It'll End in Tears #30: "Sequence Images"
Title: "Sequence Images"
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: Overall: Ianto/Andy, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Ianto/Andy, with occasional guest cameos.
Rating: Series ranges from relatively safe to hard NC-17. This one is in the NC-17 range for language and smut.
Notes/Summary: Part #30 of the " It'll End In Tears" cluster, and #29 on the table. Thanks to sanginmychains and resourceress for giving this the sweet, hot beta-fu.
Useful Note: Brains is a type of beer produced in Cardiff. Brains SA is their flagship brew.
Jack has him on his back.
It’s good like this. Fantastic, even. Jack pushes into him with a look of concentration on his face like it’s the most important thing in the world. It makes the splay of his legs feel less absurd, and the noises he makes somewhat less embarrassing in their earnestness if Jack seems awed by the experience. Fortunately, he always does. Ianto cants his hips awkwardly to meet Jack’s thrusts, but they fall in time with one another after a second and Ianto can’t help but let out a low wail.
He wants to reach up and dig his nails into Jack’s shoulders, but Jack grins, grabs Ianto’s wrists and pins them down to the pillows. Ianto struggles to twist free, but Jack grips his wrists harder and holds him down more firmly. Sex between them of late has become a game, ruthless and governed by unspoken rules. Jack makes them up as he goes along. If Ianto should happen to lose, well, that’s to be expected.
He focuses on Jack’s desperation as it builds. It’s possible Jack is holding his wrists too tightly - that there will be marks in the morning - but he’s learned that shirt cuffs and watch bands conceal an awful lot of sins. And really, isn’t that what he’s good at?
When Jack comes, Ianto keens and tenses in sympathy. It really is good like this, even if Jack is holding his wrists so that he can’t bring himself off, too. Never mind that he’s still angry, and that he feels a little sick because it feels like he’s consorting with the enemy. Again.
Jack pulls out of him and releases his wrists. His fingers start to tingle straight away, and Ianto instinctively clasps and unclasps his hands as he sits up.
“I’m losing my touch if you’ve got that look on your face,” Jack says and reaches between Ianto’s legs.
Ianto brushes his hand away and edges further back toward the headboard. Jack gives him a questioning look. Not a worried one, though. Expectant. Petulant even, like Ianto has done something wrong.
“I think you’d better go,” he tells Jack, and hates how small his voice sounds. This isn’t who he’s supposed to be. He should be stronger for his pain. Instead, he feels boxed in and crystallized.
Jack doesn’t move. “Is this about Gwen?”
He reaches over the edge of the bed for his shirt and his briefs. “No.”
“So what is it about, then?” Jack’s eyes bore into him.
“Nothing,” Ianto tells him, and crosses the bed on the other side. He won’t be blocked by Jack. Not in his own bedroom. “It’s been a long day. I’m tired.”
“Which is why you’re getting out of bed,” Jack replies with a smirk.
Ianto ignores him in favor of a trip to the toilet. He’s relieved that Jack at least has the decency to leave the door closed until he’s washing his hands.
Jack enters wearing only his trousers and sits on the edge of the tub. The smirk is gone at least, but the expectant look isn’t. “Are we okay, Ianto?”
“I asked you to get out of my flat. You’re refusing outright to do it. What do you bloody think?” Ianto asks sharply as he dries his hands on a towel.
“Gee, let me think,” Jack retorts and then pretends to concentrate. “Nope, sorry. Still not a mind reader.”
“And yet ever since I started seeing Andy, you’ve seemed to delight in making all of my decisions for me. How peculiar.” Ianto leans back against the counter and crosses his arms. “Come to think of it, opening the relationship on my side was your idea too, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, come on! This again?” Jack exclaims. “I thought the Andy thing was a dead issue.”
“I might believe that if you didn’t go fully into damage control mode every time Gwen hauls it screaming from the vaults,” Ianto yells back and stands up just a little taller. “All you do is hold forth about us and our quaint little categories, but the minute you opened up that door for me, all you did was get off on controlling me.”
“Now wait just a minute -“
“No, Jack. I won’t,” Ianto says through his teeth. “I’m tired of having to answer to you every second of the day, or taking a back seat every time you try and sort out my mistakes.”
Jack lets out an angry bark of a laugh and stands. “Your mistakes are a matter of national security. It’s my duty to ensure that they’re taken care of properly. I’m not going to stay my hand because doing my job might hurt your feelings.”
“And I’m tired of you couching every shitty, controlling thing you do to me in those terms.”
“Yeah, well,” Jack says dismissively. “Seen your track record lately? Frankly it -“
Ianto punches him hard in the mouth, and Jack staggers back, shocked and angry.
“What the fuck, Ianto!?” Jack shouts as he raises one hand to his split lip. His fingertips come away wet.
“Shit,” Ianto whispers, low and soft, and looks down at his now-aching knuckles like he’s not sure they’re real. He looks up to see Jack at the sink, dabbing at his bloodied lip with a tissue as the injury begins to mend itself.
“I’m sorry,” Ianto stammers. He opens and closes his hand and knows his knuckles will be sore long after Jack’s lip has forgotten the blow. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean - ”
“I’ve had worse.” Jack crumples the tissue and drops it in the bin, then reaches for another. He wets it under the tap and starts to clean away the blood from his mouth. “From you, even.”
Ianto looks down and lets out a breath. The memory of Jack knocked flat on the Plass is too vivid. He remembers his rage, twisted and confused as it was. They’d been fucking, even then. Just sex, or so they’d both thought until Lisa. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You could have fooled me.” Jack drops the second tissue in the bin. There’s a fine white line where the split in his lip should be. He shoves past Ianto and into the hallway.
Panic and despair crash head-on so fast Ianto swears he can almost hear the tinkling of glass on tarmac.
“Damn it,” Ianto hisses, and hurries into the bedroom after him. “Jack, I -”
“I really don’t care right now.”
Ianto pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut. He needs get a handle on things, and fast. “Look, can we start over? I’ll walk out and come back in, and then we can have this conversation properly.”
Jack sighs and lets his hands drop from the buttons of his shirt. “Fine.”
“Alright then.” Anxious but hopeful, Ianto takes a deep breath. “Right. Okay.”
He walks out into the hall, where he counts to ten. When he returns, Jack is waiting in the bedroom with his arms crossed.
“Hi.”
Jack raises a single, skeptical eyebrow.
Flustered, Ianto rubs the back of his head and rests a hand on his hip. “Okay, look. I’m not really sure where to start with this, but suffice to say I think things have gotten a little out of control.”
“Oh?” The sardonic undertones in Jack’s voice are hard to miss, but Ianto has to give him credit for playing along at least.
“Yes.” He moistens his lips and crosses his own arms. “I realize that it’s your job to maintain the status quo, and how critical that status quo is, but I also think that the broader issue ceased being a wholly professional one months ago, and it’s time we acknowledge that.”
“Meaning?” Jack adjusts his cuffs.
“Meaning maybe there aren’t as many clean edges and solid protocols as we’d like there to be. Especially after Rhys.”
Jack’s eyebrows shoot up again and he tilts his head to one side.
“Alright, fine. Torchwood SOP is a morass of inconsistently applied and contradictory policy. Also, I feel like you’re exerting your authority in our private affairs, which isn’t nearly as exciting as advertised.”
“Hazards of shagging the boss,” Jack retorts. The edge in his voice has receded though. “Not to mention hazards of shagging a witness with a propensity for spontaneous recall. Oh, and not knowing what the hell you’re doing while you’re at it.”
“You blew me off!” Ianto shouts and throws his hands up. “I came to you with questions, but you only got interested when I got hurt.”
Jack balks. “You’d prefer I ignore it when you’re in danger?”
“I’d prefer it if you took me seriously when I’m trying to be proactive instead of letting me get into danger in the first place.”
“Oh, so this is all my fault now?” Jack asks, his voice rising to match Ianto’s.
“Don’t be absurd,” Ianto snaps and rolls his eyes. “Christ, it’s like talking to a brick fucking wall.”
Jack smirks. “What happened to ‘having this conversation properly?’”
“Someone decided he’d rather be the Captain.” Ianto storms down the hall and into the front room. He drops heavily onto the sofa and turns on the telly. Nothing’s on, but he wants the light and the noise. Distraction. Anything but the sound of Jack gathering up his things.
After a long while, he becomes aware of Jack standing in the edge of his vision, watching him from the hallway.
“Jonathan Ross will be on in a little bit,” Jack says, a little awkwardly. “I think that guy from the new Blake’s 7 is going to be on. The one with all the teeth.”
Ianto shrugs and moves over to make room. Jack sits and watches the television with an intensity that suggests he’s not really focused on it, but merely in that general direction. “I forget how young you are sometimes.”
“I hear in some places it’s quite the selling point.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining,” Jack says with the barest hint of a smile. “I just forget sometimes.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes before Ianto gets up to go to the kitchen. He returns with two bottles of Brains SA and hands one to Jack before he sits down again.
“With regard to SOP, I think it’s time we consider working with contacts on a case-by-case basis,” Ianto says. “It’s a logical solution. Torchwood is already more visible than it was ten years ago, and we’ve got standards in place for when a contact goes rogue. A trusted partner, or someone who could reasonably know about us might deserve special consideration.”
Jack nods. Ianto leans back and drinks his beer.
# # #
Andy doesn’t go to the wedding.
For one, he can’t bring himself to watch Gwen get married. Not to Rhys Williams, at any rate. Christ, what a bloody car wreck that is. Part of him still hopes she’ll come around and dump the fat bastard on his arse, but unless she’s planning on leaving him at the altar, that’s probably not going to happen. She’ll be hurt, but he’ll tell her that Temple changed the work rota at the last minute. She knows what Temple can be like.
The bigger problem - and he’d never have believed there was such a thing as a problem bigger than Gwen Cooper - is Ianto Jones.
It starts with his follow-up appointment with his GP. “Honestly, Andy, I’m worried,” Doctor Dolban says, eyes fixed on his blood work from that morning they found him in the park. “You should be dead seven or eight times over. Are you sure you don’t remember anything?”
“Not a thing,” he says, which at the time was true. Now that he remembers, he spends more time than he should trying to sort out just how tenuous his position is. He has to assume Jack doesn’t actually want him dead, though the only things he has to base that on are recollections of the incident itself and the fact that he’s still alive. Harkness doesn’t strike Andy as the sort who’d have trouble arranging for means and opportunity if he had motive, so every day is another argument in favor of that assumption. Then again, maybe it’s the amnesia keeping him off the chopping block. Can Torchwood check his medical records? Probably. The prospect is disturbing enough that sometimes he sits in his flat and stares at a blank sheet of notebook paper, too unsettled to write. He tries to take comfort in his day-to-day habits, but even Trav is acting a little weird these days.
“Oi, look at that poof there,” Trav says as they sit at a red light in their uniform car, and jabs a finger in the direction of to a man waiting to cross. There’s nothing overtly homosexual about him as far as Andy can tell (unless there’s something suddenly and unexpectedly gay about owning an umbrella and eating chips), but something in his appearance sets Trav off. “Fucking sicko queers.”
“Whatever,” Andy says, and tries to ignore it, but even their fits of fraternal alcoholism have given way to something a little less carefree.
What used to be pints after work with the occasional bender has started to turn into Trav trying to get him hammered at strip clubs. While Andy certainly doesn’t object in principle to a drink or watching attractive young women demonstrate how limber they are, it feels like Trav is dragging him through a joyless, pointless grind. Andy can’t quite decide whether Trav is goading Andy to acknowledge what they both know - that Andy has been with a man in some manner or another - or if he’s just pushing buttons more and more viciously, waiting for Andy to snap.
At this rate I’m probably going to end up with a gun in my mouth and calling the Samaritans, he thinks irritably as he changes into his street clothes at the end of his shift. At least things have gone back to normal in the locker room. That’s one small blessing.
He reaches into his locker and brings out his rucksack. It’s heavy with videocassettes - more crowd footage for Nikki Bevan to go over - and he’s glad for it because it gives him a way to beg off if he runs into Trav on the way out. She’s nice, Nikki is. The case has technically gone cold, but he can’t quite bring himself to give up on Jonah. Plus, the case is dead weird. How’s a kid just up and disappear from the Barrage, anyway?
On his way out, he stops to fill out a form to request the CCTV footage from that night. It’s been months since the detectives had a look at it. Maybe fresh eyes will help. He’d do it anyway, of course, but the added benefit of having an excuse not to go out right now is too good to pass up. Andy’s just putting his form in the tray when Trav gives him a colossal slap to the back and puts his arm over Andy’s shoulders.
“So, we still on then?”
“Can’t,” Andy says, and gives his bag a quick shake. He’s grateful when it rattles. “Tapes.”
Trav laughs, low and dirty. “You dog. How is she then?”
Andy boggles and gives Trav a look. “Sorry?”
“You know. What’s-her-name. You’ve got to be shagging her, as long as you’ve been on this one. Trail’s dead cold.”
“Uh, no.” He shrugs out from under Trav’s arm and shoulders his rucksack. There’s an intensity beneath Trav’s casual demeanor that makes Andy uneasy. It reminds him a little of the way his mother looks when she starts talking about grandchildren. “Definitely not.”
Trav pulls a face. “So what’s the bloody point of it, then?”
“What, a missing boy isn’t point enough for you?” Andy snaps.
“Six months on?” Trav says and scoffs. “The only thing alive about this case is you. Fifty quid says that kid is in a ditch somewhere in, I don’t know, Didcot or something.”
Andy shoulders his bag. “Whatever. I’m off.”
He thinks he hears Trav mutter something as he goes, but whatever it is gets lost in the noise and bustle of the station. He sits in his car for almost five full minutes before he starts the engine. He doesn’t need this shit right now.
Nikki isn’t in when he drives by, which is just as well. Trav’s badgering has put him in a foul humor anyway. He goes straight home from there, where he winds up settled on his sofa watching American cartoons until he starts to nod off. Andy turns his lights out, checks the locks and chain on his front door, and then shuffles off to bed feeling empty and bored.
Maybe he needs a proper hobby. Maybe he should move. Trouble is, he doesn’t much want to do either of those things. What he wants is to call Ianto fucking Jones and demand an explanation, but that’s not going to happen, now is it?
As he drifts off to sleep he feels the fingers of his right hand lace through the fingers of his left. He nestles deeper into his duvet, half-pretending he isn’t alone.
---
Prev (Pt #29) (Warnings: language, reference to smut.)
-
Next (Pt #31) (Warnings: language)
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: Overall: Ianto/Andy, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Ianto/Andy, with occasional guest cameos.
Rating: Series ranges from relatively safe to hard NC-17. This one is in the NC-17 range for language and smut.
Notes/Summary: Part #30 of the " It'll End In Tears" cluster, and #29 on the table. Thanks to sanginmychains and resourceress for giving this the sweet, hot beta-fu.
Useful Note: Brains is a type of beer produced in Cardiff. Brains SA is their flagship brew.
Jack has him on his back.
It’s good like this. Fantastic, even. Jack pushes into him with a look of concentration on his face like it’s the most important thing in the world. It makes the splay of his legs feel less absurd, and the noises he makes somewhat less embarrassing in their earnestness if Jack seems awed by the experience. Fortunately, he always does. Ianto cants his hips awkwardly to meet Jack’s thrusts, but they fall in time with one another after a second and Ianto can’t help but let out a low wail.
He wants to reach up and dig his nails into Jack’s shoulders, but Jack grins, grabs Ianto’s wrists and pins them down to the pillows. Ianto struggles to twist free, but Jack grips his wrists harder and holds him down more firmly. Sex between them of late has become a game, ruthless and governed by unspoken rules. Jack makes them up as he goes along. If Ianto should happen to lose, well, that’s to be expected.
He focuses on Jack’s desperation as it builds. It’s possible Jack is holding his wrists too tightly - that there will be marks in the morning - but he’s learned that shirt cuffs and watch bands conceal an awful lot of sins. And really, isn’t that what he’s good at?
When Jack comes, Ianto keens and tenses in sympathy. It really is good like this, even if Jack is holding his wrists so that he can’t bring himself off, too. Never mind that he’s still angry, and that he feels a little sick because it feels like he’s consorting with the enemy. Again.
Jack pulls out of him and releases his wrists. His fingers start to tingle straight away, and Ianto instinctively clasps and unclasps his hands as he sits up.
“I’m losing my touch if you’ve got that look on your face,” Jack says and reaches between Ianto’s legs.
Ianto brushes his hand away and edges further back toward the headboard. Jack gives him a questioning look. Not a worried one, though. Expectant. Petulant even, like Ianto has done something wrong.
“I think you’d better go,” he tells Jack, and hates how small his voice sounds. This isn’t who he’s supposed to be. He should be stronger for his pain. Instead, he feels boxed in and crystallized.
Jack doesn’t move. “Is this about Gwen?”
He reaches over the edge of the bed for his shirt and his briefs. “No.”
“So what is it about, then?” Jack’s eyes bore into him.
“Nothing,” Ianto tells him, and crosses the bed on the other side. He won’t be blocked by Jack. Not in his own bedroom. “It’s been a long day. I’m tired.”
“Which is why you’re getting out of bed,” Jack replies with a smirk.
Ianto ignores him in favor of a trip to the toilet. He’s relieved that Jack at least has the decency to leave the door closed until he’s washing his hands.
Jack enters wearing only his trousers and sits on the edge of the tub. The smirk is gone at least, but the expectant look isn’t. “Are we okay, Ianto?”
“I asked you to get out of my flat. You’re refusing outright to do it. What do you bloody think?” Ianto asks sharply as he dries his hands on a towel.
“Gee, let me think,” Jack retorts and then pretends to concentrate. “Nope, sorry. Still not a mind reader.”
“And yet ever since I started seeing Andy, you’ve seemed to delight in making all of my decisions for me. How peculiar.” Ianto leans back against the counter and crosses his arms. “Come to think of it, opening the relationship on my side was your idea too, wasn’t it?”
“Oh, come on! This again?” Jack exclaims. “I thought the Andy thing was a dead issue.”
“I might believe that if you didn’t go fully into damage control mode every time Gwen hauls it screaming from the vaults,” Ianto yells back and stands up just a little taller. “All you do is hold forth about us and our quaint little categories, but the minute you opened up that door for me, all you did was get off on controlling me.”
“Now wait just a minute -“
“No, Jack. I won’t,” Ianto says through his teeth. “I’m tired of having to answer to you every second of the day, or taking a back seat every time you try and sort out my mistakes.”
Jack lets out an angry bark of a laugh and stands. “Your mistakes are a matter of national security. It’s my duty to ensure that they’re taken care of properly. I’m not going to stay my hand because doing my job might hurt your feelings.”
“And I’m tired of you couching every shitty, controlling thing you do to me in those terms.”
“Yeah, well,” Jack says dismissively. “Seen your track record lately? Frankly it -“
Ianto punches him hard in the mouth, and Jack staggers back, shocked and angry.
“What the fuck, Ianto!?” Jack shouts as he raises one hand to his split lip. His fingertips come away wet.
“Shit,” Ianto whispers, low and soft, and looks down at his now-aching knuckles like he’s not sure they’re real. He looks up to see Jack at the sink, dabbing at his bloodied lip with a tissue as the injury begins to mend itself.
“I’m sorry,” Ianto stammers. He opens and closes his hand and knows his knuckles will be sore long after Jack’s lip has forgotten the blow. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean - ”
“I’ve had worse.” Jack crumples the tissue and drops it in the bin, then reaches for another. He wets it under the tap and starts to clean away the blood from his mouth. “From you, even.”
Ianto looks down and lets out a breath. The memory of Jack knocked flat on the Plass is too vivid. He remembers his rage, twisted and confused as it was. They’d been fucking, even then. Just sex, or so they’d both thought until Lisa. “I didn’t know what I was doing.”
“You could have fooled me.” Jack drops the second tissue in the bin. There’s a fine white line where the split in his lip should be. He shoves past Ianto and into the hallway.
Panic and despair crash head-on so fast Ianto swears he can almost hear the tinkling of glass on tarmac.
“Damn it,” Ianto hisses, and hurries into the bedroom after him. “Jack, I -”
“I really don’t care right now.”
Ianto pinches the bridge of his nose and squeezes his eyes shut. He needs get a handle on things, and fast. “Look, can we start over? I’ll walk out and come back in, and then we can have this conversation properly.”
Jack sighs and lets his hands drop from the buttons of his shirt. “Fine.”
“Alright then.” Anxious but hopeful, Ianto takes a deep breath. “Right. Okay.”
He walks out into the hall, where he counts to ten. When he returns, Jack is waiting in the bedroom with his arms crossed.
“Hi.”
Jack raises a single, skeptical eyebrow.
Flustered, Ianto rubs the back of his head and rests a hand on his hip. “Okay, look. I’m not really sure where to start with this, but suffice to say I think things have gotten a little out of control.”
“Oh?” The sardonic undertones in Jack’s voice are hard to miss, but Ianto has to give him credit for playing along at least.
“Yes.” He moistens his lips and crosses his own arms. “I realize that it’s your job to maintain the status quo, and how critical that status quo is, but I also think that the broader issue ceased being a wholly professional one months ago, and it’s time we acknowledge that.”
“Meaning?” Jack adjusts his cuffs.
“Meaning maybe there aren’t as many clean edges and solid protocols as we’d like there to be. Especially after Rhys.”
Jack’s eyebrows shoot up again and he tilts his head to one side.
“Alright, fine. Torchwood SOP is a morass of inconsistently applied and contradictory policy. Also, I feel like you’re exerting your authority in our private affairs, which isn’t nearly as exciting as advertised.”
“Hazards of shagging the boss,” Jack retorts. The edge in his voice has receded though. “Not to mention hazards of shagging a witness with a propensity for spontaneous recall. Oh, and not knowing what the hell you’re doing while you’re at it.”
“You blew me off!” Ianto shouts and throws his hands up. “I came to you with questions, but you only got interested when I got hurt.”
Jack balks. “You’d prefer I ignore it when you’re in danger?”
“I’d prefer it if you took me seriously when I’m trying to be proactive instead of letting me get into danger in the first place.”
“Oh, so this is all my fault now?” Jack asks, his voice rising to match Ianto’s.
“Don’t be absurd,” Ianto snaps and rolls his eyes. “Christ, it’s like talking to a brick fucking wall.”
Jack smirks. “What happened to ‘having this conversation properly?’”
“Someone decided he’d rather be the Captain.” Ianto storms down the hall and into the front room. He drops heavily onto the sofa and turns on the telly. Nothing’s on, but he wants the light and the noise. Distraction. Anything but the sound of Jack gathering up his things.
After a long while, he becomes aware of Jack standing in the edge of his vision, watching him from the hallway.
“Jonathan Ross will be on in a little bit,” Jack says, a little awkwardly. “I think that guy from the new Blake’s 7 is going to be on. The one with all the teeth.”
Ianto shrugs and moves over to make room. Jack sits and watches the television with an intensity that suggests he’s not really focused on it, but merely in that general direction. “I forget how young you are sometimes.”
“I hear in some places it’s quite the selling point.”
“Hey, I’m not complaining,” Jack says with the barest hint of a smile. “I just forget sometimes.”
They sit in silence for a few minutes before Ianto gets up to go to the kitchen. He returns with two bottles of Brains SA and hands one to Jack before he sits down again.
“With regard to SOP, I think it’s time we consider working with contacts on a case-by-case basis,” Ianto says. “It’s a logical solution. Torchwood is already more visible than it was ten years ago, and we’ve got standards in place for when a contact goes rogue. A trusted partner, or someone who could reasonably know about us might deserve special consideration.”
Jack nods. Ianto leans back and drinks his beer.
# # #
Andy doesn’t go to the wedding.
For one, he can’t bring himself to watch Gwen get married. Not to Rhys Williams, at any rate. Christ, what a bloody car wreck that is. Part of him still hopes she’ll come around and dump the fat bastard on his arse, but unless she’s planning on leaving him at the altar, that’s probably not going to happen. She’ll be hurt, but he’ll tell her that Temple changed the work rota at the last minute. She knows what Temple can be like.
The bigger problem - and he’d never have believed there was such a thing as a problem bigger than Gwen Cooper - is Ianto Jones.
It starts with his follow-up appointment with his GP. “Honestly, Andy, I’m worried,” Doctor Dolban says, eyes fixed on his blood work from that morning they found him in the park. “You should be dead seven or eight times over. Are you sure you don’t remember anything?”
“Not a thing,” he says, which at the time was true. Now that he remembers, he spends more time than he should trying to sort out just how tenuous his position is. He has to assume Jack doesn’t actually want him dead, though the only things he has to base that on are recollections of the incident itself and the fact that he’s still alive. Harkness doesn’t strike Andy as the sort who’d have trouble arranging for means and opportunity if he had motive, so every day is another argument in favor of that assumption. Then again, maybe it’s the amnesia keeping him off the chopping block. Can Torchwood check his medical records? Probably. The prospect is disturbing enough that sometimes he sits in his flat and stares at a blank sheet of notebook paper, too unsettled to write. He tries to take comfort in his day-to-day habits, but even Trav is acting a little weird these days.
“Oi, look at that poof there,” Trav says as they sit at a red light in their uniform car, and jabs a finger in the direction of to a man waiting to cross. There’s nothing overtly homosexual about him as far as Andy can tell (unless there’s something suddenly and unexpectedly gay about owning an umbrella and eating chips), but something in his appearance sets Trav off. “Fucking sicko queers.”
“Whatever,” Andy says, and tries to ignore it, but even their fits of fraternal alcoholism have given way to something a little less carefree.
What used to be pints after work with the occasional bender has started to turn into Trav trying to get him hammered at strip clubs. While Andy certainly doesn’t object in principle to a drink or watching attractive young women demonstrate how limber they are, it feels like Trav is dragging him through a joyless, pointless grind. Andy can’t quite decide whether Trav is goading Andy to acknowledge what they both know - that Andy has been with a man in some manner or another - or if he’s just pushing buttons more and more viciously, waiting for Andy to snap.
At this rate I’m probably going to end up with a gun in my mouth and calling the Samaritans, he thinks irritably as he changes into his street clothes at the end of his shift. At least things have gone back to normal in the locker room. That’s one small blessing.
He reaches into his locker and brings out his rucksack. It’s heavy with videocassettes - more crowd footage for Nikki Bevan to go over - and he’s glad for it because it gives him a way to beg off if he runs into Trav on the way out. She’s nice, Nikki is. The case has technically gone cold, but he can’t quite bring himself to give up on Jonah. Plus, the case is dead weird. How’s a kid just up and disappear from the Barrage, anyway?
On his way out, he stops to fill out a form to request the CCTV footage from that night. It’s been months since the detectives had a look at it. Maybe fresh eyes will help. He’d do it anyway, of course, but the added benefit of having an excuse not to go out right now is too good to pass up. Andy’s just putting his form in the tray when Trav gives him a colossal slap to the back and puts his arm over Andy’s shoulders.
“So, we still on then?”
“Can’t,” Andy says, and gives his bag a quick shake. He’s grateful when it rattles. “Tapes.”
Trav laughs, low and dirty. “You dog. How is she then?”
Andy boggles and gives Trav a look. “Sorry?”
“You know. What’s-her-name. You’ve got to be shagging her, as long as you’ve been on this one. Trail’s dead cold.”
“Uh, no.” He shrugs out from under Trav’s arm and shoulders his rucksack. There’s an intensity beneath Trav’s casual demeanor that makes Andy uneasy. It reminds him a little of the way his mother looks when she starts talking about grandchildren. “Definitely not.”
Trav pulls a face. “So what’s the bloody point of it, then?”
“What, a missing boy isn’t point enough for you?” Andy snaps.
“Six months on?” Trav says and scoffs. “The only thing alive about this case is you. Fifty quid says that kid is in a ditch somewhere in, I don’t know, Didcot or something.”
Andy shoulders his bag. “Whatever. I’m off.”
He thinks he hears Trav mutter something as he goes, but whatever it is gets lost in the noise and bustle of the station. He sits in his car for almost five full minutes before he starts the engine. He doesn’t need this shit right now.
Nikki isn’t in when he drives by, which is just as well. Trav’s badgering has put him in a foul humor anyway. He goes straight home from there, where he winds up settled on his sofa watching American cartoons until he starts to nod off. Andy turns his lights out, checks the locks and chain on his front door, and then shuffles off to bed feeling empty and bored.
Maybe he needs a proper hobby. Maybe he should move. Trouble is, he doesn’t much want to do either of those things. What he wants is to call Ianto fucking Jones and demand an explanation, but that’s not going to happen, now is it?
As he drifts off to sleep he feels the fingers of his right hand lace through the fingers of his left. He nestles deeper into his duvet, half-pretending he isn’t alone.
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Prev (Pt #29) (Warnings: language, reference to smut.)
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