Hatful of Hollow - 8/13
Title: Hatful of Hollow (Part 8 of 13)
Disclaimer: Being a bloke who likes to slash pretty men doesn't make me RTD, I don't work for the BBC, and as much as I might like to, I don't own Jack or Ianto or any part of Torchwood. I do, however, order pizza under that name on principle.
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R-ish. Some sex, but nothing too explicit.
Notes: Takes place during the first half of "Random Shoes" and contains scenes and lines from that episode. As always, I welcome comments, constructive criticism, good coffee, chocolate, and pretty dark-haired men in suits. (Seriously. I watched Pushing Tin tonight and have suddenly developed a weird thing for John Cusack. WTF?!)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
"Gwen! Tosh! Get your things. We're going for a drive." Jack Harkness was already pulling on his greatcoat and moving toward the door. "OWen and Ianto, get the autopsy bay ready. We may have to bring back a body."
"Jack? What's going on?" Gwen asked as she hurried after him, tugging on her usual jacket.
"Death in the family."
# # #
It's a shame, Jack thought as he looked the scene over. We shouldn't be meeting like this.
Eugene Jones lay almost face-down on the side of the road, not far from the water's edge. They'd only been called in because one of the ambulance drivers remembered the boy from another case, chasing them to and from the SUV trying to get Gwen's attention. The message passed on had been flip -- "Looks like your nutter's been playing in traffic!" -- and it didn't sit right with him. In fact, it sat damn badly.
"Couldn't even cross the road without messing it up," Tosh snapped.
Jack held his tongue, but made sure to meet Tosh's eyes for a moment before he crouched down next to the body to get a closer look. You poor bastard. What happened to you? He gingerly lifted one of the young man's hands by the wristband of his jacket. There was something there that wasn't quite blood.
"No bag, nothing. I mean what was he doing here?" Gwen was checking the body over. "Perhaps he was hit deliberately. Maybe he really did have something important."
"Like what?" Tosh didn't look convinced.
"I don't know. He was always trying to talk to us, show us stuff. Perhaps we shouldn't have been so --"
Tosh cut her off. "Gwen, I think it's just a regular RTA."
"It was a red car," Jack said finally. "There's red paint under his fingernails."
The mobile phone went off next to Tosh's feet. He watched as Tosh answered, then quickly passed the phone to Gwen. He kept watch out of the corner of his eye as she spoke with Eugene's mother. Jack allowed himself a moment of gratitude. If ever there was a time for PC Cooper to be involved, this was it.
"Thank you Mrs. Jones. We'll see you very soon." She rang off, but did not put the phone away. She looked like she wasn't sure what to do with it.
"Okay," Jack said. "Let's take him in just in case, see if we can find anything. I'll make arrangements with the ambulance driver for a drop off." He took a last look at Eugene and sighed.
"I'm sorry."
# # #
Jack's breath was coming in shallow, irregular scraps. It was hot in here, and pitch black, and he was a little concerned that they'd stepped on something important. He would worry about that soon. Right now, it was crucial that Ianto did not stop doing what he was doing with his mouth.
Funny how sex was the natural response to death.
Ianto had come into Jack's office, poured himself a whisky and downed it in one before nearly kissing Jack out of his chair.
"Ianto? Are you okay?" he asked.
"No. I'm really not." was Ianto's reply.
Five minutes later, they were squeezing into the supply closet.
Jack sucked in a lungful of air in a bid to mute his climax, then spasmed in the younger man's mouth and threw his head back, where it banged hard into a shelf.
"Ow! Fuck!" He hissed between his teeth, the pain mingling strangely with (but not entirely cancelling out) his bliss.
Ianto stifled a laugh as he buttoned Jack's trousers. "Jack?"
Jack felt the back of his head. His fingers came away wet. "Hit my head. Ow. You know, it's never this dangerous on television."
"Oh no. Come on. Let me see." Ianto pushed the door open and drew Jack out into
the light. "Oof. That's quite a gash. I'd better go get Owen."
# # #
"I appreciate you coming out this late."
Ianto gave the man a nod and handed him a hot mug of coffee before accepting the clipboard and looking the form over. It was a gentle Retcon job -- not even enough to put the man out -- but it would be just enough for him to believe the paperwork in the morning and forget all about the Hub. They didn't often release bodies, but this was a special case.
He signed a name -- not his -- to the form on the clipboard and returned it.
Strictly speaking, he'd gone a bit above and beyond with Eugene. Owen was being a prat, so it fell to Ianto to make sure the body made its way to the funeral home. There would be no autopsy -- unusual, but not unheard of -- but since Torchwood was the attending agency, and Owen flatly refused to do the autopsy...
"-- being under the Armadillo and all."
Ianto blinked. "What was that? Sorry. I was miles away."
"I was just saying it's weird for a police substation to be down under the Millenium Centre. Though I guess it makes sense. Urban regeneration and all that."
Ianto made a noncommittal noise and shrugged. Best not to give the man too many triggers.
"Anyhow, thanks for the coffee."
Ianto accepted the empty mug, then turned and walked back in through the parking garage. At least that was over with. Though God help them if anyone ever did a production of Harold and Maude.
He closed up, checked that the lock codes were engaged, then jogged up the steps to the Information Centre to finish up another sixteen hour day for Queen and Country. He still had costing reports to trudge through. First, though, he wanted to finish up the paperwork for the body release.
He groaned and admitted to himself that sixteen hours was starting to look like a conservative estimate.
# # #
Jack bit his lip and tried to pinpoint the source of his unease. He glanced at the clock, put two and two together, and wandered into the Hub.
"Where's Gwen?"
"How should I know?" Owen reclined in his work chair, feet firmly placed on his workstation. "Went out for lunch a while back. Why? Need another lecture on feelings, and how we haven't got any?"
"Why, are you offering?" Jack raised his eyebrows. "And it's nearly two-thirty in the afternoon. She's having more than lunch."
Owen pulled a face and said something indistinct.
Jack sighed. "Whatever. Look, just call her and let her know she needs to get back here." He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed for the lift.
Sometimes, he hated being the boss.
The Information Centre was quiet as he crept through the hidden door. He could smell coffee brewing.
"Please tell me you made enough of that for two," Jack chuckled as he rattled through the beaded curtain to Ianto's workspace in the Information Centre.
"Don't I always?" Ianto poured two mugs of coffee from his French press. He handed one to Jack, then turned to lean against the counter.
Jack took a careful sip. "One of these days, the others are going to notice you're holding out on them with that thing."
"And on that day, King Ianto's rise to power will be complete."
"You never know. They might stage a mutiny. Lock you up in the Millenium Centre with nothing but a male voice choir and a pack of rugby players to keep you company."
"It'd be a pyrrhic victory. I've set everything but the instant crystals to self-destruct in the event of my disappearance." Ianto paused for a moment and looked thoughtful. "Good looking rugby players, or the sort of manky kind?"
"Manky." Jack smirked into his mug. "Really, really manky."
"Ah. I'll hold out hope for the choir, then." He slid an arm around Jack's waist and gave him a quick kiss. "How are things downstairs? And how's your head?"
"The head's fine. Just a bit sore. Owen's in a foul mood, Gwen's disappeared, and Tosh is lurking around somewhere working on that bolt gun that came through the Rift."
"The one with the Torchwood markings engraved on it?"
Jack nodded. "Weird, huh? I mean, half of the stuff it's made of hasn't even been invented yet, and at least a third of it doesn't occur on this planet."
"So. Containment box, then, sir?"
"Oh yeah." Jack grinned.
"I'll go prep it in a moment, then. It'll be on your desk by three."
"Thanks, Ianto." Jack gave him a quick peck on the forehead before heading back toward the lift.
# # #
Ianto hadn't really planned to come back in after work, but here he was. Not that Jack usually minded when he appeared out of nowhere. They'd had a long day of tracking Gwen by CCTV and GPS. Owen had been singularly nasty to everyone, and Tosh left the Hub in a quiet funk after finishing up with the bolt gun. Jack was harder to read, but the tension in his shoulders was clear enough.
"Jack?" He called out, checking the empty Hub for signs of life. He heard a muffled response from the direction of Jack's office. Ianto half-jogged across the walkway and peered down the hatch to Jack's quarters.
Jack was fully dressed and stretched out on his camp bed with a laptop. Ianto could hear people talking, and music.
"What are you watching?"
"Flatliners." Jack's eyes darted away from the screen for a moment to catch a view of Ianto. "You changed clothes."
"I went home. Decided to go out for some essentials and came out with a bottle of wine and some massage oil instead." He dangled a bag down into the hatch. "That is, if you're interested." He smirked.
Jack closed the laptop with a snap and gave Ianto a wide grin before taking the bag. Unburdened, Ianto climbed down.
"Flatliners." Ianto raised a brow. "Bit morbid, isn't it? Dying over and over again just to see what's out there?"
"Maybe. I guess it depends on whether or not there's a point to it all." Jack looked the oil and the wine over. "Remind me to ask where you shop for essentials."
Ianto toed off his sneakers, then climbed astride Jack's lap. "A gentleman never tells." He went straight to work unbuttoning Jack's shirt. After a bit of frantic stripping and tugging, Jack threw his and Ianto's shirts into a heap near the flatpack dresser.
"Get on your stomach so I can do your shoulders," Ianto said as he slid off of Jack's lap to give him room to manouver. He was just about to pour the oil onto his hands when the entry alert went off. The two of them swore quietly.
"Wait here," Jack said, grabbing a fresh set of shirts. He dressed frantically, then shot up the ladder.
When he heard voices, Ianto slid off of the bed and stood under the hatch.
"Yes, Jack I know he's dead. But --" That would be Gwen.
"I've got work to do."
"Okay."
Ianto heard Jack's footsteps begin to approach again.
"Okay, listen to this. Eugene had an alien eye in his collection. He sold it online."
Jack stopped abruptly. "What like a sixth eye? A Dogon sixth eye?"
With that, Ianto crept up the ladder and very quietly logged into Jack's workstation. Within minutes, he'd tapped into the Archive and was pulling up information about Dogon eyes, including the reference number for the one they had in storage. He also began trawling eBay for completed auctions for items claiming to be alien artefacts. There was one from an "ejones" that looked promising. He gave a low whistle when he saw the price it had gone for.
"Ianto? What are --"
"I've pulled up Owen's report on the Dogon eye we have in storage, as well as the reference numbers for its location in the Archive. I've also found an auction that makes Gwen's suspicions look pretty credible." He swiveled the screen to give Jack a better view. "I haven't gone looking for P. Klevnas yet, but I can if you like."
Jack looked at the screen, and then Ianto, then back again. "Do you have any idea how hot you are? I'm seriously considering changing the dress code."
Ianto blushed and looked down, remembering suddenly that he was half-naked and
barefoot. "You'd miss the suits."
"You could wear a tie. I wouldn't stop you. I might even encourage it."
Ianto broke into a grin and looked up at Jack. His lover's eyes were dark. It caught him by surprise sometimes just how predatory Jack could look. Ianto locked the console with a deft keystroke. "Is Gwen gone?"
"She just took the lift up."
"Well, then. Where do you want me, sir?"
===
Prev. Ep: 7/13
Next Ep: 9/13
Disclaimer: Being a bloke who likes to slash pretty men doesn't make me RTD, I don't work for the BBC, and as much as I might like to, I don't own Jack or Ianto or any part of Torchwood. I do, however, order pizza under that name on principle.
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R-ish. Some sex, but nothing too explicit.
Notes: Takes place during the first half of "Random Shoes" and contains scenes and lines from that episode. As always, I welcome comments, constructive criticism, good coffee, chocolate, and pretty dark-haired men in suits. (Seriously. I watched Pushing Tin tonight and have suddenly developed a weird thing for John Cusack. WTF?!)
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Part Five
Part Six
Part Seven
"Gwen! Tosh! Get your things. We're going for a drive." Jack Harkness was already pulling on his greatcoat and moving toward the door. "OWen and Ianto, get the autopsy bay ready. We may have to bring back a body."
"Jack? What's going on?" Gwen asked as she hurried after him, tugging on her usual jacket.
"Death in the family."
# # #
It's a shame, Jack thought as he looked the scene over. We shouldn't be meeting like this.
Eugene Jones lay almost face-down on the side of the road, not far from the water's edge. They'd only been called in because one of the ambulance drivers remembered the boy from another case, chasing them to and from the SUV trying to get Gwen's attention. The message passed on had been flip -- "Looks like your nutter's been playing in traffic!" -- and it didn't sit right with him. In fact, it sat damn badly.
"Couldn't even cross the road without messing it up," Tosh snapped.
Jack held his tongue, but made sure to meet Tosh's eyes for a moment before he crouched down next to the body to get a closer look. You poor bastard. What happened to you? He gingerly lifted one of the young man's hands by the wristband of his jacket. There was something there that wasn't quite blood.
"No bag, nothing. I mean what was he doing here?" Gwen was checking the body over. "Perhaps he was hit deliberately. Maybe he really did have something important."
"Like what?" Tosh didn't look convinced.
"I don't know. He was always trying to talk to us, show us stuff. Perhaps we shouldn't have been so --"
Tosh cut her off. "Gwen, I think it's just a regular RTA."
"It was a red car," Jack said finally. "There's red paint under his fingernails."
The mobile phone went off next to Tosh's feet. He watched as Tosh answered, then quickly passed the phone to Gwen. He kept watch out of the corner of his eye as she spoke with Eugene's mother. Jack allowed himself a moment of gratitude. If ever there was a time for PC Cooper to be involved, this was it.
"Thank you Mrs. Jones. We'll see you very soon." She rang off, but did not put the phone away. She looked like she wasn't sure what to do with it.
"Okay," Jack said. "Let's take him in just in case, see if we can find anything. I'll make arrangements with the ambulance driver for a drop off." He took a last look at Eugene and sighed.
"I'm sorry."
# # #
Jack's breath was coming in shallow, irregular scraps. It was hot in here, and pitch black, and he was a little concerned that they'd stepped on something important. He would worry about that soon. Right now, it was crucial that Ianto did not stop doing what he was doing with his mouth.
Funny how sex was the natural response to death.
Ianto had come into Jack's office, poured himself a whisky and downed it in one before nearly kissing Jack out of his chair.
"Ianto? Are you okay?" he asked.
"No. I'm really not." was Ianto's reply.
Five minutes later, they were squeezing into the supply closet.
Jack sucked in a lungful of air in a bid to mute his climax, then spasmed in the younger man's mouth and threw his head back, where it banged hard into a shelf.
"Ow! Fuck!" He hissed between his teeth, the pain mingling strangely with (but not entirely cancelling out) his bliss.
Ianto stifled a laugh as he buttoned Jack's trousers. "Jack?"
Jack felt the back of his head. His fingers came away wet. "Hit my head. Ow. You know, it's never this dangerous on television."
"Oh no. Come on. Let me see." Ianto pushed the door open and drew Jack out into
the light. "Oof. That's quite a gash. I'd better go get Owen."
# # #
"I appreciate you coming out this late."
Ianto gave the man a nod and handed him a hot mug of coffee before accepting the clipboard and looking the form over. It was a gentle Retcon job -- not even enough to put the man out -- but it would be just enough for him to believe the paperwork in the morning and forget all about the Hub. They didn't often release bodies, but this was a special case.
He signed a name -- not his -- to the form on the clipboard and returned it.
Strictly speaking, he'd gone a bit above and beyond with Eugene. Owen was being a prat, so it fell to Ianto to make sure the body made its way to the funeral home. There would be no autopsy -- unusual, but not unheard of -- but since Torchwood was the attending agency, and Owen flatly refused to do the autopsy...
"-- being under the Armadillo and all."
Ianto blinked. "What was that? Sorry. I was miles away."
"I was just saying it's weird for a police substation to be down under the Millenium Centre. Though I guess it makes sense. Urban regeneration and all that."
Ianto made a noncommittal noise and shrugged. Best not to give the man too many triggers.
"Anyhow, thanks for the coffee."
Ianto accepted the empty mug, then turned and walked back in through the parking garage. At least that was over with. Though God help them if anyone ever did a production of Harold and Maude.
He closed up, checked that the lock codes were engaged, then jogged up the steps to the Information Centre to finish up another sixteen hour day for Queen and Country. He still had costing reports to trudge through. First, though, he wanted to finish up the paperwork for the body release.
He groaned and admitted to himself that sixteen hours was starting to look like a conservative estimate.
# # #
Jack bit his lip and tried to pinpoint the source of his unease. He glanced at the clock, put two and two together, and wandered into the Hub.
"Where's Gwen?"
"How should I know?" Owen reclined in his work chair, feet firmly placed on his workstation. "Went out for lunch a while back. Why? Need another lecture on feelings, and how we haven't got any?"
"Why, are you offering?" Jack raised his eyebrows. "And it's nearly two-thirty in the afternoon. She's having more than lunch."
Owen pulled a face and said something indistinct.
Jack sighed. "Whatever. Look, just call her and let her know she needs to get back here." He shoved his hands in his pockets and headed for the lift.
Sometimes, he hated being the boss.
The Information Centre was quiet as he crept through the hidden door. He could smell coffee brewing.
"Please tell me you made enough of that for two," Jack chuckled as he rattled through the beaded curtain to Ianto's workspace in the Information Centre.
"Don't I always?" Ianto poured two mugs of coffee from his French press. He handed one to Jack, then turned to lean against the counter.
Jack took a careful sip. "One of these days, the others are going to notice you're holding out on them with that thing."
"And on that day, King Ianto's rise to power will be complete."
"You never know. They might stage a mutiny. Lock you up in the Millenium Centre with nothing but a male voice choir and a pack of rugby players to keep you company."
"It'd be a pyrrhic victory. I've set everything but the instant crystals to self-destruct in the event of my disappearance." Ianto paused for a moment and looked thoughtful. "Good looking rugby players, or the sort of manky kind?"
"Manky." Jack smirked into his mug. "Really, really manky."
"Ah. I'll hold out hope for the choir, then." He slid an arm around Jack's waist and gave him a quick kiss. "How are things downstairs? And how's your head?"
"The head's fine. Just a bit sore. Owen's in a foul mood, Gwen's disappeared, and Tosh is lurking around somewhere working on that bolt gun that came through the Rift."
"The one with the Torchwood markings engraved on it?"
Jack nodded. "Weird, huh? I mean, half of the stuff it's made of hasn't even been invented yet, and at least a third of it doesn't occur on this planet."
"So. Containment box, then, sir?"
"Oh yeah." Jack grinned.
"I'll go prep it in a moment, then. It'll be on your desk by three."
"Thanks, Ianto." Jack gave him a quick peck on the forehead before heading back toward the lift.
# # #
Ianto hadn't really planned to come back in after work, but here he was. Not that Jack usually minded when he appeared out of nowhere. They'd had a long day of tracking Gwen by CCTV and GPS. Owen had been singularly nasty to everyone, and Tosh left the Hub in a quiet funk after finishing up with the bolt gun. Jack was harder to read, but the tension in his shoulders was clear enough.
"Jack?" He called out, checking the empty Hub for signs of life. He heard a muffled response from the direction of Jack's office. Ianto half-jogged across the walkway and peered down the hatch to Jack's quarters.
Jack was fully dressed and stretched out on his camp bed with a laptop. Ianto could hear people talking, and music.
"What are you watching?"
"Flatliners." Jack's eyes darted away from the screen for a moment to catch a view of Ianto. "You changed clothes."
"I went home. Decided to go out for some essentials and came out with a bottle of wine and some massage oil instead." He dangled a bag down into the hatch. "That is, if you're interested." He smirked.
Jack closed the laptop with a snap and gave Ianto a wide grin before taking the bag. Unburdened, Ianto climbed down.
"Flatliners." Ianto raised a brow. "Bit morbid, isn't it? Dying over and over again just to see what's out there?"
"Maybe. I guess it depends on whether or not there's a point to it all." Jack looked the oil and the wine over. "Remind me to ask where you shop for essentials."
Ianto toed off his sneakers, then climbed astride Jack's lap. "A gentleman never tells." He went straight to work unbuttoning Jack's shirt. After a bit of frantic stripping and tugging, Jack threw his and Ianto's shirts into a heap near the flatpack dresser.
"Get on your stomach so I can do your shoulders," Ianto said as he slid off of Jack's lap to give him room to manouver. He was just about to pour the oil onto his hands when the entry alert went off. The two of them swore quietly.
"Wait here," Jack said, grabbing a fresh set of shirts. He dressed frantically, then shot up the ladder.
When he heard voices, Ianto slid off of the bed and stood under the hatch.
"Yes, Jack I know he's dead. But --" That would be Gwen.
"I've got work to do."
"Okay."
Ianto heard Jack's footsteps begin to approach again.
"Okay, listen to this. Eugene had an alien eye in his collection. He sold it online."
Jack stopped abruptly. "What like a sixth eye? A Dogon sixth eye?"
With that, Ianto crept up the ladder and very quietly logged into Jack's workstation. Within minutes, he'd tapped into the Archive and was pulling up information about Dogon eyes, including the reference number for the one they had in storage. He also began trawling eBay for completed auctions for items claiming to be alien artefacts. There was one from an "ejones" that looked promising. He gave a low whistle when he saw the price it had gone for.
"Ianto? What are --"
"I've pulled up Owen's report on the Dogon eye we have in storage, as well as the reference numbers for its location in the Archive. I've also found an auction that makes Gwen's suspicions look pretty credible." He swiveled the screen to give Jack a better view. "I haven't gone looking for P. Klevnas yet, but I can if you like."
Jack looked at the screen, and then Ianto, then back again. "Do you have any idea how hot you are? I'm seriously considering changing the dress code."
Ianto blushed and looked down, remembering suddenly that he was half-naked and
barefoot. "You'd miss the suits."
"You could wear a tie. I wouldn't stop you. I might even encourage it."
Ianto broke into a grin and looked up at Jack. His lover's eyes were dark. It caught him by surprise sometimes just how predatory Jack could look. Ianto locked the console with a deft keystroke. "Is Gwen gone?"
"She just took the lift up."
"Well, then. Where do you want me, sir?"
===
Prev. Ep: 7/13
Next Ep: 9/13