Café Mocha: Chapter Seven
Title: Café Mocha: Essential Child Raising Agent
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Genre: Romance, Humour
Rating/Warning/Spoilers: Adult concepts, Possibilities of some strong language, Subtle hints for season three
Summary: One night something unexpected comes through the rift and shocks the team.
In which Ianto finds a part of him he never knew he had, and Jack pervs on babies.
Author's Notes: Kudos to my wonderful beta Aaya, whose help has been immeasurable.
Disclaimer: I own nothing: it all belongs to Russell T. Davies. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Previous parts: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6
Picture of baby here
Twenty minutes later, Ianto found himself in the shower, still wondering about Jack. Babies were a huge responsibility; would Jack still want him? Sure, guys could use babies to pick up girls, but other guys weren’t generally into the commitment thing. But then Jack was no ordinary man. Speaking of which, the man definitely knew something about where she’d come from. He’d not questioned her presence here or the million to one odds of this kind of thing happening. Nor was he in the least bit suspicious.
Sighing and resolving to talk with Jack about the baby issue sometime soon, he shook out his wet hair and then stepped out of the shower to see his lover standing in front of the mirror, naked, with the baby and waiting for him.
“Round and round the garden, like a teddy bear…” Jack looked up from drawing circles on the baby’s hand, having noticed the water had stopped. “You’re done! I need a shower. The scent of a man is very strong around-”
“Jack!” interrupted Ianto, scandalised, “I’m naked!”
“Now, Ianto,” Jack began knowingly, with a lecherous grin, “I know you’ve been horny lately but we can’t have sex in front of the baby. That’s just wrong.”
Ianto gave up the point that he had been about to make about nudity and the baby but gave up, settling for: “Just pass me my towel, please…”
“Sure thing,” Jack grinned, passing along the towel before refocusing his attention onto the baby, trying to take his mind off a wet and naked Ianto. “I think she likes it when I sing to her; I have a lovely singing voice, you know?”
He looked up to see that Ianto had dried up and was smiling as he watched Jack interact with the baby. Not wanting to analyse the feelings in his chest, he hurriedly passed the baby off to Ianto then stepped into the shower to have some alone time.
“So,” Ianto announced to the baby lying on his bed as he got dressed, “why did you wake up, huh? Did you miss your daddy?”
He paused as he just watched the bundle on the bed, almost waiting for her to interrupt, before he swept her up into his arms. “Of course you did… Maybe you’re hungry?”
He wandered across the sitting room and into the kitchen, knowing that Jack would be a while after having seen the man’s erection, and emptied the ready-to-use formula in the bottle before he put it into the baby warmer.
Remembering what he’d read off the website (about how singing nursery rhymes were soothing for the baby) yesterday before Jack had distracted him, he took a cue from his blue eyed lover and started to sing his old favourite under his breath, “Mae gen i dý cysurus, a melin newydd sbon. A thair o wartheg brithion yn pori ar y fron…”
He was going through the chorus a second time as he fed his daughter, when Jack’s voice startled him, “You are one sexy baby daddy.”
Ianto rolled his eyes as he turned to face Jack sitting behind the counter on a bar stool. “She is especially handy on Friday nights when I go out on the pull.”
Jack laughed, “You sound like Owen.”
“I don’t know if I should be insulted or creeped out,” Ianto said, making a face and repositioning the baby onto his shoulder to burp her, before he walked round the counter to face Jack. “How about you make us lunch, I’ll change her and put her down.”
“You want me to cook?!” Jack asked, filled with disbelief, “I’ll change the baby and put her down, and you can cook.”
Ianto was more than happy to hand her off, remembering the smell of the mess in the nappy last time, “I can’t believe you volunteered for that. We’re going to have to make sure she doesn’t swallow anything when she gets older otherwise it’d be like panning for gold.”
Jack laughed as he swiped a nappy and headed into the bathroom.
“This is the closest thing we’ve had to a date in a long time,” Ianto said softly, as Jack poured him a glass of wine.
Jack smiled as he poured his own glass of wine, “She’s the only reason they haven’t disturbed us, you know.”
“She also needs a name,” Ianto added before he ate a mouthful of pasta.
Jack nodded in agreement, more eagerly than Ianto had anticipated. “So what were you thinking of calling her?”
“I don’t know,” Ianto said, shrugging, “but she needs a name and fast-it’s a bit ridiculous for us to keep calling her ‘The Baby’.”
“Well, what kind of name were you going for?” Jack asked as he stabbed a couple of bits of pasta with his fork. “I know a lot of unusual ones.”
Ianto ate another mouthful, “Tell me what you got.”
“Jessamine was the first one that sprung to mind, actually, when I first saw her.” Jack admitted, “She reminds me of this woman I used to know. I stayed on her ship for a while; very no nonsense.”
He laughed at an old memory, “It’s Persian for jasmine, as in the flower.” He looked at Ianto’s raised eyebrow and sighed. “Never mind…”
“I don’t mind it,” Ianto said hurriedly in his defence, “it’s a nice name… It’s just a big name for a little girl.”
Jack nodded and took another bite out of his meal as Ianto continued, “How about we stick to simpler names?”
“Well, where do you want to start?” asked Jack, “I know hundreds of names…”
“You suggest,” Ianto said as he scraped the remnants of his meal to the side of his plate, “and I’ll tell you which I like.”
“Erm, let’s see,” Jack scooped the last of the pasta into his mouth, then sat back and continued, “Naomi, Natasha, Nicole, Nina, Nadine, Nancy…”
“Nancy?” Ianto interrupted, horrified, “If I’m her dad and we call her Nancy, that’s just asking for trouble.”
Jack frowned as he saw the potential problems they had, “Beatrice, Belinda, Beloved, Bethany, Bailey…”
He stopped as Ianto laughed, “Bailey is a definite no. It’d be like naming her Cinzano or something.”
“I never said I liked the names,” Jack said as he chuckled at the point Ianto had made, “they’re just names I know.”
Ianto frowned and swivelled around on the bar stool to face him, “You want me to name my child a name you don’t like?”
This time it was Jack’s turn to frown, taken pleasantly aback. “My opinion matters that much?”
Ianto pushed his empty plate away and turned to face Jack as their talk took a serious turn. “Only if you want it to,” he murmured softly.
Jack opened his mouth to have that talk that they seriously needed and Ianto leaned in as the conversation became more intimate. Not wanting to talk about their relationship just yet, he headed into safer waters, “I think Cerys is a nice name and it would suit her.”
Ianto leaned back and stared at him questioningly so Jack quickly expanded, “It means love.”
And then Ianto smiled at him, not one of his unusual carefree grins that Jack suspected he was the only he allowed to see, but a heart-warming, breathtaking smile and Jack suddenly knew that if ever he walked away from this man, ever left him, he’d be making the biggest mistake of his life.
Translation:
I have a cosy cottage,
A newly built mill.
And three contented dappled cows
Are grazing on the hill.
Chapter Eight