Two Christmas Gift Fics
Title: Goodness and Light
Rating: G
Characters: Ianto, Andy
Words: 1,525
Summary: Ianto takes Andy home. Again.
A/N: This was a gift for electro_club. <3's to you. By her, I would highly recommend You Have The Heart of a Star, which made me the kind of happy generally associated with kittens.
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Andy’s hand shook almost imperceptibly as he tried once, twice to get his key into the lock. Ianto let it go without comment. On the third attempt, it worked, and Andy swung open the door to his flat and went inside, leaving it open for Ianto to follow him. He deposited his keys on his kitchen counter and finally turned, and Ianto could see the brightness of his eyes, half panic and half excitement, the same expression that had adorned his face through the whole ride home, Ianto driving his police car (“Like a proper copper now, eh? None of that black van nonsense.”) because of Andy’s wounds.
“Are you going to be all right, PC Davidson?” Ianto let his eyes trail over the flat; nicely put together, surprising for someone like Andy; very neat. Equally surprising was the attempt at decoration. There were white Christmas lights strung around the windows, a very small tree on a table, blinking colors. Garland, tinsel.
Andy smiled, wide. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be brilliant, actually!” He leaned heavily against the kitchen counter. “An alien! A proper alien, in the middle of Cardiff, on Christmas night! It’s totally mad, isn’t it?”
Ianto sighed. “You’d be surprised.”
“So that’s what you lot do, is it?” Andy boggled at Ianto, as though seeing him for the first time. “You hunt - aliens? Things like that Weebil, or whatever?”
“Weevil. And yes. Among other things.” Ianto fingered the small pill in his coat pocket. He watched Andy. Watched him taking all of it in, still reeling, still delighted to be part of something, something bigger than constabulary and football and beer. Ianto looked at the floor. “Andy,” he said. “Do you have anyone you should be with tonight? Family?”
Andy shook his head, laughing a little, although there was sadness somewhere behind it, behind his eyes. “Nope. My mum fairly hates me, crazy bitch she is. Dad died years ago. Sister’s an addict - tonnes of things, apparently. No clue where she is, but she’s probably enjoying her Christmas under a bridge somewhere in Splott.” Andy tapped his hand on the countertop, now himself looking at the floor. “I’ll probably just head to bed. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?” He laughed again, nervous. He looked up. “You have anyone to go home to?”
Ianto thought of Jack, probably sitting in the Hub, listening to his very, very old Christmas records, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, waiting for Ianto to get back from dropping Andy off. “I have a sister,” he said. “She lives on an estate near here, with her husband and kids.” He smiled, a little sadly. “I haven’t spoken to her in a while. Job’s a bit difficult to work around. Easier not to try.” Ianto paused. That sounded terrible.
Andy obviously thought so, too, because he frowned epically. “That’s no excuse. If she can stand the sight of you, you should at least call her sometimes.”
Rhiannon probably didn’t even know what Ianto looked like anymore. Ianto frowned, thinking of that. Did he know what David and Mica looked like?
Andy shook his head, waving a hand. “Sorry, mate, it’s just - long day. Normal Christmas troubles and then, you know, big alien clawing the hell out of my chest. My filter’s off.”
“S’all right.” Ianto rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands in his coat pockets. “Is there anything else I can do for you, PC Davidson?”
Andy looked him up and down, and Ianto felt it coming before it was even out of Andy’s mouth. “How can you take it?” he blurted. “The secrets, and everything? How can you keep yourself from just exploding and screaming in the middle of Roald Dahl Plass, ‘I clean alien shite daily in my underground sci-fi base’? How the hell am I going to keep it secret? How can you trust me to?” His face darkened. “You’re not going to kill me, are you? Gwen wouldn’t stand for it - at least, God, I hope she wouldn’t stand for it, I don’t know after everything we-”
“Andy,” Ianto interrupted, reaching out a hand and laying it on the other man’s shoulder. He smiled. “We aren’t going to kill you. We don’t do that.” Anymore. Often. “I can keep the secret because-” And he paused. He could keep the secret because. He let his hand fall off of Andy’s shoulder, thinking about it.
He could keep the secret because the secret was his entire life. Torchwood, the Hub, Jack, the team, aliens and temporal anomalies, dinosaurs, amnesia pills. He could keep the secret because the secret was all he had. The secret wasn’t a secret, because there was no one he spoke to regularly who didn’t know exactly what he did for a living.
“I can keep the secret,” he said, “because it’s what I’m paid for. We can trust you to keep it because you care about Gwen, and Cardiff, and you wouldn’t want to endanger anyone by letting it slip that there’s a team of alien catchers working beneath the water tower.”
And that was the truth, Ianto realized suddenly, watching Andy stand there and process his reasoning. They could trust Andy to keep Torchwood a secret. What’s more, they could use Andy. He was bright, eager - hell, willing to let all of this become a part of his life. The only reason they kept having to do this, kept having to retcon him, pacify him, was because he was often bright enough to see through all of their bullshit and pull the truth out of the red-tape muck that Ianto dealt out to the police, the local government, the media. Andy regularly made their lives hell by realizing and then accepting that what they did was entirely possible and exciting and often glorious, often terrible.
And Ianto didn’t want to have to make him do it again. But he had to. He sighed. “How’s the pain, by the way?"
Andy touched his chest and winced. “The painkiller is wearing off, yeah. It’s gonna be hell in the morning.”
Ianto nodded. “Sorry about that. You’re lucky we got to you when we did. Weevils are one of the more dangerous creatures we deal with regularly.” You’re another one. “Here,” he said, taking the small white pill out of his pocket and moving into the kitchen. He reached up into a cabinet and pulled down a glass, filled it with water, then turned and handed it and the pill to Andy. “This will help. With the pain, and with sleeping tonight.”
Andy laughed, taking the pill and glass. “I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight anyway. Way too much going on in here.” He tapped his forehead, then popped the pill into his mouth and chased it with the water. Ianto took the glass from his hand, rinsed it out, and put it in Andy’s draining board. When he turned back, Andy was staring at him with sudden worry. “You knew,” he said, “without asking me. Where I keep my glasses.”
Ianto nodded. “I’ve been here before. Fairly often.”
Andy was incredulous, but it was broken by a sudden sleepiness in his face, a distance in his voice. “What - what’ve you come here for?”
“For this,” Ianto said, and he caught Andy as he lost his balance and fell. Ianto sighed and began to drag him toward the bedroom. At least most of the time he made it as far as the doorway.
When Andy was in his bed, shed of his uniform, white bandages on his chest gleaming, Ianto went through the flat turning off lights. He paused at the windows, where the white lights reflected all around him on the glass, making his own reflection glow like old paintings of saints or angels. He held the switch in his hand and stared down at it for a moment. Finally, he dropped it and moved on. The Christmas lights could stay on. Familiar things to wake up to in the night.
He locked the door behind him, took the elevator down and walked through the lobby with a light wave to the night guard, who barely looked up from his newspaper. Outside, it was freezing, and Ianto pulled his coat tighter around himself. He’d have to walk back to the Hub - but that was all right. He could hear Christmas carols from somewhere down the street, someone’s car radio or television. He looked up at the sky. Overcast, dark, beautiful. The air smelled like snow, but it wouldn’t come. It hardly ever snowed in Cardiff. But that made it all the more beautiful when it did. Ianto started off down the street. At the corner, he paused. He looked back over his shoulder.
On the third floor of the building, two windows faced him, both ringed in white lights. He watched them for a moment, the only bright spot in the whole of the building. Then, coming to a decision, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile. He dialed a number, pressed it to his ear, and continued down the road.
“Rhiannon? It’s Ianto. Happy Christmas.”
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Title: The Law of Large Numbers
Rating: G
Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, Tosh, Owen
Words: 1,643
Summary: Jack traps the team in the Hub for Christmas. It's an accident, honestly.
A/N: This was a gift for blue_fjords, who has written so much, and so much that I have enjoyed, that I hardly know where to start reccing her. I guess we'll continue with the "things that make me happy" vein, and go with It's like veritaserum, only with emotion. This is what I read when I am sad. When I am done, I am no longer sad.
Tosh considered for a moment. Finally she said, “Cranberry sauce.”
“You would like that sour crap.” Owen let his head fall back against the side of his workstation. He caught Gwen’s disapproving look from where she sat against the couch, across from him. He shrugged. “What? It’s pink and disgusting and stains the countertop.”
Gwen sighed and waved her hand. “All right, Owen. How about you, then?”
Owen didn’t even consider. He just looked at the distant ceiling and wistfully sighed, “Beer.”
“Beer isn’t a Christmas food!” But Gwen was laughing. “I suppose to you it is. Christmas, New Years, Easter, any bank holiday.” She turned to Ianto, sitting to her left, his back also against the couch, pen tapping idly on a form propped against his knees. “Ianto?”
He looked at her, then Owen, then her again. “For once in my life, I agree with Owen.”
Owen barked a laugh. “Good man, Ianto.”
Jack poked his head out of his office. “What are we talking about?”
All of them held up a hand to stop him leaving the doorway.
“You’re banned,” Gwen said.
“You’ve still got an hour.” Ianto held up his stopwatch and shook it. “I’ve been keeping track.”
“For once, I approve of Ianto and his smug little stopwatch.” Owen gave a little wave to Jack from where he sat on the floor.
“That’s the Christmas spirit,” Tosh muttered airily.
“At least they aren’t fighting.” Gwen smiled.
Jack frowned, entirely petulant, mostly aimed at Ianto and Gwen. “Don’t I get time off for good behavior?”
Gwen and Ianto shared a look. With their eyes, they considered. It was fun to have Jack sequestered in his office, punishing him for trapping them here. But it would probably be more fun to have him there and not moping. And available for ribbing at every opportunity. Ianto turned to him. “You can come out. But you’ll be subject to constant verbal abuse.”
“Oh, do you promise?” Jack smirked, leaving the doorway and settling on the arm of the couch above Ianto. “All right, then. You were saying?”
“We were talking about Christmas food. What we’re missing.” Tosh was sitting against her workstation, her legs stretched out before her, crossed at the ankle. Her shoes were off, stored under her desk.
Jack watched out of the corner of his eye as Gwen stole Ianto’s form from him and started to write on it. “And you said beer?” he asked Owen, grinning. He leaned down to Ianto. “Don’t we have any beer in the Hub?”
“If I kept any here, it would be gone by mid-afternoon.” Ianto wrestled the form back from Gwen, only to have it snatched out of his hands by Jack, who made a noise of indignation and started to write on it.
“I resent that, Ianto, I really do,” Owen said. “Besides, not so much a problem anymore, is it?”
Jack looked up and made a face, and Ianto took the opportunity and steal the form back from him. “Well, you’ve totally put me off whatever I was going to say.” He peered over Ianto’s shoulder at what he was writing, then swiped the clipboard away again to scribble briefly on it.
Ianto yanked it back. “All right, enough of that.” He went back to it.
Gwen let her head fall back on the seat of the couch. “Rhys has all of it set up at home. Turkey, potatoes, stuffing. Poor man doesn’t even know why I’m not there right now.” She looked at Ianto. “Are you sure you can’t do that thing with the water tower like when Suzie kidnapped me?”
“You mean when you drove Suzie away from the Hub?” Owen asked.
Gwen waved her had dismissively. Ianto sighed, not pausing in his writing. “I’ve tried that. It was a miracle it worked the first time.”
“Christmas crackers,” Jack said.
All of them looked at him.
He blinked at them. “My favorite part of Christmas.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Owen said slowly, “that you have at some point had a normal Christmas, which involved Christmas crackers?”
“I’ve had quite a few Christmasses, Owen. One of them was bound to go right.”
“The law of large numbers does tend to work in your favor.” Ianto scribbled his signature on the form, then set the clipboard on the coffee table. “I imagine that you’ve had quite a few go right.”
Jack shrugged. “A few. A lot of the time, I’m dying. Wars, epidemics, accidents. History was rife with ways to kill me at Christmas.”
Ianto smirked. “The present is rife with ways to kill you. The future.”
“Well, you won’t be dying tonight, Jack,” Gwen said, smiling at him. “We managed to restrain ourselves.”
“Even if you are a prat,” Owen muttered.
“Well, I haven’t the law of large numbers on my side,” Tosh said, leaning back to look up at the ceiling. “My Christmasses are usual terrible.”
Ianto raised a hand as if clinking a glass. “Hear, hear.”
“Come on, you must remember at least one good Christmas, Tosh.” Gwen leaned forward.
Tosh looked at her, thinking, her mouth pulled into a frown. Then, she smiled and sat up. “I remember the first Christmas after my parents moved us back from Osaka to London. It was the first time I ever did the thing where you sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what you want for Christmas. My mother was trying to get me excited about it while we were waiting in line, but I wasn’t having it. I didn’t believe in Santa, but I didn’t want to tell her that, because I knew it would make her sad. We finally got up to him, and they lifted me up into his lap, and I looked up at this man in a big red suit, made up with rosy cheeks and white eyebrows and everything.” She grinned. “And I pulled his beard off and ran away screaming.”
They all burst into laughter.
“All of the kids in the line started crying because I’d killed Santa.”
Ianto was wiping tears of mirth out of his eyes and rubbing Gwen’s back; she’d laughed so hard she’d started choking. Owen leaned over so he could see Tosh. “There’s our Tosh, always taking shit apart to see how it works. Even holiday icons.”
Tosh beamed, blushing a little. “What about you, Owen? Any good Christmas memories?”
Owen smirked. “All of my Christmas memories are good. I remember this one time I got this bird back to my flat by-”
“And we’ve had enough of that,” Gwen said pointedly. “Ianto, you tell a story.”
Owen smirked. “Come on, Ianto, you must have a good one somewhere in you.”
Ianto smirked. “Somewhere, perhaps.” He looked at his knees for a moment. Then he looked up. “When I was at university, one Christmas I got mugged on the way to my flat.”
“Good memories, we said.”
Ianto waved a hand. “Give it a moment, Owen. I promise a bit of Christmas joy somewhere in there.” Owen gestured for him to continue. “Four guys, your average chavs, popped out of an alleyway screaming ‘Merry Christmas’ and tackled me to the ground.”
“Ah, there’s the Christmas joy.”
“I feel loved right now, truly. They went through my pockets and kicked the hell out of me and left me in the middle of the road without my wallet or my dignity.” Ianto brushed Gwen’s hand away as it eked toward his knee. “So I pulled myself off of the road and against a building. My clothes were torn and dirty and I had a split lip. I just sat there, shocked, for a few minutes. Then this man came down the sidewalk. He stopped in front of me, looked down, and smiled.” Ianto looked around at them, then grinned. “He dropped a twenty pound note in my lap and said ‘Nadolig Llawen’. Then he went off.”
Owen, Gwen and Jack laughed. Tosh just frowned. Owen choked out, “He thought you were homeless!”
“That’s terrible,” Tosh said.
Gwen grinned. “It’s fine, Tosh. You made out all right, didn’t you, Ianto?”
Ianto smiled. “I made twenty pounds. My wallet was empty.”
Behind him, Jack choked and laughed again.
“I seriously considered busking on street corners for the rest of my life.”
Gwen got control of herself again, then looked at Jack. “All right, Jack. What about you?”
Jack just smiled. “This.”
“Come again?” Owen asked.
“This. I like this. Sitting around, sharing stories. This has been Christmas for me a few times. Being with people I care about, hearing about the things that they care about.” He looked around at them. “That a good enough answer?”
Tosh beamed. “That’s a fine answer, Jack.”
“A fine answer,” Ianto murmured, and Jack felt Ianto’s fingers wind loosely around his ankle, unseen by the others.
The night passed thusly.
At 0500, the lights came back, the doors unlocked, and everyone slowly rose and stretched. Coats were grabbed; Gwen had her cell phone glued to her ear as she waved to the others, smiling through her explanation to Rhys about why she missed Christmas, all the way out the door. Ianto kissed Tosh on the cheek as she left, and she smiled and returned it, then was gone. Owen gave a cheerful wave and was off.
When Jack turned his back for a moment, Ianto disappeared. Jack frowned to himself, but let it go. They were all exhausted; he couldn’t have been asked to stay. Entirely understandable. He went into his office and sat back in his chair, sighing, closing his eyes.
When he opened them again, there was a package on his desk. And a note.
Happy Christmas, Jack. - I
Jack leaned forward and picked up the gift. He unwrapped it.
It was a Christmas cracker. He smiled, then pulled it open.
Rating: G
Characters: Ianto, Andy
Words: 1,525
Summary: Ianto takes Andy home. Again.
A/N: This was a gift for electro_club. <3's to you. By her, I would highly recommend You Have The Heart of a Star, which made me the kind of happy generally associated with kittens.
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Andy’s hand shook almost imperceptibly as he tried once, twice to get his key into the lock. Ianto let it go without comment. On the third attempt, it worked, and Andy swung open the door to his flat and went inside, leaving it open for Ianto to follow him. He deposited his keys on his kitchen counter and finally turned, and Ianto could see the brightness of his eyes, half panic and half excitement, the same expression that had adorned his face through the whole ride home, Ianto driving his police car (“Like a proper copper now, eh? None of that black van nonsense.”) because of Andy’s wounds.
“Are you going to be all right, PC Davidson?” Ianto let his eyes trail over the flat; nicely put together, surprising for someone like Andy; very neat. Equally surprising was the attempt at decoration. There were white Christmas lights strung around the windows, a very small tree on a table, blinking colors. Garland, tinsel.
Andy smiled, wide. “I’ll be fine. I’ll be brilliant, actually!” He leaned heavily against the kitchen counter. “An alien! A proper alien, in the middle of Cardiff, on Christmas night! It’s totally mad, isn’t it?”
Ianto sighed. “You’d be surprised.”
“So that’s what you lot do, is it?” Andy boggled at Ianto, as though seeing him for the first time. “You hunt - aliens? Things like that Weebil, or whatever?”
“Weevil. And yes. Among other things.” Ianto fingered the small pill in his coat pocket. He watched Andy. Watched him taking all of it in, still reeling, still delighted to be part of something, something bigger than constabulary and football and beer. Ianto looked at the floor. “Andy,” he said. “Do you have anyone you should be with tonight? Family?”
Andy shook his head, laughing a little, although there was sadness somewhere behind it, behind his eyes. “Nope. My mum fairly hates me, crazy bitch she is. Dad died years ago. Sister’s an addict - tonnes of things, apparently. No clue where she is, but she’s probably enjoying her Christmas under a bridge somewhere in Splott.” Andy tapped his hand on the countertop, now himself looking at the floor. “I’ll probably just head to bed. That sounds terrible, doesn’t it?” He laughed again, nervous. He looked up. “You have anyone to go home to?”
Ianto thought of Jack, probably sitting in the Hub, listening to his very, very old Christmas records, leaning back in his chair with his eyes closed, waiting for Ianto to get back from dropping Andy off. “I have a sister,” he said. “She lives on an estate near here, with her husband and kids.” He smiled, a little sadly. “I haven’t spoken to her in a while. Job’s a bit difficult to work around. Easier not to try.” Ianto paused. That sounded terrible.
Andy obviously thought so, too, because he frowned epically. “That’s no excuse. If she can stand the sight of you, you should at least call her sometimes.”
Rhiannon probably didn’t even know what Ianto looked like anymore. Ianto frowned, thinking of that. Did he know what David and Mica looked like?
Andy shook his head, waving a hand. “Sorry, mate, it’s just - long day. Normal Christmas troubles and then, you know, big alien clawing the hell out of my chest. My filter’s off.”
“S’all right.” Ianto rocked back and forth on his heels, his hands in his coat pockets. “Is there anything else I can do for you, PC Davidson?”
Andy looked him up and down, and Ianto felt it coming before it was even out of Andy’s mouth. “How can you take it?” he blurted. “The secrets, and everything? How can you keep yourself from just exploding and screaming in the middle of Roald Dahl Plass, ‘I clean alien shite daily in my underground sci-fi base’? How the hell am I going to keep it secret? How can you trust me to?” His face darkened. “You’re not going to kill me, are you? Gwen wouldn’t stand for it - at least, God, I hope she wouldn’t stand for it, I don’t know after everything we-”
“Andy,” Ianto interrupted, reaching out a hand and laying it on the other man’s shoulder. He smiled. “We aren’t going to kill you. We don’t do that.” Anymore. Often. “I can keep the secret because-” And he paused. He could keep the secret because. He let his hand fall off of Andy’s shoulder, thinking about it.
He could keep the secret because the secret was his entire life. Torchwood, the Hub, Jack, the team, aliens and temporal anomalies, dinosaurs, amnesia pills. He could keep the secret because the secret was all he had. The secret wasn’t a secret, because there was no one he spoke to regularly who didn’t know exactly what he did for a living.
“I can keep the secret,” he said, “because it’s what I’m paid for. We can trust you to keep it because you care about Gwen, and Cardiff, and you wouldn’t want to endanger anyone by letting it slip that there’s a team of alien catchers working beneath the water tower.”
And that was the truth, Ianto realized suddenly, watching Andy stand there and process his reasoning. They could trust Andy to keep Torchwood a secret. What’s more, they could use Andy. He was bright, eager - hell, willing to let all of this become a part of his life. The only reason they kept having to do this, kept having to retcon him, pacify him, was because he was often bright enough to see through all of their bullshit and pull the truth out of the red-tape muck that Ianto dealt out to the police, the local government, the media. Andy regularly made their lives hell by realizing and then accepting that what they did was entirely possible and exciting and often glorious, often terrible.
And Ianto didn’t want to have to make him do it again. But he had to. He sighed. “How’s the pain, by the way?"
Andy touched his chest and winced. “The painkiller is wearing off, yeah. It’s gonna be hell in the morning.”
Ianto nodded. “Sorry about that. You’re lucky we got to you when we did. Weevils are one of the more dangerous creatures we deal with regularly.” You’re another one. “Here,” he said, taking the small white pill out of his pocket and moving into the kitchen. He reached up into a cabinet and pulled down a glass, filled it with water, then turned and handed it and the pill to Andy. “This will help. With the pain, and with sleeping tonight.”
Andy laughed, taking the pill and glass. “I don’t think I’ll sleep tonight anyway. Way too much going on in here.” He tapped his forehead, then popped the pill into his mouth and chased it with the water. Ianto took the glass from his hand, rinsed it out, and put it in Andy’s draining board. When he turned back, Andy was staring at him with sudden worry. “You knew,” he said, “without asking me. Where I keep my glasses.”
Ianto nodded. “I’ve been here before. Fairly often.”
Andy was incredulous, but it was broken by a sudden sleepiness in his face, a distance in his voice. “What - what’ve you come here for?”
“For this,” Ianto said, and he caught Andy as he lost his balance and fell. Ianto sighed and began to drag him toward the bedroom. At least most of the time he made it as far as the doorway.
When Andy was in his bed, shed of his uniform, white bandages on his chest gleaming, Ianto went through the flat turning off lights. He paused at the windows, where the white lights reflected all around him on the glass, making his own reflection glow like old paintings of saints or angels. He held the switch in his hand and stared down at it for a moment. Finally, he dropped it and moved on. The Christmas lights could stay on. Familiar things to wake up to in the night.
He locked the door behind him, took the elevator down and walked through the lobby with a light wave to the night guard, who barely looked up from his newspaper. Outside, it was freezing, and Ianto pulled his coat tighter around himself. He’d have to walk back to the Hub - but that was all right. He could hear Christmas carols from somewhere down the street, someone’s car radio or television. He looked up at the sky. Overcast, dark, beautiful. The air smelled like snow, but it wouldn’t come. It hardly ever snowed in Cardiff. But that made it all the more beautiful when it did. Ianto started off down the street. At the corner, he paused. He looked back over his shoulder.
On the third floor of the building, two windows faced him, both ringed in white lights. He watched them for a moment, the only bright spot in the whole of the building. Then, coming to a decision, he reached into his pocket and pulled out his mobile. He dialed a number, pressed it to his ear, and continued down the road.
“Rhiannon? It’s Ianto. Happy Christmas.”
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Title: The Law of Large Numbers
Rating: G
Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, Tosh, Owen
Words: 1,643
Summary: Jack traps the team in the Hub for Christmas. It's an accident, honestly.
A/N: This was a gift for blue_fjords, who has written so much, and so much that I have enjoyed, that I hardly know where to start reccing her. I guess we'll continue with the "things that make me happy" vein, and go with It's like veritaserum, only with emotion. This is what I read when I am sad. When I am done, I am no longer sad.
Tosh considered for a moment. Finally she said, “Cranberry sauce.”
“You would like that sour crap.” Owen let his head fall back against the side of his workstation. He caught Gwen’s disapproving look from where she sat against the couch, across from him. He shrugged. “What? It’s pink and disgusting and stains the countertop.”
Gwen sighed and waved her hand. “All right, Owen. How about you, then?”
Owen didn’t even consider. He just looked at the distant ceiling and wistfully sighed, “Beer.”
“Beer isn’t a Christmas food!” But Gwen was laughing. “I suppose to you it is. Christmas, New Years, Easter, any bank holiday.” She turned to Ianto, sitting to her left, his back also against the couch, pen tapping idly on a form propped against his knees. “Ianto?”
He looked at her, then Owen, then her again. “For once in my life, I agree with Owen.”
Owen barked a laugh. “Good man, Ianto.”
Jack poked his head out of his office. “What are we talking about?”
All of them held up a hand to stop him leaving the doorway.
“You’re banned,” Gwen said.
“You’ve still got an hour.” Ianto held up his stopwatch and shook it. “I’ve been keeping track.”
“For once, I approve of Ianto and his smug little stopwatch.” Owen gave a little wave to Jack from where he sat on the floor.
“That’s the Christmas spirit,” Tosh muttered airily.
“At least they aren’t fighting.” Gwen smiled.
Jack frowned, entirely petulant, mostly aimed at Ianto and Gwen. “Don’t I get time off for good behavior?”
Gwen and Ianto shared a look. With their eyes, they considered. It was fun to have Jack sequestered in his office, punishing him for trapping them here. But it would probably be more fun to have him there and not moping. And available for ribbing at every opportunity. Ianto turned to him. “You can come out. But you’ll be subject to constant verbal abuse.”
“Oh, do you promise?” Jack smirked, leaving the doorway and settling on the arm of the couch above Ianto. “All right, then. You were saying?”
“We were talking about Christmas food. What we’re missing.” Tosh was sitting against her workstation, her legs stretched out before her, crossed at the ankle. Her shoes were off, stored under her desk.
Jack watched out of the corner of his eye as Gwen stole Ianto’s form from him and started to write on it. “And you said beer?” he asked Owen, grinning. He leaned down to Ianto. “Don’t we have any beer in the Hub?”
“If I kept any here, it would be gone by mid-afternoon.” Ianto wrestled the form back from Gwen, only to have it snatched out of his hands by Jack, who made a noise of indignation and started to write on it.
“I resent that, Ianto, I really do,” Owen said. “Besides, not so much a problem anymore, is it?”
Jack looked up and made a face, and Ianto took the opportunity and steal the form back from him. “Well, you’ve totally put me off whatever I was going to say.” He peered over Ianto’s shoulder at what he was writing, then swiped the clipboard away again to scribble briefly on it.
Ianto yanked it back. “All right, enough of that.” He went back to it.
Gwen let her head fall back on the seat of the couch. “Rhys has all of it set up at home. Turkey, potatoes, stuffing. Poor man doesn’t even know why I’m not there right now.” She looked at Ianto. “Are you sure you can’t do that thing with the water tower like when Suzie kidnapped me?”
“You mean when you drove Suzie away from the Hub?” Owen asked.
Gwen waved her had dismissively. Ianto sighed, not pausing in his writing. “I’ve tried that. It was a miracle it worked the first time.”
“Christmas crackers,” Jack said.
All of them looked at him.
He blinked at them. “My favorite part of Christmas.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Owen said slowly, “that you have at some point had a normal Christmas, which involved Christmas crackers?”
“I’ve had quite a few Christmasses, Owen. One of them was bound to go right.”
“The law of large numbers does tend to work in your favor.” Ianto scribbled his signature on the form, then set the clipboard on the coffee table. “I imagine that you’ve had quite a few go right.”
Jack shrugged. “A few. A lot of the time, I’m dying. Wars, epidemics, accidents. History was rife with ways to kill me at Christmas.”
Ianto smirked. “The present is rife with ways to kill you. The future.”
“Well, you won’t be dying tonight, Jack,” Gwen said, smiling at him. “We managed to restrain ourselves.”
“Even if you are a prat,” Owen muttered.
“Well, I haven’t the law of large numbers on my side,” Tosh said, leaning back to look up at the ceiling. “My Christmasses are usual terrible.”
Ianto raised a hand as if clinking a glass. “Hear, hear.”
“Come on, you must remember at least one good Christmas, Tosh.” Gwen leaned forward.
Tosh looked at her, thinking, her mouth pulled into a frown. Then, she smiled and sat up. “I remember the first Christmas after my parents moved us back from Osaka to London. It was the first time I ever did the thing where you sit on Santa’s lap and tell him what you want for Christmas. My mother was trying to get me excited about it while we were waiting in line, but I wasn’t having it. I didn’t believe in Santa, but I didn’t want to tell her that, because I knew it would make her sad. We finally got up to him, and they lifted me up into his lap, and I looked up at this man in a big red suit, made up with rosy cheeks and white eyebrows and everything.” She grinned. “And I pulled his beard off and ran away screaming.”
They all burst into laughter.
“All of the kids in the line started crying because I’d killed Santa.”
Ianto was wiping tears of mirth out of his eyes and rubbing Gwen’s back; she’d laughed so hard she’d started choking. Owen leaned over so he could see Tosh. “There’s our Tosh, always taking shit apart to see how it works. Even holiday icons.”
Tosh beamed, blushing a little. “What about you, Owen? Any good Christmas memories?”
Owen smirked. “All of my Christmas memories are good. I remember this one time I got this bird back to my flat by-”
“And we’ve had enough of that,” Gwen said pointedly. “Ianto, you tell a story.”
Owen smirked. “Come on, Ianto, you must have a good one somewhere in you.”
Ianto smirked. “Somewhere, perhaps.” He looked at his knees for a moment. Then he looked up. “When I was at university, one Christmas I got mugged on the way to my flat.”
“Good memories, we said.”
Ianto waved a hand. “Give it a moment, Owen. I promise a bit of Christmas joy somewhere in there.” Owen gestured for him to continue. “Four guys, your average chavs, popped out of an alleyway screaming ‘Merry Christmas’ and tackled me to the ground.”
“Ah, there’s the Christmas joy.”
“I feel loved right now, truly. They went through my pockets and kicked the hell out of me and left me in the middle of the road without my wallet or my dignity.” Ianto brushed Gwen’s hand away as it eked toward his knee. “So I pulled myself off of the road and against a building. My clothes were torn and dirty and I had a split lip. I just sat there, shocked, for a few minutes. Then this man came down the sidewalk. He stopped in front of me, looked down, and smiled.” Ianto looked around at them, then grinned. “He dropped a twenty pound note in my lap and said ‘Nadolig Llawen’. Then he went off.”
Owen, Gwen and Jack laughed. Tosh just frowned. Owen choked out, “He thought you were homeless!”
“That’s terrible,” Tosh said.
Gwen grinned. “It’s fine, Tosh. You made out all right, didn’t you, Ianto?”
Ianto smiled. “I made twenty pounds. My wallet was empty.”
Behind him, Jack choked and laughed again.
“I seriously considered busking on street corners for the rest of my life.”
Gwen got control of herself again, then looked at Jack. “All right, Jack. What about you?”
Jack just smiled. “This.”
“Come again?” Owen asked.
“This. I like this. Sitting around, sharing stories. This has been Christmas for me a few times. Being with people I care about, hearing about the things that they care about.” He looked around at them. “That a good enough answer?”
Tosh beamed. “That’s a fine answer, Jack.”
“A fine answer,” Ianto murmured, and Jack felt Ianto’s fingers wind loosely around his ankle, unseen by the others.
The night passed thusly.
At 0500, the lights came back, the doors unlocked, and everyone slowly rose and stretched. Coats were grabbed; Gwen had her cell phone glued to her ear as she waved to the others, smiling through her explanation to Rhys about why she missed Christmas, all the way out the door. Ianto kissed Tosh on the cheek as she left, and she smiled and returned it, then was gone. Owen gave a cheerful wave and was off.
When Jack turned his back for a moment, Ianto disappeared. Jack frowned to himself, but let it go. They were all exhausted; he couldn’t have been asked to stay. Entirely understandable. He went into his office and sat back in his chair, sighing, closing his eyes.
When he opened them again, there was a package on his desk. And a note.
Happy Christmas, Jack. - I
Jack leaned forward and picked up the gift. He unwrapped it.
It was a Christmas cracker. He smiled, then pulled it open.