Fic: To Let (Torchwood, PG-13, OCs, Ianto, Jack, Owen)

[amand_r]

Title: To Let
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: OCs, Ianto, Jack, Owen (canon pairings)
Rating: PG-13
Timeline: Starts Pre S1 (Fragments assumed). Threads through S2 to Exit Wounds. Post S2.
Author's Notes: I blame cruentum, who said 'I have never read a roommate Ianto story. It would be interesting' over at TWU, and probably doesn't even remember. Well, I blame kel_reiley too, because she then said: 'i would LOVE to read that, from the POV of Ianto's roommate, all curious and suspicious, with wild theories about what Ianto is really up to!' Massive beta bong hits to neifile7, who told me where my paper was too loose and my roach was too tight, and to unovis_lj, who, on the seventh day, read it and said that it was good (she also hit it with the kali kush of comma placement). Then we all zoned out, because that was some good bud, man.
Summary: Ianto Jones is a good housemate.



'Why'd you come from London?' you ask. If you were there, you'd never leave.

He is quick to answer. 'It got old.'

You think he's an alright bloke, Ianto Jones, and you need a housemate, now that mum is dead and you have the whole thing to yourself. You never quite intended on staying there, but you're saving money for the move, and it makes a sort of sense to keep the house. It's almost paid for anyway, and then you can sell it in a few years, take off, and never come back.

He's got that Newport accent, and you find that familiar and rather reassuring. He doesn't mind an old terrace house in Grangetown. He doesn't care for living alone, and actually, he says, he can't afford it at the moment, and he wants something close to work.

'What do you do?'

He sips from his coffee. 'I've got a line on a job.'

In the end, he offers you three months rent in advance, and you take it because you want to get tickets to the opener at the Millennium, and the job you have at the rental store doesn't even begin to allow for things like that.

You agree to a date and time for him to move in and hand over the keys. He says something about being a decent cook, but not being home much. You tell him that you don't care what he does with his private life, but to not make meth out of his bedroom. He says something about you both labelling your food in the fridge, and you agree.

And then you say, 'And you know, when we want the place to ourselves, we should make a rota or something.' You mean, obviously, if you wanted to have someone over, but you have a hard time mentioning that. You just broke up with Bren three weeks ago, over the house, actually, and you don't feel like talking about it.

Ianto looks away. 'I have a girlfriend, but she won't be over. She's still in London.' He drains his coffee and something about him reminds you of Dafydd, and the way he used to glance about, after the accident, when everyone's wounds were fresh and new. You finger the scar over your heart through your T-shirt and breathe deeply.

***

Ianto Jones doesn't have many things: no furniture, but that's fine with you, because the room is already furnished, and you're not quite keen on moving everything around to accommodate him. He had known that coming in, and you give him your old room, stripped of all of your things. You had already set up shop in mum's room, because it's bigger, and now, you help Ianto unload his boxes and suitcases from the small van. He has a lot of garment bags, and when you ask, he says that his father had been a tailor, and that he used to need them for work. You haven't seen him in anything other and denims and T-shirts, but you know what the rat race is like.

You chat as you work-he likes rugby, wants to see the Six Nations at the stadium, of course, and you spend some time discussing the Grand Slam in 2005. He's a drinker, but not heavy, he says, and he's done some Uni, which you don't doubt when you see that one of his boxes is crammed full of paperback books marked with 'used' stickers, most of them literature.

You tell him a little about mum and the house and remember to mention that the toilet knob sticks. You don't say anything about Bren, but then, you're trying to forget Bren and her psycho ways. And the way she smelled like strawberries.

Ianto seems tired and shy. He unloads the boxes in record time and then tells you that he's off to return the van, but that he'll be back late, because he's got an informal interview lined up.

You spend the rest of the night reading porn on the Internet, and when he gets back he just goes into the kitchen, pours himself a large glass of water, and disappears into his room.

You don't see him for three days, but his dishes are always washed and in the rack.

***

You're busy yourself, and it's easy to fall into a rhythm with Ianto Jones. It involves seeing him at night when he comes home from work, the job he was pulling for, he says, and sometimes he grabs clothes and goes back in again. You think he's insane for working like that, but he tells you that it's research and filing, and that the last person who'd had his job died in 1968.

You wonder if he works for the Assembly, maybe a library or research firm. You just never seem to remember to ask him, because when he comes in, he looks knackered and digs around on his labelled shelf in the fridge for something in a carton that isn't expired before disappearing into his room to eat and collapse.

In the meantime, your video store closes. It isn't a surprise; no one rents videos anymore, not when they can get them from the Internet for free or mailed to their houses. You get a cheap part-time jobbie at the local comic book store, and then another one at a tattoo parlour. You don't care, because mum'd stored up a bit of the pension for you, and you have Ianto's rent to cover the mortgage, so practically, all you need is to cover the rest of it, and some spending money for video games and pints down the street at the pub with your mates every Friday. Pete calls you all 'the pisser patrol', but you never manage to get pissed.

It is a Friday; you're staring at the letter from the insurance company, the way you'd been staring at it off and on since it had arrived in the morning with the post, when Ianto comes home from work early (it's only six) and puts the kettle on. You stare at him as well. Two odd things in one day.

'I'm not quite sure what this means,' you say, and you don't even know what you're talking about, not quite. Ianto rummages about for teabags in the cupboard, coming up with a large Tupperware box of unlabelled bags that are probably your mum's PG Tips. He opens the lid, smells them, as if they can tell him something, and then shrugs, pulling the lid off. He undoes his tie and lets it hang around his neck.

You let him take the letter. He reads it, eyebrows raising as he glances from it to you, and then the kettle whistles. He sets the letter down, almost patting it as if to tell it to stay where it is, then makes you both tea. He even knows that you take milk but no sugar. You realise that you don't know how he takes his. The answer is black.

'Well,' he says to you when you are seated across from each other at the table. 'Apparently, your class action suit has been resolved, and they are to compensate you with…that.' He nods down at the paper between the two of you, and then he sips from his mug.

That's what you'd thought. 'Oh, that's what I thought.'

'That's a sizeable sum,' he says, and you can tell that he is tickling the inside of your funny bone with that. Because that is ridiculous. You take your pulse, and his eyes flicker to it.

'What do I do with it?' you ask him. He is sitting there in his suit, looking for all the world like the kind of person who could tell you what to do with this kind of money. You bet that Ianto Jones knows what he would do if he had this much money.

'Whatever you want,' he answers. 'Anything you want.'

You have a lot of anythings, but none of them are things that money can buy.

'If you want to leave,' he says, 'I'd rent the whole thing from you. No pressure, but if you ever want to go.'

God knows you've talked about getting out often enough.

You look at the daisy wallpaper border that you put up in the kitchen for mum when you were twelve, its wavy lines uneven and poorly matched. As if on cue, there is a thump on the connecting wall, and you hear water as Mrs. Smith runs the tap for her kettle.

Up in the small attic, you have boxes of papers and doilies and all kinds of things. Transformers and Dafydd's headless Barbie dolls and at least three reams of a novel you wrote together when you were thirteen, about being ninja vampires. Bren had found it months ago and read choice bits aloud to you. It had been one of the reasons you had decided that you didn't love her anymore.

'No, not yet.'

***

Ianto is up making crempogs when you come down, and you sit at the table and stare at his back. 'Crempogs,' you say. 'It's not even my birthday.'

Ianto sets the plate in front of you, and you slather the cakes with butter and apricot jam. 'I was going to make jam splits, but there weren't currants.'

You don't quite like crempogs. But you let Ianto make them for you because it seems to make him happy. And you have to admit, as you eat them, they are indeed quite good.

Ianto sits across from you, and the two of you eat in companionable silence. You think about what you're going to do today. It would be appropriate to go to the cemetery, but you think then that maybe it's the one thing you shouldn't do.

The sun bisects the table between you with a bright barrier.

'Someone I work with killed herself,' he says suddenly. 'Last week. I'm afraid that I didn't know her well, and I can't help but think that if I had tried, I might have seen it coming.'

Ianto looks at you then, and you know that he has remembered the date from the paperwork he helped you to file. A year, a whole fucking year. Dafydd's face, smiling, as he'd said goodnight. Dafydd's room, still shuttered upstairs, and the antiseptic scent that invades your nose when you sneak up there every once in a while at night to sleep in the sheets that haven't been changed in a year.

Sometimes you think Ianto would understand some of the things that go through your head. Sometimes in the night, you hear him moaning in his sleep. A floor separates your rooms, but you hear the familiar thuds, thumps, and muffled raw human noises that Dafydd'd made, that you still make, before you wake, heart pounding, mouth tasting metallic with remembered blood. You don't know what happened to him, maybe he's one of those people who just has night terrors, but the analyst they'd sent you to had said that most of the time those things were triggered by trauma, and that if you ever felt that you needed to talk-

'It's always a surprise,' you say, 'Always.'

Ianto doesn't say anything to that, just pours you a cup of coffee. He'd known how to use your mum's old glass stove coffeemaker from the moment he'd moved in. You think of how your mum would give you the calf eyes when seeing Ianto handle her dishes.

What could you do today to mark the occasion? Flowers, a vampire novel, a packet of chips, maybe. You could pop down and get Call of Duty 4.

A car drives by, speakers blaring, and you can tell the song is 'Holidae In'. Your heart matches the bass for a second, and your chest aches.

'Oh, fuck, I need a shag,' you groan through your fingers. 'A royal fucking shag.'

Ianto smiles at you. 'I'm sorry,' he says, 'but I'm taken.'

***

You are out on the back patio, hidden behind the hedges on the lawn furniture that you and Ianto had bought three weeks ago at IKEA, preparing to smoke a bong. The sun is shining and it's rather nice, though you can see that it will probably rain soon. You have the day off, and so you plan on getting caned and playing your way though Resident Evil 4. You might even stop for lunch, but you highly doubt it.

You are in the middle of lighting the bowl when the back door opens and Ianto steps out into the garden, still wearing sweatpants and a T-shirt. He has a beer in his hand, and when he sees you, he drags his chair over towards yours and sets it down near you. He reclines the chair, then lies back on the plastic and pulls on a pair of cheap black sunglasses.

'Hey,' you say, almost burning your fingers because you've been depressing the lighter the whole time.

He nods.

'You taking the day off?' you ask. Ianto never takes the day off. Maybe he is due one though, because he hasn't been home in three days. You had even googled how to file a missing persons report just in case he hadn't shown up in the next few days.

He sighs and drinks from his bottle. 'Suspension.' You notice that the side of his face is cut a little, as if he has been in a fight. He looks as if he has just woken up, but he has that smell, the smell that he's been drinking. You wonder if his room is a wash of empties.

'What the hell did you do?' you say just before you take a hit.

Ianto turns his glasses towards you and drinks. 'Almost destroyed the world.'

You cock your head. 'Oh well, you'll have that.' He pulls a battered pack of Superkings Blue from his waistband and holds out his hand for the lighter. You are mildly interested to watch him light the cigarette and breathe deeply. He tosses the pack on the table between you and catches your inquiring stare; he's never smoked before.

'I quit for my girlfriend,' he explains, staring off at the blue sky. The clouds have rolled past, and you aren't sure if it's going to rain at all, now.

You hit the bong again, and the moment seems to stretch on forever. You think that maybe you'll have to change your plans. Ianto is always up for a little gaming action, if he's around, especially on Sunday afternoons when you have nowhere to be and footie is shite. And that one night, with the Akvavit on your birthday, when he'd played Streetfighter as Chun-Li and kicked your arse soundly.

'How long are you off for?' you ask.

He sighs and shrugs. 'I have money-'

You wave the bong wildly and water sloshes out the pipe. 'Not what I fucking meant.' The weed has made you overly offended. And hand-wavey, apparently.

Ianto raises the sunglasses and stares at you. You look him in the eye for a second longer than you feel comfortable. 'I have no idea,' he says finally, and you both lean back against the loungers.

'You know,' you say twisting your wrist and marvelling at the fact that it just…rotates in a circle. 'You never mentioned your girl again. The one in London. Did the two of you break up?'

Ianto stubs out his cigarette on the paving stones and rolls his head towards you, blinking, as if he is surprised. You think maybe you've stepped in it, and he shouldn't hold that against you, because you are well on your way to being completely stoned.

'Hand it over,' he says, and you hand him the bong and lighter, watching him light the bowl and breathe deeply, holding it in longer than you would have thought possible for someone who didn't make a habit of smoking. You think to tell him that this is good stuff and that he doesn't have to hold it in, but you know that you still do it out of habit. It's part of the fun, actually.

He hands the bong to you, and his sunglasses fall back over his eyes when he grinds out, 'We broke up,' before exhaling in a big rush.

You don't have anything to say to that.

You lie there, stretched out on the chairs; Ianto's legs bend at the knees over the sides of the chair and his toes curl in the dying grass as he stares at the clouds and finishes his beer. You yawn and set the bong off in the edge of the hedges where it will not be visible to the passerby or random visitor. Ianto mirrors your yawn and scratches his chest. You count the number of gaps that need to be repaired in the gutters: four. Maybe five. The neighbour's dog, Frodo the fucking Pomeranian, is let out and proceeds to bark on the other side of the wall. You think about getting the dog high; that'd shut it the fuck up.

Ianto sets his empty beer bottle on the plastic table between you. 'I've been suspended,' he says. 'You should get me another beer.'

You can't argue with that for some reason. You roll off the plastic lounger with difficulty and head to the back door with only a little less trouble. You hear the click of the lighter.

'Those are shite fags,' you say to him as you shuffle back into the house.

Ianto flips the V. 'They're all shite fags.'

***

You are watching the news and eating cheese toasties with Pimm's & Lemonade when you see him on the screen. All the news people are up in Brecon Beacons, where a whole town of people has apparently been killing and eating travellers. You came in late, but you get the gist of it. It's a slowly unspooling nightmare, not unlike a horror movie in which the sheet is peeled off a corpse too slowly, and you have had enough of that. You are about to change the channel, maybe switch off and watch that new DVD with Jason Statham, when he literally catches your eye.

You wish you had one of those tellies that can rewind and replay, because you could have sworn that you saw Ianto in the background, milling about. He isn't on the screen for that long, and he is leaning against the side of the ambulance, his head tilted back, hands cradling a Styrofoam cup. It's hard to tell from the distance, but he looks oddly filthy, and his jacket is missing; he's wearing a rescue blanket over his shoulders. His eyes open, he looks right at the camera and seems to notice that it's pointed at him, all the while the reporter is in the foreground, relating notes from the scene, using words like 'abattoir.' He turns away and streaks off the screen.

You sit back and consider that Ianto probably doesn't work for the Assembly. That doesn't quite matter to you, but you wonder because you have the habit of…indulging in herbal refreshment at least once every other week, and he has never said anything, so he can't be police. You wonder if he had been on holiday or something and just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

You know all about that.

You are in the middle of cutting your toenails on the sofa a half-hour later, eyes fairly glued to the telly when the keys rattle in the door and you scramble to your feet. The door swings open and Ianto stumbles in, head bandaged haphazardly, limbs so limp you wonder how he's even walking. He's supported by a shorter thin man in a leather jacket. He's got that sharp dangerous look about him, and you wonder if you've seen him out at the pub. Probably not.

Leather Jacket helps Ianto down on the sofa gently and crouches down in front of him. 'Jones, you're home, mate.' He's not from around here, and it's been a long time since you've heard a London accent in this house. Sometimes you and Ianto speak to each other in pidgin Welsh, just for jollies, but the only things that you remember with any clarity are 'where is the toilet?' and about fifty different ways to ask for sex.

Ianto opens his eyes and closes them again, and then smiles. 'I'm home, darling.'

Leather Jacket looks at you, and you shrug. Ianto is beyond banged up. His face is a patchwork of bruises, and his shirt is painted in brown bloody streaks. His denims are filthy, and you might have said something about putting him on the sofa, but you don't care about that shite. Leather Jacket takes off Ianto's shoes and throws them in the vicinity of the front door. You shuffle from one foot to another and decide which question to ask first.

Leather Jacket doesn't seem like a question sort of person. 'You're the housemate,' he says, and you wonder about his intelligence, because who else would you be? Maybe he was knocked about, as well.

'Yeah.'

Ianto murmurs something under his breath about caterpillars.

'Oh. You're on the telly,' you say blankly, and Leather Jacket turns to look at the screen, on which he is pressing his hand to the lens and you can hear something to the effect of 'get that fbeep thing out of my face.' Before the back door of the ambulance shuts and it takes off. He rolls his eyes at you.

'Look, he told me to drop him off here,' Leather Jacket says to you, and you think to ask his name, but there's no way to just work it in to the conversation. 'He's taken a bit of a beating,' the man says, 'and you should probably make sure he doesn't get worse. Head injury and all that.'

You nod. Dafydd had several concussions when he'd played rugby. 'Wake him every hour?'

Ianto lifts his head and chants the Oggy Oggy Oggy until Leather Jacket rests a hand on his shoulder and glances at you. 'Yeah, about that. You good with that?'

You look at the screen, where they are playing the clips of the police carting the black bags out of the house. Through the open doorway you can see sheets of plastic blowing, plastic scribbled with red.

'What happened?' you ask. You should have asked his name, and yet another opportunity is laid by. He hands you a large bottle of paracetamol and then a smaller package of foil wrapped lumps.

'Make sure he takes it. He's already dosed, but he'll be ready for it in about three hours. And if he can't keep it down, wait thirty minutes after he's sicked and give him the Panadol.' You look at the packets. They're suppositories. Leather Jacket smiles. 'I'm sure he'll want to do that bit himself, but I'd feel better if the person not doing sporting chants had the drugs.'

Ianto stretches out on the sofa and opens his eyes. 'You should see the freezer,' he says hoarsely, and you realise that whilst he's looking at you, he's seeing someone else.

Leather Jacket shrugs then, and stands. He looks relatively unhurt, but you don't know for sure. He moves stiffly, and spares another glance at Ianto. What crosses his face isn't affection, so it's not like that, but the kind of fondness you feel for mates after a vicious game, when everyone has got some injury or another, but you still managed to eke out a victory.

The news is still playing the reel, the halogen lights illuminating the scene. Everyone looks like deer. Someone says something about freezers.

Leather Jacket stares at the screen, but he's not seeing it either. Ianto curls one arm up to his chest. 'Did you see the freezer? You should see the freezer.'

'Yeah,' Leather Jacket answers before tearing his eyes from the screen, 'I saw the fucking freezer.' He is still, and you stand there, pills and packets in your hands until he shakes himself and looks at you. 'We should get him to bed.'

You help Leather Jacket lever Ianto up from the sofa and into his room, where he collapses on the bed and then yells with the force of it. Leather Jacket uses a scissors and simply cuts Ianto's shirt off, and you peel his denims away. Everything goes in the garbage bin, even his socks and shorts. Leather Jacket allows himself to run over Ianto's ribs with his fingers, asking where it hurts, pressing until Ianto screeches, and then he glances at you. You must have looked confused, because he mumbles something to the effect of 'I'm a doctor,' and you realise that you hadn't been thinking about that at all. In retrospect, you had just assumed that he was a doctor.

Once everything is settled and you follow Leather Jacket to the front door, you are trying to force out the words, 'What the hell happened?' when he turns to you and shoves his hands in his pockets. He pulls out a piece of paper and hands you a card. All that's on it is a large T constructed of hexagons, and under that, a phone number.

'If he gets worse, if you're worried about him in any way, call this number.'

You flip the card over, but it's blank. 'Who should I ask for?'

Leather Jacket shrugs. 'Doesn't matter.' And then he looks at you, and you realise that he sees the scar on your chest, framed by the v-neck of your stretched-out T-shirt. Your hand flies up to cover it. 'Thanks.'

An hour later, you watch Ianto sleeping in his bed and finger the scar over your heart. Ianto's neck is latticed with cuts, and his face looks like it's been tenderised by someone's fist. His chest isn't any better, really, and Leather Jacket had mentioned that he'd seen the business end of a bat. You think of what it feels like when they take the chest tube out, and the sharp pain in the ribs. You think of the sensation of the first staple being removed from the healed skin, and how that had surprised you most of all, the way that the staples had been essentially ripping the skin open on the way out, and hadn't that been counter-productive?

'Ianto,' you say, sitting on the edge of the bed. 'Ianto, wake up.'

His eyes open and he sees you. 'My name is Ianto Jones,' he says, 'And the Prime Minister is Harriet Jones. You're not holding any fingers up.'

You laugh, because he's always ahead of you, even with a mild concussion. The light from the hallway is a solar flare when you both look at it.

Ianto closes his eyes and rolls over, and you reset your wristwatch. It's not as if you won't be up anyway, but it's good to be safe. The idea that you'd fall asleep, miss a check, and then find out in the morning that he's bled out into his skull and is a corpse in your room is not out of the realm of possibility, with your luck. Behind you he mumbles something about, 'so much meat.'

You go to the fridge and open the freezer. You and Ianto had just got a half of lamb from the butcher's last week and parceled it out, freezing it (Ianto is a lot more economical than you are, and you go along with his money-saving ways, mostly because if you do, you occasionally get something that isn't dipped in batter and baked or boiled in a pot for seventeen-and-a-half hours.) In black grease pen, it's labelled, half with your scrawl, half in his more precise handwriting.

You think of the BBC reports, of the red plastic blowing in the wind, and dump it all in the rubbish.

***

You get back from holiday in Spain and find that the house looks much like it did when you left. That is to say, it's cleaner, well, clean, but nothing drastic has changed. Ianto changed the curtains in the sitting room, and now they're darker. Better for playing video games. There's a new microwave, and when you ask him what happened, he shrugs and says something about being half-awake and a travel mug.

It's been a long two months, and whilst you quite enjoyed yourself, you couldn't help but feel lonely. You met a few people in Mallorca, a few in Barcelona, and one nice girl in Toledo, but nothing that you'd say was permanent. She gave you the url to her myspace. You don't even know if you care to look it up.

You've bought Dafydd a knife, and a few days after you return, you'll go down to the cemetery and stick it in the dirt under his new headstone. Ianto accepts the shirt with the fake tits on it with a smirk. You settle down to watch the game, and he puts it on over his jersey and opens a beer.

Your suitcases are still by the door.

When you ask him what he's got up to, sometime after your fourth beer, he sighs and says something about saving the universe. It's only after you tell him about this girl in Pamplona who'd wanted you to spank her arse with an unpeeled plantain that he looks at you and says, 'I've been shagging my boss. Again.'

This, you understand, is one of those things that he tells you that is actually true. Ianto never answers you in real truths anyway, even when he knows that you know them, but sometimes he'll offer things, and those are the things that you know are true. It's like a gift, you know, a gift that you share with each other, in a way, because he doesn't ask you about things either, but sometimes you offer them up. As usual, despite this admission, he still knows more about you.

You pause, watching the Beeb report that Lucy Saxon's trial is moving forward as planned, despite the death threats.

You roll your eyes. 'I hope you get a raise.' Wait, 'What do you mean "again"?'

Ianto sighs then, picking at the sofa arm. 'There was a hiatus on it since you left, but then we sort of fell in together again, and, well.' He finishes his beer, nods at the empty bottle in his hand as if he has made a decision. 'We're shagging again.'

'I wish they'd put that on a T-shirt,' you answer finally.

***

Ianto is only home for a fiver, to change his clothes, he says, because he's in the middle of something, and the suit he's wearing smells like. Well, it reeks. As he passes you, he tells you off-handedly that you might want to avoid the pasty shop down on the corner, but he doesn't elaborate.

You are trying to read The DaVinci Code, but it's shite. You have been thinking lately that all the popular things are crap, or maybe you just don't have a taste for them. Did you ever like popular things? You had asked Bren once to recommend things, and she'd brought over a bunch of paperbacks. When you'd broken up, she'd never taken them back, and now you know why. Simply perusing the titles tells you enough about why you'd broken up.

Dafydd had all the Star Trek novels, and you fancy reading I, Spock again, but you can't make yourself go up there. It's not nearly dark enough. Besides, you have to work in about an hour anyway, though getting ready for that only involves locating a clean shirt. You listen to Ianto run the water in the sink, probably giving himself a quick wash. He should have just taken a shower.

While he's in the loo, the bluetooth he'd set down in the key-bowl with his pocket items beeps, and you can hear a male voice say, 'Ianto? Ianto? Where are you?'

You look at the closed door to the toilet and then back at the bowl. The voice continues. 'Ianto, if you don't respond in one minute I'm sending an APB to the police.'

You lever yourself off the sofa, pick the earpiece up, and knock on the door to the toilet. 'Oi, your headset is threatening to call the police.'

Ianto opens the door and snakes out an arm to take the earpiece. Once it wends its way back in, you hear him start to say, 'Jack, I'm at home--' and then he shuts the door and finishes the conversation in whispers that you can't hear.

That's sorted then. You take your pulse. You don't want the police here. You have a quarter bag of Kali Kush in the veg crisper.

***

You have two whole litres of Jolt cola that you bought on eBay (and against doctor's orders), and you are on a mission.

It's not like you want to spy on Ianto Jones. But the bit about the police on the headset the other week has made you jumpy. And then, finally, there is a lure for your curiosity because Ianto has lost a pen in between the couch cushions, a sleek, black thing that is weighty and more importantly, says one thing on it:

Torchwood.

This is a lead.

Researching Torchwood reminds you of all of those movies in which the main character is looking for a clue and stumbles on a huge conspiracy involving aliens and the government. Everything about it is hush-hush, but the information about it in chat rooms and forums is frank, insane and smells a little like aluminum foil.

Aliens. Ali-fucking-ens.

You surf about, and all the sites are these cheesy rubbish geocities pages playing midis of the X-Files theme song and shite like that. The people who keep track of these pages, of Torchwood, are not unlike the people who insist that Elvis is still alive, or that the Queen is a member of the Pentaverate.

Just clicking on the links makes you feel like a fool.

But then you see the face of the man who'd brought Ianto home from Brecons ages ago: Owen Harper. He is a doctor, trained in London, in fact. You skim over the rest of the information disinterestedly, scrolling, scrolling past Toshiko Sato and a Suzie Costello (listed as not having been seen in ages), and Gwen Cooper, a former police officer (your eye twitches), and a Jack Harkness and then--

There he is, Ianto Jones, listed as a member of Torchwood, with pics of him at crime scenes and in general places where mysterious things supposedly happen. He's got the suit, as usual, and the bluetooth, and the look of government secrecy, what you might call a top-secret poker face if you hadn't once seen him wedge four scones in his mouth and attempt to say tongue twisters before spluttering them out all over the back patio, roaring with laughter. He's some sort of martial artist or armoury expert, the webmaster posits. He drives the big black governmental SUV a great deal, and most of the rare times when he's present, things end up involving the police.

You google keywords like 'ianto jones torchwood weapons aliens' and 'torchwood threatening citizens' and 'torchwood drug policy' for good measure. A search of 'ianto jones mind control' leads to King Ianto's Coffee Club!, a page for some sort of private club with dead links and a jaunty logo. Another more general search for 'ianto jones cardiff torchwood' reveals a fanpage, in which several unhinged women have married Ianto in the Astral Plane.

You don't even know what the fuck that means.

You sit there and look at a series of grainy photographs of your housemate at his job, and you know that you can't delude yourself: whatever he does, it's secret. You aren't supposed to know. But you've lived with him for almost two years, and you know what he's like. Well, sort of. You've seen Ianto naked, high, puking, crying, swearing at the telly, mashing potatoes with a meat tenderiser, laughing, and stone sober. You like to think that some of those moments are unguarded, that this is the Ianto that you know, and that what he does when he's at work doesn't have anything to do with him at home.

But it does.

Still.

Dafydd had been this double person in the end, laughing and smiling, and poking your chest and making jokes about you being the human pincushion. He'd waved his prosthetic arm and taken it off and used it like a cricket bat. Dafydd had been there to watch them change your drain, and he'd been some sort of fucking hero when you'd had to relearn how to walk when they finally let you get up, even though the stitches ran down your legs. He'd told you that this was all going to be worth it in the end, because they had the technology, they could rebuild you, make you better, faster. He was going to take you to the track and make you race the ponies.

And then somewhere in all of this, he'd just ended up cutting and swinging. And you'd never seen it coming. Double fucking life.

Some twin you were.

Later, you get into an IRC chatroom and watch as a small cadre of paranoid individuals speculates on what Torchwood has been up to lately. One woman has a map on her wall, apparently, that she uses to track sightings of the SUV. Another argues with anyone who will listen that Jack Harkness can't die. Yet another says that she saw Harkness and Jones tackle an alien in an alleyway near the Tesco's the other night. You note the night and remember that Ianto hadn't been home until the wee hours.

It is while another paranoid freak is explaining how he (she?) thinks that Owen Harper is dead and still walking about (based on pallor and the fact that he doesn't go to clubs or pulling anymore, because those are just such accurate diagnostic tools. Maybe he has the clap.), that you decide that these people are all nutters. You close the window and wonder if they will take your abrupt departure as a sign that you are a Torchwood sockpuppet.

That's a rather entertaining thought, and also somewhat true. You want to announce to all these idiots that Ianto Jones is a normal bloke who, sadly, cannot master the backwards controls in Deus Ex and often leaves his laundry in the dryer overnight by accident (only socks and underwear, though. He's overly careful with the permanent press).

You clear your cache, but you don’t know how to remove it from the 'secret places' on your computer that CSI keeps telling you exist. You make sure that when Ianto puts his key in the door that you are playing We Love Katamari on the newly-acquired PS2. When he comes in, you glance up at him, cool as ice. Butter doesn't melt in your mouth.

He drapes his suitcoat on the back of the sofa and heads to the kitchen for a can of Irn-Bru. He finds your Jolt instead and wags the empty bottle at you through the doorway, his eyebrows furrowed in a disapproving expression. Ianto sometimes thinks that he is your cardiologist. When he returns, he slouches down on the sofa with a snort and watches you roll up a series of cars.

When you ask him how his day was, he says something off-handed about gestational parasites and you force yourself to keep playing. Your katamari bumps into the wall, and you just toggle the switches to reverse directions, but you aren't aiming for anything because it has just dawned on you that every time Ianto has been talking about his job, saving the universe, killing aliens, almost destroying the world, he's been telling the truth.

The Prince of the Cosmos is trying to push the katamari up a wall, to no avail.

Ianto takes the controller from your hand, probably because he thinks that you are having an episode. His hand takes your pulse with two fingers and, finding it fast, he asks you if you took your potassium. Of course you fucking took it.

'You should eat something. Have you had any water?' He leaves you there, staring at the screen.

Ianto hands you the water and picks up the controller, resuming where you left off, but your time is up, and you failed. His face torn between horror and amusement, he watches as the King of the Cosmos smacks his son around.

'Is it wrong to identify with this on some level?' he asks as you sip your water. He picks another challenge in the menu and begins a session of rolling up flowers. The squeak of each attachment is satisfying, not unlike popping bubble wrap.

You consider his words. 'I don't think so.'

Ianto moves the controller jerkily in his hands, as if by swinging his arms about he can make the katamari turn more sharply. 'I do like his posh green hat.'

'That's his head.'

Ianto smiles.

You roll your eyes. Ianto may be some secret alien catcher, or weapons dealer, or whatever, but you are still sure that if you ran a secret organisation, you wouldn't put the logo on a disposable pen.

***

There is a naked man in the kitchen.

You set your suitcase down in the doorway and watch him stand in front of the open fridge in profile, drinking from the milk carton. He closes the carton and sets it carefully back on Ianto's shelf, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand before closing the door and turning around. When his eyes lock with yours, there is only a split second of surprise, and then he smiles and puts one hand on a hip.

'Hi there!' That is not the response of a person who is indulging in a fetish to break into people's houses and drink from their milk cartons naked, so you think this must be a guest of Ianto's. 'Jack Harkness.' Huh.

'Hullo,' you answer.

'You're the housemate,' Jack says when you introduce yourself, then he cocks his head. You try not to pay too much attention to the fact that he's perfectly fine standing there, starkers, only having moved behind the high-backed kitchen chair to block the view. You suspect that he has done this on your account.

'Say,' he muses, 'are you and Ianto…?'

'No,' you sigh, 'we're not related.' This isn't the first time people have asked that.

Jack snorts and looks you over. You shift a little, because you just aren't used to being metaphorically undressed in the middle of your mother's kitchen. While he's very obviously giving you the once and again, you consider that he's quite inhumanly handsome. You would certainly think about it yourself. Well done, Ianto.

'Not what I was thinking about, but good answer,' he replies.

It hits you that this is the Jack from the headset episode (and the websites), and then everything clicks together. The boss. Oh ho.

'I've been on holiday,' you say faintly, then gesture at your bags.

He smiles wider. 'Yeah, in Munich, right?'

You don't know whether you are amused that Ianto mentioned your travel plans to this man, or discomfited that Jack remembered what is certainly an inconsequential bit of information for him. So you shove your hands in your pockets and nod.

'Back a little early, aren't you?' The smile dims, and it's a suspicious thing. You wonder if Jack knows that you know. This is Ianto's boss for Christ's sake, and if Torchwood is any sort of secret governmental organisation, then they know you've been snooping about on the internet. Ianto probably knows. This reminds you of all the times you had been sure that your mum knew about your pornography stash in your room. You also feel faintly like a tin-hatter.

'Jack!' Ianto calls, and you think to answer him, but something tells you that he'd be mortified to find that you've seen his…guest in such a manner. You raise a finger to your lips and shake your head at Jack, who makes an I dunno face and shrugs.

'Yeah, yeah, coming!' Jack scoops up a few oranges, a banana, and a package of red licorice from the counter. He gives you a filthy grin and disappears down the hallway. You stand there for a full five minutes, listening to the sound of laughter (Jack has a loud and infectious laugh) and some random thunking noises that you know intimately. You lost your virginity in that bed, as a matter of fact.

Then you shoulder your bags and head upstairs.

Later, after Jack has gone, and Ianto saunters out of the shower, he almost doesn't see you playing Kingdom Hearts in the sitting room with the sound off. You think to yourself that this is one of the rare times in which you have one over on him, so you play it for amusement. You can tell by the fact that he is only wearing a towel and randomly gazing about, walking the slow and smug walk of the thoroughly shagged, that he thinks that he's alone. You’re randomly amused that Jack, who had patted your head as he'd walked by you on the way out the door, hadn't told Ianto that you were home. You think this is his gift to you for startling you earlier.

Ianto's eyes finally settle on you, and he grabs at the towel. You snort and glance at him, raising an eyebrow. 'Good on you,' you say. On the screen, Goofy and Donald high five. You often wonder if video games, like your ipod, can have a sentient sense of timing.

Ianto hovers beside the sofa, as if he doesn't know what to say. You don't blame him. You'd heard some of his performance, and you imagine that right now, he is playing the last hour in his head to find out what kind of earful you'd got.

'So, this rota thing that we discussed when I moved in--'

You snort. 'If you like. I'm fine with it.' And you look back at him then as he blinks owlishly at you. You smile. 'My little licorice whip.'

Ianto blushes, flips you off, and retreats into the kitchen.

***

When you wake up, Sarah isn't there. You roll over and look at the floor: clothes everywhere, a discarded tube of lube, the empty bottle of champagne, three washable markers. You glance down. Your stomach says shagalicious in red, and on your inner thigh a feminine hand has written, in cursive, lick here later.

You had met Sarah when she'd came in for a tattoo, a serpent around the bone of her ankle, black and white. She'd told you that it's the snake god Damballah, something about voodoo. You had liked the simplicity of the design, and her ankle was dark and smooth when you had held it to trace the design on with the pen. You'd almost kissed it right there, but Geoff has definite rules about hitting on the custom, so you'd held back. When you'd tattooed her, her hands had twisted a little on the armrest, and her breath had hitched when you'd inevitably hit the bone under the round of the ankle.

Sarah is an American getting her Masters of Music at the Royal College. When you'd asked her why in God's name she'd chosen Cardiff, she'd looked you squarely in the eye and said, 'Have you ever been to Michigan?' You hadn't quite got the precise meaning of that, but the gist had been clear.

So you'd taken her out, got her drunk, and then she'd taken you back to her flat, played the cello for you, and then fucked you senseless. The next morning, she'd made toast and jam for you and demonstrated the sensual uses of xylophone hammers on the ribcage.

You've been dating a month, and this is the first time you've brought her home.

You hear Sarah laughing downstairs. There is a smell of breakfast: bacon. Ianto is making laverbread and rashers. You used to love bacon. It is one of the many fried things that you've been off for the past year, ever since the doctor had told you that you had some choices to make.

You pull on something and stumble downstairs, bracing yourself for…for whatever.

Ianto glances up from the stove. 'I've cockles,' he says brightly. 'Don't ask how or where. Just eat them.' You look at him, half-dressed for work with that ridiculous apron he bought you last year, the one that reads May The Forks Be With You over his T-shirt. His button down and tie are hanging over one of the unoccupied chairs, and Sarah is lounging on two of the others, her long brown legs propped up on one; she takes them down and you slump into it. You notice that she's not wearing pants.

'I couldn't find my shirt,' Sarah laughs. 'Ianto gave me something to wear,' she says. You look at the t-shirt with the fake tits and try to decide how to navigate this landmine until she grabs her own breasts over the shirt and pushes them together. 'I think they're about the same size.'

Ianto dumps some bacon and laverbread on her plate. 'I'd say so,' he replies.

'Oh,' Sarah says, smacking Ianto's shoulder. 'You're inappropriate.'

You smile at Ianto. 'He always is.' You pull some of her bacon from her plate and put it on yours, knowing that it's a futile gesture.

Ianto takes the bacon back and gives it to Sarah. 'You are denied,' he says. You look at the laverbread, already rather greasy, and sigh. He's probably right. Instead, he hands you a small bowl of porridge. 'Leftovers.'

You hate porridge, but you eat it anyway.

'I helped cook breakfast!' Sarah says, which you know is supposed to be funny, because she has told you that she burns water. She pushes the tomatoes at you. 'I cut the tomatoes. So you have to eat one.'

Ianto nods gravely at you, and you can tell that he likes her. 'She was indeed the master of the paring knife.' Sarah hands him the plate and then attacks her breakfast without the slightest hesitation. You wonder if she has eaten laverbread before. It's…sometimes Americans have strange tastes. You like that she turns her fork over in her mouth.

'So, Sarah,' Ianto says, tucking into his plate, 'I have a vigorous vetting process for all of the people who enter the house and shag my housemate. Eat my authentic cobbled-together Welsh breakfast.' He smiles pointedly over the plate. 'You are no different.'

Sarah props her knee up on the chair and slouches. 'Fire away,' she says, sipping from a half-full mug of tea.

'For instance, there is great debate in the house as to whether the bog roll is fed over or under…'

And without warning, your body is drowning them out.

After the accident, after the surgery, the doctors had told you that you would have moments in which you would almost literally be able to hear your heart. They had said that it was normal, and that the heart is a strong but temperamental organ, and that after being agitated in the manner of having one's chest perforated by a steering column, and then the sternum cracked open and the muscle stopped dead, repaired and then closed up again, no wonder the poor thing would be thumping and fluttering for months to come.

You think about that when you stab at your cockles with a spoon. Ianto has seasoned them with malt vinegar, and the saltiness reminds you of brine. While your heart had been stopped, they say, you were on a fake heart machine. The machine does all the things the heart does. You think of them taking your own heart out, even though that's not what they did, and dipping it in some preservative solution. You also think about how the heart is so tough that it can be stopped and started like a lawn mower, but that for the rest of your life you will always have to be careful of things.

You aren't careful.

You listen to your heart, three years after the accident. It's all over the place sometimes, and today is going to be one of those days. You aren't sure what that means, because when you look at Sarah, it feels even stranger, as if it wants to dance about in the pericardium, like it's moving around in the sac, like it must have when you'd tried to move your head around the airbag and the dust in your face.

'Where are you from?' Ianto asks after a few more innocuous questions that probably allow him to completely profile her personality.

Sarah rolls her eyes. 'Kalamazoo.'

'Have you got a gal there?' Ianto jokes and then freezes. 'Tell me that I did not just make a Glenn Miller joke.' This seems to have some unpleasant meaning for him, because he's genuinely disgruntled about it. He looks down at his laverbread and shakes his head.

Sarah snorts and licks the side of her knife. 'Your embarrassment is safe with us.'

Ianto pushes his plate away and settles in with a cup of coffee. Sarah gives him a wide-eyed look until he fixes her one. Once he is settled again, his shirtsleeves buttoned and his tie knotted neatly, he smiles at her whimpers about his coffee, and you sigh. Apparently, Ianto makes good coffee. You wouldn't know either way. You have a cup every now and then, but it all tastes the same. Well, sometimes stronger. You had to switch to decaf tea a few months ago.

He nods his head at the paper. 'The Electro is re-opening tonight. They're showing old films of Hope Street. Fancy a look?' He looks at you and you roll your eyes. You don't like films unless they're in colour.

'Oh no, we have plans.' Sarah smiles, and her dark hair falls into her eyes. It's completely mussed, tight curls framing her face, and her teeth are those perfect American ones that orthodontists must wank over. You heart does another flippety flip, and you take your pulse. Ianto catches your eyes when he sees you with your fingers on your wrist, and his mouth quirks. He knows something you don't, does he?

You look down at your foot. In blue marker it says, 'OM NOM NOM NOM.'

***

The house is a mess. You hadn't been home when it happened, and he hadn't either, but a lot of things had blown up in the terrorist attacks, and some of the terraced houses had gone up like kindling. Yours is one of the luckier ones on the street, since it is on the end. Was on the end.

When the bombs had gone off, you'd been at work, and you'd stared, stunned, as massive areas of the city went up in flames. Then something not quite human had run past the shop front, and you'd locked the front door and told Carys that maybe you should both go into the back and find something to be used as a weapon. The radio had been a wash of confusion and reports coming in too quickly to absorb properly.

When you'd heard about the fires on your street, you'd called Ianto, but his phone had gone to voicemail, and you had figured that there wasn't much that you could do. Then you'd called Sarah, tried to calm her panicked voice without giving away the fact that you weren't even seeing things correctly.

After the emergency vehicles had come and gone through the city, you and Carys had left the shop and gone back to your homes. Sarah had met you on your street, and the two of you had stood behind the barricades and watched them put the fires out. Sarah had taken your hand in hers and led you back to her flat.

In the night, in the darkness, while you curled around her and watched the sky, hazy with smoke, you'd told her everything that she couldn't have known about what this feels like: the car, laughing with Dafydd at the particular awfulness of the song on the radio, how the hauler had come out of nowhere, driver asleep at the wheel, and come over the median, right into you. You tell her about how you had woken immobile, and for a long time you hadn't even thought you were in your own body. You tell her about Dafydd through the windshield, Dafydd's arms tangled in the warped and twisted sheet metal of the bonnet.

You tell her about your mother crying over you, and how Dafydd had sat next to you in his wheelchair, his arm so very missing, his cheeks and neck wrapped in gauze, and how he'd held your hand and said, 'Aw, this is nothing, right? Fucker nearly ripped your heart out, he did.'

You tell her about how he'd been lying, because Dafydd had never quite been all there, even before the accident, not to others; he saw things, heard things, had that skittish way about him. You tell her what you had always suspected about the crash-that when your heart had stopped, it had severed your bond to him, in a great many ways, and when you had returned, you didn't know each other.

Sarah listens to you, her legs over yours, her hands in your hair, and when you are done, she bends down, pushes your shoulder back, and kisses your scar.

Two days later, after the radio had confirmed that all of the fires were out (a reactor meltdown had been averted at the power plant as well. A mysterious man in a leather jacket, they said, and you had wondered), you and Sarah kiss farewell for now, and she makes her way to the conservatory to check on her work. You head over to your house to see what you can save.

The bottom floor is wet, almost three inches of water on the floor from the firehoses, and even though the heat had blown out the windows, the fire hadn't exactly burnt anything down here; the water pretty much ruined everything. You crunch glass under your feet and look at mum's soot-stained daisy wallpaper border and feel your heart beating strangely. You haven't taken your potassium since before the fire, but when you open the cupboard, it's there, perfectly fine. You pocket the bottle.

You look at your bedroom; everything is sodden and it smells so badly that you've got a raging headache and you've only been here for five minutes. Your bed is a cinderbrick. The attic got the worst of it. The attic, filled with all of your childhood things and mum's wedding linens and Dafydd's baby clothes.

You can't help but think that a decision has been made for you, and that it's a good one.

You fill a few bags with things from the bureau that weren't burned, just soaked and now smell like a woodstove. When you have everything you care to take from there, you set the bags in a relatively dry spot in the front yard, where you will fetch them later and cart them over to Sarah's in her car.

'They said that it was structurally sound upstairs, but it's not very nice,' Ianto says from behind you. You turn, and your eyes catch everything they run over, like dragging a sweater through a thorny bush. Ianto has his arms full of garbage bags, bags that hold his clothes, rubbish, maybe, things that he has been able to salvage from the wet mess that is his room.

'I was just up there. You save anything?' you ask, gesturing to the bags.

His nose wrinkles. 'Some. Everything smells like a Hawaiian luau.'

Ah, yeah, got it in one.

He stands there and looks about the sitting room, his face a little bemused. You don't blame him. It's your house. You have no idea where to start. Perhaps with a bulldozer and a few pints.

He hands you one of the bags and you walk to his car. 'What are you going to do now?' he asks over his shoulder. 'I imagine that the insurance will fix this place up, eventually.'

You sigh, tossing the bag into the open boot. 'Dunno. You?'

Ianto rubs the bridge of his nose between his thumb and finger. 'I have a place to stay for the time being, if that's what you mean. Not ideal, in one way, but ideal, in another way.'

You nod. 'The shagalicious boss,' you say. It is one of Sarah's bastardised words, and you rather like it because it is so awful. Ianto understands, but your friends had made fun of you down at the pub for saying it. You don't spend much time with them anymore.

Ianto shrugs. 'No, at work, actually. But yes, the shagalicious boss.'

'Your job,' you say suddenly, 'Torchwood.'

He looks at you then, eyes slightly narrowed. 'Yes.'

You exhale. You had still harboured a suspicion that you had been wrong, but now he's just confirmed it. You allow yourself to think back, of the times he's stumbled in with bruises and cuts, or worked five days straight without coming home, or the times he's screamed in his sleep.

'You dealt with this?' you ask, because even if it was terrorists, it had been so massive that Torchwood probably had resources to share. It was special ops or something.

Ianto leans against the boot and crosses his arms. 'Yeah.'

You glance back at the house. 'Well, it's still standing, and at least no one I know is dead.'

Ianto's face slackens, going blank, the face that he uses to cover work issues most of the time.

'Oh, Ianto, I'm sorry.'

He glances away, looking at the house across the street, untouched by the fires. 'These things happen,' he tells you.

You follow his gaze and then look back at your own house. You idly hope that Frodo the fucking Pomeranian had been able to get out, along with Mrs. Smith, your neighbour. You look up at the gutters that you never fixed and see that they are blackened and full of holes where the rust burnt away.

'This is going to be a nightmare. I should just sell it as is and move to the Bay.' You look at him as he rounds the car to lean against the driver's side. 'If there's anything left, that is.' You tilt your head. 'Maybe I'll move to Kalamazoo.'

'I'll find you a contractor.' Ianto closes his eyes and rests the back of his head against the frame.

You take a moment to look at him. He's been wearing the same suit for probably the last three days, since you last saw him, you are sure, when you had eaten a perfunctory breakfast of cereal and tea and he'd bolted for the door, saying something about being late, even though it had been a Saturday. You had told him that you were going to make Bara Brith and he had warned you not to burn the house down.

That had been idiotic and halfhearted at the time, but now it's rather funny.

'I shouldn't have left the popty on,' you murmur, and then you laugh. Ianto shakes his head, but you can see that he's amused as well. He claps his hands on your shoulders and pulls you in for a hug, and you stiffen. You aren't affectionate, and you've never actually hugged Ianto. He hasn't ever indicated that he was interested in hugging, either, but right now you are smelly and tired and burnt out. He's red around the eyes, probably from smoke, but possibly from crying, and you wonder how the past three days have been for him.

He's taller than you are, and you bury your face in his neck and feel something in your throat, so you just decide that fuck it, you aren't interested in what he thinks of you. So you cry a little bit, grabbing his chest and pressing into it. You think you might hear him saying something, but when you open your eyes, you see the burned out wreck of your childhood over his shoulder.

When you're done, you don't even bother to feel embarrassed. You wipe your eyes on the sleeve of the sweatshirt that Sarah has leant you and step back. Ianto scrubs at his face with his hands, then claps them together once, staring you in the eyes.

'Well, I think that this is the end of our time together.' He rolls his shoulders in the manner of sliding out of a garment. 'I've a friend who might say that the end is where we start from.'

'Yeah,' you say, one foot scuffing the ground. 'You were a good housemate, Jones.'

He punches your arm lightly. 'You were a good landlord, Jones.'

You back up and stand in the street, shoving your hands into your pockets as he gets in, and you wonder if you'll ever see him again. Ianto's car is full of bags, and he never really had much anyway: clothes, books, a few CDs that he liked to play when he was drunk. Most of those are ruined, you know, because yours are, and there is nothing to bring him back.

You knock on the window, suddenly.

'We can do lunch, or something, yeah?' you ask as he starts the car and rolls down the window.

Ianto looks at you and smiles again. 'Yeah, sounds good.' Then he puts the car in gear and pulls out. You watch him until he turns right, and then he's out of sight.

You miss him already.

END

( Click here for the optional coda.)