TW: Underhanded Tactics, chapter VI [T-M]
Fandom:
Torchwood
Title:
Underhanded Tactics
Chapter VI:
The Catch
In which Tosh returns, Gwen is Gwennish and Owen finds himself dwelling on the situation.
Author:
lt_indigo
Pairing(s):
Jack/Ianto(/Tosh)
Warning(s):
Do I still need to fill this in?
Disclamer:
Yep, still skint. Still not mine.
Word count:
1,909
back to Chapter V
on to Chapter VII
Tosh arrived back at the Hub bright and early the following morning, finding not only Jack and Ianto, as she expected, but Gwen as well. Her boys gave her bright smiles, but before either of them could descend from Jack’s office, Gwen whisked her away and into an alcove.
“Look, Tosh, I know it’s not really any of my business 36,” Gwen began hesitantly, her eyes huge, “but Jack and Ianto… Well, they…”
Tosh smiled. She had a very good idea of what Gwen was trying to tell her. “What, Gwen? They seemed okay. Did something happen yesterday? Did one of them get hurt? 37”
“No, no, nothing like that,” Gwen assured her. The former copper was holding Tosh’s hand, patting it in what she probably thought was a reassuring manner. It just amused Tosh all the more. “They were just, well, Jack sent me and Owen home early.”
“Oh, is that all?” Tosh made herself sound relieved 38 39. “They had sex?”
Gwen looked flabbergasted and Tosh really had to rein herself in to stop herself from laughing as much as she wanted to, managing to contain it to a carefree little giggle.
“Gwen, it’s sweet that you’re concerned, really 40, but our relationship isn’t like that. I have a lot of fun with Jack and Ianto, but it’s not serious. In fact, I would have been more surprised if they hadn’t taken advantage of me being away.” She sighed. “They’re sweet, talented men, but I think they’ve forgotten that women aren’t fragile little flowers.”
She gave Gwen a knowing look, making the other woman flush with embarrassment. Tosh took advantage of Gwen’s speechlessness.
“I’m going to go and say hello. Shall I get Ianto to bring you some coffee?”
Gwen nodded slowly, and Tosh turned back to the main Hub. She was had only taken one step when Gwen grabbed her hand.
“Tosh, be careful,” she implored. “Don’t let them hurt you.”
Tosh nodded, squeezed Gwen’s hand and headed upstairs. She held in her laughter until the door was shut behind her.
.oOo.
Gwen came down the stairs and leaned nonchalantly against the wall before Owen had even had a chance to get his feet under his desk.
“Oh, bloody hell, what?”
Gwen had that earnest, sincere expression with the enormous, anime eyes. He knew it all too well 41.
“I talked to Tosh.”
Owen shook his head and turned to log on to his computer. “Not interested, Gwen. 42"
“I’m worried she’s going to get hurt. She says it’s not serious, but she ‘s always had a soft spot for Ianto, and Jack’s easy to fall for. If you like that kind of thing, I mean. 43”
Owen sighed and turned back to her. “Gwen, Tosh is a big girl. She can look after herself, and if she wants to get her rocks off with them, then let her. Now, kindly fuck off and let me work.”
She gave him a hard look before turning and flouncing up the stairs. Relieved, Owen turned back to his computer and pulled up the files he had earmarked for today. However, despite his proclamations to Gwen, he found that he did care after all. He was glad that things weren’t serious, because neither of them were good enough for Tosh. Tosh was special; she deserved a special kind of guy. She deserved someone who appreciated her brilliance, and who thought the sun shone out of her arse. She deserved someone who would take her out to dinner, and buy her flowers on a whim. Someone who would remember her birthday, and anniversaries 44.
While Ianto might fit those categories 45, Jack fucking Harkness did not. And even someone blind could see that they were completely in love with each other. It had taken Owen a long time to see that, and if he could see it, Tosh definitely could 46. It made him wonder how their relationship, whatever the hell it was, had begun 47.
.oOo.
They each had their duties to attend to that morning, and they found themselves separated: Jack stuck up in his office, Tosh and Mainframe still trying to find any correlations in Ianto’s historical riftugee data, and Ianto down in the archives, finding said data. The closest contact they got was when Ianto came around with coffee and the takeaway menu for the local sushi bar for lunch.
After the entertainment of watching Owen try to eat ‘healthy shit 48’ with chopsticks 49, Tosh lurked in the conference room with Jack and Ianto 50.
“Owen’s been looking your way,” Ianto remarked as she passed him a pile of plastic containers.
“We all were,” Jack said around a mouthful of noodles. “We were trying to work out how the hell you picked up those roll things.”
Tosh just smiled knowingly as Ianto kicked Jack in the ankle.
“Do you want us to back off a bit and see if he takes the bait?” Ianto asked her as he produced a damp cloth 51 and started wiping the noodle-and-rice-strewn table.
“A little,” Tosh said. “Hopefully Gwen’s told him what I said to her this morning, so he might have worked out that I’m not actually spoken for.”
“How about we dial it down here,” Jack suggested, “and keep up the dates? That way, we’re not rubbing his face in it quite so much.”
.oOo.
Following Jack’s 52 suggestion, they tried: they cut down their flirting in the Hub to a bare minimum 53, but Owen’s attention was focussed more on the Weevils than Tosh. After a few more days, watching Tosh become more and more frustrated with Owen, Jack came up with a new plan.
“Toshiko?” he said, sidling up to her in an entirely guilty fashion.
She narrowed her eyes at him. Normally that wheedling tone was followed by a request she wasn’t going to like. “What? What have you done?”
Jack shrugged, his eyes twinkling mischievously. “The usual: Ianto, you… But Archie’s having trouble installing his linkup to Mainframe. He’s never been the technical sort.”
Tosh took her glasses off and rubbed the bridge of her nose with a sigh. “Do you want me to go and sort it out?" 54
Jack managed to look almost angelic as he put his hands together as if in prayer, a contrite expression and pleading eyes persuading her.
“Fine.”
Jack didn’t move.
“You want me to go now?” She checked her watch. “You’re lucky you’re cute. I’ll grab a few things from home, if Ianto will book me a ticket?”
Jack grinned. “He’s good at that kind of thing.”
He waited while she logged off of her computer, and gave her a goodbye kiss.
“Absence makes the heart grow fonder,” he whispered in her ear. “Take your time.”
The light dawned, and she smiled up at him. “I will.”
.oOo.
Ianto appeared, unsurprisingly, to be in on the plan. As she passed through the tourist office, he handed her a travel itinerary and a map of Glasgow Central station, with a route from one platform to another marked on it.
“Archie’s not that bad, really,” Ianto assured her. “He’s just a bit of a dinosaur, and he’s turned Jack down.”
“Oh, I see.”
“Twice, I believe,” Ianto added, keeping his face neutral, but his eyes danced with laughter.
“His loss.” She sighed. “I’m going to miss you.”
Ianto swept her into his arms and pressed a kiss to the top of her head. “I’ll miss you too, but it’s only going to be a couple of days. Glasgow is hardly the other side of the world.”
She snuggled into his broad, warm chest, enjoying the sensation of being held. “Oh, I know,” she said. “Take care of Jack while I’m gone.”
He leaned down and whispered: “I intend to get him to take care of me.”
Tosh’s face lit up. “Ooh, excellent. Save me the footage?”
Ianto laughed. “Don’t we always, minx?”
36 Things were rarely Gwen’s business, as far as Tosh could tell. That didn’t tend to stop her sticking her well-intentioned but often unwelcomed nose in.
37 Tosh had to stop herself from laughing there: knowing what her boys had been planning, it was more than likely that Jack, although in all probability had not been injured, had at the very least been somewhat uncomfortable for some time.
38 It wasn’t hard: Tosh was well aware that she had been encroaching more than she had intended on Jack and Ianto’s personal life, and she was glad they had spent some quality time together while she had been away.
39 The hard part was stopping herself sounding as excited as was: hopefully Mainframe had been good enough to stash the video files in her secret-from-Gwen folder.
40 Not really, but Gwen’s bleeding heart made their game with Owen all the more interesting. Because she would tell him everything, whether he cared or not. Of course, Tosh was somewhat counting on him actually giving a damn.
41 They all knew it all too fucking well - it was the look she used on people she wanted to cooperate with her. These days, she generally pulled it out alongside a bottle of retcon-laced water, or for evil, psychotic aliens she didn’t particularly want to kill her. Or Jack.
42 That was, at least, true: he really didn’t want to know precisely what positions Jack and Ianto were contorting her into.
43 Gwen clearly thought no-one had noticed her repeated attempts to seduce Jack at the beginning of her time with Torchwood. Even Owen would admit that Jack was handsome enough, in a clean-cut, flashy kind of way, but Gwen had drooled for a long time. Even after her affair with him, and her engagement to Rhys. Even after Jack had practically proclaimed his undying (ha!) love for Ianto in front of the whole team.
44 In other words, someone completely the opposite of Owen himself. He was utterly crap at all of that. He didn’t know how Katie had put up with it all for so long.
45 Owen swore that, if he ever had the misfortune of conducting Ianto’s autopsy, he would find a Filofax where his brain should be.
46 And yet, for some reason, Gwen still struggled with the concept.
47 Especially since Tosh had enough taste not to be the kind of person who lusted over Jack Harkness.
48 Owen’s food philosophy was that they weren’t going to live long enough to deal with cholesterol issues or die of a heart attack from excess sodium intake, so why worry?
49 Gwen and Jack were little better, admittedly, but at least they were more polite, and more appreciative of the food itself. Gwen seemed to enjoy the change of pace from their normal pizza/Chinese/curry diet.
50 Ianto was clearing up the empty sushi containers, and the mess their less dexterous colleagues had left behind. Jack was… well, he was ogling Ianto while still valiantly battling with his prawn yakisoba and his chopsticks.
51 From where, exactly, Tosh couldn’t determine. Cloths seemed to regularly appear in Ianto’s hand from nowhere, and no-one batted an eyelid at it. One of these days, she would have to watch in slow-motion on the CCTV and work it out.
52 surprising and insightful
53 To as little as would not be suspicious in its own right, anyway. For Jack to stop flirting completely would be even more suspect than him, say, shagging someone senseless in the hothouse.
54 Great - spending time in the frozen north with a cantankerous Glaswegian was her absolute favourite way to spend her days.
back to Chapter V
on to Chapter VII