Fic: Square One (1/1)
Title: Square One
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Gwen/Ianto, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys, implication of previous Gwen/Owen
Word Count: 5,816
Summary: It’s more about filling the emptiness, the void, than it is about the two of them - but it’s certainly not about that bastard Jack Harkness, that’s for sure. Spoilers for Torchwood S1 and S2.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. All recognizable elements of Torchwood and Doctor Who are copyright to RTD and the BBC.
Author’s Notes: Written for a prompt by kate24534 for thestopwatch Holiday!Bang Twelve Days of Janto. Why I do this to myself, let alone why I did this to myself again, after the last fic exchange, I have no idea. The prompt just really grabbed me, and I had to give it a try. Particularly because my experience with writing Gwen is limited, and I thought this was a story line I could really get to like her in. Kinda wish I could pursue it further, really - I was pleasantly shocked at how much I enjoyed writing the bitter and desperate Gwen/Ianto. Warnings in advance for the American-isms; when it comes to sex in particular, it feels far too awkward and ingenuine to write outside my native dialect. And of course, a whole heap of thanks to the wonderful nschick for the beta; you’re a love, my dear.
Square One
It’s that goddamn greatcoat that signals the difference.
It’s common knowledge that Gwen Cooper is not one to mind her own business, and Ianto’s recent lapse into obsession is of particular interest to her, indeed. She notices the exceptionally pedantic manner in which he lays out the untouched curry on Jack’s desk, complete with plastic silverware and starchy paper napkin from the take-out bag, leaving it to flavor the stale air until the end of the day when it finds itself splattered at the bottom of a bin liner that holds nothing but the shadow of soupy yellow pooled at the bottom. She can’t help but recognize the deeper crease of his frown when she sneaks the extra double-shot latte that is sweetened just to Jack’s particular taste buds, drawing down the corners of his lips, aging him as she laps at foamy residue on the roof of her mouth, savoring the tang of the espresso as her pulse rushes with the extra caffeine. The rattling echo that the hatch-like door to Jack’s living quarters makes when it opens and closes is nigh impossible to ignore, and always has been, but Gwen notices that she only ever hears it when Ianto doesn’t know she’s there, too late into the evening for her presence to be suspected; she doesn’t know why she always slips out before he can spot her on such occasions, but she does.
She doesn’t fail to notice the way Jack’s trademark overcoat moves, either, despite its agitator’s meticulous efforts to conceal the slight changes in its position - in fact, it takes a week for him to replace it on the wrong hanger, causing it to cast a different shadow and attract her attention. She smiles sadly when she catches his face buried against the line of buttons, each fastened with due care, wrapped gently in the embrace of lifeless, flapping sleeves with nothing to hold them up, nothing to give them substance. She feels her throat tighten when he averts his eyes later, so that the red rims below his eyelashes can be written off as a trick of the light.
It’s only when the coat lies wedged beneath the corner of the filing cabinet, littered with CCTV stills, both of Jack and a man in a worn sort of leather jacket - vague printouts labeled “Classified” peeking tantalizingly out the tops of manilla folders - the fabric grease-stained at the collar with the remains of the day-old Chinese that never got taken out of the overturned bin nearby, chips gouged out of the antique pieces that always served as strange accents to the sleek metal fixtures next to them, which now sport their own fair share of dents and scratches, more than she suspects the light from outside the office can accentuate, now that the lamps lay shattered beneath her shoes; it’s only then that Gwen realizes something is really very wrong with the teaboy.
________________________________________________
It starts between two points. Between ‘Co’ and ‘Cu’ in the archives, in the middle of Correllian Dichloride Antitoxins and Currusian Warpseed Dart Launchers. Somewhere between coffee and cultural detection software, the lines blurring between cock and cunt. And that’s all she cares about, really - a mind-blowing orgasm and a bit of clever irony. She isn’t hard to please.
Notorious for being constitutionally incapable of letting a thing go, she refuses to leave before Ianto comes back up from the Archives, where his heat signature has been identified for the better part of the evening. Owen has long since abandoned his post, cracking open a longneck and taking the lift towards the first lucky pub on his weekly barhop, and Tosh, having volunteered for the overnight shift two days going, gives up trying to seem concerned after falling asleep at her computer leaves the impression of her keyboard etched into her forehead. She reluctantly hails a taxi home just before midnight.
Gwen was slated to stay anyway, but with Ianto always buried in some project or another, they were all well-aware that they could shirk their duties so long as he was present. Still, she clung to that excuse as the minutes trickled past, the only sign that Ianto was actually still breathing down in the bowels of the hub was the fact that his internal body temperature hadn’t dropped.
Unable to concentrate on the reports she should have been revising and approving, what with the conspicuous dripping from the plumbing near the kitchenette and Myfanwy’s damned pseudo-snore, she reasons that it’s only logical that she go to check on Ianto after so long - common courtesy, at the very least. She’s never liked the Archives much, mostly because she manages to fuck something up every time she looks for anything down there, which only sets a tone of confrontation that suffocates the entire team for at least the day, though since Jack’s disappearance, it tends to last longer.
He’s not hard to find, braced by the palms against the farthest cabinet in the second vault, eyes closed and lips just barely parted; he looks magnificent in a more human way than Gwen could previously have imagined possible - exquisite, erotic even, but melancholy. Resilient only because he’s hardened beyond recognition.
She steps towards him, her footsteps echoing, and he flinches at the sharp resonance, but doesn’t respond. She doesn’t know how, or why, but his mouth is on hers in an instant, and the contact almost burns; it’s not even a kiss at all so much as a sob, as if the touch of her lips is all that keeps him from drowning - the illusion that they belong to someone else all that saves him from the fall.
Well, two could play that game.
She jerks with the force of her knees making contact with the metal file drawers, the air being forced from her lungs as his fingers grip tightly around the line of her pelvis; she can’t think of anything but how strong he is, how perfectly-disguised those muscles must be, or how well her new diet regimen is working as he shifts her weight effortlessly upwards, balancing her on his palms as he digs frantically at the button of her jeans, unfastening it with such force that her zipper splits along with it.
His own trousers are hanging below his calves before she can blink, their shirts gone before she can empty her lungs, and she doesn’t even have to look down to know he’s ready to slide into her; she can feel the brush of the pert tip of his cock against her Venusian cleft with stark clarity, and it sends a shiver down her spine. She tries to recover her breath as the back of her skull crashes back onto the metal, spreading dizziness out through the bone. “Shouldn’t,” she struggles, hands grasping blindly as he loses his grip on her for the barest of instants, afraid of falling. “ Shouldn’t we use some sort of...”
“Don’t insult me,” he sneers, voice low and cold - if it wasn’t Ianto Jones, slick with sweat and half-nude standing in front of her, holding her up against the juncture of the wall and the filer, she’d never have known it was him. She knows that he’s not seeing her when he stares into her eyes, and it unnerves her something terrible. “We both know we’re clean.”
She’s barely coherent enough to feel affronted at the invasion of privacy as he thrusts his erection up to press against the inside of her thigh. “Or else, I know we’re both clean,” he clarifies in a whisper, “and that you’re on the pill.”
She doesn’t have the time or the mind to do anything but moan as he pushes into her, his hot, frantic breath on her shoulder making her heart pound. “You’re tighter than I’d have imagined,” he rasps before he starts to rock against her, hard and fast and without aplomb or ceremony; this is the back-alley sort of gig, this is, and they’re both just fillers, temporarily assuming the roles. He’s bigger than Rhys, which blows her away, and she’s got to be wetter than she’s ever been in her life, because it doesn’t so much as sting, doesn’t so much as pinch as he pulls out and plunges in over and over again. She feels herself tremble around the blissful feeling of fullness he’s giving her, and she has to blink twice not to see a blonder head bowed distractedly over her bare breasts.
“You feel nothing like Lisa,” he sighs into her cleavage, but he doesn’t mention whether that’s good or bad. He doesn’t even bother to compare her to Jack - she suspects it’s no contest.
They’re the same, she suddenly realizes, she and Ianto. Both of them fucked over by the only man they can imagine being worth it, and forced to settle as a result. Feeling his firm balls rub rhythmically back and forth against her slit as the friction builds further in, neither one of them looking at each other, never uttering a single word louder than their gasping breaths; like this, she finally feels like someone understands what it’s like not to get what you want.
________________________________________________
It’s exactly seventeen hours, fifty-six minutes, and twenty-eight seconds later that she realizes he’s not just a teaboy, but also a really good fuck. She’s not keeping track of course, but Ianto apparently is, or else she assumes as much, and even though he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t point it out, that fucking stopwatch is still ticking long after they’ve climaxed - she twice, though he just the once - and she can’t help but be mesmerized by the steady movement of the second hand as the moments whisper on by, bleeding into the moonlight that shimmers somewhere, though certainly not here, where the musty scent of stagnant water is never more than a breath away.
She feels dirty when it’s all said and done, like a cheap whore. She flinches as a strange, guilty tingle sparks in the juncture of her legs, the recollection of the warmth of his seed spilling into her now only a stinging echo, resonating from the inside out. She showers once before she leaves, and once when she gets home, blaming the noise and the late hour on a particularly dirty incident with spray paint on a vandalism case as she walks out of the bath, clouded by the steam. Rhys, of course, thinks nothing of her alibi, and rolls back over before she’s done toweling off her split ends.
She’s late the next morning, and she knows that Owen can see what she’s done, somehow; he reads it on her immediately, and there’s a jealous, self-righteous sort of smirk curving his mouth that only makes her blush harder and avoid Ianto’s gaze with greater intention. If the medic gave the teaboy any credit, he would have pieced the puzzle together without batting an eye - discretion had never been Gwen’s strong suit after all. Thankfully for them both, Owen was of the general opinion that if Ianto wasn’t a virgin (which he suspected aloud on various occasions), he was too much of a woman to be over mourning his recent abandonment just yet, and wouldn’t be catching for some willing, faceless cock any time soon.
When she goes to retrieve Coptogulan burn ointment the next day, she cringes as she feels herself growing hot, wet between her thighs.
________________________________________________
That was the first time. She never lets him get away without a condom again - birth control be damned, it was still too long of a month waiting for her period to beg a repeat performance - and she makes sure that they make it to the bed more often than not for the sake of her back. He doesn’t so much as touch Jack’s coat anymore, and he has to balance the budget anew for the money he’s saving on takeout in only buying the Captain food every other day, and cutting off his coffee on the weekends. It works, and it’s soothing in a perverse sort of way that makes it easy to forget the multitude of reason why they shouldn’t - the endless supply of explanations that point more towards Jack than to either of them. But this is about a man and a woman who need more than what they have - about two people filling a void, nothing else - and there’s no room in their bed for a phantom threesome, as much as they both might wish otherwise.
It started between two points, she knows that. She can’t think of them at present, to be honest - sprawled on sheets warmed by their bodies in spite of the chill - but she’ll remember them when the world makes sense again; when her heart can return to beating instead of humming, when her lungs stop burning, and her chest stops aching with the frantic exertions of both. She feels almost nauseous, lightheaded, and she doesn’t know whether its sleep or a more unnatural brand of unconsciousness that consumes her in the end - the only thing real to her mind is the smell of Jack on the pillow wedged awkwardly beneath her, and she can almost imagine that the galloping pulse that rushes under her palm, haphazardly splayed upon the collarbone of her exhausted partner in crime, belongs to Jack as well.
________________________________________________
They fall into a routine that they never talk about - no one thinks twice of their excuses, their lies, because they’re the last two people anyone suspects. It works to their advantage.
She has to concentrate in order to call out his name, and not another as he presses deeper into her. “Ianto,” she moans out, flat on her back in the dark. “Yan...”
Everything stops, all motion, all pleasure, the world on hold as the blackness becomes impossibly blacker around them. “Don’t call me that.” The words reach her ears, and they sear, ripping like barbed wire from the depths of his soul to the surface of her own.
“Call you what?” she asks in a small voice, unsure and bereft and too aroused to stop now.
“That sorry excuse for a nickname,” he bites out again. “It’s... despicable.”
She gnaws her lip to keep from thinking of the hot, sticky evidence of her need for satisfaction throbbing angrily between her thighs. “Is it because Jack called you that?”
It’s a low blow, and she can see the sting in his eyes giving him away. “No,” he snarls, his nose turned up and his lips tight. “It’s because you’re calling me that.”
He pulls out of her without a word, and it’s in that very moment that she begins to understand everything he can never say.
She pleasures herself that night with nothing but her persistent finger, the frustration at how long it takes to manage even the slightest arousal something like a self-inflicted penance. She cries out when she slices a jagged fingernail against the slick lip just at the edge of her vulva, and as the sweet rush of her orgasm burns in the cut, she finally learns to keep her mouth shut.
________________________________________
It’s not even a consideration, not a choice to stay for the evening as the 31st rolls around. She’s not at all surprised by the fact that she’s curled into the arm of the sofa, sipping champagne and nibbling eagerly at some camembert straight off the knife, ankles tucked under her thighs like a little girl again, anxiously waiting for the clock to reach midnight. Ianto looks the part of the adult; the flute of bubbly threaded casually between deft fingers, his shirt unbuttoned to the center of his chest and his tie draped over his knees, splayed across the adjacent table where his socked feet sit propped, unconcerned and unabashed.
“Shall we take this down instead?” she asks with a gesture towards Jack’s room, feeling the effect of the alcohol and wanting to lay down somewhere a bit more comfortable.
“No.” It’s the sharpness of the reply that grabs her, challenges her, and she straightens her spine proudly, shooting him a questioning stare, taunting him wordlessly, begging him to take her on.
“I put up with Jack’s abysmal manners in bed long enough, thank you,” he tosses offhandedly, not bothering to move a muscle, but there’s a desperate edge of longing frosting every word that makes her take careful pause. “Always with the eating in bed and the crumbs on the sheets, the bragging and the ego. At least you keep your fucking mouth shut,” he grins, the tension easing as he puts it aside for the moment. “Most of the time.” She smiles back at him, the solidarity between them waxing. “But if I never have to get a stain out of those sheets again, wine or otherwise, it’ll be too soon.”
She swallows a juvenile chuckle, letting the atmosphere settle before she asks gently the question she wishes someone would ask her: “Do you still miss him?”
He doesn’t answer, which isn’t surprising - not with him - and instead poses a question of his own. “Won’t Rhys wonder where you are?”
“He’s out with some friends.”
Ianto snorts before sobering, trying to sound genuine. “How desperately considerate of him.” Trying, and failing miserably.
“Oi,” Gwen defends half-heartedly with a roll of her eyes. She can’t say she’s heartbroken over the absence of her boyfriend on the last day of the year.
“When he proposes, will you say yes?”
It catches her off-guard, the gentle probing of the inquiry, the honest vulnerability that says things she can’t understand, implies things she’ll never know. There’s only one response that makes any sense. “Why?”
“Call it morbid curiosity,” he comments, refusing to meet her gaze as his eyes focus on the bag of crisps in front of him, flickering at random to the elevated point that’s only ever been occupied by one person’s overwhelming presence. She can see his cocksure grin as well as Ianto can, the ghost of his presence lingering still, though she knows that Ianto sees something deeper in it, something more. She just doesn’t know if what he sees was ever really there. “I honestly don’t know what the two of you see in each other,” he adds thoughtfully before draining the last of his champagne.
She doesn’t know if that’s an underhanded insult or just a valid observation - because while she won’t admit it, sometimes she wonders the same. She lets it slide.
“You don’t have to.” It’s pointed, and it’s enough. That’s all the answer he needs. The silence stretches out over them and it steals the breath from her throat, the saliva from her tongue; she feels uncharacteristically claustrophobic for a moment, and fights the urge to run.
“Any resolutions you’d like to make before the clock strikes twelve?” Ianto’s voice finally shatters the ice.
She swallows hard, and wishes the cream-colored liquid in her glass wasn’t so dry. “To be more honest.”
Ianto barks out a sardonic sort of laugh that doesn’t even make an attempt at discreetness. “Good luck with that,” he scoffs, reading for the bottle of Chardonnay at the other end of the coffee table.
“I intend to rotate coffee flavors every week,” he volunteers with apt seriousness, pouring himself a class of the wine, breathing in the aroma as he swirls it about the glass. “Variety, after all, is the spice of life.”
“How inspired,” she comments back dryly, slicing off a bit more cheese.
“I only make resolutions I can rightfully uphold. Less disappointing that way.”
He makes a valid point. She doesn’t know why it infuriates her.
The clock strikes twelve, but they only know it because the rift monitor resets itself. “Happy New Year, Gwen Cooper,” he breathes softly, and she can tell that something’s changed between them, something small but important, and she feels compelled to figure out what.
“Happy New Year, Ianto Jones.”
She pegs him with the strap-on she discovered buried in the bottom of his desk, the one she knows had to belong to him and Jack for reasons she can’t fully understand. She wonders if he’s using her to replace him, instead of just stand in for him, and she can’t help but feel hurt by the notion in spite of the hypocrisy of it all. She bites her lip until it bleeds in frustration, and uses just enough lube to make the process possible without making it too pleasurable; she’s angry for reasons she can’t quite place, and she’d like very much for him to feel it. She braces herself by the heels of her palms against his shoulders, using them for leverage as she rocks into him, and when she hears him moan just a little too deep, a little too desperate as she drives the dildo in harder, dragging her nails along the cleft of his ass, she knows she’s making him bleed. It thrills her in the most sickening sort of way; when his hands reach back, groping blindly for a moment before finding her own and forcing her deeper - quicker - it makes her blood run thinner, hotter through her veins. She fumbles instinctively towards his groin, slipping a curled index finger around his cock and teasing his balls with her French-manicured thumb, shivering as he bucks against her, feeling second-hand as he clenches down on the dildo as the straps tug and dig at her sensitive skin. She runs a loose fist up and down his shaft, pulling devilishly at the slick tip and squeezing just a tad near the base on the upstroke. He whimpers, and she has the sudden urge to taste him; she falls against him, driving hard and deep as she sacrifices her balance to slip her fingers past her lips, running her teeth below the nails and tasting every nuance of flesh and salt; of copper and cum and something unnamable that makes her heart race with sheer, wanton need. She wonders briefly if it’s wrong, unnatural that she’s never been more turned on than she is in that very moment, watching him writhe beneath her for once; her nerve-endings trill with the wave of power that comes over her when he spills his seed onto the pillowcase (which she suspects will leave one hell of a stain, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time), and its only after she peaks with a gasp that she cringes, the weight of the toy secured about her hips suddenly uncomfortable as she loses feeling in her thighs, the wetness between them seeping around the strap and spreading out to glisten on the untainted end of the silicone bobbing out in front of her.
They both know she won’t keep her promise, that honesty has become a matter of perspective where it was once an absolute; that her moral compass started pointing to a different north from the very first night. The truth is, it doesn’t so much as cross her mind anymore that the word “adultery” is something she should be thinking on.
She doesn’t wear a ring yet.
________________________________________
Which is an excuse whose validity is living on borrowed time, as is made clear when Rhys proposes before the end of January.
She knows that Ianto notices it - he has to, even before Tosh squeals over it and asks for all the romantic details, before Owen sulks about for nearly a week solid so that Ianto is forced to submit a supply order early to replace everything the medic manages to trash in his tantrum - but he doesn’t say a word, never so much as blinks at the damn thing when it’s choking her finger, a little golden jailor, and never bothers to spare it a glance when she slips it off for her desperately-awaited parole; she refuses to wear it while she beds another man. Somehow, that little concession makes it easier to swallow - easier to ignore. For the both of them.
She’s looking through fabric samples for the gowns long after Rhys drinks himself into slumber following a particularly rousing football match, and she’d give anything for a reprieve when she hears a gentle yet persistent tapping on the door. She minds the peephole for an instant before swinging the door open on its hinges, revealing the only logical guest that would call at such an hour. Ianto looks damp, soggy-like; he’d either walked in the rain, or spent more time than he ought to have debating whether or not his visit was wise. His sparkling eyes are dull, haunted, and his tie clings limply to the center of his chest beneath his trench, a second skin like an emerald bloodstain, a fatal blow. It makes her ache to see anyone look so pathetic - she always felt too much for her own good, really - but she had wanted a distraction, and here one was, standing on her doorstep, as if fate had been assigned to have her best interests at heart.
“You forgot this,” he announces strongly, though his voice is monotone, as he holds out the sparkling rock that was missing from her hand - she hadn’t even noticed its absence. “I thought you might need it,” he explains, waiting for her to take it from his fingers. “Bit conspicuous without it, yeah?”
She reaches out, running her fingertips over the diamond but not grabbing to reclaim the ring. “Ianto...”
“Don’t, Gwen. We both know what this is. What it isn’t.”
She deflates at his forcefulness, his assuredness, and she feels strangely vulnerable here, in her home, with her fiancée sleeping just feet away, blocked by a door suddenly too thin and insubstantial for her tastes. She’s never stopped to realize before this moment that maybe their arrangement wasn’t just stressful on her end; that maybe Ianto was betraying the lingering promise of Captain Jack Harkness as much as she was breaking faith on her end. “I just...”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he assures her with a humble shake of his head and a reassuring smile that doesn’t meet his eyes, and she doesn’t have to think as he turns away to go; it’s instinct when she grabs onto his sleeve and drags him to press against her.
He doesn’t react, and she stops - everything freezes as an unexpected fear grips her, and she’s frightened of everything, from the light in the kitchen to the growing hardness protruding into her lower stomach as Ianto leans against her. “I can’t do this,” she gasps, turning lost, wild eyes upon him. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t.” His voice is mesmerizing, like he’s learned from the best, and nothing matters anymore at all as she tears his overcoat from his frame and tosses it to catch on the back of the couch.
“What about-”
She presses a hand over his mouth, the damp texture of his lips tantalizing, dangerous - the one thing she needs in all the world, that rush of adrenaline. “Rhys sleeps like a baby. Nothing can wake him.”
Ianto doesn’t say anything as she continues to undress him, only stopping her as she fingers the elastic of his boxers, seeking to delve inside. “You’re sure?” he asks cautiously, responsibly, with a glance towards the bedroom as he stills her eager hands.
She feels that familiarly tantalizing burn of shame, and even though she can’t quite nod, she knows he can sense her assent.
They’ve reached an understanding.
_______________________________________
Gwen falls asleep on the couch after Ianto slips out, more comfortable there than back in her bed, next to her faithful, loving, honest husband-to-be. He’s loud as hell when he wakes, and he stumbles out to find her in front of the telly, assuming she fell asleep in the rumpled blouse and panties she’s sporting, that she tossed her bra innocently, half-asleep, to hang from the entertainment center in the corner. He leans down to press a kiss to the crook of her neck in greeting; her heart speeds when he pauses, looking confused.
“What is it?” she asks breathlessly, hoping he writes it off the catch in her voice to her having just woken up.
“You smell different,” he murmurs warily, and she knows she’s been caught.
“Oh,” she dips her head to take a whiff herself, and lo and behold, she reeks of Ianto. His sweat, his scent, his arousal, his cologne. It’s everywhere, and it’s undeniable.
“That’s just Ianto’s cologne, love,” she soothes with more calmness than she expected to be capable of. “It was cold last night, and he leant me is jacket.”
The suspicion on Rhys’ face melts slowly as a soft, tentative smile spreads across his features. She can’t be this lucky; it’s uncanny.
“Ah, well; that’s the poof, yeah?” he asks good-naturedly, and Gwen wants to sob with relief; she manages to nod and smile uncertainly instead.
“Then nothing to worry about,” Rhys writes the whole thing off with a smile, forgetting it entirely, and Gwen almost wishes, in spite of the mind-blowing sex from the night before, that she could do the same.
_______________________________________
The game changes when Jack comes back, as was to be expected, really, but only in theory - they’d both long given up any real hope that he’d return. Sure, Ianto still left a mug of coffee on his desk to grow stale until the surface was cleared for more... productive use, Gwen still CC’d him on memos and briefings, and they both still called out his name on occasion when they came, but the thought of the Captain making his heart-stopping return from the ether, guns blazing and teeth gleaming, is something they’d both written off as half-baked fantasy - some strange and unhealthy mixture of lust, libido, and irrational hope that would color often their dreams, seldom their nightmares, but never their reality.
Ianto rediscovers in Jack whatever he was searching for in Gwen, and that’s all well and good, but as the weeks drag by, Gwen realizes that she’s been left with the short end of the bargain, with no Jack of her own to fill the gap.
________________________________________
She’s not a dancer, and the thought of spinning around a ballroom in front of any number of people makes her stomach churn. There’s only one person in the world that can help her, only one she can even think of asking.
He doesn’t look surprised when she asks him while he’s making coffee one morning - somewhere he can’t escape her - and by the end of the week they’re face to face, alone in the Hub, surrounded by the furniture they moved for their makeshift dance floor, with nothing else but the subtle strings of generic background music to set a beat separate from her racing pulse.
He leads, and it’s strange, because the feel of his hand in hers isn’t charged with anything other than instruction. She’s almost disappointed. They twirl a few times, simple movements, and he never mentions when her heel crushes his toes, though she apologizes with a blush. Soon, the opening notes, the harsh brass of ‘Moonlight Serenade’ overtakes the atmosphere of forced propriety between them, and they stop mid-dip; Ianto rights her again as his eyes glaze over, and she feels the need to comfort him - Jack may have returned, but he isn’t here now.
“I hate this song,” she states simply, hoping it’s enough; and yet knowing that it isn’t, it’s all she has to give.
It takes a while, but after a time, Ianto’s lips curve into a soft, half-hearted smile. “You know what? So do I.”
They wait until it’s over before they start again.
At her wedding, Ianto doesn’t even try to dance with her. She feels like Hester Prynne and remembers how happily that story ended. She laughs in Jack’s arms, and feels light, airy - she tries to ignore the piercing stare from the DJ table that pins the back of her neck when she’s facing away but disappears on every other turn across the floor. She notices the faint scent masking Jack’s trademark pheromones, recognizes it as familiar, and she knows, she knows that this is the end of a great many things just as much as it’s the beginning of others. She glances down at the pair of rings on her left hand, and feels her stomach plunge as she realizes that she’s not entirely sure that what’s she losing is quite made up for by what she’s come to gain.
Ianto plays Dexy’s Midnight Runners next, and it all escapes her mind.
________________________________________
When it’s all said and done, bodies filed away and blood scoured from the floor, they’re left alone again, with nothing but each other.
Jack leaves the Hub with Owen’s labcoat draped over Tosh’s computer terminal, as if she had something to hide. It feels almost like they’ve lost three members of their team, really, so it’s fitting; it’s okay when they find themselves returning once more to the scene of the crime - the first, and all those subsequent - Gwen sprawled wide and unforgiving on rumpled bedclothes that smell like the Captain again, Ianto kneeling ready, eager between her legs, his shoulders flanked by her trembling thighs, his body cradled closer to the heat at her center by weak knees bent tight, anticipatory around his broad torso. It’s natural, expected even, when Ianto’s hands gently, almost delicately, inch her blouse over the sensitive flesh of her stomach, palms dragging against her ribs before he peels her shirt from her breasts, hooking his thumbs expertly beneath the underwire of her bra and pulling it off along with in one sleek, smooth motion that leaves the ironed-in puckers of the fabric at the juncture of her elbows staring at her accusatorially from the floor - stark imperfections in the rumpled heap of clothing, accentuated in the subtle glow from the old oil lamp burning across the room. She wants to see someone, anyone but him hovering over her as the cold seeps into her muscles, her bones; but it’s Ianto Jones who will make her feel alive amidst all this death, and maybe that’s okay. Without love, there can be no guilt, or so she likes to imagine; and she’s already had her fair share of guilt, if she’s honest. He penetrates her without warning, and it feels new again, like their very first time; she can smell Jack on him, and she can pretend.
They are back to square one.
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Gwen/Ianto, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys, implication of previous Gwen/Owen
Word Count: 5,816
Summary: It’s more about filling the emptiness, the void, than it is about the two of them - but it’s certainly not about that bastard Jack Harkness, that’s for sure. Spoilers for Torchwood S1 and S2.
Disclaimer: I own nothing but the plot. All recognizable elements of Torchwood and Doctor Who are copyright to RTD and the BBC.
Author’s Notes: Written for a prompt by kate24534 for thestopwatch Holiday!Bang Twelve Days of Janto. Why I do this to myself, let alone why I did this to myself again, after the last fic exchange, I have no idea. The prompt just really grabbed me, and I had to give it a try. Particularly because my experience with writing Gwen is limited, and I thought this was a story line I could really get to like her in. Kinda wish I could pursue it further, really - I was pleasantly shocked at how much I enjoyed writing the bitter and desperate Gwen/Ianto. Warnings in advance for the American-isms; when it comes to sex in particular, it feels far too awkward and ingenuine to write outside my native dialect. And of course, a whole heap of thanks to the wonderful nschick for the beta; you’re a love, my dear.
Square One
It’s that goddamn greatcoat that signals the difference.
It’s common knowledge that Gwen Cooper is not one to mind her own business, and Ianto’s recent lapse into obsession is of particular interest to her, indeed. She notices the exceptionally pedantic manner in which he lays out the untouched curry on Jack’s desk, complete with plastic silverware and starchy paper napkin from the take-out bag, leaving it to flavor the stale air until the end of the day when it finds itself splattered at the bottom of a bin liner that holds nothing but the shadow of soupy yellow pooled at the bottom. She can’t help but recognize the deeper crease of his frown when she sneaks the extra double-shot latte that is sweetened just to Jack’s particular taste buds, drawing down the corners of his lips, aging him as she laps at foamy residue on the roof of her mouth, savoring the tang of the espresso as her pulse rushes with the extra caffeine. The rattling echo that the hatch-like door to Jack’s living quarters makes when it opens and closes is nigh impossible to ignore, and always has been, but Gwen notices that she only ever hears it when Ianto doesn’t know she’s there, too late into the evening for her presence to be suspected; she doesn’t know why she always slips out before he can spot her on such occasions, but she does.
She doesn’t fail to notice the way Jack’s trademark overcoat moves, either, despite its agitator’s meticulous efforts to conceal the slight changes in its position - in fact, it takes a week for him to replace it on the wrong hanger, causing it to cast a different shadow and attract her attention. She smiles sadly when she catches his face buried against the line of buttons, each fastened with due care, wrapped gently in the embrace of lifeless, flapping sleeves with nothing to hold them up, nothing to give them substance. She feels her throat tighten when he averts his eyes later, so that the red rims below his eyelashes can be written off as a trick of the light.
It’s only when the coat lies wedged beneath the corner of the filing cabinet, littered with CCTV stills, both of Jack and a man in a worn sort of leather jacket - vague printouts labeled “Classified” peeking tantalizingly out the tops of manilla folders - the fabric grease-stained at the collar with the remains of the day-old Chinese that never got taken out of the overturned bin nearby, chips gouged out of the antique pieces that always served as strange accents to the sleek metal fixtures next to them, which now sport their own fair share of dents and scratches, more than she suspects the light from outside the office can accentuate, now that the lamps lay shattered beneath her shoes; it’s only then that Gwen realizes something is really very wrong with the teaboy.
________________________________________________
It starts between two points. Between ‘Co’ and ‘Cu’ in the archives, in the middle of Correllian Dichloride Antitoxins and Currusian Warpseed Dart Launchers. Somewhere between coffee and cultural detection software, the lines blurring between cock and cunt. And that’s all she cares about, really - a mind-blowing orgasm and a bit of clever irony. She isn’t hard to please.
Notorious for being constitutionally incapable of letting a thing go, she refuses to leave before Ianto comes back up from the Archives, where his heat signature has been identified for the better part of the evening. Owen has long since abandoned his post, cracking open a longneck and taking the lift towards the first lucky pub on his weekly barhop, and Tosh, having volunteered for the overnight shift two days going, gives up trying to seem concerned after falling asleep at her computer leaves the impression of her keyboard etched into her forehead. She reluctantly hails a taxi home just before midnight.
Gwen was slated to stay anyway, but with Ianto always buried in some project or another, they were all well-aware that they could shirk their duties so long as he was present. Still, she clung to that excuse as the minutes trickled past, the only sign that Ianto was actually still breathing down in the bowels of the hub was the fact that his internal body temperature hadn’t dropped.
Unable to concentrate on the reports she should have been revising and approving, what with the conspicuous dripping from the plumbing near the kitchenette and Myfanwy’s damned pseudo-snore, she reasons that it’s only logical that she go to check on Ianto after so long - common courtesy, at the very least. She’s never liked the Archives much, mostly because she manages to fuck something up every time she looks for anything down there, which only sets a tone of confrontation that suffocates the entire team for at least the day, though since Jack’s disappearance, it tends to last longer.
He’s not hard to find, braced by the palms against the farthest cabinet in the second vault, eyes closed and lips just barely parted; he looks magnificent in a more human way than Gwen could previously have imagined possible - exquisite, erotic even, but melancholy. Resilient only because he’s hardened beyond recognition.
She steps towards him, her footsteps echoing, and he flinches at the sharp resonance, but doesn’t respond. She doesn’t know how, or why, but his mouth is on hers in an instant, and the contact almost burns; it’s not even a kiss at all so much as a sob, as if the touch of her lips is all that keeps him from drowning - the illusion that they belong to someone else all that saves him from the fall.
Well, two could play that game.
She jerks with the force of her knees making contact with the metal file drawers, the air being forced from her lungs as his fingers grip tightly around the line of her pelvis; she can’t think of anything but how strong he is, how perfectly-disguised those muscles must be, or how well her new diet regimen is working as he shifts her weight effortlessly upwards, balancing her on his palms as he digs frantically at the button of her jeans, unfastening it with such force that her zipper splits along with it.
His own trousers are hanging below his calves before she can blink, their shirts gone before she can empty her lungs, and she doesn’t even have to look down to know he’s ready to slide into her; she can feel the brush of the pert tip of his cock against her Venusian cleft with stark clarity, and it sends a shiver down her spine. She tries to recover her breath as the back of her skull crashes back onto the metal, spreading dizziness out through the bone. “Shouldn’t,” she struggles, hands grasping blindly as he loses his grip on her for the barest of instants, afraid of falling. “ Shouldn’t we use some sort of...”
“Don’t insult me,” he sneers, voice low and cold - if it wasn’t Ianto Jones, slick with sweat and half-nude standing in front of her, holding her up against the juncture of the wall and the filer, she’d never have known it was him. She knows that he’s not seeing her when he stares into her eyes, and it unnerves her something terrible. “We both know we’re clean.”
She’s barely coherent enough to feel affronted at the invasion of privacy as he thrusts his erection up to press against the inside of her thigh. “Or else, I know we’re both clean,” he clarifies in a whisper, “and that you’re on the pill.”
She doesn’t have the time or the mind to do anything but moan as he pushes into her, his hot, frantic breath on her shoulder making her heart pound. “You’re tighter than I’d have imagined,” he rasps before he starts to rock against her, hard and fast and without aplomb or ceremony; this is the back-alley sort of gig, this is, and they’re both just fillers, temporarily assuming the roles. He’s bigger than Rhys, which blows her away, and she’s got to be wetter than she’s ever been in her life, because it doesn’t so much as sting, doesn’t so much as pinch as he pulls out and plunges in over and over again. She feels herself tremble around the blissful feeling of fullness he’s giving her, and she has to blink twice not to see a blonder head bowed distractedly over her bare breasts.
“You feel nothing like Lisa,” he sighs into her cleavage, but he doesn’t mention whether that’s good or bad. He doesn’t even bother to compare her to Jack - she suspects it’s no contest.
They’re the same, she suddenly realizes, she and Ianto. Both of them fucked over by the only man they can imagine being worth it, and forced to settle as a result. Feeling his firm balls rub rhythmically back and forth against her slit as the friction builds further in, neither one of them looking at each other, never uttering a single word louder than their gasping breaths; like this, she finally feels like someone understands what it’s like not to get what you want.
________________________________________________
It’s exactly seventeen hours, fifty-six minutes, and twenty-eight seconds later that she realizes he’s not just a teaboy, but also a really good fuck. She’s not keeping track of course, but Ianto apparently is, or else she assumes as much, and even though he doesn’t say anything, doesn’t point it out, that fucking stopwatch is still ticking long after they’ve climaxed - she twice, though he just the once - and she can’t help but be mesmerized by the steady movement of the second hand as the moments whisper on by, bleeding into the moonlight that shimmers somewhere, though certainly not here, where the musty scent of stagnant water is never more than a breath away.
She feels dirty when it’s all said and done, like a cheap whore. She flinches as a strange, guilty tingle sparks in the juncture of her legs, the recollection of the warmth of his seed spilling into her now only a stinging echo, resonating from the inside out. She showers once before she leaves, and once when she gets home, blaming the noise and the late hour on a particularly dirty incident with spray paint on a vandalism case as she walks out of the bath, clouded by the steam. Rhys, of course, thinks nothing of her alibi, and rolls back over before she’s done toweling off her split ends.
She’s late the next morning, and she knows that Owen can see what she’s done, somehow; he reads it on her immediately, and there’s a jealous, self-righteous sort of smirk curving his mouth that only makes her blush harder and avoid Ianto’s gaze with greater intention. If the medic gave the teaboy any credit, he would have pieced the puzzle together without batting an eye - discretion had never been Gwen’s strong suit after all. Thankfully for them both, Owen was of the general opinion that if Ianto wasn’t a virgin (which he suspected aloud on various occasions), he was too much of a woman to be over mourning his recent abandonment just yet, and wouldn’t be catching for some willing, faceless cock any time soon.
When she goes to retrieve Coptogulan burn ointment the next day, she cringes as she feels herself growing hot, wet between her thighs.
________________________________________________
That was the first time. She never lets him get away without a condom again - birth control be damned, it was still too long of a month waiting for her period to beg a repeat performance - and she makes sure that they make it to the bed more often than not for the sake of her back. He doesn’t so much as touch Jack’s coat anymore, and he has to balance the budget anew for the money he’s saving on takeout in only buying the Captain food every other day, and cutting off his coffee on the weekends. It works, and it’s soothing in a perverse sort of way that makes it easy to forget the multitude of reason why they shouldn’t - the endless supply of explanations that point more towards Jack than to either of them. But this is about a man and a woman who need more than what they have - about two people filling a void, nothing else - and there’s no room in their bed for a phantom threesome, as much as they both might wish otherwise.
It started between two points, she knows that. She can’t think of them at present, to be honest - sprawled on sheets warmed by their bodies in spite of the chill - but she’ll remember them when the world makes sense again; when her heart can return to beating instead of humming, when her lungs stop burning, and her chest stops aching with the frantic exertions of both. She feels almost nauseous, lightheaded, and she doesn’t know whether its sleep or a more unnatural brand of unconsciousness that consumes her in the end - the only thing real to her mind is the smell of Jack on the pillow wedged awkwardly beneath her, and she can almost imagine that the galloping pulse that rushes under her palm, haphazardly splayed upon the collarbone of her exhausted partner in crime, belongs to Jack as well.
________________________________________________
They fall into a routine that they never talk about - no one thinks twice of their excuses, their lies, because they’re the last two people anyone suspects. It works to their advantage.
She has to concentrate in order to call out his name, and not another as he presses deeper into her. “Ianto,” she moans out, flat on her back in the dark. “Yan...”
Everything stops, all motion, all pleasure, the world on hold as the blackness becomes impossibly blacker around them. “Don’t call me that.” The words reach her ears, and they sear, ripping like barbed wire from the depths of his soul to the surface of her own.
“Call you what?” she asks in a small voice, unsure and bereft and too aroused to stop now.
“That sorry excuse for a nickname,” he bites out again. “It’s... despicable.”
She gnaws her lip to keep from thinking of the hot, sticky evidence of her need for satisfaction throbbing angrily between her thighs. “Is it because Jack called you that?”
It’s a low blow, and she can see the sting in his eyes giving him away. “No,” he snarls, his nose turned up and his lips tight. “It’s because you’re calling me that.”
He pulls out of her without a word, and it’s in that very moment that she begins to understand everything he can never say.
She pleasures herself that night with nothing but her persistent finger, the frustration at how long it takes to manage even the slightest arousal something like a self-inflicted penance. She cries out when she slices a jagged fingernail against the slick lip just at the edge of her vulva, and as the sweet rush of her orgasm burns in the cut, she finally learns to keep her mouth shut.
________________________________________
It’s not even a consideration, not a choice to stay for the evening as the 31st rolls around. She’s not at all surprised by the fact that she’s curled into the arm of the sofa, sipping champagne and nibbling eagerly at some camembert straight off the knife, ankles tucked under her thighs like a little girl again, anxiously waiting for the clock to reach midnight. Ianto looks the part of the adult; the flute of bubbly threaded casually between deft fingers, his shirt unbuttoned to the center of his chest and his tie draped over his knees, splayed across the adjacent table where his socked feet sit propped, unconcerned and unabashed.
“Shall we take this down instead?” she asks with a gesture towards Jack’s room, feeling the effect of the alcohol and wanting to lay down somewhere a bit more comfortable.
“No.” It’s the sharpness of the reply that grabs her, challenges her, and she straightens her spine proudly, shooting him a questioning stare, taunting him wordlessly, begging him to take her on.
“I put up with Jack’s abysmal manners in bed long enough, thank you,” he tosses offhandedly, not bothering to move a muscle, but there’s a desperate edge of longing frosting every word that makes her take careful pause. “Always with the eating in bed and the crumbs on the sheets, the bragging and the ego. At least you keep your fucking mouth shut,” he grins, the tension easing as he puts it aside for the moment. “Most of the time.” She smiles back at him, the solidarity between them waxing. “But if I never have to get a stain out of those sheets again, wine or otherwise, it’ll be too soon.”
She swallows a juvenile chuckle, letting the atmosphere settle before she asks gently the question she wishes someone would ask her: “Do you still miss him?”
He doesn’t answer, which isn’t surprising - not with him - and instead poses a question of his own. “Won’t Rhys wonder where you are?”
“He’s out with some friends.”
Ianto snorts before sobering, trying to sound genuine. “How desperately considerate of him.” Trying, and failing miserably.
“Oi,” Gwen defends half-heartedly with a roll of her eyes. She can’t say she’s heartbroken over the absence of her boyfriend on the last day of the year.
“When he proposes, will you say yes?”
It catches her off-guard, the gentle probing of the inquiry, the honest vulnerability that says things she can’t understand, implies things she’ll never know. There’s only one response that makes any sense. “Why?”
“Call it morbid curiosity,” he comments, refusing to meet her gaze as his eyes focus on the bag of crisps in front of him, flickering at random to the elevated point that’s only ever been occupied by one person’s overwhelming presence. She can see his cocksure grin as well as Ianto can, the ghost of his presence lingering still, though she knows that Ianto sees something deeper in it, something more. She just doesn’t know if what he sees was ever really there. “I honestly don’t know what the two of you see in each other,” he adds thoughtfully before draining the last of his champagne.
She doesn’t know if that’s an underhanded insult or just a valid observation - because while she won’t admit it, sometimes she wonders the same. She lets it slide.
“You don’t have to.” It’s pointed, and it’s enough. That’s all the answer he needs. The silence stretches out over them and it steals the breath from her throat, the saliva from her tongue; she feels uncharacteristically claustrophobic for a moment, and fights the urge to run.
“Any resolutions you’d like to make before the clock strikes twelve?” Ianto’s voice finally shatters the ice.
She swallows hard, and wishes the cream-colored liquid in her glass wasn’t so dry. “To be more honest.”
Ianto barks out a sardonic sort of laugh that doesn’t even make an attempt at discreetness. “Good luck with that,” he scoffs, reading for the bottle of Chardonnay at the other end of the coffee table.
“I intend to rotate coffee flavors every week,” he volunteers with apt seriousness, pouring himself a class of the wine, breathing in the aroma as he swirls it about the glass. “Variety, after all, is the spice of life.”
“How inspired,” she comments back dryly, slicing off a bit more cheese.
“I only make resolutions I can rightfully uphold. Less disappointing that way.”
He makes a valid point. She doesn’t know why it infuriates her.
The clock strikes twelve, but they only know it because the rift monitor resets itself. “Happy New Year, Gwen Cooper,” he breathes softly, and she can tell that something’s changed between them, something small but important, and she feels compelled to figure out what.
“Happy New Year, Ianto Jones.”
She pegs him with the strap-on she discovered buried in the bottom of his desk, the one she knows had to belong to him and Jack for reasons she can’t fully understand. She wonders if he’s using her to replace him, instead of just stand in for him, and she can’t help but feel hurt by the notion in spite of the hypocrisy of it all. She bites her lip until it bleeds in frustration, and uses just enough lube to make the process possible without making it too pleasurable; she’s angry for reasons she can’t quite place, and she’d like very much for him to feel it. She braces herself by the heels of her palms against his shoulders, using them for leverage as she rocks into him, and when she hears him moan just a little too deep, a little too desperate as she drives the dildo in harder, dragging her nails along the cleft of his ass, she knows she’s making him bleed. It thrills her in the most sickening sort of way; when his hands reach back, groping blindly for a moment before finding her own and forcing her deeper - quicker - it makes her blood run thinner, hotter through her veins. She fumbles instinctively towards his groin, slipping a curled index finger around his cock and teasing his balls with her French-manicured thumb, shivering as he bucks against her, feeling second-hand as he clenches down on the dildo as the straps tug and dig at her sensitive skin. She runs a loose fist up and down his shaft, pulling devilishly at the slick tip and squeezing just a tad near the base on the upstroke. He whimpers, and she has the sudden urge to taste him; she falls against him, driving hard and deep as she sacrifices her balance to slip her fingers past her lips, running her teeth below the nails and tasting every nuance of flesh and salt; of copper and cum and something unnamable that makes her heart race with sheer, wanton need. She wonders briefly if it’s wrong, unnatural that she’s never been more turned on than she is in that very moment, watching him writhe beneath her for once; her nerve-endings trill with the wave of power that comes over her when he spills his seed onto the pillowcase (which she suspects will leave one hell of a stain, but it certainly wouldn’t be the first time), and its only after she peaks with a gasp that she cringes, the weight of the toy secured about her hips suddenly uncomfortable as she loses feeling in her thighs, the wetness between them seeping around the strap and spreading out to glisten on the untainted end of the silicone bobbing out in front of her.
They both know she won’t keep her promise, that honesty has become a matter of perspective where it was once an absolute; that her moral compass started pointing to a different north from the very first night. The truth is, it doesn’t so much as cross her mind anymore that the word “adultery” is something she should be thinking on.
She doesn’t wear a ring yet.
________________________________________
Which is an excuse whose validity is living on borrowed time, as is made clear when Rhys proposes before the end of January.
She knows that Ianto notices it - he has to, even before Tosh squeals over it and asks for all the romantic details, before Owen sulks about for nearly a week solid so that Ianto is forced to submit a supply order early to replace everything the medic manages to trash in his tantrum - but he doesn’t say a word, never so much as blinks at the damn thing when it’s choking her finger, a little golden jailor, and never bothers to spare it a glance when she slips it off for her desperately-awaited parole; she refuses to wear it while she beds another man. Somehow, that little concession makes it easier to swallow - easier to ignore. For the both of them.
She’s looking through fabric samples for the gowns long after Rhys drinks himself into slumber following a particularly rousing football match, and she’d give anything for a reprieve when she hears a gentle yet persistent tapping on the door. She minds the peephole for an instant before swinging the door open on its hinges, revealing the only logical guest that would call at such an hour. Ianto looks damp, soggy-like; he’d either walked in the rain, or spent more time than he ought to have debating whether or not his visit was wise. His sparkling eyes are dull, haunted, and his tie clings limply to the center of his chest beneath his trench, a second skin like an emerald bloodstain, a fatal blow. It makes her ache to see anyone look so pathetic - she always felt too much for her own good, really - but she had wanted a distraction, and here one was, standing on her doorstep, as if fate had been assigned to have her best interests at heart.
“You forgot this,” he announces strongly, though his voice is monotone, as he holds out the sparkling rock that was missing from her hand - she hadn’t even noticed its absence. “I thought you might need it,” he explains, waiting for her to take it from his fingers. “Bit conspicuous without it, yeah?”
She reaches out, running her fingertips over the diamond but not grabbing to reclaim the ring. “Ianto...”
“Don’t, Gwen. We both know what this is. What it isn’t.”
She deflates at his forcefulness, his assuredness, and she feels strangely vulnerable here, in her home, with her fiancée sleeping just feet away, blocked by a door suddenly too thin and insubstantial for her tastes. She’s never stopped to realize before this moment that maybe their arrangement wasn’t just stressful on her end; that maybe Ianto was betraying the lingering promise of Captain Jack Harkness as much as she was breaking faith on her end. “I just...”
“You don’t have to say anything,” he assures her with a humble shake of his head and a reassuring smile that doesn’t meet his eyes, and she doesn’t have to think as he turns away to go; it’s instinct when she grabs onto his sleeve and drags him to press against her.
He doesn’t react, and she stops - everything freezes as an unexpected fear grips her, and she’s frightened of everything, from the light in the kitchen to the growing hardness protruding into her lower stomach as Ianto leans against her. “I can’t do this,” she gasps, turning lost, wild eyes upon him. “I can’t.”
“Then don’t.” His voice is mesmerizing, like he’s learned from the best, and nothing matters anymore at all as she tears his overcoat from his frame and tosses it to catch on the back of the couch.
“What about-”
She presses a hand over his mouth, the damp texture of his lips tantalizing, dangerous - the one thing she needs in all the world, that rush of adrenaline. “Rhys sleeps like a baby. Nothing can wake him.”
Ianto doesn’t say anything as she continues to undress him, only stopping her as she fingers the elastic of his boxers, seeking to delve inside. “You’re sure?” he asks cautiously, responsibly, with a glance towards the bedroom as he stills her eager hands.
She feels that familiarly tantalizing burn of shame, and even though she can’t quite nod, she knows he can sense her assent.
They’ve reached an understanding.
_______________________________________
Gwen falls asleep on the couch after Ianto slips out, more comfortable there than back in her bed, next to her faithful, loving, honest husband-to-be. He’s loud as hell when he wakes, and he stumbles out to find her in front of the telly, assuming she fell asleep in the rumpled blouse and panties she’s sporting, that she tossed her bra innocently, half-asleep, to hang from the entertainment center in the corner. He leans down to press a kiss to the crook of her neck in greeting; her heart speeds when he pauses, looking confused.
“What is it?” she asks breathlessly, hoping he writes it off the catch in her voice to her having just woken up.
“You smell different,” he murmurs warily, and she knows she’s been caught.
“Oh,” she dips her head to take a whiff herself, and lo and behold, she reeks of Ianto. His sweat, his scent, his arousal, his cologne. It’s everywhere, and it’s undeniable.
“That’s just Ianto’s cologne, love,” she soothes with more calmness than she expected to be capable of. “It was cold last night, and he leant me is jacket.”
The suspicion on Rhys’ face melts slowly as a soft, tentative smile spreads across his features. She can’t be this lucky; it’s uncanny.
“Ah, well; that’s the poof, yeah?” he asks good-naturedly, and Gwen wants to sob with relief; she manages to nod and smile uncertainly instead.
“Then nothing to worry about,” Rhys writes the whole thing off with a smile, forgetting it entirely, and Gwen almost wishes, in spite of the mind-blowing sex from the night before, that she could do the same.
_______________________________________
The game changes when Jack comes back, as was to be expected, really, but only in theory - they’d both long given up any real hope that he’d return. Sure, Ianto still left a mug of coffee on his desk to grow stale until the surface was cleared for more... productive use, Gwen still CC’d him on memos and briefings, and they both still called out his name on occasion when they came, but the thought of the Captain making his heart-stopping return from the ether, guns blazing and teeth gleaming, is something they’d both written off as half-baked fantasy - some strange and unhealthy mixture of lust, libido, and irrational hope that would color often their dreams, seldom their nightmares, but never their reality.
Ianto rediscovers in Jack whatever he was searching for in Gwen, and that’s all well and good, but as the weeks drag by, Gwen realizes that she’s been left with the short end of the bargain, with no Jack of her own to fill the gap.
________________________________________
She’s not a dancer, and the thought of spinning around a ballroom in front of any number of people makes her stomach churn. There’s only one person in the world that can help her, only one she can even think of asking.
He doesn’t look surprised when she asks him while he’s making coffee one morning - somewhere he can’t escape her - and by the end of the week they’re face to face, alone in the Hub, surrounded by the furniture they moved for their makeshift dance floor, with nothing else but the subtle strings of generic background music to set a beat separate from her racing pulse.
He leads, and it’s strange, because the feel of his hand in hers isn’t charged with anything other than instruction. She’s almost disappointed. They twirl a few times, simple movements, and he never mentions when her heel crushes his toes, though she apologizes with a blush. Soon, the opening notes, the harsh brass of ‘Moonlight Serenade’ overtakes the atmosphere of forced propriety between them, and they stop mid-dip; Ianto rights her again as his eyes glaze over, and she feels the need to comfort him - Jack may have returned, but he isn’t here now.
“I hate this song,” she states simply, hoping it’s enough; and yet knowing that it isn’t, it’s all she has to give.
It takes a while, but after a time, Ianto’s lips curve into a soft, half-hearted smile. “You know what? So do I.”
They wait until it’s over before they start again.
At her wedding, Ianto doesn’t even try to dance with her. She feels like Hester Prynne and remembers how happily that story ended. She laughs in Jack’s arms, and feels light, airy - she tries to ignore the piercing stare from the DJ table that pins the back of her neck when she’s facing away but disappears on every other turn across the floor. She notices the faint scent masking Jack’s trademark pheromones, recognizes it as familiar, and she knows, she knows that this is the end of a great many things just as much as it’s the beginning of others. She glances down at the pair of rings on her left hand, and feels her stomach plunge as she realizes that she’s not entirely sure that what’s she losing is quite made up for by what she’s come to gain.
Ianto plays Dexy’s Midnight Runners next, and it all escapes her mind.
________________________________________
When it’s all said and done, bodies filed away and blood scoured from the floor, they’re left alone again, with nothing but each other.
Jack leaves the Hub with Owen’s labcoat draped over Tosh’s computer terminal, as if she had something to hide. It feels almost like they’ve lost three members of their team, really, so it’s fitting; it’s okay when they find themselves returning once more to the scene of the crime - the first, and all those subsequent - Gwen sprawled wide and unforgiving on rumpled bedclothes that smell like the Captain again, Ianto kneeling ready, eager between her legs, his shoulders flanked by her trembling thighs, his body cradled closer to the heat at her center by weak knees bent tight, anticipatory around his broad torso. It’s natural, expected even, when Ianto’s hands gently, almost delicately, inch her blouse over the sensitive flesh of her stomach, palms dragging against her ribs before he peels her shirt from her breasts, hooking his thumbs expertly beneath the underwire of her bra and pulling it off along with in one sleek, smooth motion that leaves the ironed-in puckers of the fabric at the juncture of her elbows staring at her accusatorially from the floor - stark imperfections in the rumpled heap of clothing, accentuated in the subtle glow from the old oil lamp burning across the room. She wants to see someone, anyone but him hovering over her as the cold seeps into her muscles, her bones; but it’s Ianto Jones who will make her feel alive amidst all this death, and maybe that’s okay. Without love, there can be no guilt, or so she likes to imagine; and she’s already had her fair share of guilt, if she’s honest. He penetrates her without warning, and it feels new again, like their very first time; she can smell Jack on him, and she can pretend.
They are back to square one.