( open to capnhotness )
The call happened while Ianto was buried under the alarming mauve duvet and one of Jack’s arms, and possibly one of his legs, as well. The trill of the phone was distant, at first, muffled by the squishy pillow surrounding his head - then Torchwood-borne instinct kicked in and the noise melded from mere annoyance into a cohesive alert. He groped ( Read more... )
Ianto staggered back under the weight of his sister because, although she was rail thin, what mass she did carry was solid muscle. He grunted as she hugged him a little more tightly than was entirely necessary, returned the embrace with a light squeeze of his own. It was good to see her again - she was taller than he remembered, although not much different, otherwise. When she finally let go of him, he shot Jack a helpless look. "My sister. She's in training to be the first girl to join the Black-and-Ambers."
Come to notice, she was wearing a very horrible yellow and black striped shirt, with a pair of yellow shorts - albeit a little (or a lot) shorter than was strictly regulation. The girl disentangled herself from her brother and stepped back, wheeling around to face their new visitor with hands on her hips. "And who do we have here, now?"
"This is Jack," Ianto supplied, wanting to get a proper introduction in. "Jack Harkness, meet my sister, Winnifred Jones."
"Fred," she corrected brusquely, giving her older brother a sharp elbow in the ribs as she held out the other hand to offer a handshake. Her entire demeanor seemed to change, suddenly, bold and straight-forward tomboy gone and replaced by a perfectly prim and proper lass. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Jack." As an aside to Ianto, she added, "Mum didn't mention you were bringing a good looking friend." Never mind that he looked old enough to be her dad. The Joneses were flexible people!
Reply
"Good to meet you, Fred," he said as he accepted the proffered hand with his typical brilliant sort of grin, which did well to hide the fact that he was perhaps a little thrown off balance by the reversal (wherein he was properly introduced to someone anticipating a handshake - instead of introducing himself while making the offer). Her assessment - appraisal? - sparked a laugh from him and Jack swayed a little back towards Ianto to throw an arm around the other man's shoulders, almost as if he intended to ground himself against his lover. It wasn't entirely that he needed the physical contact to remind him of the promise he'd made not but a few minutes before - ...just that he needed the physical contact to remind him of the promise he'd made (best behavior, no fifty-first century, no flirting) not but a few minutes before. It was almost second nature, a conditioned sort of response, to reply to such statements with positive, reinforcing flirtations of his own, after all. "Hell, he didn't even mention it to me. You're bringing a good looking friend, Ianto? ...You know, we could have carpooled."
Captain Jack Harkness meekly staving off compliment? It might have been a little painful to behold, such a sudden shift in attitude, but he looked entirely unpained by it - just amusedly modest. In fact, to the casual observer Jack might have even been described as somewhat embarrassed. However, for those paying special attention, he wore it like a man who had only learned the definition of the word from a book without any accompanying first-hand experience (which was, in fact, exactly how it happened). Blushing, after all, was not an instinctive response for him.
Reply
The wry grin lingering on Fred's face suggested that she didn't believe a word of Jack's would-be modest act, but she restrained herself to a polite - but firm - handshake and a knowing glance in her brother's direction that just had an unspoken mm-HMM attached.
The garishly yellow-and-black-clad girl stepped back into the house and swung the door open wide, gesturing them inside before she closed it again. "Everyone's out in the back garden," she explained. "I came in to change. You're just in time for food - Dad's doing kebabs."
Ianto stepped into the cool entryway of the house, taking Jack's hand to tug him along as he followed Fred through the rooms. It was fairly standard, somewhat blocky layout that suggested late seventies or early eighties construction: doorway facing a steep stairwell that led up to a second floor, with the lounge off to the left, dining room to the right, and kitchen straight on through that had a door onto the back garden. Cozy, maybe a little too close quartered for the amount of people, but it didn't seem crowded.
When Fred reached to slide open the backdoor, she paused and looked at her brother. "Ianto - why don't you go say hello to everyone first? I'd like to talk to Jack about something."
Ianto hesitated, giving her a suspicious look.
"Go on!" she insisted, not only opening the door for him but shoving him out as well. He didn't get a chance to protest as she slid the door back shut behind him and turned the latch - although he did look plaintively back before descending into the sea of hellos, hugs, and handshakes.
"So!" Fred turned back to Jack, a bright smile on her face. "How long have you and Ianto been dating, anyway?"
Reply
At the question, which he could actually appreciate for the straight-forward and bright way in which it was asked, Jack merely blinked for a moment. "Are we that obvious or has he been bragging?" Harkness asked, dropping all former modesty and sliding easily back into what would have been considered more his 'usual' attitude - casual confidence and stunning charisma. Then, with a serious edge to his amusement, Jack answered the question in a less evasive manner, "We've known each other for years, Fred, but our relationship has been - complicated. I'm pretty sure we'd give conflicting answers about how long we've been dating, everyone has a different definition, right? What matters is that I love him."
So much for worrying about how the Joneses felt about same-sex relationships in a historical context. Apparently Jack pulled no punches.
Reply
Fred jumped up to sit on the edge of the kitchen counter, already short shorts riding up to an even more indecent level, as she listened to Jack's explanation of his relationship with her brother. She leaned over and retrieved a perspiring glass of lemonade that she'd been drinking before going to answer the door, and wiped dripping water from her legs after taking a sip.
"It's pretty obvious," she said, continuing on with her campaign of blatant honesty. "I mean, for one, it's not every day Ianto bothers to bring someone home with him. Two, you usually only try to bring someone home to meet your parents that will be able to stand it - which excludes close friends, because they might run off screaming in the opposite direction. Three, well, I can just tell. Call it a gift."
Fred's conclusion was a little smug, but offset by the fact that she smiled prettily at their visitor. "I'm glad for Ianto, he was always so bloody emo anyway." She hopped down from the counter after finishing off the lemonade, and walked around to set the glass of ice in the sink. When she came back around, she fixed a scrutinizing gaze on Jack. "I'm not going to make things awkward for you two - which includes not telling Mum and Dad. Not that they wouldn't approve, just - I don't see any reason to spell it out. They'll figure it out on their own. Eventually."
Reply
"Emo?" Jack scanned through his mental lexicon for a definition of the vaguely familiar word. (Early twenty-first century slang 'emo,' derived from emotional and used to describe a counterculture best known for its fashion style, attitude, and whiny music - excessive eyeliner, melodrama, bordering on ridiculous.) The idea of Ianto fitting into the stereotypical definition of emo, the one that was floating around in his head from historical research and observing the latest fashion trends, was - to say the very least - hilarious and the Captain made no attempt to hide the fact.
He only stopped laughing when faced with the scrutinizing look from the young woman, toning himself down to a grin that was no doubt meant to be perfectly charming. "Awkward? I'll be perfectly honest with you, Fred, I don't know the meaning of the word. It wouldn't bother me in the slightest to walk outside right now and inform your lovely parents that I'm madly, devastatingly in love with their son. But ... Ianto might appreciate a more tactful approach." There was a slight pause, thoughtful and on a subject matter that roused a quiet chuckle from him. "I was a little worried, though. It's hard to tell how people will react to - certain situations. You have no idea how relieved I am to know your parents would approve of something a little less, ah, conventional?"
It was such an odd thing for Jack Harkness to say, but he managed to pull it off without making the words stilted or like a completely foreign language.
Reply
"My brother is braver than I," Fred declared, hands perched on her hips as she gazed out the window in the back door. From the barbecue where he was marinating kebabs, her father - a tall and broad man in a garish yellow jersey of his own - threw up a large hand in a wave. She gestured back to stall him, then dropped her hand down to the door handle, and looked back at their guest again. "I'd never bring a bloke home to Mum and Dad."
The girl paused, a wicked grin on her face. "Anyway - I don't believe a bit of your modest act, Jack Harkness, but I like you. Anyone who could keep my brother away from home for a couple of years must be worth something." Blunt? She just liked to call it how she saw it. "I'm sure my parents will love you - just be charming, like rugby, and - oh - I hope your Welsh is good."
That said, she wrenched open the door and bounced outside, catching a pass of the rugby ball thrown at her from a cousin.
Ianto, meanwhile, was standing rather awkwardly in a cluster of women, holding a baby that was drooling on his shirt, and looking uncomfortable about it.
Reply
That was saying quite a bit. Captain Jack Harkness usually didn't engage in worry - at least excessively so - even in the newest and strangest of situations, as meeting the parents of one's lover actually was for him. Surprisingly enough, Jack was very unfamiliar with that pareticular part of the twenty-first century dating ritual.
Jack, however, did not seem particularly worried. He just grinned - in fact, looking not entirely unlike a kid who'd been caught with his hand in the cookie jar before dinner and was attempting to illude punishment by being adorable and charming. "Unbelievable modesty or not, I'm glad I've managed to win another Jones over. Now for your parents. I'll just stick with being, yeah, charming and rugby-loving and - " Welsh? He paused before following Fred out the door, just a second stilted in his step, and grinned again. Jack loved Welsh. He understood it, of course, but speaking it was a beast of an entirely different nature. He did not, however, have any problem whatsoever with butchering a lovely language with his "American" accent. At the very least, it would be a talking point with Ianto's relatives.
Outside, Jack allowed himself to part with Fred (who seemed somewhat distracted with rugby) and stood near the door for a handful of moments simply scanning the backyard. The scene, for someone from the fifty-first century, was not unlike a Norman Rockwell painting - delicious and historically domestic in a way Jack was, all this considered, almost entirely unfamiliar with in actual practice. He spotted Ianto, who was looking awkward with the tiny drooling burden he had been handed, and Jack couldn't hide his amusement. Crossing the distance between the door and the cluster of women, the Captain decided to do exactly what charming captains throughout history had always done for their good-looking lovers in undesirable situations - with a twist.
"Hello, ladies," he greeted the women with a flash of charm, coming to a stop next to Ianto and offering each of the unfamiliar persons a hand for shaking. "Jack Harkness. Hopefully Ianto hasn't been telling you absolutely horrible things about me. If he has, err on the side of caution and only believe, oh, half of anything he's said? For my sake. - And who's this gorgeous little one?" This, of course, was directed to the infant, who Jack was more than willing to take off Ianto's awkward, perhaps even unskilled, hands with a motion. "May I?"
Reply
Ianto had carefully schooled his features into a patient expression, although he did try for something a little more animated than his typically bland expression worn around the Hub. This was his family, he had to remember, and although they had embraced him in his return with open arms and picked up as if no time had passed at all, Ianto was having a little more difficult of a time remembering how their interaction went. Lisa had been his single-minded purpose in life for so long; then it became his job. And now here he was, trying to pick up the pieces and remember how to put himself back together into a rounded whole.
The ladies all began to 'ooh' and 'ahh' as the very classically handsome man came out the back door behind tomboy Winnifred, then practically lumped themselves into a huddle of speculation. "Is that your friend, Ianto?" his Aunt Liz questioned. Before he had a chance to answer, the women collectively moved backward - almost as one entity - and spread further apart with bright smiles on their faces. There were some whispers exchanged at the back of the ground (not so discreetly, either) about how he was American, too. They were speaking in Welsh - assuming, more than likely, that the stranger would not understand.
Ianto tried not to look overly relieved when Jack appeared, although internally he wanted to sink into the ground as his group of aunts, cousins, and in-laws began to descend upon the Captain. He willingly handed over the 'bundle of joy,' as people enjoyed calling them, shrinking back and scratching at his neck. There was no need for him to volunteer introductions, as the women were doing well enough going around, shaking Jack's proffered hand and letting him know what their own names were.
After a moment, the commotion having somewhat cleared - but before the ladies could start asking a lot of prying questions - Ianto's mother came rushing up. She was built much like her children, undoubtedly where their slender genes came from, as her husband was much broader. A bit tall for a woman at about five-foot-eight, trim but not skinny, suggesting athleticism ran in the family (in all except, apparently, her black sheep of a middle child).
"Jack Harkness, is it?" she asked when she came up, politely speaking English for his sake - although it was heavily accented. "Pleasure to finally meet you!"
Noting that his mother seemed to be failing on the introduction front, Ianto cleared his throat and noted, "Jack - this is my mother. She ... already seems to know who you are." Cue odd smile.
The baby, meanwhile, seemed to have satisfied itself with drooling on Ianto, and instead was busily grabbing at handfuls of the new guy's shirt, trying to figure out how to chew the cloth without the aid of teeth.
Reply
Jack did not look quite so 'descended upon' as Ianto might have felt. He loved people by nature, loved Ianto's family by extension of loving the man himself, and not even the most annoying of extended family members could have shaken his enjoyment of the moment. The bundle of joy (which, hey, was what Jack happened to call them) was taken from the put-upon Ianto with more experienced hands than one might have expected from a man who was little more a - well - time pirate and leader of a renegade outpost dedicated to the capture and study of alien technology in Britain. Somehow, just somehow, Jack managed to look as at ease holding the baby against his shoulder as he did standing on the edge of the roof of a very tall building - as if that was the only place in the world he could manage to belong, as if everything he did he could do with ease and a charming sort of grace.
Internally, however, he was experiencing a minor bit of panic over the fact that he was, indeed, holding a tiny little human baby and he'd not done that in - hell - more years than he could imagine and, oh God, it was beginning to squirm and gum at his shirt and what if he dropped it? And then the panic gave way - as he discovered a delicate little equilibrium with the child and his own strength and the unfamiliar influx of fear into his nervous system - and Jack began to wonder if taking the baby was such a good idea, with regards to the fact that he'd soon have one of his own and how Ianto seemed to feel about that.
Thankfully, Mrs. Jones arrived to interrupt the careful way he was studying his lover's face as he chuckled and tried to pry a tiny hand away from his shirt collar. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Mrs. Jones," Jack countered genuinely, leaving off the battle for control of his collar to offer the woman a hand. "Well Ianto, you did leave alone with your sister and her interrogative methods for a whole five minutes. I wouldn't be surprised if she reported her findings to your mother. I am, after all, a very interesting person. And highly modest." He gave Mrs. Jones a playful, almost conspiratorial wink to punctuate the joke.
"Though the bigger point of interest with Fred seems to be that you've brought a friend home with you. This could be because your sister asserts that you're emo, but I completely disagree - and I did admirably defend your honor." He hadn't, really, but it was a nice thing to say, just to drop the ambiguously gay hint to Mrs. Jones without being excessively obvious about it. If Fred had been able to 'just tell,' Jack would bet money her mother could to. (There was silly twenty-first century slang for that sort of thing, but he couldn't remember the correct portmanteau.)
It was quite likely that the flood of unreserved Jack Harkness style wit, subtle innuendo, and dazzling grin after his failed attempts at modesty and reserve with the aforementioned Jones sister would be - a little too much to handle. Admittedly, coupled with the fact that there was an infant gumming at his shirt collar and he was standing amongst of gaggle of gossiping ladies, this must have been a shockingly strange thing to behold.
Reply
The ladies giggled amongst themselves as Jack responded, having the good grace to look at least a little embarrassed at being called out about their gossiping, and soon enough dispersed back to whatever they had been concerned with doing before the new visitor came along to be the topic of discussion.
Mrs. Jones, meanwhile, accepted Jack's hand and gave it a firm shake with a grip not unlike that of her daughter. She smiled brightly at him, and of course she could tell - she would have been able to tell even if Fred hadn't given her the nod when she came bounding outside - but she was hardly going to point it out. There were those good Welsh Presbyterians among them, and naturally some of them adhered to the outdated tenants of religion that suggested a long list of grievances for various 'lifestyles.'
"I'm quite excited Ianto's brought someone along," she confided to Jack in a mock-conspiratorial tone, "sometimes I'm a bit concerned he's not social at all."
If Ianto could have sunk into the ground just then, he might have considered it - in fact, he was fairly certain there was an alien device (or several) lying around the archives in the Hub that could accomplish just that. Pity foresight had not suggested he bring it along, even if there was a strict policy against removal of alien artefacts in Torchwood. He loved his mother, really he did, but sometimes she could be so ... embarrassing. Of course, parents were good for that.
"Mum," he protested, trying not to sound like he was sixteen, "really -"
"Oh, now I've gone and embarrassed him!" she declared, laughing. "I'm quite sorry, darling."
That only made it worse. Ianto retreated helplessly closer to Jack, as if that could defend him from the bubble of his mother's potential for embarrassment.
Mrs. Jones' smile turned into a bit of a grin. "Well, I'll leave you boys alone - the kebabs should be done soon - hope you brought your appetite!"
Reply
Leave a comment