They Come in Pairs - 5/?
Jack/Ianto
NC-17
set between 1x08 and 1x13
No action in this chapter, but I promise angst and excitement in future ones. And pretty please leave comments. They feed my muse.
They Come in Pairs - 5
-----
Owen fumbled to answer his phone, if only to make that damned ringing finally stop. Before he could ask who was calling and what the bloody hell they wanted, Toshiko began rambling at him faster than he could make any sense of. Something about an alien device, Ianto, quarantine, and Jack putting the Hub into lockdown.
So basically, they had the day off?
"Brilliant," he mumbled, hanging up on Tosh who was still talking. He reached over the side of his bed to yank the alarm clock's plug from the wall, then rolled over and went back to sleep.
-----
Jack stood at the foot of his bed, watching Ianto sleep. He was definitely out cold, the sedative doing its job. Jack reached down and grabbed the blanket that Ianto was lying on top of, giving it a tug to pull it free. Ianto'd be much more comfortable underneath it.
His gaze moved from bare toes up to Ianto's waist. His pulling the blanket loose had caused the sweatpants to slide an inch or two lower, leaving a gap of skin showing between that material and the t-shirt, revealing Ianto's hipbone. And black ink.
Since when did Ianto have a tattoo? One that had managed to go unnoticed when Jack had been peeling away bloodstained clothing. It looked like a backward KC with a line over it. Which wasn't any of Jack's business, but who was he kidding, he was going to look. He moved to the side of the bed, then placed a single finger on Ianto's waist and drew the material down a little farther.
It wasn't backwards, but rather had been upside down. One word, all caps and underlined.
JACK
"Son of a bitch!" Ignoring however hot it might be that his name was written on Ianto's hipbone, Jack didn't hesitate in crossing whatever moral line there was against undressing an unconscious employee and jerked both sweatpants and boxers down indecently low. The "tattoo" indeed hadn't been there before.
died risen-mitten retcon
JACK
He turned and spotted the pen on the table beside the bed. Ianto was more clever than Jack gave him credit for. Not only had he managed to leave himself a note during Jack's conversation with Toshiko, he'd done it completely unnoticed, and also left the message in a place where he'd be certain to see it even without the memory of writing it and that Jack wouldn't find, at least in theory.
He smiled fondly at the sleeping man. "I knew I kept you around for more than your looks and coffee." He headed for his bathroom to get the soap. "But you should never have trusted me to respect your modesty."
As he fetched the bar of soap and wet a towel, he wondered if scrubbing away the ink was actually the right thing to do. He'd been so preoccupied with the decision to drug Ianto that he hadn't even realized he'd fixed coffee instead of tea. And for Ianto to attempt retconning him with a kiss... there had to have been real anger behind that.
If Ianto found out what he'd done, Jack wasn't sure he would ever be forgiven. He thought again about what Ianto had said before passing out. If they both died, it was meaningless. If Jack got himself killed along with Ianto, then Ianto's sacrifice had been for nothing. He wondered how he hadn't caught the meaning of that statement earlier.
His entire relationship with Ianto was based on deception, a lack of communication, and betrayal, and he was only adding to it. They were constantly fucking things up between them, and yet underneath it all, Ianto was willing to die for him. And perhaps more importantly, he hadn't exactly objected to the idea of an actual date. Messed up though it might be, whatever relationship it was that had been slowly forming between them, it was something real. Jack wondered if he was risking destroying that.
The phone rang then, and Jack knew who it was without needing to check the caller ID. He'd drugged her and been forgiven, although that had only been a small dose, just enough to allow her to walk away if she really wanted to, but if she found out about the second glove, he wasn't sure she'd be so understanding.
He needed to stick with his cover story of half-truths. Ianto'd been exposed to an artifact of unknown origins, and Jack was placing him under indefinite quarantine.
He set down the soap and picked up the phone. "Hello, Gwen."
He'd tell her the same thing he'd told Tosh, and neither of them would be permitted to enter the Hub until there was no longer any trace of the wound in Ianto's chest.
-----
For somebody who'd done so much of it, Jack thought he should be better at waiting. He'd placated Gwen and Toshiko with reassurances that he had the situation under control, scrubbed the ink from Ianto's skin and the coffee from his wall, and then painstakingly burned bloodstained clothing. Now all that was left was the uneasy anticipation of getting slowly shot through the lung.
He pulled a chair up beside his bed and sat. He checked Ianto's pulse about every ten minutes, his agitation growing worse as the day wore on. He still felt fine, and why was nothing happening yet? He moved his fingers to rest on Ianto's throat once more, confirming that the pulse was indeed still there, still steady.
All Jack could do was wait.
-----
He really needed a bigger room, Jack thought, giving up on pacing and sitting back down. He checked his watch. The sedative he'd given Ianto should have knocked him out for about eight hours. He'd been asleep going on fourteen now.
Jack had gotten two more calls from Toshiko and seven from Gwen. Owen had yet to call even once.
He shifted position in the chair, stretched out a few kinks from tired muscles, and poked and prodded at his chest. He was a little stiff, but there was still no sign of a wound. He checked Ianto's pulse again. Still alive. So why wasn't he waking up?
Jack stood once more, unable to keep still. He climbed up the ladder and out of his room, fixed a bowl of soup, and then precariously balanced it in one hand while he climbed back down. Ianto needed to eat something, keep up his strength.
"Ianto." Jack gently patted his hand, trying to bring him around. "Come on, time to wake up."
Ianto stirred and made a tiny little moaning sound, but he didn't wake. Jack was seriously beginning to think the sedative hadn't been the best idea. This was going much too slow. Jack should have been at least half dead by now. Things had gone more quickly with Suzie.
Although he was basing his timeframe on a single occurrence, with a different wound and a different glove. They were both gunshots, however, no reason for one to take more time than the other. If anything, Suzie should have been the one to heal more slowly. She'd been shot in the head, blown out part of her brain. And yet had been talking. How exactly did that work anyway? The one other thing that Jack could think of was that Ianto had taken significantly longer to die. Jack wasn't sure if that mattered or not.
It could also be that Suzie had been fighting more fiercely to live. But Ianto wouldn't remember dying anymore, had no reason to not want to live. He wouldn't be able to counter the retcon, Jack had given him a strong enough dose to make certain of that.
"Ianto," he repeated, more loudly. "You really need to wake up now."
-----
Somebody was gently shaking him, talking to him. The voice sounded concerned. Jack? Ianto struggled to blink open his eyes. "Jack?"
The man smiled at him, relief clearly showing in his eyes. "Hi."
Jack had shook him awake in order to say hi? "What's going on?" Jack waking him up usually meant he'd been knocked unconscious by something, and urgent shaking probably meant the threat was still there and the world was quite possibly coming to an end.
Jack lifted something. "Soup."
Ianto squinted at him, forcing his tired eyes to focus on the bowl. "We're not running for our lives?"
Jack smiled. "No."
Ianto closed his eyes again, allowed himself to relax.
A hand was quickly back on his shoulder. "Hey now, none of that. Open those gorgeous eyes and tell me how many fingers I'm holding up."
"Two," Ianto replied without bothering to open his eyes.
"You can do this with me, or I can call Owen."
Ianto finally opened his eyes. Jack was only holding up one finger now, his middle finger. "Very mature, Sir."
Jack cracked a cocky grin, then helped Ianto into a more upright position, shoving a pillow behind his back. The movement hurt slightly, and Ianto reached a hand to his chest, but was quickly stopped by Jack. "Keep still, save your strength."
"Will you be feeding me the soup then?" It was meant as sarcasm, but Jack merely shrugged and picked up the spoon.
"Are you going to make me do little airplane moves?"
Grabbing the spoon from Jack, Ianto proceeded to feed himself. He swallowed the spoonful of cold soup. Just how long ago had Jack fixed it? He dropped the spoon back in the bowl. "How long was I out?"
"A little over fourteen hours."
Which was probably close to how long the soup had been sitting around from the taste of it. He was hungry, however, and ate another spoonful. "What happened?" He was in Jack's bed and he had no memory of how he'd gotten there.
Jack looked uncomfortable, but he smiled again at Ianto, his classic grin, showing too many teeth, but this time it seemed forced. "There'll be time for explanations later. Right now you need to rest."
Jack's voice had been almost panicked when he'd been telling Ianto to wake up, he was obviously still worried, and he was faking smiles. Ianto frowned. Had there actually been doubt about whether or not he was going to wake up? What exactly had knocked him out, and for that matter... "Where are my clothes?" He was wearing what must be Jack's.
That same awkward look appeared once more behind Jack's smile, then he let the smile drop entirely. "I burned them."
Okay, now Ianto was worried. "Jack..."
"Finish your soup."
-----
After assurances that everybody was fine and the only casualty had been their clothing, and after half a bowl of soup, Ianto had drifted back to sleep. Natural sleep this time, not drugged. Jack watched over him for a while, then went about his day. He stopped an invasion, fended off twelve more phone calls from Gwen and Tosh, fed Myfanwy, and then settled back in the chair beside his bed again with a stack of paperwork balanced on one knee.
He was filling out what had to be about the hundredth form, at least it seemed that way to him, when he found himself absently rubbing at his chest. He paused, then glanced down at the small spot of blood on his shirt. He poked at the area and hissed in pain. Finally.
He set aside the paperwork and got up to bandage the wound then change his shirt. When that task was done, he returned to Ianto. He carefully pulled down the blanket so as not to wake him, then pushed up his shirt and removed the bandaging there. He tossed the bloody gauze in his wastebasket. There was only a faint red mark remaining, like a strange rash, definitely not a fatal gunshot wound.
He was still inspecting the area when he noticed that there'd been a change in the steady rise and fall of Ianto's chest, which probably meant that... He glanced up and found Ianto staring at him, very much awake. Ianto raised his eyebrows at Jack in obvious question.
"So was it good for you?" he asked, sliding his hand out from under Ianto's shirt as the man sat up. The baffled expression remained. "Inappropriate time to be making that joke?"
"Probably, Sir." He lifted his shirt and tried to get his own look at the wound.
This time Jack didn't stop him. He'd have preferred Ianto stay asleep until this was over, but he didn't want to sedate him again, and seeing as the evidence was still there, it was no use pretending it wasn't. That would only draw more attention to it, more questions.
"What happened?"
Like that one. "Just your typical work-related mishap. You really should be asking for hazard pay." He grinned at Ianto. "Want me to kiss it better?"
Ianto pulled the shirt back down. "Everyone okay?"
"For the third time," Jack replied with amusement, "yes, they're fine."
"I don't remember." Ianto frowned. "What exactly hit me?"
He hadn't really paid attention to the caliber of the bullet when he'd pulled it out. "Not entirely sure."
Ianto took a deep breath and winced. "Feels like I was ran over by a bus."
"Do you want me to call Owen and have him check you out?" Which was the last thing Jack wanted, but it would seem suspicious if he didn't suggest it.
Ianto ran a hand along his chest again. "Not that large of a bus. I think I'm alright."
"All the same, I think I'll give it another few hours before I release you from quarantine."
"You've quarantined me in your bedroom?"
"That would have been clever," he smirked. "But no, you're not confined to my room."
"We're in lockdown?"
Jack nodded. "We were exposed to something. An alien device of some kind, probably dumped here, thrown into the rift to get rid of it." He stopped himself before sounding too much like what he'd said about the last glove.
"The device, you destroyed it?"
Jack nodded again. He was going to, soon as Ianto was fully healed. This was a one-time thing. He wouldn't curse Ianto with immortality as he had been. So he would destroy the glove, before the idea became too alluring. "I've taken care of it."
"Do you know what it was for? Its purpose?"
Of course Ianto would ask. Jack shrugged a shoulder. "We'll likely never know for sure."
Ianto didn't seem pleased with that answer, but he accepted it. "Do you have a spare toothbrush? My mouth tastes like something died."
Jack flinched at that remark, covered with a fake cough that turned into a real one and left his chest aching.
"Are you alright, Jack?" Ianto was studying him with concern. "You look like hell."
Jack responded to that with an honest smile. "Never better."
-----
TBC
NC-17
set between 1x08 and 1x13
No action in this chapter, but I promise angst and excitement in future ones. And pretty please leave comments. They feed my muse.
They Come in Pairs - 5
-----
Owen fumbled to answer his phone, if only to make that damned ringing finally stop. Before he could ask who was calling and what the bloody hell they wanted, Toshiko began rambling at him faster than he could make any sense of. Something about an alien device, Ianto, quarantine, and Jack putting the Hub into lockdown.
So basically, they had the day off?
"Brilliant," he mumbled, hanging up on Tosh who was still talking. He reached over the side of his bed to yank the alarm clock's plug from the wall, then rolled over and went back to sleep.
-----
Jack stood at the foot of his bed, watching Ianto sleep. He was definitely out cold, the sedative doing its job. Jack reached down and grabbed the blanket that Ianto was lying on top of, giving it a tug to pull it free. Ianto'd be much more comfortable underneath it.
His gaze moved from bare toes up to Ianto's waist. His pulling the blanket loose had caused the sweatpants to slide an inch or two lower, leaving a gap of skin showing between that material and the t-shirt, revealing Ianto's hipbone. And black ink.
Since when did Ianto have a tattoo? One that had managed to go unnoticed when Jack had been peeling away bloodstained clothing. It looked like a backward KC with a line over it. Which wasn't any of Jack's business, but who was he kidding, he was going to look. He moved to the side of the bed, then placed a single finger on Ianto's waist and drew the material down a little farther.
It wasn't backwards, but rather had been upside down. One word, all caps and underlined.
JACK
"Son of a bitch!" Ignoring however hot it might be that his name was written on Ianto's hipbone, Jack didn't hesitate in crossing whatever moral line there was against undressing an unconscious employee and jerked both sweatpants and boxers down indecently low. The "tattoo" indeed hadn't been there before.
died risen-mitten retcon
JACK
He turned and spotted the pen on the table beside the bed. Ianto was more clever than Jack gave him credit for. Not only had he managed to leave himself a note during Jack's conversation with Toshiko, he'd done it completely unnoticed, and also left the message in a place where he'd be certain to see it even without the memory of writing it and that Jack wouldn't find, at least in theory.
He smiled fondly at the sleeping man. "I knew I kept you around for more than your looks and coffee." He headed for his bathroom to get the soap. "But you should never have trusted me to respect your modesty."
As he fetched the bar of soap and wet a towel, he wondered if scrubbing away the ink was actually the right thing to do. He'd been so preoccupied with the decision to drug Ianto that he hadn't even realized he'd fixed coffee instead of tea. And for Ianto to attempt retconning him with a kiss... there had to have been real anger behind that.
If Ianto found out what he'd done, Jack wasn't sure he would ever be forgiven. He thought again about what Ianto had said before passing out. If they both died, it was meaningless. If Jack got himself killed along with Ianto, then Ianto's sacrifice had been for nothing. He wondered how he hadn't caught the meaning of that statement earlier.
His entire relationship with Ianto was based on deception, a lack of communication, and betrayal, and he was only adding to it. They were constantly fucking things up between them, and yet underneath it all, Ianto was willing to die for him. And perhaps more importantly, he hadn't exactly objected to the idea of an actual date. Messed up though it might be, whatever relationship it was that had been slowly forming between them, it was something real. Jack wondered if he was risking destroying that.
The phone rang then, and Jack knew who it was without needing to check the caller ID. He'd drugged her and been forgiven, although that had only been a small dose, just enough to allow her to walk away if she really wanted to, but if she found out about the second glove, he wasn't sure she'd be so understanding.
He needed to stick with his cover story of half-truths. Ianto'd been exposed to an artifact of unknown origins, and Jack was placing him under indefinite quarantine.
He set down the soap and picked up the phone. "Hello, Gwen."
He'd tell her the same thing he'd told Tosh, and neither of them would be permitted to enter the Hub until there was no longer any trace of the wound in Ianto's chest.
-----
For somebody who'd done so much of it, Jack thought he should be better at waiting. He'd placated Gwen and Toshiko with reassurances that he had the situation under control, scrubbed the ink from Ianto's skin and the coffee from his wall, and then painstakingly burned bloodstained clothing. Now all that was left was the uneasy anticipation of getting slowly shot through the lung.
He pulled a chair up beside his bed and sat. He checked Ianto's pulse about every ten minutes, his agitation growing worse as the day wore on. He still felt fine, and why was nothing happening yet? He moved his fingers to rest on Ianto's throat once more, confirming that the pulse was indeed still there, still steady.
All Jack could do was wait.
-----
He really needed a bigger room, Jack thought, giving up on pacing and sitting back down. He checked his watch. The sedative he'd given Ianto should have knocked him out for about eight hours. He'd been asleep going on fourteen now.
Jack had gotten two more calls from Toshiko and seven from Gwen. Owen had yet to call even once.
He shifted position in the chair, stretched out a few kinks from tired muscles, and poked and prodded at his chest. He was a little stiff, but there was still no sign of a wound. He checked Ianto's pulse again. Still alive. So why wasn't he waking up?
Jack stood once more, unable to keep still. He climbed up the ladder and out of his room, fixed a bowl of soup, and then precariously balanced it in one hand while he climbed back down. Ianto needed to eat something, keep up his strength.
"Ianto." Jack gently patted his hand, trying to bring him around. "Come on, time to wake up."
Ianto stirred and made a tiny little moaning sound, but he didn't wake. Jack was seriously beginning to think the sedative hadn't been the best idea. This was going much too slow. Jack should have been at least half dead by now. Things had gone more quickly with Suzie.
Although he was basing his timeframe on a single occurrence, with a different wound and a different glove. They were both gunshots, however, no reason for one to take more time than the other. If anything, Suzie should have been the one to heal more slowly. She'd been shot in the head, blown out part of her brain. And yet had been talking. How exactly did that work anyway? The one other thing that Jack could think of was that Ianto had taken significantly longer to die. Jack wasn't sure if that mattered or not.
It could also be that Suzie had been fighting more fiercely to live. But Ianto wouldn't remember dying anymore, had no reason to not want to live. He wouldn't be able to counter the retcon, Jack had given him a strong enough dose to make certain of that.
"Ianto," he repeated, more loudly. "You really need to wake up now."
-----
Somebody was gently shaking him, talking to him. The voice sounded concerned. Jack? Ianto struggled to blink open his eyes. "Jack?"
The man smiled at him, relief clearly showing in his eyes. "Hi."
Jack had shook him awake in order to say hi? "What's going on?" Jack waking him up usually meant he'd been knocked unconscious by something, and urgent shaking probably meant the threat was still there and the world was quite possibly coming to an end.
Jack lifted something. "Soup."
Ianto squinted at him, forcing his tired eyes to focus on the bowl. "We're not running for our lives?"
Jack smiled. "No."
Ianto closed his eyes again, allowed himself to relax.
A hand was quickly back on his shoulder. "Hey now, none of that. Open those gorgeous eyes and tell me how many fingers I'm holding up."
"Two," Ianto replied without bothering to open his eyes.
"You can do this with me, or I can call Owen."
Ianto finally opened his eyes. Jack was only holding up one finger now, his middle finger. "Very mature, Sir."
Jack cracked a cocky grin, then helped Ianto into a more upright position, shoving a pillow behind his back. The movement hurt slightly, and Ianto reached a hand to his chest, but was quickly stopped by Jack. "Keep still, save your strength."
"Will you be feeding me the soup then?" It was meant as sarcasm, but Jack merely shrugged and picked up the spoon.
"Are you going to make me do little airplane moves?"
Grabbing the spoon from Jack, Ianto proceeded to feed himself. He swallowed the spoonful of cold soup. Just how long ago had Jack fixed it? He dropped the spoon back in the bowl. "How long was I out?"
"A little over fourteen hours."
Which was probably close to how long the soup had been sitting around from the taste of it. He was hungry, however, and ate another spoonful. "What happened?" He was in Jack's bed and he had no memory of how he'd gotten there.
Jack looked uncomfortable, but he smiled again at Ianto, his classic grin, showing too many teeth, but this time it seemed forced. "There'll be time for explanations later. Right now you need to rest."
Jack's voice had been almost panicked when he'd been telling Ianto to wake up, he was obviously still worried, and he was faking smiles. Ianto frowned. Had there actually been doubt about whether or not he was going to wake up? What exactly had knocked him out, and for that matter... "Where are my clothes?" He was wearing what must be Jack's.
That same awkward look appeared once more behind Jack's smile, then he let the smile drop entirely. "I burned them."
Okay, now Ianto was worried. "Jack..."
"Finish your soup."
-----
After assurances that everybody was fine and the only casualty had been their clothing, and after half a bowl of soup, Ianto had drifted back to sleep. Natural sleep this time, not drugged. Jack watched over him for a while, then went about his day. He stopped an invasion, fended off twelve more phone calls from Gwen and Tosh, fed Myfanwy, and then settled back in the chair beside his bed again with a stack of paperwork balanced on one knee.
He was filling out what had to be about the hundredth form, at least it seemed that way to him, when he found himself absently rubbing at his chest. He paused, then glanced down at the small spot of blood on his shirt. He poked at the area and hissed in pain. Finally.
He set aside the paperwork and got up to bandage the wound then change his shirt. When that task was done, he returned to Ianto. He carefully pulled down the blanket so as not to wake him, then pushed up his shirt and removed the bandaging there. He tossed the bloody gauze in his wastebasket. There was only a faint red mark remaining, like a strange rash, definitely not a fatal gunshot wound.
He was still inspecting the area when he noticed that there'd been a change in the steady rise and fall of Ianto's chest, which probably meant that... He glanced up and found Ianto staring at him, very much awake. Ianto raised his eyebrows at Jack in obvious question.
"So was it good for you?" he asked, sliding his hand out from under Ianto's shirt as the man sat up. The baffled expression remained. "Inappropriate time to be making that joke?"
"Probably, Sir." He lifted his shirt and tried to get his own look at the wound.
This time Jack didn't stop him. He'd have preferred Ianto stay asleep until this was over, but he didn't want to sedate him again, and seeing as the evidence was still there, it was no use pretending it wasn't. That would only draw more attention to it, more questions.
"What happened?"
Like that one. "Just your typical work-related mishap. You really should be asking for hazard pay." He grinned at Ianto. "Want me to kiss it better?"
Ianto pulled the shirt back down. "Everyone okay?"
"For the third time," Jack replied with amusement, "yes, they're fine."
"I don't remember." Ianto frowned. "What exactly hit me?"
He hadn't really paid attention to the caliber of the bullet when he'd pulled it out. "Not entirely sure."
Ianto took a deep breath and winced. "Feels like I was ran over by a bus."
"Do you want me to call Owen and have him check you out?" Which was the last thing Jack wanted, but it would seem suspicious if he didn't suggest it.
Ianto ran a hand along his chest again. "Not that large of a bus. I think I'm alright."
"All the same, I think I'll give it another few hours before I release you from quarantine."
"You've quarantined me in your bedroom?"
"That would have been clever," he smirked. "But no, you're not confined to my room."
"We're in lockdown?"
Jack nodded. "We were exposed to something. An alien device of some kind, probably dumped here, thrown into the rift to get rid of it." He stopped himself before sounding too much like what he'd said about the last glove.
"The device, you destroyed it?"
Jack nodded again. He was going to, soon as Ianto was fully healed. This was a one-time thing. He wouldn't curse Ianto with immortality as he had been. So he would destroy the glove, before the idea became too alluring. "I've taken care of it."
"Do you know what it was for? Its purpose?"
Of course Ianto would ask. Jack shrugged a shoulder. "We'll likely never know for sure."
Ianto didn't seem pleased with that answer, but he accepted it. "Do you have a spare toothbrush? My mouth tastes like something died."
Jack flinched at that remark, covered with a fake cough that turned into a real one and left his chest aching.
"Are you alright, Jack?" Ianto was studying him with concern. "You look like hell."
Jack responded to that with an honest smile. "Never better."
-----
TBC