Moving On - 11/18
Title: Moving On
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, references to past Ianto/Lisa
Rating: R
Disclaimer: If I was the one who owned Torchwood, you think I'd admit it now?
Spoilers: Some information and events from s1,2. None for s3.
Summary: Lisa is gone, and Ianto is starting to move on with his life, but it isn't always as easy as it sounds.
Author's Note: Sequel to Guilt and Turning Point.
Thanks to: My sister angelzbabe1989 for stepping in as beta, morbid_sparks for all of her support and idea bouncing through the writing of this, and pinkfairy727 for cheerleading even when she doesn't know what happens.
For previous chapters see Master list for this fic
Chapter Eleven
Ianto had a wide smile on his face as he stepped into the Hub for the day. He knew there was probably a long day ahead of them - there was still a lot they didn’t know about whatever it was the team had found the night before - but he was in too good a mood to care.
He was later in than he would usually be, and a quick glance around told him that Tosh had beaten him in, and was already at her desk working on… he wasn’t sure what. Although her presence put paid to the possibility of greeting Jack with a ‘proper’ good morning - he was sure Tosh would figure it out but didn’t want to make it too obvious quite yet - it didn’t wipe the smile from his face.
He could probably have been in earlier, more akin to his usual time, but it had been very late by the time he and Jack had roused themselves sufficiently to get up off the shooting range floor and redress and clean up properly. It had been later still by the time Ianto, tired, contented and with lips swollen from the rather extensive goodnight kiss he and Jack had shared, finally went home.
He bounded up to the kitchen area, more than ready to make a start on the day. It wasn’t until he saw the partially dismantled coffee machine that he remembered that part of the day before. There was no way that machine was producing coffee until he managed to find a supplier for the broken part.
“Morning,” Jack said, materialising behind him.
Ianto spun around, wondering how Jack had managed to sneak up on him; he was usually paying better attention than that. “Morning,” he smiled.
The warm look in Jack’s eyes told Ianto that he wanted to kiss Ianto good morning just as much as Ianto wanted him to do it, but they both knew they couldn’t, not right now.
“If you’re looking for a coffee,” Ianto said instead, “I’m afraid you’re out of luck. Since you broke the machine yesterday, if you remember.”
Jack pouted at the reminder.
“Unless there’s something else you urgently need me for this morning,” Ianto said. “While you figure out what’s going on with that thing you picked up last night, I’ll go out and find somewhere that stocks the part I need and fix it up.”
Jack shook his head quickly. “No, fix the coffee machine. Whatever else we might need you for, we’ll manage. The coffee is more important.”
Ianto smirked a little. Some days he wondered if it was really a good thing that he enabled the caffeine addictions of the team, but given that he was just as bad, he wasn’t about to stop.
“Will do,” he nodded, consciously encasing himself in his professional mask for the day. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need me for.”
Jack quirked an eyebrow and leered a bit at that, but said nothing.
When Gwen arrived, followed in quick succession by Owen, and Jack disappeared to hold some sort of discussion about what to do next in their quest to discover more about the mysterious tech they’d picked up the night before, Ianto pulled out a pristine copy of the Cardiff and West Valleys Yellow Pages.
Ninety minutes later, he sighed and put down the phone after yet another fruitless conversation. It didn’t help that he wasn’t actually sure of the technical name for the part, and given the extent of modification that had been done on the machine since it was first bought, quoting the model number etched on the bottom edge was useless.
It had taken a minimum of several minutes discussion with each of the possible suppliers he’d managed to get on the phone for them to understand what he was looking for, which wouldn’t be a problem if any of them had actually had it.
He was down to only… he drew his finger down the page, counting swiftly… six possible sources. If he still had no luck, he might have to start looking further afield.
Like Newport.
He glanced at his watch. It was nearly half past ten, and he’d heard the others come clattering back in from wherever they’d disappeared off to just ten or fifteen minutes before.
He suspected they were beginning to feel the effects of the coffee deprivation as much as (or more than) he was, and put down the thick yellow book. He’d come back to the final six later, right at that moment, he was going to source them some coffee.
He paused for a moment as he stepped out of the tourist information office into the rare early autumn sunshine. There were several coffee shops within easy walking distance, but it took a bit of thought to decide which of them generally had the most palatable coffee.
Decision made, he started climbing the stairs towards the Plass, surprised when he met a small crowd of people heading the other way. The street at the top was just as busy and it was a second before he realised why; it was Saturday. Saturday, when other people - those for whom weekends actually meant something - went shopping and met friends in town.
His quickly formed suspicions were confirmed when he got to the coffee shop of his choice - the queue was almost out the door. He knew he could go somewhere else, but the coffee wouldn’t be as good, and the queues were hardly likely to be much shorter.
He inched forward slowly as the queue moved. He was glad he wasn’t going to be attempting to find somewhere to sit in the café once he had his coffees, as he knew the tables were bound to be crammed.
In a crafty move by the shop, it was necessary to walk past all of the displays of snack and bakery items in order to get to the counter. And Ianto hadn’t eaten any breakfast.
So it really wasn’t entirely his fault that, when he finally made it to the front of the queue more than ten minutes later, he found himself not only ordering five cups of coffee, but also five jammy doughnuts.
He walked back to the Hub as quickly as he could, skirting around dawdling crowds of shoppers in an attempt not to let the coffees grow entirely cold by the time he got back. More than once someone nearly knocked into him and tipped over his carefully balanced tray of cardboard cups.
He caught what appeared to be the tail end of a description as he climbed the steps in the Hub towards Jack’s office, where the team had congregated.
“…of convictions - burglary, shoplifting, credit cards ...” Gwen was saying as she took a seat.
Ianto could only assume they were talking about the kid that had got away the night before, as there had been talk of finding him the night before. He recognised the description, he remembered kids like that. Hell, he remembered being a kid like that, even if he only got caught just the once. He knew the mentality intimately.
“Do warn me if he’s going to be dropping in,” he said mildly; not everything could be nailed down, but most of it could be moved.
His words brought a few heads up, the team finally noticing that he’d appeared.
Tosh held up a piece of paper from the manila folder she’d been rifling through, laughing a little as Ianto skirted the desk and handed Jack his coffee, holding out the paper bag containing the doughnuts. “I’m not sure how much we should read into that record… the theft conviction - he was attempting to nick the tyres from a car when the owner came back, frightens the kid enough that he apologises and puts them back on for him, which of course is when the police finally arrive.”
She paused to accept the coffee and doughnut Ianto was holding out for her. “Thanks, Ianto. And as for the shoplifting… a bottle of vodka and three Pot Noodles.”
Owen snorted, nodding his thanks in turn at the hot beverage and sticky snack offered. “So we’re clearly dealing with a real criminal mastermind here.”
Ianto kept silent with his thought that, as with his own experience, that might just be all he’d been caught doing, and handed Gwen her cup and the last but one doughnut.
“So what’s our next move then?” Tosh asked, taking a sip of coffee and sighing a little as the caffeine entered her system.
“Where does this Bernie kid live?” Jack asked in turn, taking a huge messy bite from his doughnut. Ianto took a bite of his own to distract himself from the very lickable dribble of raspberry jam that had escaped from the corner of Jack’s mouth.
Tosh flipped a page in her file with her pinkie, trying not to get jam or sugar on it. “Splott.”
“Splott,” Owen repeated, sounding as if he was trying to remember quite where that was.
Ianto remembered quite perfectly where Splott was. While it wasn’t an area he’d frequented at all growing up - it would have taken quite the trek across Cardiff and there wasn’t anything there particularly worth going for - he’d seen several flats there when he’d first moved back to Cardiff with Lisa.
It wasn’t the most sought after area, so the rents had been far more affordable than in some other places, although some had still been out of his price range. He stifled a chuckle as he remembered one particular estate agent who’d shown him around a few of them. “I believe estate agents call it ‘Sploe’,” he said, looking to the ceiling and stuffing another bite of doughnut into his mouth before he released an entirely undignified giggle.
“Whatever you want to call it,” Jack said - Ianto could tell that he was still chewing a piece of doughnut while speaking even without looking at him - “that’s where we start. Home address, relatives, pubs, street corners, parks. He has to be somewhere.”
“When do we go?” Gwen asked, taking a sip of coffee.
Jack stuffed the rest of his doughnut into his mouth, clearly catching Ianto’s look of disapproval when he opened his mouth, closing it and swallowing before saying anything. “Now.” He pushed his chair back and stood up.
There were several minutes of hustle after that, the rest of the team trying to finish their coffees and snacks quickly while they bustled around getting ready to leave with Jack.
“How’s the machine repair going?” Jack asked quietly after the rest of the team had cleared the office.
Ianto grimaced. “You don’t want to know.” He really, really hoped that one of these last places would prove more help than any of those he’d already tried.
“That good, huh?” Jack reached out and rubbed a hand across his arm in commiseration. Ianto leaned into the touch almost imperceptibly, mindful that the rest of the team were just on the other side of a transparent wall.
“I’m sure I’ll find the part eventually,” Ianto sighed. “It’s just… taking a little bit more time and effort than I’d hoped.”
Jack opened his mouth as if to reply, but he was cut off before he could say anything.
“Oi! You ready then?” Owen called from the other side of the raised office area, Gwen and Tosh standing next to him, all looking ready to leave.
Jack straightened and, sparing no more than a warm look for Ianto, grabbed his coat and joined them as they left.
Ianto finished his coffee and doughnut at a slightly more leisurely pace before clearing up the empty cups that had been left scattered around the place and returning to the Yellow Pages and the phone.
He was feeling more than a little desperate by the time he phoned the last but one entry in the directory. Hence he began to wonder, after hanging up on the helpful store employee, if he hadn’t been just a little bit too enthusiastic in his gratitude to them for having the part he required.
He jotted down the address on a notepad, just in case his usually reliable memory failed him this once, and headed for his car, making a brief detour on his way out of the Hub to pick up the broken part for comparison purposes. In Saturday lunchtime traffic, he suspected the journey was going to take at least 45 minutes - if not an hour or more - either way, but if this part really was the one he needed to restore the coffee machine to working order, it would be worth it.
Just over two hours later, he was barely in the door at the Hub - necessary machine part in hand - when his phone rang.
“Have you eaten?” Jack said the moment he picked up, dispensing with greetings entirely.
“Hello to you too, Jack,” Ianto replied, rolling his eyes a little even when he knew there was no one to see it. “And no, not yet, but it’s only…” He glanced down at his watch. Oops.
“Nearly a quarter to three,” Jack finished for him. “I thought as much. You need to eat, Ianto, even if you’re not feeding the rest of us.”
“I know that, Jack,” Ianto said patiently. “But I’ve been busy. I only just got back from a two hour jaunt to pick up the part I need for this repair. I haven’t had time to eat.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “All right,” Jack eventually said, sounding suspicious. “As long as you do eat something. I can’t have you wasting away on me.” There was another, shorter, less suspicious pause. “Especially not now,” Jack added softly, the unspoken meaning clear.
“I promise,” Ianto assured him. “I’ll go out and get something to eat just as soon as I’ve dropped off the new part, before I start fitting it, okay?”
“Okay,” Jack accepted. “Just see that you do. If I get back later and you haven’t, I’ll… decide then what to do. I’ll see you later.”
“Bye,” Ianto responded just as Jack hung up.
He set the new part down on top of the coffee machine and considered his options. There was a large part of him that wanted to get going on this now, and have the machine fixed just as soon as possible. But he had promised Jack he’d go and eat.
As interesting as Jack’s ‘punishment’ for breaking that promise might be, Ianto decided not to risk it, heading back out of the Hub for the third time that day.
Chapter Twelve
As always, comments and concrit are loved!
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, references to past Ianto/Lisa
Rating: R
Disclaimer: If I was the one who owned Torchwood, you think I'd admit it now?
Spoilers: Some information and events from s1,2. None for s3.
Summary: Lisa is gone, and Ianto is starting to move on with his life, but it isn't always as easy as it sounds.
Author's Note: Sequel to Guilt and Turning Point.
Thanks to: My sister angelzbabe1989 for stepping in as beta, morbid_sparks for all of her support and idea bouncing through the writing of this, and pinkfairy727 for cheerleading even when she doesn't know what happens.
For previous chapters see Master list for this fic
Chapter Eleven
Ianto had a wide smile on his face as he stepped into the Hub for the day. He knew there was probably a long day ahead of them - there was still a lot they didn’t know about whatever it was the team had found the night before - but he was in too good a mood to care.
He was later in than he would usually be, and a quick glance around told him that Tosh had beaten him in, and was already at her desk working on… he wasn’t sure what. Although her presence put paid to the possibility of greeting Jack with a ‘proper’ good morning - he was sure Tosh would figure it out but didn’t want to make it too obvious quite yet - it didn’t wipe the smile from his face.
He could probably have been in earlier, more akin to his usual time, but it had been very late by the time he and Jack had roused themselves sufficiently to get up off the shooting range floor and redress and clean up properly. It had been later still by the time Ianto, tired, contented and with lips swollen from the rather extensive goodnight kiss he and Jack had shared, finally went home.
He bounded up to the kitchen area, more than ready to make a start on the day. It wasn’t until he saw the partially dismantled coffee machine that he remembered that part of the day before. There was no way that machine was producing coffee until he managed to find a supplier for the broken part.
“Morning,” Jack said, materialising behind him.
Ianto spun around, wondering how Jack had managed to sneak up on him; he was usually paying better attention than that. “Morning,” he smiled.
The warm look in Jack’s eyes told Ianto that he wanted to kiss Ianto good morning just as much as Ianto wanted him to do it, but they both knew they couldn’t, not right now.
“If you’re looking for a coffee,” Ianto said instead, “I’m afraid you’re out of luck. Since you broke the machine yesterday, if you remember.”
Jack pouted at the reminder.
“Unless there’s something else you urgently need me for this morning,” Ianto said. “While you figure out what’s going on with that thing you picked up last night, I’ll go out and find somewhere that stocks the part I need and fix it up.”
Jack shook his head quickly. “No, fix the coffee machine. Whatever else we might need you for, we’ll manage. The coffee is more important.”
Ianto smirked a little. Some days he wondered if it was really a good thing that he enabled the caffeine addictions of the team, but given that he was just as bad, he wasn’t about to stop.
“Will do,” he nodded, consciously encasing himself in his professional mask for the day. “Let me know if there’s anything else you need me for.”
Jack quirked an eyebrow and leered a bit at that, but said nothing.
When Gwen arrived, followed in quick succession by Owen, and Jack disappeared to hold some sort of discussion about what to do next in their quest to discover more about the mysterious tech they’d picked up the night before, Ianto pulled out a pristine copy of the Cardiff and West Valleys Yellow Pages.
Ninety minutes later, he sighed and put down the phone after yet another fruitless conversation. It didn’t help that he wasn’t actually sure of the technical name for the part, and given the extent of modification that had been done on the machine since it was first bought, quoting the model number etched on the bottom edge was useless.
It had taken a minimum of several minutes discussion with each of the possible suppliers he’d managed to get on the phone for them to understand what he was looking for, which wouldn’t be a problem if any of them had actually had it.
He was down to only… he drew his finger down the page, counting swiftly… six possible sources. If he still had no luck, he might have to start looking further afield.
Like Newport.
He glanced at his watch. It was nearly half past ten, and he’d heard the others come clattering back in from wherever they’d disappeared off to just ten or fifteen minutes before.
He suspected they were beginning to feel the effects of the coffee deprivation as much as (or more than) he was, and put down the thick yellow book. He’d come back to the final six later, right at that moment, he was going to source them some coffee.
He paused for a moment as he stepped out of the tourist information office into the rare early autumn sunshine. There were several coffee shops within easy walking distance, but it took a bit of thought to decide which of them generally had the most palatable coffee.
Decision made, he started climbing the stairs towards the Plass, surprised when he met a small crowd of people heading the other way. The street at the top was just as busy and it was a second before he realised why; it was Saturday. Saturday, when other people - those for whom weekends actually meant something - went shopping and met friends in town.
His quickly formed suspicions were confirmed when he got to the coffee shop of his choice - the queue was almost out the door. He knew he could go somewhere else, but the coffee wouldn’t be as good, and the queues were hardly likely to be much shorter.
He inched forward slowly as the queue moved. He was glad he wasn’t going to be attempting to find somewhere to sit in the café once he had his coffees, as he knew the tables were bound to be crammed.
In a crafty move by the shop, it was necessary to walk past all of the displays of snack and bakery items in order to get to the counter. And Ianto hadn’t eaten any breakfast.
So it really wasn’t entirely his fault that, when he finally made it to the front of the queue more than ten minutes later, he found himself not only ordering five cups of coffee, but also five jammy doughnuts.
He walked back to the Hub as quickly as he could, skirting around dawdling crowds of shoppers in an attempt not to let the coffees grow entirely cold by the time he got back. More than once someone nearly knocked into him and tipped over his carefully balanced tray of cardboard cups.
He caught what appeared to be the tail end of a description as he climbed the steps in the Hub towards Jack’s office, where the team had congregated.
“…of convictions - burglary, shoplifting, credit cards ...” Gwen was saying as she took a seat.
Ianto could only assume they were talking about the kid that had got away the night before, as there had been talk of finding him the night before. He recognised the description, he remembered kids like that. Hell, he remembered being a kid like that, even if he only got caught just the once. He knew the mentality intimately.
“Do warn me if he’s going to be dropping in,” he said mildly; not everything could be nailed down, but most of it could be moved.
His words brought a few heads up, the team finally noticing that he’d appeared.
Tosh held up a piece of paper from the manila folder she’d been rifling through, laughing a little as Ianto skirted the desk and handed Jack his coffee, holding out the paper bag containing the doughnuts. “I’m not sure how much we should read into that record… the theft conviction - he was attempting to nick the tyres from a car when the owner came back, frightens the kid enough that he apologises and puts them back on for him, which of course is when the police finally arrive.”
She paused to accept the coffee and doughnut Ianto was holding out for her. “Thanks, Ianto. And as for the shoplifting… a bottle of vodka and three Pot Noodles.”
Owen snorted, nodding his thanks in turn at the hot beverage and sticky snack offered. “So we’re clearly dealing with a real criminal mastermind here.”
Ianto kept silent with his thought that, as with his own experience, that might just be all he’d been caught doing, and handed Gwen her cup and the last but one doughnut.
“So what’s our next move then?” Tosh asked, taking a sip of coffee and sighing a little as the caffeine entered her system.
“Where does this Bernie kid live?” Jack asked in turn, taking a huge messy bite from his doughnut. Ianto took a bite of his own to distract himself from the very lickable dribble of raspberry jam that had escaped from the corner of Jack’s mouth.
Tosh flipped a page in her file with her pinkie, trying not to get jam or sugar on it. “Splott.”
“Splott,” Owen repeated, sounding as if he was trying to remember quite where that was.
Ianto remembered quite perfectly where Splott was. While it wasn’t an area he’d frequented at all growing up - it would have taken quite the trek across Cardiff and there wasn’t anything there particularly worth going for - he’d seen several flats there when he’d first moved back to Cardiff with Lisa.
It wasn’t the most sought after area, so the rents had been far more affordable than in some other places, although some had still been out of his price range. He stifled a chuckle as he remembered one particular estate agent who’d shown him around a few of them. “I believe estate agents call it ‘Sploe’,” he said, looking to the ceiling and stuffing another bite of doughnut into his mouth before he released an entirely undignified giggle.
“Whatever you want to call it,” Jack said - Ianto could tell that he was still chewing a piece of doughnut while speaking even without looking at him - “that’s where we start. Home address, relatives, pubs, street corners, parks. He has to be somewhere.”
“When do we go?” Gwen asked, taking a sip of coffee.
Jack stuffed the rest of his doughnut into his mouth, clearly catching Ianto’s look of disapproval when he opened his mouth, closing it and swallowing before saying anything. “Now.” He pushed his chair back and stood up.
There were several minutes of hustle after that, the rest of the team trying to finish their coffees and snacks quickly while they bustled around getting ready to leave with Jack.
“How’s the machine repair going?” Jack asked quietly after the rest of the team had cleared the office.
Ianto grimaced. “You don’t want to know.” He really, really hoped that one of these last places would prove more help than any of those he’d already tried.
“That good, huh?” Jack reached out and rubbed a hand across his arm in commiseration. Ianto leaned into the touch almost imperceptibly, mindful that the rest of the team were just on the other side of a transparent wall.
“I’m sure I’ll find the part eventually,” Ianto sighed. “It’s just… taking a little bit more time and effort than I’d hoped.”
Jack opened his mouth as if to reply, but he was cut off before he could say anything.
“Oi! You ready then?” Owen called from the other side of the raised office area, Gwen and Tosh standing next to him, all looking ready to leave.
Jack straightened and, sparing no more than a warm look for Ianto, grabbed his coat and joined them as they left.
Ianto finished his coffee and doughnut at a slightly more leisurely pace before clearing up the empty cups that had been left scattered around the place and returning to the Yellow Pages and the phone.
He was feeling more than a little desperate by the time he phoned the last but one entry in the directory. Hence he began to wonder, after hanging up on the helpful store employee, if he hadn’t been just a little bit too enthusiastic in his gratitude to them for having the part he required.
He jotted down the address on a notepad, just in case his usually reliable memory failed him this once, and headed for his car, making a brief detour on his way out of the Hub to pick up the broken part for comparison purposes. In Saturday lunchtime traffic, he suspected the journey was going to take at least 45 minutes - if not an hour or more - either way, but if this part really was the one he needed to restore the coffee machine to working order, it would be worth it.
Just over two hours later, he was barely in the door at the Hub - necessary machine part in hand - when his phone rang.
“Have you eaten?” Jack said the moment he picked up, dispensing with greetings entirely.
“Hello to you too, Jack,” Ianto replied, rolling his eyes a little even when he knew there was no one to see it. “And no, not yet, but it’s only…” He glanced down at his watch. Oops.
“Nearly a quarter to three,” Jack finished for him. “I thought as much. You need to eat, Ianto, even if you’re not feeding the rest of us.”
“I know that, Jack,” Ianto said patiently. “But I’ve been busy. I only just got back from a two hour jaunt to pick up the part I need for this repair. I haven’t had time to eat.”
There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “All right,” Jack eventually said, sounding suspicious. “As long as you do eat something. I can’t have you wasting away on me.” There was another, shorter, less suspicious pause. “Especially not now,” Jack added softly, the unspoken meaning clear.
“I promise,” Ianto assured him. “I’ll go out and get something to eat just as soon as I’ve dropped off the new part, before I start fitting it, okay?”
“Okay,” Jack accepted. “Just see that you do. If I get back later and you haven’t, I’ll… decide then what to do. I’ll see you later.”
“Bye,” Ianto responded just as Jack hung up.
He set the new part down on top of the coffee machine and considered his options. There was a large part of him that wanted to get going on this now, and have the machine fixed just as soon as possible. But he had promised Jack he’d go and eat.
As interesting as Jack’s ‘punishment’ for breaking that promise might be, Ianto decided not to risk it, heading back out of the Hub for the third time that day.
Chapter Twelve
As always, comments and concrit are loved!