Fic: That Monday Feeling 9/9
Monday. February. AM.
Another Monday, Ianto thought as the light behind his eyelids changed with the flapping of the blinds. It took a moment before it struck him that he’d never woken up in the sunlight before, always in the rain with the curtains open.
‘Ianto?’
He wasn’t alone either. Another sign that it wasn’t the same Monday again. He felt relief shuddering through him in an agonising way and when he opened his mouth to reply, all that came out was a feeble, ‘Ow.’
There was a laugh. Not a heart warming sound, but one of relief as Ianto’s senses struggled back to him and he could finally feel a hand in his own as he blinked himself back to reality. Jack was there, perched on a chair, watching Ianto with wary eyes.
‘You finally with us?’
‘Did I go somewhere?’ Ianto asked. He was confused now. He was glad that he wasn’t looped in another Monday, but Tuesday didn’t seem to be making him feel any better. ‘What day is it?’
‘It’s Monday.’ Jack saw the panicked look in Ianto’s eyes before he added. ‘Don’t worry, you’ve only been out for a week.’
‘So it’s not the same Monday?’
‘As when you got attacked?’ Jack shook his head. ‘No, you’ve been unconscious for a week. The doctors said you were in a coma, and they didn’t know when or if you’d wake up.’ Jack gave a small smile then, but there was something behind it other than amusement and relief, something bitter. ‘Not exactly what happened, but it’s the cover story we’re going with.’
‘You haven’t been-‘ Ianto started, his eyes flicking to the coat on the back of Jack’s chair, noting that it still had drops of rain drying along the collar. Ianto could just see the toe of his left boot, mud drying on the edges of it.
‘A nurse called me, said you were showing signs of waking up.’
‘Good,’ Ianto breathed, grateful somewhat that Jack hadn’t been stood vigil at his beside all week, but at the same time slightly bitter, because if roles had been reversed Ianto didn’t know that he would have done the same. Jack was still smiling at him, his brow still furrowed slightly, not in worry, but in anger.
‘So what’s the real story?’ Ianto asked round a yawn.
Jack shook his head slightly. ‘Now isn’t the time for a bedtime story.’ He pulled himself to his feet then, shrugging his coat back on, a drop of rain flying out to hit Ianto on the cheek. He blinked in surprise before wiping the moisture away with heavy limbs. Jack’s hand rested on Ianto’s foot through the hospital sheets for a moment before he gave it a squeeze.
‘Get some sleep, Ianto,’ Jack said, voice not quite steady before he swept out the room, leaving Ianto staring out the window in contemplation, at skies that were no longer Welsh grey in colour.
~
They let him go as soon as they realised there wasn’t a thing wrong with him. He felt like a drunk being asked to prove he was sober, the amount of cognitive tests he was asked to perform. When he was fed up of indentifying shapes and repeating his name like he was an Alzheimer’s patient he discharged himself. He met Gwen in the lobby, clearly on her way to visit him, a bag of grapes in one hand.
‘Those for me?’
‘Ianto? What are you doing? I thought that-‘ she stopped rambling and hugged him, a sigh of relief escaping her. When she eventually pulled away from him, he indicated the grapes again and she wordlessly handed them over.
‘Come on, I’ll give you a lift home,’ she said, looping her arm through his even as he started eating the grapes. He suddenly realised how hungry he was and grapes did nothing but irritate the itch.
They stopped off at a café in Grangetown full of old biddies supping on luke-warm cups of tea and nibbling the edges of Welshcakes like rodents, chattering away in Welsh. Gwen sat across the table from him, watching him devour the bigger breakfast while she stared mournfully at her empty plate. She licked her finger and picked up the last few crumbs from her bacon butty.
‘Busy week?’ Ianto asked, like he’d been on holiday instead of in a coma in hospital. Gwen held her composure well though, raised her eyebrows slightly before propping her head on her hand.
‘No busier than usual.’
Ianto nodded, stuffed the last half of sausage in his mouth and then wiped his greasy hands on his jeans. Gwen let out a little huff of a laugh before she picked up her mug of coffee, her nose twitching slightly, because it is clear she had suffered through this week without Ianto’s delectable brew.
‘It was bad wasn’t it?’
Gwen shrugged in reply, avoiding Ianto’s gaze by watching the TV in the corner of the room, the newsreader lost in the low murmur of the café occupants and the sizzle of bacon in the frying pan. Gwen’s lack of words unnerved him.
‘Gwen-‘
Gwen laid a hand over his on the table, finally turning to look at him with pale cheeks and glassy eyes. She forced a smile that Ianto’s seen in more end of the world type scenarios than he’d care to admit.
‘You’re alright now,’ she said. It was as much a reassurance as a statement of fact, and there was almost a question hidden in there too. He nodded, folded his thumb over the top of her hand and rubbed.
~
Rhiannon was waiting back at the house, like her and the kids had never left. She pulled open the door before he’d even got the key out his pocket, hugging him just as enthusiastically as Gwen had at the hospital and for a moment he thought it was maybe all worth it if he was greeted back into the world like this. When Rhiannon let go of him, Rona was hovering by his feet, waiting to be lifted for a hug, Finlay already clamped round his legs in something more than the perfunctory hugs of late.
Rhiannon didn’t say anything about the last week, didn’t ask after his health as she lead the way back into the kitchen, Rona clung round Ianto’s neck. He struggled to walk as Finlay continued to try and cling to his legs. Rhiannon didn’t even mention the previous Monday and the words that had been exchanged.
‘I thought I’d make that chicken thing you like for dinner,’ she said, already foraging through the fridge that had been re-stocked in his absence. Ianto didn’t ask where Ryan was or if they’d be staying the night, he was already being shown detailed pictures of himself wearing skin-tight Lycra as he saved the rest of the family, including Jack, from Flaming Finn.
~
‘Do you keep count?’
Jack didn’t say anything at first. He just continued watching the kettle on Ianto’s kitchen work surface, willing it to boil. Rhiannon and the kids had been here when he returned, but Rhiannon, sensing the uncomfortable silence between the two men, had been quick to usher the kids out the front door.
‘Of what?’ Jack somehow already knew what Ianto’s question was, but he thought he could prolong the answer by asking pointless questions.
‘Every time you die. Do you keep count?’ The kettle was boiling furiously now, the click of it turning off before the bubbles died away. Jack couldn’t answer though.
‘Seventy-two,’ Ianto said. Jack turned round to find the man in question folding a bill into ever decreasing squares, an air of nonchalance about him.
‘Seventy-two?’ Jack asked as he turned back to the mugs before him, pouring water from the kettle.
‘Mondays I lived through.’ A beat. Spoon hitting porcelain. Paper scratching on wood. ‘Times I died.’ Spoon hitting work surface. Paper folding.
‘Ianto-‘
‘You still haven’t told me what happened,’ said Ianto. He looked up at Jack then, however briefly, discarding the paper before him and moving onto page two of three. Jack picked up the mugs he’d prepared, moving over to the table with them and sitting down before Ianto.
Jack sighed, opened his mouth to speak. ‘It was Hart.’
‘Ah,’ Ianto said, a slight smile, ‘wrong time, wrong place on my part then?’
‘As always,’ Jack tried to tease, but his heart wasn’t in it. He picked up his mug and took a sip, forgetting that it was too hot to drink and consequently burning his tongue.
Ianto waited for Jack to stop making silly flapping motions, waited for him to tell him everything that had happened while he’d been stuck in a never-ending cycle of hell on earth, waited for the dull look of worry to slide off of Jack’s face, but Ianto was running out of patience.
‘So?’
Monday 2nd February
‘Ianto?’ There was no reply. Not even the harsh rasp of Ianto’s breathing anymore. Jack cradled him with one arm, feeling for a pulse with his other hand.
‘Ianto?’
Jack lowered Ianto back to the floor and refreshed his CPR training. He kept going until his shoulders ached and only chocked sobs came from him. It took Jack a moment to realise the water falling onto Ianto’s face was not from the leaking roof above, but was coming from his own eyes. The harsh clack of Gwen’s heels against concrete barely penetrated his awareness.
‘Ianto.’ Jack pulled the man up into his arms again, head cradled against Jack’s shoulder, not a sound escaped his parted lips.
A heartbeat lasted a lifetime before a hitch of breath came from Ianto, barely there but enough to spur Jack into action.
‘Is he-?’ Gwen asked, not quite able to finish the question even as Jack struggled to throw Ianto over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.
‘No,’ Jack said sharply as he pulled himself to his feet, Ianto weighing him down as he headed for the exit. ‘Gather up the parts of that thing and make it quick, but be careful.’
~
They took him to the hospital. Jack didn’t know what else to do. He had little to no medical training and he didn’t think he could take on the responsibility of keeping Ianto alive.
Inhaled unknown chemicals. That was all he could really tell the staff at St. Helen’s. One of the triage nurses looked at him sceptically when he flashed his Torchwood badge while one of the Doctors rolled her eyes knowingly. Jack recognised more than a few familiar faces as they wheeled Ianto away, leaving he and Gwen in the waiting room, reduced to nothing more than worried friends and family, like the rest of the room’s occupants.
Coma, they were told several hours later. Little brain activity. (Little chance of waking up remained unsaid.) They couldn’t find anything physically wrong with him apart from abrasions on his throat where he’d obviously inhaled the toxins. Torchwood badges got them into his room where he just lay there, sleeping like Jack had never seen him sleep before. Ianto was normally all pointy elbows and cold feet in twisted covers when he slept, but now he lay in regimented fashion between the white sheets.
They didn’t stay long after that. There wasn’t anything they could do, and Jack wanted to know what the canister had been. Gwen had retrieved what she could find and had stuck it all in a containment box. There wasn’t much left of the debris, not even residue of the powder that Ianto had inhaled remained to be able to test it. Jack threw the tray that the parts lay on across the autopsy bay after an hour of so of careful prodding. It clattered loudly and Gwen came to see what was wrong.
‘Jack-‘
‘What?!’
She blinked a couple of times, recoiled slightly. ‘Nothing,’ she said before she went back to her desk, researching owners of the warehouse, running through CCTV footage from the area on that day to try and figure out any way to help Ianto.
Jack was almost grateful when the call came to say that there were more Weevils, this time out on the Glamorgan Golf Course. He didn’t let Gwen come with him, sent her home. Although he had a feeling that she never made it there, her feet somehow guiding her back to the hospital on autopilot.
~
Jack lost sight of one of the Weevil’s on the eighteenth hole. He chased it towards the car park by the Nineteenth Hole Public House, gun out as he took pot shots at it, but this one seemed to be faster than all the others. When Jack got to the car park though, his attention was drawn by something else. He watched his Weevil dart into the road, heading for the sea. Jack briefly hoped the Weevil decide to take a bath.
‘Evening,’ the figured said, leaning off the SUV that Jack had abandoned in the middle of the empty car park and swaggering towards Jack. Jack turned his gun on the figure, but he was just as quick, both of them staring each other down like something out of a Wild West film.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Came to see you,’ John Hart said, leering slightly.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jack repeated.
‘Alright, you got me,’ Hart started then scratched the back of his head with the barrel of his gun before putting it back in its holster. Jack’s gun didn’t budge an inch.
‘Thing is, got a bit of a confession to make,’ Hart said. Jack waited, gesturing with his gun for him to continue.
Hart shook his head. ‘I ain’t confessing anything when you’ve got that pointed at me. I thought we were past the stage of shooting each other?’
Jack contemplated this for a moment before he dropped his arm, holstering his gun before crossing his arms in front of his chest, still very aware of the danger he was no doubt in. John seemed to be losing his bottle, though. He was backing up a couple of steps, looking about for a quick exit.
‘Go on then, confess your sins,’ said Jack.
John laughed. ‘May be here a while if I confess them all.’ Jack wasn’t laughing. John shifted from one foot to the other. ‘This one I’ve got in mind concerns your boy. Bit of an oversight on my part.’ John stopped. He could see Jack’s hand sliding back towards his gun again.
‘Hey! Don’t go jumping to any conclusions! It wasn’t really meant for him that canister, Eye Candy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ said John, his legs already carrying him back towards the car park, but Jack had his gun out again and John, for once in his life, was like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
‘Tell me what you did or you might find yourself lying in the bed next to him,’ Jack said. His jaw was set, making an effort not to grind his teeth together as he stared levelly at John Hart.
John sighed. ‘You remember when we got stuck in that time loop together?’ John made a face that suggested he was already regretting his actions as he tried to avoid the stare of Jack’s gun. Jack didn’t say anything.
‘Well, Eye Candy might be sort of stuck in the same kind of thing.’ Jack’s grip on the gun tightened. ‘But it weren’t meant for him!’ John said quickly. ‘Made a bit of a cock-up,’ John said, looking rather sheepish.
‘Was supposed to be for you.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Jack asked, suspicion rearing its ugly head, as it was wont to do around John Hart.
‘’Cause I were hoping if I helped with the safe return of Eye-‘
‘His name’s Ianto!’ Jack’s gun moved to Hart’s face.
‘Right, so if I help you get,’ John struggled with the name for a moment, ‘Ianto back then maybe you and I could-‘
‘If you help me get Ianto back I won’t kill you, how’s about that for a trade off?’ Jack asked. John considered it for a moment, weighing up his very limited options at this point. If he played his cards right he might be able to wrangle a threesome out of it.
‘Yeah, that sounds fair to me,’ said John, shoving his hands in his pockets. ‘Except,’ John sucked air in through his teeth, ‘might be a bit harder than that.’
Jack steadied his gun hand again.
‘Eye-‘ Jack glared. ‘Ianto has to get himself out of this one. Time Loop has a get out clause, Twenty-four hour thing. All he has to do is survive until the end of the day.’
~
‘Is that it?’ Ianto now clutched his cold cup of coffee between his hands, his eyes still riveted on Jack, waiting for him to continue his story.
‘The rest of the week was just waiting,’ said Jack. ‘I threatened Hart a bit more, but he said he couldn’t do anything. Said it was all down to you.’
‘So you just let him go?’
Jack shrugged. ‘Not like we could hold him long if I had taken him into custody.’ Jack sounded almost apologetic at that.
‘What about when I woke up?’
Jack looked away from Ianto at that, his own coffee lay untouched on the table between them.
‘We haven’t seen the last of him have we?’ Ianto said when Jack didn’t answer him.
Jack got up quite suddenly from the table, taking his cold coffee with him and chucking it down the sink before re-filling the kettle again.
‘Probably not,’ said Jack. The kettle had just started to boil again when he decided he needed something stronger and flicked the switch off before going in one of cupboards out of the kids reach and retrieving a half drunk bottle of scotch.
~
‘Figured it out then, did he?’
John Hart was leaning against the SUV in the hospital car park - where it had almost been permanently parked for a week - like he was waiting on his date to give him a lift home.
‘No thanks to you,’ Jack said. It almost came out a growl. John could see the bags under Jack’s eyes that spoke of boring books read in low light conditions at the side of beds.
‘So, I was thinking, since everything turned out hunky-dory-‘
Jack slammed into John with such force that Jack’s teeth rattled where they were clenched together and the breath rushed out of John onto Jack’s face, the SUV rocking back and forth on its wheels for a moment.
‘Come near my team or me again and I will kill you. There is nothing between us anymore and never will be. Only in your sick deluded fantasies will we ever be together again, so drop the lovesick act and go and cause chaos somewhere that I don’t care about,’ Jack said, his teeth bared like a hungry Weevil, pushing against John one last time so the bonnet of the SUV popped beneath him. Jack let go of the front of his clothes and stepped back, allowing John enough wiggle room to get away, but he didn’t leave as quickly as Jack would have liked. He lingered, straightening his clothes out, watching Jack carefully.
‘Gotten a bit possessive in our old age haven’t we?’ John commented. ‘What happened to free love?’
‘Things change. People change,’ said Jack, feeling like he had to justify himself somehow, to a murderer, a drunk, a druggy and a sex addict.
John laughed, started making whipping motions as he turned away. When Jack’s head snapped up to look at him John Hart was long gone.
~
‘You never answered my question,’ Ianto said, shifting in the bed slightly, patting the covers down so he could see Jack’s face in the half-light of the street lamp shining through the thin curtains.
‘Hmm?’ Jack’s eyes weren’t open, but his brow quirked slightly.
‘Do you keep count?’
Jack opened his eyes then, head lolling slightly so he could see Ianto, eyes reflecting the scant rays of light in the room.
‘I used to,’ said Jack.
‘But not anymore?’
‘Do you keep count of the number of cups of coffee you make?’
‘Two million, three-hundred and twenty-three thousand, six hundred and seven,’ said Ianto without taking a breath. Jack let out a bark of laughter at that, before giving Ianto a questioning look.
‘Why would I count the number of cups of coffee I make? Who would want to know that?’
‘Exactly my thoughts,’ Jack said, closing his eyes again as he settled back into the pillows. Ianto listened to the pipes in the bathroom clanging, like someone was playing the drums on them, before he spoke again.
‘What number did you get to before you lost count?’
‘Why do you want to know so badly?’
‘I’m curious.’
‘Curiosity killed the cat,’
‘Satisfaction brought him back,’ Ianto retorted.
Jack exhaled. ‘A thousand. When I got to a thousand I figured that it was permanent.’
‘You hadn’t figured that out the other nine hundred and ninety-nine times?’
Jack made a disconcerted noise in the back of his throat. ‘You satisfied now? Can I go to sleep?’ Before Ianto had a chance to reply he was rolling over in the bed so he was facing away from Ianto. Ianto shifted behind him in the bed before a faint glow lit up most of the bedroom.
‘What are you doing now?’ Jack asked in annoyance.
‘Nothing,’ Ianto replied immediately. But the dim glow lighting up the ceiling didn’t go away and Jack turned back over so he was facing Ianto again. He had his phone held up before him, pressing the unlock button every couple of seconds so he could see the screen.
‘You expecting a call?’ Jack asked.
‘No,’ Ianto said, pressing the unlock button again. The screen glowed brightly, almost blinding Jack for a moment before Ianto, seemingly satisfied put his phone back down on the bedside table, next to the radio alarm clock that now read Tues 10th Feb 00:01.
-END-
Another Monday, Ianto thought as the light behind his eyelids changed with the flapping of the blinds. It took a moment before it struck him that he’d never woken up in the sunlight before, always in the rain with the curtains open.
‘Ianto?’
He wasn’t alone either. Another sign that it wasn’t the same Monday again. He felt relief shuddering through him in an agonising way and when he opened his mouth to reply, all that came out was a feeble, ‘Ow.’
There was a laugh. Not a heart warming sound, but one of relief as Ianto’s senses struggled back to him and he could finally feel a hand in his own as he blinked himself back to reality. Jack was there, perched on a chair, watching Ianto with wary eyes.
‘You finally with us?’
‘Did I go somewhere?’ Ianto asked. He was confused now. He was glad that he wasn’t looped in another Monday, but Tuesday didn’t seem to be making him feel any better. ‘What day is it?’
‘It’s Monday.’ Jack saw the panicked look in Ianto’s eyes before he added. ‘Don’t worry, you’ve only been out for a week.’
‘So it’s not the same Monday?’
‘As when you got attacked?’ Jack shook his head. ‘No, you’ve been unconscious for a week. The doctors said you were in a coma, and they didn’t know when or if you’d wake up.’ Jack gave a small smile then, but there was something behind it other than amusement and relief, something bitter. ‘Not exactly what happened, but it’s the cover story we’re going with.’
‘You haven’t been-‘ Ianto started, his eyes flicking to the coat on the back of Jack’s chair, noting that it still had drops of rain drying along the collar. Ianto could just see the toe of his left boot, mud drying on the edges of it.
‘A nurse called me, said you were showing signs of waking up.’
‘Good,’ Ianto breathed, grateful somewhat that Jack hadn’t been stood vigil at his beside all week, but at the same time slightly bitter, because if roles had been reversed Ianto didn’t know that he would have done the same. Jack was still smiling at him, his brow still furrowed slightly, not in worry, but in anger.
‘So what’s the real story?’ Ianto asked round a yawn.
Jack shook his head slightly. ‘Now isn’t the time for a bedtime story.’ He pulled himself to his feet then, shrugging his coat back on, a drop of rain flying out to hit Ianto on the cheek. He blinked in surprise before wiping the moisture away with heavy limbs. Jack’s hand rested on Ianto’s foot through the hospital sheets for a moment before he gave it a squeeze.
‘Get some sleep, Ianto,’ Jack said, voice not quite steady before he swept out the room, leaving Ianto staring out the window in contemplation, at skies that were no longer Welsh grey in colour.
~
They let him go as soon as they realised there wasn’t a thing wrong with him. He felt like a drunk being asked to prove he was sober, the amount of cognitive tests he was asked to perform. When he was fed up of indentifying shapes and repeating his name like he was an Alzheimer’s patient he discharged himself. He met Gwen in the lobby, clearly on her way to visit him, a bag of grapes in one hand.
‘Those for me?’
‘Ianto? What are you doing? I thought that-‘ she stopped rambling and hugged him, a sigh of relief escaping her. When she eventually pulled away from him, he indicated the grapes again and she wordlessly handed them over.
‘Come on, I’ll give you a lift home,’ she said, looping her arm through his even as he started eating the grapes. He suddenly realised how hungry he was and grapes did nothing but irritate the itch.
They stopped off at a café in Grangetown full of old biddies supping on luke-warm cups of tea and nibbling the edges of Welshcakes like rodents, chattering away in Welsh. Gwen sat across the table from him, watching him devour the bigger breakfast while she stared mournfully at her empty plate. She licked her finger and picked up the last few crumbs from her bacon butty.
‘Busy week?’ Ianto asked, like he’d been on holiday instead of in a coma in hospital. Gwen held her composure well though, raised her eyebrows slightly before propping her head on her hand.
‘No busier than usual.’
Ianto nodded, stuffed the last half of sausage in his mouth and then wiped his greasy hands on his jeans. Gwen let out a little huff of a laugh before she picked up her mug of coffee, her nose twitching slightly, because it is clear she had suffered through this week without Ianto’s delectable brew.
‘It was bad wasn’t it?’
Gwen shrugged in reply, avoiding Ianto’s gaze by watching the TV in the corner of the room, the newsreader lost in the low murmur of the café occupants and the sizzle of bacon in the frying pan. Gwen’s lack of words unnerved him.
‘Gwen-‘
Gwen laid a hand over his on the table, finally turning to look at him with pale cheeks and glassy eyes. She forced a smile that Ianto’s seen in more end of the world type scenarios than he’d care to admit.
‘You’re alright now,’ she said. It was as much a reassurance as a statement of fact, and there was almost a question hidden in there too. He nodded, folded his thumb over the top of her hand and rubbed.
~
Rhiannon was waiting back at the house, like her and the kids had never left. She pulled open the door before he’d even got the key out his pocket, hugging him just as enthusiastically as Gwen had at the hospital and for a moment he thought it was maybe all worth it if he was greeted back into the world like this. When Rhiannon let go of him, Rona was hovering by his feet, waiting to be lifted for a hug, Finlay already clamped round his legs in something more than the perfunctory hugs of late.
Rhiannon didn’t say anything about the last week, didn’t ask after his health as she lead the way back into the kitchen, Rona clung round Ianto’s neck. He struggled to walk as Finlay continued to try and cling to his legs. Rhiannon didn’t even mention the previous Monday and the words that had been exchanged.
‘I thought I’d make that chicken thing you like for dinner,’ she said, already foraging through the fridge that had been re-stocked in his absence. Ianto didn’t ask where Ryan was or if they’d be staying the night, he was already being shown detailed pictures of himself wearing skin-tight Lycra as he saved the rest of the family, including Jack, from Flaming Finn.
~
‘Do you keep count?’
Jack didn’t say anything at first. He just continued watching the kettle on Ianto’s kitchen work surface, willing it to boil. Rhiannon and the kids had been here when he returned, but Rhiannon, sensing the uncomfortable silence between the two men, had been quick to usher the kids out the front door.
‘Of what?’ Jack somehow already knew what Ianto’s question was, but he thought he could prolong the answer by asking pointless questions.
‘Every time you die. Do you keep count?’ The kettle was boiling furiously now, the click of it turning off before the bubbles died away. Jack couldn’t answer though.
‘Seventy-two,’ Ianto said. Jack turned round to find the man in question folding a bill into ever decreasing squares, an air of nonchalance about him.
‘Seventy-two?’ Jack asked as he turned back to the mugs before him, pouring water from the kettle.
‘Mondays I lived through.’ A beat. Spoon hitting porcelain. Paper scratching on wood. ‘Times I died.’ Spoon hitting work surface. Paper folding.
‘Ianto-‘
‘You still haven’t told me what happened,’ said Ianto. He looked up at Jack then, however briefly, discarding the paper before him and moving onto page two of three. Jack picked up the mugs he’d prepared, moving over to the table with them and sitting down before Ianto.
Jack sighed, opened his mouth to speak. ‘It was Hart.’
‘Ah,’ Ianto said, a slight smile, ‘wrong time, wrong place on my part then?’
‘As always,’ Jack tried to tease, but his heart wasn’t in it. He picked up his mug and took a sip, forgetting that it was too hot to drink and consequently burning his tongue.
Ianto waited for Jack to stop making silly flapping motions, waited for him to tell him everything that had happened while he’d been stuck in a never-ending cycle of hell on earth, waited for the dull look of worry to slide off of Jack’s face, but Ianto was running out of patience.
‘So?’
Monday 2nd February
‘Ianto?’ There was no reply. Not even the harsh rasp of Ianto’s breathing anymore. Jack cradled him with one arm, feeling for a pulse with his other hand.
‘Ianto?’
Jack lowered Ianto back to the floor and refreshed his CPR training. He kept going until his shoulders ached and only chocked sobs came from him. It took Jack a moment to realise the water falling onto Ianto’s face was not from the leaking roof above, but was coming from his own eyes. The harsh clack of Gwen’s heels against concrete barely penetrated his awareness.
‘Ianto.’ Jack pulled the man up into his arms again, head cradled against Jack’s shoulder, not a sound escaped his parted lips.
A heartbeat lasted a lifetime before a hitch of breath came from Ianto, barely there but enough to spur Jack into action.
‘Is he-?’ Gwen asked, not quite able to finish the question even as Jack struggled to throw Ianto over his shoulder in a fireman’s lift.
‘No,’ Jack said sharply as he pulled himself to his feet, Ianto weighing him down as he headed for the exit. ‘Gather up the parts of that thing and make it quick, but be careful.’
~
They took him to the hospital. Jack didn’t know what else to do. He had little to no medical training and he didn’t think he could take on the responsibility of keeping Ianto alive.
Inhaled unknown chemicals. That was all he could really tell the staff at St. Helen’s. One of the triage nurses looked at him sceptically when he flashed his Torchwood badge while one of the Doctors rolled her eyes knowingly. Jack recognised more than a few familiar faces as they wheeled Ianto away, leaving he and Gwen in the waiting room, reduced to nothing more than worried friends and family, like the rest of the room’s occupants.
Coma, they were told several hours later. Little brain activity. (Little chance of waking up remained unsaid.) They couldn’t find anything physically wrong with him apart from abrasions on his throat where he’d obviously inhaled the toxins. Torchwood badges got them into his room where he just lay there, sleeping like Jack had never seen him sleep before. Ianto was normally all pointy elbows and cold feet in twisted covers when he slept, but now he lay in regimented fashion between the white sheets.
They didn’t stay long after that. There wasn’t anything they could do, and Jack wanted to know what the canister had been. Gwen had retrieved what she could find and had stuck it all in a containment box. There wasn’t much left of the debris, not even residue of the powder that Ianto had inhaled remained to be able to test it. Jack threw the tray that the parts lay on across the autopsy bay after an hour of so of careful prodding. It clattered loudly and Gwen came to see what was wrong.
‘Jack-‘
‘What?!’
She blinked a couple of times, recoiled slightly. ‘Nothing,’ she said before she went back to her desk, researching owners of the warehouse, running through CCTV footage from the area on that day to try and figure out any way to help Ianto.
Jack was almost grateful when the call came to say that there were more Weevils, this time out on the Glamorgan Golf Course. He didn’t let Gwen come with him, sent her home. Although he had a feeling that she never made it there, her feet somehow guiding her back to the hospital on autopilot.
~
Jack lost sight of one of the Weevil’s on the eighteenth hole. He chased it towards the car park by the Nineteenth Hole Public House, gun out as he took pot shots at it, but this one seemed to be faster than all the others. When Jack got to the car park though, his attention was drawn by something else. He watched his Weevil dart into the road, heading for the sea. Jack briefly hoped the Weevil decide to take a bath.
‘Evening,’ the figured said, leaning off the SUV that Jack had abandoned in the middle of the empty car park and swaggering towards Jack. Jack turned his gun on the figure, but he was just as quick, both of them staring each other down like something out of a Wild West film.
‘What are you doing here?’
‘Came to see you,’ John Hart said, leering slightly.
‘What are you doing here?’ Jack repeated.
‘Alright, you got me,’ Hart started then scratched the back of his head with the barrel of his gun before putting it back in its holster. Jack’s gun didn’t budge an inch.
‘Thing is, got a bit of a confession to make,’ Hart said. Jack waited, gesturing with his gun for him to continue.
Hart shook his head. ‘I ain’t confessing anything when you’ve got that pointed at me. I thought we were past the stage of shooting each other?’
Jack contemplated this for a moment before he dropped his arm, holstering his gun before crossing his arms in front of his chest, still very aware of the danger he was no doubt in. John seemed to be losing his bottle, though. He was backing up a couple of steps, looking about for a quick exit.
‘Go on then, confess your sins,’ said Jack.
John laughed. ‘May be here a while if I confess them all.’ Jack wasn’t laughing. John shifted from one foot to the other. ‘This one I’ve got in mind concerns your boy. Bit of an oversight on my part.’ John stopped. He could see Jack’s hand sliding back towards his gun again.
‘Hey! Don’t go jumping to any conclusions! It wasn’t really meant for him that canister, Eye Candy just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time,’ said John, his legs already carrying him back towards the car park, but Jack had his gun out again and John, for once in his life, was like a rabbit caught in the headlights.
‘Tell me what you did or you might find yourself lying in the bed next to him,’ Jack said. His jaw was set, making an effort not to grind his teeth together as he stared levelly at John Hart.
John sighed. ‘You remember when we got stuck in that time loop together?’ John made a face that suggested he was already regretting his actions as he tried to avoid the stare of Jack’s gun. Jack didn’t say anything.
‘Well, Eye Candy might be sort of stuck in the same kind of thing.’ Jack’s grip on the gun tightened. ‘But it weren’t meant for him!’ John said quickly. ‘Made a bit of a cock-up,’ John said, looking rather sheepish.
‘Was supposed to be for you.’
‘Why are you telling me all this?’ Jack asked, suspicion rearing its ugly head, as it was wont to do around John Hart.
‘’Cause I were hoping if I helped with the safe return of Eye-‘
‘His name’s Ianto!’ Jack’s gun moved to Hart’s face.
‘Right, so if I help you get,’ John struggled with the name for a moment, ‘Ianto back then maybe you and I could-‘
‘If you help me get Ianto back I won’t kill you, how’s about that for a trade off?’ Jack asked. John considered it for a moment, weighing up his very limited options at this point. If he played his cards right he might be able to wrangle a threesome out of it.
‘Yeah, that sounds fair to me,’ said John, shoving his hands in his pockets. ‘Except,’ John sucked air in through his teeth, ‘might be a bit harder than that.’
Jack steadied his gun hand again.
‘Eye-‘ Jack glared. ‘Ianto has to get himself out of this one. Time Loop has a get out clause, Twenty-four hour thing. All he has to do is survive until the end of the day.’
~
‘Is that it?’ Ianto now clutched his cold cup of coffee between his hands, his eyes still riveted on Jack, waiting for him to continue his story.
‘The rest of the week was just waiting,’ said Jack. ‘I threatened Hart a bit more, but he said he couldn’t do anything. Said it was all down to you.’
‘So you just let him go?’
Jack shrugged. ‘Not like we could hold him long if I had taken him into custody.’ Jack sounded almost apologetic at that.
‘What about when I woke up?’
Jack looked away from Ianto at that, his own coffee lay untouched on the table between them.
‘We haven’t seen the last of him have we?’ Ianto said when Jack didn’t answer him.
Jack got up quite suddenly from the table, taking his cold coffee with him and chucking it down the sink before re-filling the kettle again.
‘Probably not,’ said Jack. The kettle had just started to boil again when he decided he needed something stronger and flicked the switch off before going in one of cupboards out of the kids reach and retrieving a half drunk bottle of scotch.
~
‘Figured it out then, did he?’
John Hart was leaning against the SUV in the hospital car park - where it had almost been permanently parked for a week - like he was waiting on his date to give him a lift home.
‘No thanks to you,’ Jack said. It almost came out a growl. John could see the bags under Jack’s eyes that spoke of boring books read in low light conditions at the side of beds.
‘So, I was thinking, since everything turned out hunky-dory-‘
Jack slammed into John with such force that Jack’s teeth rattled where they were clenched together and the breath rushed out of John onto Jack’s face, the SUV rocking back and forth on its wheels for a moment.
‘Come near my team or me again and I will kill you. There is nothing between us anymore and never will be. Only in your sick deluded fantasies will we ever be together again, so drop the lovesick act and go and cause chaos somewhere that I don’t care about,’ Jack said, his teeth bared like a hungry Weevil, pushing against John one last time so the bonnet of the SUV popped beneath him. Jack let go of the front of his clothes and stepped back, allowing John enough wiggle room to get away, but he didn’t leave as quickly as Jack would have liked. He lingered, straightening his clothes out, watching Jack carefully.
‘Gotten a bit possessive in our old age haven’t we?’ John commented. ‘What happened to free love?’
‘Things change. People change,’ said Jack, feeling like he had to justify himself somehow, to a murderer, a drunk, a druggy and a sex addict.
John laughed, started making whipping motions as he turned away. When Jack’s head snapped up to look at him John Hart was long gone.
~
‘You never answered my question,’ Ianto said, shifting in the bed slightly, patting the covers down so he could see Jack’s face in the half-light of the street lamp shining through the thin curtains.
‘Hmm?’ Jack’s eyes weren’t open, but his brow quirked slightly.
‘Do you keep count?’
Jack opened his eyes then, head lolling slightly so he could see Ianto, eyes reflecting the scant rays of light in the room.
‘I used to,’ said Jack.
‘But not anymore?’
‘Do you keep count of the number of cups of coffee you make?’
‘Two million, three-hundred and twenty-three thousand, six hundred and seven,’ said Ianto without taking a breath. Jack let out a bark of laughter at that, before giving Ianto a questioning look.
‘Why would I count the number of cups of coffee I make? Who would want to know that?’
‘Exactly my thoughts,’ Jack said, closing his eyes again as he settled back into the pillows. Ianto listened to the pipes in the bathroom clanging, like someone was playing the drums on them, before he spoke again.
‘What number did you get to before you lost count?’
‘Why do you want to know so badly?’
‘I’m curious.’
‘Curiosity killed the cat,’
‘Satisfaction brought him back,’ Ianto retorted.
Jack exhaled. ‘A thousand. When I got to a thousand I figured that it was permanent.’
‘You hadn’t figured that out the other nine hundred and ninety-nine times?’
Jack made a disconcerted noise in the back of his throat. ‘You satisfied now? Can I go to sleep?’ Before Ianto had a chance to reply he was rolling over in the bed so he was facing away from Ianto. Ianto shifted behind him in the bed before a faint glow lit up most of the bedroom.
‘What are you doing now?’ Jack asked in annoyance.
‘Nothing,’ Ianto replied immediately. But the dim glow lighting up the ceiling didn’t go away and Jack turned back over so he was facing Ianto again. He had his phone held up before him, pressing the unlock button every couple of seconds so he could see the screen.
‘You expecting a call?’ Jack asked.
‘No,’ Ianto said, pressing the unlock button again. The screen glowed brightly, almost blinding Jack for a moment before Ianto, seemingly satisfied put his phone back down on the bedside table, next to the radio alarm clock that now read Tues 10th Feb 00:01.
-END-