CONCUSSION WAVE
Title: Concussion Wave
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Rating: Very mild PG
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to RTD and to the BBC
Summary: Bonfire Night isn't fun for everyone.
Still no answer.
Jack shoved the mobile phone back in his pocket as he continued to drive one-handed through the streets of Cardiff. He'd originally tried to call Ianto to ask him if he wanted to join him for a meal before watching the big firework display, but that plan had been abandoned when Ianto had failed to respond to his home phone, his mobile or an email. According to the sensors, his car was still parked outside his house, but if Ianto was inside, he wasn't interested in the outside world.
Jack knew he was probably overreacting. Ianto had probably decided to go out on the spur of the moment and was at some club, where the noise was so loud he couldn't hear his phone go off. Jack could even see him in his mind's eye, dancing and flirting without a care in the world, little realising that his supposedly omniscient boss was busy working himself into what Gwen would describe as 'a proper tizzy'.
Except that Jack knew what Ianto was like. He knew that the only time he didn't carry his mobile phone was when he was either in his house or linked into the Torchwood network. And if he was carrying his mobile in a noisy environment, he switched it to vibrate and carried it close to his person where he could feel it if it went off. Unlike the others, Ianto was never out of contact. In part that was because he was still overcompensating for the Lisa incident, but it was mainly because what had happened at Canary Wharf had got that little bit worse because people had been slow to communicate with one another. Jack knew from bitter experience that Ianto tended to nag if he and the others didn't maintain contact when they were out in the field and Ianto was co-ordinating them.
So this silence was worrying. And where Ianto was concerned, Jack had elevated worrying to an art form. He reached the house in record time and was out of the SUV and running up the garden path with almost indecent haste. He could hear the fireworks going off all around them and realised that Ianto could have been in a pitched gun battle and no-one would have batted an eyelid or called for the police, thinking it was just more fireworks going off. There was no answer to his doorbell and Jack groped for his lockpicks before realising he had left them behind. Taking a step back, he kicked at the door, snapping the lock at the first attempt. As he pushed open the door and slid inside, Jack made a mental note to get Ianto to strengthen the locks once he'd sorted out what was going on.
The house seemed to be in darkness, and once again there was that small voice in the back of Jack's head telling him that he was overreacting; that there was no reason to suppose that there was anything even slightly amiss with Ianto's continued silence. And yet Jack couldn't ignore that other, much more pronounced prod that told him that he needed to find Ianto and he needed to find him now.
He quickly discovered that the ground floor was deserted and in darkness, but now that his eyes had adjusted, he caught the spill of light from upstairs. Torn between relief and annoyance, he still climbed the stairs cautiously, his hand on his gun just in case, but not drawing it in case Ianto was in bed with someone else. Neither of them had made any promises of exclusivity so Jack was a little annoyed with himself for the ambivalent feelings he had over the idea. The light was coming from Ianto's bedroom and he edged his way across the landing, pushing the door open carefully. He realised that the main light was on, which was unusual for Ianto, who had a disconcerting habit of walking around either in the dark or with minimum lighting. Then the bed came into view and Jack realised that he had been right to worry about Ianto's silence.
OOOO
They're only fireworks. They're nothing more than noisy balls of gunpowder and cardboard. Just noise and light, nothing more. Oh God, why can't they just stop?
Ianto knew he was being ridiculous. He was a grown man, who had seen and done more things in the last ten years than a dozen other people managed to do in their entire lives. He faced down Weevils as a regular part of his job and fed and cared for a pteranodon, not to mention all the other stuff that came his way, up to and including alien invasions. He'd come home that night looking forward to an early night for once. He'd made sure that Moses was indoors and safely out of the way of any stray fireworks and after making himself a meal, he had watched a little television before retiring upstairs.
It wasn't until he had switched off the TV that he had noticed the noise coming from outside. Even then it hadn't really registered as being anything more than a nuisance since he wanted to get to sleep. He'd got ready for bed and settled down to sleep. He was on the verge of going under when someone a few doors down started their own display and Ianto was suddenly right back in his deepest, most terrible nightmare.
Light so bright that it cast sharply defined shadows pulsed outside his bedroom window, followed by crashes of sound that had the glass vibrating audibly. More than half-asleep, Ianto had lunged off the bed in an instinctive attempt to escape the bombardment, only to come up against the wall with bruising force. Locked in his memories, it took several minutes for him to realise that he wasn't back at the Tower and fighting for his and his people's lives, but safe in his bedroom in Cardiff. The deafening fireworks had stopped but the ones that were currently going off were almost as bad. Ianto struggled to get his breathing under control and switched on the light in an attempt to drown out the flashes and flares.
There was a ghosting movement from out of the corner of his eyes and Ianto spun around in time to see Moses slink into the room, his belly brushing the floor as he made for the safety of underneath Ianto's bed. For one idiotic moment, Ianto wished that he could follow him.
He struggled to get his breathing under control and made himself get back into the bed. It was just Bonfire Night. Just stupid people who needed to make lots of noise in order to get themselves noticed. He'd enjoyed fireworks himself in the past, although he had to admit that he was more interested in the patterns of light and colour than in how big a bang they could produce. He struggled to summon up memories of those firework displays, but the fear was there, rising like a cold tide inside of him, and no matter how rational he tried to be, the water kept on rising.
In the end he dragged a pillow over his head and curled up in the bed, shaking uncontrollably as he remembered... God, how he remembered. Remembered the tramp of metal feet that would have been funny if it hadn't been a harbinger of death and distraction. Remembered being the one that everyone seemed to be looking to as a source of command and strategy, when all he could really think about what the fact that he had never had to face something like this before on his own and where the hell was Lisa? Remembered the way the light of the Cybermen weaponry cast harsh shadows as it reached out to claim life after life - and they were the lucky ones.
He could hear the fireworks even through the muffling protection of the pillow, so he pulled another one into place and curled up even tighter, dimly aware that he was in danger of suffocating himself. The ploy didn't really work, since the sounds were now inside his head as well as outside the house. Sounds of mayhem and destruction; the soundtrack to his world going up in flames and there being nothing he could do to stop it, only slow it down by the tiniest of fractions and pray that the Doctor or UNIT would be able to produce something a little more effective. Sounds of his people screaming and dying, no matter how hard he tried, because the only way to keep them really safe would be to withdraw into the Deep Vaults and to do that would leave the public utterly undefended and he bloody well believed the bit in the Torchwood Charter that stated that they were the shield and sword that kept Great Britain safe.
He remembered the harsh litany of the Daleks as they had appeared just as suddenly and inexplicably as the Cybermen had, making a disaster into a holocaust. The only thing that had saved them was the fact that the Daleks and the Cybermen had promptly gone to war against one another, distracting each other from the destruction of the humans, although enough had died just by being caught in the crossfire. A Dalek on the rampage slaughtered anything and everything that moved, while the Cybermen had soon realised they had bitten off far more than they could chew and had started to harvest anyone they could find in an attempt to produce more cannon fodder for the Daleks to destroy.
He remembered the jury-rigged tactical board bleeding red, Dani and Emma frantically trying to drag him away while he fought them and struggled to see the pattern that would allow him to get them all through this. He remembered the world abruptly going strange, the instruments registering a massive spatial anomaly opening up just as everything looked like it was coming to an end. Overtaxed systems had started shutting down or blowing up and Ianto had become separated from the others in the evacuation, deliberately moving in the opposite direction in an attempt to find Lisa.
More fireworks went off, their light finding its way to him from a small gap in the pillows. Blood-red, like the flames that had been consuming the conversion chambers when he'd stumbled over them. Heat and light had slapped at him, warning him to come no further, but he had caught a glimpse of dark skin amongst all the silver and he had moved forward. Lisa's terrified eyes had met his own and Ianto had felt the hammer blow of her emotions collide against his tissue-thin defences and they had fallen without so much as a sigh. In that moment she had become his world, his Grail, his holy quest for which he would sacrifice anything and everything.
Ianto shuddered uncontrollably, curling even tighter into himself. Even now, with time allowing him to distance himself from the event, he could still feeling the insistent clawing need to protect Lisa haunting him like the memory of an old wound. His obsession had taken him to a very dark and deadly place and there were still days when he wondered if he would ever be free of the taint that he had so willingly allowed to corrupt his soul.
He sensed that he wasn't alone at the same time as something landed on the bed beside him. Already keyed up, Ianto shot up and away from the potential danger and caught a glimpse of a startled looking Jack just before the swinging pillow connected with the Captain and he went over onto his back with a grunt of surprise. Double-vision swamped Ianto for a moment, with his bedroom and Canary Wharf fighting for ascendancy, but then the nightmare images faded and he was back in the here and now.
"What the hell was that for?" Jack demanded a little plaintively.
"Jack."
Ianto was panting, feeling like he was running a marathon, but the sight of Jack was an anchor to reality. Jack hadn't been at Canary Wharf. Jack belonged to Cardiff and to the here and now. Almost without realising what he was doing, Ianto reached out to grab Jack and drag him down beside him on the bed, wrapping himself around the older man as he frantically tried to centre himself.
"Ianto?" Jack sounded uncertain as he returned the embrace tentatively. "What's wrong?"
Ianto shook his head, burrowing his face in the junction between Jack's neck and shoulder. He knew he was freaking the other man out, but speech was beyond him. The fireworks had started up again and Ianto felt himself jerking in echo to every explosion, his teeth chattering as he struggled to pull in enough oxygen when all he wanted to do was bury his head in a pillow and scream and scream until the demons were put to flight.
"Oh, shit, I get it," Jack said, his arms tightening around Ianto. "It's okay, 'Yan, this is just a memory, a ghost trying to haunt you. The battle's in the past, the enemy was defeated, the dead have all been buried."
Ianto was clenching Jack's coat so hard that it was almost painful, his joints cracking under the pressure, but he couldn't let go. He tried to get even closer, frantic to escape the cold voices that demanded either deletion or extermination. Jack was pulling his head up and away from its sanctuary and Ianto resisted until he felt Jack's hot lips against his own cold ones and then he was kissing back desperately, trying to offset death with life.
"Come on," Jack ordered when they eventually broke free.
Ianto yowled a wordless protest when Jack broke away, doing his best to pull him back down on the bed as Jack reached back for him. Jack was the stronger and more persistent, however, and Ianto soon found himself being dragged down the stairs and into the front room, where Jack flicked on the main light. Still keeping an arm around Ianto, he pulled him over to the sound-system.
"Let's see what you've got by way of loud music, hmm?" Jack flicked through the CDs, bizarrely annoyed by the fact that Ianto didn't seem to have them filed in any order. Then he gave a relieved yip as he spotted the perfect CD and slipped it out of its case and into the stereo, cranking up the volume. The thunderous rhythms of Kodo surrounded them and Ianto jumped before calming a little. He didn't struggle as Jack pulled him over to the couch and grabbed at the TV remote, switching it on.
"Cartoon Network?" he said out loud, managing a grin as Ianto gave him a slightly less dazed look. "C'mon, 'Yan, it's gotta be Boomerang and Loony Tunes!" He switched channels and got Dexter's Lab instead, but he figured that would do for the moment.
Settling Ianto on the couch, he went over to ignite the gas fire. The house wasn't all that cold, but Ianto was only wearing pyjama bottoms and Jack wanted the psychological boost that firelight gave. He hadn't seen any indication that Ianto had problems with flames. If anything, it was the opposite and he frequently teased the younger man about his pyromaniac tendencies. Ianto had simply produced the half-used candles that were dotted all around Jack's quarters at the Hub and raised an eloquent eyebrow.
He shrugged off his coat as he returned to the couch, pulling off shoes and socks before settling back down beside Ianto and pulling him into an embrace that Ianto was all too eager to reciprocate. He was still shivering a little but calming visibly. They sat in silence, listening to the thunderous roll of the Kodo drums as they called to a deeper instinct that swamped more recent memories, drowning out the harsh staccato thuds and crashes of the fireworks.
"Did I ever tell you about the time I went to a planet called Kantaris?" Jack murmured into his ear. "Fantastic place. The sky's the colour of Jersey cream and the grass is red as ruby. The people there have four arms and three eyes and their entire religion is based on the idea that God is a drummer. On sacred days the entire planet is one solid drumbeat that can be picked up on instruments far out in space. They call it God's Heartbeat and they say that if you listen hard enough you can hear it everywhere you go. Sometimes when I stand up on the rooftop and the city's three-quarters asleep I think I can hear the faintest echo and it makes me feel better somehow."
Ianto sighed, a warm puff against his throat. "I'm sorry."
Jack chuckled. "You think you're the first person to freak out like this? Trust me, I can remember a time when my team-mates can to drag me out from underneath my bed. God, that was embarrassing, especially when I was trying so hard to impress our new Captain. Then she told me about the time she locked herself in a cupboard and tried to tunnel her way out of a spaceship in warp." He nuzzled up against Ianto's ear and kissed it gently. "Never underestimate the bogeyman, Ianto. Bastard's a tricky one and can ambush you when you least expect it. I worked with a man called Nathan once. Hard as nails. Veteran of God knows how many alien encounters and never turned a hair. Then he went berserk at his daughter's fifth birthday party and wound up killing three people, including his wife. Turned out that the lime jelly was the trigger. Reminded him of an alien encounter he suppressed. Compared to that, wanting to hug me is pretty tame stuff - especially when I spend most of my time trying to figure out how to get you to hug me!"
He was rewarded by a faint chuckle. "I stayed over at the Hub last Bonfire Night," Ianto admitted after a moment. "I never heard the fireworks. It... took me by surprise. I'm glad you came."
"I'm glad too," Jack admitted, recalling the insistent urge that he had had to see Ianto and right that moment. Something to consider when all this was over. Right now he had more important things to focus on. "You know, I know a great fertility dance that goes perfectly with drumbeats," he offered and had the intense pleasure of hearing Ianto laugh out loud.
OOOO
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Rating: Very mild PG
Disclaimer: Not mine; they belong to RTD and to the BBC
Summary: Bonfire Night isn't fun for everyone.
Still no answer.
Jack shoved the mobile phone back in his pocket as he continued to drive one-handed through the streets of Cardiff. He'd originally tried to call Ianto to ask him if he wanted to join him for a meal before watching the big firework display, but that plan had been abandoned when Ianto had failed to respond to his home phone, his mobile or an email. According to the sensors, his car was still parked outside his house, but if Ianto was inside, he wasn't interested in the outside world.
Jack knew he was probably overreacting. Ianto had probably decided to go out on the spur of the moment and was at some club, where the noise was so loud he couldn't hear his phone go off. Jack could even see him in his mind's eye, dancing and flirting without a care in the world, little realising that his supposedly omniscient boss was busy working himself into what Gwen would describe as 'a proper tizzy'.
Except that Jack knew what Ianto was like. He knew that the only time he didn't carry his mobile phone was when he was either in his house or linked into the Torchwood network. And if he was carrying his mobile in a noisy environment, he switched it to vibrate and carried it close to his person where he could feel it if it went off. Unlike the others, Ianto was never out of contact. In part that was because he was still overcompensating for the Lisa incident, but it was mainly because what had happened at Canary Wharf had got that little bit worse because people had been slow to communicate with one another. Jack knew from bitter experience that Ianto tended to nag if he and the others didn't maintain contact when they were out in the field and Ianto was co-ordinating them.
So this silence was worrying. And where Ianto was concerned, Jack had elevated worrying to an art form. He reached the house in record time and was out of the SUV and running up the garden path with almost indecent haste. He could hear the fireworks going off all around them and realised that Ianto could have been in a pitched gun battle and no-one would have batted an eyelid or called for the police, thinking it was just more fireworks going off. There was no answer to his doorbell and Jack groped for his lockpicks before realising he had left them behind. Taking a step back, he kicked at the door, snapping the lock at the first attempt. As he pushed open the door and slid inside, Jack made a mental note to get Ianto to strengthen the locks once he'd sorted out what was going on.
The house seemed to be in darkness, and once again there was that small voice in the back of Jack's head telling him that he was overreacting; that there was no reason to suppose that there was anything even slightly amiss with Ianto's continued silence. And yet Jack couldn't ignore that other, much more pronounced prod that told him that he needed to find Ianto and he needed to find him now.
He quickly discovered that the ground floor was deserted and in darkness, but now that his eyes had adjusted, he caught the spill of light from upstairs. Torn between relief and annoyance, he still climbed the stairs cautiously, his hand on his gun just in case, but not drawing it in case Ianto was in bed with someone else. Neither of them had made any promises of exclusivity so Jack was a little annoyed with himself for the ambivalent feelings he had over the idea. The light was coming from Ianto's bedroom and he edged his way across the landing, pushing the door open carefully. He realised that the main light was on, which was unusual for Ianto, who had a disconcerting habit of walking around either in the dark or with minimum lighting. Then the bed came into view and Jack realised that he had been right to worry about Ianto's silence.
OOOO
They're only fireworks. They're nothing more than noisy balls of gunpowder and cardboard. Just noise and light, nothing more. Oh God, why can't they just stop?
Ianto knew he was being ridiculous. He was a grown man, who had seen and done more things in the last ten years than a dozen other people managed to do in their entire lives. He faced down Weevils as a regular part of his job and fed and cared for a pteranodon, not to mention all the other stuff that came his way, up to and including alien invasions. He'd come home that night looking forward to an early night for once. He'd made sure that Moses was indoors and safely out of the way of any stray fireworks and after making himself a meal, he had watched a little television before retiring upstairs.
It wasn't until he had switched off the TV that he had noticed the noise coming from outside. Even then it hadn't really registered as being anything more than a nuisance since he wanted to get to sleep. He'd got ready for bed and settled down to sleep. He was on the verge of going under when someone a few doors down started their own display and Ianto was suddenly right back in his deepest, most terrible nightmare.
Light so bright that it cast sharply defined shadows pulsed outside his bedroom window, followed by crashes of sound that had the glass vibrating audibly. More than half-asleep, Ianto had lunged off the bed in an instinctive attempt to escape the bombardment, only to come up against the wall with bruising force. Locked in his memories, it took several minutes for him to realise that he wasn't back at the Tower and fighting for his and his people's lives, but safe in his bedroom in Cardiff. The deafening fireworks had stopped but the ones that were currently going off were almost as bad. Ianto struggled to get his breathing under control and switched on the light in an attempt to drown out the flashes and flares.
There was a ghosting movement from out of the corner of his eyes and Ianto spun around in time to see Moses slink into the room, his belly brushing the floor as he made for the safety of underneath Ianto's bed. For one idiotic moment, Ianto wished that he could follow him.
He struggled to get his breathing under control and made himself get back into the bed. It was just Bonfire Night. Just stupid people who needed to make lots of noise in order to get themselves noticed. He'd enjoyed fireworks himself in the past, although he had to admit that he was more interested in the patterns of light and colour than in how big a bang they could produce. He struggled to summon up memories of those firework displays, but the fear was there, rising like a cold tide inside of him, and no matter how rational he tried to be, the water kept on rising.
In the end he dragged a pillow over his head and curled up in the bed, shaking uncontrollably as he remembered... God, how he remembered. Remembered the tramp of metal feet that would have been funny if it hadn't been a harbinger of death and distraction. Remembered being the one that everyone seemed to be looking to as a source of command and strategy, when all he could really think about what the fact that he had never had to face something like this before on his own and where the hell was Lisa? Remembered the way the light of the Cybermen weaponry cast harsh shadows as it reached out to claim life after life - and they were the lucky ones.
He could hear the fireworks even through the muffling protection of the pillow, so he pulled another one into place and curled up even tighter, dimly aware that he was in danger of suffocating himself. The ploy didn't really work, since the sounds were now inside his head as well as outside the house. Sounds of mayhem and destruction; the soundtrack to his world going up in flames and there being nothing he could do to stop it, only slow it down by the tiniest of fractions and pray that the Doctor or UNIT would be able to produce something a little more effective. Sounds of his people screaming and dying, no matter how hard he tried, because the only way to keep them really safe would be to withdraw into the Deep Vaults and to do that would leave the public utterly undefended and he bloody well believed the bit in the Torchwood Charter that stated that they were the shield and sword that kept Great Britain safe.
He remembered the harsh litany of the Daleks as they had appeared just as suddenly and inexplicably as the Cybermen had, making a disaster into a holocaust. The only thing that had saved them was the fact that the Daleks and the Cybermen had promptly gone to war against one another, distracting each other from the destruction of the humans, although enough had died just by being caught in the crossfire. A Dalek on the rampage slaughtered anything and everything that moved, while the Cybermen had soon realised they had bitten off far more than they could chew and had started to harvest anyone they could find in an attempt to produce more cannon fodder for the Daleks to destroy.
He remembered the jury-rigged tactical board bleeding red, Dani and Emma frantically trying to drag him away while he fought them and struggled to see the pattern that would allow him to get them all through this. He remembered the world abruptly going strange, the instruments registering a massive spatial anomaly opening up just as everything looked like it was coming to an end. Overtaxed systems had started shutting down or blowing up and Ianto had become separated from the others in the evacuation, deliberately moving in the opposite direction in an attempt to find Lisa.
More fireworks went off, their light finding its way to him from a small gap in the pillows. Blood-red, like the flames that had been consuming the conversion chambers when he'd stumbled over them. Heat and light had slapped at him, warning him to come no further, but he had caught a glimpse of dark skin amongst all the silver and he had moved forward. Lisa's terrified eyes had met his own and Ianto had felt the hammer blow of her emotions collide against his tissue-thin defences and they had fallen without so much as a sigh. In that moment she had become his world, his Grail, his holy quest for which he would sacrifice anything and everything.
Ianto shuddered uncontrollably, curling even tighter into himself. Even now, with time allowing him to distance himself from the event, he could still feeling the insistent clawing need to protect Lisa haunting him like the memory of an old wound. His obsession had taken him to a very dark and deadly place and there were still days when he wondered if he would ever be free of the taint that he had so willingly allowed to corrupt his soul.
He sensed that he wasn't alone at the same time as something landed on the bed beside him. Already keyed up, Ianto shot up and away from the potential danger and caught a glimpse of a startled looking Jack just before the swinging pillow connected with the Captain and he went over onto his back with a grunt of surprise. Double-vision swamped Ianto for a moment, with his bedroom and Canary Wharf fighting for ascendancy, but then the nightmare images faded and he was back in the here and now.
"What the hell was that for?" Jack demanded a little plaintively.
"Jack."
Ianto was panting, feeling like he was running a marathon, but the sight of Jack was an anchor to reality. Jack hadn't been at Canary Wharf. Jack belonged to Cardiff and to the here and now. Almost without realising what he was doing, Ianto reached out to grab Jack and drag him down beside him on the bed, wrapping himself around the older man as he frantically tried to centre himself.
"Ianto?" Jack sounded uncertain as he returned the embrace tentatively. "What's wrong?"
Ianto shook his head, burrowing his face in the junction between Jack's neck and shoulder. He knew he was freaking the other man out, but speech was beyond him. The fireworks had started up again and Ianto felt himself jerking in echo to every explosion, his teeth chattering as he struggled to pull in enough oxygen when all he wanted to do was bury his head in a pillow and scream and scream until the demons were put to flight.
"Oh, shit, I get it," Jack said, his arms tightening around Ianto. "It's okay, 'Yan, this is just a memory, a ghost trying to haunt you. The battle's in the past, the enemy was defeated, the dead have all been buried."
Ianto was clenching Jack's coat so hard that it was almost painful, his joints cracking under the pressure, but he couldn't let go. He tried to get even closer, frantic to escape the cold voices that demanded either deletion or extermination. Jack was pulling his head up and away from its sanctuary and Ianto resisted until he felt Jack's hot lips against his own cold ones and then he was kissing back desperately, trying to offset death with life.
"Come on," Jack ordered when they eventually broke free.
Ianto yowled a wordless protest when Jack broke away, doing his best to pull him back down on the bed as Jack reached back for him. Jack was the stronger and more persistent, however, and Ianto soon found himself being dragged down the stairs and into the front room, where Jack flicked on the main light. Still keeping an arm around Ianto, he pulled him over to the sound-system.
"Let's see what you've got by way of loud music, hmm?" Jack flicked through the CDs, bizarrely annoyed by the fact that Ianto didn't seem to have them filed in any order. Then he gave a relieved yip as he spotted the perfect CD and slipped it out of its case and into the stereo, cranking up the volume. The thunderous rhythms of Kodo surrounded them and Ianto jumped before calming a little. He didn't struggle as Jack pulled him over to the couch and grabbed at the TV remote, switching it on.
"Cartoon Network?" he said out loud, managing a grin as Ianto gave him a slightly less dazed look. "C'mon, 'Yan, it's gotta be Boomerang and Loony Tunes!" He switched channels and got Dexter's Lab instead, but he figured that would do for the moment.
Settling Ianto on the couch, he went over to ignite the gas fire. The house wasn't all that cold, but Ianto was only wearing pyjama bottoms and Jack wanted the psychological boost that firelight gave. He hadn't seen any indication that Ianto had problems with flames. If anything, it was the opposite and he frequently teased the younger man about his pyromaniac tendencies. Ianto had simply produced the half-used candles that were dotted all around Jack's quarters at the Hub and raised an eloquent eyebrow.
He shrugged off his coat as he returned to the couch, pulling off shoes and socks before settling back down beside Ianto and pulling him into an embrace that Ianto was all too eager to reciprocate. He was still shivering a little but calming visibly. They sat in silence, listening to the thunderous roll of the Kodo drums as they called to a deeper instinct that swamped more recent memories, drowning out the harsh staccato thuds and crashes of the fireworks.
"Did I ever tell you about the time I went to a planet called Kantaris?" Jack murmured into his ear. "Fantastic place. The sky's the colour of Jersey cream and the grass is red as ruby. The people there have four arms and three eyes and their entire religion is based on the idea that God is a drummer. On sacred days the entire planet is one solid drumbeat that can be picked up on instruments far out in space. They call it God's Heartbeat and they say that if you listen hard enough you can hear it everywhere you go. Sometimes when I stand up on the rooftop and the city's three-quarters asleep I think I can hear the faintest echo and it makes me feel better somehow."
Ianto sighed, a warm puff against his throat. "I'm sorry."
Jack chuckled. "You think you're the first person to freak out like this? Trust me, I can remember a time when my team-mates can to drag me out from underneath my bed. God, that was embarrassing, especially when I was trying so hard to impress our new Captain. Then she told me about the time she locked herself in a cupboard and tried to tunnel her way out of a spaceship in warp." He nuzzled up against Ianto's ear and kissed it gently. "Never underestimate the bogeyman, Ianto. Bastard's a tricky one and can ambush you when you least expect it. I worked with a man called Nathan once. Hard as nails. Veteran of God knows how many alien encounters and never turned a hair. Then he went berserk at his daughter's fifth birthday party and wound up killing three people, including his wife. Turned out that the lime jelly was the trigger. Reminded him of an alien encounter he suppressed. Compared to that, wanting to hug me is pretty tame stuff - especially when I spend most of my time trying to figure out how to get you to hug me!"
He was rewarded by a faint chuckle. "I stayed over at the Hub last Bonfire Night," Ianto admitted after a moment. "I never heard the fireworks. It... took me by surprise. I'm glad you came."
"I'm glad too," Jack admitted, recalling the insistent urge that he had had to see Ianto and right that moment. Something to consider when all this was over. Right now he had more important things to focus on. "You know, I know a great fertility dance that goes perfectly with drumbeats," he offered and had the intense pleasure of hearing Ianto laugh out loud.
OOOO