Fic: Time Enough and Life.
Title: Time Enough and Life.
Characters/pairings: Jack/Ianto, team, past Ianto/Lisa.
Word count: 23,900
Rating: nc17
Warnings: None.
Contains Sex scene. Temporary character death.
Beta: mcparrot
Artist: mella68
Summary: Writing up the report on the Night Travellers, Jack finds one line in the Electro guide book that confuses him - it closed in 1977. It leaves him with one question, how did Ianto watch films there if it closed six years before he was born?
A/N: The guide book about the Electro can be found here iantos-desktop Electro guidebook The guide book was one of the extras from the BBC Torchwood series 2 website. And a big thank you to mcparrot
Links
Part one Part two Part three Part four Part five Part six
The story can be found here as a pdf HERE
The encounter with the Night Travellers had been unsettling to say the least. Their ability to step through film and trap people so that they're caught between one breath and the next almost incomprehensible.
The idea that if technology is sufficiently advanced it becomes indistinguishable from magic couldn’t be more apt in this case, Jack thinks as he gathers up files relating to the Night Travellers and the Electro, and takes them to his office.
The Night Travellers aren’t magic though, Jack knows that. The pain they caused on touching was the biggest clue; they were nothing more than energy. Everything is, when it comes down to it, just energy.
They were nothing more than a sentient projection, rather like the ones that would pilot ships in deep space centuries in the future. So while the original night travellers have been human back when he first tried to track them down in the 1920's, the versions that stepped through the film were nothing more than data ghosts. Their minds and desires frozen in a tight loop, destined to repeat the actions of the past over and over until they are switched off.
How filming them again stops them isn’t clear, but Jack’s best guess is that it either overloaded them or perhaps interrupted the connection to the original film and erased them. How the bottle works he can’t even begin to understand.
But then that’s what a lot of the things that come Torchwood's way are like. Dangerous, incomprehensible, and unsettling in a way that lingers and worms its way into how you see the world, leaving it feeling just that bit more tarnished than before.
Despite all this it has been Ianto's reaction that has unsettled him most of all. Sure his father had taken him there as a kid to see a few movies, but the way he's been jumping at shadows, eyes nervous and worried any time anybody mentions it makes Jack sure there's something more he's missing.
Which is why, when almost everybody else has gone home, Jack is writing up the case file for the Electro alone. While Jack knows that Ianto has the best background knowledge of the place, he also knows that getting him to look at the place in any detail is only likely to make him more jumpy and on edge than he already is.
Tosh’s final report on previous rift activity in the vicinity of the Electro reveals nothing, although Jack suspected that that would be the case; her preliminary searches hadn’t shown anything and he knows that Tosh rarely gets anything wrong.
He flicks through the guide book, looking at the images of the Electro in its heyday, and smiles. There have been so many good nights spent in the back row of various cinemas over the years. Perhaps in a few weeks, once the Night Travellers and the Electro isn’t quite as fresh in their minds, Jack thinks it might be good idea to suggest to Ianto that they go to the cinema.
Jack looks at the slightly blurry photo of its opening as the Panopticon Theatre in 1899, and then at another of its reopening as the Electro cinema in 1924. The booklet lists some of the big name films that played there back in the 1930’s when it was in its prime, then on through a slow decline in the sixties and seventies.
It's interesting in a nostalgic kind of way, but there's nothing there of interest in until he reaches the next to last paragraph of the booklet.
By 1969 the Electro was threatened with closure. It managed a stay of execution thanks to the British Film institute scheme supporting regional arthouse cinemas, and was renamed the Cardiff Showhouse. Even so, as the 1970s wore on it struggled to turn a profit and it finally closed its doors on the 22nd of February 1977.
Jack stops and reads the sentence again. Simple, factual and easy to understand it is also completely incomprehensible in relation to what Ianto has told him about it.
There had been such genuine fondness and affection in Ianto's voice at the memories of Saturday mornings spent there with his father that Jack finds it incredibly unlikely that it is a lie. Yet if it's not a lie Ianto is a great deal older than he looks and had lied about his age when he joined Torchwood One. Either that or his father's idea of a nice day out was to zip back a couple of decades to see a film.
All the options are preposterous, yet a quick search of the internet confirms the 1977 closure date. The only thing that’s clear is that, for whatever reason, Ianto has been lying to him, and maybe to Torchwood from the outset. The question is why?
Jack is still trying to work out just what Ianto could hope to gain from it, and why he'd invent something that couldn't be true, when the man himself walks in carrying two mugs of coffee.
Putting them down on Jack's desk, he smiles at Jack, and then says, “I thought you might like some help with the report. I can cover the Electro and look into where the film rolls were purchased. You could do the Night Travellers.”
It seems to confirm to Jack that Ianto knows that there is a discrepancy with the dates and that he doesn't want it discovered. Glaring at Ianto's blatant attempt to continue to deceive him, Jack says, “I'd bet you'd just love that.”
“What do you mean?” Ianto's eyes flick down to where the guide book is open on Jack's desk, then his shoulders slump. “Oh.”
Ianto’s guilt at being found out is all too obvious, and Jack feels his heart sink, the hope that there might be a better explanation than Ianto deliberately lying to him dying before it’s even fully realised. “How about you start with fact that the Electro closed six years before you were born?”
“I'm sorry.” Ianto sits down opposite Jack, his hands clasped in his lap. “I suppose I should be grateful that you're not pointing a gun at my head right now.”
“You think I need to be?” Jack asks, the anger starting to ebb as he looks at him, seeing how defeated and vulnerable he looks. Because he knows that's not what Ianto is usually like at all. He's far stronger than many have given him credit for, he keeps going, and doesn't admit defeat. Not when faced by cannibals, people holding a gun to his head or even an army of Cybermen tearing Torchwood Tower apart.
It's that optimism, and sometimes near idiotic bravery that's part of what's making him fall in love with Ianto a little more each day. And to see him like this, not fighting back, scares him, because he doesn't know what it means. Although now he thinks about it all the times Ianto has fought it has been to protect others, the idea that perhaps Ianto sees his own life as less worth fighting for than other peoples worries Jack as much as the thought that Ianto isn't the man he thought him to be.
Ianto slowly shakes his head. “After Lisa, after what happened, you told me if I ever lied to you like that again there'd be no second chances.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I'm sorry, I really am.”
“A lot of things have changed since then,” Jack says. He knows that Ianto had truly believed he could save Lisa, that everything that he'd done had been out of love. Being as he'd once nearly turned everyone into gas mask wearing zombies in the name of making a bit of quick cash, he'd quickly decided that Ianto had deserved a second chance, just like he'd been give all those years ago.
“Have they?” Ianto asks, sounding uncertain of whether Jack really means it.
“Yes.” After the year I've had, Jack thinks to himself, you really don't know just how much. “So why don't you tell me?
Ianto takes a shaky breath, then says, “I was born in 1948, and I spent 25 years frozen at Torchwood One.”
Cryogenics. He's not sure why he'd not considered it before. It's probably the best answer that Ianto could have given him. It means he's just a normal human, guy, who's just a bit out of time. Sagging back in his chair, Jack lets relief wash over him, before finally saying, “Is that all?”
Ianto seems surprised that Jack isn't angry, “Isn't that bad enough?”
Jack can think of a whole lot of things that would have been worse than Ianto is just a man out of his time, like so many others Jack has met over the years. Looking at him, Jack thinks that it explains a lot of things that he'd not even realised were out of place until now. There's still one question though, “What I don't get is why you didn't tell me?”
“When?” There's a hint of anger in Ianto's voice now. “Should I have told you when I was trying to get you to hire me? Would that have made it easier? Or would I found myself retconned and dumped who knows where?”
“I don't know.” Jack hates to admit it but he really doesn't know how it would have played out. He'd looked at Ianto's personnel records from London when he'd been pestering him for a job, and there hadn't even been a hint of it in there. “Why wasn’t any of this on your file? Torchwood One was many things, but I seem to remember they were pretty keen on paperwork.”
“Because you only saw what I wanted to be seen.”
“You hacked your own file so I'd hire you?” Jack knows he shouldn't be surprised that Ianto would do this, but he really doesn't like the fact that Ianto had set out to deceive him about even the most basic facts about himself.
“No, believe it or not, not everything is about you,” Ianto says not unkindly. “I hadn't even thought of trying to get back into Torchwood when I changed it.”
“Then why?” Jack asks surprised.
“Why do you think?” Ianto gets up and starts pacing. “There were only twenty seven of us who got out of Torchwood London alive, and the Future Options Committee, once it was set up, needed any survivor who was able to assist with the what was left of the data bases, they didn't even know the names of half of the missing and dead until then. I just made sure there was nothing on my record that would make them look twice at me.”
“Was any of it true?” Jack asks, his heart sinking, wondering if Ianto had constructed an entirely new identity for himself, just as he had done when he’d taken the name Jack Harkness all those years ago. “Is your name even Ianto?”
“Of course it is. Most of it was true, I just changed the dates, set up a new National Insurance number, took out anything about the cryogenics project. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just set up a new identify it was because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretence.” He stops, overwhelmed by the memories for a moment, and when he continues his voice is far from steady. “I was caring for Lisa, most of my friends were dead, I didn’t have the time needed to make it believable and I knew was too tired not to slip up with aliases. It wasn’t worth the risk.”
He stops again, this time to take a drink of the now nearly cold coffee he’d brought in earlier.
“So my birthday is the 19th of August. My parents were Ernest and Lizzy Jones. I don't have any brothers or sisters. I really did shoplift. I was ten, it was some sweets; if you’re really interested I think they were mint flavoured. And I didn't go to college or university, but then in the 60's the children of shopkeepers struggling to keep their business afloat really didn't have the money to go.”
“I always thought you were smart enough to have gone,” Jack says, catching the long held disappointment in Ianto's voice. “So how did it happen? How did you end up frozen in London?”
Ianto gives Jack as small, sad smile. “I volunteered for it.”
‘What?” Volunteering for a cryogenic project, to be frozen with experimental or alien technology would have risky, and Jack asks, “Why?”
“I didn't have much to lose.”
“There's always something.” Jack gets a little closer to him. “Your life can't have been so bad that you didn't care what happened to you.”
“What do you know?” Ianto glares at him. “You know nothing about me.”
“And who's fault's that?”
“Fine. I had nobody, nothing.” His hands ball into fists at his sides. “My mam died when I was kid. I'd sold my dad's tailors shop when he'd become too ill to work, so I could look after him, and because I wasn't good enough at it, not like he'd been. By the time he ended up in Providence Park, and he didn't even know his own name, never mind mine. And I couldn't watch....”
“Ianto...” Jack begins, starting to put his arm about him.
“No, you wanted to know. No more secrets, right?” He jerks away, tears in his eyes. “I ran, I went to London.” He smiles bitterly. “I thought life might be better there.”
Jack doesn't need to ask if it was. The fact that Ianto was willing to take part in the cryogenics project pretty much says how badly it must have gone.
“I had no job, no friends, no money, I couldn't afford to pay my rent so I wasn't even going to have somewhere to live in a few weeks. And then spotted the advert in the dole office. It seemed like an answer to all my problems.”
“Torchwood was recruiting in a job centre?” He doesn't want to sound too sceptical about it, but it really doesn't sound like how they'd operated, unless of course it had been a lot different in London than it had been in Cardiff.
Sitting back down, Ianto says, “Nothing in the advert said they were Torchwood. The name wouldn't have meant anything to me then anyway. It said just that there were vacancies for research test subjects, no experience needed, accommodation provided.” His expression turns bitter as he continues, “It turned out that my most marketable skill was the fact that nobody would know or care if I went missing. It was the same for the other eleven people, we were all recruited because we were nobodies; we were expendable.”
That sounds much more like the Torchwood of old that Jack had known. Ruthless in how it carried out what it believed to be necessary.
“When I saw top secret and official secrets act stamped on what they'd given us to sign I thought they were MI5.” He shakes his head at his own past naivety. “I think I'd half convinced myself I was going to be James Bond before they said they were Torchwood and explained what it was.”
“You in a tux?” Jack says with grin, trying to lighten the mood a little. “I could go with that. You could be ...”
“Don't,” Ianto snaps, sounding hurt. “Don't make this harder than it already is, and try thinking with something other than what's in your trousers for once.”
Knowing that his attempt to help has fallen flat, he says, “Not the time and place? Got it. Would, ‘Sorry any of this ever happened,’ have been better?”
“Not really.” Ianto looks at the floor rather than at him. “If I hadn't got the job I'd never have met you. I'd be an old man or dead.”
It's the truth, Jack knows it, but it's still unpleasant to have to think about it.
“You told me once that you never regretted being out of your time, because it had meant you had the opportunity to meet people you otherwise never have known or loved, well...” Ianto reached a hand across the desk to Jack. “I feel the same. Whatever happens I want you to know that.”
It sounds more ominous than reassuring. Hoping that he's not reading anything into it that isn't intended, Jack says, “You want to take a break?”
Ianto looks tempted, but sighs saying, “No. This isn't going to be any easier if I leave it.”
“Alright. But you can stop if you need to.”
He nods, but doesn't look like he's about to take the advice. “I don't remember much about the cryo units, apart from that they weren't as small as I'd imagined they’d be and that they were in warehouse type building in the East End. They'd divided us into three groups, five years, ten years and twenty years. I was in the twenty year group.”
“They messed up, didn't they?” Jack interrupts. Twenty years would have meant he'd have been taken out of cryo in 1993. Something which, even without being told, he knows can't be right. “So what happened?”
Ianto nods, letting go of Jack's hand. “The project was shelved in the mid 80's due to cost, or so they told me when they finally woke me up. It didn't help that two of the three people heading up the project were killed by an alien artefact at around that time. The cryo units were left in the warehouse and forgotten.”
“At least they were left switched on,” Jack says, knowing that if they hadn't, and the test subjects had all been subjected to a rapid, uncontrolled defrost it's unlikely that any of them would be around to tell the tale.
“It wasn't until Yvonne Hartman was given control of Torchwood One, that we were found. She decided to consolidate all the offices and storage facilities across London into the newly built tower in Canada Square.” He looks down at the desk top, fingers tracing the grain of the wood, before adding quietly. “If she hadn't I might have still been there.”
“Guess I've got something I should be thankful to her for. And I never though that I'd be saying that about her.”
“They gave me a job, the same as they did with the rest of them. Yvonne said it would be nice having somebody who had a good old fashioned work ethic. Gave me her Queen and Country spiel.” Ianto shakes his head. “She could have been amazing, but she was too focused on carving out her place in history.”
They lapse into silence. Jack has a lot of questions, but for the moment there is only one that seems to matter. Why had Ianto kept this information back? Ianto knew how they dealt with people from the past who came through the Rift like John Ellis and Diane Holmes or those that had been kept in cryo like Tommy Brockless.
Puzzled, he says, “You could have told me all this, after what happened with Lisa, any time really. There's nothing there that would make you a risk to anybody or that would have cost you your job.”
“Because it isn't everything,” Ianto says glumly. He looks at the decanter and glasses on the desk, then gestures towards them. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead,” Jack says, apprehension growing again.
Ianto pours himself a glass, his hands shaking slightly. Drinking it fast, he pours himself another.
“Hey, steady,” Jack says concerned. “That's not going to help.”
“I'm not sure anything can,” Ianto says morosely, but he doesn't drink any more.
“Ianto, just tell me what it is.”
“While I was frozen.” He looks at Jack with fear in his eyes. “I think they did something to me.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asks; trying not to sound as worried about it as Ianto looks.
“I didn't notice at first,” Ianto says quietly, turning the glass in his hands. “But it's getting more noticeable, isn't it?”
“What is?”
“I've been here the best part of two years now.” He looks at Jack again. “Do I look any different?”
It feels like a trick question or the kind of one that you really aren't expected to know the answer to, but the person asking it wants you to say something anyway. So Jack does, “You've put on weight?”
Ianto gives him a rather annoyed look.
Obviously not the right answer, and Jack quickly says, “I never said it was bad weight.”
Ianto rolls his eyes. “You don't see any other differences?”
“No. Look, Ianto what's this about?” Worry is making him lose his patience quicker than normal. “Because I could sit here all night playing twenty questions and not find out a thing. So why don't you just tell me?”
“I'm not getting any older.”
Jack stares at him. He's not sure what he'd expected Ianto to say, but it certainly wasn't that.
“You think I'm crazy, don't you?”
“I never said that.”
“I can prove it,” Ianto says, sounding a little desperate. “My personnel file from London is on the mainframe, my ID badge picture will be on it. I didn’t make any changes to it, I promise. Just look at it, Jack. Please?”
“Okay.” Jack clicks through a few links, and then a scan of Ianto's old ID badge appears on screen. It's a not particularly good head and shoulders image of Ianto looking a little thinner and with the half worried, half eager look in his eyes that he'd had when he'd been trying to secure a job at Torchwood Three. It's an ID badge, nothing more, nothing less, and Jack says, “What am I supposed to be getting from this?”
“Look at the date.”
Just visible on the corner of the badge it says, issued 17th Feb 2000. Jack stares at the date and then at Ianto.
“My birth certificate says I was born in 1948, so I should be sixty now. But I spent nearly twenty six years of that frozen, so I suppose the question should be, do I look about thirty five?”
“No,” Jack admits. He hates to think what it will mean for him if he’s right, as he knows only too well what it's like to stay the same while the world ages around you.
“People are going to notice soon,” Ianto says miserably, before finishing the rest of the glass. “Five more years and it's going to be noticeable. People will say I look young for thirty. Give it ten and there's no way anybody could fail to notice.”
“We'll find out what they did.” Standing up, Jack pulls Ianto against him. “We'll find it and put it right.”
Ianto tenses. “So I'm wrong, am I?”
“What? No.” Jack’s heart twinges with a sudden pain. “I just don't want this for you. Living so long...” Jack sighs, and holds him a little tighter. “It gets lonely.”
“I wouldn't be alone.” He looks at Jack, hope in his eyes. “You'd always be there.”
“Ianto...”
“I'm not expecting it to be a relationship, not like that. Forever is a long time,” he says carefully. “But I hope we'd always be friends.”
Jack signs and closes his eyes. “You've been giving this a lot of thought, haven't you?”
“Yes.” Ianto relaxes a little. “Although probably not as much as I should have.”
“It's a hard thing to think about.” In the days and months after he'd first realised that he'd changed, Jack knows that he'd spent much of that time trying to crawl in to a bottle or into any willing bed he could find, desperate to drown out the thoughts of what his future might be.
“I thought I'd die before it became noticeable,” Ianto says quietly, sounding like he can't quite believe he's actually admitting this. “Ever since...what happened, London, the Cybermen, it's all just feels like borrowed time.”
“Don't,” Jack presses a finger to Ianto's lips. “Don't talk like that.”
“Sorry.” Ianto sighs, then says wearily. “I don't want to think about this anymore I don't want to think about anything.” He rubs his eyes. “I'm so tired.”
Jack knows that since the Night Travellers appeared two nights ago Ianto has been increasingly on edge, and he asks, “When did you last sleep?”
“Last night.”
Jack can see the dark smudges under Ianto's eyes. “For how long? Because I’m guessing it wasn’t the whole night.”
Closing his eyes, Ianto leans forward to rest his head against Jack shoulder. “Three, four hours maybe.”
Wishing that he'd asked Ianto to stay with him the past few nights rather than just telling him to get some sleep at home, Jack says, “Let me guess the night before, about the same?”
Ianto nods, the movement awkward against Jack's shoulder. “I just can't seem to stop thinking about it.”
“I could distract you,” Jack says, smiling at him. He needs him to know that he's not angry about him not having told him the truth about his past. “I can be very distracting,”
Ianto returns the smile. “I know you can.”
“You want me to be distracting now?”
Ianto lifts his head so he's looking directly at Jack. “What I want is for you to screw me until I'm having trouble remembering my own name, never mind whatever happened in London.”
Jack laughs. He's not sure if he's more surprised that Ianto has suggested it or that he'd not done it first himself.
“Is that a yes?” Ianto says sounding like he already knows that it is.
“For you, Ianto?” Jack grins at him. “Always.”
“Come on then,” Ianto says, moving towards the hatchway down to Jack room. “I'm not going to have to delete sections of the Hubs CCTV footage again.”
Following Ianto, Jack says, “Don’t you think having blank sections looks more suspicious?”
“I’d rather people had suspicions than have my naked arse on film for all to see.”
“I wouldn't mind,” Jack says with a smirk. “I think it's a very fine ass.”
Ianto gives a snort of laughter, and climbs down into Jack's room.
During the re-modelling of the Hub while he had been away, his room under his office had been enlarged slightly, so that there is enough space for larger bed and room to store his clothes. It’s still not exactly homely, but it is better. Not that Jack particularly cares about how it looks at the moment.
With Ianto already physically tired Jack decides that energetic probably isn’t the way to go - strained muscles and bruises from falling backwards off the bed really isn't something Ianto needs. No, what he needs to do is occupy Ianto's mind, and if he's honest, his own as well.
Standing behind him, Jack leans in so that his mouth is next to Ianto's ear. "Close your eyes and just feel."
Jack strips Ianto of his clothes, hands lingering, caressing his body as he does so. It's familiar, comforting, something that they've done so many times before, and Jack finds himself relaxing as well, the tension easing as he allows himself to be caught up in the moment.
The suit jacket goes first, then the silk tie, the slippery material playing through his fingers. The waistcoat buttons are next, but he leaves it on, the fine wool hanging open to reveal the deep red lining within. Once the shirt is unbuttoned as well, Jack runs his hands across the dark, curling hairs on Ianto's chest.
He can feel Ianto's breathing quicken as his hands finally make contact with bare skin. He wonders if it will always be like this between them or if the passage of time will take it from them. Trying to push the idea from his mind, Jack concentrates on alternating light teasing touches with firmer ones, until he's rewarded with a breathy, “Please.”
Taking off Ianto's waistcoat and shirt, Jack doesn't linger over removing the trousers and underwear. Turning his attention to his own clothes, Jack quickly strips off, leaving their clothes tangled together on the floor.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Jack retrieves lube from under the pillow, and a condom from a box that is partially under the bed.
“How do you want me?” Ianto asks, speaking for the first time since they entered Jack's room.
“You could sit on my lap.” Jack pats the top of his leg. “Best seat in the house.”
Ianto laughs relaxed and genuine, and then leans in for a kiss. “That might be the best idea you've had all night.”
It's an intimate position despite the fact that they can't see each other's faces. The heat between them, the thin trail of sweat that's runs down Ianto's back to be lost where their bodies meet, and the feel of skin against skin.
Jack sees, hears and feels each little movement, and knows how Ianto will react to his touch. He knows those responses almost as well as he knows his own.
Yet what they have isn't just sex, and it hasn't been for some time. Jack wonders sometimes if Ianto knows that. He hopes he does.
Admittedly sex, or rather the desire for it, had been how it had started. By the time that it had actually happened, awkward and wonderful and messy in his office after Ianto's surprise proposition with a stopwatch, he'd known that they'd gone beyond something as simple as mutual lust and into something that neither of them were ready or able to define.
Since returning from the Year That Never Was he knows it has changed again. He'd hoped to come back fixed, instead he'd come back broken in a different way. They lean on each other now in a way that Jack knows they wouldn't be comfortable doing with anybody else.
How much more will their relationship change it they have a few more years? Longer. What if Ianto has forever the same as himself?
Jack closes his eyes, hands gripping Ianto's hips tighter as his movements slow to almost nothing. He can't think about this now, about the wonderful, terrifying things that Ianto living for such a very long time could mean.
“Jack?” Ianto asks breathlessly. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Jack says letting the strain in his voice be interpreted as something else. “Just trying to last.”
“Really don't think you need to,” Ianto says turning his head to look at Jack. “I'm not going to.”
“In that case...” Jack kisses the back of Ianto neck and down onto his shoulder. “I'll get things moving.”
It's a pace Jack knows that neither of them can maintain for any length of time, with Ianto pushing back into each of his short, fast, thrusts.
Ianto gasps, sharper than those before, his body going tense. Then Jack feels a flood of wet warmth across their hands, the tight clench of muscles around his cock pulling him moments later over the edge as well.
Panting, Jack keeps his arms wrapped around Ianto, holding them together, until the last tremors have faded.
Condom removed, they lie together on the bed, hands seeking out skin that is still over sensitised, as they kiss.
“Are you going to stay?” Ianto asks, once he's curled under the covers, gesturing sleepily to the space in the bed beside him.
“For a while.” Rolling onto his side, Jack pulls some of the covers over himself. “I've got a few things I need to finish off, but they can wait for now.”
Ianto murmurs an agreement, then closes his eyes.
Once Ianto is asleep, Jack slips out of bed. Stopping only to pick up underwear and a t-shirt, he heads back up to his office to check what information there is on the mainframe about past projects that Torchwood One ran. He just hopes he can give Ianto some good news in the morning.
He and his team had salvaged, scavenged, and where those hadn't proven possible, stolen, anything they could get from Torchwood One after its fall. It was better they had it, in Jack's opinion, than it falling into the hands of UNIT or any one of the numerous committees or shadowy organisations within the government.
It had been small artefacts mostly, anything that they could transport back to Cardiff in the back of the SUV. Tosh had done what she could with the computer systems, but a lot of the archive files had been corrupted with the Bad Wolf virus, and those that hadn't were fragmentary from where a running battle between Cybermen, Daleks and Torchwood One's security staff had been fought in the server room.
It's the early hours of the morning when Jack finally admits defeat. The records that remain from the 1970's at Torchwood One are patchy, and without any concrete details about the project other than Ianto's name, which Ianto had presumably removed from any files associated with it, Jack knows that he could look for a week and still not find it.
Ianto is still asleep when Jack climbs back down the ladder into his room, although from the twisted and bunched up covers it looks like his sleep has been far from restful.
Lifting the tangled covers as best he can, Jack gets into bed. At somewhere between a single and a double it's rather cramped, and Jack has to spoon against his partner to comfortably fit. As he does, Ianto mumbles something about Jack's knees being cold without really waking, then settles back against him.
Part two
Characters/pairings: Jack/Ianto, team, past Ianto/Lisa.
Word count: 23,900
Rating: nc17
Warnings: None.
Contains Sex scene. Temporary character death.
Beta: mcparrot
Artist: mella68
Summary: Writing up the report on the Night Travellers, Jack finds one line in the Electro guide book that confuses him - it closed in 1977. It leaves him with one question, how did Ianto watch films there if it closed six years before he was born?
A/N: The guide book about the Electro can be found here iantos-desktop Electro guidebook The guide book was one of the extras from the BBC Torchwood series 2 website. And a big thank you to mcparrot
Links
Part one Part two Part three Part four Part five Part six
The story can be found here as a pdf HERE
The encounter with the Night Travellers had been unsettling to say the least. Their ability to step through film and trap people so that they're caught between one breath and the next almost incomprehensible.
The idea that if technology is sufficiently advanced it becomes indistinguishable from magic couldn’t be more apt in this case, Jack thinks as he gathers up files relating to the Night Travellers and the Electro, and takes them to his office.
The Night Travellers aren’t magic though, Jack knows that. The pain they caused on touching was the biggest clue; they were nothing more than energy. Everything is, when it comes down to it, just energy.
They were nothing more than a sentient projection, rather like the ones that would pilot ships in deep space centuries in the future. So while the original night travellers have been human back when he first tried to track them down in the 1920's, the versions that stepped through the film were nothing more than data ghosts. Their minds and desires frozen in a tight loop, destined to repeat the actions of the past over and over until they are switched off.
How filming them again stops them isn’t clear, but Jack’s best guess is that it either overloaded them or perhaps interrupted the connection to the original film and erased them. How the bottle works he can’t even begin to understand.
But then that’s what a lot of the things that come Torchwood's way are like. Dangerous, incomprehensible, and unsettling in a way that lingers and worms its way into how you see the world, leaving it feeling just that bit more tarnished than before.
Despite all this it has been Ianto's reaction that has unsettled him most of all. Sure his father had taken him there as a kid to see a few movies, but the way he's been jumping at shadows, eyes nervous and worried any time anybody mentions it makes Jack sure there's something more he's missing.
Which is why, when almost everybody else has gone home, Jack is writing up the case file for the Electro alone. While Jack knows that Ianto has the best background knowledge of the place, he also knows that getting him to look at the place in any detail is only likely to make him more jumpy and on edge than he already is.
Tosh’s final report on previous rift activity in the vicinity of the Electro reveals nothing, although Jack suspected that that would be the case; her preliminary searches hadn’t shown anything and he knows that Tosh rarely gets anything wrong.
He flicks through the guide book, looking at the images of the Electro in its heyday, and smiles. There have been so many good nights spent in the back row of various cinemas over the years. Perhaps in a few weeks, once the Night Travellers and the Electro isn’t quite as fresh in their minds, Jack thinks it might be good idea to suggest to Ianto that they go to the cinema.
Jack looks at the slightly blurry photo of its opening as the Panopticon Theatre in 1899, and then at another of its reopening as the Electro cinema in 1924. The booklet lists some of the big name films that played there back in the 1930’s when it was in its prime, then on through a slow decline in the sixties and seventies.
It's interesting in a nostalgic kind of way, but there's nothing there of interest in until he reaches the next to last paragraph of the booklet.
By 1969 the Electro was threatened with closure. It managed a stay of execution thanks to the British Film institute scheme supporting regional arthouse cinemas, and was renamed the Cardiff Showhouse. Even so, as the 1970s wore on it struggled to turn a profit and it finally closed its doors on the 22nd of February 1977.
Jack stops and reads the sentence again. Simple, factual and easy to understand it is also completely incomprehensible in relation to what Ianto has told him about it.
There had been such genuine fondness and affection in Ianto's voice at the memories of Saturday mornings spent there with his father that Jack finds it incredibly unlikely that it is a lie. Yet if it's not a lie Ianto is a great deal older than he looks and had lied about his age when he joined Torchwood One. Either that or his father's idea of a nice day out was to zip back a couple of decades to see a film.
All the options are preposterous, yet a quick search of the internet confirms the 1977 closure date. The only thing that’s clear is that, for whatever reason, Ianto has been lying to him, and maybe to Torchwood from the outset. The question is why?
Jack is still trying to work out just what Ianto could hope to gain from it, and why he'd invent something that couldn't be true, when the man himself walks in carrying two mugs of coffee.
Putting them down on Jack's desk, he smiles at Jack, and then says, “I thought you might like some help with the report. I can cover the Electro and look into where the film rolls were purchased. You could do the Night Travellers.”
It seems to confirm to Jack that Ianto knows that there is a discrepancy with the dates and that he doesn't want it discovered. Glaring at Ianto's blatant attempt to continue to deceive him, Jack says, “I'd bet you'd just love that.”
“What do you mean?” Ianto's eyes flick down to where the guide book is open on Jack's desk, then his shoulders slump. “Oh.”
Ianto’s guilt at being found out is all too obvious, and Jack feels his heart sink, the hope that there might be a better explanation than Ianto deliberately lying to him dying before it’s even fully realised. “How about you start with fact that the Electro closed six years before you were born?”
“I'm sorry.” Ianto sits down opposite Jack, his hands clasped in his lap. “I suppose I should be grateful that you're not pointing a gun at my head right now.”
“You think I need to be?” Jack asks, the anger starting to ebb as he looks at him, seeing how defeated and vulnerable he looks. Because he knows that's not what Ianto is usually like at all. He's far stronger than many have given him credit for, he keeps going, and doesn't admit defeat. Not when faced by cannibals, people holding a gun to his head or even an army of Cybermen tearing Torchwood Tower apart.
It's that optimism, and sometimes near idiotic bravery that's part of what's making him fall in love with Ianto a little more each day. And to see him like this, not fighting back, scares him, because he doesn't know what it means. Although now he thinks about it all the times Ianto has fought it has been to protect others, the idea that perhaps Ianto sees his own life as less worth fighting for than other peoples worries Jack as much as the thought that Ianto isn't the man he thought him to be.
Ianto slowly shakes his head. “After Lisa, after what happened, you told me if I ever lied to you like that again there'd be no second chances.” He runs a hand through his hair. “I'm sorry, I really am.”
“A lot of things have changed since then,” Jack says. He knows that Ianto had truly believed he could save Lisa, that everything that he'd done had been out of love. Being as he'd once nearly turned everyone into gas mask wearing zombies in the name of making a bit of quick cash, he'd quickly decided that Ianto had deserved a second chance, just like he'd been give all those years ago.
“Have they?” Ianto asks, sounding uncertain of whether Jack really means it.
“Yes.” After the year I've had, Jack thinks to himself, you really don't know just how much. “So why don't you tell me?
Ianto takes a shaky breath, then says, “I was born in 1948, and I spent 25 years frozen at Torchwood One.”
Cryogenics. He's not sure why he'd not considered it before. It's probably the best answer that Ianto could have given him. It means he's just a normal human, guy, who's just a bit out of time. Sagging back in his chair, Jack lets relief wash over him, before finally saying, “Is that all?”
Ianto seems surprised that Jack isn't angry, “Isn't that bad enough?”
Jack can think of a whole lot of things that would have been worse than Ianto is just a man out of his time, like so many others Jack has met over the years. Looking at him, Jack thinks that it explains a lot of things that he'd not even realised were out of place until now. There's still one question though, “What I don't get is why you didn't tell me?”
“When?” There's a hint of anger in Ianto's voice now. “Should I have told you when I was trying to get you to hire me? Would that have made it easier? Or would I found myself retconned and dumped who knows where?”
“I don't know.” Jack hates to admit it but he really doesn't know how it would have played out. He'd looked at Ianto's personnel records from London when he'd been pestering him for a job, and there hadn't even been a hint of it in there. “Why wasn’t any of this on your file? Torchwood One was many things, but I seem to remember they were pretty keen on paperwork.”
“Because you only saw what I wanted to be seen.”
“You hacked your own file so I'd hire you?” Jack knows he shouldn't be surprised that Ianto would do this, but he really doesn't like the fact that Ianto had set out to deceive him about even the most basic facts about himself.
“No, believe it or not, not everything is about you,” Ianto says not unkindly. “I hadn't even thought of trying to get back into Torchwood when I changed it.”
“Then why?” Jack asks surprised.
“Why do you think?” Ianto gets up and starts pacing. “There were only twenty seven of us who got out of Torchwood London alive, and the Future Options Committee, once it was set up, needed any survivor who was able to assist with the what was left of the data bases, they didn't even know the names of half of the missing and dead until then. I just made sure there was nothing on my record that would make them look twice at me.”
“Was any of it true?” Jack asks, his heart sinking, wondering if Ianto had constructed an entirely new identity for himself, just as he had done when he’d taken the name Jack Harkness all those years ago. “Is your name even Ianto?”
“Of course it is. Most of it was true, I just changed the dates, set up a new National Insurance number, took out anything about the cryogenics project. If you’re wondering why I didn’t just set up a new identify it was because I knew I wouldn’t be able to keep up the pretence.” He stops, overwhelmed by the memories for a moment, and when he continues his voice is far from steady. “I was caring for Lisa, most of my friends were dead, I didn’t have the time needed to make it believable and I knew was too tired not to slip up with aliases. It wasn’t worth the risk.”
He stops again, this time to take a drink of the now nearly cold coffee he’d brought in earlier.
“So my birthday is the 19th of August. My parents were Ernest and Lizzy Jones. I don't have any brothers or sisters. I really did shoplift. I was ten, it was some sweets; if you’re really interested I think they were mint flavoured. And I didn't go to college or university, but then in the 60's the children of shopkeepers struggling to keep their business afloat really didn't have the money to go.”
“I always thought you were smart enough to have gone,” Jack says, catching the long held disappointment in Ianto's voice. “So how did it happen? How did you end up frozen in London?”
Ianto gives Jack as small, sad smile. “I volunteered for it.”
‘What?” Volunteering for a cryogenic project, to be frozen with experimental or alien technology would have risky, and Jack asks, “Why?”
“I didn't have much to lose.”
“There's always something.” Jack gets a little closer to him. “Your life can't have been so bad that you didn't care what happened to you.”
“What do you know?” Ianto glares at him. “You know nothing about me.”
“And who's fault's that?”
“Fine. I had nobody, nothing.” His hands ball into fists at his sides. “My mam died when I was kid. I'd sold my dad's tailors shop when he'd become too ill to work, so I could look after him, and because I wasn't good enough at it, not like he'd been. By the time he ended up in Providence Park, and he didn't even know his own name, never mind mine. And I couldn't watch....”
“Ianto...” Jack begins, starting to put his arm about him.
“No, you wanted to know. No more secrets, right?” He jerks away, tears in his eyes. “I ran, I went to London.” He smiles bitterly. “I thought life might be better there.”
Jack doesn't need to ask if it was. The fact that Ianto was willing to take part in the cryogenics project pretty much says how badly it must have gone.
“I had no job, no friends, no money, I couldn't afford to pay my rent so I wasn't even going to have somewhere to live in a few weeks. And then spotted the advert in the dole office. It seemed like an answer to all my problems.”
“Torchwood was recruiting in a job centre?” He doesn't want to sound too sceptical about it, but it really doesn't sound like how they'd operated, unless of course it had been a lot different in London than it had been in Cardiff.
Sitting back down, Ianto says, “Nothing in the advert said they were Torchwood. The name wouldn't have meant anything to me then anyway. It said just that there were vacancies for research test subjects, no experience needed, accommodation provided.” His expression turns bitter as he continues, “It turned out that my most marketable skill was the fact that nobody would know or care if I went missing. It was the same for the other eleven people, we were all recruited because we were nobodies; we were expendable.”
That sounds much more like the Torchwood of old that Jack had known. Ruthless in how it carried out what it believed to be necessary.
“When I saw top secret and official secrets act stamped on what they'd given us to sign I thought they were MI5.” He shakes his head at his own past naivety. “I think I'd half convinced myself I was going to be James Bond before they said they were Torchwood and explained what it was.”
“You in a tux?” Jack says with grin, trying to lighten the mood a little. “I could go with that. You could be ...”
“Don't,” Ianto snaps, sounding hurt. “Don't make this harder than it already is, and try thinking with something other than what's in your trousers for once.”
Knowing that his attempt to help has fallen flat, he says, “Not the time and place? Got it. Would, ‘Sorry any of this ever happened,’ have been better?”
“Not really.” Ianto looks at the floor rather than at him. “If I hadn't got the job I'd never have met you. I'd be an old man or dead.”
It's the truth, Jack knows it, but it's still unpleasant to have to think about it.
“You told me once that you never regretted being out of your time, because it had meant you had the opportunity to meet people you otherwise never have known or loved, well...” Ianto reached a hand across the desk to Jack. “I feel the same. Whatever happens I want you to know that.”
It sounds more ominous than reassuring. Hoping that he's not reading anything into it that isn't intended, Jack says, “You want to take a break?”
Ianto looks tempted, but sighs saying, “No. This isn't going to be any easier if I leave it.”
“Alright. But you can stop if you need to.”
He nods, but doesn't look like he's about to take the advice. “I don't remember much about the cryo units, apart from that they weren't as small as I'd imagined they’d be and that they were in warehouse type building in the East End. They'd divided us into three groups, five years, ten years and twenty years. I was in the twenty year group.”
“They messed up, didn't they?” Jack interrupts. Twenty years would have meant he'd have been taken out of cryo in 1993. Something which, even without being told, he knows can't be right. “So what happened?”
Ianto nods, letting go of Jack's hand. “The project was shelved in the mid 80's due to cost, or so they told me when they finally woke me up. It didn't help that two of the three people heading up the project were killed by an alien artefact at around that time. The cryo units were left in the warehouse and forgotten.”
“At least they were left switched on,” Jack says, knowing that if they hadn't, and the test subjects had all been subjected to a rapid, uncontrolled defrost it's unlikely that any of them would be around to tell the tale.
“It wasn't until Yvonne Hartman was given control of Torchwood One, that we were found. She decided to consolidate all the offices and storage facilities across London into the newly built tower in Canada Square.” He looks down at the desk top, fingers tracing the grain of the wood, before adding quietly. “If she hadn't I might have still been there.”
“Guess I've got something I should be thankful to her for. And I never though that I'd be saying that about her.”
“They gave me a job, the same as they did with the rest of them. Yvonne said it would be nice having somebody who had a good old fashioned work ethic. Gave me her Queen and Country spiel.” Ianto shakes his head. “She could have been amazing, but she was too focused on carving out her place in history.”
They lapse into silence. Jack has a lot of questions, but for the moment there is only one that seems to matter. Why had Ianto kept this information back? Ianto knew how they dealt with people from the past who came through the Rift like John Ellis and Diane Holmes or those that had been kept in cryo like Tommy Brockless.
Puzzled, he says, “You could have told me all this, after what happened with Lisa, any time really. There's nothing there that would make you a risk to anybody or that would have cost you your job.”
“Because it isn't everything,” Ianto says glumly. He looks at the decanter and glasses on the desk, then gestures towards them. “Do you mind?”
“Go ahead,” Jack says, apprehension growing again.
Ianto pours himself a glass, his hands shaking slightly. Drinking it fast, he pours himself another.
“Hey, steady,” Jack says concerned. “That's not going to help.”
“I'm not sure anything can,” Ianto says morosely, but he doesn't drink any more.
“Ianto, just tell me what it is.”
“While I was frozen.” He looks at Jack with fear in his eyes. “I think they did something to me.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asks; trying not to sound as worried about it as Ianto looks.
“I didn't notice at first,” Ianto says quietly, turning the glass in his hands. “But it's getting more noticeable, isn't it?”
“What is?”
“I've been here the best part of two years now.” He looks at Jack again. “Do I look any different?”
It feels like a trick question or the kind of one that you really aren't expected to know the answer to, but the person asking it wants you to say something anyway. So Jack does, “You've put on weight?”
Ianto gives him a rather annoyed look.
Obviously not the right answer, and Jack quickly says, “I never said it was bad weight.”
Ianto rolls his eyes. “You don't see any other differences?”
“No. Look, Ianto what's this about?” Worry is making him lose his patience quicker than normal. “Because I could sit here all night playing twenty questions and not find out a thing. So why don't you just tell me?”
“I'm not getting any older.”
Jack stares at him. He's not sure what he'd expected Ianto to say, but it certainly wasn't that.
“You think I'm crazy, don't you?”
“I never said that.”
“I can prove it,” Ianto says, sounding a little desperate. “My personnel file from London is on the mainframe, my ID badge picture will be on it. I didn’t make any changes to it, I promise. Just look at it, Jack. Please?”
“Okay.” Jack clicks through a few links, and then a scan of Ianto's old ID badge appears on screen. It's a not particularly good head and shoulders image of Ianto looking a little thinner and with the half worried, half eager look in his eyes that he'd had when he'd been trying to secure a job at Torchwood Three. It's an ID badge, nothing more, nothing less, and Jack says, “What am I supposed to be getting from this?”
“Look at the date.”
Just visible on the corner of the badge it says, issued 17th Feb 2000. Jack stares at the date and then at Ianto.
“My birth certificate says I was born in 1948, so I should be sixty now. But I spent nearly twenty six years of that frozen, so I suppose the question should be, do I look about thirty five?”
“No,” Jack admits. He hates to think what it will mean for him if he’s right, as he knows only too well what it's like to stay the same while the world ages around you.
“People are going to notice soon,” Ianto says miserably, before finishing the rest of the glass. “Five more years and it's going to be noticeable. People will say I look young for thirty. Give it ten and there's no way anybody could fail to notice.”
“We'll find out what they did.” Standing up, Jack pulls Ianto against him. “We'll find it and put it right.”
Ianto tenses. “So I'm wrong, am I?”
“What? No.” Jack’s heart twinges with a sudden pain. “I just don't want this for you. Living so long...” Jack sighs, and holds him a little tighter. “It gets lonely.”
“I wouldn't be alone.” He looks at Jack, hope in his eyes. “You'd always be there.”
“Ianto...”
“I'm not expecting it to be a relationship, not like that. Forever is a long time,” he says carefully. “But I hope we'd always be friends.”
Jack signs and closes his eyes. “You've been giving this a lot of thought, haven't you?”
“Yes.” Ianto relaxes a little. “Although probably not as much as I should have.”
“It's a hard thing to think about.” In the days and months after he'd first realised that he'd changed, Jack knows that he'd spent much of that time trying to crawl in to a bottle or into any willing bed he could find, desperate to drown out the thoughts of what his future might be.
“I thought I'd die before it became noticeable,” Ianto says quietly, sounding like he can't quite believe he's actually admitting this. “Ever since...what happened, London, the Cybermen, it's all just feels like borrowed time.”
“Don't,” Jack presses a finger to Ianto's lips. “Don't talk like that.”
“Sorry.” Ianto sighs, then says wearily. “I don't want to think about this anymore I don't want to think about anything.” He rubs his eyes. “I'm so tired.”
Jack knows that since the Night Travellers appeared two nights ago Ianto has been increasingly on edge, and he asks, “When did you last sleep?”
“Last night.”
Jack can see the dark smudges under Ianto's eyes. “For how long? Because I’m guessing it wasn’t the whole night.”
Closing his eyes, Ianto leans forward to rest his head against Jack shoulder. “Three, four hours maybe.”
Wishing that he'd asked Ianto to stay with him the past few nights rather than just telling him to get some sleep at home, Jack says, “Let me guess the night before, about the same?”
Ianto nods, the movement awkward against Jack's shoulder. “I just can't seem to stop thinking about it.”
“I could distract you,” Jack says, smiling at him. He needs him to know that he's not angry about him not having told him the truth about his past. “I can be very distracting,”
Ianto returns the smile. “I know you can.”
“You want me to be distracting now?”
Ianto lifts his head so he's looking directly at Jack. “What I want is for you to screw me until I'm having trouble remembering my own name, never mind whatever happened in London.”
Jack laughs. He's not sure if he's more surprised that Ianto has suggested it or that he'd not done it first himself.
“Is that a yes?” Ianto says sounding like he already knows that it is.
“For you, Ianto?” Jack grins at him. “Always.”
“Come on then,” Ianto says, moving towards the hatchway down to Jack room. “I'm not going to have to delete sections of the Hubs CCTV footage again.”
Following Ianto, Jack says, “Don’t you think having blank sections looks more suspicious?”
“I’d rather people had suspicions than have my naked arse on film for all to see.”
“I wouldn't mind,” Jack says with a smirk. “I think it's a very fine ass.”
Ianto gives a snort of laughter, and climbs down into Jack's room.
During the re-modelling of the Hub while he had been away, his room under his office had been enlarged slightly, so that there is enough space for larger bed and room to store his clothes. It’s still not exactly homely, but it is better. Not that Jack particularly cares about how it looks at the moment.
With Ianto already physically tired Jack decides that energetic probably isn’t the way to go - strained muscles and bruises from falling backwards off the bed really isn't something Ianto needs. No, what he needs to do is occupy Ianto's mind, and if he's honest, his own as well.
Standing behind him, Jack leans in so that his mouth is next to Ianto's ear. "Close your eyes and just feel."
Jack strips Ianto of his clothes, hands lingering, caressing his body as he does so. It's familiar, comforting, something that they've done so many times before, and Jack finds himself relaxing as well, the tension easing as he allows himself to be caught up in the moment.
The suit jacket goes first, then the silk tie, the slippery material playing through his fingers. The waistcoat buttons are next, but he leaves it on, the fine wool hanging open to reveal the deep red lining within. Once the shirt is unbuttoned as well, Jack runs his hands across the dark, curling hairs on Ianto's chest.
He can feel Ianto's breathing quicken as his hands finally make contact with bare skin. He wonders if it will always be like this between them or if the passage of time will take it from them. Trying to push the idea from his mind, Jack concentrates on alternating light teasing touches with firmer ones, until he's rewarded with a breathy, “Please.”
Taking off Ianto's waistcoat and shirt, Jack doesn't linger over removing the trousers and underwear. Turning his attention to his own clothes, Jack quickly strips off, leaving their clothes tangled together on the floor.
Sitting down on the edge of the bed, Jack retrieves lube from under the pillow, and a condom from a box that is partially under the bed.
“How do you want me?” Ianto asks, speaking for the first time since they entered Jack's room.
“You could sit on my lap.” Jack pats the top of his leg. “Best seat in the house.”
Ianto laughs relaxed and genuine, and then leans in for a kiss. “That might be the best idea you've had all night.”
It's an intimate position despite the fact that they can't see each other's faces. The heat between them, the thin trail of sweat that's runs down Ianto's back to be lost where their bodies meet, and the feel of skin against skin.
Jack sees, hears and feels each little movement, and knows how Ianto will react to his touch. He knows those responses almost as well as he knows his own.
Yet what they have isn't just sex, and it hasn't been for some time. Jack wonders sometimes if Ianto knows that. He hopes he does.
Admittedly sex, or rather the desire for it, had been how it had started. By the time that it had actually happened, awkward and wonderful and messy in his office after Ianto's surprise proposition with a stopwatch, he'd known that they'd gone beyond something as simple as mutual lust and into something that neither of them were ready or able to define.
Since returning from the Year That Never Was he knows it has changed again. He'd hoped to come back fixed, instead he'd come back broken in a different way. They lean on each other now in a way that Jack knows they wouldn't be comfortable doing with anybody else.
How much more will their relationship change it they have a few more years? Longer. What if Ianto has forever the same as himself?
Jack closes his eyes, hands gripping Ianto's hips tighter as his movements slow to almost nothing. He can't think about this now, about the wonderful, terrifying things that Ianto living for such a very long time could mean.
“Jack?” Ianto asks breathlessly. “Is something wrong?”
“No,” Jack says letting the strain in his voice be interpreted as something else. “Just trying to last.”
“Really don't think you need to,” Ianto says turning his head to look at Jack. “I'm not going to.”
“In that case...” Jack kisses the back of Ianto neck and down onto his shoulder. “I'll get things moving.”
It's a pace Jack knows that neither of them can maintain for any length of time, with Ianto pushing back into each of his short, fast, thrusts.
Ianto gasps, sharper than those before, his body going tense. Then Jack feels a flood of wet warmth across their hands, the tight clench of muscles around his cock pulling him moments later over the edge as well.
Panting, Jack keeps his arms wrapped around Ianto, holding them together, until the last tremors have faded.
Condom removed, they lie together on the bed, hands seeking out skin that is still over sensitised, as they kiss.
“Are you going to stay?” Ianto asks, once he's curled under the covers, gesturing sleepily to the space in the bed beside him.
“For a while.” Rolling onto his side, Jack pulls some of the covers over himself. “I've got a few things I need to finish off, but they can wait for now.”
Ianto murmurs an agreement, then closes his eyes.
Once Ianto is asleep, Jack slips out of bed. Stopping only to pick up underwear and a t-shirt, he heads back up to his office to check what information there is on the mainframe about past projects that Torchwood One ran. He just hopes he can give Ianto some good news in the morning.
He and his team had salvaged, scavenged, and where those hadn't proven possible, stolen, anything they could get from Torchwood One after its fall. It was better they had it, in Jack's opinion, than it falling into the hands of UNIT or any one of the numerous committees or shadowy organisations within the government.
It had been small artefacts mostly, anything that they could transport back to Cardiff in the back of the SUV. Tosh had done what she could with the computer systems, but a lot of the archive files had been corrupted with the Bad Wolf virus, and those that hadn't were fragmentary from where a running battle between Cybermen, Daleks and Torchwood One's security staff had been fought in the server room.
It's the early hours of the morning when Jack finally admits defeat. The records that remain from the 1970's at Torchwood One are patchy, and without any concrete details about the project other than Ianto's name, which Ianto had presumably removed from any files associated with it, Jack knows that he could look for a week and still not find it.
Ianto is still asleep when Jack climbs back down the ladder into his room, although from the twisted and bunched up covers it looks like his sleep has been far from restful.
Lifting the tangled covers as best he can, Jack gets into bed. At somewhere between a single and a double it's rather cramped, and Jack has to spoon against his partner to comfortably fit. As he does, Ianto mumbles something about Jack's knees being cold without really waking, then settles back against him.
Part two