Fic: A Dirty Great Monster
Title: A Dirty Great Monster
Author: definehome
Recipient: thefannishwaldo
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys (implication)
Summary: There’s a dirty great monster, in this house; We pretend it’s not there
Rating: R (sex and some violence)
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the pretty boys.
Warnings: none really
Word Count: approx 5000
Betas: Anonymous
A Dirty Great Monster
There’s a dirty great monster, in this house
We pretend it’s not there
And there’s no escape, from its grip
But nobody seems to care
There was a ferret staring at Ianto from the desk of the Tourist Office. Ianto had unlocked the fairly grey morning and startled the sleek ball of short black fur from the impromptu nest it had scavenged and filled with a CD jewel case, a shiny bell, six Styrofoam peanuts, and shredded epitaphs to the wonders of Wales.
There was a note from Gwen scrawled on a yellow sticky-note and stuck to the computer monitor. Ianto read it from a distance. Though small, the animal had sharp teeth.
And so went the tale, according to Gwen. It had been injured in the middle of a fight that had erupted at a pub she and Rhys frequented. She’d have taken it home, but Rhys was allergic, and did Ianto think Owen might take a look to see if there was anything that could be done?
Ianto gazed at the small creature for a moment then rolled his eyes to the ceiling and took a long, deep breath. Her gift is her humanity. Right.
He scavenged a medium cardboard box from the back room and coaxed it inside, took one last look at the mess the animal created in the space of one unsupervised evening, and then took the box and Gwen’s note down to Owen’s autopsy bay.
Transfer of responsibility completed, Ianto counted the stairs up to the coffee machine, and pulled two long shots of espresso into small demitasses, one for Ianto and one for Jack. Then he moved off to find Jack, in hopes of sharing a relaxed moment.
Except that Jack wasn’t in his office. Ianto paused in the doorway of the darkened alcove. There was no hint that Jack had been up yet this morning, but the papers of yesterdays unfinished report lay half completed and strewn across a messy desk. Jack s coat hung on the coat rack, and his boots sat on the ground next to the hatch to his room below. A quick peek down showed Jack’s form prone on his cot, his chest rising and falling rhythmically.
The room felt dark, and very empty, but if Jack had managed solid sleep, then he should probably be left to rest. Ianto carefully placed Jack s cup on his desk, straightened the desk into some semblance of order, and left to enjoy the relative quiet of an empty Hub, before the storms of the new day began.
*************************
Owen took one look at the ferret and released it on its own recognisance. The timing could have been better, as it was right in the middle of the morning briefing, during Toshiko’s presentation on Gemini cluster language roots. She trailed off as the animal weaved between her legs, chittering happily, before it jumped sideways and scampered off.
“As I was saying...” Tosh looked up and Ianto saw her expression change as she realized that the three sets of eyes in the room were intently focussed on the capering animal, with no interest in her own pet project. She changed her tack, plunging towards the finish without any of the intervening explanation. “The point is that this should allow us to develop translations in a matter of seconds. That’s it.”
“Alright,” Gwen clapped, looking more alive than she had in the last fifteen minutes. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, Gwen,” Owen groused. “Do remember we aren’t an animal shelter. There’s nothing wrong with your stray.” Tosh and Gwen began to leave, a little sluggishly because there was no one to actually dismiss the meeting. “And just so everyone’s clear, it’s a human medical license I’ve got. I’m not a vet.”
“Between blowfish and space whales, you can’t mind the variation too much, now can you?” Gwen replied sweetly. “It’s not even alien.”
Tosh snorted and over her shoulder Ianto could see her pull up a rodent illustration on her handheld. She opened her mouth to say something, but glanced up at the slides from her unfinished presentation, and cleared the screen.
After Owen, Tosh and Gwen filed out, Ianto cleared the detritus from the conference room, including Jack's untouched mug.
*************************
The hallways of the lower level always seemed dark and slightly forbidding. One overhead fixture provided only flickering light, and as Ianto made his way back from tending to the Weevil occupants of the lower cells, he noted it. He would probably have to sand down the contacts to get it to work properly, or maybe he’d replace the setting altogether. Ianto approached the door that provided a second entrance to Jack's bunk and considered checking on the Captain. His hand paused inches from pushing into the room and then pulled back.
He would give Jack until noon - and if there wasn’t an appearance by then, Ianto would check on him. For now Jack deserved rest. Ianto glanced back up at the ominously flickering bulb. And he’d fix that next.
Lunch came and went and Ianto and Gwen managed to convince a pair of teenaged Camelids that Earth was probably not the safest place to be away from home for the first time. Ianto recommended a couple of tour groups that tended to safely blend into local customs, and suggested they get back to their parents. And to be sure to avoid American airspace.
*************************
Rhys came to collect Gwen promptly at half five. The bell above the door chimed, and both Ianto and the ferret looked up from the magazine Ianto had been perusing.
“So your man’s a ferret now is he?” Rhys joked, but Ianto failed to smile.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Ianto was faintly annoyed by Rhys’ presence for no reason he could actually articulate. It wasn’t as if Rhys was destroying the facade of a tourist office by visiting it. “Gwen will be up to the car park shortly.”
“What’s it harming now? There’s no one here but us boys,” Rhys smiled. Reaching over he punched Ianto lightly on the shoulder.
Ianto twisted a little to avoid the punch, then moved slowly back into place. “And if someone were to observe you?” Ianto asked, tilting his head a little to the side. Even he didn’t believe his excuse.
“They might think you and I were having a go at it.” Rhys replied, winking. Then he reached out and twisted Ianto’s monitor around, so that he could glimpse Gwen frantically picking up her bits to go home. “Where’s the boss then? I don’t see him around anyplace.”
“I’m sorry.” Ianto firmly turned the computer back to its accustomed position and frowned, confusion and a strange sense of loss coloring his features. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fine, whatever.” Rhys shrugged. “I guess you two aren’t joined at the hip after all, are you? Tell Gwen I’ll meet her on the Plas.”
*************************
There is a man following him. Dark and tall with a smile wider than the Atlantic and a laugh that rings dark and sad through his dreams. He isn’t supposed to be, but he stands in the flickers of firelight or the drifting smoke, or the empty motorway, or the silent quay, too real and too loud. He fills up Ianto’s head, and pushes out the lonely echoes.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Ianto says, finally. Or maybe he thinks it, but it’s cohesive, a full thought in the scattered images of his unconscious mind.
“And why is that?” The dark man laughs in a familiar tenor. “Are you telling me that I don’t normally fill your dreams?”
Ianto skitters away from recognition as he flits back to fire and smoke, desperation and longing. But he’s followed.
“Is this your dream?” The man beside him muses. “Or mine?” He reaches out a hand to Ianto, offering something, but Ianto hesitates, trying to pull context back into place and separate help from harm. But there’s too much in the smile, and so they’re connected and Ianto is pulled from the flames into warmth. As lips touch, and eager hands find familiar purchase a single word fights through the fog and parts mists of memory, and for a clear and panicked moment Ianto remembers what he’s missing.
“Jack.”
*************************
Do you ever wonder, about the days
When we were straight
But daddy got the hunger
So much to hide, we learn to lie
Ianto woke alone in his flat, with the memory of a name on his lips, but as he reached for it, it was gone.
The ferret had made a nest for itself in the protective cabling beneath Tosh’s workstation, safe from Mywfany’s attacks, which were only half playful. Ianto judged that, short of Tosh’s hardware requiring massive rewiring, it was probably a good home for the displaced animal. While the ferret clucked in displeasure, Ianto examined the nest. He left most of the scavenged material in place, but he retrieved from the detritus a few needful objects and a palm sized artifact of burnished silver that Ianto had thought was safely archived. Owen. Owen had been asking about it; he must have gotten impatient and removed it himself, then left it lying around. There would need to be more words on the importance of safe storage at some point, and maybe a change in access codes.
Ianto paused for a moment, considering, and then stood straight. Maybe he should change the archive codes right away.
************************* “I wasn’t implying anything!” Ianto had barely gotten the fourth and final coffee to its owner when Gwen started in on Owen about sensitivity.
“You bloody well were.” Gwen pointed her finger and stood to get some height on Owen. “And I’ll have you know that even Rhys could...”
“Even Rhys,“ Owen mimicked, high pitched and awful. “If you think so little of the dumb ox why are you marrying him?” Tosh looked from one to another, eyes wide, with a worried frown on her face.
“Because I love him, Owen,” Gwen stormed, heading towards the exit. “Not that you would know anything about that.” As she reached the lintel she turned, and surveyed the room.
“And don’t think I don’t know what you’re saying behind my back.” Gwen added, then her gaze turned inward a little.
“What are you talking about?” Toshiko asked, her quiet calm cutting through Owen's scowl and Gwen’s storm.
“Andy called this morning. I’m going to go see if it’s something.” Gwen turned as quickly as she had changed the subject, and clicked off down the hallway. “I’ll be on my comm.”
*************************
The CCTV showed violent images of mayhem and gore in the cells. He’d grouped the current crop of weevils somewhat, allowed them a bit of company, and normally they seemed to get some solace from that, playing and touching in ways that could have been comforting. Now, however, they seemed to object to the companionship, and there were multiple altercations that seemed to have been going on for a while.
Ianto hit a few buttons from his workstation, and released a sedative into the air in the vaults. Then he grabbed a mask from the equipment locker and headed off to begin the task of separating the combatants.
As he was about to cross the threshold from the main hub to the hallway and stairs to the lower level, Ianto paused in sudden apprehension. He glanced over his shoulder, and scanned the room behind him. Owen was puttering about with some program or, more probably, computer game; Tosh was definitely working at some sort of research and Gwen was still out chasing ghosts and rumours. The ferret stood under Tosh's desk, frozen and alert, and looking directly at Ianto. Their eyes met for a moment, and Ianto thought he saw a flash of silver and gold, before he turned back to the flickering light of the stairway.
When he reached the base of the steps, Ianto noticed a door in the wall. Something about the way green light scattered dully off the rough surface poked at a weary corner of his mind. He reached his hand out to push it open, trying at the same time to remember a time when he knew what lay beyond the metal barrier.
The overhead light flickered one last time and died, casting his world into darkness. Ianto started and glanced upwards, blinded while his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. He considered heading back to grab a torch, but a puddle of illumination suggested that the lights worked only a couple of hundred meters ahead. Ianto squared his shoulders and strode in the direction of his business,his footfalls echoing dangerously off the silent bricks of the underground prison.
*************************
Ianto emerged into the harsh light of the hub to the image of Gwen holding a full grown mallard and striding purposefully towards the interrogation rooms. Ianto blinked, and then looked up at Tosh, who was following behind with a cardboard box.
“Owen says they are perfectly terrestrial, Gwen," Tosh called out. As she passed Ianto, she shook her, head and rolled her eyes a little. Ianto peered into the box, and saw a collection of fuzzy ducklings, squawking and jostling each other.
Ianto moved to the observation window and watched as Gwen placed the duck on the table and proceeded to interrogate it. The entire process was extremely one sided. None of Tosh’s translation algorithms,nor any of devices nominally tagged as translation tools, produced anything more than a quack or, more spectacularly, a quack convolved with a chirp.
“What made her so sure these were aliens?” Tosh asked Owen, as the three of them stood watching Gwen through the mirror.
“I’ll be arsed if I know.” Owen shook is head. “When she came in she was babbling about temporal anomalies and concentric circles, but none of the rift readings correlate to... well anything. If you ask me the bird's cuckoo.”
“We didn’t ask you,” Ianto snapped. Owen huffed, but retreated back to his work station. Ianto decided to put an end to this.
“Gwen,” Ianto spoke through the comms. “Can I speak to you a moment?”
Gwen jogged up the stairs and poked her head out the door. “Yes, what is it?”
“Tosh is going to tag and release them now. “ Tosh looked startled, and then nodded in agreement.
“But I’m not finished yet,” Gwen protested, closing the interrogation room door and standing with her back to it. She looked from Ianto to Tosh and then back.
“We’ll be able to keep a close eye on them, Gwen, and their actions might give us a clue towards their intentions.”
“So you believe me then,” Gwen questioned, eyeing Ianto. He nodded solemnly.
“Absolutely,” Ianto lied. He could see Tosh’s chest tighten, as if she were holding in a giggle, but if Gwen noticed, she gave no sign.
“Fine then, keep me posted.” Gwen held Ianto’s gaze for a long moment. “And don’t hold me responsible if the city's bird population becomes homicidal.” Before Ianto could ask what she meant by that, Gwen had brushed past Ianto and disappeared.
*************************
“Ianto,” Tosh called softly, as Ianto was handing out a round of drinks, probably the last for the day.
“Yes?” Ianto passed Tosh a mug, which she set down carefully on her workstation. From where he stood he could see the empath sub-file open on one of the windows, but not the species or region she was researching.
“I can’t seem to access the general archives, have we been locked out?” As Ianto came around, a few quick keystrokes changed the display on Tosh’s monitors to an eerie swirling light pattern.
“No, I changed the codes this morning,” Ianto told her carefully. “Somehow our friend here had managed to ferret out an item. I can get you anything you need.” Tosh brought her coffee to her nose slowly, as if with some trepidation, and inhaled.
“I’d rather just have the numbers, if you don’t mind.” Tosh turned her head a little, and looked at Ianto out of the corner of her eye while pretending to examine her drink.
“I’ll set you up tomorrow,” Ianto lied sincerely and moved off before she could ask him to do it immediately.
As he shut the hub down for the night, Ianto checked the system access logs and compiler records. Entries from Toshiko’s workstation had been wiped for the entire afternoon.
*************************
There is a dark haired man with a harsh American accent standing over another male, the second one much more effeminately dressed. There’s a hint of old cigar smoke hiding somewhere in someone’s mind, but if Ianto focuses on the sensation, then all he can smell is sweat.
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all, Jack."
“That’s just your way of telling me you aren’t leaving,” the man in the greatcoat replies darkly.
“Jack?” Ianto asks. The dark haired man turns around, his smile absorbing all the light the room and reemitting it, coherent, and focused at Ianto. Ianto is blind to everything except the stars in Jack’s eyes.
“I know this one is mine,” Jack states with an air of authority.
“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world,” the man on the settee observed.
“What’s going on?” Ianto asks, and his vision expands once again. The man on the couch is half dressed and lazily stroking an erection. It’s indecent to watch, but it would be rude to leave; after all, he is a guest.
“They will come for him tomorrow,“ Jack whispers, too loud, his warm breath licking his skin and leaving behind curling fractals of sensation. “He’ll spend two years in prison for indecency, and then die not long after getting out.”
“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.” Ianto is less than reassured.
Jack slides in behind Ianto, pressing against the flannel of Ianto’s pyjama pants, and tries to guide their steps towards the couch. But each movement seems to draw them farther away, until they are looking at the lonely figure from across a hallway patterned with tiles like a sea of stars.
“This can’t be my dream,” Jack comments, smiling and amused as he turns Ianto in so that Jacks face becomes the world. “I’d never shy from a threesome, but you want me all to yourself.”
Ianto lifts his face and presses in, drinking the contact as a man long denied. A hard body presses Ianto back against a wall that could have just formed. Strong hands encircle his wrists and pin his arms to the wall and the world is filled with Jack’s scent and Jack’s taste and Ianto groans into Jack’s mouth.
“I've missed this. G-d, I've missed this." Jack pulls back, hard, and Ianto’s sight goes black.
“Where am I?” He can still feel Jack's hands trapping him, holding him, but the voice sounds lost, and a little scared. “Ianto, where?” Fingers of grey light slash into the blackness, and the pressure is gone, the comfort and scent of another body following the fading memory of something misplaced.
************************* So watch yourself, in the hall Where you’re not supposed to know Cuz we’re all afraid of each others We’re the victims in this show
The rain filled Ianto’s mind as he entered the tourist office. It came down hard and fast and beat a tempo that played counterpoint to the pounding in his head, rising in frequency as it intensified, until it drowned out the hum of the machinery. Eventually the cacophony faded as Ianto descended to the hub and left the surface and the street behind him, but the impressions of melancholy remained.
He was searching. Ianto wandered through the hub, straightening it and preparing for the day, setting the coffee to drip, drawing himself an espresso, and searching. The ferret chattered and wove between his feet, daring Ianto to chase it and inviting him to play. Through a pane of glass clouded with age and dust and writing, Ianto’s eyes fell on a small espresso cup, sitting improbably on an otherwise tidy wooden desk. He should clean that up. After he found what he was looking for.
************************* There was a dead Weevil in the cells. Ianto saw it from the CCTV, but there was something dark lurking in the shadows of the vaults, and he resolved to wait until he had back-up before venturing in to clean up the corpse.
Either Owen or Gwen could have served as that back up, but within fifteen minutes of arriving Owen was holding a gun to Gwen’s head. Toshiko managed to talk him down, but Gwen was delivered to Rhys for safe keeping, and Owen was sent home, with strict orders to remain inside.
Tosh didn’t say a word all day after that. She sat at her computer working furiously, and started nervously when Ianto came by with a coffee, or a file, but not the pass codes to the archives. When she left in the evening to check on Owen, her logs had been deleted and her workstation was locked behind a new set of security procedures.
Ianto closed up the hub for the night, and wondered if anyone had remembered to check on the released ducklings.
*************************
There is a man in a dark greatcoat standing in a puddle of moonlight. His teeth glint sharply, and in his eyes Ianto can see both life and death dancing uneasily.
In two swift steps the man closes the distance between them. His hands are sure and steady, and he catches Ianto’s mouth with his as he slowly strips away the layers.
“Who am I?” He asks, his tongue caressing the shell of Ianto’s ear. “Tell me, who do you think I am?”
“G-d,” Ianto breathes, but doesn’t mean that as an answer, searching to feel, straining to touch, as clever hands find his belt buckle, and unzip him from his trousers.
Ianto reaches out to strip the coat from the man, to even the score, just a little, but he bats Ianto’s hands away, and takes a step back.
“No, remember. Remember this.” The man pushes, and Ianto falls, hard on a bed, a cot, that has formed behind him. The man smiles, and spins, and his coat swirls out and tumbles behind him, heavy and majestic.
“Jack.....” Ianto gasps, gaping up at the man towering above him.
“Yes...” Jack hisses, shedding the coat and his shirt in messy haste.
“Love the coat,” Ianto says weakly, as Jack straddles him, still not letting him touch.
Jack laughs, his grin wide and real, and reaching his eyes, and the world spins a little faster as Jack leans down and takes a kiss, hard. His lips part and Jack presses forward, tasting of missed coffees and too much sugar.
Ianto tries to draw Jack in closer, harder, to force them tighter so that they fuse into a single being, but Jack catches his wrists, and presses them in to the mattress, above his head. He holds them there a moment and looks at Ianto, all traces of levity gone.
Stay.
Ianto isn’t sure if it is spoken, but the command is unmistakable, and Ianto doesn’t move his hands. Won't move them. Ever.
Then Jack is back to teasing. His lips trace intricate patters on the flat of Ianto’s chest, before he gathers the flesh of the nipples between his index finger and thumb and presses down, hard enough to make Ianto arch and buck. Ianto is caught, trapped, between Jack, pinning his thighs from below, and the command, binding his wrists above.
“Where am I, Ianto? “ Jack’s question demands a response. “Why am I here? Why are we here and not.... there?” Then Jack slips down, his mouth finding first one soft sac, then another, as his finger caresses the weeping head.
Jack pulls back and asks again. “Where am I?” Ianto pushes back up, and tries to follow the stimulation, but Jack is insistent. “Ianto?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t....” Ianto repeats himself, over again, trying to make it true, or trying to find some remembrance to offer, something to make this real, and make it stay. “Jack”
“Try.” Jack deliberately spreads Ianto’s legs. The prep is quick and cursory, but for here and now it’s more than enough, and Jack slides in with none of the burning Ianto remembers, really does remember, and all of the relief he craves.
Ianto’s hands pull into tight fists, fingernails biting into his palms with the effort not to move them, and Jack takes pity, reaching down to pull him off in time to the thrusts.
“Find me, Ianto. Wake me.” Jack orders, as the light builds and the darkness shatters, and the whirling partners dancing in Jack s eyes break into pieces and fall out of step.
Find me. Wake me.
*************************
Well do you ever wonder, about the days
When we were straight
But daddy got the hunger
Too much to hide, we learn to lie
Silently outnumbered, we make mistakes
When we were straight
Now we’re all going under
Ianto woke with Jack's name on his lips, and memories burned into his palms as crescent moons of broken skin, and he wasn’t going to forget. Not this time.
Refusing distraction, and holding tight to a single purpose, Ianto found a pen and paper, and proceeded to write himself notes, identical and direct, and placed where he couldn’t fail to notice them, including in permanent ink, on the back of his hand.
“Wake Jack.”
*************************
When he arrived at the hub, there was an e-mail waiting for him.
Ianto,
I’m not coming in today. I’ve told Owen and Gwen to stay away, so you should be safe. Please retrieve the item from drawer 01-669, and get the hell out.
Tosh
Ianto frowned. Drawer 01-669, that was... locked behind the general archive password. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember the specific contents, but he’d find out sooner or later. Tosh hadn’t thought to provide an archive number for the item she wanted, and that was annoying, but she must have thought it was obvious. Well if it was really important she would have retrieved it herself. He had other things to do with his morning.
Ianto finished tidying up; he fed the ferret. He went to make coffee before remembering that the rest of the team wasn’t going to be in today.
Ianto’s hand went into his pocket, and found a folded slip of paper, one that he dimly remembered writing that morning. He touched the edge of the paper, and could almost touch the remembrance of some that once had felt deadly important. He unfolded the paper and read the message.
“Wake Jack.”
Suddenly the ferret was at his feet, trying to play, and chittering insistently. Ianto stepped carefully around it, and headed to the archives. Maybe it was time to fetch that thing for Tosh.
*************************
Ianto keyed the password into the door guarding the way to the basement. He could remember a time when it hadn’t been code-protected, but somehow it had seemed deathly important to keep people out. It was dangerous down there.
The door swung open into darkness, and Ianto edged down nervously, grasping a torch in hands that most certainly were not shaking. Something was moving in the darkness.
The beam of light cleared a narrow path along the hallway, and eventually ended in a pool of light from what might have been the only working fixture on this level. Sighing in relief, Ianto switched off his torch and pushed into the room. The sooner he got the item, the sooner he could go home.
There was only one thing in drawer 01-669, a burnished silver device. It looked like nothing more than a paperweight or some sort of modern desk-art. Ianto shook his head, momentarily considering the form of his revenge if Tosh simply wanted this for aesthetic purposes.
Ianto set his shoulders and took a deep breath, bracing himself for the return trip. Then he pushed back out in to what might as well have been a black abyss.
There really was a monster there, prowling in the solid shadows. Ianto could feel its eyes on him, feel it following. He swung the torch left and right, darting quickly in a circle, but never catching more than a fleeting glimpse of movement, until he reached the stairs. Twenty-two steps to safety, and the mechanical daylight of his working world. Twenty-two steps left, but he didn’t take one. Instead, he glanced down at the device he was holding and his eyes fell on the black print on the back of his hand.
“Wake Jack."
His gaze swung right, followed by the torchlight- and then he could see, and really remember, a heavy metal door, a door that he had to open, a door that he had to get through.
And there, right in front, where he could smell its breath, was a weevil, crouched and weaving, but standing solidly in his path.
Ianto froze. The weevil lifted its snout, and sniffed at the stale air of the tunnel. Ianto took a few steps back, never breaking eye contact, and positioned himself, left foot forward, angled slightly towards the weevil, and away from the wall. He didn’t have to beat it. Just get by it.
The weevil charged, standing straight, and almost galloping with its uneven gait. Ianto prayed there would be enough momentum, as he turned, letting the weevil just brush by, his right hand sweeping down over the head, urging the weevil forward, as his left hand swept under forcing its legs out, timed with a twist of the hips to send the body flying. The weevil went sprawling, its predatory charge converted into an out-of-control tumble with the application of a little force.
Ianto didn’t pause to gloat, or to watch the weevil pick itself up and resume its attack. He fled, throwing the door open without a single thought and barricading himself behind it.
*************************
The room was stale, like a locker room, empty and rarely cleaned. It was too warm, and too dusty, and it smelled sharply of sweat and dirt. Ianto could hear the hum of equipment from the hub, louder here than it had been in the hall, as well as the slow, steady intake and exhalation of breath.
“Wake Jack.”
Ianto's fingers fumbled along the wall on either side of the door, and eventually they caught on something, a switch. A moment later the room was bathed in an ugly dim light, from a greyed over fixture in the ceiling. But it was something, and Ianto flicked off his torch.
The room was cramped, and someone had shoved a dresser and a wardrobe in next to some rusting pipes and a beat up wooden desk and a cot. The surfaces were bare, except for a fine coating of dust, and there was no clue as to the occupant of this room, except for the man himself.
Stretched out on the cot in a white t-shirt and boxers, the dark haired man, lay, undisturbed by the light or the noise or the movement around him. Jack's legs were tangled in amongst the blankets, as if something about his rest had been less than peaceful. But he was serene now. His face tilted to one side, and pillowed in the crook of one arm, while the other lay across his midriff.
Ianto padded over to the camp bed and sat down gently on the edge. This was -- quite literally -- the man of his dreams. He could remember the lips, pressing him hard into a wall of blackness, and tearing the breath from his soul. He could feel the hands, the chest, and as he gently traced the eyes lidded and sealed with dark lashes, he remembered the pain and sorrow in the ice-blue gaze, and it was almost enough for Ianto to leave. To grant this beautiful man the respite that came with sleep.
But they needed him.
“Wake Jack”
Ianto leaned over, and brushed his lips over Jack's, tasted the salt and dried tears, before closing his eyes and pressing just a little bit harder.
A hand caught Ianto just behind the head, and Ianto’s eyes startled open, into bright twinkling skies surrounding deep black pools. Jack pulled away, and Ianto was swallowed by the smile that was revealed.
That expression died slowly as both men registered a frantic scrabbling in the ceiling. The hatchway was pushed aside by a ferret that was no longer playful and chittering, but solemn and surprisingly strong.
Jacks grin came back, but this time it was a feral one, and there was no warmth in his gaze.
Jack held out his hand, expecting something, and Ianto realized that he was still holding the artifact Tosh had requested. Ianto placed it hesitantly in Jacks waiting palm, and glanced nervously from Jack's face to the ferret and back.
Jacks fingers closed on the device, and he rolled it between his palms. The ferret froze, and from the distance Ianto was standing at, he couldn’t have sworn that the animal was breathing.
“I only want to live." A voice emerged from the device, strong and deep, with just the hint of an emotional warble at the end.
“Bullshit. You had food, and safety and a means of communication. The games you played with my team, with the weevils, that was sport and nothing more.” Jack was hard, and he spat the words.
“It’s how I survive,” and the tone was different this time. It was searching for something, anything to reach Jack.
“Not enough. You knew your games wouldn’t work on me. So instead of trying to communicate, asking for help, you put me to sleep, you kept me out of the way. I could have helped you.” Jack was still rolling the device between his hands.
“Would you have?”
“You didn’t ask, and now? Now, I know what you are, and I might forgive but I don’t forget.” Ianto shuddered at the chill in Jack's voice, and the memory of that venom, directed at him not too long ago.
Jack dropped the device, and burst forward; he was halfway up the ladder and back down, the struggling ferret in his tight grip, before Ianto could process that he had moved.
With quick practiced hands, Jack snapped the creature’s neck. The aggression, anger, suspicion, paranoia, and fear that had filtered in over days, somehow unnoticed, and had filled the darkened corners of Ianto’s mind dissipated in the brilliant sunrise of clarity.
“Ianto,” Jack called, bringing Ianto back to attention. Jack nodded towards the still corpse. “Store him on ice, and call the team back in - I want a debrief in forty-five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Three hours later all the apologies had been made (both to each other and the wayward family of ducks); the cells had been cleaned of weevil bodies; the escaped weevil had been re-impounded and strict policies had been enacted regarding the vetting of pets in the hub. Ianto pulled Jack close, and pressed in tightly, actually feeling the warmth of skin against his cheek and hands tight to his back.
Ianto may never be the one to slay the dragon, marry Prince Charming, or live in an enchanted castle, but he had woken the dark knight with a kiss, and he was satisfied with the happily ever after of right now.
Author: definehome
Recipient: thefannishwaldo
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Gwen/Rhys (implication)
Summary: There’s a dirty great monster, in this house; We pretend it’s not there
Rating: R (sex and some violence)
Disclaimer: I don’t own any of the pretty boys.
Warnings: none really
Word Count: approx 5000
Betas: Anonymous
A Dirty Great Monster
There’s a dirty great monster, in this house
We pretend it’s not there
And there’s no escape, from its grip
But nobody seems to care
There was a ferret staring at Ianto from the desk of the Tourist Office. Ianto had unlocked the fairly grey morning and startled the sleek ball of short black fur from the impromptu nest it had scavenged and filled with a CD jewel case, a shiny bell, six Styrofoam peanuts, and shredded epitaphs to the wonders of Wales.
There was a note from Gwen scrawled on a yellow sticky-note and stuck to the computer monitor. Ianto read it from a distance. Though small, the animal had sharp teeth.
And so went the tale, according to Gwen. It had been injured in the middle of a fight that had erupted at a pub she and Rhys frequented. She’d have taken it home, but Rhys was allergic, and did Ianto think Owen might take a look to see if there was anything that could be done?
Ianto gazed at the small creature for a moment then rolled his eyes to the ceiling and took a long, deep breath. Her gift is her humanity. Right.
He scavenged a medium cardboard box from the back room and coaxed it inside, took one last look at the mess the animal created in the space of one unsupervised evening, and then took the box and Gwen’s note down to Owen’s autopsy bay.
Transfer of responsibility completed, Ianto counted the stairs up to the coffee machine, and pulled two long shots of espresso into small demitasses, one for Ianto and one for Jack. Then he moved off to find Jack, in hopes of sharing a relaxed moment.
Except that Jack wasn’t in his office. Ianto paused in the doorway of the darkened alcove. There was no hint that Jack had been up yet this morning, but the papers of yesterdays unfinished report lay half completed and strewn across a messy desk. Jack s coat hung on the coat rack, and his boots sat on the ground next to the hatch to his room below. A quick peek down showed Jack’s form prone on his cot, his chest rising and falling rhythmically.
The room felt dark, and very empty, but if Jack had managed solid sleep, then he should probably be left to rest. Ianto carefully placed Jack s cup on his desk, straightened the desk into some semblance of order, and left to enjoy the relative quiet of an empty Hub, before the storms of the new day began.
*************************
Owen took one look at the ferret and released it on its own recognisance. The timing could have been better, as it was right in the middle of the morning briefing, during Toshiko’s presentation on Gemini cluster language roots. She trailed off as the animal weaved between her legs, chittering happily, before it jumped sideways and scampered off.
“As I was saying...” Tosh looked up and Ianto saw her expression change as she realized that the three sets of eyes in the room were intently focussed on the capering animal, with no interest in her own pet project. She changed her tack, plunging towards the finish without any of the intervening explanation. “The point is that this should allow us to develop translations in a matter of seconds. That’s it.”
“Alright,” Gwen clapped, looking more alive than she had in the last fifteen minutes. “Anything else?”
“Yeah, Gwen,” Owen groused. “Do remember we aren’t an animal shelter. There’s nothing wrong with your stray.” Tosh and Gwen began to leave, a little sluggishly because there was no one to actually dismiss the meeting. “And just so everyone’s clear, it’s a human medical license I’ve got. I’m not a vet.”
“Between blowfish and space whales, you can’t mind the variation too much, now can you?” Gwen replied sweetly. “It’s not even alien.”
Tosh snorted and over her shoulder Ianto could see her pull up a rodent illustration on her handheld. She opened her mouth to say something, but glanced up at the slides from her unfinished presentation, and cleared the screen.
After Owen, Tosh and Gwen filed out, Ianto cleared the detritus from the conference room, including Jack's untouched mug.
*************************
The hallways of the lower level always seemed dark and slightly forbidding. One overhead fixture provided only flickering light, and as Ianto made his way back from tending to the Weevil occupants of the lower cells, he noted it. He would probably have to sand down the contacts to get it to work properly, or maybe he’d replace the setting altogether. Ianto approached the door that provided a second entrance to Jack's bunk and considered checking on the Captain. His hand paused inches from pushing into the room and then pulled back.
He would give Jack until noon - and if there wasn’t an appearance by then, Ianto would check on him. For now Jack deserved rest. Ianto glanced back up at the ominously flickering bulb. And he’d fix that next.
Lunch came and went and Ianto and Gwen managed to convince a pair of teenaged Camelids that Earth was probably not the safest place to be away from home for the first time. Ianto recommended a couple of tour groups that tended to safely blend into local customs, and suggested they get back to their parents. And to be sure to avoid American airspace.
*************************
Rhys came to collect Gwen promptly at half five. The bell above the door chimed, and both Ianto and the ferret looked up from the magazine Ianto had been perusing.
“So your man’s a ferret now is he?” Rhys joked, but Ianto failed to smile.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Ianto was faintly annoyed by Rhys’ presence for no reason he could actually articulate. It wasn’t as if Rhys was destroying the facade of a tourist office by visiting it. “Gwen will be up to the car park shortly.”
“What’s it harming now? There’s no one here but us boys,” Rhys smiled. Reaching over he punched Ianto lightly on the shoulder.
Ianto twisted a little to avoid the punch, then moved slowly back into place. “And if someone were to observe you?” Ianto asked, tilting his head a little to the side. Even he didn’t believe his excuse.
“They might think you and I were having a go at it.” Rhys replied, winking. Then he reached out and twisted Ianto’s monitor around, so that he could glimpse Gwen frantically picking up her bits to go home. “Where’s the boss then? I don’t see him around anyplace.”
“I’m sorry.” Ianto firmly turned the computer back to its accustomed position and frowned, confusion and a strange sense of loss coloring his features. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Fine, whatever.” Rhys shrugged. “I guess you two aren’t joined at the hip after all, are you? Tell Gwen I’ll meet her on the Plas.”
*************************
There is a man following him. Dark and tall with a smile wider than the Atlantic and a laugh that rings dark and sad through his dreams. He isn’t supposed to be, but he stands in the flickers of firelight or the drifting smoke, or the empty motorway, or the silent quay, too real and too loud. He fills up Ianto’s head, and pushes out the lonely echoes.
“You shouldn’t be here.” Ianto says, finally. Or maybe he thinks it, but it’s cohesive, a full thought in the scattered images of his unconscious mind.
“And why is that?” The dark man laughs in a familiar tenor. “Are you telling me that I don’t normally fill your dreams?”
Ianto skitters away from recognition as he flits back to fire and smoke, desperation and longing. But he’s followed.
“Is this your dream?” The man beside him muses. “Or mine?” He reaches out a hand to Ianto, offering something, but Ianto hesitates, trying to pull context back into place and separate help from harm. But there’s too much in the smile, and so they’re connected and Ianto is pulled from the flames into warmth. As lips touch, and eager hands find familiar purchase a single word fights through the fog and parts mists of memory, and for a clear and panicked moment Ianto remembers what he’s missing.
“Jack.”
*************************
Do you ever wonder, about the days
When we were straight
But daddy got the hunger
So much to hide, we learn to lie
Ianto woke alone in his flat, with the memory of a name on his lips, but as he reached for it, it was gone.
The ferret had made a nest for itself in the protective cabling beneath Tosh’s workstation, safe from Mywfany’s attacks, which were only half playful. Ianto judged that, short of Tosh’s hardware requiring massive rewiring, it was probably a good home for the displaced animal. While the ferret clucked in displeasure, Ianto examined the nest. He left most of the scavenged material in place, but he retrieved from the detritus a few needful objects and a palm sized artifact of burnished silver that Ianto had thought was safely archived. Owen. Owen had been asking about it; he must have gotten impatient and removed it himself, then left it lying around. There would need to be more words on the importance of safe storage at some point, and maybe a change in access codes.
Ianto paused for a moment, considering, and then stood straight. Maybe he should change the archive codes right away.
************************* “I wasn’t implying anything!” Ianto had barely gotten the fourth and final coffee to its owner when Gwen started in on Owen about sensitivity.
“You bloody well were.” Gwen pointed her finger and stood to get some height on Owen. “And I’ll have you know that even Rhys could...”
“Even Rhys,“ Owen mimicked, high pitched and awful. “If you think so little of the dumb ox why are you marrying him?” Tosh looked from one to another, eyes wide, with a worried frown on her face.
“Because I love him, Owen,” Gwen stormed, heading towards the exit. “Not that you would know anything about that.” As she reached the lintel she turned, and surveyed the room.
“And don’t think I don’t know what you’re saying behind my back.” Gwen added, then her gaze turned inward a little.
“What are you talking about?” Toshiko asked, her quiet calm cutting through Owen's scowl and Gwen’s storm.
“Andy called this morning. I’m going to go see if it’s something.” Gwen turned as quickly as she had changed the subject, and clicked off down the hallway. “I’ll be on my comm.”
*************************
The CCTV showed violent images of mayhem and gore in the cells. He’d grouped the current crop of weevils somewhat, allowed them a bit of company, and normally they seemed to get some solace from that, playing and touching in ways that could have been comforting. Now, however, they seemed to object to the companionship, and there were multiple altercations that seemed to have been going on for a while.
Ianto hit a few buttons from his workstation, and released a sedative into the air in the vaults. Then he grabbed a mask from the equipment locker and headed off to begin the task of separating the combatants.
As he was about to cross the threshold from the main hub to the hallway and stairs to the lower level, Ianto paused in sudden apprehension. He glanced over his shoulder, and scanned the room behind him. Owen was puttering about with some program or, more probably, computer game; Tosh was definitely working at some sort of research and Gwen was still out chasing ghosts and rumours. The ferret stood under Tosh's desk, frozen and alert, and looking directly at Ianto. Their eyes met for a moment, and Ianto thought he saw a flash of silver and gold, before he turned back to the flickering light of the stairway.
When he reached the base of the steps, Ianto noticed a door in the wall. Something about the way green light scattered dully off the rough surface poked at a weary corner of his mind. He reached his hand out to push it open, trying at the same time to remember a time when he knew what lay beyond the metal barrier.
The overhead light flickered one last time and died, casting his world into darkness. Ianto started and glanced upwards, blinded while his eyes adjusted to the lack of light. He considered heading back to grab a torch, but a puddle of illumination suggested that the lights worked only a couple of hundred meters ahead. Ianto squared his shoulders and strode in the direction of his business,his footfalls echoing dangerously off the silent bricks of the underground prison.
*************************
Ianto emerged into the harsh light of the hub to the image of Gwen holding a full grown mallard and striding purposefully towards the interrogation rooms. Ianto blinked, and then looked up at Tosh, who was following behind with a cardboard box.
“Owen says they are perfectly terrestrial, Gwen," Tosh called out. As she passed Ianto, she shook her, head and rolled her eyes a little. Ianto peered into the box, and saw a collection of fuzzy ducklings, squawking and jostling each other.
Ianto moved to the observation window and watched as Gwen placed the duck on the table and proceeded to interrogate it. The entire process was extremely one sided. None of Tosh’s translation algorithms,nor any of devices nominally tagged as translation tools, produced anything more than a quack or, more spectacularly, a quack convolved with a chirp.
“What made her so sure these were aliens?” Tosh asked Owen, as the three of them stood watching Gwen through the mirror.
“I’ll be arsed if I know.” Owen shook is head. “When she came in she was babbling about temporal anomalies and concentric circles, but none of the rift readings correlate to... well anything. If you ask me the bird's cuckoo.”
“We didn’t ask you,” Ianto snapped. Owen huffed, but retreated back to his work station. Ianto decided to put an end to this.
“Gwen,” Ianto spoke through the comms. “Can I speak to you a moment?”
Gwen jogged up the stairs and poked her head out the door. “Yes, what is it?”
“Tosh is going to tag and release them now. “ Tosh looked startled, and then nodded in agreement.
“But I’m not finished yet,” Gwen protested, closing the interrogation room door and standing with her back to it. She looked from Ianto to Tosh and then back.
“We’ll be able to keep a close eye on them, Gwen, and their actions might give us a clue towards their intentions.”
“So you believe me then,” Gwen questioned, eyeing Ianto. He nodded solemnly.
“Absolutely,” Ianto lied. He could see Tosh’s chest tighten, as if she were holding in a giggle, but if Gwen noticed, she gave no sign.
“Fine then, keep me posted.” Gwen held Ianto’s gaze for a long moment. “And don’t hold me responsible if the city's bird population becomes homicidal.” Before Ianto could ask what she meant by that, Gwen had brushed past Ianto and disappeared.
*************************
“Ianto,” Tosh called softly, as Ianto was handing out a round of drinks, probably the last for the day.
“Yes?” Ianto passed Tosh a mug, which she set down carefully on her workstation. From where he stood he could see the empath sub-file open on one of the windows, but not the species or region she was researching.
“I can’t seem to access the general archives, have we been locked out?” As Ianto came around, a few quick keystrokes changed the display on Tosh’s monitors to an eerie swirling light pattern.
“No, I changed the codes this morning,” Ianto told her carefully. “Somehow our friend here had managed to ferret out an item. I can get you anything you need.” Tosh brought her coffee to her nose slowly, as if with some trepidation, and inhaled.
“I’d rather just have the numbers, if you don’t mind.” Tosh turned her head a little, and looked at Ianto out of the corner of her eye while pretending to examine her drink.
“I’ll set you up tomorrow,” Ianto lied sincerely and moved off before she could ask him to do it immediately.
As he shut the hub down for the night, Ianto checked the system access logs and compiler records. Entries from Toshiko’s workstation had been wiped for the entire afternoon.
*************************
There is a dark haired man with a harsh American accent standing over another male, the second one much more effeminately dressed. There’s a hint of old cigar smoke hiding somewhere in someone’s mind, but if Ianto focuses on the sensation, then all he can smell is sweat.
“A man who does not think for himself does not think at all, Jack."
“That’s just your way of telling me you aren’t leaving,” the man in the greatcoat replies darkly.
“Jack?” Ianto asks. The dark haired man turns around, his smile absorbing all the light the room and reemitting it, coherent, and focused at Ianto. Ianto is blind to everything except the stars in Jack’s eyes.
“I know this one is mine,” Jack states with an air of authority.
“A dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world,” the man on the settee observed.
“What’s going on?” Ianto asks, and his vision expands once again. The man on the couch is half dressed and lazily stroking an erection. It’s indecent to watch, but it would be rude to leave; after all, he is a guest.
“They will come for him tomorrow,“ Jack whispers, too loud, his warm breath licking his skin and leaving behind curling fractals of sensation. “He’ll spend two years in prison for indecency, and then die not long after getting out.”
“A poet can survive everything but a misprint.” Ianto is less than reassured.
Jack slides in behind Ianto, pressing against the flannel of Ianto’s pyjama pants, and tries to guide their steps towards the couch. But each movement seems to draw them farther away, until they are looking at the lonely figure from across a hallway patterned with tiles like a sea of stars.
“This can’t be my dream,” Jack comments, smiling and amused as he turns Ianto in so that Jacks face becomes the world. “I’d never shy from a threesome, but you want me all to yourself.”
Ianto lifts his face and presses in, drinking the contact as a man long denied. A hard body presses Ianto back against a wall that could have just formed. Strong hands encircle his wrists and pin his arms to the wall and the world is filled with Jack’s scent and Jack’s taste and Ianto groans into Jack’s mouth.
“I've missed this. G-d, I've missed this." Jack pulls back, hard, and Ianto’s sight goes black.
“Where am I?” He can still feel Jack's hands trapping him, holding him, but the voice sounds lost, and a little scared. “Ianto, where?” Fingers of grey light slash into the blackness, and the pressure is gone, the comfort and scent of another body following the fading memory of something misplaced.
************************* So watch yourself, in the hall Where you’re not supposed to know Cuz we’re all afraid of each others We’re the victims in this show
The rain filled Ianto’s mind as he entered the tourist office. It came down hard and fast and beat a tempo that played counterpoint to the pounding in his head, rising in frequency as it intensified, until it drowned out the hum of the machinery. Eventually the cacophony faded as Ianto descended to the hub and left the surface and the street behind him, but the impressions of melancholy remained.
He was searching. Ianto wandered through the hub, straightening it and preparing for the day, setting the coffee to drip, drawing himself an espresso, and searching. The ferret chattered and wove between his feet, daring Ianto to chase it and inviting him to play. Through a pane of glass clouded with age and dust and writing, Ianto’s eyes fell on a small espresso cup, sitting improbably on an otherwise tidy wooden desk. He should clean that up. After he found what he was looking for.
************************* There was a dead Weevil in the cells. Ianto saw it from the CCTV, but there was something dark lurking in the shadows of the vaults, and he resolved to wait until he had back-up before venturing in to clean up the corpse.
Either Owen or Gwen could have served as that back up, but within fifteen minutes of arriving Owen was holding a gun to Gwen’s head. Toshiko managed to talk him down, but Gwen was delivered to Rhys for safe keeping, and Owen was sent home, with strict orders to remain inside.
Tosh didn’t say a word all day after that. She sat at her computer working furiously, and started nervously when Ianto came by with a coffee, or a file, but not the pass codes to the archives. When she left in the evening to check on Owen, her logs had been deleted and her workstation was locked behind a new set of security procedures.
Ianto closed up the hub for the night, and wondered if anyone had remembered to check on the released ducklings.
*************************
There is a man in a dark greatcoat standing in a puddle of moonlight. His teeth glint sharply, and in his eyes Ianto can see both life and death dancing uneasily.
In two swift steps the man closes the distance between them. His hands are sure and steady, and he catches Ianto’s mouth with his as he slowly strips away the layers.
“Who am I?” He asks, his tongue caressing the shell of Ianto’s ear. “Tell me, who do you think I am?”
“G-d,” Ianto breathes, but doesn’t mean that as an answer, searching to feel, straining to touch, as clever hands find his belt buckle, and unzip him from his trousers.
Ianto reaches out to strip the coat from the man, to even the score, just a little, but he bats Ianto’s hands away, and takes a step back.
“No, remember. Remember this.” The man pushes, and Ianto falls, hard on a bed, a cot, that has formed behind him. The man smiles, and spins, and his coat swirls out and tumbles behind him, heavy and majestic.
“Jack.....” Ianto gasps, gaping up at the man towering above him.
“Yes...” Jack hisses, shedding the coat and his shirt in messy haste.
“Love the coat,” Ianto says weakly, as Jack straddles him, still not letting him touch.
Jack laughs, his grin wide and real, and reaching his eyes, and the world spins a little faster as Jack leans down and takes a kiss, hard. His lips part and Jack presses forward, tasting of missed coffees and too much sugar.
Ianto tries to draw Jack in closer, harder, to force them tighter so that they fuse into a single being, but Jack catches his wrists, and presses them in to the mattress, above his head. He holds them there a moment and looks at Ianto, all traces of levity gone.
Stay.
Ianto isn’t sure if it is spoken, but the command is unmistakable, and Ianto doesn’t move his hands. Won't move them. Ever.
Then Jack is back to teasing. His lips trace intricate patters on the flat of Ianto’s chest, before he gathers the flesh of the nipples between his index finger and thumb and presses down, hard enough to make Ianto arch and buck. Ianto is caught, trapped, between Jack, pinning his thighs from below, and the command, binding his wrists above.
“Where am I, Ianto? “ Jack’s question demands a response. “Why am I here? Why are we here and not.... there?” Then Jack slips down, his mouth finding first one soft sac, then another, as his finger caresses the weeping head.
Jack pulls back and asks again. “Where am I?” Ianto pushes back up, and tries to follow the stimulation, but Jack is insistent. “Ianto?”
“I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t....” Ianto repeats himself, over again, trying to make it true, or trying to find some remembrance to offer, something to make this real, and make it stay. “Jack”
“Try.” Jack deliberately spreads Ianto’s legs. The prep is quick and cursory, but for here and now it’s more than enough, and Jack slides in with none of the burning Ianto remembers, really does remember, and all of the relief he craves.
Ianto’s hands pull into tight fists, fingernails biting into his palms with the effort not to move them, and Jack takes pity, reaching down to pull him off in time to the thrusts.
“Find me, Ianto. Wake me.” Jack orders, as the light builds and the darkness shatters, and the whirling partners dancing in Jack s eyes break into pieces and fall out of step.
Find me. Wake me.
*************************
Well do you ever wonder, about the days
When we were straight
But daddy got the hunger
Too much to hide, we learn to lie
Silently outnumbered, we make mistakes
When we were straight
Now we’re all going under
Ianto woke with Jack's name on his lips, and memories burned into his palms as crescent moons of broken skin, and he wasn’t going to forget. Not this time.
Refusing distraction, and holding tight to a single purpose, Ianto found a pen and paper, and proceeded to write himself notes, identical and direct, and placed where he couldn’t fail to notice them, including in permanent ink, on the back of his hand.
“Wake Jack.”
*************************
When he arrived at the hub, there was an e-mail waiting for him.
Ianto,
I’m not coming in today. I’ve told Owen and Gwen to stay away, so you should be safe. Please retrieve the item from drawer 01-669, and get the hell out.
Tosh
Ianto frowned. Drawer 01-669, that was... locked behind the general archive password. It bothered him that he couldn’t remember the specific contents, but he’d find out sooner or later. Tosh hadn’t thought to provide an archive number for the item she wanted, and that was annoying, but she must have thought it was obvious. Well if it was really important she would have retrieved it herself. He had other things to do with his morning.
Ianto finished tidying up; he fed the ferret. He went to make coffee before remembering that the rest of the team wasn’t going to be in today.
Ianto’s hand went into his pocket, and found a folded slip of paper, one that he dimly remembered writing that morning. He touched the edge of the paper, and could almost touch the remembrance of some that once had felt deadly important. He unfolded the paper and read the message.
“Wake Jack.”
Suddenly the ferret was at his feet, trying to play, and chittering insistently. Ianto stepped carefully around it, and headed to the archives. Maybe it was time to fetch that thing for Tosh.
*************************
Ianto keyed the password into the door guarding the way to the basement. He could remember a time when it hadn’t been code-protected, but somehow it had seemed deathly important to keep people out. It was dangerous down there.
The door swung open into darkness, and Ianto edged down nervously, grasping a torch in hands that most certainly were not shaking. Something was moving in the darkness.
The beam of light cleared a narrow path along the hallway, and eventually ended in a pool of light from what might have been the only working fixture on this level. Sighing in relief, Ianto switched off his torch and pushed into the room. The sooner he got the item, the sooner he could go home.
There was only one thing in drawer 01-669, a burnished silver device. It looked like nothing more than a paperweight or some sort of modern desk-art. Ianto shook his head, momentarily considering the form of his revenge if Tosh simply wanted this for aesthetic purposes.
Ianto set his shoulders and took a deep breath, bracing himself for the return trip. Then he pushed back out in to what might as well have been a black abyss.
There really was a monster there, prowling in the solid shadows. Ianto could feel its eyes on him, feel it following. He swung the torch left and right, darting quickly in a circle, but never catching more than a fleeting glimpse of movement, until he reached the stairs. Twenty-two steps to safety, and the mechanical daylight of his working world. Twenty-two steps left, but he didn’t take one. Instead, he glanced down at the device he was holding and his eyes fell on the black print on the back of his hand.
“Wake Jack."
His gaze swung right, followed by the torchlight- and then he could see, and really remember, a heavy metal door, a door that he had to open, a door that he had to get through.
And there, right in front, where he could smell its breath, was a weevil, crouched and weaving, but standing solidly in his path.
Ianto froze. The weevil lifted its snout, and sniffed at the stale air of the tunnel. Ianto took a few steps back, never breaking eye contact, and positioned himself, left foot forward, angled slightly towards the weevil, and away from the wall. He didn’t have to beat it. Just get by it.
The weevil charged, standing straight, and almost galloping with its uneven gait. Ianto prayed there would be enough momentum, as he turned, letting the weevil just brush by, his right hand sweeping down over the head, urging the weevil forward, as his left hand swept under forcing its legs out, timed with a twist of the hips to send the body flying. The weevil went sprawling, its predatory charge converted into an out-of-control tumble with the application of a little force.
Ianto didn’t pause to gloat, or to watch the weevil pick itself up and resume its attack. He fled, throwing the door open without a single thought and barricading himself behind it.
*************************
The room was stale, like a locker room, empty and rarely cleaned. It was too warm, and too dusty, and it smelled sharply of sweat and dirt. Ianto could hear the hum of equipment from the hub, louder here than it had been in the hall, as well as the slow, steady intake and exhalation of breath.
“Wake Jack.”
Ianto's fingers fumbled along the wall on either side of the door, and eventually they caught on something, a switch. A moment later the room was bathed in an ugly dim light, from a greyed over fixture in the ceiling. But it was something, and Ianto flicked off his torch.
The room was cramped, and someone had shoved a dresser and a wardrobe in next to some rusting pipes and a beat up wooden desk and a cot. The surfaces were bare, except for a fine coating of dust, and there was no clue as to the occupant of this room, except for the man himself.
Stretched out on the cot in a white t-shirt and boxers, the dark haired man, lay, undisturbed by the light or the noise or the movement around him. Jack's legs were tangled in amongst the blankets, as if something about his rest had been less than peaceful. But he was serene now. His face tilted to one side, and pillowed in the crook of one arm, while the other lay across his midriff.
Ianto padded over to the camp bed and sat down gently on the edge. This was -- quite literally -- the man of his dreams. He could remember the lips, pressing him hard into a wall of blackness, and tearing the breath from his soul. He could feel the hands, the chest, and as he gently traced the eyes lidded and sealed with dark lashes, he remembered the pain and sorrow in the ice-blue gaze, and it was almost enough for Ianto to leave. To grant this beautiful man the respite that came with sleep.
But they needed him.
“Wake Jack”
Ianto leaned over, and brushed his lips over Jack's, tasted the salt and dried tears, before closing his eyes and pressing just a little bit harder.
A hand caught Ianto just behind the head, and Ianto’s eyes startled open, into bright twinkling skies surrounding deep black pools. Jack pulled away, and Ianto was swallowed by the smile that was revealed.
That expression died slowly as both men registered a frantic scrabbling in the ceiling. The hatchway was pushed aside by a ferret that was no longer playful and chittering, but solemn and surprisingly strong.
Jacks grin came back, but this time it was a feral one, and there was no warmth in his gaze.
Jack held out his hand, expecting something, and Ianto realized that he was still holding the artifact Tosh had requested. Ianto placed it hesitantly in Jacks waiting palm, and glanced nervously from Jack's face to the ferret and back.
Jacks fingers closed on the device, and he rolled it between his palms. The ferret froze, and from the distance Ianto was standing at, he couldn’t have sworn that the animal was breathing.
“I only want to live." A voice emerged from the device, strong and deep, with just the hint of an emotional warble at the end.
“Bullshit. You had food, and safety and a means of communication. The games you played with my team, with the weevils, that was sport and nothing more.” Jack was hard, and he spat the words.
“It’s how I survive,” and the tone was different this time. It was searching for something, anything to reach Jack.
“Not enough. You knew your games wouldn’t work on me. So instead of trying to communicate, asking for help, you put me to sleep, you kept me out of the way. I could have helped you.” Jack was still rolling the device between his hands.
“Would you have?”
“You didn’t ask, and now? Now, I know what you are, and I might forgive but I don’t forget.” Ianto shuddered at the chill in Jack's voice, and the memory of that venom, directed at him not too long ago.
Jack dropped the device, and burst forward; he was halfway up the ladder and back down, the struggling ferret in his tight grip, before Ianto could process that he had moved.
With quick practiced hands, Jack snapped the creature’s neck. The aggression, anger, suspicion, paranoia, and fear that had filtered in over days, somehow unnoticed, and had filled the darkened corners of Ianto’s mind dissipated in the brilliant sunrise of clarity.
“Ianto,” Jack called, bringing Ianto back to attention. Jack nodded towards the still corpse. “Store him on ice, and call the team back in - I want a debrief in forty-five minutes.”
“Yes, sir.”
Three hours later all the apologies had been made (both to each other and the wayward family of ducks); the cells had been cleaned of weevil bodies; the escaped weevil had been re-impounded and strict policies had been enacted regarding the vetting of pets in the hub. Ianto pulled Jack close, and pressed in tightly, actually feeling the warmth of skin against his cheek and hands tight to his back.
Ianto may never be the one to slay the dragon, marry Prince Charming, or live in an enchanted castle, but he had woken the dark knight with a kiss, and he was satisfied with the happily ever after of right now.