Fic: The Thrill of the Chase
Title: THE THRILL OF THE CHASE
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: Mild PG for implied M/M relationship
Spoilers: General, for series
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to the BBC.
Prompt: Christmas
Summary: Jack asks Gwen to accompany him on a very important mission.
“Gwen! With me!”
Gwen nearly dropped her cup as Jack swept past her, all verve and flapping coat. Realising that he was showing no sign of slowing down, she hastily grabbed at her bag and scrambled after him. “Do I need a gun?” she demanded, sending a helpless look in Ianto’s direction. He just looked bemused and gave an elaborate shrug.
“No, I’ve got that covered,” Jack said, patting his hip where his Webley was.
With a sigh, Gwen gave up on the idea of getting to know what she was getting into and hurried after him, turning when she heard Ianto whistle and catching her coat as he threw it after her.
“It’s raining,” he explained.
“Figures,” she grumbled as she pulled it on and followed Jack out. “We’re not taking the SUV?” she said in surprise as Jack walked past the vehicle.
“Not appropriate for the mission,” Jack explained. “Ianto said I could borrow his car.”
Gwen came to a halt and stared at Jack in amazement. “Ianto is letting you drive his car? Without any kind of threats or blackmail on your part?” Jack flashed a smile as he unlocked the car and got in. “Okay, that settles it: he’s head over heels in love with you!”
She got in after Jack and they drove off towards the centre of Cardiff at what was dangerously close to a sedate pace. Gwen gave Jack a bemused look, knowing that the man generally only had one speed when it came to driving and it was nowhere near the legal speed limit. Jack shot her a sheepish look as he found a parking space and slid into it with almost uncanny precision.
“He’s likely to be watching on the CCTV,” he told her as they left the car and made for St Mary’s Street. “I like to live dangerously, not commit suicide!”
Gwen laughed as she caught up, making her usual mental curse at his long stride as she struggled to keep up without looking like she was skipping. Tosh had the right idea; she simply continued to walk at her normal pace and made Jack stop and wait when he got too far ahead and realised he’d left her behind. Gwen had tried doing that but something always made her speed up to try and keep pace with him. It was a fool’s errand: the only person who could keep up with Jack’s stride was Ianto. She had seen them sometimes, walking along in perfect step and remembered wondering if it had been deliberate or subconscious. She had decided it was the latter when she had seen Ianto arrive to join them on one occasion and both he and Jack had done an odd little dance which seemed to be completely unconscious, but which had resulted in them falling into step with one another.
Now she gave up on dignity and hurried to catch up with Jack as he strode down the street before ducking into one of the arcades. “So what are we here for? Witness interviews? Preliminary investigation? Check-up on a resident alien?”
“Nope,” Jack said as he paused outside one shop and gazed at the widow display. “Something much more important than that.”
Gwen waited but after a moment Jack moved on without saying anything. “Hey! What are we here for then? Jack? Jack!”
“Hmm?” Jack shifted his attention from another window to her. “What?”
Gwen swallowed the urge to hit him. “Why are we here?” she asked slowly.
Jack blinked. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Gwen decided that screaming wasn’t the right way to go. “No,” she said shortly.
“Oh. Sorry about that.” Jack’s attention drifted back to the window. “Do you think that would suit him?”
Bewildered, Gwen followed the direction of his gaze and realised they were standing in front of a men’s clothes shop, and a pretty upmarket one at that. Jack was pointing at a cranberry red shirt with a co-ordinating black silk tie. A metaphorical light bulb went off above her head. “Jack Harkness, have you dragged me out to do some Christmas shopping?”
Jack had the grace to look a little sheepish. “You have no idea what it’s like! He has eyes in the back of his head and he always turns up when I least want him to! Trying to buy something that’s absolutely perfect for him without his figuring out what I’m doing is next to impossible.” He turned back to the display and wrinkled his nose. “He has shirts. He has red shirts. Buying him a shirt is not Christmassy. It’s not romantic. Nope, no shirts.”
He turned on his heel and continued up the arcade, leaving Gwen to stare after him with her jaw on the ground. After a moment, she shook herself and took off after him. She tracked him down inside another shop, poking through some iPods and muttering peevishly under his breath. Knowing how he could get about being asked to pay large amounts of money for what he considered to be primitive junk, Gwen moved in hastily.
“You know Ianto’s very particular about his gadgets, Jack,” she reminded him. “I know! Why don’t you get him some coffee?”
Jack made a scoffing sound. “I’ve already got him coffee. The best beans from his favourite estate. That was easy and didn’t take any imagination. I want to get him something that proves I’ve been paying attention.” He allowed himself to be chivvied out of the shop and looked around a little helplessly before giving Gwen a hopeful look. “Help?”
“Me?” Gwen squeaked. “What makes you think I know Ianto better than you do?”
This time Jack gave her a scornful look. “Of course you don’t! I know Ianto. I know what he likes and what he doesn’t like. That’s part of the problem,” He paused and revolved around in a small circle, waving his hands helplessly. “I know all kinds of stuff but this is for a Christmas present. It has to be special. It has to be something he wouldn’t normally buy for himself. You’re supposed to be good with people and have that ‘special instinct’,” he continued, making little quotation marks in midair. “Come up with something!”
“Oh, now that’s not fair!” Gwen protested. “I observe other people. Observing Ianto is a whole other ball game, You need alien tech to do that.” Jack snorted with amusement. “I’m not kidding! All I really know about him is that he makes fantastic coffee, loves eating Indian and never wears anything but suits. What?”
Jack was laughing softly. “That’s all? That’s all you know? Gwen, he’s so much more than that! He makes fantastic coffee but you haven’t lived until you taste his hot chocolate. He loves take-out Indian but the way to his heart is via Italian. And while he may wear suits to work, when we go clubbing he likes to wear-” He stopped in mid-sentence and stood staring into the distance, an odd expression on his face. Gwen was staring, as well.
“You both go clubbing?” She tried to wrap her head around that idea. Jack was always such a workaholic, working, eating and living at the Hub. She’d tried many a time to get him to come out with her, and while he was willing enough to come for a meal or a drink, that was usually as far as it went. The mental image of him and Ianto wearing anything other than their ‘work’ clothes and going to clubs was so utterly bizarre that her brain refused to process it.
“That’s it!” Jack yelped. “Oh, that’s brilliant! You’re brilliant, Gwen Cooper-Williams. I knew bringing you along was a good idea. Come on!”
Gwen scrambled to keep up as he went into full ‘Captain Jack’ mode. She was personally of the opinion that Jack could walk as fast as most people ran and it was at times like this that she had that suspicion confirmed. It was a case of trying to keep up as Jack darted in and out of various shops. Jewellery shops, she realised after a while, and she experienced an odd little lurch in her stomach as the obvious thought sprang to mind. She was bitterly ashamed of the tiny kick of relief she felt when she realised that Jack wasn’t interested in rings. She was in love with Rhys. She had married Rhys and he gave her something that Jack could never give her and which she had gradually come to realise she needed more than she could ever have thought possible. Rhys was her safe harbour; his warm, undemanding love a defence against all the horror and tragedy she sometimes saw but with a surprising streak of determination buried deep inside that she could collide with when she went too far. Jack set her boundaries but often let her ignore them without comeback. Rhys set very few lines but was adamant that she didn’t pass them and if she did she was the one who had to bend. It infuriated her when it was happening but deep down she knew she needed those limitations. In some ways she was too much like Jack for her own good. Sometimes she really didn’t understand herself.
She realised she had lost sight of Jack and she backtracked, eventually catching a glimpse of him inside a tiny shop she had never seen before. It was another jewellery shop, but the display in the tall narrow window, panelled with beautiful amber-tinged glass, had less glitter and more glow. Most of the pieces seemed to be made from old silver, bronze or pewter rather than gold or new silver and they were set with coloured stones cut and polished as cabochons instead of faceted gems. Gwen went through the narrow door and discovered that the shop interior was every bit as tiny as the exterior.
Jack was chatting away with the proprietor, a tall angular woman with silver-grey hair and startlingly amber eyes that matched some of the jewellery in the display cases. She was smiling at him, an expression that softened the somewhat harsh planes of her face. She lifted up a flat tray from underneath the polished wooden counter and laid it down for Jack to look into. Jack made a pleased sound and picked something up into the light. Gwen saw that it was a polished pewter chain on a black cord making a necklace. Jack was grinning now and nodded.
“Can you box it?”
“Of course.” The woman looked faintly insulted. Then the smile reappeared. “Would sir like it gift-wrapped?”
“No, I don’t think so. Ianto says half the fun is trying to break into a present I’ve wrapped.” He looked around at Gwen and smiled happily. “Got it!” he announced.
Gwen stared at the plain-looking necklace as the woman laid it in a box. She would have imagined Jack buying Ianto something a lot more expensive, especially since he had bought the rest of the team presents in the past that hadn’t exactly been cheap. “Why not a gold chain?” she asked.
“Because he’d never wear it,” Jack said with a laugh. “Ianto? Wear a gold chain? He’d shoot himself before he’d do that. And he’d shoot me first for giving him such a thing. No, you reminded me that I broke one of his necklaces a few weeks ago while we were at a club.” His gaze became a little abstracted. “I got a little carried away and Ianto didn’t realise it had come off until much later and then it was too late to find it again.”
Gwen waved her hands a little frantically. “Okay, now we’re heading into the territory of too much information. Lord knows what you were both up to and I really don’t want to know! You’ve got his present and that’s what counts.”
“Yes!” Jack was genuinely delighted as they left the shop and made their way back to the car, the box tucked away inside Jack’s coat. “Now all I have to do is get it back into the Hub without him catching me.”
Gwen groaned as she walked in front of him. “You’re giving me Bambi eyes, aren’t you?” She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Jack hastily alter his expression. “You’re impossible,”
“Who, me? Gwen Cooper-Williams, I am shocked by that accusation. Shocked!” Jack affected an air of outrage with the ease of long practice.
“Uh-huh.” Gwen ignored him with the equal ease of long practice. “Hand it over and I’ll smuggle it in.”
“Not here!” Jack hissed. “He’ll be watching! Wait until we get back in the car.”
Gwen swallowed a very unprofessional giggle and nodded solemnly. Jack gave her a narrow-eyed look but didn’t say anything. They got back in the car and Gwen felt the box being slipped into her lap.
“Just remember: we were checking out a possible infringement of a parole given to an alien called Dessa Summers. She makes awful herbal tea and wonderful sand cake. She also has one of the yappiest poodles in Wales. We spent some time chatting to her but it turned out the infringement was a misunderstanding and I let her off with a warning. Ianto knew I was going to see her some time this week so that should satisfy him.”
“Won’t he get suspicious when you need to go and see her again?” Gwen asked.
“Nah, I don’t need to go and see her for a while. Dessa’s always forgetting her parole conditions. I’ll go and see her in the New Year instead and remind her that she isn’t supposed to turn lead into gold when she overspends her allowance.”
Gwen stared at him. “Lead into gold? She does that?”
“All the time,” Jack sighed. “Come the January sales and she could destabilise the economy if I don’t remind her to behave herself. The lead up to Christmas isn’t so bad since she follows the old calendar. Now, remember what I told you and make sure he doesn’t see that box!”
They got back to the Hub without further incident and Gwen carefully concealed the box under her jacket while Jack distracted Ianto with overdone wails for coffee, citing his being forced to drink herbal tea. Ianto laughed and went to provide him with his fix, giving Gwen time to slide the box into her bag. She couldn’t help but grin. All this subterfuge reminded her of when she was younger and she would go to elaborate lengths to make sure that her family didn’t find out what their presents were.
“Good time out?”
Gwen yelped and leapt a good foot in the air as Ianto materialised beside her. “Dear God, will you stop doing that! At this rate it’s not going to be aliens that finish me off!”
Ianto laughed softly, his eyes sparkling with mischief. It crossed her mind that she had never seen him so happy. She hesitated for a moment, then gave in to her inner imp. “Have you bought Jack his present yet?”
“Presents,” Ianto corrected her. “I can never make up my mind what to buy him so I usually wind up giving him more than one present, which is just as well because Jack always goes mad and buys me at least three presents. Which takes me back to my question: did you have a nice time while you were out with Jack?”
“Uh-” Gwen suddenly realised why Jack tended to take Ianto with him when he wanted to interrogate someone. There was something very disconcerting about having Ianto’s full attention on you. “Yes?” she offered after a moment.
Ianto laughed and leaned forward. “A word to the wise,” he said into her ear. “If you want to hide something, don’t stuff it under your coat as you walk. You hold yourself differently as you walk.” He winked at her before standing upright again and turning towards Jack’s office. “Jack?” After a moment, Jack appeared and looked a question. “I’m going out to get some supplies. Plenty of time for you to grab that present off Gwen and get it packed.”
“Gwen Cooper-Williams, you snitch!” Jack howled.
Ianto grinned as he left, listening to Gwen spluttering denials that she had told Ianto anything. Tosh caught his eye as he left, wagging her finger reprovingly before answering his smirk with one of her own. He didn’t care what Jack had bought him. It was enough that Jack spent longer thinking about his presents than anyone else and that Jack really loved making the whole present exchange a surprise. For Ianto, the pleasure came from watching Jack derive some honest joy from something utterly human and ordinary.
Which reminded him that he really needed to go and pick up Jack’s present while Jack was safely distracted by wrapping and hiding Ianto’s!
OOOO
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: Mild PG for implied M/M relationship
Spoilers: General, for series
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to the BBC.
Prompt: Christmas
Summary: Jack asks Gwen to accompany him on a very important mission.
“Gwen! With me!”
Gwen nearly dropped her cup as Jack swept past her, all verve and flapping coat. Realising that he was showing no sign of slowing down, she hastily grabbed at her bag and scrambled after him. “Do I need a gun?” she demanded, sending a helpless look in Ianto’s direction. He just looked bemused and gave an elaborate shrug.
“No, I’ve got that covered,” Jack said, patting his hip where his Webley was.
With a sigh, Gwen gave up on the idea of getting to know what she was getting into and hurried after him, turning when she heard Ianto whistle and catching her coat as he threw it after her.
“It’s raining,” he explained.
“Figures,” she grumbled as she pulled it on and followed Jack out. “We’re not taking the SUV?” she said in surprise as Jack walked past the vehicle.
“Not appropriate for the mission,” Jack explained. “Ianto said I could borrow his car.”
Gwen came to a halt and stared at Jack in amazement. “Ianto is letting you drive his car? Without any kind of threats or blackmail on your part?” Jack flashed a smile as he unlocked the car and got in. “Okay, that settles it: he’s head over heels in love with you!”
She got in after Jack and they drove off towards the centre of Cardiff at what was dangerously close to a sedate pace. Gwen gave Jack a bemused look, knowing that the man generally only had one speed when it came to driving and it was nowhere near the legal speed limit. Jack shot her a sheepish look as he found a parking space and slid into it with almost uncanny precision.
“He’s likely to be watching on the CCTV,” he told her as they left the car and made for St Mary’s Street. “I like to live dangerously, not commit suicide!”
Gwen laughed as she caught up, making her usual mental curse at his long stride as she struggled to keep up without looking like she was skipping. Tosh had the right idea; she simply continued to walk at her normal pace and made Jack stop and wait when he got too far ahead and realised he’d left her behind. Gwen had tried doing that but something always made her speed up to try and keep pace with him. It was a fool’s errand: the only person who could keep up with Jack’s stride was Ianto. She had seen them sometimes, walking along in perfect step and remembered wondering if it had been deliberate or subconscious. She had decided it was the latter when she had seen Ianto arrive to join them on one occasion and both he and Jack had done an odd little dance which seemed to be completely unconscious, but which had resulted in them falling into step with one another.
Now she gave up on dignity and hurried to catch up with Jack as he strode down the street before ducking into one of the arcades. “So what are we here for? Witness interviews? Preliminary investigation? Check-up on a resident alien?”
“Nope,” Jack said as he paused outside one shop and gazed at the widow display. “Something much more important than that.”
Gwen waited but after a moment Jack moved on without saying anything. “Hey! What are we here for then? Jack? Jack!”
“Hmm?” Jack shifted his attention from another window to her. “What?”
Gwen swallowed the urge to hit him. “Why are we here?” she asked slowly.
Jack blinked. “Didn’t I tell you?”
Gwen decided that screaming wasn’t the right way to go. “No,” she said shortly.
“Oh. Sorry about that.” Jack’s attention drifted back to the window. “Do you think that would suit him?”
Bewildered, Gwen followed the direction of his gaze and realised they were standing in front of a men’s clothes shop, and a pretty upmarket one at that. Jack was pointing at a cranberry red shirt with a co-ordinating black silk tie. A metaphorical light bulb went off above her head. “Jack Harkness, have you dragged me out to do some Christmas shopping?”
Jack had the grace to look a little sheepish. “You have no idea what it’s like! He has eyes in the back of his head and he always turns up when I least want him to! Trying to buy something that’s absolutely perfect for him without his figuring out what I’m doing is next to impossible.” He turned back to the display and wrinkled his nose. “He has shirts. He has red shirts. Buying him a shirt is not Christmassy. It’s not romantic. Nope, no shirts.”
He turned on his heel and continued up the arcade, leaving Gwen to stare after him with her jaw on the ground. After a moment, she shook herself and took off after him. She tracked him down inside another shop, poking through some iPods and muttering peevishly under his breath. Knowing how he could get about being asked to pay large amounts of money for what he considered to be primitive junk, Gwen moved in hastily.
“You know Ianto’s very particular about his gadgets, Jack,” she reminded him. “I know! Why don’t you get him some coffee?”
Jack made a scoffing sound. “I’ve already got him coffee. The best beans from his favourite estate. That was easy and didn’t take any imagination. I want to get him something that proves I’ve been paying attention.” He allowed himself to be chivvied out of the shop and looked around a little helplessly before giving Gwen a hopeful look. “Help?”
“Me?” Gwen squeaked. “What makes you think I know Ianto better than you do?”
This time Jack gave her a scornful look. “Of course you don’t! I know Ianto. I know what he likes and what he doesn’t like. That’s part of the problem,” He paused and revolved around in a small circle, waving his hands helplessly. “I know all kinds of stuff but this is for a Christmas present. It has to be special. It has to be something he wouldn’t normally buy for himself. You’re supposed to be good with people and have that ‘special instinct’,” he continued, making little quotation marks in midair. “Come up with something!”
“Oh, now that’s not fair!” Gwen protested. “I observe other people. Observing Ianto is a whole other ball game, You need alien tech to do that.” Jack snorted with amusement. “I’m not kidding! All I really know about him is that he makes fantastic coffee, loves eating Indian and never wears anything but suits. What?”
Jack was laughing softly. “That’s all? That’s all you know? Gwen, he’s so much more than that! He makes fantastic coffee but you haven’t lived until you taste his hot chocolate. He loves take-out Indian but the way to his heart is via Italian. And while he may wear suits to work, when we go clubbing he likes to wear-” He stopped in mid-sentence and stood staring into the distance, an odd expression on his face. Gwen was staring, as well.
“You both go clubbing?” She tried to wrap her head around that idea. Jack was always such a workaholic, working, eating and living at the Hub. She’d tried many a time to get him to come out with her, and while he was willing enough to come for a meal or a drink, that was usually as far as it went. The mental image of him and Ianto wearing anything other than their ‘work’ clothes and going to clubs was so utterly bizarre that her brain refused to process it.
“That’s it!” Jack yelped. “Oh, that’s brilliant! You’re brilliant, Gwen Cooper-Williams. I knew bringing you along was a good idea. Come on!”
Gwen scrambled to keep up as he went into full ‘Captain Jack’ mode. She was personally of the opinion that Jack could walk as fast as most people ran and it was at times like this that she had that suspicion confirmed. It was a case of trying to keep up as Jack darted in and out of various shops. Jewellery shops, she realised after a while, and she experienced an odd little lurch in her stomach as the obvious thought sprang to mind. She was bitterly ashamed of the tiny kick of relief she felt when she realised that Jack wasn’t interested in rings. She was in love with Rhys. She had married Rhys and he gave her something that Jack could never give her and which she had gradually come to realise she needed more than she could ever have thought possible. Rhys was her safe harbour; his warm, undemanding love a defence against all the horror and tragedy she sometimes saw but with a surprising streak of determination buried deep inside that she could collide with when she went too far. Jack set her boundaries but often let her ignore them without comeback. Rhys set very few lines but was adamant that she didn’t pass them and if she did she was the one who had to bend. It infuriated her when it was happening but deep down she knew she needed those limitations. In some ways she was too much like Jack for her own good. Sometimes she really didn’t understand herself.
She realised she had lost sight of Jack and she backtracked, eventually catching a glimpse of him inside a tiny shop she had never seen before. It was another jewellery shop, but the display in the tall narrow window, panelled with beautiful amber-tinged glass, had less glitter and more glow. Most of the pieces seemed to be made from old silver, bronze or pewter rather than gold or new silver and they were set with coloured stones cut and polished as cabochons instead of faceted gems. Gwen went through the narrow door and discovered that the shop interior was every bit as tiny as the exterior.
Jack was chatting away with the proprietor, a tall angular woman with silver-grey hair and startlingly amber eyes that matched some of the jewellery in the display cases. She was smiling at him, an expression that softened the somewhat harsh planes of her face. She lifted up a flat tray from underneath the polished wooden counter and laid it down for Jack to look into. Jack made a pleased sound and picked something up into the light. Gwen saw that it was a polished pewter chain on a black cord making a necklace. Jack was grinning now and nodded.
“Can you box it?”
“Of course.” The woman looked faintly insulted. Then the smile reappeared. “Would sir like it gift-wrapped?”
“No, I don’t think so. Ianto says half the fun is trying to break into a present I’ve wrapped.” He looked around at Gwen and smiled happily. “Got it!” he announced.
Gwen stared at the plain-looking necklace as the woman laid it in a box. She would have imagined Jack buying Ianto something a lot more expensive, especially since he had bought the rest of the team presents in the past that hadn’t exactly been cheap. “Why not a gold chain?” she asked.
“Because he’d never wear it,” Jack said with a laugh. “Ianto? Wear a gold chain? He’d shoot himself before he’d do that. And he’d shoot me first for giving him such a thing. No, you reminded me that I broke one of his necklaces a few weeks ago while we were at a club.” His gaze became a little abstracted. “I got a little carried away and Ianto didn’t realise it had come off until much later and then it was too late to find it again.”
Gwen waved her hands a little frantically. “Okay, now we’re heading into the territory of too much information. Lord knows what you were both up to and I really don’t want to know! You’ve got his present and that’s what counts.”
“Yes!” Jack was genuinely delighted as they left the shop and made their way back to the car, the box tucked away inside Jack’s coat. “Now all I have to do is get it back into the Hub without him catching me.”
Gwen groaned as she walked in front of him. “You’re giving me Bambi eyes, aren’t you?” She glanced over her shoulder in time to see Jack hastily alter his expression. “You’re impossible,”
“Who, me? Gwen Cooper-Williams, I am shocked by that accusation. Shocked!” Jack affected an air of outrage with the ease of long practice.
“Uh-huh.” Gwen ignored him with the equal ease of long practice. “Hand it over and I’ll smuggle it in.”
“Not here!” Jack hissed. “He’ll be watching! Wait until we get back in the car.”
Gwen swallowed a very unprofessional giggle and nodded solemnly. Jack gave her a narrow-eyed look but didn’t say anything. They got back in the car and Gwen felt the box being slipped into her lap.
“Just remember: we were checking out a possible infringement of a parole given to an alien called Dessa Summers. She makes awful herbal tea and wonderful sand cake. She also has one of the yappiest poodles in Wales. We spent some time chatting to her but it turned out the infringement was a misunderstanding and I let her off with a warning. Ianto knew I was going to see her some time this week so that should satisfy him.”
“Won’t he get suspicious when you need to go and see her again?” Gwen asked.
“Nah, I don’t need to go and see her for a while. Dessa’s always forgetting her parole conditions. I’ll go and see her in the New Year instead and remind her that she isn’t supposed to turn lead into gold when she overspends her allowance.”
Gwen stared at him. “Lead into gold? She does that?”
“All the time,” Jack sighed. “Come the January sales and she could destabilise the economy if I don’t remind her to behave herself. The lead up to Christmas isn’t so bad since she follows the old calendar. Now, remember what I told you and make sure he doesn’t see that box!”
They got back to the Hub without further incident and Gwen carefully concealed the box under her jacket while Jack distracted Ianto with overdone wails for coffee, citing his being forced to drink herbal tea. Ianto laughed and went to provide him with his fix, giving Gwen time to slide the box into her bag. She couldn’t help but grin. All this subterfuge reminded her of when she was younger and she would go to elaborate lengths to make sure that her family didn’t find out what their presents were.
“Good time out?”
Gwen yelped and leapt a good foot in the air as Ianto materialised beside her. “Dear God, will you stop doing that! At this rate it’s not going to be aliens that finish me off!”
Ianto laughed softly, his eyes sparkling with mischief. It crossed her mind that she had never seen him so happy. She hesitated for a moment, then gave in to her inner imp. “Have you bought Jack his present yet?”
“Presents,” Ianto corrected her. “I can never make up my mind what to buy him so I usually wind up giving him more than one present, which is just as well because Jack always goes mad and buys me at least three presents. Which takes me back to my question: did you have a nice time while you were out with Jack?”
“Uh-” Gwen suddenly realised why Jack tended to take Ianto with him when he wanted to interrogate someone. There was something very disconcerting about having Ianto’s full attention on you. “Yes?” she offered after a moment.
Ianto laughed and leaned forward. “A word to the wise,” he said into her ear. “If you want to hide something, don’t stuff it under your coat as you walk. You hold yourself differently as you walk.” He winked at her before standing upright again and turning towards Jack’s office. “Jack?” After a moment, Jack appeared and looked a question. “I’m going out to get some supplies. Plenty of time for you to grab that present off Gwen and get it packed.”
“Gwen Cooper-Williams, you snitch!” Jack howled.
Ianto grinned as he left, listening to Gwen spluttering denials that she had told Ianto anything. Tosh caught his eye as he left, wagging her finger reprovingly before answering his smirk with one of her own. He didn’t care what Jack had bought him. It was enough that Jack spent longer thinking about his presents than anyone else and that Jack really loved making the whole present exchange a surprise. For Ianto, the pleasure came from watching Jack derive some honest joy from something utterly human and ordinary.
Which reminded him that he really needed to go and pick up Jack’s present while Jack was safely distracted by wrapping and hiding Ianto’s!
OOOO