the evil that men do ; capnhotness
The world moves in slow motion, an adrenaline high, and Ianto walks through it like he's wearing blinders. Careless enough in this state to PINpoint onto the front walk instead of the back garden, he leaves the door slightly ajar and his shoes (bearers of bloody footprints up the walk) on the stoop. His jacket gets lost on one of the landings of ( Read more... )
Arriving home from work via his own PINpoint and the back garden, Jack circumvents the entire mess leading up the front walk to the porch and the bloody shoes left there. Instead, he finds a trail of attire leading up from the foyer. Obviously Ianto's clothing, Jack stoops to collect the pieces as he follows them up the stairs, only worried when he finds an alarming few drops of blood on the cloth. Discarding the socks and tie at the top of the stairs, Jack hurries toward the sound of running water, concerned.
Instead the bathroom, Jack finds himself immediately confused by the state of things - an assortment items in the sink, for one - and the fact that, visible through the pane of glass the comprises the door, Ianto is sitting in the corner of the shower, almost entirely clothed. Already out of his coat, Jack is halfway out of his requisite blue shirt by the time he reaches the shower (to note the alarming amount of blood swirling down the drain), where he forgets the rest of the buttons and steps into the shower regardless. "Ianto?" he asks over the spray of water, crouching next to his husband and neglecting to put up pretense contrary to the once-over he's giving Ianto for wounds.
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Jack's presence goes unacknowledged until he speaks, and even then Ianto is slow to look up. It didn't take the running water long to soak through his clothes, the fabric clinging to skin in a soggy mess. The spray of the shower washes away any evidence of tears, but his eyes are red-rimmed and increasingly less vacant, signs of shock replaced with abject acknowledgment of the horror of the evening.
Ianto wants to say something, even as a small, reasonable part of his mind tells him not to worry Jack. There were people there being eaten - but don't make him feel guilty for not being there - but people died ... Inevitably, such thoughts running through his head, he can't bring himself to say a word.
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Clearly, Jack hasn't checked his messages this evening. And in an effort to keep from reminding Ianto of the invitation to Pickman's gala after realizing the subject matter, Jack refrained from mentioning it to the point that he actually forgot the date of the party. If he could easily recall, he might be able to put two and two together (though not to an extent that explains Ianto's reaction or the blood) to better understand Ianto's current mood.
Instead, he runs a hand through Ianto's damp hair, checking for signs of concussion in addition to the obvious signs of shock. Though relieved to discover none of the copious amounts of blood happens to belong to Ianto, that does nothing to quell his fears at the near catatonic response. "Ianto?" he asks again.
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Through what really boils down to, in the end, a rather small matter of miscommunication, Ianto had failed to mention the gallery exhibit, too. He had expected to object to the subject matter of the paintings, but to actually go and find himself needed in a professional capacity, with all the chaos surrounding.
Ianto shifts after a second, a sob catching in his throat, and gives a shake of his head. "Jack," he acknowledges, sounding flat and desperate and yet, somehow, numb to it all.
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The acknowledgment is what Jack needs most of all at the moment. Beyond that, in conjunction with the knowledge that Ianto isn't physically harmed, Jack can let himself back down from the edge of panic and look at the situation logically. "It's all right," he says despite knowing nothing of what's happened, "I've got you." That much, he knows, is the truth.
For a moment, Jack simply folds his arms around Ianto and holds him, giving him the opportunity to let loose the sob caught in his throat (and others) before the daunting task of relocating from the tiled floor of the shower.
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One sob becomes a floodgate opening, and Ianto sinks into Jack's arms, his own hands shaking with the effort. Fingers grip at fabric and trouser braces and the distant, stray thought appears in his mind that it's odd that Jack's clothes are so wet. "They were horrible," he chokes out, the words broken by shudders.
"Shouldn't have gone ... useless ... nothing I could do ... I-I got a few of them out. Couldn't help some of them - I was too late." Ianto gives up on his explanation after that disjointed ramble, clinging on to Jack for dear life.
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None of it makes any sort of sense to Jack, just a confusing and disjointed ramble with no hint of the source. Where has Ianto been? What has he been doing? It's easy to rule out any sort of Torchwood operation in Cardiff, given that he spent the entirety of the evening in the Hub himself, but the possibility of something in London isn't ruled out. A part of him can't help but wonder if this is a post-traumatic response to a particularly intense session with one of those therapists from London, though Jack can't particularly piece together a reason why Ianto would go back after the extreme breach of doctor-patient confidentiality that brought him into the loop concerning Ianto's progress and treatment options.
"I know," Jack answers, always the expert at lying through his teeth to sound confident when others need him to be. "You did everything you could," he soothes, carefully tucking Ianto's head beneath his chin and drawing his husband closer to whatever warmth he can provide; the cold spray of water is doing absolutely nothing for the shock.
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Jack doesn't know, can't know, but Ianto doesn't rob him of the attempt at comfort, either. He's too busy freezing under the cold spray of the shower, and fortunately shaking now more from the cold than the continued resonance of the experience earlier this evening. It has nothing to do with London, or Torchwood, or anything that it normally should, of course - except perhaps beyond a certain sense of responsibility toward the rest of the world that the Institute has burdened them all down with - but another of those inconvenient things that likes to intrude on their lives every now and then. The memories of Torchwood past experiences don't help, of course, but they're hardly the entire cause.
"I didn't," Ianto argues stubbornly. "I could have - I should've been faster - fewer people could have died. Why did anyone have to? It was so - so senseless - I never thought ..."
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Having known Ianto for as long as he has, Jack has learned to pick and choose his battles at the first sign of stubborn argument, even in cases such as this. Instead of immediately responding, he reaches for the knob to turn the shower off.
"C'mon," he urges, draping one of Ianto's arms over his shoulders and sliding an arm of his own around Ianto's waist. "You're in shock. This water isn't going to do you any good." Jack is relying on the fact that Ianto is a logical person, even while shocked, and he'll comply with the order to move when presented with a logical argument.
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Though stubborn, Ianto is still made to follow orders, even if Jack doesn't consider himself to have given one. He's shivering as the water goes off, and it just makes Jack's logical argument sound all the more so. Ianto keeps one hand locked in a death grip around Jack's trouser braces and a good portion of his shirt, and awkwardly climbs to his feet.
"Am I in shock?" he asks after a moment, frowning. The chatter of his teeth might be a good clue.
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"Yes, you are," Jack answers honestly, helping him out of the shower and onto the bath mat in front of the sliding glass door. "Let's not add a bad cold to the mix, shall we?" he wonders, downplaying the seriousness of Ianto sitting under the cold spray of water for however long he was there before Jack arrived home. Still, he's worried first about the medical ramifications of the decision, then the emotional state Ianto is clearly in. Piece by piece, he begins removing Ianto's wet attire (though only after gently coercing Ianto's fingers free from the front of his shirt) in order to replace it with a dry terrycloth robe.
By the time he's stripped to just a towel, adding his own soaked clothes to the steadily growing pile on the floor, Jack is talking just to keep Ianto focused, reminded painfully of the long drive home from the countryside that seems so long ago. "You look better in red, anyway," he finishes, rubbing at Ianto's hair with a towel, having just given a lecture of the evils of hypoxia. Blue lips, he's decided, aren't for Ianto.
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It does take a few seconds before Ianto relents to relinquishing his grip on Jack's shirt, but after that he gives little trouble in the undressing process, even going so far as to attempt to help. Unfortunately, numb fingers and unsteady hands don't quite help with buttons, and he gives up after the very small contribution of his own belt. Wrapped up in the robe, Ianto folds his arms across his chest to harness in the warmth, working purely on instinct at this point, as he's too confused and there aren't very many logical thoughts rattling around in his brain just now.
Ianto can focus on Jack, however, a faintly bemused look on his face as he watches his husband get undressed. Somehow, his brain has connected the fact that Jack shouldn't have been in the shower with clothes on, while not quite reaching the same conclusion in regards to himself. "I was trying to get clean," he explains, a weak gesture back at the shower. The water wasn't so cold when he first got in there. "There was blood - on my shirt - and the hem of my trousers - and my knees."
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"Yeah?" he asks, brushing the towel down Ianto's face to dry a trail of water droplets. The towel is settled around Ianto's shoulders and Jack slides an arm around his husband to lead him out of the bathroom into the bedroom itself. His prescription for the strange situation involves getting Ianto to bed and under a thick blanket.
After locating an undershirt and pants, Jack crawls into bed with Ianto and pulls him into an embrace. "Let me have your hands ... put your feet against mine ... " He tucks Ianto's hands under his arms to warm them and presses a kiss against his temple. "There. You want to talk about it?"
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The foggy thought is lodged somewhere in Ianto's mind that Jack is terribly wonderful and caring to him, and Ianto is filled with a warm fondness that doesn't mesh at all with the earlier upset of the evening, or even the post-stress reaction to it all. By the time he's tucked into bed, Ianto is seeking warmth and proximity for comfort and willingly gravitates toward Jack's body for it.
Contentedly ensconced, Ianto takes a few moments to answer, carefully putting his feet against Jack's. "The gallery opening," he says thickly. "I wasn't going to go, I remembered what you said, and then Njoki came over one night and she was upset about it. She thought it wouldn't be safe, so I thought I could just be there a while as - as backup."
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Jack is terribly caring, though his larger than life ego doesn't extend in size to this particular area of his life, so he's unlikely to actually admit to the wonderful part of the equation. All that seems to matter at the moment is the circulation of blood to Ianto's fingers and toes, first and foremost, though Ianto has his undivided attention when he speaks.
"I'm sorry," is all Jack can find to say, giving Ianto an emphatic squeeze of a hug. "I didn't want you to go, not after I realized what the art would be like, so I didn't mention it. I hoped you'd forget, then I forgot." But the information doesn't mesh with Ianto's response nor the amount of blood that had washed out of his clothing. "What happened?"
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It is all fine that Jack doesn't admit to the wonderful part of it, because Ianto is, typically, more than willing enough to remind him of it. Unfortunately, his fingers and ties are starting to hurt, tingling with pins-and-needles sensation as the blood flow gets started back through all his appendages with the application of warmth.
"The art was just the beginning," Ianto replies, shuddering at the memory - and, comparatively, how mild it had been ... at first. "I wore the talisman that came with the invitation, and Njoki gave me a ring. I didn't realize ... not everyone had a talisman, Jack. After the artist showed up, there were these - these - creatures, I don't even know how to describe them, or what they were called. They started attacking the guests who weren't protected. The doors were locked. It was ... it was slaughter."
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