Fic: It's (Un)complicated (Gold dust post-fic scene for blue_fjords, J/I/L)
Title: It's (Un)complicated
Author: amand_r
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack/Ianto/Lisa, OCs
Rating: PG-13 for language (also, this is incredibly indulgent)
Wordcount: 5,600. I got REALLY carried away.
Author's Notes: for blue_fjords, who bought me in the lightning round of help_haiti, and requested post-Gold Dust fic. Thanks to 51stcenturyfox for the beta sprinkles.
Summary: It's parent-teacher conference day.
The suit bothers him, and he's bothered that it bothers him. It smells a little like mothballs. Lisa had huffed his shoulder in the kitchen and told him that he was barmy, and Pen (Penny Pen-Pen) had offered to spray him down with Febreeze, but then he'd given her what he hoped was the evil eye and she'd turned the bottle on Jack instead, who had thought it was funny and lifted his arms so that she could spray his pits. Ianto has long given up on normalcy, for many many reasons, but really, he's amused as hell.
He just would rather smell like English leather today, and not like a Spring Rain, or Fresh Linen, or a Country Faire, or whatever the scent of the week is.
He hasn't worn the suit since Torchwood, and that had been a fair number of years ago, and while he would say that he hasn't missed it, wearing a proper suit in the proper fashion is a thing one has to practise. Furthermore, suit cuts are capricious in fashion. Are his suits dated? He had always tried for classic cuts that were supposed to be timeless, but sometimes what one season thinks will be timeless are the shoulderpads of tomorrow. He hasn't much occasion to see actual suits on men these days, out on the boat, so it's not like this even matters. He'll wear the suit to the meeting, then come home and pack it away in the closet again until the next time.
He doesn't know why he cares, he thinks as he sits in the chair in the breakfast nook (Even his posture has improved, he notices as he sits ramrod straight and sips his coffee, eyes flitting from Lisa to Pen to Jack.). Pen and Jack are laughing about something in the funny pages and Lisa is making herself a cup of tea and Evan stumbles in, already dressed, because he's not got the day off, and slumps into his chair, headphones clamped to his ears.
Jack reaches over and pulls them down. 'Good morning starshine, the earth says hello.'
Lisa and Ianto exchange glances when Evan just grunts and pulls a cup of coffee towards himself. Ianto knows that he was up late the night before, something about a physics exam, and so he doesn't begrudge him caffeine. It's better than getting it from those energy drink vending machines at school. Besides, at sixteen Evan is a fucking skyscraper, so there's no growth-stunting going on there.
'I'll drop you off on my way,' Ianto tells him softly, as if he is hung over, and he earns a grunt. He often wonders what Jack was like when he was sixteen, though in a lot of ways Evan is pretty much like him. Another mystery. He had always thought that Evan would be the one dying to find out who his real father is, but it seems as if Ianto is the one who harbours the secret desire. Jack winks at him and mimes a kiss. Pen uses the moment to steal Jack's bacon.
'I saw that,' Jack says, tugging a pigtail. Pen swings her legs under the table and catches Ianto in the knee. He rolls his eyes. 'You keep this up and I'll make you scrub the poop deck.'
Pen laughs so hard that bacon comes out of her mouth. Lisa just shields her tea and Evan rolls his eyes. 'That’s fucking disgusting.'
'Oi! Language!' comes in a three, no, four-part harmony. Ianto sings bass. Evan sighs and opens his textbook, eyes scanning the pages and ignoring them.
Jack had warned them about radio silence, and how it occurred from ages thirteen to about…twenty, and Ianto often tries to remember what he was like at sixteen, but he finds that Evan's situation is so different from his own that he cannot even begin to compare the two.
Pen, on the other hand, pours herself more juice and spills all over the paper, and Lisa says something scolding and dismissive because she doesn't really care if yesterday's Key Largo Citizen is damp. Jack finishes his toast and coffee and stands. There's the shuffle of scooting chairs as he squeezes out of the wall bench (Pen simply goes under the table and comes out next to Ianto), and while Jack passes Lisa she grabs his arse and squeezes. Ianto smirks into his cup and wonders what they might all be doing tonight.
Jack laughs, his eyes wrinkled in amusement and he leans over for a kiss, a "good morning, how are you, I love you" kiss, as he calls them, and Lisa gives it back. Evan's face is buried in a book or he might have said something, because he's at that age when he rolls his eyes at the thought that any of them have sex ever, and Pen is in the kitchen dumping the papers in the recycling, but that doesn't matter because she still doesn't care that Jack's "good morning how are you I love you" doesn't stop with Lisa, but starts there, ending with Ianto, and it's good, the coffee-juice-toast kiss, good as every morning he gets it, gives it to one or the other or both, because it's a pillar, a thing, upon which they all stand, one of many many things.
'Cute suit,' Jack murmurs into his ear. 'You think that maybe later on, you might want to relive old times?'
Ianto's eyes flit to Lisa and she bats her eyelashes over her small square glasses. Ooh, sexy glasses. They could play "We've been bad in the library" or "Porno board meeting" again. Mmm.
'I think I could arrange something, he says, and Jack's hand grabs his jaw, and when their mouths touch, they're back, back a decade ago, almost two, actually, and Lisa's foot is in his lap and moving, and Jack's mouth is on his and Ianto can't even move his hands anymore because he feels as if he's been restrained until it's just the nearness of them both and the scent of Jack (Mountain Stream Febreeze Jack) until someone in the kitchen giggles and they all fall apart, three spoonfuls of cocoa dissolved by the boiling water of their daughter's amusement.
Jack says that when she starts dating, they should develop a game plan for meeting her beaus (or beau-ettes, Lisa jokes, and they agree) at the door. Jack thinks he should just clean the guns. Lisa says they should add a few of the deck machetes to the table. Ianto thinks that the fact that there are three of them should make any suitor want to rethink their ability to draw and quarter him or her. Four, if they got Evan in on it.
Jack pulls away. He's got two parties to take out, and Ianto can't be with him. Pen is going along for the ride. He'll call her Skipper and let her steer once they're in deep waters. Lisa can't get away, she says, and that's true enough, Ianto knows, otherwise he'd have left it to her. But Jesus, they're a third more than most parents, so one of them at least should be there. The school has called them, so they all three wonder if it isn't something bad.
All Ianto can remember from these kinds of meetings is that they mostly resulted in a sore bum at the end of the day.
His belt is used to hold up his trousers, and never anything else, a fact that he sometimes wishes he was given more credit for, and then feels bad about. Regardless, Jack sees it sometimes, and his hand on Ianto's knee is enough. A mental biscuit in place of a physical one.
Evan slams his book shut, Jack pulls back and ghosts his fingers over their shoulders and Ianto hears him and Pen tumbling out the back door and down the path in the back, where the boat is moored. Lisa checks the clock on the microwave and says something noncommittal about a meeting at eight. Ianto leaves the dishes for later, scattered on the table as proof that they all were there and had a family breakfast, then he takes a piss, washes his hands, looks in the mirror over the sink in the loo: still serious, a little gray, not a lot, a few laugh lines. More tanned than he ever thought his Welsh skin could be, but well, that was life on a boat. In the Sunshine State, no less, or so the brochures had told them when they'd relocated three years ago. The jacket collar is perfect. He changes the knot from a half-Windsor to a four in hand. There, that's less stuffy. That blue brings out his eyes: pop.
'Of course,' he tells the mirror, 'Penny is our number one priority, mine and her mother's.' He blinks. 'And her other father's.' Too tacked on. 'We believe in a three prong parenting approach,' he says again. Mirror self is sceptical. 'You see,' he begins and then he stops. 'We're Mormons,' he concludes.
Mirror self thinks he's full of bullshit. He's inclined to agree.
***
'Please, call me Cathy,' Ms. Burns says, smiling. 'Cathy with a C.' As if that's going to change how he says it, Ianto thinks and then realises that she probably means if he ever has to spell it out. Cathy Burns directs him to a chair next to her desk and he sits in it, grateful that she's not making him sit at one of the tiny desks in front of her, like they always do in the movies and on the telly.
'Call me Ianto,' Ianto says, 'Ianto with an I,' and then he regrets it because Americans like to call him "Eye-ahnto", but he just decides to go with it. He doesn't know why he's nervous. They've gone to these things before, Jack once, Lisa loads of times, and once when Evan was twelve and set the makeshift chem lab on fire they all had to visit the principal of the school and have a talk about precociousness and "No sir, we'll have a talk with him about listening to his teachers", but Ianto has never gone it alone before.
It's not that he doesn't know what's going on in his kids' academic lives, it's that he likes to do this with other people-Lisa is especially good at navigating the waters of the educational system, and Jack makes small talk until everyone has forgot that they're supposed to be talking about children-Ianto likes to make these decisions with others. They are a unit, the three of them, and he feels as if he is spearheading something, and that's odd.
Old dynamics coming to the fore. Jack would wave his hands and say something about the power of sperm.
Cathy with a C shuffles some file folders and opens the one she wants, the folder that holds all of Penny, as far as the school is concerned. She pulls a pen from a big cup with #1 Teacher! painted on it in red. 'It's a pleasure to finally meet you,' she says, 'I've heard a lot about you. You have the boat?'
Ianto nods. 'Yes, family business.' He shrugs. 'It seemed like…fun?' he offers.
Cathy smiles. 'The other kids almost fell on themselves when Penny described it. It seems like a dream job.'
Ianto smiles and picks at a callus that he hadn't five years ago. Ropes and rigging. He wants to tell her that it's better than stunguns and alien slime, but instead he says, 'My partner came up with the idea, and I'm afraid we all…just went along with it.'
'And your wife, also, let me see-'
'She's a software engineer,' Ianto adds, cutting her off. 'Someone has to pay for our house whilst we sail out on the sea.' He doesn't add that Lisa thinks the ocean is a menace and that she’ll keep her feet on the land, thank you very much. Or that despite that, she likes to take the boat out with them on off days and jump in the water, pumping her legs of her own volition as the dolphins come up on both sides and skim her along in the water. He doesn't add that they sometimes, all three of them fall into the waves and just float there, loosely linked, silent, thinking, seeing only sky and surf and each other, and that is the way they exist.
Cathy smiles. 'Sounds like a good agreement.' Pages turn. 'Now I called you, not for anything bad, by the way,' she adds, and Ianto can feel his back muscles relaxing. That was all she needed to say, and now he can slide through the rest of the meeting. Funny, how those triggers build up and are only noticed when they're gone. 'I'm concerned about the level of challenge that Penny receives from her current work.'
'We're not skipping her a grade,' he says suddenly, because they'd done that with Evan, and they have all agreed that they're not doing it again. Evan will graduate this spring, and they're none of them sure that they can willingly part with him to Uni, not yet, or if he's even ready for it. In some ways he is, of course, but in others, well.
Jack says that they should put him on the boat, and they'll take a year jetting around and fishing and swimming, and he'll get life experience or something. Ianto thinks he just wants Evan to rebuild the engine for him.
Cathy taps her pen on her papers. 'No I don't think that'd be wise. That's always the first thing parents suggest, and I think it's more about maturity than intelligence.' She levels her gaze at Ianto. 'I can offer enrichment, and we have a small gifted program, but it's something that has to be nurtured in the home. Independent projects, things like that. Would you and-'
His mobile buzzes and Ianto pulls it from his pocket. It's Jack.
Are U there yet? Is it over? Does she look like a troll? Pen says she looks like a troll.
Ianto decides that he and Penny are going to have to have a conversation about tact and keeping some observations to oneself. On the other hand, he doesn't mind if she tells him, so telling Jack is pretty much the same. Ianto glances up and clears the screen. 'I'm sorry. My partner. He's uh, he's just concerned about the meeting.' Ianto spreads his hands and makes a gesture to show that he's at a loss and the honesty is refreshing.
Cathy smiles and nods her head. 'Involved with family life, that's nice.'
Ianto sets the mobile on the edge of the desk, because if it goes off again in his pocket he might jump out of his suit and that is a show that Cathy with a C doesn't need. 'He's like a second father.' There, that was easy to say. And uncomplicated, right? Like an uncle. No need to add, He's really probably her dad, and it's complicated, but sometimes I like when he fucks my wife and I ram myself into his arse and then later we all sit naked in front of the open refrigerator and feed each other ice cream with our fingers.
He used to be quite good at keeping secrets. This isn't a secret, Lisa would tell him, but an omission. Ianto sometimes had preferred it when all the people in their life knew what they were about and they never had to explain it, but everyone knew it nonetheless.
'Well, when I say enrichment, I mean that we can start her on extra math on the side. Penny is really rather ready to start working with fractions and long division, and you could start her on some more advanced science, like some biology and basic chemistry.' Cathy glances at him. 'She also should have more advanced books, but what we really want to focus on is the communication part, the writing and so forth-'
'She's been keeping journals since she could print,' Ianto tells her, and in that one thing he's amazingly proud. Lisa keeps a livejournal, and Jack likes to tell his stories out loud, but Penny and Ianto often use the hour after dinner for 'diary time' sitting side by side at the kitchen table and writing and drawing in their books. After the first year, he'd got her a leather-bound one with her initials on it, and they continue to fill them utterly. He doesn't ask to see what's in hers unless she offers and she isn't nosy about his. Jack says that he reads them all, but only because they are "left in obvious places" such as under the mattress or in that locked drawer.
Lisa won't tell them her lj name, but Ianto knows it's 'learningtorun'.
Cathy makes a note in her file. 'This is her IEP from when she was tested last year,' and Ianto tries to remember. Lisa took this one, and he remembers that she said something about it, but he hadn't been paying attention, probably because she'd been topless or he'd been doing their taxes or something. 'We have to update them every year, legally, since she's technically part of the special education program.'
Ianto draws his brows in at that. 'Special education, like-'
'Oh I know, some parents think that means disabled. Gifted children are part of the Special Education system because they have additional requirements that other students don't have,' Cathy says offhand. 'It's not a bad thing.'
His mobile vibrates again and he blushes. Cathy gives him an indulgent look and he glances at the display. It's a text from Lisa: WHAT IS THE VERDICT? ARE WE SCHOOL SHOPPING AGAIN?
He snorts. If they keep this up he might be pulling Penny out just to cover his own embarrassment at her parents' behavior. 'My wife,' he says. 'We usually do this together,' he capitulates, and hopes that they all come off as Very Concerned and not a bunch of nutters.
Cathy waves her hand. 'Yesterday I had a conference with a father who insisted on conveying the whole thing to his wife on his cell the entire time,' she says, and this makes Ianto feel minutely better. Lisa would never stand for that anyway, and Jack's phone conversation would consist of, "Can you hear me now, Ianto? Hold on a minute, this marlin is huge. We are eating good for the next three weeks!'
Ianto has learnt to love fish.
His phone vibrates again. Evan this time. There's hockey tryouts tonight. I'll be home at 5:30. Ianto doesn't even know where one plays hockey in the Florida Keys. He flips the mobile off and shoves it in his pocket. 'Please, continue.'
Cathy smirks. 'Yes, well, I'll give you your own copy, but I'd like to lay out a brief plan with you about what we're going to focus on this year as far as enrichment goes. Are you all right with the math and science ideas?'
Ianto nods, because what else is he going to say? "No, I think children should be intellectually stunted and enrichment is for nerds"? Of course he's okay with it. Sums and fractions are easy, and they've been celebrating Pi day on March fourteenth in their house since before Penny was born. 'Perhaps,' he says, 'We could get her to…blog or something? Or write essays about things for all to see and not just private diaries.'
Cathy scrolls her hand. 'Book reports, anything that would make her have to think critically. Problem solve, persuade, explain informatively, yes, that would be good. And blogging might be acceptable, and easy for us all to track, given that you feel comfortable with her being on the Internet.'
Ianto smiles. 'She set up our last router.'
Cathy laughs. 'I swear that Hewlett Packard would have better customer service if they let a bunch of eight year olds be their IT phone people.' She makes a few notes and Ianto smirks, glancing about at the room.
It's like all kid classrooms he's seen in the past few years: cluttered and bright, rows and rows of desks, walls plastered with construction paper. Computers lining the back wall with their keyboards and flat screens. They had debated enrolling Penny and Evan in the local private school, but that curriculum had integrated laptops onto every student desk. Lisa had said that there was a point in which everything could be acceptably cyberised, and Jack had agreed that some things, such as paper and pencils were good to hold onto. Ianto had agreed as well, but secretly because he stubbornly held on to the "state school was good for me and it will be good for our kids" attitude of an Estate chav.
He wonders what they have left to talk about. He's been there five minutes. Not that he expected to be there for hours, or maybe he'd just worked himself into a lather for no reason. Lisa had tried to suggest that as he had dithered about his tie selection for fifteen minutes the night before, but he'd ignored her.
Cathy answers that for him. 'I have this copy here, and it lists the things we've mentioned and some specific suggestions of mine. If you'll sign my copy, you can take this one home and consult with…' she pauses. 'The family. And nothing here is set in stone,' she adds hastily. 'If you have changes you want to make, you can come in, or send a letter through Penny, or just call. My email is at the bottom, too.'
He signs his name in a scrawl that he's perfected through years and years of signing off on demolition orders and payroll sheets and mortgages (and second mortgages) and US Visa papers, and smiles when she hands him the folded packet of his own, as if he is being given homework. And in a way he is. In his head, he is already imagining the extra things they will do for Penny and with Penny.
Lisa will design maths programs for her and they will email Gwen and get her to send some of Tosh's old algorithms, little math exercises and brain teasers that she used to do at her desk when she was bored. They're probably still stored in a folder on the mainframe. Jack will start her on oceanography or astronomy, and Ianto will peruse the shelves at Borders, looking for books to buy. He'll get two copies and they will both mark them up as they read, and then they will discuss them after "journal hour" after dinner. Already he's thinking something with horses. Black Beauty or somesuch. Watership Down, maybe. It's sad, but they don't shield their children from sadness, they decided long ago that they would supplement that too with comfort.
On his way out he sees the wall of drawings by the door, and he stops. Kids' drawings are a mystery to him. He doesn't remember making any, but for years Evan made drawings with markers and crayons, abstract things that he had to then comment on. Four boxes linked with a line were a kitty, and a row of lines was a tank in a bathtub. It had been so relieving in some ways to have the school psychologist explain to them that Evan was gifted and saw the world in ways that the adult eye simply didn't. Jack had winked and said that it was all Lisa, but they knew better. Well…maybe.
Cathy stands next to him and smiles. 'The theme for last week was family diversity.' His heart speeds up. 'We encourage the kids to write and draw their own family dynamics, in order to foster the idea that families are different and special and don't necessarily conform to a set idea.' Her finger points to a few of the drawings, stick people and blob people. One drawing is labelled, "Me, Daddy, Mommy, Sarah, Buffins, Snowball, Winky". Winky is a tiny mouse-looking creature. Another is labelled, "Mom, Nana, Pop-Pop, Me", and another "Me, Dad".
His eyes search for Penny's, partly out of parental pride, partly out of curiosity. This drawing will tell him what she thinks of her home life, this drawing that was intended to be viewed by people outside their home. What does she say when they are not there? Does she edit?
Cathy finds it for him, pointing, 'There.'
Above the door, five figures in a row in front of a boat, little stick hands joined together like two dimensional paper dolls, they are Penny and her family, labelled from left to right: "Me, Mummy, Dad, Daddy, Evan". Under Evan's name is a little >:P.
Ianto looks at his little stick hand holding Lisa's stick hand and Jack's stick hand and Penny and Evan buffering them all (Penny has added a few dolphins on either side, but they look like Blowfish a little bit. One of them is wearing a tie. Also, Jack appears to be standing on a dead shark.), and he remembers now that they're all good.
He snaps a pic of it and texts it to "Lis" and "Jack": We are apparently awesome.
He's not to the car when he gets a volley of return texts:
Lis: Ianto, where is your tie? Clearly we have been remiss.
Jack: Lis-where are your tits?
Lis: Where is your cock? Probably with my tits.
Ianto: THIS IS OUR DAUGHTER'S ART. I'd rather not think she knows about either of those things.
Jack: He's precious when he's in denial.
Lis: I vaguely remember being that thin.
Jack: My hair is FANTASTIC.
***
STOP READING UNLESS YOU ARE BLUE FJORDS. THE REST IS INCREDIBLY INDULGENT.
***
Later that evening, Cathy Burns flips through her menu at the Red Crab and contemplates the scampi. It's cliched to get seafood here. She lives in the Keys, for god's sake, but she can't seem to help it. Scampi is good and local eating is environmentally responsible.
There's a loud laugh in the corner of the restaurant and a small shriek, and then a crab leg flips up in the air and hits the chandelier made from ancient dueling pistols, the kinds with huge wooden handles. Cathy feels as if she should know what they're called, but she doesn't remember. Some teacher she is.
'That is enough, both of you,' a woman's voice warns. British. They have a lot of expats here. 'We can't have them tossing us out of here, too.'
'I used to know how to behave, you know,' a man's voice replies. 'I used to be able to use a fish knife and a serviette and everything.' Cathy snorts at an American calling it a serviette.
'I'm serious, Ianto Jones, that butter sauce is going to-' There is a splatting noise. 'Stain.'
A child laughs, and then a teenager says something like, 'Jesus, I can't go anywhere with you people. You act like goddamn-'
'Oi! Language!' the rest of the table chants out, as if it's a long time joke.
Cathy has to see how, because she's curious. She's not dumb, and she knows when something about a kid's home life is fishy. It's not always abuse or neglect, in fact it's not always a problem. There's nothing wrong with Penny Hallett-Jones anyway, nothing that a bunch of math and reading enrichment won't fix.
She angles herself in her booth, almost into the aisle of the dining room so that she can see the round booth three down from hers, tucked in the corner. And there they are, the Hallet-Joneses: mum dad, brother, Penny and-a tanned handsome man who is probably the American voice she'd heard. An uncle maybe, the partner, a business partner, adopted into the family, sure, Cathy'd had a few of those when she'd grown up in Milwaukee and her father had co-owned the brewery with Uncle Mike.
Except that if her Uncle Mike had wrapped his arm around her mother's shoulders the way this man was to Mrs. Hallett-Jones, he might have found himself an ex-co-owner. Things suddenly slot into place, like putting the last few puzzle pieces in and finally seeing the whole thing. Me, Mummy, Dad, Daddy, Evan (>:P).
The waiter takes her order and she says, 'Scampi,' because that's the first thing she can think of. In the corner, the Hallett-Joneses are finishing their dinners, tossing napkins on the table, haggling over the tip amount ('I don't get this tipping thing,' the American says, and Ianto calls him a cheap git), and surprise wiping each other's faces with wet-naps. The teenager plants his wetnapped hand on Penny's face and scrubs back and forth. 'Lemon-scented attack!'
'Evan,' Ianto says, tossing bills on the table and then rolling his eyes when the American snatches them back up. He waits until the other man is gone before adding another bill on the table. 'Stop disinfecting your sister.'
Evan kisses the top of Penny's head, scruffs her bangs with his knuckles and lets her go. 'Can we get ice cream?'
Mrs. Hallett-Jones rolls her eyes as she passes Cathy's table. 'Good lord, where do you put it all?'
'My hollow leg,' Evan replies as he follows her. Cathy sees the American pick up the bill Ianto had tossed on the table and pocket it before double-timing it to join them as they file past.
Penny sees her and stops. 'Ms. Burns!'
Cathy tries to pretend as if she's just now learned that they are there and does a surprised face. 'Penny! Hello!' These are always awkward moments for her, because it's not that she doesn't care about her students, but out of the classroom is her off-duty, and being out of the classroom is a different thing. She's almost a different person.
Ianto stops behind Penny because she's blocking traffic, and he puts a hand on her shoulder and makes a small face, as if he finds the situation as awkward as Cathy does. That's possibly true. She is in street clothes and he's traded out his dapper suit for a T-shirt and raggedy pair of jeans that probably have strategic holes in places. Cathy approves of strategic holes, she thinks, and then realizes that that kind of thought is exactly why off-duty encounters are awkward.
'Pen, she's eating. You'll see her in school on Monday,' Ianto says. To Cathy he adds, 'It's nice to see you again.'
She's about to open her mouth to reply, but Penny is bulldozed from behind as the American scoops her up and tosses her over his shoulder. 'Say goodbye, Pen.' And he winks at Cathy and strides away.
Pen waves at Cathy from behind the American's shoulder. 'Goodbye, Pen!' and The American smacks her bottom and bounces her on his shoulder.
'Oh you think you're so funny.'
Cathy hears Penny say, 'But I am funny,' before their voices drift off into the lobby and out the door. Ianto shrugs and smiles and then steps back to their table and puts another bill down to replace the one the American took. Cathy senses that this an ongoing argument, like the kind she used to have with Kyle before the divorce. Just another thing that couples do. And then he's off, jogging to catch up with the rest.
She sips her water and looks out the window as they make their way to the van, an old thing with the company logo on the side: Ocean Fantasy Tours, Swim with the dolphins! and a phone number. An art deco dolphin on either side of the white lettering, like the kind that Penny had drawn on her illustration.
Mrs. Hallett-Jones runs when the American chases her with Penny clenched to his back, her little legs wrapped around his waist. He's saying something about Squadron Leader Penny lining up her Spitfire to launch an aerial attack. Evan has the door to the van open and is standing on the runner. Ianto jogs into view and watches the rest of them run about on the asphalt.
Evan says something and the American smacks Ianto's ass as he passes him.
Penny straightens and says something like, 'I scream, you scream we all scream for ice cream,' as they all pile into the van, and even though the muting of the glass, Cathy can hear the subsequent five-part hollering from here. Ianto is the last to get in the driver's side, looking back at the window, as if he can see her, and she jolts with guilt even though he can't.
Mrs. Hallet-Jones's arm dangles from the passenger window as it turns out of the parking lot. They head along the road to the ice cream place down a ways. Cathy thinks that's probably a good idea, and she'll stop on her way home. It is Friday, and she's got two whole days to herself.
She wonders about the story there, of three adults obviously linked romantically, two children who have the same mother, if looks are anything to go by, but well-she's being nosy, and it's none of her business. Especially not when there's no reason to be suspicious of anything amiss.
Still, she thinks as the van disappears completely from view, it was funny to see how people got from one place to the next, wasn't it? From one life to the next, from one person to the next, and, she thinks as the waiter places her plate in front of her, one encounter to the next. What passes for normal in one person's life is completely foreign in another.
She pulls a sheath of papers from her bag and sets them on the table next to her. She has a lot of grading to do. One last glance out at the road as she uncaps her pen, but the van is gone, the Hallett-Joneses have disappeared on their quest for dessert, and everything is tinted the colors of the setting sun.
Just the way it should be.
END
Are you looking at this and thinking, "Dammit, I want fic from Amand-r too!"? Well now you can get it: Here for a longer wait (and right now it looks as if the highest bidder wants me to write a HP mpreg), or here for a (possibly!) shorter but more instantly gratifying hit.
Author: amand_r
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack/Ianto/Lisa, OCs
Rating: PG-13 for language (also, this is incredibly indulgent)
Wordcount: 5,600. I got REALLY carried away.
Author's Notes: for blue_fjords, who bought me in the lightning round of help_haiti, and requested post-Gold Dust fic. Thanks to 51stcenturyfox for the beta sprinkles.
Summary: It's parent-teacher conference day.
The suit bothers him, and he's bothered that it bothers him. It smells a little like mothballs. Lisa had huffed his shoulder in the kitchen and told him that he was barmy, and Pen (Penny Pen-Pen) had offered to spray him down with Febreeze, but then he'd given her what he hoped was the evil eye and she'd turned the bottle on Jack instead, who had thought it was funny and lifted his arms so that she could spray his pits. Ianto has long given up on normalcy, for many many reasons, but really, he's amused as hell.
He just would rather smell like English leather today, and not like a Spring Rain, or Fresh Linen, or a Country Faire, or whatever the scent of the week is.
He hasn't worn the suit since Torchwood, and that had been a fair number of years ago, and while he would say that he hasn't missed it, wearing a proper suit in the proper fashion is a thing one has to practise. Furthermore, suit cuts are capricious in fashion. Are his suits dated? He had always tried for classic cuts that were supposed to be timeless, but sometimes what one season thinks will be timeless are the shoulderpads of tomorrow. He hasn't much occasion to see actual suits on men these days, out on the boat, so it's not like this even matters. He'll wear the suit to the meeting, then come home and pack it away in the closet again until the next time.
He doesn't know why he cares, he thinks as he sits in the chair in the breakfast nook (Even his posture has improved, he notices as he sits ramrod straight and sips his coffee, eyes flitting from Lisa to Pen to Jack.). Pen and Jack are laughing about something in the funny pages and Lisa is making herself a cup of tea and Evan stumbles in, already dressed, because he's not got the day off, and slumps into his chair, headphones clamped to his ears.
Jack reaches over and pulls them down. 'Good morning starshine, the earth says hello.'
Lisa and Ianto exchange glances when Evan just grunts and pulls a cup of coffee towards himself. Ianto knows that he was up late the night before, something about a physics exam, and so he doesn't begrudge him caffeine. It's better than getting it from those energy drink vending machines at school. Besides, at sixteen Evan is a fucking skyscraper, so there's no growth-stunting going on there.
'I'll drop you off on my way,' Ianto tells him softly, as if he is hung over, and he earns a grunt. He often wonders what Jack was like when he was sixteen, though in a lot of ways Evan is pretty much like him. Another mystery. He had always thought that Evan would be the one dying to find out who his real father is, but it seems as if Ianto is the one who harbours the secret desire. Jack winks at him and mimes a kiss. Pen uses the moment to steal Jack's bacon.
'I saw that,' Jack says, tugging a pigtail. Pen swings her legs under the table and catches Ianto in the knee. He rolls his eyes. 'You keep this up and I'll make you scrub the poop deck.'
Pen laughs so hard that bacon comes out of her mouth. Lisa just shields her tea and Evan rolls his eyes. 'That’s fucking disgusting.'
'Oi! Language!' comes in a three, no, four-part harmony. Ianto sings bass. Evan sighs and opens his textbook, eyes scanning the pages and ignoring them.
Jack had warned them about radio silence, and how it occurred from ages thirteen to about…twenty, and Ianto often tries to remember what he was like at sixteen, but he finds that Evan's situation is so different from his own that he cannot even begin to compare the two.
Pen, on the other hand, pours herself more juice and spills all over the paper, and Lisa says something scolding and dismissive because she doesn't really care if yesterday's Key Largo Citizen is damp. Jack finishes his toast and coffee and stands. There's the shuffle of scooting chairs as he squeezes out of the wall bench (Pen simply goes under the table and comes out next to Ianto), and while Jack passes Lisa she grabs his arse and squeezes. Ianto smirks into his cup and wonders what they might all be doing tonight.
Jack laughs, his eyes wrinkled in amusement and he leans over for a kiss, a "good morning, how are you, I love you" kiss, as he calls them, and Lisa gives it back. Evan's face is buried in a book or he might have said something, because he's at that age when he rolls his eyes at the thought that any of them have sex ever, and Pen is in the kitchen dumping the papers in the recycling, but that doesn't matter because she still doesn't care that Jack's "good morning how are you I love you" doesn't stop with Lisa, but starts there, ending with Ianto, and it's good, the coffee-juice-toast kiss, good as every morning he gets it, gives it to one or the other or both, because it's a pillar, a thing, upon which they all stand, one of many many things.
'Cute suit,' Jack murmurs into his ear. 'You think that maybe later on, you might want to relive old times?'
Ianto's eyes flit to Lisa and she bats her eyelashes over her small square glasses. Ooh, sexy glasses. They could play "We've been bad in the library" or "Porno board meeting" again. Mmm.
'I think I could arrange something, he says, and Jack's hand grabs his jaw, and when their mouths touch, they're back, back a decade ago, almost two, actually, and Lisa's foot is in his lap and moving, and Jack's mouth is on his and Ianto can't even move his hands anymore because he feels as if he's been restrained until it's just the nearness of them both and the scent of Jack (Mountain Stream Febreeze Jack) until someone in the kitchen giggles and they all fall apart, three spoonfuls of cocoa dissolved by the boiling water of their daughter's amusement.
Jack says that when she starts dating, they should develop a game plan for meeting her beaus (or beau-ettes, Lisa jokes, and they agree) at the door. Jack thinks he should just clean the guns. Lisa says they should add a few of the deck machetes to the table. Ianto thinks that the fact that there are three of them should make any suitor want to rethink their ability to draw and quarter him or her. Four, if they got Evan in on it.
Jack pulls away. He's got two parties to take out, and Ianto can't be with him. Pen is going along for the ride. He'll call her Skipper and let her steer once they're in deep waters. Lisa can't get away, she says, and that's true enough, Ianto knows, otherwise he'd have left it to her. But Jesus, they're a third more than most parents, so one of them at least should be there. The school has called them, so they all three wonder if it isn't something bad.
All Ianto can remember from these kinds of meetings is that they mostly resulted in a sore bum at the end of the day.
His belt is used to hold up his trousers, and never anything else, a fact that he sometimes wishes he was given more credit for, and then feels bad about. Regardless, Jack sees it sometimes, and his hand on Ianto's knee is enough. A mental biscuit in place of a physical one.
Evan slams his book shut, Jack pulls back and ghosts his fingers over their shoulders and Ianto hears him and Pen tumbling out the back door and down the path in the back, where the boat is moored. Lisa checks the clock on the microwave and says something noncommittal about a meeting at eight. Ianto leaves the dishes for later, scattered on the table as proof that they all were there and had a family breakfast, then he takes a piss, washes his hands, looks in the mirror over the sink in the loo: still serious, a little gray, not a lot, a few laugh lines. More tanned than he ever thought his Welsh skin could be, but well, that was life on a boat. In the Sunshine State, no less, or so the brochures had told them when they'd relocated three years ago. The jacket collar is perfect. He changes the knot from a half-Windsor to a four in hand. There, that's less stuffy. That blue brings out his eyes: pop.
'Of course,' he tells the mirror, 'Penny is our number one priority, mine and her mother's.' He blinks. 'And her other father's.' Too tacked on. 'We believe in a three prong parenting approach,' he says again. Mirror self is sceptical. 'You see,' he begins and then he stops. 'We're Mormons,' he concludes.
Mirror self thinks he's full of bullshit. He's inclined to agree.
***
'Please, call me Cathy,' Ms. Burns says, smiling. 'Cathy with a C.' As if that's going to change how he says it, Ianto thinks and then realises that she probably means if he ever has to spell it out. Cathy Burns directs him to a chair next to her desk and he sits in it, grateful that she's not making him sit at one of the tiny desks in front of her, like they always do in the movies and on the telly.
'Call me Ianto,' Ianto says, 'Ianto with an I,' and then he regrets it because Americans like to call him "Eye-ahnto", but he just decides to go with it. He doesn't know why he's nervous. They've gone to these things before, Jack once, Lisa loads of times, and once when Evan was twelve and set the makeshift chem lab on fire they all had to visit the principal of the school and have a talk about precociousness and "No sir, we'll have a talk with him about listening to his teachers", but Ianto has never gone it alone before.
It's not that he doesn't know what's going on in his kids' academic lives, it's that he likes to do this with other people-Lisa is especially good at navigating the waters of the educational system, and Jack makes small talk until everyone has forgot that they're supposed to be talking about children-Ianto likes to make these decisions with others. They are a unit, the three of them, and he feels as if he is spearheading something, and that's odd.
Old dynamics coming to the fore. Jack would wave his hands and say something about the power of sperm.
Cathy with a C shuffles some file folders and opens the one she wants, the folder that holds all of Penny, as far as the school is concerned. She pulls a pen from a big cup with #1 Teacher! painted on it in red. 'It's a pleasure to finally meet you,' she says, 'I've heard a lot about you. You have the boat?'
Ianto nods. 'Yes, family business.' He shrugs. 'It seemed like…fun?' he offers.
Cathy smiles. 'The other kids almost fell on themselves when Penny described it. It seems like a dream job.'
Ianto smiles and picks at a callus that he hadn't five years ago. Ropes and rigging. He wants to tell her that it's better than stunguns and alien slime, but instead he says, 'My partner came up with the idea, and I'm afraid we all…just went along with it.'
'And your wife, also, let me see-'
'She's a software engineer,' Ianto adds, cutting her off. 'Someone has to pay for our house whilst we sail out on the sea.' He doesn't add that Lisa thinks the ocean is a menace and that she’ll keep her feet on the land, thank you very much. Or that despite that, she likes to take the boat out with them on off days and jump in the water, pumping her legs of her own volition as the dolphins come up on both sides and skim her along in the water. He doesn't add that they sometimes, all three of them fall into the waves and just float there, loosely linked, silent, thinking, seeing only sky and surf and each other, and that is the way they exist.
Cathy smiles. 'Sounds like a good agreement.' Pages turn. 'Now I called you, not for anything bad, by the way,' she adds, and Ianto can feel his back muscles relaxing. That was all she needed to say, and now he can slide through the rest of the meeting. Funny, how those triggers build up and are only noticed when they're gone. 'I'm concerned about the level of challenge that Penny receives from her current work.'
'We're not skipping her a grade,' he says suddenly, because they'd done that with Evan, and they have all agreed that they're not doing it again. Evan will graduate this spring, and they're none of them sure that they can willingly part with him to Uni, not yet, or if he's even ready for it. In some ways he is, of course, but in others, well.
Jack says that they should put him on the boat, and they'll take a year jetting around and fishing and swimming, and he'll get life experience or something. Ianto thinks he just wants Evan to rebuild the engine for him.
Cathy taps her pen on her papers. 'No I don't think that'd be wise. That's always the first thing parents suggest, and I think it's more about maturity than intelligence.' She levels her gaze at Ianto. 'I can offer enrichment, and we have a small gifted program, but it's something that has to be nurtured in the home. Independent projects, things like that. Would you and-'
His mobile buzzes and Ianto pulls it from his pocket. It's Jack.
Are U there yet? Is it over? Does she look like a troll? Pen says she looks like a troll.
Ianto decides that he and Penny are going to have to have a conversation about tact and keeping some observations to oneself. On the other hand, he doesn't mind if she tells him, so telling Jack is pretty much the same. Ianto glances up and clears the screen. 'I'm sorry. My partner. He's uh, he's just concerned about the meeting.' Ianto spreads his hands and makes a gesture to show that he's at a loss and the honesty is refreshing.
Cathy smiles and nods her head. 'Involved with family life, that's nice.'
Ianto sets the mobile on the edge of the desk, because if it goes off again in his pocket he might jump out of his suit and that is a show that Cathy with a C doesn't need. 'He's like a second father.' There, that was easy to say. And uncomplicated, right? Like an uncle. No need to add, He's really probably her dad, and it's complicated, but sometimes I like when he fucks my wife and I ram myself into his arse and then later we all sit naked in front of the open refrigerator and feed each other ice cream with our fingers.
He used to be quite good at keeping secrets. This isn't a secret, Lisa would tell him, but an omission. Ianto sometimes had preferred it when all the people in their life knew what they were about and they never had to explain it, but everyone knew it nonetheless.
'Well, when I say enrichment, I mean that we can start her on extra math on the side. Penny is really rather ready to start working with fractions and long division, and you could start her on some more advanced science, like some biology and basic chemistry.' Cathy glances at him. 'She also should have more advanced books, but what we really want to focus on is the communication part, the writing and so forth-'
'She's been keeping journals since she could print,' Ianto tells her, and in that one thing he's amazingly proud. Lisa keeps a livejournal, and Jack likes to tell his stories out loud, but Penny and Ianto often use the hour after dinner for 'diary time' sitting side by side at the kitchen table and writing and drawing in their books. After the first year, he'd got her a leather-bound one with her initials on it, and they continue to fill them utterly. He doesn't ask to see what's in hers unless she offers and she isn't nosy about his. Jack says that he reads them all, but only because they are "left in obvious places" such as under the mattress or in that locked drawer.
Lisa won't tell them her lj name, but Ianto knows it's 'learningtorun'.
Cathy makes a note in her file. 'This is her IEP from when she was tested last year,' and Ianto tries to remember. Lisa took this one, and he remembers that she said something about it, but he hadn't been paying attention, probably because she'd been topless or he'd been doing their taxes or something. 'We have to update them every year, legally, since she's technically part of the special education program.'
Ianto draws his brows in at that. 'Special education, like-'
'Oh I know, some parents think that means disabled. Gifted children are part of the Special Education system because they have additional requirements that other students don't have,' Cathy says offhand. 'It's not a bad thing.'
His mobile vibrates again and he blushes. Cathy gives him an indulgent look and he glances at the display. It's a text from Lisa: WHAT IS THE VERDICT? ARE WE SCHOOL SHOPPING AGAIN?
He snorts. If they keep this up he might be pulling Penny out just to cover his own embarrassment at her parents' behavior. 'My wife,' he says. 'We usually do this together,' he capitulates, and hopes that they all come off as Very Concerned and not a bunch of nutters.
Cathy waves her hand. 'Yesterday I had a conference with a father who insisted on conveying the whole thing to his wife on his cell the entire time,' she says, and this makes Ianto feel minutely better. Lisa would never stand for that anyway, and Jack's phone conversation would consist of, "Can you hear me now, Ianto? Hold on a minute, this marlin is huge. We are eating good for the next three weeks!'
Ianto has learnt to love fish.
His phone vibrates again. Evan this time. There's hockey tryouts tonight. I'll be home at 5:30. Ianto doesn't even know where one plays hockey in the Florida Keys. He flips the mobile off and shoves it in his pocket. 'Please, continue.'
Cathy smirks. 'Yes, well, I'll give you your own copy, but I'd like to lay out a brief plan with you about what we're going to focus on this year as far as enrichment goes. Are you all right with the math and science ideas?'
Ianto nods, because what else is he going to say? "No, I think children should be intellectually stunted and enrichment is for nerds"? Of course he's okay with it. Sums and fractions are easy, and they've been celebrating Pi day on March fourteenth in their house since before Penny was born. 'Perhaps,' he says, 'We could get her to…blog or something? Or write essays about things for all to see and not just private diaries.'
Cathy scrolls her hand. 'Book reports, anything that would make her have to think critically. Problem solve, persuade, explain informatively, yes, that would be good. And blogging might be acceptable, and easy for us all to track, given that you feel comfortable with her being on the Internet.'
Ianto smiles. 'She set up our last router.'
Cathy laughs. 'I swear that Hewlett Packard would have better customer service if they let a bunch of eight year olds be their IT phone people.' She makes a few notes and Ianto smirks, glancing about at the room.
It's like all kid classrooms he's seen in the past few years: cluttered and bright, rows and rows of desks, walls plastered with construction paper. Computers lining the back wall with their keyboards and flat screens. They had debated enrolling Penny and Evan in the local private school, but that curriculum had integrated laptops onto every student desk. Lisa had said that there was a point in which everything could be acceptably cyberised, and Jack had agreed that some things, such as paper and pencils were good to hold onto. Ianto had agreed as well, but secretly because he stubbornly held on to the "state school was good for me and it will be good for our kids" attitude of an Estate chav.
He wonders what they have left to talk about. He's been there five minutes. Not that he expected to be there for hours, or maybe he'd just worked himself into a lather for no reason. Lisa had tried to suggest that as he had dithered about his tie selection for fifteen minutes the night before, but he'd ignored her.
Cathy answers that for him. 'I have this copy here, and it lists the things we've mentioned and some specific suggestions of mine. If you'll sign my copy, you can take this one home and consult with…' she pauses. 'The family. And nothing here is set in stone,' she adds hastily. 'If you have changes you want to make, you can come in, or send a letter through Penny, or just call. My email is at the bottom, too.'
He signs his name in a scrawl that he's perfected through years and years of signing off on demolition orders and payroll sheets and mortgages (and second mortgages) and US Visa papers, and smiles when she hands him the folded packet of his own, as if he is being given homework. And in a way he is. In his head, he is already imagining the extra things they will do for Penny and with Penny.
Lisa will design maths programs for her and they will email Gwen and get her to send some of Tosh's old algorithms, little math exercises and brain teasers that she used to do at her desk when she was bored. They're probably still stored in a folder on the mainframe. Jack will start her on oceanography or astronomy, and Ianto will peruse the shelves at Borders, looking for books to buy. He'll get two copies and they will both mark them up as they read, and then they will discuss them after "journal hour" after dinner. Already he's thinking something with horses. Black Beauty or somesuch. Watership Down, maybe. It's sad, but they don't shield their children from sadness, they decided long ago that they would supplement that too with comfort.
On his way out he sees the wall of drawings by the door, and he stops. Kids' drawings are a mystery to him. He doesn't remember making any, but for years Evan made drawings with markers and crayons, abstract things that he had to then comment on. Four boxes linked with a line were a kitty, and a row of lines was a tank in a bathtub. It had been so relieving in some ways to have the school psychologist explain to them that Evan was gifted and saw the world in ways that the adult eye simply didn't. Jack had winked and said that it was all Lisa, but they knew better. Well…maybe.
Cathy stands next to him and smiles. 'The theme for last week was family diversity.' His heart speeds up. 'We encourage the kids to write and draw their own family dynamics, in order to foster the idea that families are different and special and don't necessarily conform to a set idea.' Her finger points to a few of the drawings, stick people and blob people. One drawing is labelled, "Me, Daddy, Mommy, Sarah, Buffins, Snowball, Winky". Winky is a tiny mouse-looking creature. Another is labelled, "Mom, Nana, Pop-Pop, Me", and another "Me, Dad".
His eyes search for Penny's, partly out of parental pride, partly out of curiosity. This drawing will tell him what she thinks of her home life, this drawing that was intended to be viewed by people outside their home. What does she say when they are not there? Does she edit?
Cathy finds it for him, pointing, 'There.'
Above the door, five figures in a row in front of a boat, little stick hands joined together like two dimensional paper dolls, they are Penny and her family, labelled from left to right: "Me, Mummy, Dad, Daddy, Evan". Under Evan's name is a little >:P.
Ianto looks at his little stick hand holding Lisa's stick hand and Jack's stick hand and Penny and Evan buffering them all (Penny has added a few dolphins on either side, but they look like Blowfish a little bit. One of them is wearing a tie. Also, Jack appears to be standing on a dead shark.), and he remembers now that they're all good.
He snaps a pic of it and texts it to "Lis" and "Jack": We are apparently awesome.
He's not to the car when he gets a volley of return texts:
Lis: Ianto, where is your tie? Clearly we have been remiss.
Jack: Lis-where are your tits?
Lis: Where is your cock? Probably with my tits.
Ianto: THIS IS OUR DAUGHTER'S ART. I'd rather not think she knows about either of those things.
Jack: He's precious when he's in denial.
Lis: I vaguely remember being that thin.
Jack: My hair is FANTASTIC.
***
STOP READING UNLESS YOU ARE BLUE FJORDS. THE REST IS INCREDIBLY INDULGENT.
***
Later that evening, Cathy Burns flips through her menu at the Red Crab and contemplates the scampi. It's cliched to get seafood here. She lives in the Keys, for god's sake, but she can't seem to help it. Scampi is good and local eating is environmentally responsible.
There's a loud laugh in the corner of the restaurant and a small shriek, and then a crab leg flips up in the air and hits the chandelier made from ancient dueling pistols, the kinds with huge wooden handles. Cathy feels as if she should know what they're called, but she doesn't remember. Some teacher she is.
'That is enough, both of you,' a woman's voice warns. British. They have a lot of expats here. 'We can't have them tossing us out of here, too.'
'I used to know how to behave, you know,' a man's voice replies. 'I used to be able to use a fish knife and a serviette and everything.' Cathy snorts at an American calling it a serviette.
'I'm serious, Ianto Jones, that butter sauce is going to-' There is a splatting noise. 'Stain.'
A child laughs, and then a teenager says something like, 'Jesus, I can't go anywhere with you people. You act like goddamn-'
'Oi! Language!' the rest of the table chants out, as if it's a long time joke.
Cathy has to see how, because she's curious. She's not dumb, and she knows when something about a kid's home life is fishy. It's not always abuse or neglect, in fact it's not always a problem. There's nothing wrong with Penny Hallett-Jones anyway, nothing that a bunch of math and reading enrichment won't fix.
She angles herself in her booth, almost into the aisle of the dining room so that she can see the round booth three down from hers, tucked in the corner. And there they are, the Hallet-Joneses: mum dad, brother, Penny and-a tanned handsome man who is probably the American voice she'd heard. An uncle maybe, the partner, a business partner, adopted into the family, sure, Cathy'd had a few of those when she'd grown up in Milwaukee and her father had co-owned the brewery with Uncle Mike.
Except that if her Uncle Mike had wrapped his arm around her mother's shoulders the way this man was to Mrs. Hallett-Jones, he might have found himself an ex-co-owner. Things suddenly slot into place, like putting the last few puzzle pieces in and finally seeing the whole thing. Me, Mummy, Dad, Daddy, Evan (>:P).
The waiter takes her order and she says, 'Scampi,' because that's the first thing she can think of. In the corner, the Hallett-Joneses are finishing their dinners, tossing napkins on the table, haggling over the tip amount ('I don't get this tipping thing,' the American says, and Ianto calls him a cheap git), and surprise wiping each other's faces with wet-naps. The teenager plants his wetnapped hand on Penny's face and scrubs back and forth. 'Lemon-scented attack!'
'Evan,' Ianto says, tossing bills on the table and then rolling his eyes when the American snatches them back up. He waits until the other man is gone before adding another bill on the table. 'Stop disinfecting your sister.'
Evan kisses the top of Penny's head, scruffs her bangs with his knuckles and lets her go. 'Can we get ice cream?'
Mrs. Hallett-Jones rolls her eyes as she passes Cathy's table. 'Good lord, where do you put it all?'
'My hollow leg,' Evan replies as he follows her. Cathy sees the American pick up the bill Ianto had tossed on the table and pocket it before double-timing it to join them as they file past.
Penny sees her and stops. 'Ms. Burns!'
Cathy tries to pretend as if she's just now learned that they are there and does a surprised face. 'Penny! Hello!' These are always awkward moments for her, because it's not that she doesn't care about her students, but out of the classroom is her off-duty, and being out of the classroom is a different thing. She's almost a different person.
Ianto stops behind Penny because she's blocking traffic, and he puts a hand on her shoulder and makes a small face, as if he finds the situation as awkward as Cathy does. That's possibly true. She is in street clothes and he's traded out his dapper suit for a T-shirt and raggedy pair of jeans that probably have strategic holes in places. Cathy approves of strategic holes, she thinks, and then realizes that that kind of thought is exactly why off-duty encounters are awkward.
'Pen, she's eating. You'll see her in school on Monday,' Ianto says. To Cathy he adds, 'It's nice to see you again.'
She's about to open her mouth to reply, but Penny is bulldozed from behind as the American scoops her up and tosses her over his shoulder. 'Say goodbye, Pen.' And he winks at Cathy and strides away.
Pen waves at Cathy from behind the American's shoulder. 'Goodbye, Pen!' and The American smacks her bottom and bounces her on his shoulder.
'Oh you think you're so funny.'
Cathy hears Penny say, 'But I am funny,' before their voices drift off into the lobby and out the door. Ianto shrugs and smiles and then steps back to their table and puts another bill down to replace the one the American took. Cathy senses that this an ongoing argument, like the kind she used to have with Kyle before the divorce. Just another thing that couples do. And then he's off, jogging to catch up with the rest.
She sips her water and looks out the window as they make their way to the van, an old thing with the company logo on the side: Ocean Fantasy Tours, Swim with the dolphins! and a phone number. An art deco dolphin on either side of the white lettering, like the kind that Penny had drawn on her illustration.
Mrs. Hallett-Jones runs when the American chases her with Penny clenched to his back, her little legs wrapped around his waist. He's saying something about Squadron Leader Penny lining up her Spitfire to launch an aerial attack. Evan has the door to the van open and is standing on the runner. Ianto jogs into view and watches the rest of them run about on the asphalt.
Evan says something and the American smacks Ianto's ass as he passes him.
Penny straightens and says something like, 'I scream, you scream we all scream for ice cream,' as they all pile into the van, and even though the muting of the glass, Cathy can hear the subsequent five-part hollering from here. Ianto is the last to get in the driver's side, looking back at the window, as if he can see her, and she jolts with guilt even though he can't.
Mrs. Hallet-Jones's arm dangles from the passenger window as it turns out of the parking lot. They head along the road to the ice cream place down a ways. Cathy thinks that's probably a good idea, and she'll stop on her way home. It is Friday, and she's got two whole days to herself.
She wonders about the story there, of three adults obviously linked romantically, two children who have the same mother, if looks are anything to go by, but well-she's being nosy, and it's none of her business. Especially not when there's no reason to be suspicious of anything amiss.
Still, she thinks as the van disappears completely from view, it was funny to see how people got from one place to the next, wasn't it? From one life to the next, from one person to the next, and, she thinks as the waiter places her plate in front of her, one encounter to the next. What passes for normal in one person's life is completely foreign in another.
She pulls a sheath of papers from her bag and sets them on the table next to her. She has a lot of grading to do. One last glance out at the road as she uncaps her pen, but the van is gone, the Hallett-Joneses have disappeared on their quest for dessert, and everything is tinted the colors of the setting sun.
Just the way it should be.
END
Are you looking at this and thinking, "Dammit, I want fic from Amand-r too!"? Well now you can get it: Here for a longer wait (and right now it looks as if the highest bidder wants me to write a HP mpreg), or here for a (possibly!) shorter but more instantly gratifying hit.