there's gonna be an accident ;; capnhotness, in_absolutio
Late night at the Hub and unexpected Weevil activity send Ianto Jones to bed alone. He conscientiously - and perhaps with unrealistic hope - leaves Jack's side of the bed empty, and curls up with half the pillows and most of the blankets, and a dog on his feet, to sleep. It's blissful and warm and lasts naught-point-two minutes before Ianto ( Read more... )
While the captain may have been disappointed in the lack of actually being able to get into the bedroom the night before, he's running incorrectly on several counts. He might have been locked out, yes, but not for any of the reasons he might think; and there is not an absence of coffee downstairs ... but not because Ianto made him any. (Though, if Jack had gone and tried the handle, he would've found it unlocked this morning.)
Rather, there's a fellow standing at the kitchen counter with his back turned to Jack. A man of the average looking variety from behind, slim and normal, with dark brown hair that's still damp from a recent shower, but not sticking up or flying about in any sort of suspicious giveaway ways. He's wearing (Ianto's) a bathrobe, and currently bouncing on the balls of his bare feet while waiting for the toaster to pop.
When it does - mere seconds after Jack talks into the kitchen - the mysterious man grabs toast from toaster and drops it onto a plate, then goes for the nearest jar of marmalade or jam or what-have-you. He's completely oblivious to the presence of anyone else, humming to himself.
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Downstairs, Jack stops short of entering the kitchen at the threshold and finds himself staring at the back of Ianto's dressing gown, as worn by an utter stranger. There's a sick, familiar-but-foreign twist in his gut, aching all the way up to lodge painfully in his chest, as he watches the man prowl about his kitchen. Clearly, since he's all about jumping to several sorts of conclusions this morning, this man is the reason why Ianto's bedroom door had been locked last night and, though he's associating the odd twist of his insides to the mere idea of it, Jack can't say he's entirely surprised. Why not? Turn about is fair play, as he's said all along, and maybe it was only a matter of time until Ianto decided that he was done playing the role of the noble sacrifice.
"Morning," Jack greets evenly, lingering in the doorway still, perhaps without the intent of actually entering the kitchen. His tone, somehow, remains unaffected by the dread and fear and hurt burrowing into his heart to settle in and remain.
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Of course, the man - the Doctor - should have expected Jack to come home. He knew when he turned up here that this was not just Mr. Jones's house, but Jack's as well. The house that the two humans live in together. The Doctor is perfectly fine with that - rather thrilled by it, actually, being back in this pocket of time where Jack is alive and happy - but actually encountering the man complicates things a bit. He's been recklessly careful, dancing around the potential and the reality of meeting Jack in this timeline, a Jack who doesn't know him - at least not in this regeneration - yet.
Turning around sets a pang to the Doctor's hearts, as he regards familiar eyes and posture and mannerisms that are just slightly enough off to actually take reconciling with the man he most recently knew. He pastes on a smile two seconds after letting it falter, making the situation seem awkward - a bad thing to do, considering what Jack is thinking, unbeknownst to him - and gestures with his plate. "Morning. Toast?"
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Of course, Jack reads guilt - or something like it - in every awkward gesture added to the already tense (at least for him) moment, his suspicions mounting the longer he stands there and watches this smug - yes, he's decided on smug - bastard use his kitchen and toast his bread and drink his coffee and fuck his husband. That's a massive assumption. Jack isn't prone to making such assumptions, hadn't been until this emotional entanglement and something like suppose monogamy and commitment and partnership registered in front of God and everyone with rings and anniversaries and I love you more than I can say ...
"No thanks," he answers, surprised by how detached and calm his voice sounds to his own ears. "I'm not much of a breakfast person."
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Something seems amiss about Jack, and the Doctor - in spite of having known the man longer than any other human, ever - fails to realize what it is. Perhaps he's simply too detached from the proprieties and social norms of human culture by this point in his life, having spent little time visiting Earth anymore since he stopped really having human companions aside from a Jack this one hasn't become yet. He pauses with his toast mid-way to his mouth and gives a little bit of a shrug.
"A shame," he states after a pause. "I hear you make an excellent eggy in a basket." The Doctor sets his plate back down and gestures to the drip-pot of coffee. "Coffee, at least? I'm afraid it's not as good as Ianto's, but it's still caffeine!"
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It might have been all right, in a strange and almost endurable way, if this random stranger was only that: a random stranger. Nameless. Unimportant. Ships passing in the night, the cold and lonely night. It happens, Jack understands and accepts. It's just sex.
But it isn't. He isn't. They're friends. This man and Ianto are friends. They know each other, swap stories, talk about their lives over the good coffee Ianto makes. Are they lovers? Why would it be so bad if they were? It wouldn't. Jack knows it wouldn't, but the way he feels contradicts everything he understands and all the logical sense in his head. It wouldn't be the end of the world, if Ianto were happy with another, but it almost feels like the end of his own world.
"No, thank you," Jack answers, realizing after the fact that he's no doubt being extremely rude, if not politely so, to someone he should for all intents and purposes regard as a guest. Even if he's a guest who's turned Jack's preconceived notions on their heads. "I'm not feeling well. I just wanted a glass of water to take a few aspirin with." Which, once he wills himself to step into the kitchen, he obtains in addition to the bottle of pills resting on the bottom shelf of the cabinet above the skin, behind some perhaps out-dated cough syrup.
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Quietly observant, the Doctor tracks Jack's progress across the kitchen, trying to do so subtly while gnawing on the edge of a piece of toast. It hurts and soothes, all at once, to have the man's presence near; the solidity of a universal constant, a fact. Once, the Doctor had cringed away from that, then he'd grown to adjust and accept Jack for what and who he was. Now, with Jack gone, truly gone, from his own timeline and general sphere of existence, it's almost a guilty pleasure to be here and get to see him again. But the idea of seeing Jack happy ... that seems to be backfiring a little.
Turning in such a way that makes the bruise near his jawline more readily evident, standing starkly purple-green against white skin, the Doctor reaches out to brush his hand against Jack's arm as the man moves past him. "Is something the matter?" he asks, perfectly concerned - as if he's completely unaware that Jack might have some reason to be upset over him.
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The touch is surprising, almost startling, and Jack works around the spontaneous spasm of anger at the audacity - disgust, maybe a little too - in order to open the bottle of aspirin and get through the line of questioning without twitching. "Just ... hung over," he supplies, lying rather effortlessly in an attempt to explain away his apparently noticeable behavior. A hangover, Jack things, would explain everything nicely.
"What about you?" he wonders, seeking to keep the focus of the conversation off himself and the sudden spike of jealous (yes, that's the word he'd been looking for to pin on the emotions) at the realization that this man, whoever he is, is gorgeous and nice and compassionate. No wonder Ianto likes him. "You look a little rough." Jack indicates the bruise casually.
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Trying to keep the conversation moving, the Doctor decides not to point that Ianto thought Jack was working the night before. Additionally, the Time Lord knows that Jack rarely if ever actually drinks, and then likely not enough to develop any hangover to amount to anything afterward. But it's not his place to call Jack out on the lie - if, indeed, it is a lie - and so he says nothing on the subject.
"Hmm?" he questions instead, before realizing Jack means the bruise on his face. The Doctor raises his hand to cover it, the flesh cool but tender to his touch, and thinks about the argument he had with the Master - the one-sided argument, and how Koschei had driven him away from the TARDIS, landing him here to begin with. Oh, how vexed the Master would be if he knew the Doctor were talking to Jack, here and now ... "Oh, just a bit of a - misunderstanding."
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Unfortunately, Jack is ignorant of the man's intimate knowledge of him, blissfully unaware that he's known so well by someone he considers a stranger. He is sure, at least, that if Ianto had this man over, this man he's never mentioned before, it was likely under the pretense of Jack's long evening at work - with which his current story does not jive. But, in all fairness, this is the first he's heard of Ianto's still nameless friend.
"Put some ice on it," Jack recommends, popping four aspirin and gulping down the entire glass of water. Once the bottle is put away and glass rinsed, he moves away and back towards the kitchen door. "Nice meeting you," he lies almost pleasantly. "Tell Ianto I headed back to the office early if he wakes up?"
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"Tell Ianto what?"
It's both a wonderful and terrible moment for Ianto to choose to appear in the doorway of the kitchen, still slightly bleary-eyed and missing his bathrobe. If not for the sight of the Doctor over Jack's shoulder - oh, how his mind is working quickly to come up with an explanation for that - then he would probably be convinced that the entire night prior was just some kind of bizarre dream. Ianto rakes his fingers through his bed hair, less setting it to rights and more sending everything else sticking up awkwardly.
He's pleased and relieved to see Jack, and yet can't figure out why he also feels a little afraid. How long has Jack been home, and has he had a chance yet to figure out that the man in his kitchen is a Lord of Time and Space?
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"That I've got an early day today," Jack supplies easily, as if he isn't startled by his husband's sudden presence and unsettled by the number of knots twisting in his stomach. For a reason he can only begin to describe, he wants out - of the kitchen, the situation, the entire house - and can't think of any other good reason to do so. "Sorry," he goes on, pausing to press a quick kiss to Ianto's cheek as he brushes past him out of the kitchen. "Last night was a nightmare. I've got a ton a loose ends to tie up this morning. You kids have fun."
Though he doesn't mean to, and obviously doesn't notice that he's done it, there's something in the inflection of his voice during the last statement that suggests little more than complacent hurt at the situation. He gets it, he understands what's going on, and that's fine. Jack is already halfway upstairs by the time he realizes his mistake.
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It's upon watching them in a certain, expectant way - ready to see Jack light up the room, ready to just see how obvious the love is between the two of them - that the Doctor realizes that something is amiss. Jack answers with too much alacrity, in too much of a hurry to leave, too escape. It's then that the last puzzle piece really slots into place for the Doctor. His eyes widen as he watches Jack flee the kitchen, hearing that last statement. He wants to go after him, but remembers carefully that in this timeline, it's not his place.
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Really still a bit slow on the uptake, Ianto stands still and stunned. He lets Jack kiss him on the cheek and keep going, and lets that last audacious statement hang in the air before he turns to realize that Jack really is leaving. Jolted into action by that epiphany, Ianto falls into step behind him, bare feet padding softly on the hard wood as he rushes to catch up. "Jack --"
You kids have fun does it for him. Really, Jack, really?
"Wait, stop," Ianto pleads, stumbling up behind Jack until he's close enough to grab the other man's hand.
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Really.
At the top of the stairs, Jack does pause just long enough to give Ianto the edge he needs to overtake them, grab his hand, coerce him to stop where he otherwise wouldn't, doesn't want to, almost can't. "I'm sorry," he apologizes immediately, an unexpected level of sincerity in his voice - he really is sorry for his reaction to what he perceives as fact (rather than his assumption of something altogether incorrect). "I'm being rude, I know. I didn't know you had someone over last night. I'd stay and meet him, but I really did leave things unfinished at work last night. There's a screaming Weevil in the vaults giving Janet hell, I'd hate for them to rip through the concrete to get at each other ... "
It's true, whether or not he'd initially planned to actually drag himself into work three hours early to fix it.
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Encouraged at least by the fact that he has not been shaken off, Ianto takes a firmer grip on Jack's hand and laces their fingers together, and moves up two more steps in order to be only one down from the other man. The posture he has to adopt in doing so is subtly submissive, standing one step lower and forced to tilt his chin up - bare his neck - in order to really look up at Jack. Ianto finds that the accusation in Jack's lack of accusation stings more than he would ever anticipate, maybe just the realization that Jack would think it of him. The same as that night with Njoki, when she'd taken the nightmares from him - and nothing ever happened aside from the innocence of sleep in proximity to another warm body.
"I didn't have him over," he protests. "It was really late and he showed up. He needed someone to talk to, and I let him in."
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