Fic: Friendships and Rain and Other Ordinary, Extraordinary Things
Title: Friendships and Rain and Other Ordinary, Extraordinary Things
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, mentions of Gwen/Rhys
Rating: G.
Warnings: Spoilers for all of S2, major spoilers for Exit Wounds and FOOTR
Summary: About 3 months after Exit Wounds, things begin to change for Jack and Ianto.
Disclaimers: This is a work of fan ficiton, all the characters except the rugby fans from London and Glasgow belong to the BBC.
It was a Thursday afternoon of a blessedly quiet week. There had been no marauding Weevils, no alien incursions, no bizarre technology found in the streets of Cardiff, and, best of all, nobody from London (Torchwood, Downing Street, or otherwise) calling them to bother them about something. The five temporary staff members, three from London and two from Torchwood Glasgow, had settled in nicely, easing the strain from the three remaining Torchwood Cardiff personnel. The most exciting thing that had happened all day was a merry, boisterous discussion between two of the London temps and one of the Glasgow temps about an upcoming England/Scotland rugby match. The quiet was a refreshing break in the shadows of the disaster just over three months ago.
Ianto was in the Hub somewhere. Gwen was out at the moment, having her scheduled weekly appointment with the UNIT psychologist that Jack insisted all the survivors (Rhys included) go see. She’d be back in half an hour or so. Jack had pulled in every favour he’d ever been owed plus a few he hadn’t to get help for them, from temporary staff so that he could give Ianto and Gwen two weeks convalescent leave to psychiatric treatment, the kind that Ianto should have gotten after the fall of Torchwood One but hadn’t. He’d also borrowed a fast-tracker system from UNIT, so that any of the four survivors could hit a help button and be picked up by whichever temporary employee was on duty at the moment.
“This is your call button. This is your safe button. Every day, when you get home from work, I need you to push your safe button. When you go to sleep or wake up in the morning, push your safe button. We will be tracking them from here. If you ever, for any reason, need anything, push the call button, and somebody will get in touch with you within five minutes. If you are in immediate danger, press the call button three times in a row, and somebody will come get you from wherever you are.” Jack handed out the wristbands. Ianto put his on without hesitation. Gwen and Rhys both looked askance at theirs.
“What’s this all about, mate?” Rhys asked.
Jack answered, “We all just survived something nobody should ever have to deal with.” His voice broke. “Things will get better, but they’ll get worse before they do. This way, you don’t ever have to be completely alone.” He did not feel the need to explain that the tracker was monitoring their vital signs and that they were all under 24-hour suicide watch. Ianto clearly had already figured that out, but Jack wasn’t about to say that to Rhys or Gwen.
“Come by mine this evening?”
Jack started and looked up, then relaxed when he saw who it was. Ianto had just walked into his office with something that smelled like heaven. The world could have come to an end (but it hadn’t, Jack had an intimate knowledge of what that looked like) and Torchwood Cardiff’s world had been broken apart, yet Ianto still came to his office every day at 3pm with a cup of fresh coffee.
“What time?” Although Jack had spent every night in the last two months with Ianto, the younger man still asked whether he were coming over. Jack always said yes.
“Around seven, perhaps?”
“You going to visit to your fair lady?”
“I think she would miss me terribly if I didn't come.”
Jack cocked his head and raised an eyebrow. “I think you would miss her terribly if you didn't go.”
“That too.” Ianto lowered his head, and Jack thought he saw the barest hints of a smile.
“I'll be there around half past seven, then. Anything I should bring?” Ianto shook his head. As he took the cup of coffee, Jack let his fingers brush over Ianto's. “Be safe.”
“Thank you.” Ianto leaned over and gave Jack a quick kiss on the forehead. Jack closed his eyes and exhaled. Things had changed…one of them being that if they had a private moment on work time, Ianto was far more likely to physically express affection.
Jack sipped at his coffee as the door closed behind him. After their first meeting during the Night Travellers investigation, Ianto had struck up an unlikely friendship with Christina, the elderly lady at Providence Park. He was as thoroughly smitten with her, with her keen observations and stories of things past and kind comments, as she was with him. Since they'd met, he'd gone to the hospital twice a week to visit, missing only the two weeks immediately after their world fell to pieces. He would always take something with him: his chess set, books of poetry and short stories from the library to read to her, picture puzzles for them to piece together, and once, when he resumed his visits after the bombings, an exquisitely beautiful aqua silk scarf that she wore around her wrist like a corsage. He seldom gave specifics of their visits, but when he came back he always had a hint of a smile and less of the sadness that followed all of them since that day.
When he had first started going to visit her after the bombings, Ianto didn't tell Jack where he was going. He would simply excuse himself at the end of the workday, then vanish. Before the bombings, it never seemed odd; he could have been out shopping or doing laundry, so Jack never asked. When he resumed his visits after the bombings, however, his disappearance frightened Jack, frightened him horribly. He’d never hit his call button, not once, but Jack was terrified all the same. Part of it was a lingering fear on his part about being alone, part of it was fear on Ianto’s behalf, and part of it was fear for their relationship. They’d survived terrible things before, but nothing that had shattered both of them quite as badly as Gray’s path of destruction. For the first few days, they’d clung to one another like children...and then the strain took its toll and they began to fight. About a month in, they had had a huge fight, and then things changed.
“Jack, look at me.” Ianto maneuvered him into a corner in his kitchen, grabbed both of his hands, and pinned them to his sides. “Look at me.” Jack shuddered and flinched, but finally met his eyes. They’d had another big fight about something. Jack could sense that something had snapped in Ianto, but he didn’t know what.
“Jack, do you want to keep doing this?”
“Doing what? Fighting with you?”
“No. Being with me. Do you want to stay together as a couple or not?”
The breath caught in Jack’s throat. He could hear the blood roaring in his ears, and for an awful second he was sure he was going to pass out. “God, Ianto, more than anything. Please…yes…”
The expression on Ianto’s face softened. He dropped Jack’s hands, but instead of backing away, he gathered Jack into his arms. “Can we promise each other from here on out to take a time out before we start yelling at each other? Please? I want you in my life, I really do, but things have to change.”
“I promise.”
Since he found out where Ianto was going, Jack always asked how Christina was doing and asked Ianto to send his regards. He also did the usual Hub shutdown routine on the nights that Ianto went to Providence Park. Ianto had initially protested, but for the first time since they’d started dating Jack pulled rank in a personal matter, telling Ianto point-blank that his mental health was more important than mindless drudgery. Jack figured that two nights of week of mucking Weevil cells, taking out the trash, and cleaning the Hub was absurdly little effort compared to the reward. That decision proved to be the right one, as the slow and gradual improvement in Ianto’s mood began to spill over to Jack and Gwen. As a supervisor, Jack clung to that faintest bit of happiness, knowing it was probably one of the few things keeping him from the brink of despair and Gwen from crying into her tea every day. Personally, away from the Hub, he loved it even more. After each visit, Ianto would open up to him just a little more, and would say something that helped Jack open up to him. His tales of his afternoons with Christina gave both of them welcome relief from the devastation around them and, surprisingly, a wholly unexpected avenue to explore one another. Jack now knew that Ianto had a real flair for history, for instance, and Ianto found out about Jack's closet passion for baroque and romantic literature: two bizarrely ordinary (and therefore extraordinary) discoveries in the wreckage of Torchwood Cardiff.
The Night Travellers had been horrific, particularly to Ianto who still took the loss of every innocent life as a personal failing. Following that harrowing experience with nearly being killed in an explosion, watching Cardiff burn, and losing two beloved friends and compatriots had dredged up every long-repressed bad memory of the massacre at Canary Wharf and added several new ones, to the point where Jack seriously feared for Ianto’s sanity. The UNIT psychologist told Jack to focus on the beauty in ordinary things, everyday things, as a way to remind himself that no matter how overwhelming the tragedy, he always had some kind of stability. He assumed she’d told the same thing to Ianto. Jack wouldn’t quite put Ianto and Christina’s friendship in the category of everyday things, as she was helping Ianto cope with the devastation and grief, just as Ianto was helping her emerge from years of isolation. Christina provided an unlikely sanctuary from the madness of Torchwood that, at the moment, was a gift beyond measure.
When Gwen noticed that Jack was doing the shutdown routine on a regular basis, and Ianto was nowhere to be seen, she timidly knocked on his door and asked where he was. Judging by her expression, she also feared for his safety and well-being.
“Jack, when Ianto leaves and you do the chores, where does he go? Is he okay?”
“He’s fine. He's found himself a ladyfriend, and when he goes to visit, I do all that.”
Gwen frowned. “He has a girlfriend? Did something happen? I thought the two of you were still together.” She looked as if she were about to cry at that thought. He knew exactly how she felt. She and Rhys had gone through a rough patch about the same time he and Ianto had, and they had gone to the counselor together several times to try and patch up the differences.
Looking down at the papers on his desk, Jack smiled and shook his head. “No, no, nothing like that.” He looked up at Gwen. “She’s in her eighties, lives in a home, and loves having a cup of tea with a dashing young man. She’s been alone for many years, so she adores his visits, and it helps him cope.” The smile fell from his face. “It’s a bright spark in his life, Gwen, one he desperately needs right now. We all do.”
That evening, just as Jack started the shutdown routine, he heard Gwen call Rhys and tell him she’d be about half an hour late coming home. After a pause, he heard her tell Rhys about a new cleanup rotation and promised that she wouldn’t be doing anything more dangerous or time-consuming than sweeping floors. He could hear Rhys laughing through the phone as he wandered down to the Weevil cages.
At five o’clock on the nose, Gwen knocked on Jack’s office door, distracting him from the report he was working on. Since that night, she always helped him with the chores. He stood up, offered her his arm, and escorted her to the broom closet. While she swept and wiped desktops and washed dishes and emptied the rubbish bins, he fed and mucked out the Weevils, did the security protocols, and fed Myfawny. It became something of a private joke that it took the two of them as much time to do those chores together as it took Ianto to do on his own-a bit of lighthearted, gentle fun, another surprising but welcome side effect of Ianto’s friendship with Christina. Ianto showed his appreciation to both of them in his usual quiet way. There were no words of thanks, nor were there grand gestures, but one day Gwen found a box of foil-wrapped chocolates on her desk and Jack found a battered paperback translation of L’ecole des Femmes on his own.
A couple of hours later, Jack dragged himself away from his pile of job applications. Ten till seven, his clock read, which meant it was time to start walking over to Ianto's flat. Standing up, he grabbed his greatcoat from the hook and shrugged it on. It was raining softly, not unusual in Cardiff, and pooling water turned the streets (the ones that weren’t destroyed, at least) into black mirrors. Tucking his hands into his pockets and turning up his collar, he made his way through towards Ianto’s flat. He remembered Ianto's comment about bringing something, and so he stopped at a shop to pick up some fruit juice-they’d both stopped drinking alcohol after the bombings, deciding they’d rather be sober and in pain than raging alcoholics-and, on a whim, a single yellow rose. After paying, he resumed his walk through the damp, argon-lit streets, admiring the reflection of the streetlamps in the rain.
Ianto didn’t live far from the Hub, as the crow flies, but the bombings had blasted out several streets and buildings along the way. His block of flats had survived unscathed, but there were a few nearby that hadn’t. Jack he let his mind wander while his feet beat out the shortest safe route by themselves. When he arrived at the building, he let himself in and began to ascend the narrow stairway. Halfway up, he was accosted by an extremely friendly puppy and her exasperated owner on their way for their evening walk. The door to flat 3B was open just a bit, a shaft of light peeking out of it, letting Jack know that Ianto was already home. The door creaked as he pushed it open.
Ianto was nowhere to be seen, hardbound version of Old Possum's Book of Practical Cats laying abandoned and alone on the coffee table, coat and scarf thrown over the back of the sofa. Apparently today was a reading day. He walked in and closed the door behind him, hitting his safe button as soon as the latch closed.
“Ianto?” He moved across the living room to the sofa, picked up Ianto's coat and scarf, and hung them and his coat on the hook before taking his boots off.
“In here,” came a voice from the kitchen.
Jack padded in, setting the juice and rose on the counter before coming up behind Ianto and wrapping an arm around his waist. “Hey.”
“Hey.” Ianto leaned back against Jack, eyes closed, head resting on Jack's shoulder. He looked pale and tired, but as was typical after his visits, a little bit of the shadow following him was gone. Jack wrapped his other arm around Ianto, who covered them with his own. “You’re wet.” He nuzzled Jack behind his ear, and then moved away. His eyes crinkled in surprise when he saw the rose. “Where did you find this?” He twirled the stem between his thumb and forefinger. “I haven’t seen fresh flowers anywhere in ages.” Since that day. The unspoken words were loud and clear. Holding the stem under the tap, he snipped off the end and stuck it into a water glass. Then he opened up the cabinet, took out two tumblers, and poured them each a glass of juice.
“The little market on the way here had some. I just saw it and thought you might enjoy it.”
“I do. Thank you.” He led Jack into the living room and sat on the couch. He was sitting in a posture that Jack recognized as please touch me, arm extended across the back of the sofa, legs stretched out with feet on the coffee table. Jack slid over to sit pressed next to him, shoulders under Ianto’s outstretched arm. Ianto reached a hand up to play with Jack's hair, something he’d only started doing after the bombings. Jack sighed and leaned back into the caresses. In typical Ianto fashion, when he developed a nervous habit born of a need for tactile reassurance that Jack was there and alive and safe, he chose one that soothed and calmed both of them.
After a while, Ianto spoke. “I was there about an hour. My rendition of The Awefull Battle of the Pekes and the Pollicles was well-received. About six of the others came to listen, plus Christina of course.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “What’s that about?”
“Dogs. Loud, annoying, yappy dogs.” He stopped for a quick sip of his juice. “She asked after you, by the way. She wanted to know how you were getting on.”
“What did you tell her?”
“That you are more trouble than I know what to do with.”
“She doesn't know the half of it.” Jack smiled. After almost three long months, they’d finally begun to banter with one another again in the last couple of weeks. It felt odd, like putting on a shirt that used to fit but was now too big, but good at the same time. It was still a fragile and delicate thing, but slowly, ever so slowly, they were coming back to where they’d been.
“No, she doesn't.” They sat there a while longer, Ianto staring at the ceiling and Jack playing absently with the buttons on his cuffs.
Jack reached for his glass and took a drink. He could hear the patter of the rain falling outside, droplets splashing down on the roof. The steady drumming was interspersed with the occasional rustle of something moving outside and the gentle rasping of his and Ianto’s breathing. It was soothing and comforting and warm and safe. They probably would have sat like that for a very long time, but just then, Jack’s stomach growled.
“Are you hungry, cariad?” Ianto raised an eyebrow at him.
“I could eat.”
They stood and walked into the kitchen, Jack following orders when given and otherwise staying out of Ianto's way, Ianto preparing the food and telling him about the rest of his visit with Christina. Jack asked about the puppy next door and was rewarded by a low chuckle and an anecdote about the puppy getting loose in his flat. One pan of butter chicken and a pot of boiled rice later, they took their meals back to the couch. Jack grabbed the remote and turned the television on. Without really thinking about it, he flipped through the channels until he found a documentary film on Australian birds that he figured would be safe enough…no bombs, no excavations, no destruction or violence, just birds. They settled in to watch, Ianto putting a hand up to stroke Jack’s hair again as soon as he finished his food. To their mutual surprise, the birds in question were interesting and engaging and rather funny. When the credits rolled, Jack took the plates and headed into the kitchen to wash up. As he stood there up to his elbows in soapy water, it suddenly hit him what they’d done that night. They’d had dinner and a movie together for the first time since the blasts. Something so simple and ordinary, and before today they’d both been under the weight of so much guilt and grief that the very thought of dinner and a movie had been too much. He didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry.
Ordinary things. Curry and friendship and birds and movies and dishes-all those little ordinary things that held them together like a thousand tiny ribbons. He dropped the dishes in the sink, strode quickly into the living room, seized Ianto by the hand, and pulled him upright into a fierce hug.
Outside, the rain continued to fall.
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Author's notes: This fic started life as a h/c set somewhere after FOOTR, and then got completely and utterly jossed by Exit Wounds. I don't like writing AU stuff, so I had to go back and substantially rework the story. In the end I'm glad it got jossed, because I like the finished product a whole lot better. I know I complained about the World's Loudest Mosque in my previous post, but this fic owes a debt of gratitude to the WLM. The call to prayer is rather soothing and nice to listen to (if loud) and most importantly on key, and the chanting helped set the gentle, contemplative mood for the fic. Also, it gave me about 4 hours every day that I wasn't sleeping and couldn't concentrate on anything else...especially between 5 and 7 am.