[RL WITH SULU]

[torchwoodteaboy]

The past few days had been exciting ones, and definitely not in the way that Ianto would have predicted them to be when he'd first set foot on the boat. They should have known that there would be something wrong with this, but how were they to know that Sulu saying that nothing could go wrong after what they'd accomplished on the first night would

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[takeitoutofpark]

Sulu was a rational man. He was very good at rationalizing almost anything, really, with the right amount of evidence. Unfortunately, though, he was also a little superstitious, and he'd been raised to have a healthy fear of the paranormal. So, after the creepy first night, Sulu had been a little more cautious about the situation - surprised and creeped out more often than he would have liked, given how nice the room had seemed before things began being moved around without their knowledge, before they heard strange noises, before people began talking about all the ghosts they'd interacted with

[torchwoodteaboy]

Ianto wasn't exactly sure of Sulu's showering habits, considering the only time the two of them had spent this amount of time together, they'd been handcuffed together, and had really tried to avoid having to be naked in front of each other if at all possible, considering. (Sulu hadn't exactly been himself, and Ianto was embarrassed. He'd had to spend the whole time half-naked anyway, with no shirt on, he wanted to keep whatever dignity he'd had left, and Sulu had humored him.) But he was willing to bet that Sulu was spending a fair amount more time in there than he would normally do. Which was fine, Ianto understood that the bathroom did seem a lot less, well, eerie than the room did

[takeitoutofpark]

Sulu swore loudly as the water changed from lukewarm to ice cold, quickly moving to rinse out the shampoo; the water, however, chose that moment to shut off completely, leaving him with soap in his eyes and a string of swears coming out of his mouth. He grabbed a towel and went to the sink, feeling around until he finally turned on the faucet, rinsing out the soap and then stepping back. He heard Ianto calling out his name - sounding... no, he just sounded strained, maybe like he was expecting something.

"Yeah?" he called back, trying to blink his eyes and only managing to get more soap in them. He leaned over to splash water in his face and felt a cold chill run up his spine - deeper than anything the water could have caused. Shuddering a bit, he forced himself to not turn around, and absolutely refused to look into the mirror. Who knew what might be looking back at him from behind?

[torchwoodteaboy]

The arm still around his waist, a chest pressed up against his back, Ianto very clearly and distinctly heard Sulu's voice responding to him. Coming from inside the bathroom. ...SHIT.

With as much dignity as he could muster, considering the situation he'd inadvertently found himself in, Ianto threw back the covers, launched himself from the bed, and sprinted to the bathroom. He felt no need to turn and look and see if there actually had been anyone there, especially not if there was something to look at lying in the bed still. He knew what he felt, and it had been a solid presence, a solid arm and pair of lips that had touched him, not some ghostly brush or whatever people sometimes talked about. He really, really didn't need an image to go along with that

[takeitoutofpark]

Sulu leaped away from the sink as the door flew open, one hand grabbing the towel he'd wrapped around his waist, the other flailing ineffectually as he realized the following things: 1) you could not hit a ghost, so punching was useless; 2) Ianto was not a ghost and therefore not someone to hit; and 3) Ianto had run into the bathroom and was now panicking against the door.

Pausing, Sulu gulped and tried to give Ianto a casually curious look. It failed utterly as his expression revealed just how freaked out he was by Ianto's sudden appearance. "Ianto? - What happened?"

[torchwoodteaboy]

Ianto shook his head, trying to get his breathing under control. He couldn't tell Sulu about what'd happened, not while they were still in the room, not while...whatever it was that had just done that was still out there. God, he didn't even know if they were safe in the bathroom, or if it'd find them there too. Knocking things down and changing the water temperature was one thing. This had been solid, it had touched him, and he wanted out. Now.

Ianto took a step forward. He hadn't exactly calmed down, but he didn't think that he could, all things considered. He reached out, and grabbed Sulu by the forearm, not thinking about the fact that Sulu was in front of him dressed in nothing more than a towel and that he probably needed his arm to keep that towel on, or that his grip was probably a lot tighter than it might normally have been. He just knew one thing.

"We need to leave. We need to get out of this room and we need to leave. Now," Ianto said, his voice not exactly steady, his pulse still racing.

[takeitoutofpark]

Sulu reached forward as Ianto gasped for breath, putting a hand on his shoulder. He could feel his own shoulders tensing as worry and a healthy dose of fear filled him, Ianto's expression and panic doing nothing to help him out. When Ianto moved and grabbed his arm, he switched hands easily, grabbing the towel tight in his other hand and letting Ianto pull him.

Because, the fact of the matter was that if Ianto was freaking out - Ianto, the one who dealt with things that were far more paranormal than the things Starfleet dealt with, who had damned ghost machines for crying out loud, was panicking, and that made Sulu even less eager to stay in the room than he had been before.

"Okay," he said quickly, "All right." He didn't want to ask what had happened - he didn't want to know. He knew he should probably grab some clothes, but... fuck it.

[torchwoodteaboy]

Ianto was very grateful that Sulu didn't put up a fight at all, didn't say so much as a single word to question him. He gripped Sulu's forearm tight, and cautiously opened the door. Assuring himself that there was nothing in the way of the path from the bathroom to the parlor room or whatever that other room was, Ianto stepped forward and walked briskly through the bedroom to the parlor room. He did not look at the bed, he did not stop and pick up any of his belongings, and he did not let Sulu grab any sort of clothes. He had a towel, he wasn't completely naked, and he was sure that Sulu'd understand once he explained himself. Which he would do as soon as they were out of there

[takeitoutofpark]

Sulu almost made a grab for a pair of jeans lying crumpled by the bed, then thought better of it as Ianto continued to pull him towards the parlor - if Ianto was going to run out of the room in his shorts like that, Sulu was positive he could deal with being in a towel. He'd never seen Ianto this before; Sulu hadn't realized that Ianto's rationalization and general level-headedness had been the ground he'd needed during this entire haunting, to keep him from panicking too badly, but now that it was all but gone, he was quickly seeing the difference

[torchwoodteaboy]

Ianto tried the door one more time, but still it remained locked. He heard the mechanism turning, he knew that the door was unlocking every time he turned the key, but something was negating that. He thought about trying to find something to pick the lock, but he didn't think that that would work anyway, what with the way his hands were shaking and also with the fact that he'd still get it unlocked to find that the door wouldn't open. Something didn't want them to get out of the room, and that something was more powerful than a simple key in a door.

Ianto lay his head against the door. He heard the panic bubbling up in Sulu's voice, knew that he'd just terrified the other man with how effected he was by this whole ghost thing. He'd been strong for him up until then, but the ghost climbing into bed with him had rocked him, and he needed to get his footing. "Sulu, it's no use," he said, trying to keep his voice low and as calming as he could, because the other man really wasn't going to like what he had to say, "I'm sorry. The door, it

[takeitoutofpark]

No, that was not what Sulu had wanted to hear. It was possibly the exact opposite of what he'd wanted to hear. He didn't like the way Ianto was referring to the general feeling of unease as "it", like it was personified - which it clearly was, but Sulu didn't want to believe that. He - didn't quite see the shape that passed in front of the light, not really, but it was almost like a shadow in the corner of his eye. He tensed his shoulders, tried to calm himself down.

"This is a bad time to mention that I'm Not good with ghosts," Sulu mumbled to Ianto, "I'm really, really not good with ghosts." He didn't like the cold air, or the feeling of eyes on them, or the footsteps, or the damned things trying to touch them, and he wasn't sure he could keep it together long enough to deal with this.

[torchwoodteaboy]

Ianto restrained himself from telling Sulu that he'd noticed long before, on that first night when Sulu'd woken him up because things had just been odd, that Sulu really didn't seem all too keen on paranormal things. He didn't mention that he'd rationalized things that he wouldn't normally rationalize, just so Sulu would feel a little better about what it was that was going on in their room.

There was a sound in the bedroom, like the noise of one of their suitcases being dragged across the floor. Ianto shivered and stepped closer to Sulu, trying to stay as calm as he could, putting himself between Sulu and the noise. "I know. I'm sorry. If... If I had known about this, I would've...I don't know, propped the door. Found someone to call so we could get out. I just... I didn't think it'd be that bad. It'd never touched either of us before..." Oops. Maybe... Maybe he shouldn't have said that. No. He really probably shouldn't have said that.

[takeitoutofpark]

"...Touched?" Sulu turned his head to look at Ianto, eyes narrowing a bit, though the rest of his expression betrayed how freaked he was. "What do you mean, touched?"

Because, despite his fear, despite the fact that ghosts - spirits, entities, whatever they were - despite the fact they scared him, terrified him even, they were incorporeal. The most they did was throw things around; maybe they'd stack furniture, or make noises, but they never, never were supposed to touch the people they were haunting. If they did, it moved from the realm of "acceptable fear" to "terror," and Sulu... Sulu couldn't do that.

"I really don't want to be in here, Ianto," he said weakly, listening to the suitcase being opened and the whisper of noise the clothes inside made as they were taken out. He tried not to focus on the fact that he could almost hear some kind of talking, or humming.

[torchwoodteaboy]

Ianto swallowed. "Well, I mean that..." he trailed off. Did he really want to tell Sulu about what'd happened? He wasn't sure how the other man would handle that sort of information. He listened to the...whatever it was, unpacking one of their suitcases, almost frustrated by that, because he'd just had to refold all the clothes and put them back in there that morning, had to sift through the entire suite and find all the clothes that had been tossed about, identify whether they were Sulu's or his, and then put them back in their respective suitcases. He really did want to have to do so again. ...but he would

[takeitoutofpark]

Oh, no.

Sulu practically felt the blood drain from his face as Ianto spoke, eyes narrowing and moving to look towards the bedroom. He heard that laugh - it sent shivers down his spine to hear it, to know that something was in this room and had touched Ianto, and apparently thought it was fucking funny.

Sulu had two different actions he could take at the moment. The normal route at this point, with the fear and hot-cold adrenaline running through his veins, was to try everything to get the hell out of the room. But Sulu knew that there was no safety out there - people had been seeing ghosts out there, and there was nothing to say the thing wasn't going to just follow them.

The other option was to let that adrenaline take over, embrace that fear and move past it to get pissed off at some dead... demonic son of a bitch to try touching either of them.

Sulu squeezed Ianto's hand tightly, and then growled, shouting in the direction of the bedroom, "You think that's funny, asshole?!" Sure, he sounded scared, but he sounded pissed too

[torchwoodteaboy]

Oh, wow. Ianto blinked. Sulu... Well, on top of sound pretty freaked out, like he had been before, there was a really dangerous tone to his voice, a really angry and feral quality, and well. While Ianto appreciated the sentiments, and probably given a normal situation would have more than welcomed the other man backing him up that ferociously, he... He wasn't sure that it was such a great idea there and then, considering that they were up against ghosts, and well. They couldn't hurt a ghost, but a ghost could probably get them, if it really tried