The Windhovers (3 of 10)
Title: The Windhovers
Chapter: 3 of 10
Author: sarcasticchick
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R
Spoilers: TW S1, S2
Fluffers/Betas: lilithilien
Summary: "A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgement based upon it." - Bertrand Russell
A/N: I hope everyone in the US is enjoying their holiday weekend and have not drank too much, ate too many hot dogs, or gotten too much sun. What am I saying, I hope you did, I just hope you don't feel crappy tomorrow *g*
Please see full A/N for story details, credits, and posting schedule.
Previous Chapters:
The Windhovers (1 of 10)
The Windhovers (2 of 10)
Beautiful Chapter 3 cover art by love_jackianto
Two days later and things were back to normal, or as normal as Torchwood ever got. Owen was still dead, Jack was still immortal, Tosh was still freakishly adept with technology, Gwen was still ... human ... and Ianto, well, he considered himself still breathing. And while that may have seemed like a minor point on anyone's scale of normalcy and things to consider 'good,' given it was Torchwood, Ianto considered himself lucky. He made the coffee, spent most of his free-time in the Archives, avoided the team best he could - made easier by his suspension from field duty - and focused on compartmentalizing the whole experience with the alien and the hallucination. Because that's all it was. Overwork, exhaustion, living and breathing Torchwood until it became second-skin. That's all it was.
Avidly monitoring the CCTV footage and sensors because there was something about the case that left him uneasy for the safety of the team was just exhaustion, too. His mind playing tricks on him, alone in the Hub while the others were off defending Cardiff from the greater threats of the universe. Wishful thinking, more like. He'd become so much a part of the team in the field that, when they were out, he began imagining what they were searching for. The overwhelming urge to save the day, to taste that high from rescuing someone from a threat manifesting through the fatigue as a sort of fear for the team. It made sense. No cause for panic or alarm.
He just hadn't mentioned it to Jack because the team had come back splattered in fluorescent pink alien guts and reeked of paint thinner, Tosh with a sprained wrist, Jack once-dead-now-living, Gwen with a limp and Owen bitching about his favorite pair of pants.
Ianto threw his keys into the small dish in the entrance way of his flat, rubbing his hand over his face, wincing when they still smelled of paint thinner. Or rather, alien guts with the tenacity of skunk spray. Jack had said he'd be by later, with dinner. That in and of itself had surprised Ianto, but he wasn't going to argue if Jack wanted to take responsibility for dinner. Ianto would have time for a quick shower, maybe even time to catch up on some of the work he'd brought home. Stacks of paperwork he'd put off while the team had been in the field filled his briefcase, along with a few harmless artifacts and documents he could record and place in the Archives in the morning. One apparently was an alien toothbrush; he'd been a bit squeamish about touching it, there was just something inherently wrong about touching another's toothbrush. He'd even purchased one for Jack (and threw away his old one) after he'd caught Jack using his one morning. Blue, with sparkles in the handle. For some reason, it made him laugh every time Jack used it.
He turned on the lights, wincing as they flared on bright to light his flat. Really too much time spent in the dim Hub, Ianto decided, cancelling the second and fifth light switches, a hazard of their job. Underground, poor lighting, it was a wonder they all weren't blind by the time they were thirty and could stand to enter the daylight at all. Perhaps that's how Torchwood would survive in the future, their DNA altering to become night dwellers, the dark vampires of lore. Owen was already working on the undead problem, though the notion of consuming blood was one to turn his stomach and make him thankful Jack never forgot Ianto's switch to vegetarianism. Nearly becoming meat himself had put him off quickly; the alien manatee had cemented any lingering taste for it.
Unless the meat was Jack.
Ianto smirked at his own joke as he sorted the paperwork into piles of urgency, leaving the rest of the various widgets and gadgets in the briefcase. The pile for 'immediate attention' grew at an alarming rate, and with an eye he quickly calculated the time required to work through the stacks. Far more than he had initially figured when he'd packed his briefcase. With a grimace, Ianto opted to put aside the paperwork, procrastination the preferable choice when the evening was to consist of Jack, food, maybe a movie, sex and sleep.
Definitely sleep. And perhaps even a repetition of sex in the morning.
Instead, Ianto went to the kitchen and quickly mixed up a batch of scones to enjoy with morning coffee. Not that he was really much of a baker - working for the Smythe's bakery had taught him little of the trade but how to sweep up flour and empty bins - but Taffy Smythe herself had taught him the simple recipe as a surprise for his mum. They were cheap to make, difficult for him to screw up too badly and his mum's favorite with tea.
It'd been a long while since he'd bothered making them, though he always kept the ingredients on hand. Out of habit, and partially to thumb his nose at his past; a stocked pantry was a wealthy pantry.
After placing the pan of carefully cut dough rounds in the oven, Ianto once again considered the paperwork before opting for a shower to wash away the long hours of the day and the smell of turpentine in an efficient (lemon-vanilla scented, both energizing and a combination Jack seemed to appreciate) scrub that left his skin pleasantly tingling. He didn't waste any time, knowing he had just minutes before the oven timer would buzz, though he did pause, contemplating wanking before dismissing that notion as well. Jack was coming over, after all. There'd be time enough for pleasure later.
Ianto threw on a pair of pajama bottoms, a deep cranberry pinstripe he'd purchased simply with hedonistic intentions rather than Jack's accusations that he couldn't wear anything that wasn't tailored and professional in appearance. The material was the softest cotton-silk Ianto had touched, light and cool on his skin and an indulgence he enjoyed whenever he had a lengthy evening at home. Rare, given Torchwood, but occasionally he found himself with time to luxuriate in something as frivolous as expensive pajama bottoms.
He'd just loosely tied the drawstrings when Ianto heard a knock at the door. Jack never knocked as he had a key, just as he did to all the other team member's flats but Ianto doubted Jack just strolled in without so much as a courtesy knock on their doors. Given it might be a neighbor and some of those neighbors had young children, Ianto grabbed a black tee as he went to the door, stretching it over his head as he walked, nearly tripping over his own feet when, for a moment, he couldn't see the path to the door. Perhaps the paperwork should be avoided altogether, he decided, if he couldn't even manage to walk and pull a tee over his head. It hadn't even been that bad of a day.
Upon opening the door, Ianto quickly set about revising that notion.
"Ianto?"
Rationally, Ianto knew the truth of the man standing in his doorway just as rationally he knew now that what he had seen at the Information Center was not his mother. Logically, he understood that his difference of perception was not normal and the question still lurked behind Jack's eyes (and in the back of Ianto's consciousness, if he were to be honest with himself) as to the cause. There had to be a cause, an explanation, a reason why he had seen his mother -- why even after he had been told the figure was not even female he still saw his mother.
Because there had to be an equally logical cause and explanation as to why his father stood in his doorway.
Ianto stared; he couldn't help himself. Before him stood the man he hadn't seen in nearly twenty years and no rational argument or logic could dissuade his eyes from believing what they saw. It wasn't real; Ianto knew it couldn't be real. But knowing it wasn't real and wishing it was were two completely different things.
His father looked just as Ianto remembered, though the angle was different. Instead of looking up into his face, Ianto looked down, his father no longer the towering figure he'd always appeared. He was still a gangly man, all arms and legs just like Ianto remembered, and impeccably dressed in the brown suit he had worn the day he'd died, brown the exact shade of the wire-framed glasses he wore and brown making his blond hair appear even more golden.
"Are you okay?"
The vision had his father's voice as well, only it didn't. Split, bi-tonal, sounding in the same breath distinctly like Ianto's father - a light tenor pitch, distinctly masculine, unrushed and soothing - and a woman, a voice he recognized but couldn't place for all the distraction of the hand placed on his arm. A gold wedding band gleamed on the ring finger.
Not his father. It wasn't his father, not even if that was his wedding band.
"Fine." Ianto winced at the sound of his own voice, unsteady and clouded by emotion's strangle-hold on his throat. Almost twenty years; before he'd discovered Torchwood, before he'd wandered the streets, before childhood's end when his mum's mind had splintered, fragile as spun glass after his father had died, tiny pieces breaking every day, every week, every year until nothing remained but paranoia and altered realities. Despite all that time, he'd never forgotten what his father had looked like, even though all the photographs had burned.
But Ianto had forgotten that look, that look he'd received when he was just little, he'd been running and fallen, skinning his knee and tearing his trousers. His father had run out of the house at the sound of his cries, crouching beside him and looking at him in the same concerned way, the same exact way, before gathering Ianto in his arms to carry him into the house. A plaster and bowl of ice cream later and Ianto had been laughing again, helping his father measure everything from the length of Ianto's nose to the distance of Ianto's best hop with the ever-present measuring tape.
Clearing his throat, Ianto smiled in what he hoped was an assuring smile, never forgetting that it couldn't be his father but yet unable to tear his eyes away. "I'm fine, just a bit under the weather."
"Right." Ianto could hear the doubt in his (not) father's voice, the feminine tones curling up and around the tenor. "Well, I got some of your post by mistake." A handful of paper envelopes ended up in his hand which visibly shook no matter how hard he tried to steady it. "You sure you're okay? I could make some ginger tea?"
He nearly laughed. His father had gotten his post by mistake. It was the most ridiculous thing he'd never thought he'd hear.
"No, thank you." Ianto turned down the offer, the lure of sitting down with his father too tempting when he knew it couldn't possibly be him. He'd sit and stare, memorize every movement that did not belong to his father, tarnishing memories and imposing a reality that just were not possible. It wasn't real. Ianto kept repeating this even as he stared, his eyes contradicting his brain's mantra.
"Get yourself to bed, then. You look terrible."
He tried to smile at the words, the advice sound given his shaking hands and relative inability to move past the thought of his father, standing at the door because he'd received Ianto's post by mistake. He stared even long after the door had closed and his father vanished, a reprisal of a theme nearly twenty years before when his father had left and never returned.
The door closing behind him as he waved goodbye to son while the son waved goodbye in reply; the chapter closing on another life, another time, over and over as history repeated itself. Ianto only wondered what his mother would say, had she been alive to watch him leave again.
He refused to consider that maybe she had seen exactly that, lost in her own world, when he'd read to her while they sat on a sunny bench on Providence Park grounds.
***
"Ianto?"
The sound of his name reverberated in Ianto's ears, striking off the memories of his father and collapsing the veritable picture show he'd been watching since 'he' had left. He. It hadn't been his father. He knew and was fully aware of it. But the memories were so old, the history so faint that it had been impossible not to sink within them once 'he' had left, closing the door behind him. They were hard to grasp, glimpses of Ianto's childhood framed in sometimes fuzzy colors and strange order, but seeing his father had triggered them all. And greedy though it was, Ianto couldn't resist embracing each one. Going to the cinema. Watching his father work. A trip to the zoo. Bedtime stories and goodnight kisses. Skinned knees and playing in the rain. The one time his parents had taken him on a picnic and he'd pretended they were in King Arthur's court, dining on the grounds of Camelot.
Those were the days of his childhood, the tiny sliver of time when he could remember no sorrow, no grief, no struggle to survive. They weren't perfect days - he knew there were things he was conveniently forgetting because they didn't match the idyllic nature of the memories - but they were the closest thing Ianto had to simple, carefree times, times when he wasn't mourning the death of his father or dealing with the slow decay of his mother's mind.
They'd been a happy family.
Overwhelming in all its peacefulness and multitude of snapshots, Ianto was reluctant to slip away from the vise memory held, almost desperate in his attempt to capture every tiny moment anew. No, he knew he was desperate and the tingle of awareness that his name had been spoken was acknowledged and equally dismissed.
Toast. Ianto connected amusement with the memory, images of his father vainly scraping off the blackened sections into the sink to disguise the fact that he'd done it again. He always burned the toast. Every time. To the extent that his mother finally banned him from attempting to make toast or anything else. A chef his father was not, Ianto remembered, could almost hear his father stating that if he were meant to cook then cakes would come with zippers and toast with hems.
Ianto imagined his coffee and tea would have been dreadful as well, but that was long before he could appreciate them.
"Ianto!"
Like a film reel snapping, wildly spinning with two tails flapping in the air, Ianto felt his attention break and the screen go blank as his shoulders struck something solid, the physical touch jolting him from his reverie. He protested before he could stop himself, rationally knowing that any attempt to recapture the wisps of the past would be as likely as stopping time but he tried anyway, pushing back physically and with a vocal "no!" while trying to chase down the images of his father dissolving into his past, becoming nothing more than a blurred lump of entangled experiences forming who he once was.
Lost again. His father had stepped out the door, closing it behind him just as he had that morning so long ago, never to return. But Ianto could still smell the burnt toast, burnt and scraped into the sink quickly before his mum would spot him, though the smell would always linger, a telltale sign she never missed.
Ianto scowled as the smell remained, long after the mental images had scattered to the wind. Remained and tickled the back of his throat to the point he had to cough. And he did, both coughing and clearing his throat, the taste of burnt toast on his tongue.
"Shit. The scones." Awareness had his heart pounding against his ribs as panic set in, his mind quickly rifling through memory backwards from knock on the door to the shower to setting a timer. The timer. He didn't hear the time but he could smell the scones burning; frantic he shifted his body to stand, moving his hands to push himself off the floor but he couldn't. Couldn't move, couldn't stand because he couldn't get leverage because his hands wouldn't move. His hands... oh.
He blinked, the back of his head colliding with the wall in surprise as he tried desperately to get his breathing under control. Jack. Jack was there, holding his wrists, though when he had arrived Ianto wasn't quite sure because he didn't remember the door opening or Jack entering, and wouldn't he be offended to learn Ianto had missed his approach. "Jack," Ianto tried to pull his hands away to stand but Jack wouldn't budge, and Ianto needed to do something before Jack rang the fire brigade. "Let go, the scones are burning."
"Were. I took care of them." Jack's statement gave Ianto pause, he could feel his forehead wrinkle as he tried to figure out how much time had passed while he sat on the floor. He didn't think it had been long, he remembered the door closing and he'd sat with his back against the wall, cherishing all the fleeting memories seeing his father had triggered. But he couldn't remember Jack's arrival nor the timer going off which certainly would have alerted him before the scones burned. Wouldn't it have? The grip on his wrists loosened, though Jack didn't remove his hands; one thumb softly circled the skin on the inside of Ianto's wrist as though to soothe him. It was working, no matter how Ianto wanted to deny he needed to be treated like some skittish animal. "Where were you, just now?"
They didn't lie, not to each other. But Ianto had to admit to himself he was seriously considering it given how the situation looked and what it would sound like. Even inside his own head, the self-deprecating tones mocked him. He scared himself, truth be told. "My post," Ianto evaded, pulling his hands away to search the floor, not having the faintest notion where he'd left it. Not that it was important in the grand scheme but that was what had initiated the sight of his father. "A neighbor, I think, brought it-"
He stopped himself when Jack reached down near his feet, slowly bringing up a pile of envelopes that Ianto had misplaced. He couldn't even look at Jack, whether due to embarrassment or denial he wasn't sure but he found the tiled floor far safer than the eyes of his boss. Lover? Too archaic. Partner, perhaps. Friend assuredly, though he wasn't sure which face Jack wore now and he didn't much care to find out. The most unnerving thing was what Jack didn't say as Ianto looked at everything but him - that he didn't ask what the hell was going on or demand answers. He just waited patiently while Ianto glanced through the envelopes, then waited some more while Ianto struggled to his feet, knees stiff from having sat for a time in the same position.
And waited more while he stared at the door, trying to figure out what happened for himself, pacing to and fro in the entranceway in frustration when he failed. Miserably.
It made no sense. It made absolutely no sense.
For something, anything to do with his hands that twitched constantly (and no amount of running them through his hair would calm the need to anxiously wring them), Ianto instead followed his nose to the coffee table where bags of food were set. At first he was curious why they were there instead of the dining table, but then he remembered spreading piles of paper out. Seemed a lifetime ago, but it must have been a matter of an hour or so. Chinese; he could smell the soy sauce on his lo mein, carried on the breeze from an open window. He nearly asked about that too, before he remembered the taste of burnt toast and the smell of smoking scones.
Jack followed, still waiting for an answer as Ianto sat on the couch and grabbed the nearest container of food and a set of chopsticks. Taking Ianto's lead, Jack sat on the chair across from him, selecting a dinner that had, prior to events, been intended to be the start of a quiet evening at home, just the two of them, no Torchwood or Weevils or Rift. And now... Ianto didn't even know what 'now' was, stabbing his chopsticks into the vegetable and noodle mix, spearing a mushroom with the skills of one using the utensils for the first time.
He wasn't hungry.
After contemplating the fascinating exterior of a mushroom and deliberately avoiding all thought of 'father' and 'Jack', Ianto returned the fungus to the container. He couldn't eat. He knew it, Jack knew it, even the chopsticks knew it, so he set the box aside, giving up all pretense of eating. Ianto caught sight of Jack doing the same, and fuck if he hadn't ruined their night. Not a date night, not exactly. But it'd been a night spent in. Jack had even picked up dinner.
Wasn't bloody fair.
"I think it was a neighbor," Ianto admitted as he rested his elbows on his knees, supporting his chin with his thumbs. He still didn't look at Jack; knowing what Jack was thinking as Ianto confessed something he wished to avoid. He'd seen the looks his mother had received, there at the end on those rare occasions when she left their house, and he didn't need to see them reflected on the face of the man he shared a bed with. "But I saw my father. I heard my father."
Silence fell over the room, so thick in the air Ianto breathed the tension. He finally chanced a look at Jack, but couldn't read the expression on his face. Couldn't see any expression, just blank, maybe a little concern, but empty of anything Ianto could discern.
And that scared him, far more than he had expected. Preemptively, Ianto started talking before Jack said anything, interrupting the drawn breath and opening lips. "Don't. Don't say anything." Ianto watched with some satisfaction as Jack's mouth snapped shut at his accusing finger and tone. "This isn't what you think. It's not like my mum's illness."
He could feel his voice growing hoarse and rising in volume despite his best attempts at maintaining a level pitch. That wasn't the response of a calm man. If he was so certain of what he was saying he'd be collected and explaining to Jack in a reasonable tone what had happened. But he could feel that slipping away as quickly as the images of his father at his door crept back into his head to hand him his post, over and over. "There's a rational explanation for this. Stress, delayed trauma response to London, an after-effect of the alien I saw as my mum, but there is nothing wrong with me. I just saw my dad, he handed me the post he got by mistake, and left. I am not going mad."
Ianto was on his feet by the time he was finished, or rather, when he ran out of things to say in his defense, pathetic a defense as it was. He rested his hands on his hips, refraining from a flinch when he was reminded that he'd just performed a monologue, brief as it was, clad in his pajamas. Impressive, really. It would surely convince Jack of the truth of his words.
Jack remained silent for some time, enough time to set Ianto's teeth on edge as he tried not to read into everything he wasn't saying, fingers tapping both with impatience and nerves. Finally, Jack spoke, his voice melting into every surface of Ianto's flat, warm and understanding rather than the cold distance Ianto had been expecting while saying the clinical and detached words threatening from the far corners of Ianto's mind. But they weren't anything close, and Ianto's relief left him breathless.
"What I was going to say, is your father deceased as well?"
Lacking any other option, Ianto jerked his head in an embarrassed 'yes,' affirming what Jack had already correctly presumed. He almost wished a Rift tear would open right in his flat, swallowing him bodily into another time, another place, another dimension, anywhere but there, standing before Jack and feeling more naked than he had ever felt. Raw and shamed, clad in pajamas and wearing a crack in his persona running far deeper than his betrayal of Torchwood to save Lisa. Love was an easy excuse, a normal, understandable flaw that could be exploited because everyone knew what one would do for love. Love wasn't wrong; when it gleamed through fractured control, no one bothered.
But now Ianto found himself exposed beyond what he allowed others to see within his suits and ties, quiet pieces of himself pushed behind destruction and chaos, Torchwood and coffee. It was awkward and uncomfortable. Humiliating. Others simply weren't to know basic terrors itching at the subconscious, the haunting surreal forms that twisted into dreams of possibility. Fear of the dark would even be more acceptable, fear of snakes or flying; phobias were simple and admissible.
Ianto's dreams weren't of death and loss, of ruin and defeat to an invading alien army. No, his nightmares were of ruin of self, a complete divergence of reality into the paranoid and the fantasy, where control no longer existed but in the hands of others as they bed his body down for the night, tucking him into a room with padded walls that reflected the screams of his mind back upon himself. That was what he feared, and he knew each disastrous Torchwood failure brought him one step closer to that threshold, that knife blade upon which all Torchwood danced but he quite possibly had the genes to assist the process.
He'd all but admitted as such to Jack, who was again waiting patiently for Ianto to speak.
The carpeting suddenly became very, very interesting.
He ran a hand through his hair, smelling both the sharp-mellow of his shampoo and the smoky bitter of the burnt scones, odors intermingling with the Chinese until he felt nauseous. Fuck, if it hadn't been for Jack, would he have noticed the burning scones in time? The thought shook him, his mind deliberately refusing to accept the similarities between his mother's accident and his with the scones. And wasn't that really the mark of sanity? Reality wasn't broken if he was aware, and he was aware insomuch as he recognized that spending time lost within his memories was foolish when the oven was on. He'd simply forgotten, distracted by the appearance of his father. Not appearance - vision, but not hallucination. Someone had been there, that meant he wasn't hallucinating. He just ... was stressed.
And seeing his dead parents. There were movies with this as a plot. Terrible movies; he never did finish one of them to see how they ended.
"Nearly twenty years ago." Ianto crossed his arms, wrapping them about himself as the breeze blowing in through the window carried both the scent of sweet rain and a chill, answering the request Jack never gave. Body language; he was failing miserably. Torchwood One had given him the training, all employees received it. Cursory, basic interrogation tactics and defenses. He was failing tone, body language, speech pattern ... hell, he probably could be read by the most inept psychic. Every learned trick for maintaining normalcy had been forgotten; he wasn't even going to attempt.
At least it was Jack who witnessed, not the police, not UNIT, and not Owen. Ianto gave a soft huff of laughter, shaking his head. "Looked just as I remembered, only shorter." Tearing his gaze away from the carpet, fascinating though the pattern might be in the ecru fibers, he risked a glance at Jack despite knowing almost instinctively that the other man's eyes hadn't left him since he'd arrived. His face was inscrutable, which did nothing for Ianto's nerves, stretched taut and quivering just waiting to be snapped. The visions weren't normal, Ianto knew they weren't normal. But for the life of him, he couldn't explain it. He didn't know.
And, he was willing to wager everything he owned, neither did Jack.
But he wasn't going mad. "There was nothing threatening about him. He just ... left."
"You're positive there's no danger?"
"Absolutely." Ianto wasn't sure how he was so convinced, but didn't hesitate when answering Jack's question. He didn't trust one parent more than the other or anything as foolish as that, but when he'd seen his father, there had been no overwhelming feeling of a threat as it had been when he'd seen his mother. Ianto worried his lower lip a moment before continuing, debating whether to mention it or not as it just compounded the matter of sanity. "When he spoke, I could hear both his voice and one that was feminine."
Jack's brow furrowed in thought and Ianto privately rejoiced in triggering a response of any kind. While he appreciated the unflappable patience, the later the hour the more Ianto grew nervous about Jack's silence. He wasn't looking for reassurance, not exactly; they weren't hearts and flowers. But when he could discern nothing from Jack's expression or action, the old niggling fear that something was terribly wrong with him choked what little analytic logic he possessed.
"You think the one that handed you the post might have been female."
Statement, not a question. But it was what Ianto had began to assume, not to mention offering him ginger tea fit a few of his female neighbors' mothering personalities. He nodded, though the insight didn't really explain why he'd seen what he'd seen. Nothing did. Well, nothing rational. Ianto ran his hand through his hair again, trying to piece together his thoughts enough to figure out what to do and how to proceed. Should have been easy, there was standard protocol at Torchwood for such events, buried in the back of the employee manual but they were there, from alien mind devices to cracks in sanity, rare but did happen with the stresses of the job. Ianto knew them, had memorized the handbook when he'd started for fear there'd be tests that he could fail, that he might lose the first permanent position he'd held since he'd began working.
Problem was, he couldn't order his thoughts at the moment to remember the first page of the handbook, much less protocol buried in the back, and the harder he tried the more the pages fluttered in the wind as he desperately grasped at the information swirling about in the maelstrom of his mind. He knew, logically, that seeing his father was most likely the explanation for his rattled thoughts, but that was little comfort as he forced himself not to panic. "What am I supposed to do?" Ianto finally asked Jack, hands back on his hips for lack of clipboard or coffee mug or anything else to give his idle hands a focus.
Ianto held that stance even as Jack approached him, wary as to Jack's purpose but trusting him at least enough that whatever he intended, it would probably not involve a violent action to render him unconscious, followed by waking in a cell and labeled a threat to Torchwood. He might have flinched just a little when Jack's hands gripped his shoulders, but Ianto would deny it to his death.
"First, we're going to bed." The idea startled Ianto so much he opened his mouth to protest but nothing came out, prompting a grin - far softer than a typical Jack smirk which so often accompanied talk of beds - that surprised Ianto nearly as much as Jack's words. "Tomorrow, you'll submit to every test Owen thinks necessary, even the ones he makes up on the spot." Ianto felt himself nodding in agreement, though the ease may have had something to do with Jack's thumb circling his collar bone, hypnotically faint with just enough pressure to both anesthetize the skin as well as remind Ianto of its presence. The touch stopped, distracting Ianto from the lull, and made him even more aware of Jack's hands on his shoulders, fingers increasing in pressure as the hold tightened. "And you'll pack an overnight bag with things you'll need for a few days. You're staying at the Hub."
"No." Ianto understood immediately why Jack's hands had tightened on his shoulders as he tried to jerk away with the last order. Either he was weaker than he'd thought or Jack was that much stronger, but Ianto couldn't pull away, no matter how he tried. It wasn't that there was anything inherently wrong with the order; he'd shared Jack's bed overnight on more than one occasion. Ianto even had a suit tucked away in Jack's wardrobe. But removing the option that had always existed, the freedom to go home, that kind of heavy-handed control of his life stank of something he would have done for his mother. "No," he repeated, stubbornly falling still within Jack's hands, "that's unnecessary and unwarranted. You can't keep me confined to the Hub like a bloody invalid."
Ianto saw the muscles clench and release in Jack's jaw as they stared at each other with equal measures of defiance, Jack's born from decades of practice and his own tenacious stubbornness and Ianto's from dealing with his mother and maybe just a hint of fear. "One week." Jack's voice was as clipped and determined as Ianto had heard it. "If your labs come back clear and you've not seen any other dead relatives, you're free to come back. That's an order."
"What? No!" Ianto managed to pull away, disbelief at the week-restrictions fueling his motions or maybe it was Jack's surprise that he would have the audacity to defy his orders. But when those orders felt so much like betrayal, defiance was easy. "Tests, yes. But you've no cause to lock me up."
"Lock..." Jack's mouth snapped shut as though Ianto had struck him, and from the way he rubbed his face Ianto almost wondered if he had. But he hadn't moved, still braced for whatever Jack had to argue. "Ianto." His name was spoken with such exasperation Ianto wondered if he'd missed some vital component of the conversation. "Staying at the Hub isn't about your mom's committal; there are legions of unknown devices in the Archives. Until we're sure you're safe, I don't want to find out you saw the face of your grandma in a bar of soap and drowned in the shower!"
Ianto stared with all words of protest forgotten in the back of his throat as he watched Jack first flail a hand at the kitchen in faint reminder of what had transpired that evening, then use those same fingers to pull him forward, stumbling, into the radiant heat of Jack's embrace. If Ianto's return of the hug was perhaps a little more desperate than was proper, Jack made no comment. And likewise Ianto said nothing of how Jack's hold tightened until he could scarcely breathe.
Next Chapter
Chapter: 3 of 10
Author: sarcasticchick
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R
Spoilers: TW S1, S2
Fluffers/Betas: lilithilien
Summary: "A hallucination is a fact, not an error; what is erroneous is a judgement based upon it." - Bertrand Russell
A/N: I hope everyone in the US is enjoying their holiday weekend and have not drank too much, ate too many hot dogs, or gotten too much sun. What am I saying, I hope you did, I just hope you don't feel crappy tomorrow *g*
Please see full A/N for story details, credits, and posting schedule.
Previous Chapters:
The Windhovers (1 of 10)
The Windhovers (2 of 10)
Beautiful Chapter 3 cover art by love_jackianto
Two days later and things were back to normal, or as normal as Torchwood ever got. Owen was still dead, Jack was still immortal, Tosh was still freakishly adept with technology, Gwen was still ... human ... and Ianto, well, he considered himself still breathing. And while that may have seemed like a minor point on anyone's scale of normalcy and things to consider 'good,' given it was Torchwood, Ianto considered himself lucky. He made the coffee, spent most of his free-time in the Archives, avoided the team best he could - made easier by his suspension from field duty - and focused on compartmentalizing the whole experience with the alien and the hallucination. Because that's all it was. Overwork, exhaustion, living and breathing Torchwood until it became second-skin. That's all it was.
Avidly monitoring the CCTV footage and sensors because there was something about the case that left him uneasy for the safety of the team was just exhaustion, too. His mind playing tricks on him, alone in the Hub while the others were off defending Cardiff from the greater threats of the universe. Wishful thinking, more like. He'd become so much a part of the team in the field that, when they were out, he began imagining what they were searching for. The overwhelming urge to save the day, to taste that high from rescuing someone from a threat manifesting through the fatigue as a sort of fear for the team. It made sense. No cause for panic or alarm.
He just hadn't mentioned it to Jack because the team had come back splattered in fluorescent pink alien guts and reeked of paint thinner, Tosh with a sprained wrist, Jack once-dead-now-living, Gwen with a limp and Owen bitching about his favorite pair of pants.
Ianto threw his keys into the small dish in the entrance way of his flat, rubbing his hand over his face, wincing when they still smelled of paint thinner. Or rather, alien guts with the tenacity of skunk spray. Jack had said he'd be by later, with dinner. That in and of itself had surprised Ianto, but he wasn't going to argue if Jack wanted to take responsibility for dinner. Ianto would have time for a quick shower, maybe even time to catch up on some of the work he'd brought home. Stacks of paperwork he'd put off while the team had been in the field filled his briefcase, along with a few harmless artifacts and documents he could record and place in the Archives in the morning. One apparently was an alien toothbrush; he'd been a bit squeamish about touching it, there was just something inherently wrong about touching another's toothbrush. He'd even purchased one for Jack (and threw away his old one) after he'd caught Jack using his one morning. Blue, with sparkles in the handle. For some reason, it made him laugh every time Jack used it.
He turned on the lights, wincing as they flared on bright to light his flat. Really too much time spent in the dim Hub, Ianto decided, cancelling the second and fifth light switches, a hazard of their job. Underground, poor lighting, it was a wonder they all weren't blind by the time they were thirty and could stand to enter the daylight at all. Perhaps that's how Torchwood would survive in the future, their DNA altering to become night dwellers, the dark vampires of lore. Owen was already working on the undead problem, though the notion of consuming blood was one to turn his stomach and make him thankful Jack never forgot Ianto's switch to vegetarianism. Nearly becoming meat himself had put him off quickly; the alien manatee had cemented any lingering taste for it.
Unless the meat was Jack.
Ianto smirked at his own joke as he sorted the paperwork into piles of urgency, leaving the rest of the various widgets and gadgets in the briefcase. The pile for 'immediate attention' grew at an alarming rate, and with an eye he quickly calculated the time required to work through the stacks. Far more than he had initially figured when he'd packed his briefcase. With a grimace, Ianto opted to put aside the paperwork, procrastination the preferable choice when the evening was to consist of Jack, food, maybe a movie, sex and sleep.
Definitely sleep. And perhaps even a repetition of sex in the morning.
Instead, Ianto went to the kitchen and quickly mixed up a batch of scones to enjoy with morning coffee. Not that he was really much of a baker - working for the Smythe's bakery had taught him little of the trade but how to sweep up flour and empty bins - but Taffy Smythe herself had taught him the simple recipe as a surprise for his mum. They were cheap to make, difficult for him to screw up too badly and his mum's favorite with tea.
It'd been a long while since he'd bothered making them, though he always kept the ingredients on hand. Out of habit, and partially to thumb his nose at his past; a stocked pantry was a wealthy pantry.
After placing the pan of carefully cut dough rounds in the oven, Ianto once again considered the paperwork before opting for a shower to wash away the long hours of the day and the smell of turpentine in an efficient (lemon-vanilla scented, both energizing and a combination Jack seemed to appreciate) scrub that left his skin pleasantly tingling. He didn't waste any time, knowing he had just minutes before the oven timer would buzz, though he did pause, contemplating wanking before dismissing that notion as well. Jack was coming over, after all. There'd be time enough for pleasure later.
Ianto threw on a pair of pajama bottoms, a deep cranberry pinstripe he'd purchased simply with hedonistic intentions rather than Jack's accusations that he couldn't wear anything that wasn't tailored and professional in appearance. The material was the softest cotton-silk Ianto had touched, light and cool on his skin and an indulgence he enjoyed whenever he had a lengthy evening at home. Rare, given Torchwood, but occasionally he found himself with time to luxuriate in something as frivolous as expensive pajama bottoms.
He'd just loosely tied the drawstrings when Ianto heard a knock at the door. Jack never knocked as he had a key, just as he did to all the other team member's flats but Ianto doubted Jack just strolled in without so much as a courtesy knock on their doors. Given it might be a neighbor and some of those neighbors had young children, Ianto grabbed a black tee as he went to the door, stretching it over his head as he walked, nearly tripping over his own feet when, for a moment, he couldn't see the path to the door. Perhaps the paperwork should be avoided altogether, he decided, if he couldn't even manage to walk and pull a tee over his head. It hadn't even been that bad of a day.
Upon opening the door, Ianto quickly set about revising that notion.
"Ianto?"
Rationally, Ianto knew the truth of the man standing in his doorway just as rationally he knew now that what he had seen at the Information Center was not his mother. Logically, he understood that his difference of perception was not normal and the question still lurked behind Jack's eyes (and in the back of Ianto's consciousness, if he were to be honest with himself) as to the cause. There had to be a cause, an explanation, a reason why he had seen his mother -- why even after he had been told the figure was not even female he still saw his mother.
Because there had to be an equally logical cause and explanation as to why his father stood in his doorway.
Ianto stared; he couldn't help himself. Before him stood the man he hadn't seen in nearly twenty years and no rational argument or logic could dissuade his eyes from believing what they saw. It wasn't real; Ianto knew it couldn't be real. But knowing it wasn't real and wishing it was were two completely different things.
His father looked just as Ianto remembered, though the angle was different. Instead of looking up into his face, Ianto looked down, his father no longer the towering figure he'd always appeared. He was still a gangly man, all arms and legs just like Ianto remembered, and impeccably dressed in the brown suit he had worn the day he'd died, brown the exact shade of the wire-framed glasses he wore and brown making his blond hair appear even more golden.
"Are you okay?"
The vision had his father's voice as well, only it didn't. Split, bi-tonal, sounding in the same breath distinctly like Ianto's father - a light tenor pitch, distinctly masculine, unrushed and soothing - and a woman, a voice he recognized but couldn't place for all the distraction of the hand placed on his arm. A gold wedding band gleamed on the ring finger.
Not his father. It wasn't his father, not even if that was his wedding band.
"Fine." Ianto winced at the sound of his own voice, unsteady and clouded by emotion's strangle-hold on his throat. Almost twenty years; before he'd discovered Torchwood, before he'd wandered the streets, before childhood's end when his mum's mind had splintered, fragile as spun glass after his father had died, tiny pieces breaking every day, every week, every year until nothing remained but paranoia and altered realities. Despite all that time, he'd never forgotten what his father had looked like, even though all the photographs had burned.
But Ianto had forgotten that look, that look he'd received when he was just little, he'd been running and fallen, skinning his knee and tearing his trousers. His father had run out of the house at the sound of his cries, crouching beside him and looking at him in the same concerned way, the same exact way, before gathering Ianto in his arms to carry him into the house. A plaster and bowl of ice cream later and Ianto had been laughing again, helping his father measure everything from the length of Ianto's nose to the distance of Ianto's best hop with the ever-present measuring tape.
Clearing his throat, Ianto smiled in what he hoped was an assuring smile, never forgetting that it couldn't be his father but yet unable to tear his eyes away. "I'm fine, just a bit under the weather."
"Right." Ianto could hear the doubt in his (not) father's voice, the feminine tones curling up and around the tenor. "Well, I got some of your post by mistake." A handful of paper envelopes ended up in his hand which visibly shook no matter how hard he tried to steady it. "You sure you're okay? I could make some ginger tea?"
He nearly laughed. His father had gotten his post by mistake. It was the most ridiculous thing he'd never thought he'd hear.
"No, thank you." Ianto turned down the offer, the lure of sitting down with his father too tempting when he knew it couldn't possibly be him. He'd sit and stare, memorize every movement that did not belong to his father, tarnishing memories and imposing a reality that just were not possible. It wasn't real. Ianto kept repeating this even as he stared, his eyes contradicting his brain's mantra.
"Get yourself to bed, then. You look terrible."
He tried to smile at the words, the advice sound given his shaking hands and relative inability to move past the thought of his father, standing at the door because he'd received Ianto's post by mistake. He stared even long after the door had closed and his father vanished, a reprisal of a theme nearly twenty years before when his father had left and never returned.
The door closing behind him as he waved goodbye to son while the son waved goodbye in reply; the chapter closing on another life, another time, over and over as history repeated itself. Ianto only wondered what his mother would say, had she been alive to watch him leave again.
He refused to consider that maybe she had seen exactly that, lost in her own world, when he'd read to her while they sat on a sunny bench on Providence Park grounds.
***
"Ianto?"
The sound of his name reverberated in Ianto's ears, striking off the memories of his father and collapsing the veritable picture show he'd been watching since 'he' had left. He. It hadn't been his father. He knew and was fully aware of it. But the memories were so old, the history so faint that it had been impossible not to sink within them once 'he' had left, closing the door behind him. They were hard to grasp, glimpses of Ianto's childhood framed in sometimes fuzzy colors and strange order, but seeing his father had triggered them all. And greedy though it was, Ianto couldn't resist embracing each one. Going to the cinema. Watching his father work. A trip to the zoo. Bedtime stories and goodnight kisses. Skinned knees and playing in the rain. The one time his parents had taken him on a picnic and he'd pretended they were in King Arthur's court, dining on the grounds of Camelot.
Those were the days of his childhood, the tiny sliver of time when he could remember no sorrow, no grief, no struggle to survive. They weren't perfect days - he knew there were things he was conveniently forgetting because they didn't match the idyllic nature of the memories - but they were the closest thing Ianto had to simple, carefree times, times when he wasn't mourning the death of his father or dealing with the slow decay of his mother's mind.
They'd been a happy family.
Overwhelming in all its peacefulness and multitude of snapshots, Ianto was reluctant to slip away from the vise memory held, almost desperate in his attempt to capture every tiny moment anew. No, he knew he was desperate and the tingle of awareness that his name had been spoken was acknowledged and equally dismissed.
Toast. Ianto connected amusement with the memory, images of his father vainly scraping off the blackened sections into the sink to disguise the fact that he'd done it again. He always burned the toast. Every time. To the extent that his mother finally banned him from attempting to make toast or anything else. A chef his father was not, Ianto remembered, could almost hear his father stating that if he were meant to cook then cakes would come with zippers and toast with hems.
Ianto imagined his coffee and tea would have been dreadful as well, but that was long before he could appreciate them.
"Ianto!"
Like a film reel snapping, wildly spinning with two tails flapping in the air, Ianto felt his attention break and the screen go blank as his shoulders struck something solid, the physical touch jolting him from his reverie. He protested before he could stop himself, rationally knowing that any attempt to recapture the wisps of the past would be as likely as stopping time but he tried anyway, pushing back physically and with a vocal "no!" while trying to chase down the images of his father dissolving into his past, becoming nothing more than a blurred lump of entangled experiences forming who he once was.
Lost again. His father had stepped out the door, closing it behind him just as he had that morning so long ago, never to return. But Ianto could still smell the burnt toast, burnt and scraped into the sink quickly before his mum would spot him, though the smell would always linger, a telltale sign she never missed.
Ianto scowled as the smell remained, long after the mental images had scattered to the wind. Remained and tickled the back of his throat to the point he had to cough. And he did, both coughing and clearing his throat, the taste of burnt toast on his tongue.
"Shit. The scones." Awareness had his heart pounding against his ribs as panic set in, his mind quickly rifling through memory backwards from knock on the door to the shower to setting a timer. The timer. He didn't hear the time but he could smell the scones burning; frantic he shifted his body to stand, moving his hands to push himself off the floor but he couldn't. Couldn't move, couldn't stand because he couldn't get leverage because his hands wouldn't move. His hands... oh.
He blinked, the back of his head colliding with the wall in surprise as he tried desperately to get his breathing under control. Jack. Jack was there, holding his wrists, though when he had arrived Ianto wasn't quite sure because he didn't remember the door opening or Jack entering, and wouldn't he be offended to learn Ianto had missed his approach. "Jack," Ianto tried to pull his hands away to stand but Jack wouldn't budge, and Ianto needed to do something before Jack rang the fire brigade. "Let go, the scones are burning."
"Were. I took care of them." Jack's statement gave Ianto pause, he could feel his forehead wrinkle as he tried to figure out how much time had passed while he sat on the floor. He didn't think it had been long, he remembered the door closing and he'd sat with his back against the wall, cherishing all the fleeting memories seeing his father had triggered. But he couldn't remember Jack's arrival nor the timer going off which certainly would have alerted him before the scones burned. Wouldn't it have? The grip on his wrists loosened, though Jack didn't remove his hands; one thumb softly circled the skin on the inside of Ianto's wrist as though to soothe him. It was working, no matter how Ianto wanted to deny he needed to be treated like some skittish animal. "Where were you, just now?"
They didn't lie, not to each other. But Ianto had to admit to himself he was seriously considering it given how the situation looked and what it would sound like. Even inside his own head, the self-deprecating tones mocked him. He scared himself, truth be told. "My post," Ianto evaded, pulling his hands away to search the floor, not having the faintest notion where he'd left it. Not that it was important in the grand scheme but that was what had initiated the sight of his father. "A neighbor, I think, brought it-"
He stopped himself when Jack reached down near his feet, slowly bringing up a pile of envelopes that Ianto had misplaced. He couldn't even look at Jack, whether due to embarrassment or denial he wasn't sure but he found the tiled floor far safer than the eyes of his boss. Lover? Too archaic. Partner, perhaps. Friend assuredly, though he wasn't sure which face Jack wore now and he didn't much care to find out. The most unnerving thing was what Jack didn't say as Ianto looked at everything but him - that he didn't ask what the hell was going on or demand answers. He just waited patiently while Ianto glanced through the envelopes, then waited some more while Ianto struggled to his feet, knees stiff from having sat for a time in the same position.
And waited more while he stared at the door, trying to figure out what happened for himself, pacing to and fro in the entranceway in frustration when he failed. Miserably.
It made no sense. It made absolutely no sense.
For something, anything to do with his hands that twitched constantly (and no amount of running them through his hair would calm the need to anxiously wring them), Ianto instead followed his nose to the coffee table where bags of food were set. At first he was curious why they were there instead of the dining table, but then he remembered spreading piles of paper out. Seemed a lifetime ago, but it must have been a matter of an hour or so. Chinese; he could smell the soy sauce on his lo mein, carried on the breeze from an open window. He nearly asked about that too, before he remembered the taste of burnt toast and the smell of smoking scones.
Jack followed, still waiting for an answer as Ianto sat on the couch and grabbed the nearest container of food and a set of chopsticks. Taking Ianto's lead, Jack sat on the chair across from him, selecting a dinner that had, prior to events, been intended to be the start of a quiet evening at home, just the two of them, no Torchwood or Weevils or Rift. And now... Ianto didn't even know what 'now' was, stabbing his chopsticks into the vegetable and noodle mix, spearing a mushroom with the skills of one using the utensils for the first time.
He wasn't hungry.
After contemplating the fascinating exterior of a mushroom and deliberately avoiding all thought of 'father' and 'Jack', Ianto returned the fungus to the container. He couldn't eat. He knew it, Jack knew it, even the chopsticks knew it, so he set the box aside, giving up all pretense of eating. Ianto caught sight of Jack doing the same, and fuck if he hadn't ruined their night. Not a date night, not exactly. But it'd been a night spent in. Jack had even picked up dinner.
Wasn't bloody fair.
"I think it was a neighbor," Ianto admitted as he rested his elbows on his knees, supporting his chin with his thumbs. He still didn't look at Jack; knowing what Jack was thinking as Ianto confessed something he wished to avoid. He'd seen the looks his mother had received, there at the end on those rare occasions when she left their house, and he didn't need to see them reflected on the face of the man he shared a bed with. "But I saw my father. I heard my father."
Silence fell over the room, so thick in the air Ianto breathed the tension. He finally chanced a look at Jack, but couldn't read the expression on his face. Couldn't see any expression, just blank, maybe a little concern, but empty of anything Ianto could discern.
And that scared him, far more than he had expected. Preemptively, Ianto started talking before Jack said anything, interrupting the drawn breath and opening lips. "Don't. Don't say anything." Ianto watched with some satisfaction as Jack's mouth snapped shut at his accusing finger and tone. "This isn't what you think. It's not like my mum's illness."
He could feel his voice growing hoarse and rising in volume despite his best attempts at maintaining a level pitch. That wasn't the response of a calm man. If he was so certain of what he was saying he'd be collected and explaining to Jack in a reasonable tone what had happened. But he could feel that slipping away as quickly as the images of his father at his door crept back into his head to hand him his post, over and over. "There's a rational explanation for this. Stress, delayed trauma response to London, an after-effect of the alien I saw as my mum, but there is nothing wrong with me. I just saw my dad, he handed me the post he got by mistake, and left. I am not going mad."
Ianto was on his feet by the time he was finished, or rather, when he ran out of things to say in his defense, pathetic a defense as it was. He rested his hands on his hips, refraining from a flinch when he was reminded that he'd just performed a monologue, brief as it was, clad in his pajamas. Impressive, really. It would surely convince Jack of the truth of his words.
Jack remained silent for some time, enough time to set Ianto's teeth on edge as he tried not to read into everything he wasn't saying, fingers tapping both with impatience and nerves. Finally, Jack spoke, his voice melting into every surface of Ianto's flat, warm and understanding rather than the cold distance Ianto had been expecting while saying the clinical and detached words threatening from the far corners of Ianto's mind. But they weren't anything close, and Ianto's relief left him breathless.
"What I was going to say, is your father deceased as well?"
Lacking any other option, Ianto jerked his head in an embarrassed 'yes,' affirming what Jack had already correctly presumed. He almost wished a Rift tear would open right in his flat, swallowing him bodily into another time, another place, another dimension, anywhere but there, standing before Jack and feeling more naked than he had ever felt. Raw and shamed, clad in pajamas and wearing a crack in his persona running far deeper than his betrayal of Torchwood to save Lisa. Love was an easy excuse, a normal, understandable flaw that could be exploited because everyone knew what one would do for love. Love wasn't wrong; when it gleamed through fractured control, no one bothered.
But now Ianto found himself exposed beyond what he allowed others to see within his suits and ties, quiet pieces of himself pushed behind destruction and chaos, Torchwood and coffee. It was awkward and uncomfortable. Humiliating. Others simply weren't to know basic terrors itching at the subconscious, the haunting surreal forms that twisted into dreams of possibility. Fear of the dark would even be more acceptable, fear of snakes or flying; phobias were simple and admissible.
Ianto's dreams weren't of death and loss, of ruin and defeat to an invading alien army. No, his nightmares were of ruin of self, a complete divergence of reality into the paranoid and the fantasy, where control no longer existed but in the hands of others as they bed his body down for the night, tucking him into a room with padded walls that reflected the screams of his mind back upon himself. That was what he feared, and he knew each disastrous Torchwood failure brought him one step closer to that threshold, that knife blade upon which all Torchwood danced but he quite possibly had the genes to assist the process.
He'd all but admitted as such to Jack, who was again waiting patiently for Ianto to speak.
The carpeting suddenly became very, very interesting.
He ran a hand through his hair, smelling both the sharp-mellow of his shampoo and the smoky bitter of the burnt scones, odors intermingling with the Chinese until he felt nauseous. Fuck, if it hadn't been for Jack, would he have noticed the burning scones in time? The thought shook him, his mind deliberately refusing to accept the similarities between his mother's accident and his with the scones. And wasn't that really the mark of sanity? Reality wasn't broken if he was aware, and he was aware insomuch as he recognized that spending time lost within his memories was foolish when the oven was on. He'd simply forgotten, distracted by the appearance of his father. Not appearance - vision, but not hallucination. Someone had been there, that meant he wasn't hallucinating. He just ... was stressed.
And seeing his dead parents. There were movies with this as a plot. Terrible movies; he never did finish one of them to see how they ended.
"Nearly twenty years ago." Ianto crossed his arms, wrapping them about himself as the breeze blowing in through the window carried both the scent of sweet rain and a chill, answering the request Jack never gave. Body language; he was failing miserably. Torchwood One had given him the training, all employees received it. Cursory, basic interrogation tactics and defenses. He was failing tone, body language, speech pattern ... hell, he probably could be read by the most inept psychic. Every learned trick for maintaining normalcy had been forgotten; he wasn't even going to attempt.
At least it was Jack who witnessed, not the police, not UNIT, and not Owen. Ianto gave a soft huff of laughter, shaking his head. "Looked just as I remembered, only shorter." Tearing his gaze away from the carpet, fascinating though the pattern might be in the ecru fibers, he risked a glance at Jack despite knowing almost instinctively that the other man's eyes hadn't left him since he'd arrived. His face was inscrutable, which did nothing for Ianto's nerves, stretched taut and quivering just waiting to be snapped. The visions weren't normal, Ianto knew they weren't normal. But for the life of him, he couldn't explain it. He didn't know.
And, he was willing to wager everything he owned, neither did Jack.
But he wasn't going mad. "There was nothing threatening about him. He just ... left."
"You're positive there's no danger?"
"Absolutely." Ianto wasn't sure how he was so convinced, but didn't hesitate when answering Jack's question. He didn't trust one parent more than the other or anything as foolish as that, but when he'd seen his father, there had been no overwhelming feeling of a threat as it had been when he'd seen his mother. Ianto worried his lower lip a moment before continuing, debating whether to mention it or not as it just compounded the matter of sanity. "When he spoke, I could hear both his voice and one that was feminine."
Jack's brow furrowed in thought and Ianto privately rejoiced in triggering a response of any kind. While he appreciated the unflappable patience, the later the hour the more Ianto grew nervous about Jack's silence. He wasn't looking for reassurance, not exactly; they weren't hearts and flowers. But when he could discern nothing from Jack's expression or action, the old niggling fear that something was terribly wrong with him choked what little analytic logic he possessed.
"You think the one that handed you the post might have been female."
Statement, not a question. But it was what Ianto had began to assume, not to mention offering him ginger tea fit a few of his female neighbors' mothering personalities. He nodded, though the insight didn't really explain why he'd seen what he'd seen. Nothing did. Well, nothing rational. Ianto ran his hand through his hair again, trying to piece together his thoughts enough to figure out what to do and how to proceed. Should have been easy, there was standard protocol at Torchwood for such events, buried in the back of the employee manual but they were there, from alien mind devices to cracks in sanity, rare but did happen with the stresses of the job. Ianto knew them, had memorized the handbook when he'd started for fear there'd be tests that he could fail, that he might lose the first permanent position he'd held since he'd began working.
Problem was, he couldn't order his thoughts at the moment to remember the first page of the handbook, much less protocol buried in the back, and the harder he tried the more the pages fluttered in the wind as he desperately grasped at the information swirling about in the maelstrom of his mind. He knew, logically, that seeing his father was most likely the explanation for his rattled thoughts, but that was little comfort as he forced himself not to panic. "What am I supposed to do?" Ianto finally asked Jack, hands back on his hips for lack of clipboard or coffee mug or anything else to give his idle hands a focus.
Ianto held that stance even as Jack approached him, wary as to Jack's purpose but trusting him at least enough that whatever he intended, it would probably not involve a violent action to render him unconscious, followed by waking in a cell and labeled a threat to Torchwood. He might have flinched just a little when Jack's hands gripped his shoulders, but Ianto would deny it to his death.
"First, we're going to bed." The idea startled Ianto so much he opened his mouth to protest but nothing came out, prompting a grin - far softer than a typical Jack smirk which so often accompanied talk of beds - that surprised Ianto nearly as much as Jack's words. "Tomorrow, you'll submit to every test Owen thinks necessary, even the ones he makes up on the spot." Ianto felt himself nodding in agreement, though the ease may have had something to do with Jack's thumb circling his collar bone, hypnotically faint with just enough pressure to both anesthetize the skin as well as remind Ianto of its presence. The touch stopped, distracting Ianto from the lull, and made him even more aware of Jack's hands on his shoulders, fingers increasing in pressure as the hold tightened. "And you'll pack an overnight bag with things you'll need for a few days. You're staying at the Hub."
"No." Ianto understood immediately why Jack's hands had tightened on his shoulders as he tried to jerk away with the last order. Either he was weaker than he'd thought or Jack was that much stronger, but Ianto couldn't pull away, no matter how he tried. It wasn't that there was anything inherently wrong with the order; he'd shared Jack's bed overnight on more than one occasion. Ianto even had a suit tucked away in Jack's wardrobe. But removing the option that had always existed, the freedom to go home, that kind of heavy-handed control of his life stank of something he would have done for his mother. "No," he repeated, stubbornly falling still within Jack's hands, "that's unnecessary and unwarranted. You can't keep me confined to the Hub like a bloody invalid."
Ianto saw the muscles clench and release in Jack's jaw as they stared at each other with equal measures of defiance, Jack's born from decades of practice and his own tenacious stubbornness and Ianto's from dealing with his mother and maybe just a hint of fear. "One week." Jack's voice was as clipped and determined as Ianto had heard it. "If your labs come back clear and you've not seen any other dead relatives, you're free to come back. That's an order."
"What? No!" Ianto managed to pull away, disbelief at the week-restrictions fueling his motions or maybe it was Jack's surprise that he would have the audacity to defy his orders. But when those orders felt so much like betrayal, defiance was easy. "Tests, yes. But you've no cause to lock me up."
"Lock..." Jack's mouth snapped shut as though Ianto had struck him, and from the way he rubbed his face Ianto almost wondered if he had. But he hadn't moved, still braced for whatever Jack had to argue. "Ianto." His name was spoken with such exasperation Ianto wondered if he'd missed some vital component of the conversation. "Staying at the Hub isn't about your mom's committal; there are legions of unknown devices in the Archives. Until we're sure you're safe, I don't want to find out you saw the face of your grandma in a bar of soap and drowned in the shower!"
Ianto stared with all words of protest forgotten in the back of his throat as he watched Jack first flail a hand at the kitchen in faint reminder of what had transpired that evening, then use those same fingers to pull him forward, stumbling, into the radiant heat of Jack's embrace. If Ianto's return of the hug was perhaps a little more desperate than was proper, Jack made no comment. And likewise Ianto said nothing of how Jack's hold tightened until he could scarcely breathe.
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