Nothing's Fair in Love and War - 5/10
Title: Nothing’s fair in Love and War - 5/10
Rating: NC17 for the whole thing.
Warnings/Spoilers: Set after Series 2. Slash/Language.
Characters: Torchwood Team Fic - Jack/Ianto.
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood or its characters.
Summary: Sequel to my fic - Sex, Lies and CCTV. Jack and Ianto deal with the end of their relationship. Flashbacks are indicated with ‘xxxxxxx’s….’
A/N: Because Hell hath no fury like a Captain scorned.
This is for
lucy_locketit isn't good enough for her but its for her none the less. I have no words for how awesome she is. She looks after me. And no one does that anymore, so thank you sweetie.
Nothing's fair in Love and War: Part One
Nothing's fair in Love and War: Part Two
Nothing's fair in Love and War: Part Three
Nothing's fair in Love and War: Part Four
‘The only thing wrong with immortality is that it tends to go on forever.’ Herb Caen.
Jack sat back in his chair and twirled his pencil in his fingers, going over in his mind for the millionth time memories of Ianto, everything reminded him of something and it was becoming harder to act like it wasn’t affecting him. He saw Ianto’s car pull up in the car park on the CCTV and sighed, he missed his aftershave and his laugh he thought, breath on his neck when he slept, talking in bed, kissing in the rain, hands under his coat, lips on his - he clenched his jaw and realised he had snapped his pencil.
He rocked backwards on his chair and stood up, he knew it was a bad idea but to be honest he didn’t care, everything was telling him he should - would, go and talk to him, because you never knew where it would get you. He stood up quickly and walked out into the Hub just as Gwen walked in noisily and took off her coat, standing behind Ianto and Jack moved out the way, watching them both carefully.
‘My husband wants to know if you want to and go and watch the rugby this weekend.’
‘Tell your husband I’m already going with someone and I’ll meet him there if he wants.’
Gwen sat down next to him and watched as he went through daily rift rituals that Tosh would have already taken care of, ‘you’re already going?’
‘Uh huh.’
‘But you didn’t go to the last three,’ she replied curiously and Ianto rolled his eyes.
‘I was busy for those.’
‘Busy?’
‘Doing…erm…’ Ianto glanced away and Jack smiled, he had spent the last three rugby matches with him. In bed. Jack loved Sundays.
‘Jack?’ Gwen asked smiling and Ianto nodded.
‘Yep.’
‘Uh huh. So not busy anymore?’
‘You know I’m not.’
‘Okay.’ She nodded slowly and he turned his head round warily.
‘Wait - are you coming?’
‘No,’ Gwen said, ‘date with my mother.’ She sighed and Ianto turned back as she continued, ‘I’m kinda hoping I’m killed by a weevil before it so I don’t have to talk about grandchildren constantly. Why?’
‘No reason,’ Ianto shook his head and smiled to himself, ‘just…I’m pretty sure you permanently damaged my hearing last time that’s all - Ow!
He flinched and Gwen scowled as he rubbed his shoulder.
‘I am not loud.’
‘You’re certainly not quiet.’ Ianto replied distractedly and Jack grinned as he continued, ‘you know Gavin Henson can’t actually understand you from that distance and even if he could he wouldn’t take your advice. Ow!’
Jack snorted silently as Ianto jerked away and Gwen glared at him.
‘You’re right,’ he agreed, ‘sorry…You’re as quiet as a…foghorn. Ow! Stop it!’
She grinned and he moved more than an arms length away. Jack stifled a laugh as he watched, he loved that Gwen and Ianto got on well these days. Even if they did argue like children.
‘Why do you smell of woman’s perfume?’
Jack’s head snapped up and he listened carefully.
‘What?’ Ianto frowned and Gwen sniffed him.
‘Yeah, you smell of Chanel.’
Jack frowned and realised he wasn’t breathing, he stared at Ianto intently and noted he had tired eyes and was wearing the same suit as yesterday.
‘Are you sure you’re not just smelling yourself?’
‘No.’ Gwen replied obviously and Jack realised Ianto was even wearing the same tie as yesterday, ‘I know what I smell of.’
Ianto grinned, ‘so many responses…so little time.’
‘Shut up.’
Jack tapped his foot impatiently, he couldn’t believe Ianto had spent the night with someone else. A woman. And had come into work unashamedly smelling of her.
‘Work you two!’ They both looked up at him as he swept through, ‘Gwen - meeting, now.’
He slammed the door and they looked at each other warily.
‘What did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ He said, ‘what did you do?’
‘Nothing.’ She stared at him confused as they heard a loud crash from Jack’s office, ‘fuck.’
‘Yep.’
....................
Gwen watched Jack slam the phone down and walked into his office sitting down opposite him defiantly, ‘what is going on with you!?’
‘Nothing.’ Jack realised he didn’t know what he was going to do with Gwen now that he had asked her to come in, he had just had to end that conversation.
‘Don’t lie.’
She put a pen in her mouth and chewed thoughtfully.
‘Leave it Gwen.’
‘So there is something then?’
‘No.’
They glared at each other and Jack tapped his finger impatiently on the desk.
‘Jack, what is it?’
‘Gwen!’
She sighed and glanced at her watch, ‘Jack, whatever it is, and it’s clearly Ianto, just tell me.’
They continued to glare at each other and Jack realised it was Gwen he was talking to and there every chance she would sit here until the end of time - and thanks to his extreme wealth of knowledge on that subject he knew it was fucking ages away.
‘Ianto.’
‘Thought as much,’ she grinned smugly and he seriously considered throwing her out, ‘what about him?’
‘You saw him.’
‘Uh huh.’
‘Well isn’t it obvious?’
His fingernails dug into his palm and he realised how petty he sounded. It was a while since he had been in a relationship like this - not since a particularly emotional boyfriend that had thrived on angst and created more dramatics than a soap opera and whom Jack had loved and hated all at once, using every tactic under the various Sun’s to get rid of him and win him back time and again until thy were both crazy. This was different though, Ianto and he weren’t meant to be dramatic and petty. Jack wasn’t meant to get jealous. And Ianto wasn’t meant to make him. It was infuriating.
‘Noooo.’ Gwen twirled her pen in her hair annoyingly and looked like she was enjoying being who Jack came to for…help, ‘looked like Ianto. Suit. Tie. Expensive shoes - which I still don’t know how he pays for.’
‘You don’t want to.’ Jack huffed, ‘and that’s what I mean. His suit. It’s the same as yesterday.’
He sat back as if he had proved a point and Gwen raised her eyebrows. ‘Oh.’
Jack sighed, she clearly wasn’t getting this.
‘And he smelt of women’s perfume…’ He widened his eyes and she finally understood.
‘Oh - you think he…maybe…spent the night with someone?’
Jack glanced away quickly and crossed his arms.
‘I don’t know what I think. I have to get out for a bit. Hold down the fort.’
Gwen stood up and he raked his hands through his hair, also standing and putting his coat on. She leaned over and touched his arm gently.
‘You don’t know for sure Jack,’ she shrugged, ‘I think he’s still all about you personally - just, don’t jump to conclusions if you can’t prove it.’
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
‘You don’t stay dead.’
Ianto walked into his office and sat down opposite him. Files in one hand, not even a cup of coffee as an excuse and not waiting for an invitation to sit down. It was practically a dramatic entrance for the young unassuming man Jack had recently hired. However, Jack knew different, knew how exciting that unassuming demeanour was, knew that underneath it was the potential for something brilliant and wondered not for the first time why exactly he had felt he had had to pursue it and hired a man who knew a lot more about everything than he should. Especially, it appeared, with this most recent discovery.
‘Excuse me?’
‘You die, but you don’t stay dead.’
He said it almost as if it was an answer to something mundane about paperwork but there was a steely glare in his eyes and Jack reminded himself that Ianto Jones was still something of an enigma, not least because no one was as normal as he made himself out to be on paper. There was more to Ianto than he was letting on and Jack had intended to discover what it was but it seemed he had been superseded and Ianto had figured him out first.
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Yes.’ Ianto grinned that small grin he had that Jack couldn’t get enough of, it was a knowing smile with the hint of a threat, ‘you do.’
‘Okay,’ Jack grinned back just as threateningly and nodded to him, ‘you don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘That’s potentially more accurate.’ Ianto agreed and sat up straighter in the chair.
‘But unfortunately for you, not true either. ’
‘I have things to do.’
Jack made to stand up and Ianto looked down at his hands in his lap.
‘Is it dying and coming back to life?’
He cocked his head and raised an eyebrow and Jack clenched his jaw.
‘Ianto -‘
‘Sir. I know it’s true, I’ve read the files.’
Jack sat back down and leaned across the desk, rested on his forearms and tilted his head amusedly, ‘you shouldn’t believe everything you read.’
Ianto gave a small nod of seeming acceptance and then reached out, placed the file he had been holding on the desk in front of Jack, opened the front cover and spread the first few pages out. Accounts and pictures, reports and mission reviews of Jack’s deaths at Torchwood over the years fell across the surface and Ianto stared at him pointedly.
‘Okaaay.’
Jack sat back and Ianto raised an eyebrow questioningly.
‘How is it possible?’
‘It isn’t.’
He grinned and Ianto stared back.
‘Clearly it is.’
‘You know everything. You tell me.’
The atmosphere in the room shifted and suddenly Ianto was at a loss, his hands splayed on the desk and he regarded Jack coolly as he thought.
‘You’re…wrong.’
The words hit home and Jack flinched, his eyes flashing and his voice tight.
‘Wrong? I’m wrong?’
‘You’re right - sorry that’s rude,’ Ianto caught himself quickly at Jack’s expression and he frowned to himself, ‘sounded prejudiced didn’t it?’ He thought again and Jack considered the fact that he was wrong, he wasn’t human anymore…he was new, a different type of human maybe. Not necessarily a bad thing, he could start creating a new race… ‘Not wrong,’ Ianto corrected, ‘just not normal. Different.’
Ianto had mirrored his thoughts and Jack rolled the word in his mouth.
‘Different?’
‘Still prejudiced.’ Ianto agreed, thinking out loud, ‘special?’
‘Not better Jones.’ Jack drawled in a low growl and Ianto let that knowing look glean in his eye again
‘How about alien?’
‘How about enough questions? Why are you even doing this?’
‘Because you’re the only person I know who has lived here for a hundred years or so and looks pretty good on it - and that intrigues me.’
‘You think I look good?’
‘Don’t change the subject.’
‘Look Ianto - I don’t know what to tell you. You read the files, take from it what you will.’
He sat back and Ianto looked over the pictures of deaths once again, a particularly violent one with a rather nasty alien was sitting on top and he grimaced.
‘You seem remarkably flippant for a man who’s had 867 recorded deaths at the hands of Torchwood.’
Jack balked at the number, even he didn’t know how many deaths he had experienced here and it was curious to him that something as important as dying should be so commonplace to him that he’d never kept count, never felt the need to. He really shouldn’t be flummoxed by a man he hardly knew and it was making his head hurt that this conversation was being forced upon him.
‘I didn’t employ you to question me Ianto, it isn’t relevant to your duties so how about you leave it alone.’
‘What do you think the others would say?’
‘I’m sorry?’
Ianto raised an eyebrow and stared directly at him, ‘the others, the Torchwood Three team who are so dissimilar in their approach to Torchwood One.’ Jack shifted uncomfortably and started to wonder what he had started, he shouldn’t be allowed to employ anyone just because they made him hard as fuck. Even if they did provide him with dinosaur pets. Ianto was still staring and he dragged his attention back.
‘What would they say about your…difference? A new type of team that would go to any lengths to do good, use their talents to save the innocent, protect the public at any cost. Follow their leader without question.’
‘This team isn’t Torchwood One,’ Jack countered steely, ‘they follow orders but they all have their own minds and intelligence, they aren’t programmed to be obliviously loyal.’ He pointed at him, ‘you should start understanding that.’
‘And maybe you should start understanding what you’ve created.’
‘What?’
‘Understand that there is only one type of loyalty and it is oblivious.’ Ianto leaned forward and rested his arms on the desk. ‘ There will always be leaders and there will always be those that will follow, be loyal, fight for that leader and die for that leader and to die for you sir, would be futile. And you know that but you don’t prevent the risk by informing any of us of that fact.’
‘I don’t ask people to die for me.’
Ianto seemed to ignore the tone in his voice and Jack tried to ignore the lie in that very statement. He knew he had sent people to die, had killed people, had had people die for him and die because of him, and knew that he would never forgive himself for any one of them.
‘It doesn’t matter, that’s my point, you’ve made this team and you are their leader, and can you guarantee that they wouldn’t die for you? Could you live with it if you were wrong?’
‘I live with more than you can ever imagine and I think you’ve asked enough questions and you’re done.’ He stood up and pointed out the door, crossed his arms over his chest and glared at him.
‘Of course, sir,’ Ianto stood and gave him a tight smile, ‘I’ll keep the information to myself,’ he picked up the file and tucked the papers in again neatly before making his way to the door and turning to face him again briefly, ‘its just - I’ve been a part of Torchwood before when it saw fit to allow needless death. If you’re as different as you claim - prove it.’
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
‘What was it?’ Ianto asked, trying not to seem too interested as Gwen crept by noisily.
‘Oh - erm,’ she gestured uselessly wondering how Ianto caught her in super stealth mode, ‘nothing…’
‘You are shit at lying,’ Ianto spun round to face her in his chair and shook his head, ‘how you had an affair is beyond me.’
‘Ianto!’
‘Sorry.’ He glanced away guiltily and knew he had let Jack get to him. ‘What is it? Just tell me.’
She moved closer and whispered in her best soap opera voice, ‘he thinks you slept with someone else.’
‘What?’
‘Same suit,’ Gwen gestured and Ianto looked down at himself and pouted, ‘same tie. Smell of Chanel…’ She raised her eyebrows and Ianto frowned at her.
‘I stayed at my aunts - I was going to mention it earlier but he cut us off slightly…We watched films until 4 and then fell asleep on the sofa together.’
‘Ooohhh.’
Ianto wasn’t surprised, shouldn’t be surprised, he’d come back home one night months ago to find Jack sitting in the dark waiting for him and had only taken one step in the door before Jack had smelt the other guy on him. It had only been a blow job, behind a club and Ianto had come hard and immediately gotten rid of him. But Jack hadn’t forgiven him for days. Hadn’t forgiven himself either, had driven them both crazy until Ianto had made him talk about it and they had both decided to be monogomous. But they weren’t together now. And clearly Jack wasn’t understanding it. He leaned his elbows forward onto his knees and ran his hands over his face speaking through his fingers.
‘He isn’t over this at all is he?’
Gwen snorted quietly and rolled her eyes, ‘have you just realised?’
‘Shit.’ He dropped his head further and closed his eyes, he was so tired, so tired of trying to do the right thing and it smacking him back in the face.
‘You need to go and talk to him,’ Gwen tapped her pen against her cheek and Ianto looked up at her blearily, ‘again.’
‘It shouldn’t matter.’ He shook his head softly, ‘we aren’t together anymore I’m single.’
‘Have you…?’ She nodded her head and Ianto frowned confused.
‘What?’
‘Slept with anyone else?’
He rolled his eyes, trust Gwen, but if he was honest his ex - time travelling, immortal boyfriend wasn’t a topic he could talk to anyone else about honestly - apart from his Aunt Lexie. So Gwen would have to do. ‘No.’
‘Not exactly the actions of a single person,’ she replied pointedly.
‘I’m not talking to him,’ Ianto shook his head defiantly, ‘if he wants to think that of me, he can.’
‘Ianto!….Ianto!’ They both looked up at the disembodied voice yelling down into the Hub and Ianto swept out forcefully, disappearing into the Archives and brushing Jack’s shoulder on his way out.
‘What was that about?’ He glared at Gwen as she fisted her hands and drew herself up from her desk.
‘You two need to get back together you are both driving me crazy!’
‘Gwen, he’s sleeping with someone else,’ Jack replied frustratedly, gesturing after him, ‘he thinks he’s better off, I don’t know what to do.’
She shook her head, her hair flying over her shoulders, ‘he isn’t over you.’
‘He slept with another woman!’
‘No.’ She stared at him hard, ‘He didn’t.’
‘What?’
‘He was with his aunt the whole night, they fell asleep together on the sofa.’
Jack’s face fixed expressionless and his body tensed, he knew how much Ianto loved his aunt, it made sense and he let the information run through his mind over and over.
‘Oh.’
‘Jack, if you want him back,’ Gwen grabbed his arm when Jack glanced away, ‘if you want him back - fight for him.’
Jack stared after the route Ianto had taken and leaned against the side thoughtfully, ‘love…isn’t a battle.’ Gwen let a smile play across her lips as Jack continued to gaze into the distance, he did love Ianto.
‘Yes it is - all’s fair in love and war Jack,’ she said softly and he turned to look at her, ‘I would have thought out of everyone, after everything you’ve been through, the two of you - that you would be the first to believe that.’
.......................
Jack sat back many hours later that night and closed his eyes, he had barely slept for weeks, insomnia was driving him crazy - he had gotten too close to Ianto and started sleeping normally and now he was exhausted. He breathed in deeply and tried to slip into dreams, nightmares, anything that meant he was unconscious for just a couple of uninterrupted hours. He sighed frustratedly and sat back up, he wasn’t going to get to sleep, images of Ianto and mystery women flashing in his mind, each one a different person, a new face, never one of them him and he ran his hands through his hair. He knew it hadn't happened but now he knew how much it had hit him he couldn't stop thinking about it.
He had to though. He had to stop it, stop torturing himself. He had to sleep, he had to say goodnight to Ianto. He picked up his phone and fiddled with it for a second, flipping it open and closed before quickly making the decision and firing off a text that would make Ianto mad or realise he still loved him. Either way it was worth it he reasoned as he slid back under the sheets, his last thoughts the echoing of Gwen’s words that all was fair in love and war. He believed it. Always had, and he realised as he remembered that, that he was going to get Ianto back.
He loved him.
Part 6
A/N 2: I actually apologise if this isn’t very good because - without being horribly self indulgent - I feel awful right now. I’m exhausted and just at a loss, so please forgive any mistakes or anything. P.S. Lots of smut coming up. xxx