Jack mistakenly and enthusiastically interpreting the source of the noise for pleasure as he slides a leg between Ianto’s thighs, pressing deeply and thoroughly with his tongue. Ianto hums quietly and with his unwounded hand, slithers his fingers over the back of Jack’s neck and urges their bodies closer together to distract him from his bleeding palm. He hides it behind his back as the glitter begins to the flood from the wound like sand and stardust. Squeezing his fingers tightly over the cut, he stops the fireworks and lullabies and the smell of newborn babies from spilling all over the floor.
End
----
AUTHOR'S NOTES:
1.) I BRANCHED OUT. Look, I didn't write something sad.
2.) Please don't take this seriously.