may your days be merry and bright

[tenuefarfalla]

WHO: um... everybody

Comments

[guns_and_coffee]

Ianto had considered asking Jack if he'd want to--

Yeah. No. Terrible idea.

He arrived at Cho's alone, then, wearing a seasonally appropriate cheerful smile, and wandered towards the tree he'd brought her to see how she'd decorated it.

[maybeunorthadox]

Grace had slid herself through the door reasonably undetected -- being a stranger to almost everyone in the room -- and hovered by the closest wall, giving the room a once over; there were a few interesting characters, one with vibrant red hair, an Asian, a broad-shouldered, bespectacled man with a weedy friend, some lesbians, a handful of abstract animals, a half-animal-half-person. She briefly wondered whether Jack would be attending, primarily because he was the only person she was acquainted with, but found herself quickly distracted by how much this was like walking into a Lord of the Rings convention.

Well, except for that guy -- Pride and Prejudice convention, perhaps?

An improvement nonetheless.

Intrigued, Grace strode across the room, using her elbows and shoulders to maneuver her way through before comfortably sidling next to Ianto.

"Who'd you have to fuck to get that?" Grace asked with a shit-eating grin, clearly impressed.

[guns_and_coffee]

Ianto didn't even blink. This woman, whoever she was, was not like anyone else he'd encountered in Rowan, but she reminded him a little of the friends he'd had once. Before Lisa, before Torchwood. "Isaac Singer? Metaphorically speaking, of course, though he did have a very fine beard." She was new, clearly. He knew this because he didn't know her.

[maybeunorthadox]

"An entrepreneur and an inventor?" She chirped, readjusting her vest. "Classy. Can't say I would've myself, but each to their own. I hope you got a free sewing machine in the very least. I can't imagine he's all that preserved in the sack. And by in the sack I mean his balls. I'd be asking for a sewing machine as insurance."

She paused and looked him up and down, more analytical than debauchee. "Weren't into the medieval vibe? A bit more renaissance fop?"

[guns_and_coffee]

Ianto actually laughed, which was as close to a Christmas miracle as he expected to get. "As far as derogatory terms for the upper crust go, I prefer toff , but then I am wearing as ascot. I have little room for complaint." She actually knew something about Singer. That was promising. At the very least, it placed her solidly above his shoplifting mates. "Singer's balls are not so much ill-preserved as they are nonexistant, but the matter proved irrelevant. It wasn't his gratification I was concerned with."

[maybeunorthadox]

"Speaking of ascot -- Roy Ascott? Totally went there." She crossed her arms over her chest and leaned closer. "Between you and me, if you ever want a good night, tap a theorist."

And then she laughed in return. "And what was it, pray tell, that you were concerned with?"

[guns_and_coffee]

"My own, naturally. Much more important, as per the terms of fucking him over." He wasn't going to spell any of this out until he absolutely had to. Much more fun to let her wonder.

...if he was mad, probably, but he'd take his amusement where he could find it.

"But never mind that. I always felt that Roy Ascott ought to be made some sort of spokesman for Royal Ascot. Just think of the magnificent hat they could have put him in. Would've suited him, I think."

[maybeunorthadox]

Oh, he was precious. "I like the way you think. I like a good fucking over."

And yes, they came out exactly how she'd intended.

"I accidentally backed my car into a group of Royal Ascoteers once. It was like looking at roadkill and realising it was once a flock of parakeets. I think it was when I ran over them a second time that really ruffled their feathers, though. Just you wait until judgment day!" She made a wild, erratic gesture, pointing angrily. "I told them if they could prove to me that homeopathy works I'd pay a million dollars to my nearest church. To their credit they did a have lot of argument. Nothing to back it up, mind, but oh-ho they tried their best. You're going to go to Hell, they said. Honestly? Telling me I'm going to hell is like a hippie telling me they'll punch me in my aura."

[guns_and_coffee]

She was full of shit, clearly, but Ianto was willing to go with it. "You have an aura here, you know. Still wouldn't do anyone any good to punch it, but it exists. So does hell, of a sort, but that may come as less of a surprise to you. I haven't heard many kind things about the American South.

[maybeunorthadox]

"Yeah, well," she was still having difficulty believing that. Whatever. "Want me to write 'fancy that?' on the side of my fucking my face?"

And then she scoffed. "Yeah, I imagine you wouldn't. I'd liken it to hell."

[guns_and_coffee]

"That was where I was going with that, yes." From what he'd heard, it was... not dissimilar to Wales, in certain aspects. Not that they'd be discussing that. "I'm Ianto, by the way. Ianto Jones." He waved a hand, a vague gesture meant to indicate the general uselessness of this information. This would typically be the part where he'd be gifted with a brief bio, but he didn't expect much from this one. Though if he tried, maybe... No harm in exercising his newfound abilities, was there?

Well. There was probably plenty. But since when did that stop them?

[maybeunorthadox]

"Ianto," she parroted, mildly interested. "Never heard that name before. Although Ianto Jones, what were you, a hit man? Agent 99?"

Right. Introductions. "Grace Falls. Georgia. 2009." It felt relevant to introduce herself in such a manner -- though by his general speech pattern she deducted he wasn't far from her decade.

"You sound Welsh. Or Cornish."

[guns_and_coffee]

...Well, at least Agent 99 was the competent one.

Nothing she'd said had felt like a lie. He wasn't sure that meant anything from someone like her, but there it was. Grace Falls, though, really? Sounded like the title of a poem, an earnest but overwrought one teaming with poorly executed metaphors. He was quite happy to stick with the apparent hitman connotations, himself.

"Welsh." That was impressive too. Few people outside of Britain were equipped to make that call, but then again, perhaps he was assuming too much. "Spent much time in Britain, Grace Falls?"

[maybeunorthadox]

Grace made a thoughtful noise. "I have not," she responded, dubiously. "I studied English and Latin, dabbled in Speech Pathology. My parents are Scottish. But Britain? Never felt so inclined." Not that she ever pursued any career remotely linked with anything she'd studied. No, instead Grace had found herself a job working a small, off-beat cafe on the outskirts of Columbus. Hardly anything worth bragging about -- not that she wouldn't try.

She made a fucking amazing latte.

She paused with a crooked smile. "And you, Ianto Jones?"

[guns_and_coffee]

"I'd think that would be obvious." Ianto had only left the country three times in his entire life, but Grace didn't get that information. Ianto gave the impression of being well-travelled, and he intended to keep it that way. "2009 for me too, by the way. A suspicious number of us are from that decade, and most of those who are not aren't from Earth at all." There was something to that. He wished he knew what.

[maybeunorthadox]

"Could have had oppressive, overbearing parents who beat an accent into you." Grace feigned serious, eyebrows raised. "It happens."

Not from Earth at all? Okay, alright, that went straight over her head. "Huh. And they all just fell through a tree, then?" So that was how Jack caught his victims. Naked and disoriented, occasionally drunk -- add a random forest and a reasonably handsome man -- yeah, he had it in the bag.

Though she still wasn't entirely convinced this wasn't a ridiculously long and tedious dream. But whatever. At least this ridiculously long and tedious dream was occasionally throwing her a bone.

And hey, this guy wasn't a total idiot.