Torchwood writing amnesty info dump
AAAAAAAAAAAAAMNESTY FOR WIPS THAT I SHALL NOT FINISH. INFO DUMP
1. Jack/John post CoE. Five times John finds Jack again for the first time.
(set about two months after the end of the series, 8 after the death of Ianto)
SOMETIME OUT THERE:
1.
John finds Jack out in the living area of the suite, some posh place that they might have grifted once in the past, might have trashed and then billed the Agency for. Part of him wants to raid the minibar, and then he remembers that they don't have those here. Just a full bar that doesn't need raiding. It's there, to his right.
He's been on Sol 3 too long. That can be remedied with the bottle of hypervodka, actually. The bottle trembles when he pours them both a tumbler -fuck those dainty stemmed glasses. Jack is drunk already. That is the whole point of this, really. He doesn't harbour any illusions about what he wants to do here, or what he wants Jack to do to him, but he certainly wants them both to be soused.
Jack rolls his head on the back of the sofa and reaches for the glass, laughing and saying, "Emergency Protocol-"
He rolls his eyes. "You did that? We made that up for Bikini Cops."
Jack grins. "I was by myself on the ship, and it seemed like a fitting tribute." He raises his glass. "You were incommunicado."
He drains his glass and pours another before lying down on the other couch. "I was involuntarily committed." He sighs and glares at Jack. "I was waiting for you to break me out."
Jack stares at him then, frowning, remembering. John notices that sometimes he needs longer to access things, to remember, and then he realises that Jack's memories of him are thousands of years old. The concept of it makes John want to drink more.
Easy fix, that.
"I think I'm the one who had you committed," he says softly, and then he bursts out laughing, raising his back from the sofa and curling towards his knees with the hilarity of it. John watches him from the other couch and wonders if it's true. If it is, then it's bloody funny.
Jack flops back then, sloshing vodka everywhere, hiccuping with snorted laughter intermittently, like the last stuttering throes of a dying animal. John isn't sure when he had changed out of his earth clothes, but it occurs to him for the first time that Jack is wearing things that he must have bought from one of these horrible tourist places: dark trousers with that slim cut; the buff shirt that buttons down the sides. His feet are clad in the dark Pylazian skin that looks like leather, but is actually green under a black light. Jack has gone native here on this backwater space station, his expensive hotel room aside.
He probably tossed all that military garb in a bin somewhere, stripped it off at the cruise ship, before he'd even got on board, like a man peeling his skin, like when he pulled the vortex manipulator from his arm after Gray had released him, well--
John smiles. It's why he's here.
"Why are you doing this? I didn't want to see you, and I meant it."
He smiles. Jack says this, but he had answered the wave. Jack had opened the door. Jack had stepped back, let him inside, with his small bag and a smile.
"Because I want to," he whispers. "Because you need it."
Jack picks at the buttons of the sofa. "I don't need it."
John rolls his eyes. They always need it.
2.
It had been easy to find Jack, really, once he had found out about Cardiff, tracked down doe-eyed Gwennie of the gigantic belly and wheedled the information out of her with a doughnut and a promise to bring Jack back. The first he'd stolen from a pastry shop, the second had been an outright lie.
And this? This thing laid out in front of him? An exquisite sort of thing, the kind of way they used to twist each other's knives, because really, he and Jack get each other. Not for long, but they get it.
It's easy to slip into it. He imagines that he is Eye Candy, that he will be eye candy, lickable, easy to crack with the teeth, he imagines that he is a dead man called Ianto Jones, and isn't that a damn shame? Isn't he going to go out there and be that man, for about three seconds before the inevitable happens?
Divine.
He straightens the tie. It feels like something tight, noose-like. He should be used to it by now. His fingers work the silk, remember how to work the silk, smooth the tie down, pull the waistcoat tight around his chest and do each button, fingers tucking the plastic through the holes like loading bullets into a clip. Then the stopwatch, hooking the fob on the button and dipping it into his pocket, softy whisper of gold on satin.
He saves the coat for last. It is a little long; he likes the sleeves with more give, more allowance, to hide a weapon, to deliver a punch without tearing the fabric. He has to admit that the hedonist in him likes the coldness of it on his back before his skin warms it. The fabric feels too rough, almost, too stiff, but too elegant for him, actually. Never was this kind of person, himself.
He looks at himself in the mirror. It would be disturbing, if he hadn't been used to changing clothing, changing persons, changing temperaments, changing everything but the brown leather strapped to his wrist. He looks at the strap, nestled safely with his normal clothes in the bag.
"Back later, precious," he tells it, glad that it never beeps in return. That would have been embarrassing.
Jack is still drunk. No way he could have sobered in the fifteen minutes John had been in the bedroom. He thinks that it's only been eight months since Jones, and that maybe it's too soon, but ah well, back on the horse. This is John's horse, and Jack always took a bit well, mostly because he likes the ride.
Nothing for it then. "Sir!" he says then, as cheekily as he can, because he can't say it like Jones would have said it. John loves the game. John loves the knife, and best of all, he knows that even as Jack's face pales a little, as he sees the suit, the pinstripe, the tie and the watch, his eyes skitter to the watch even as he doesn't turn from the glass, looks at mirror John-Ianto (isn't that Welsh for John anyway?) and his hands curl when they tuck themselves up under his arms, he loves it too.
"What do you think? Natty? Dapper?" He smiles. "Bond-like? Mister Steed." He crosses the room slowly, because something like this has to be eased into, dipped into, like sliding into a hot tub, or pulling off a sticky bandage. Picking a scab.
Jack looks away then, eyes staring at the spaceport outside. "Don't."
He runs his hands on Jack's neck, thick muscles there. "I can't talk like him," he says. "You know that." His fingers find Jack's and they lean into each other, staring out to sea, perhaps, a thousand worlds twinkling in the heavens for them.
Jack shakes his head. "Take it off."
He slides the jacket from his shoulders, then twirls it on a finger before throwing it across the room. Jack sees him do it in the reflection of the glass, eyes hard, squinty. Angry. That's okay. He straightens the tie, though, pushing up on the knot and twisting his neck back and forth just like he's seen them do on the telly. It doesn't do much, but Jack turns then, grabs him by the waistcoat and pulls, one hand rounding his waist to reach for the back buckle and twist until John gasps for breath inside the corset Jack has made of the cloth. His eyes are hard when he yanks at the watch, wrapping the chain about his hand and pulling. A button flies off into the darkness, hitting the window with a plink.
Jack stares at the watch, opening it with his thumb and letting it tick away merrily in his palm. John gives him a few seconds to process that it is set on Cardiff Sol 3 time before he leans forward to brush his temple against Jack's. "I stole it," he whispers.
Jack's hand slackens on the back of his coat and he sighs now, closing the gap between them to press into Jack's chest, always warm, and now easier to feel with the different clothes. This shirt is thin, reminds him of the homespun shit Jack'd come to the Academy with, that backend Boeshane shit. It suits him now, when Jack's mouth finds his neck and he buries his nose in it, just above the collar.
That's right. He'd stolen the boy's cologne. Now it is game time, that scent hitting Jack's sensitive fifty-first century nose and dialing everything up to eleven. John licks Jack's ear.
"Come on, then," he whispers, like waiting for a carnivore to move in the darkness. "Come out then."
Jack's breath rasps, sails preparing to surge this boat forward, and when he exhales, it's with his fist. John doesn't even really feel it until his back hits the edge of a chair, and then they're off. Jack's hands have always been large, and when they are fists, weaponised, he is armed something deadly. John thinks that maybe he should have bothered to rearm himself.
John raises an arm to shield his face as he tries to get up, but Jack's hand connects again, this time across his brow, and he can grab it, use it as leverage to get up, swing about, twist the arm, just a little. Jack jerks himself so sharply that John can hear the grind of the ball joint in his shoulder playing in the socket.
Jack lets him hold him there, then, not even remotely finished, but paused, as if they are airborne, coming over some arc, waiting to land. It take about three seconds for them to process it all, John can feel it when he lets go of Jack's arm just as Jack pulls at his hand.
END
2. MAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDY. I just can't get this ball rolling. Andy-Mickey are buddies!
The Torchwood team had changed. Andy noticed a while back, but he hadn't really ever got to see them up close, and now, as they rolled toward him, he winked in the bright sunlight as Gwen's hair flew behind her, and Harkness's sunglasses hid his eyes. She strode just behind him on his left, and on his right, the tall one called Ianto, in his suit, hands already covered in neilex gloves, and on Ianto's right, a shorter black woman with her hair pulled back, hands hefting the heavy plastic kit boxes as if they weighed nothing.
They stepped in unison, as if they practised. Jesus.
The short Englishman was gone, as was the Asian woman. Andy didn't ask Gwen after them, because the few times they had got together for a coffee, her face had looked haggard, the kind that he saw on his mates when they came home from a tour of duty and saw action, or even a few of his London PC mates who had lost people. Even his own face had started to look that way some days, after the bombings, when some constables he'd known had been killed by the explosions or the monsters roaming the streets.
Harkness barked orders to his team like a friendly German Shepherd with police training. Andy knew those dogs; he always wanted to scrunch his fingers up into their fur and scratch their ears. Gwen used to roll her eyes and say, 'Andy, they're not petting dogs.'
[…]
"And you?" Andy asked, sipping his coffee. "What do you do?" He really wanted to lean against the SUV and look like he knew what he was doing there.
"You know, shoot and scoot." Mickey shrugged, hands in pockets. "Gun and run."
"Pardon?"
Mickey leaned against the side panel foot he SUV, and he didn't object when Andy did the same, offering him a cup of coffee from his thermos. "Ah, firearm and vehicle maintenance."
Andy felt a little increase in his heartbeat, but it could have been the coffee. "Oh. Badass."
Mickey smiled into his cup. "Oh, it's alright." He looked at Andy. "The uniform is better."
Andy almost blushed. To be honest, he liked his uniform, actually, and he liked being a police constable. Yeah, he wouldn't turn down Torchwood if they came knocking, but it wasn't as if he was ashamed of being a PC. You couldn't put on this uniform if you were ashamed, not really.
"So, what is all this, then?" he said, gesturing to the smoking crater with one hand. "Aliens, then? Dinosaurs?" He leaned into Mickey's space. "Chupacabra?"
Mickey leaned away from him. "You're bloody queer, mate."
Andy righted himself and watched the other officers mill about the edges of the scene, desperate to see what Special Ops was doing down there. He wished them luck. Everything Torchwood did was shrouded in just enough mystery to make it indecipherable.
"Well," he waffled. "I've seen things." He waved a hand. "This is getting to be old hat."
END
3.
Title: Fukai Mori
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Gwen/Ianto
Warnings: NC-17
Timeline: Post S1, during the Year That Wasn't
Author's Notes: written for the kink_bingo challenge at Dreamwidth. Kink: brands/branding (freeze branding).
Summary: Ten Percent.
They don't know how they got here.
Gwen and Ianto spend all their time in the Hub, now that Jack is gone, and Tosh and Owen are dead, died in the first wave.
Ianto's hair is messy and too long, and she is sure hers is the same. When he isn't looking, she thinks about all of the things that make this calm and completely fucked: she hasn't shaved her legs since it happened; she's been off the pill for months; she hasn't seen Rhys's face since it all happened; she hasn't gone a day without cleaning her gun.
Ianto doesn't care about any of that. He hasn't had a cup of coffee since it happened; he hasn't worn a tie since Jack disappeared; he hasn't called anyone at all; he hasn't gone a day without kissing her.
Gwen hisses when he holds the metal close to her breasts, but she doesn't move; the head of the iron is cold, but it isn't charged with anything. Ianto is hard between her legs, but all he does is press the curve of his cock against her while she lies back, dangling her feet from Jack's immaculate desk. He has one glove on, but he's held off on the other because she's sucking his fingers, and that is always good, always seems like the start of a massive bout of biting and kicking. She wants to be kicking.
There is a clank when the irons go in the tub, and Ianto leans over her, one gloved hand reaching down between her legs to find her clit with the leather. His tongue rasps against her breast, long and whole, not some delicate licking. He cleans one breast, tucking his tongue up under to follow the indentation left by her underwire, and then over the nipples, barely stopping before moving on to her sternum and up into her clavicles. Gwen grabs that too-long hair and pulls him in for a kiss, and that tongue is just as long and languid in her mouth.
Somewhere in all of this he has donned the other glove, and he runs them both up to tangle in her hair, and then he pulls her up, not upright, but enough for her head and shoulders to leave the desk, and he presses his forehead to hers, his eyes impossibly close and blue and not blinking at all. Her hands slip down between his legs and grab his cock, and that makes him let go of her.
Ianto's gloved hands work in her for a second while the brand chills. She inhales the alcohol vapor when he pours it on, rolling down over her breasts and shoulders onto the desk. Under her, she imagines it removing the finish from the desk, leaving something permanent that is shaped like her chest.
'Do it," she grinds, 'do it.'
END
4. Jack and Gwen's great granddaughter. This ended up becoming unweildy as I used bits of Myri's personality ot become Lisa in the poly, so here it is.
When Jack first sees Myri in person, she's beating the ever-loving snot out of some Weevils just off the new docks of Cardiff Bay.
It's been eighty years since he's been here, though somewhere in his skull, in the places he saves for thinky thoughts he doesn't want to have, he has always known that he wouldn't be able to stay away. He'll be coming back to Cardiff for as long as it's here, not because he has something here, but because he had something here. Favorites from the man who lives forever? Yeah, sure maybe, but eighty percent of the first twenty-one hundred years of that forever had been on this little planet, in this little city, a dirty, grinding thing that, he reminds himself, he would do well to forget.
Ah, but yeah.
It's not like in that eighty years he hasn't been thinking about other things, other people. It's not as if he's, as Owen might have rolled off at him in one drunken slur, 'pining for the fjords,' whatever the hell that means. Whole months had passed in which he hadn't thought of Torchwood or Cardiff, usually because he had been busy fighting something or fucking something or drinking something. He had spent five years in a Time Agency jail (half of it in Soviet Russia, the other half in some oubliette with the Marquis de Sade's great-grandfather, and Jack figures that he won't be telling that story any time soon.).
Still, in other times, when he had been quieter, when he'd had a house or a flat of his own, or settled in a city or space station for a few months, he'd found that his hands tried to stuff themselves into pockets that weren't there, his fingers reached for an earpiece long gone. He'd wanted to be able to press a button and speak directly to someone who could identify him just by the sound of his voice. His hands had ached for the rails of the Hub catwalks sometimes; his feet always seem to mistrust the soft dirt he treads, never really satisfied unless his boot heels ring on metal grating.
The little things, that all add up to much larger things, really.
He could have just checked the Earth records to satisfy his curiosity, he supposes. The twenty-first century is well on its way to being officially done, humans have made official first contact and are beginning their ascent to the heavens, and he could have transported to an outpost on Mars, blended in, and used a view monitor to stalk Gwen Cooper's great-granddaughter from the god-like distance of another planet. But once he and John had almost wrecked an entire primitive civilisation by impersonating deities for a rare mineral they wanted to export (re: scam), and since then he's lost his taste for the divine.
So there she is, down on the warehouse floor, and here he is, slouched in his synth-leather coat, hands finally and joyously stuffed into the pockets, boots grinding on the metal of the catwalk. Myri punches and kicks and all but crows with satisfaction as she takes on three Weevils, what would earn Ianto's tongue-in-cheek plural, a shitload of Weevils, really. He can lean over the railing and get a good view of her in action. Well, and she has her great grandmother's arse, which is a reward for coming back in and of itself.
She's short and violent and a little too sure of herself. He likes her right hook. He doesn't like how she leaves herself open. Jack sucks in a breath and cocks his head, knowing that he's just here to look, not to touch. It's hard not to, like going into a pet store and not sticking a finger in the kitten cage. Jack isn't much of a pet person, but petting the kittens, he had been told once by Alice, was a requirement of all people who enter the pet store (apparently, so is being suckered into buying one for your eight year old daughter).
Myri knocks one of the Weevils out with some sort of asp/stun gun combination that Ianto would have orgasmed just to see, and then she spins inexpertly, which puts the second Weevil's claws right in her chest. Jack closes his eyes against her grunt and yelp.
He always was more of a doer anyway. Him, and this crowbar.
It doesn't take long to get down there. He aims himself fairly well in the momentary pause of combat, and the impact that the crowbar makes on the Weevil's skull as he comes down on it pretty much breaks his fall.
[…]
He hadn't been following the genealogy of Gwen Cooper, not really, and so he had been surprised to see that her son had joined Torchwood, and then his daughter and her daughter. Somewhere along the way, those Welsh genes had ventured out into the world, Africa, or the West Indies. Gwen's great-granddaughter is dark, a gorgeous package , and those eyes, Gwen's doe eyes, a little less round, smiling, almond. When Myri stands in front of him, he is distinctly reminded of Tish Jones.
He makes a mental note to look for Martha's progeny as well. Might as well get them all in while he's here. Look up Rhiannon's kids, too. Curiosity is a stinging balm.
He doesn't even bother trying to run, to slip away, the damage had been done, and so they stand there, panting at each other. He's not out of shape, per se, but his last job had involved service maintenance on a freighter (free room and board is a big draw, actually, and all he needs some days), and it's a far cry from the running and punching he used to do.
"What the hell were you thinking?" they both ask in unison. Jack understands instantly.
[…]
Myri leans in over the table, her hands still clutching the table edge. "I'm not stupid, you know. I know who you are, Jack Harkness."
Oh. Should have thought of that.
Myri depresses a few buttons on her infostrap, one of the earliest ancestors of the wrist strap (he realises with irony that Torchwood's inspiration, Gwen's creation of the wrist strap, had been his fault, and therefore he has made time circular again. The Doctor must think he's hysterically funny, watching him stumble through existence affecting and not affecting everything). The holo pops out of the top, a few inches, and he can see that it is a scan of a photograph, one in which he Is standing on the Plass with Owen and Tosh and Gwen and Ianto, way back, before they realised that it was all going to end in shit. He doesn't even really see himself, not really, just some dopey smiling idiot. It's a fist-smash worthy face.
In contrast, Tosh and Owen are almost unfamiliar, as if the memories he has in his head don't match those faces anymore. Ianto is so young, Christ had he even ever noticed that before? In his less fine moments during their time together, he remembers thinking of Ianto as much older than himself in some ways. The photographic evidence is damning when juxtaposed with actual recall.
And Gwen, well, poor Gwen. Jack wants to shake his head at the picture and apologise, except that he doesn't mean it, not for the things she'd want him to apologise for. He still isn't sorry about any of that.
Myri closes the strap when he looks away, staring at the other people in the bar, all busy with drinks and each other.
"I think I'm supposed to call you Uncle Jack," Myri says over her glass.
He rolls his eyes. "Is that how I'm remembered over time? Funny uncle jack?"
Myri finishes her drink and messes with a few buttons on her strap, answering some text that she's gotten, distracted. Being half of her attention had not been what he'd has in mind when he'd stalked her to the bar. On the other hand, he hadn't exactly been thinking about it.
"Oh," Myri finally says, "Grandmum-mum never said you were funny." He gets a quick smile. "Are you funny?"
Jack stands and runs his credit block over the table scanner. "Nope." He gives her a winning smile, it’s easy now that he's seen the picture and remembered how to do it, actually. "Drinks are on me. Nice to meet you, Myri Cooper."
[…]
"Wait," Myri says when she finally catches up to him. Her hair is tangled around her face. "That's it? Jack Harkness comes back to Torchwood, to visit the descendent of Gwen Cooper, and you buy her a drink? That's it?"
Jack keeps walking. This feels very familiar. If she tells him that she loves his coat he might vomit. "Pretty much."
Myri hits him in the back, just with the flat of her palm, and it's enough to stop him, because he hadn't seen that coming. "That's bullshit."
He turns then, so that they can stand there and have themselves a nice standoff. "I did save your ass from the Weevils," he tells her. "That was very heroic of me."
Her smile is accompanied by an eyeroll and a little blush. "Yeah, about that. Look-"
Jack takes a step backwards, because he realises that they are about to have some sort of 'talk.' They aren't supposed to be talking. They aren't even supposed to be looking, not really. Well, he was supposed to be doing the looking. Now it's all witty bantering and possibly flirting a little and Myri looking like she's going to ask him if he has a place to stay.
Myri sighs when he shuffles away from her. "Do you have a place to stay?"
Jack wonders if he isn't psychic. Maybe those malfunctioning implants he'd got from an ad in the back of the book when he had been seventeen and still stuck on Boeshane had finally kicked in.
"I've got a room at the Altolusso," he says, walking backwards.
Myri's nose wrinkles and she kicks a few cans as she follows him, like some lost dog. Isn't walking away the intergalactic sign for 'we are finished'? "That piece of shit?" she groans. "You're a traditionalist. I hear they rent rooms by the hour over there."
He smiles. "An hour's all I need," is out of his mouth before he realises that he's said it, and he's glad that his hands are in his pockets because he might very well have hit his forehead. He is rusty, being Jack Harkness.
Myri crosses her arms, but she skips after him. "Then you can't be the real Jack Harkness," she says, and then he turns when she reaches him, and they begin to walk, in step, down the street, past a few greasy chip ships that seem like the exact ones that had been there when he'd left.
"I know your great grandmother didn't tell you anything about that," he says, pulling his hands from his pockets because the air is cool and he wants to dry the sweat his fists have made. The coat flaps against his fingers, against his thighs and calves, and it's not wool, but it will do.
Myri's hand reaches for his, and he lets her grasp it, some sort of shake, a squeeze, but he doesn't try to think too hard when she doesn't let go of it. "Oh I know. I read your Torchwood file." She grins. "I'm a bit of a fan, actually."
He snorts, because really, what could she have possibly read? He had spent months destroying files about himself (they always seemed to pop up from somewhere. It had been infuriating.), and if she has found anything at all, it is bad intel. Or, he considers with a bit of weight, Gwen-intel. Oh, sobering.
"Yeah," she continues, working on her own conversation in her head, obviously, one that may or may not involve him. "Later, you can sign my tits with marker."
[…]
"When I pictured you in my head," she says, speech punctuated with yawns, "you smiled more. When I was five, I waited for you to come and take me on adventures. In space."
He sighs then, listening to her breathing evening out. He might have been better staying on Mars.
It occurs to him when he watches her sleep that he can't give her retcon because he doesn't have any.
***
"You want to come and see? The Hub?" she asks as she pulls her shirt on. He is laying in her bed, her bed, the bed of Gwen Cooper's grown up great granddaughter; he's watching her tits disappear under a fall of stretchy green nylon and just the idea of it makes him hard even as he watches it happen. It's also a little disconcerting. And something that he figures he might have to get used to if he cannot resist jaunts down memory lane, this running into the progeny of former…what was Gwen? Employee? Family? Love? Not lover, of course, but not for lack of wanting, he supposed. Is he fucking Myri because of that or in spite of it?
Even if Gwen had still been alive he wouldn't have asked her. Part of him wonders if Rhys is spinning in his grave like an express wagon wheel.
"We actually call it 'NewHub'. Even though it's the building they constructed after you, well, you know."
"I exploded," he says. Myri gives him a funny look, and he glances away. "Yeah, it hurt."
To her credit, she doesn't ask anything else.
[…]
***
"Actually, I don't remember a lot about Grandmum-mum," she says, spooning the ice cream into her mouth and flipping the spoon distractedly. "But Mum said that she was always rather…liberal in what she thought was sexually acceptable." She winked. "Granddad fancied gents, and my mum, his daughter, you see, has three husbands." She uses finger quotes. "Puppy piles of love, you know."
Jack stares at her, because he's not following her at all. It's as if her brain has an internal monologue that he can only tune in to every two minutes or so before the signal fades and the broadcast goes on without him.
"I'm telling you what I think you helped us to be," she says, hitting his thigh. "Gwen Cooper's Torchwood was full of what they call Jackisms, and some of them had nothing to do with aliens." She smiles. "Well, something about shooting things in the face."
Jack grimaces. "What a legacy to leave," he mumbles, because that hadn't really been his intention. He's not happy with the turn of the conversation, because it's as if Torchwood had finally been remade into something, and it had been his image. His image, a whitewashed and morally ambiguous version of the Doctor. That hadn't been his intention either, and it's slightly frightening.
What had he been able to impart to Gwen? Enough to build an organisation on slapdash operations and inter-office groping, perhaps. He endorses the groping.
Myri tilts her head. "Torchwood is different now, you know, since we're part of it all. Part of you know, space." She flings her arms out and ice cream flies off the spoon and splats on the wall. Myri doesn't see it, but he watches the mint green and chocolate slide down the eggshell colour of it. "The universe and everything." Jack doesn't tell her that they were always a part of it, they just didn't know it. He gets her anyway. Myri is disjointed and brilliant, really, just not good with utensils and words.
[…]
***
"We should have a kid," Myri says one day when they're sitting on the patio in the sun, and the beach is rolling up on the sand. Soon it will be close enough that they'll have to move the furniture if they want to stay dry. Jack picks at the crempogs on his plate with the business end of a butter knife. Myri drinks from the carton instead of the glass on the table and wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve. It's…not at all sexy. Kind of gross, actually.
"Anyway," she adds. "it's a literary thing, us having a kid. To cement the circle of the romantic legacy with you and grandmum-mum, you and Torchwood." She does not say 'of me and you,' he notices, and he is grateful. She smiles at him and glances out to the shore. "Like an Austen novel or some bullshit."
Jack is fairly sure Myri has never read an Austen novel in her entire life. "Don't people usually get married first?"
Myri wrinkles her nose when she glares at him. "What are you, some sort of traditionalist?"
He shakes his head and watches the gulls come in to pick up the half-eaten crempogs he's tossed out there. "I just think it requires more thought," he says, because this is the kind of conversation that leads to them wondering what they're doing here and Jack doesn't want to have that talk now.
Myri stands and sighs, walking away from him and down towards the water. "Well that's too bad, asshole," she calls over her shoulder, "because we're having one."
Oh. Well.
[…]
"Don't you ever get tired of it? Of the worry?" Myri throws a stone out at the birds and they scatter. "Here's how it is. You live forever. I won't."
He shakes his head.
"You do know that knowing I'm going to die some day doesn't make my death any more imminent." She pauses. "That's depressing, but it's not about you, Jack." She shrugs. "So you won't remember me someday. If it wasn't you, I'd be forgotten sooner. So what?"
Jack sighs. "You'll see."
Myri rests her head on his shoulder. "I won't be seeing anything if you don't let me," she sings. "Come on. It's sunny. No work. No more Torchwood. Let's go native. Make something to sell. Baskets. Bricks. Naked sculptures."
"We already made a baby," he jokes, thinking to make that a reason for like, not. Right there, though, his words twist and suddenly it's real. Cemented, something else to revolve around his ever-fixed point.
"I know!" Myri says, her feet digging in the sand. "How crazy is that?"
Jack watches the three suns fight in the sky-one up, one down, one right in the dead center of his sky, near and far, hot, hotter and hottest.
"Pretty damn crazy," he admits.
He can finally feel the ground under his feet.
END
Okay so now I can dump these in my abandoned folder.
1. Jack/John post CoE. Five times John finds Jack again for the first time.
(set about two months after the end of the series, 8 after the death of Ianto)
SOMETIME OUT THERE:
1.
John finds Jack out in the living area of the suite, some posh place that they might have grifted once in the past, might have trashed and then billed the Agency for. Part of him wants to raid the minibar, and then he remembers that they don't have those here. Just a full bar that doesn't need raiding. It's there, to his right.
He's been on Sol 3 too long. That can be remedied with the bottle of hypervodka, actually. The bottle trembles when he pours them both a tumbler -fuck those dainty stemmed glasses. Jack is drunk already. That is the whole point of this, really. He doesn't harbour any illusions about what he wants to do here, or what he wants Jack to do to him, but he certainly wants them both to be soused.
Jack rolls his head on the back of the sofa and reaches for the glass, laughing and saying, "Emergency Protocol-"
He rolls his eyes. "You did that? We made that up for Bikini Cops."
Jack grins. "I was by myself on the ship, and it seemed like a fitting tribute." He raises his glass. "You were incommunicado."
He drains his glass and pours another before lying down on the other couch. "I was involuntarily committed." He sighs and glares at Jack. "I was waiting for you to break me out."
Jack stares at him then, frowning, remembering. John notices that sometimes he needs longer to access things, to remember, and then he realises that Jack's memories of him are thousands of years old. The concept of it makes John want to drink more.
Easy fix, that.
"I think I'm the one who had you committed," he says softly, and then he bursts out laughing, raising his back from the sofa and curling towards his knees with the hilarity of it. John watches him from the other couch and wonders if it's true. If it is, then it's bloody funny.
Jack flops back then, sloshing vodka everywhere, hiccuping with snorted laughter intermittently, like the last stuttering throes of a dying animal. John isn't sure when he had changed out of his earth clothes, but it occurs to him for the first time that Jack is wearing things that he must have bought from one of these horrible tourist places: dark trousers with that slim cut; the buff shirt that buttons down the sides. His feet are clad in the dark Pylazian skin that looks like leather, but is actually green under a black light. Jack has gone native here on this backwater space station, his expensive hotel room aside.
He probably tossed all that military garb in a bin somewhere, stripped it off at the cruise ship, before he'd even got on board, like a man peeling his skin, like when he pulled the vortex manipulator from his arm after Gray had released him, well--
John smiles. It's why he's here.
"Why are you doing this? I didn't want to see you, and I meant it."
He smiles. Jack says this, but he had answered the wave. Jack had opened the door. Jack had stepped back, let him inside, with his small bag and a smile.
"Because I want to," he whispers. "Because you need it."
Jack picks at the buttons of the sofa. "I don't need it."
John rolls his eyes. They always need it.
2.
It had been easy to find Jack, really, once he had found out about Cardiff, tracked down doe-eyed Gwennie of the gigantic belly and wheedled the information out of her with a doughnut and a promise to bring Jack back. The first he'd stolen from a pastry shop, the second had been an outright lie.
And this? This thing laid out in front of him? An exquisite sort of thing, the kind of way they used to twist each other's knives, because really, he and Jack get each other. Not for long, but they get it.
It's easy to slip into it. He imagines that he is Eye Candy, that he will be eye candy, lickable, easy to crack with the teeth, he imagines that he is a dead man called Ianto Jones, and isn't that a damn shame? Isn't he going to go out there and be that man, for about three seconds before the inevitable happens?
Divine.
He straightens the tie. It feels like something tight, noose-like. He should be used to it by now. His fingers work the silk, remember how to work the silk, smooth the tie down, pull the waistcoat tight around his chest and do each button, fingers tucking the plastic through the holes like loading bullets into a clip. Then the stopwatch, hooking the fob on the button and dipping it into his pocket, softy whisper of gold on satin.
He saves the coat for last. It is a little long; he likes the sleeves with more give, more allowance, to hide a weapon, to deliver a punch without tearing the fabric. He has to admit that the hedonist in him likes the coldness of it on his back before his skin warms it. The fabric feels too rough, almost, too stiff, but too elegant for him, actually. Never was this kind of person, himself.
He looks at himself in the mirror. It would be disturbing, if he hadn't been used to changing clothing, changing persons, changing temperaments, changing everything but the brown leather strapped to his wrist. He looks at the strap, nestled safely with his normal clothes in the bag.
"Back later, precious," he tells it, glad that it never beeps in return. That would have been embarrassing.
Jack is still drunk. No way he could have sobered in the fifteen minutes John had been in the bedroom. He thinks that it's only been eight months since Jones, and that maybe it's too soon, but ah well, back on the horse. This is John's horse, and Jack always took a bit well, mostly because he likes the ride.
Nothing for it then. "Sir!" he says then, as cheekily as he can, because he can't say it like Jones would have said it. John loves the game. John loves the knife, and best of all, he knows that even as Jack's face pales a little, as he sees the suit, the pinstripe, the tie and the watch, his eyes skitter to the watch even as he doesn't turn from the glass, looks at mirror John-Ianto (isn't that Welsh for John anyway?) and his hands curl when they tuck themselves up under his arms, he loves it too.
"What do you think? Natty? Dapper?" He smiles. "Bond-like? Mister Steed." He crosses the room slowly, because something like this has to be eased into, dipped into, like sliding into a hot tub, or pulling off a sticky bandage. Picking a scab.
Jack looks away then, eyes staring at the spaceport outside. "Don't."
He runs his hands on Jack's neck, thick muscles there. "I can't talk like him," he says. "You know that." His fingers find Jack's and they lean into each other, staring out to sea, perhaps, a thousand worlds twinkling in the heavens for them.
Jack shakes his head. "Take it off."
He slides the jacket from his shoulders, then twirls it on a finger before throwing it across the room. Jack sees him do it in the reflection of the glass, eyes hard, squinty. Angry. That's okay. He straightens the tie, though, pushing up on the knot and twisting his neck back and forth just like he's seen them do on the telly. It doesn't do much, but Jack turns then, grabs him by the waistcoat and pulls, one hand rounding his waist to reach for the back buckle and twist until John gasps for breath inside the corset Jack has made of the cloth. His eyes are hard when he yanks at the watch, wrapping the chain about his hand and pulling. A button flies off into the darkness, hitting the window with a plink.
Jack stares at the watch, opening it with his thumb and letting it tick away merrily in his palm. John gives him a few seconds to process that it is set on Cardiff Sol 3 time before he leans forward to brush his temple against Jack's. "I stole it," he whispers.
Jack's hand slackens on the back of his coat and he sighs now, closing the gap between them to press into Jack's chest, always warm, and now easier to feel with the different clothes. This shirt is thin, reminds him of the homespun shit Jack'd come to the Academy with, that backend Boeshane shit. It suits him now, when Jack's mouth finds his neck and he buries his nose in it, just above the collar.
That's right. He'd stolen the boy's cologne. Now it is game time, that scent hitting Jack's sensitive fifty-first century nose and dialing everything up to eleven. John licks Jack's ear.
"Come on, then," he whispers, like waiting for a carnivore to move in the darkness. "Come out then."
Jack's breath rasps, sails preparing to surge this boat forward, and when he exhales, it's with his fist. John doesn't even really feel it until his back hits the edge of a chair, and then they're off. Jack's hands have always been large, and when they are fists, weaponised, he is armed something deadly. John thinks that maybe he should have bothered to rearm himself.
John raises an arm to shield his face as he tries to get up, but Jack's hand connects again, this time across his brow, and he can grab it, use it as leverage to get up, swing about, twist the arm, just a little. Jack jerks himself so sharply that John can hear the grind of the ball joint in his shoulder playing in the socket.
Jack lets him hold him there, then, not even remotely finished, but paused, as if they are airborne, coming over some arc, waiting to land. It take about three seconds for them to process it all, John can feel it when he lets go of Jack's arm just as Jack pulls at his hand.
END
2. MAAAAAAAAAAAAAANDY. I just can't get this ball rolling. Andy-Mickey are buddies!
The Torchwood team had changed. Andy noticed a while back, but he hadn't really ever got to see them up close, and now, as they rolled toward him, he winked in the bright sunlight as Gwen's hair flew behind her, and Harkness's sunglasses hid his eyes. She strode just behind him on his left, and on his right, the tall one called Ianto, in his suit, hands already covered in neilex gloves, and on Ianto's right, a shorter black woman with her hair pulled back, hands hefting the heavy plastic kit boxes as if they weighed nothing.
They stepped in unison, as if they practised. Jesus.
The short Englishman was gone, as was the Asian woman. Andy didn't ask Gwen after them, because the few times they had got together for a coffee, her face had looked haggard, the kind that he saw on his mates when they came home from a tour of duty and saw action, or even a few of his London PC mates who had lost people. Even his own face had started to look that way some days, after the bombings, when some constables he'd known had been killed by the explosions or the monsters roaming the streets.
Harkness barked orders to his team like a friendly German Shepherd with police training. Andy knew those dogs; he always wanted to scrunch his fingers up into their fur and scratch their ears. Gwen used to roll her eyes and say, 'Andy, they're not petting dogs.'
[…]
"And you?" Andy asked, sipping his coffee. "What do you do?" He really wanted to lean against the SUV and look like he knew what he was doing there.
"You know, shoot and scoot." Mickey shrugged, hands in pockets. "Gun and run."
"Pardon?"
Mickey leaned against the side panel foot he SUV, and he didn't object when Andy did the same, offering him a cup of coffee from his thermos. "Ah, firearm and vehicle maintenance."
Andy felt a little increase in his heartbeat, but it could have been the coffee. "Oh. Badass."
Mickey smiled into his cup. "Oh, it's alright." He looked at Andy. "The uniform is better."
Andy almost blushed. To be honest, he liked his uniform, actually, and he liked being a police constable. Yeah, he wouldn't turn down Torchwood if they came knocking, but it wasn't as if he was ashamed of being a PC. You couldn't put on this uniform if you were ashamed, not really.
"So, what is all this, then?" he said, gesturing to the smoking crater with one hand. "Aliens, then? Dinosaurs?" He leaned into Mickey's space. "Chupacabra?"
Mickey leaned away from him. "You're bloody queer, mate."
Andy righted himself and watched the other officers mill about the edges of the scene, desperate to see what Special Ops was doing down there. He wished them luck. Everything Torchwood did was shrouded in just enough mystery to make it indecipherable.
"Well," he waffled. "I've seen things." He waved a hand. "This is getting to be old hat."
END
3.
Title: Fukai Mori
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Gwen/Ianto
Warnings: NC-17
Timeline: Post S1, during the Year That Wasn't
Author's Notes: written for the kink_bingo challenge at Dreamwidth. Kink: brands/branding (freeze branding).
Summary: Ten Percent.
They don't know how they got here.
Gwen and Ianto spend all their time in the Hub, now that Jack is gone, and Tosh and Owen are dead, died in the first wave.
Ianto's hair is messy and too long, and she is sure hers is the same. When he isn't looking, she thinks about all of the things that make this calm and completely fucked: she hasn't shaved her legs since it happened; she's been off the pill for months; she hasn't seen Rhys's face since it all happened; she hasn't gone a day without cleaning her gun.
Ianto doesn't care about any of that. He hasn't had a cup of coffee since it happened; he hasn't worn a tie since Jack disappeared; he hasn't called anyone at all; he hasn't gone a day without kissing her.
Gwen hisses when he holds the metal close to her breasts, but she doesn't move; the head of the iron is cold, but it isn't charged with anything. Ianto is hard between her legs, but all he does is press the curve of his cock against her while she lies back, dangling her feet from Jack's immaculate desk. He has one glove on, but he's held off on the other because she's sucking his fingers, and that is always good, always seems like the start of a massive bout of biting and kicking. She wants to be kicking.
There is a clank when the irons go in the tub, and Ianto leans over her, one gloved hand reaching down between her legs to find her clit with the leather. His tongue rasps against her breast, long and whole, not some delicate licking. He cleans one breast, tucking his tongue up under to follow the indentation left by her underwire, and then over the nipples, barely stopping before moving on to her sternum and up into her clavicles. Gwen grabs that too-long hair and pulls him in for a kiss, and that tongue is just as long and languid in her mouth.
Somewhere in all of this he has donned the other glove, and he runs them both up to tangle in her hair, and then he pulls her up, not upright, but enough for her head and shoulders to leave the desk, and he presses his forehead to hers, his eyes impossibly close and blue and not blinking at all. Her hands slip down between his legs and grab his cock, and that makes him let go of her.
Ianto's gloved hands work in her for a second while the brand chills. She inhales the alcohol vapor when he pours it on, rolling down over her breasts and shoulders onto the desk. Under her, she imagines it removing the finish from the desk, leaving something permanent that is shaped like her chest.
'Do it," she grinds, 'do it.'
END
4. Jack and Gwen's great granddaughter. This ended up becoming unweildy as I used bits of Myri's personality ot become Lisa in the poly, so here it is.
When Jack first sees Myri in person, she's beating the ever-loving snot out of some Weevils just off the new docks of Cardiff Bay.
It's been eighty years since he's been here, though somewhere in his skull, in the places he saves for thinky thoughts he doesn't want to have, he has always known that he wouldn't be able to stay away. He'll be coming back to Cardiff for as long as it's here, not because he has something here, but because he had something here. Favorites from the man who lives forever? Yeah, sure maybe, but eighty percent of the first twenty-one hundred years of that forever had been on this little planet, in this little city, a dirty, grinding thing that, he reminds himself, he would do well to forget.
Ah, but yeah.
It's not like in that eighty years he hasn't been thinking about other things, other people. It's not as if he's, as Owen might have rolled off at him in one drunken slur, 'pining for the fjords,' whatever the hell that means. Whole months had passed in which he hadn't thought of Torchwood or Cardiff, usually because he had been busy fighting something or fucking something or drinking something. He had spent five years in a Time Agency jail (half of it in Soviet Russia, the other half in some oubliette with the Marquis de Sade's great-grandfather, and Jack figures that he won't be telling that story any time soon.).
Still, in other times, when he had been quieter, when he'd had a house or a flat of his own, or settled in a city or space station for a few months, he'd found that his hands tried to stuff themselves into pockets that weren't there, his fingers reached for an earpiece long gone. He'd wanted to be able to press a button and speak directly to someone who could identify him just by the sound of his voice. His hands had ached for the rails of the Hub catwalks sometimes; his feet always seem to mistrust the soft dirt he treads, never really satisfied unless his boot heels ring on metal grating.
The little things, that all add up to much larger things, really.
He could have just checked the Earth records to satisfy his curiosity, he supposes. The twenty-first century is well on its way to being officially done, humans have made official first contact and are beginning their ascent to the heavens, and he could have transported to an outpost on Mars, blended in, and used a view monitor to stalk Gwen Cooper's great-granddaughter from the god-like distance of another planet. But once he and John had almost wrecked an entire primitive civilisation by impersonating deities for a rare mineral they wanted to export (re: scam), and since then he's lost his taste for the divine.
So there she is, down on the warehouse floor, and here he is, slouched in his synth-leather coat, hands finally and joyously stuffed into the pockets, boots grinding on the metal of the catwalk. Myri punches and kicks and all but crows with satisfaction as she takes on three Weevils, what would earn Ianto's tongue-in-cheek plural, a shitload of Weevils, really. He can lean over the railing and get a good view of her in action. Well, and she has her great grandmother's arse, which is a reward for coming back in and of itself.
She's short and violent and a little too sure of herself. He likes her right hook. He doesn't like how she leaves herself open. Jack sucks in a breath and cocks his head, knowing that he's just here to look, not to touch. It's hard not to, like going into a pet store and not sticking a finger in the kitten cage. Jack isn't much of a pet person, but petting the kittens, he had been told once by Alice, was a requirement of all people who enter the pet store (apparently, so is being suckered into buying one for your eight year old daughter).
Myri knocks one of the Weevils out with some sort of asp/stun gun combination that Ianto would have orgasmed just to see, and then she spins inexpertly, which puts the second Weevil's claws right in her chest. Jack closes his eyes against her grunt and yelp.
He always was more of a doer anyway. Him, and this crowbar.
It doesn't take long to get down there. He aims himself fairly well in the momentary pause of combat, and the impact that the crowbar makes on the Weevil's skull as he comes down on it pretty much breaks his fall.
[…]
He hadn't been following the genealogy of Gwen Cooper, not really, and so he had been surprised to see that her son had joined Torchwood, and then his daughter and her daughter. Somewhere along the way, those Welsh genes had ventured out into the world, Africa, or the West Indies. Gwen's great-granddaughter is dark, a gorgeous package , and those eyes, Gwen's doe eyes, a little less round, smiling, almond. When Myri stands in front of him, he is distinctly reminded of Tish Jones.
He makes a mental note to look for Martha's progeny as well. Might as well get them all in while he's here. Look up Rhiannon's kids, too. Curiosity is a stinging balm.
He doesn't even bother trying to run, to slip away, the damage had been done, and so they stand there, panting at each other. He's not out of shape, per se, but his last job had involved service maintenance on a freighter (free room and board is a big draw, actually, and all he needs some days), and it's a far cry from the running and punching he used to do.
"What the hell were you thinking?" they both ask in unison. Jack understands instantly.
[…]
Myri leans in over the table, her hands still clutching the table edge. "I'm not stupid, you know. I know who you are, Jack Harkness."
Oh. Should have thought of that.
Myri depresses a few buttons on her infostrap, one of the earliest ancestors of the wrist strap (he realises with irony that Torchwood's inspiration, Gwen's creation of the wrist strap, had been his fault, and therefore he has made time circular again. The Doctor must think he's hysterically funny, watching him stumble through existence affecting and not affecting everything). The holo pops out of the top, a few inches, and he can see that it is a scan of a photograph, one in which he Is standing on the Plass with Owen and Tosh and Gwen and Ianto, way back, before they realised that it was all going to end in shit. He doesn't even really see himself, not really, just some dopey smiling idiot. It's a fist-smash worthy face.
In contrast, Tosh and Owen are almost unfamiliar, as if the memories he has in his head don't match those faces anymore. Ianto is so young, Christ had he even ever noticed that before? In his less fine moments during their time together, he remembers thinking of Ianto as much older than himself in some ways. The photographic evidence is damning when juxtaposed with actual recall.
And Gwen, well, poor Gwen. Jack wants to shake his head at the picture and apologise, except that he doesn't mean it, not for the things she'd want him to apologise for. He still isn't sorry about any of that.
Myri closes the strap when he looks away, staring at the other people in the bar, all busy with drinks and each other.
"I think I'm supposed to call you Uncle Jack," Myri says over her glass.
He rolls his eyes. "Is that how I'm remembered over time? Funny uncle jack?"
Myri finishes her drink and messes with a few buttons on her strap, answering some text that she's gotten, distracted. Being half of her attention had not been what he'd has in mind when he'd stalked her to the bar. On the other hand, he hadn't exactly been thinking about it.
"Oh," Myri finally says, "Grandmum-mum never said you were funny." He gets a quick smile. "Are you funny?"
Jack stands and runs his credit block over the table scanner. "Nope." He gives her a winning smile, it’s easy now that he's seen the picture and remembered how to do it, actually. "Drinks are on me. Nice to meet you, Myri Cooper."
[…]
"Wait," Myri says when she finally catches up to him. Her hair is tangled around her face. "That's it? Jack Harkness comes back to Torchwood, to visit the descendent of Gwen Cooper, and you buy her a drink? That's it?"
Jack keeps walking. This feels very familiar. If she tells him that she loves his coat he might vomit. "Pretty much."
Myri hits him in the back, just with the flat of her palm, and it's enough to stop him, because he hadn't seen that coming. "That's bullshit."
He turns then, so that they can stand there and have themselves a nice standoff. "I did save your ass from the Weevils," he tells her. "That was very heroic of me."
Her smile is accompanied by an eyeroll and a little blush. "Yeah, about that. Look-"
Jack takes a step backwards, because he realises that they are about to have some sort of 'talk.' They aren't supposed to be talking. They aren't even supposed to be looking, not really. Well, he was supposed to be doing the looking. Now it's all witty bantering and possibly flirting a little and Myri looking like she's going to ask him if he has a place to stay.
Myri sighs when he shuffles away from her. "Do you have a place to stay?"
Jack wonders if he isn't psychic. Maybe those malfunctioning implants he'd got from an ad in the back of the book when he had been seventeen and still stuck on Boeshane had finally kicked in.
"I've got a room at the Altolusso," he says, walking backwards.
Myri's nose wrinkles and she kicks a few cans as she follows him, like some lost dog. Isn't walking away the intergalactic sign for 'we are finished'? "That piece of shit?" she groans. "You're a traditionalist. I hear they rent rooms by the hour over there."
He smiles. "An hour's all I need," is out of his mouth before he realises that he's said it, and he's glad that his hands are in his pockets because he might very well have hit his forehead. He is rusty, being Jack Harkness.
Myri crosses her arms, but she skips after him. "Then you can't be the real Jack Harkness," she says, and then he turns when she reaches him, and they begin to walk, in step, down the street, past a few greasy chip ships that seem like the exact ones that had been there when he'd left.
"I know your great grandmother didn't tell you anything about that," he says, pulling his hands from his pockets because the air is cool and he wants to dry the sweat his fists have made. The coat flaps against his fingers, against his thighs and calves, and it's not wool, but it will do.
Myri's hand reaches for his, and he lets her grasp it, some sort of shake, a squeeze, but he doesn't try to think too hard when she doesn't let go of it. "Oh I know. I read your Torchwood file." She grins. "I'm a bit of a fan, actually."
He snorts, because really, what could she have possibly read? He had spent months destroying files about himself (they always seemed to pop up from somewhere. It had been infuriating.), and if she has found anything at all, it is bad intel. Or, he considers with a bit of weight, Gwen-intel. Oh, sobering.
"Yeah," she continues, working on her own conversation in her head, obviously, one that may or may not involve him. "Later, you can sign my tits with marker."
[…]
"When I pictured you in my head," she says, speech punctuated with yawns, "you smiled more. When I was five, I waited for you to come and take me on adventures. In space."
He sighs then, listening to her breathing evening out. He might have been better staying on Mars.
It occurs to him when he watches her sleep that he can't give her retcon because he doesn't have any.
***
"You want to come and see? The Hub?" she asks as she pulls her shirt on. He is laying in her bed, her bed, the bed of Gwen Cooper's grown up great granddaughter; he's watching her tits disappear under a fall of stretchy green nylon and just the idea of it makes him hard even as he watches it happen. It's also a little disconcerting. And something that he figures he might have to get used to if he cannot resist jaunts down memory lane, this running into the progeny of former…what was Gwen? Employee? Family? Love? Not lover, of course, but not for lack of wanting, he supposed. Is he fucking Myri because of that or in spite of it?
Even if Gwen had still been alive he wouldn't have asked her. Part of him wonders if Rhys is spinning in his grave like an express wagon wheel.
"We actually call it 'NewHub'. Even though it's the building they constructed after you, well, you know."
"I exploded," he says. Myri gives him a funny look, and he glances away. "Yeah, it hurt."
To her credit, she doesn't ask anything else.
[…]
***
"Actually, I don't remember a lot about Grandmum-mum," she says, spooning the ice cream into her mouth and flipping the spoon distractedly. "But Mum said that she was always rather…liberal in what she thought was sexually acceptable." She winked. "Granddad fancied gents, and my mum, his daughter, you see, has three husbands." She uses finger quotes. "Puppy piles of love, you know."
Jack stares at her, because he's not following her at all. It's as if her brain has an internal monologue that he can only tune in to every two minutes or so before the signal fades and the broadcast goes on without him.
"I'm telling you what I think you helped us to be," she says, hitting his thigh. "Gwen Cooper's Torchwood was full of what they call Jackisms, and some of them had nothing to do with aliens." She smiles. "Well, something about shooting things in the face."
Jack grimaces. "What a legacy to leave," he mumbles, because that hadn't really been his intention. He's not happy with the turn of the conversation, because it's as if Torchwood had finally been remade into something, and it had been his image. His image, a whitewashed and morally ambiguous version of the Doctor. That hadn't been his intention either, and it's slightly frightening.
What had he been able to impart to Gwen? Enough to build an organisation on slapdash operations and inter-office groping, perhaps. He endorses the groping.
Myri tilts her head. "Torchwood is different now, you know, since we're part of it all. Part of you know, space." She flings her arms out and ice cream flies off the spoon and splats on the wall. Myri doesn't see it, but he watches the mint green and chocolate slide down the eggshell colour of it. "The universe and everything." Jack doesn't tell her that they were always a part of it, they just didn't know it. He gets her anyway. Myri is disjointed and brilliant, really, just not good with utensils and words.
[…]
***
"We should have a kid," Myri says one day when they're sitting on the patio in the sun, and the beach is rolling up on the sand. Soon it will be close enough that they'll have to move the furniture if they want to stay dry. Jack picks at the crempogs on his plate with the business end of a butter knife. Myri drinks from the carton instead of the glass on the table and wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve. It's…not at all sexy. Kind of gross, actually.
"Anyway," she adds. "it's a literary thing, us having a kid. To cement the circle of the romantic legacy with you and grandmum-mum, you and Torchwood." She does not say 'of me and you,' he notices, and he is grateful. She smiles at him and glances out to the shore. "Like an Austen novel or some bullshit."
Jack is fairly sure Myri has never read an Austen novel in her entire life. "Don't people usually get married first?"
Myri wrinkles her nose when she glares at him. "What are you, some sort of traditionalist?"
He shakes his head and watches the gulls come in to pick up the half-eaten crempogs he's tossed out there. "I just think it requires more thought," he says, because this is the kind of conversation that leads to them wondering what they're doing here and Jack doesn't want to have that talk now.
Myri stands and sighs, walking away from him and down towards the water. "Well that's too bad, asshole," she calls over her shoulder, "because we're having one."
Oh. Well.
[…]
"Don't you ever get tired of it? Of the worry?" Myri throws a stone out at the birds and they scatter. "Here's how it is. You live forever. I won't."
He shakes his head.
"You do know that knowing I'm going to die some day doesn't make my death any more imminent." She pauses. "That's depressing, but it's not about you, Jack." She shrugs. "So you won't remember me someday. If it wasn't you, I'd be forgotten sooner. So what?"
Jack sighs. "You'll see."
Myri rests her head on his shoulder. "I won't be seeing anything if you don't let me," she sings. "Come on. It's sunny. No work. No more Torchwood. Let's go native. Make something to sell. Baskets. Bricks. Naked sculptures."
"We already made a baby," he jokes, thinking to make that a reason for like, not. Right there, though, his words twist and suddenly it's real. Cemented, something else to revolve around his ever-fixed point.
"I know!" Myri says, her feet digging in the sand. "How crazy is that?"
Jack watches the three suns fight in the sky-one up, one down, one right in the dead center of his sky, near and far, hot, hotter and hottest.
"Pretty damn crazy," he admits.
He can finally feel the ground under his feet.
END
Okay so now I can dump these in my abandoned folder.