Resonating Through Time -- That's the Thing About Gloves, Sir
Title: That's The Thing About Gloves, Sir
dwtwprompts prompt: Destiny
Date Written: 4/21/08
Rating: PG-13/T just to be safe
Word Count: 2,046
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Gwen, Jack/Ianto
Spoilers: Doctor Who 01, Torchwood season 1 & 2
Warnings: Nekkid boystuffs. Not sex naked, but still naked.
Author's Notes: Because you asked for it... Sequel to Salt and Pepper.
Gwen stared at Jack in absolute shock for a full fifteen seconds before smacking her hands on the desk. "Oh, come off it!"
Jack blinked at her. "What?"
"Oh, that was a good one! He's my soul mate. You were completely serious, too! Oh, you should be in films, honestly."
Jack leaned back in his chair, still holding the Vidara necklace. "I am serious, Gwen. D'you think I'd make something like this up?"
"Okay then, how do they work?" the Welsh woman asked, crossing her arms. Her entire body oozed disbelief.
"It's... a bit hard to explain."
"A pair of Vidara necklaces!" the Doctor crowed. "No wonder he couldn't pass them up! That old bat could have charged a million credit or whatever she was taking for them, and he'd have put the money down for them!"
"Vidara necklaces?" Rose cocked her head to the side, looking at Jack.
The former Time Agent shrugged. "Never heard of them."
"Oh, you're gonna love this." The Doctor grinned and clapped his hands, rubbing them together. "I sure do!"
"There's this thing, okay, it's called the Time Vortex. It's what the Rift keys into, that's why things get snatched from different places and times and end up here." He paused for a moment, thinking. The Doctor aways was better at explain this timey-wimey stuff, even better than the Academy had. "The Time Vortex contains everything that ever is, ever was, and ever will be.
"Certain races can tap into the Time Vortex. The Time Lords can -- could. Humans, to an extent, but it drives them crazy, burns them up from the inside out after too long. And the Vidarans can, for a very specific purpose. They find a soul that's been split, and tailor their jewelry specifically to them. I don't know if they link it genetically or psychically or what, but they do. It's a sort of trade secret, they don't like to talk about it with outsiders."
"There's an Earth myth about soul mates," the Doctor mused once Rose's laughter had died down enough to be heard over. "Humans used to be one complete whole, but they were split into male and female forms, with one half of a soul in each. Sometimes two humans find the other half of that part."
"So there's another me out there?" Jack had replied, giving a smirk. "Sexy."
"Just when I think your narcissism can't reach another level, you find a way to surprise me."
Rose's laughter redoubled, and she grabbed at the railing to keep from falling to the floor. "Only Jack would bring about the ruin of the universe by shagging himself!"
"There's no such thing as soul mates, Jack," Gwen said, shaking her head sadly. "Only people who can make us happy."
Jack scoffed, tucking the necklace into his shirts and feeling unaccountably sorry for Rhys. The metal was warm against his skin. "Sometimes, Gwen, there are people who just get you, who understand things about you that you don't get. People who slot themselves into your life so perfectly that it's hard to imagine that they were never there to begin with."
"I know."
Jack looked back down at his papers, suddenly unable to meet Gwen's intense gaze. "Ianto does that. He... just fits. I need him. He makes me feel human again."
Gwen's demeanor changed, and it felt like Jack had jumped from the sweltering summers of the Boeshane Peninsula to the dark side of Pluto. "I thought I made you feel human again."
"You do. You make all of us feel human, like there's actually a point to what we're doing instead of just interesting repetitive tasks." He risked looking up at her, finding her to be about as angry as he expected. "But for me, Ianto makes me feel human, he makes me feel normal. He makes me afraid to die, because I don't want to wake up to see his tears."
"But why... why him?"
"Because it's just him."
"But why? How did you know?" The unspoken Why not me? hung in the air between them, as thick as if she'd said it aloud.
"I just knew."
He was bleeding, a thin trickle of blood down the side of his face. Ianto Jones, the name said in those beautiful Welsh vowels he'd admired in his coworkers for a century. He'd saved Jack's life -- well, one of Jack's nine million lives -- and didn't make the typical 'oh dear sweet lord, it's an alien' fuss that the locals tended to make.
In fact, he'd been far too knowledgeable about the Weevils.
Jack knew he should think of Ianto as a threat, but he just couldn't. There was something about Ianto that made Jack want to run to him and kiss him stupid. Not an unusal reaction to someone who'd rescued him from certain death.
If it wasn't for the knocked-out Weevil, he might have offered to take Ianto to a bar, probably more. Then again, if it wasn't for the Weevil, Ianto Jones might not have appeared, Gift of the Gods as he was.
The joined Vidara necklaces shifted against his chest as he hoisted the alien over his shoulder, the metal fairly humming with energy, and Jack felt his breath catch in his chest. Him. This was the one who was going to get the other half. He'd wanted to give it away, to Estelle, to many, many others, but he'd never been able to bring himself to do it.
Ianto Jones was dangerous. He would drive Jack to distraction and back. He couldn't have someone so suddenly precious to him in the danger Torchwood presented.
He turned and walked away.
"From the moment I saw him, I just knew. And then when I saw him again, it was so damn hard to walk away from him."
"We could use the help, you know," Suzie said conversationally.
Jack made a noncommittal noise as he watched Ianto Jones pace outside the Information Booth.
"He can handle a Weevil."
Jack 'hmmed' again, leaning into his hand. Even just looking at him on-screen, Ianto made Jack's heart skip beats. This was all sorts of not good.
"He's got promise, his file from Torchwood is nothing but glowing review after glowing review."
Jack sighed a little, cocking his head to the side as he watched Ianto. Damn his ass looked good in those jeans...
"It's obvious you like him."
"Says who?" Jack asked, looking up at her.
"Says me!" She laughed, taking her glasses off and tossing the folder down onto the desk in front of Jack. "So are you going to take the Lift or are you going to go hire him?"
"Neither." He shut of the CCTV and stood, grabbing his jacket. "I'm going to go tell him to get lost." Whether he liked it or not, it was for his own good.
Gwen shook her head. "Jack, I just... why Ianto?"
"I don't know, okay? I didn't pick him out of a line up and go, 'You, in the suit, with me'. I mean... Gwen, we're from completely different times. It's lucky I even found him."
Ianto looked so much closer to his true age when he slept. The others probably wouldn't recognize him if they saw Ianto like this, with his hair sticking out at all angles and his face still softly flushed from excursion, those beautiful pale lips slightly swollen.
Jack reached out to touch Ianto's face gently, smiling when Ianto shifted a little in his sleep and curled up against Jack's side. One of the Welshman's arms came out to loop loosely around his waist and Jack laughed softly, kissing Ianto's forehead.
It was in the quiet, at times like this, that Jack realized just how perfectly Ianto had situated himself into Jack's life. He hadn't even known the man for two years and Jack couldn't believe how he'd managed to survive without Ianto in his life.
Ianto Jones. Even the name was enough to make Jack smile. Just the sound of his footsteps in the Hub, the way he rolled those beautiful Rs, or hearing him sing softly up to Myfanwy in Welsh when it was feeding time made little shivers of pleasure go down Jack's spine.
The others (read: Owen) teased Ianto about his near-psychic abilities when it came to Jack, knowing just what their Captain needed before anyone else did, but they didn't realize that it ran both ways. After the Cyberwoman in the basement (Jack still refused to call her Lisa. Lisa Hallet died in Canary Wharf), it had been Jack to put the shattered pieces of Ianto back together again, a quiet presence in Ianto's grieving for the man to turn to, someone who understood the deep-down desperation of wanting to save a loved one and damn the consequences. They'd slowly made their way through Ianto's flat, packing up everything Ianto wanted gone. Ther were things that they'd tossed out or donated (a half-used bottle of her perfume, the half-closet and still-packed boxes of her clothes), but there were some things that Jack had known Ianto would want some day and he'd rescued from the trash (the boxes and boxes and boxes of photos of him and Lisa, looking so gloriously happy. the little diamond ring that had been taken on a trip to London and buried at her empty grave site).
They'd known each other so oddly instinctively intimate in those first days -- how Jack liked his coffee, how to organize things just so to make Ianto give that small smile of satisfaction. Their bond had only strengthened and deepened over time, even though both of their not-quite betrayals to one another.
His hand slipped down Ianto's face and neck, his fingertips carefully stroking the golden chain around Ianto's neck. It was funny to think that his other half had been born thirty centuries before him.
The Universe sure had a twisted sense of humor sometimes.
Jack sighed and rubbed at his face. "I don't know what I'm going to do when he dies," he said aloud. He realized that he needed sleep. He'd thought it, certainly, but never actually admitted it.
Part of him hoped he'd just drop into a coma from shock when it happened. He didn't think he'd be able to survive the loss.
His second was quiet, far too quiet. He looked up to see her looking away at some invisible spot halfway across the room. Her eyes were a bit glazed over. "Gwen?"
She snapped out of it, blinking rapidly as the sheen in her eyes dissipated somewhat. "I just... I didn't know. I'm sorry."
"Ianto's a private person. He doesn't like to be completely showy like me." It was one thing he admired about Ianto, his ability to play the Straight Man to Jack's Wild Card. Just another way they complimented one another.
"No, I meant--"
There was a knock at the door frame, and they both turned to the sound. Ianto stood in the doorway, looking exhausted and holding a Styrofoam cup. "'M sorry, didn' mean to interrupt," he said, his Welsh accent thicker than normal in his tiredness. "I got your coffee, Gwen."
Gwen pushed off the desk and walked around to him. The necklace had come out of his shirt again (Tosh had demanded a second look when Ianto handed over their coffee), and it glinted against the dark fabric. She glared a little at the necklace before taking the cup from him. She muttered a "Gotta go, Rhys is waiting," as she hurried out of the Hub.
Ianto blinked after her owlishly before looking at Jack. "I missed something."
"Not really." Jack pushed his paperwork aside and rubbed at his face. "Staying the night?"
"D'you even have to ask?" Ianto replied, heading to the hatch that entered into Jack's private quarters.
"I'll be down in a moment," Jack called out as the dark head of hair disappeared below ground. "Gonna power the Hub down."
"Done, cariad," Ianto's sleepy voice replied, and Jack's face broke into what he knew was a completely sappy grin. He loved it when Ianto called him that. "Now get your arse down here, 'm tired."
Jack laughed and clicked the lamp off. "Sir yes sir!"
ETA: Chapter three here
dwtwprompts prompt: Destiny
Date Written: 4/21/08
Rating: PG-13/T just to be safe
Word Count: 2,046
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairings: Gwen, Jack/Ianto
Spoilers: Doctor Who 01, Torchwood season 1 & 2
Warnings: Nekkid boystuffs. Not sex naked, but still naked.
Author's Notes: Because you asked for it... Sequel to Salt and Pepper.
Gwen stared at Jack in absolute shock for a full fifteen seconds before smacking her hands on the desk. "Oh, come off it!"
Jack blinked at her. "What?"
"Oh, that was a good one! He's my soul mate. You were completely serious, too! Oh, you should be in films, honestly."
Jack leaned back in his chair, still holding the Vidara necklace. "I am serious, Gwen. D'you think I'd make something like this up?"
"Okay then, how do they work?" the Welsh woman asked, crossing her arms. Her entire body oozed disbelief.
"It's... a bit hard to explain."
"A pair of Vidara necklaces!" the Doctor crowed. "No wonder he couldn't pass them up! That old bat could have charged a million credit or whatever she was taking for them, and he'd have put the money down for them!"
"Vidara necklaces?" Rose cocked her head to the side, looking at Jack.
The former Time Agent shrugged. "Never heard of them."
"Oh, you're gonna love this." The Doctor grinned and clapped his hands, rubbing them together. "I sure do!"
"There's this thing, okay, it's called the Time Vortex. It's what the Rift keys into, that's why things get snatched from different places and times and end up here." He paused for a moment, thinking. The Doctor aways was better at explain this timey-wimey stuff, even better than the Academy had. "The Time Vortex contains everything that ever is, ever was, and ever will be.
"Certain races can tap into the Time Vortex. The Time Lords can -- could. Humans, to an extent, but it drives them crazy, burns them up from the inside out after too long. And the Vidarans can, for a very specific purpose. They find a soul that's been split, and tailor their jewelry specifically to them. I don't know if they link it genetically or psychically or what, but they do. It's a sort of trade secret, they don't like to talk about it with outsiders."
"There's an Earth myth about soul mates," the Doctor mused once Rose's laughter had died down enough to be heard over. "Humans used to be one complete whole, but they were split into male and female forms, with one half of a soul in each. Sometimes two humans find the other half of that part."
"So there's another me out there?" Jack had replied, giving a smirk. "Sexy."
"Just when I think your narcissism can't reach another level, you find a way to surprise me."
Rose's laughter redoubled, and she grabbed at the railing to keep from falling to the floor. "Only Jack would bring about the ruin of the universe by shagging himself!"
"There's no such thing as soul mates, Jack," Gwen said, shaking her head sadly. "Only people who can make us happy."
Jack scoffed, tucking the necklace into his shirts and feeling unaccountably sorry for Rhys. The metal was warm against his skin. "Sometimes, Gwen, there are people who just get you, who understand things about you that you don't get. People who slot themselves into your life so perfectly that it's hard to imagine that they were never there to begin with."
"I know."
Jack looked back down at his papers, suddenly unable to meet Gwen's intense gaze. "Ianto does that. He... just fits. I need him. He makes me feel human again."
Gwen's demeanor changed, and it felt like Jack had jumped from the sweltering summers of the Boeshane Peninsula to the dark side of Pluto. "I thought I made you feel human again."
"You do. You make all of us feel human, like there's actually a point to what we're doing instead of just interesting repetitive tasks." He risked looking up at her, finding her to be about as angry as he expected. "But for me, Ianto makes me feel human, he makes me feel normal. He makes me afraid to die, because I don't want to wake up to see his tears."
"But why... why him?"
"Because it's just him."
"But why? How did you know?" The unspoken Why not me? hung in the air between them, as thick as if she'd said it aloud.
"I just knew."
He was bleeding, a thin trickle of blood down the side of his face. Ianto Jones, the name said in those beautiful Welsh vowels he'd admired in his coworkers for a century. He'd saved Jack's life -- well, one of Jack's nine million lives -- and didn't make the typical 'oh dear sweet lord, it's an alien' fuss that the locals tended to make.
In fact, he'd been far too knowledgeable about the Weevils.
Jack knew he should think of Ianto as a threat, but he just couldn't. There was something about Ianto that made Jack want to run to him and kiss him stupid. Not an unusal reaction to someone who'd rescued him from certain death.
If it wasn't for the knocked-out Weevil, he might have offered to take Ianto to a bar, probably more. Then again, if it wasn't for the Weevil, Ianto Jones might not have appeared, Gift of the Gods as he was.
The joined Vidara necklaces shifted against his chest as he hoisted the alien over his shoulder, the metal fairly humming with energy, and Jack felt his breath catch in his chest. Him. This was the one who was going to get the other half. He'd wanted to give it away, to Estelle, to many, many others, but he'd never been able to bring himself to do it.
Ianto Jones was dangerous. He would drive Jack to distraction and back. He couldn't have someone so suddenly precious to him in the danger Torchwood presented.
He turned and walked away.
"From the moment I saw him, I just knew. And then when I saw him again, it was so damn hard to walk away from him."
"We could use the help, you know," Suzie said conversationally.
Jack made a noncommittal noise as he watched Ianto Jones pace outside the Information Booth.
"He can handle a Weevil."
Jack 'hmmed' again, leaning into his hand. Even just looking at him on-screen, Ianto made Jack's heart skip beats. This was all sorts of not good.
"He's got promise, his file from Torchwood is nothing but glowing review after glowing review."
Jack sighed a little, cocking his head to the side as he watched Ianto. Damn his ass looked good in those jeans...
"It's obvious you like him."
"Says who?" Jack asked, looking up at her.
"Says me!" She laughed, taking her glasses off and tossing the folder down onto the desk in front of Jack. "So are you going to take the Lift or are you going to go hire him?"
"Neither." He shut of the CCTV and stood, grabbing his jacket. "I'm going to go tell him to get lost." Whether he liked it or not, it was for his own good.
Gwen shook her head. "Jack, I just... why Ianto?"
"I don't know, okay? I didn't pick him out of a line up and go, 'You, in the suit, with me'. I mean... Gwen, we're from completely different times. It's lucky I even found him."
Ianto looked so much closer to his true age when he slept. The others probably wouldn't recognize him if they saw Ianto like this, with his hair sticking out at all angles and his face still softly flushed from excursion, those beautiful pale lips slightly swollen.
Jack reached out to touch Ianto's face gently, smiling when Ianto shifted a little in his sleep and curled up against Jack's side. One of the Welshman's arms came out to loop loosely around his waist and Jack laughed softly, kissing Ianto's forehead.
It was in the quiet, at times like this, that Jack realized just how perfectly Ianto had situated himself into Jack's life. He hadn't even known the man for two years and Jack couldn't believe how he'd managed to survive without Ianto in his life.
Ianto Jones. Even the name was enough to make Jack smile. Just the sound of his footsteps in the Hub, the way he rolled those beautiful Rs, or hearing him sing softly up to Myfanwy in Welsh when it was feeding time made little shivers of pleasure go down Jack's spine.
The others (read: Owen) teased Ianto about his near-psychic abilities when it came to Jack, knowing just what their Captain needed before anyone else did, but they didn't realize that it ran both ways. After the Cyberwoman in the basement (Jack still refused to call her Lisa. Lisa Hallet died in Canary Wharf), it had been Jack to put the shattered pieces of Ianto back together again, a quiet presence in Ianto's grieving for the man to turn to, someone who understood the deep-down desperation of wanting to save a loved one and damn the consequences. They'd slowly made their way through Ianto's flat, packing up everything Ianto wanted gone. Ther were things that they'd tossed out or donated (a half-used bottle of her perfume, the half-closet and still-packed boxes of her clothes), but there were some things that Jack had known Ianto would want some day and he'd rescued from the trash (the boxes and boxes and boxes of photos of him and Lisa, looking so gloriously happy. the little diamond ring that had been taken on a trip to London and buried at her empty grave site).
They'd known each other so oddly instinctively intimate in those first days -- how Jack liked his coffee, how to organize things just so to make Ianto give that small smile of satisfaction. Their bond had only strengthened and deepened over time, even though both of their not-quite betrayals to one another.
His hand slipped down Ianto's face and neck, his fingertips carefully stroking the golden chain around Ianto's neck. It was funny to think that his other half had been born thirty centuries before him.
The Universe sure had a twisted sense of humor sometimes.
Jack sighed and rubbed at his face. "I don't know what I'm going to do when he dies," he said aloud. He realized that he needed sleep. He'd thought it, certainly, but never actually admitted it.
Part of him hoped he'd just drop into a coma from shock when it happened. He didn't think he'd be able to survive the loss.
His second was quiet, far too quiet. He looked up to see her looking away at some invisible spot halfway across the room. Her eyes were a bit glazed over. "Gwen?"
She snapped out of it, blinking rapidly as the sheen in her eyes dissipated somewhat. "I just... I didn't know. I'm sorry."
"Ianto's a private person. He doesn't like to be completely showy like me." It was one thing he admired about Ianto, his ability to play the Straight Man to Jack's Wild Card. Just another way they complimented one another.
"No, I meant--"
There was a knock at the door frame, and they both turned to the sound. Ianto stood in the doorway, looking exhausted and holding a Styrofoam cup. "'M sorry, didn' mean to interrupt," he said, his Welsh accent thicker than normal in his tiredness. "I got your coffee, Gwen."
Gwen pushed off the desk and walked around to him. The necklace had come out of his shirt again (Tosh had demanded a second look when Ianto handed over their coffee), and it glinted against the dark fabric. She glared a little at the necklace before taking the cup from him. She muttered a "Gotta go, Rhys is waiting," as she hurried out of the Hub.
Ianto blinked after her owlishly before looking at Jack. "I missed something."
"Not really." Jack pushed his paperwork aside and rubbed at his face. "Staying the night?"
"D'you even have to ask?" Ianto replied, heading to the hatch that entered into Jack's private quarters.
"I'll be down in a moment," Jack called out as the dark head of hair disappeared below ground. "Gonna power the Hub down."
"Done, cariad," Ianto's sleepy voice replied, and Jack's face broke into what he knew was a completely sappy grin. He loved it when Ianto called him that. "Now get your arse down here, 'm tired."
Jack laughed and clicked the lamp off. "Sir yes sir!"
ETA: Chapter three here