Fic: Cake or Death? Jack/Ianto, (Owen/Tosh), Gwen
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood or any of the characters therein. No money is being made from this silly, silly piece of work.
A/N: Okay, so it’s half past four in the morning and I’ve been marathon-ing Torchwood all night high on fever medication. This is what you get: Utter and complete pointless fluff that probably doesn’t make the least bit of sense. Just drunken nonsense, really, so bear with me.
Cake or Death?
So they were all pretty drunk. It had been a hard couple of... well months really, and the entire team was drained and rather tired of it all; even Jack, though he'd never admit it.
After yet another exhausting hunt through some really class A sewage for yet another adventurous Weevil, he’d neither been able nor willing to gather enough boss-vibes to protest when Owen had broken out scotch and glasses from who knows where.
For some reason they had congregated in Jack’s office. He was slumped behind the desk in his armchair, and Gwen was curled up in the guest chair with her feet on the table. Owen and Tosh were sprawled on pillows scavenged from the dilapidated down stairs couch, decidedly NOT cuddling. As the night wore on and the alcohol flowed, Ianto had moved from his perch on the far side of the table to sitting very close to Jack, facing him, their legs almost touching.
Jack thought he might have been momentarily distracted by the almost tangible heat that was rising off Ianto’s leg to radiate through the fine wool of his trousers, when the next words he heard were “cake or death?”
“Huh?” he asked, looking at Owen like he’d suddenly grown purple pom-poms out of both arms and started cheering for Weevils’ rights to marriage.
The surly Englishman heaved an exasperated sigh and threw a long suffering look at Tosh before repeating: “Cake or death?”
Jack stared at his medical officer, for a moment pondering what standard procedure was for when one’s only trained doctor went nuts. Who did the diagnosis?
Surely Ianto would know. He knew everything; he was clever like that.
“Look, Jack,” Owen continued, before Jack had a chance to ask, “it’s not that hard a question. Cake or death, which would you choose? Me an’ Tosh would both choose cake, and I suppose Gwen would too?”
Gwen nodded once, her head rolling a little on her shoulders. “Most definitely,” she slurred. “I love cake I do.”
Jack thought about it. Even after all this time spent on Earth, he still didn’t get what the hell his team was on about most of the time. Cake or death? What kind of a question was that anyway? Was it a moral dilemma of some sort? A psychological test maybe? Some kind of team building, most likely.
“How much cake is there?” he asked.
“What has that got to do with anything?” Owen riposted. “Look just… a guy comes up to you and asks you: ‘Cake or death?’ What do you say?”
The alcohol was sloshing around in his stomach, a burning tide battling for supremacy against the heat given off by the warm body next to him. Jack looked up at Ianto.
"What did Ianto choose?" he asked.
"He has...not," Tosh replied with all the concentratred effort of someone very drunk, trying to sound sober and in control. Her head was resting on Owen's shoulder; neither of them seemed to notice or care.
“I’d say ‘death’,” Jack finally replied.
“You’d say what?” Owen asked incredulously.
“I’d say ‘death’,” Jack repeated absently, getting a little lost in the nearly unnoticable crinkling around blue eyes as his lover smiled at him in fond amusement. Such a rare sight: Ianto really smiling. Jack was happy that Ianto was happy.
A few seconds passed, the silence only broken by Tosh’s quiet giggles and Gwen’s gentle snoring. Owen was opening and closing his mouth like a fish gaping for air.
“But, but. That’s completely daft! Why would you say ‘death’?” he finally managed.
Jack’s hand was absently running up and down Ianto’s calf, searching out the pressed fold in the fabric and playing with it. The Welshman had been silent through the exchange, observing the ‘festivities’ as it were in his usual unassuming fashion. He’d no doubt be the last to leave, taking the time to put a blanket over Gwen’s sleeping form and be up at sunrise to clean up Owen’s vomit from the floor.
“Well,” Jack finally said, returning Ianto’s smile with a grin of his own, “what if there wasn’t enough cake?”
-Fin-