[fic] torchwood - the thirteenth interrupted pub night - pg - ianto + gwen (canon pairings)
Title: The Thirteenth Interrupted Pub Night
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto + Gwen (with canon pairings)
Rating: PG
Length: ~5800
Summary: Ianto and Gwen have a conversation, get captured by aliens, have a conversation, escape, have a conversation, run for their lives, and have another conversation.
Notes: For spoggly who bid on me for help_haiti. She wanted Gwen+Ianto friendship fic, possibly while captured by aliens, with some hurt/comfort. Sorry I'm a little late, but I hope you enjoy.
Thanks to solsticezero for the beta. She remains lovely and talented.
***
It took Gwen a moment to come back to herself. Things were slowly slotting into place in her mind, cutting through a fuzzy cloud, circling until she could snatch them from the fog and focus on them clearly. She wasn't in her bed. There was something lumpy under her head. She didn't remember drinking. No--no, she remembered drinking, she was drinking with Ianto, but then--
She opened her eyes.
Definitely not in bed. Not anywhere she recognized at all.
"Oh, good."
She turned her head, wincing at jackhammer that was suddenly drilling into her brain, and the world came back into focus on Ianto lounging against the wall. His jacket was missing and his sleeves were rolled up. He looked bored.
"I was wondering when you were going to come to," he continued, straightening up and getting to his feet. "I was unconscious when they brought you in. I didn't know how long you'd been out."
Very, very tentatively, Gwen pressed her palms to the floor and lifted herself up. The room didn't swim quite as much as it had when she first opened her eyes. Progress.
"You know," she said, her voice creaking from disuse. "We really need to talk about your habit of sacrificing yourself to the aliens so that one of us can get away."
Ianto crouched down next to her and helped her sit up against the wall of their--well, cell.
"The last time," he reminded her, "it wasn't aliens. Just to be clear."
Gwen leaned against the wall with a thud and closed her eyes. The evening was coming back to her in rough fragments. Leaving the Hub. Going home to change. Kissing Rhys as he left to meet Daf. Meeting Ianto at the pub. She was telling Ianto some story about Rhys when they spotted the six foot iguana-like creature outside. They were chasing it, it raised its gun to fire at her, Ianto shoved her out of the way, and then everything got fuzzy.
"So we were captured, then?" she asked. She opened her eyes again. Ianto was picking his suit jacket--her impromptu pillow--up off of the floor and brushing the dust off of it.
"Mm," Ianto hummed. "So it seems. I don't remember much after the initial running and trying to call Jack."
"Didn't even get to the trying to call Jack part myself," Gwen said. She watched as Ianto put his suit jacket back on, dusted off his hands, and then sat on the ground next to her. "So, what's the plan, then?"
"Why does there always have to be a plan?" Ianto asked. "I would like, just once, to be able to spend my night off being... off. I would like to be able to have a drink without needing to rush in for back up or clean up or to save the world. Just once, I'd like someone else to do the rescuing."
"A dashing captain, perhaps?" Gwen suggested with a wink. Ianto rolled his eyes.
"At this point I'll take a technological genius or a surly medic." He rolled his shoulders and got to his feet, offering Gwen his hand. "But no," he continued. "Once again, it's up to us."
"We're a good team at least," Gwen said. "Imagine if you'd gotten captured with Owen. Remember that time the two of you had to get me and Tosh out of that pit thing?"
"Unfortunately yes," Ianto said. "No matter how hard I try to forget."
They were old hat at trying to escape from alien prisons, by this point. While Jack did perform quite a dashing rescue when given the chance, they couldn't be certain that Jack knew where they were or that the aliens would let them live long enough for Jack, Tosh, and Owen to figure out how to find them. It was easier to rescue themselves.
They both turned to the wall and started walking the length of the cell in opposite directions. It looked more like something out of an action film than a scifi film. Gwen wondered if they weren't in the basement of some warehouse.
"Got a duct," she said, pointing to a panel in the wall about seven feet off the ground. It was flush with the rest of the wall and the air slats were nothing more than thin slits in the metal. Still, it was very obviously a separate panel and Gwen had confidence that, between the two of them, they could pry it loose.
"They're not very good at this," Ianto said. "They took my coat and my weapon but not my wallet." He fished a small screwdriver out of it, the kind people carried to fix their glasses. They stood back and looked at the panel again.
"On your shoulders, I think," Gwen said. Ianto nodded.
"I hope you haven't put on weight."
Gwen smacked his arm. "I'm three pounds lighter than last week, thank you very much. Got to fit into that wedding dress."
Ianto knelt down and Gwen took the screwdriver and put it between her teeth. She climbed easily onto Ianto's shoulders and he lifted her up almost as easily.
"I don't understand that," he said as Gwen plucked the screwdriver from between her lips and started running it along the seam of the panel. "Why not just buy a dress that fits?"
"I did," Gwen insisted. "But you know how it goes--you eat an extra slice of pizza, you forget to go to the gym, you spend a week with a sprained ankle after tripping over a weevil. You should know."
"Are you implying that I've gained weight?" Ianto asked.
"Not in a bad way," Gwen said absently. The screwdriver was definitely bumping against something and if she pried it up just right, she might have the bottom corner free. "You were too skinny, before. You've filled out a little. It looks good. I'm surprised Jack hasn't commented." Something in the panel popped and Gwen slid her fingers beneath it eagerly. It looked like there was a stud every ten or so centimeters. If they were all that easy to pop out, it wouldn't be long until they were free.
"Jack doesn't really notice things like that," Ianto said.
"Jack doesn't notice how your body looks? Ianto, Jack spends a third of his day staring a hole through your suit."
"Yes, but he doesn't care much about things like that. He doesn't..." Gwen could tell he wanted to shrug, which was impossible with Gwen on his shoulders. "He notices, but it doesn't matter to him. Like when I change the way I do my hair or something. I don't know how to explain it. It's actually rather fascinating."
"Oh, fascinating, eh?" Gwen asked, prying up two more studs. "I'm sure that's what you find so fascinating."
"You'd be surprised," Ianto murmured wryly.
"Oh, I'm sure I would," Gwen said. "I bet it has nothing to do with his cock."
Ianto snorted. "Not as much as you'd think. You wouldn't be so focused on his cock if you knew what he could do with his hands. I remember this one time--"
"Right!" Gwen said. Three more studs pulled away in rapid succession as she gave the cover of the vent a sharp tug. "Let's stop talking about Jack's assets and focus more on getting out of here, yeah?"
"You were the one who brought it up," Ianto said mildly. "And you can't pretend you weren't dying to hear about it at the pub earlier."
"Time and a place, love. Give me a little more boost. I can't get enough leverage to get the top off."
Ianto did something that lifted her another three inches in the air. She had a terrible feeling he was balancing on his toes.
"Anyway," she said, straining to pull at the top of the vent, "you like telling as much as I like asking. I love Rhys with all my heart, but there's something about Jack that makes you... curious. All that time alive, all those places he's seen. You can't help but wonder."
"I know," Ianto says, breathlessly. "I wonder sometimes, with all he has to offer, why he's with me."
Gwen froze, her fingers wrapped tight around a stud. "Oh, Ianto," she said. "You're--"
"No, no," Ianto said quickly. "Not in some kind of self-pitying way. I'm honestly curious why he's with me. He could be out shagging half the universe and he limits himself to me."
Gwen could feel a smile slipping across her face as she quickly moved down the rest of the line of studs. Ianto's breathing was labored and she didn't know how much longer he could hold her up this high. She pulled out the last stud and barely caught the panel before it hit the ground. She tugged his hair with her freehand.
"Down, pet," she said, and Ianto nearly sagged forward in his haste to get her on the ground. He rolled his shoulders once he straightened up, and cracked his neck. "So," Gwen said, leaning the panel against the wall and smirking involuntarily. "He limits himself, eh?"
"We... don't really talk about it," Ianto said, looking up at the hole in the wall and purposely not at Gwen.
"Because every time he brings it up you panic and change the subject?"
"You're right," Ianto said. "Time and a place. Let's focus on getting out of here. You want me to give you a boost?"
Gwen sighed, but filed the admission away for later interrogation. They had another night off coming to them to make up for this, and she was going to pry a confession of Ianto, even if it took all night and half a bottle of whiskey to do it.
"No," she said. "Better I boost you. I don't know that I'd be able to pull you up after me."
"Is that another dig at my weight?" Ianto asked, but he stepped forward and wrapped his fingers around the edge of the duct, stepping obligingly into Gwen's knit fingers. It was a little more difficult launching him into the duct than it would have been to get her up, but they managed to use the momentum to their advantage. It only took Ianto a minute or two to pull himself up and turn his body around enough to lean out of the duct and slide his hands under Gwen's sleeves to grasp her forearms.
"It looks clear further down," he said to her. "There's not much light, though, and they took the torch from my jacket pocket."
"We'll manage," Gwen assured him. "Ready?"
Ianto squeezed her forearms affirmatively, so Gwen pushed off the ground and struggled to push off the wall as Ianto pulled her upwards. The edge of the duct scraped along her stomach where her shirt rode up, but she was in the duct, nearly on top of Ianto, in no time at all.
"All right, then," Ianto said, sliding back as best he could. "Shall we?"
"Best if we do," Gwen said. "Wouldn't want our hosts to come calling and notice we've gone."
They crawled forward on their hands and knees. The top of the duct grazed the top of Gwen's head, and Ianto had to stoop down lower than was comfortable to keep it from hitting his as well. He led the way with the same silent efficiency he demonstrated in all other parts of his job. The duct seemed to be leading in a straight line, and Ianto squinted quickly out the slats in each vent before moving forward at a pace that was brisk enough to give them a lengthy head-start on their captors.
He stopped abruptly near the first turn in the duct. Gwen nearly ran right into him.
"Some sort of control room," he said quietly. "Can I have my screwdriver back?"
Gwen groped into her pocket for the screwdriver and managed to pass it back into Ianto's hands without dropping it. He scratched at something along the duct, then used the screwdriver as a sort of chisel and hit it with his fist. There was a loud clanging and they both froze.
Seconds passed long and anxious until Ianto, apparently, determined they hadn't been heard. His shoulders relaxed and he started again, hitting the screwdriver with his fist in five or six strategic places until he could push the edge of the vent away from the wall. After that, he worked his fingers around it and pried it off the rest of the way with his hands.
"This is too easy," he murmured, sliding the screwdriver into his pocket and dropping easily to the floor. He extended his hand up to Gwen and she accepted it out of politeness, though she hardly needed help jumping the few feet to the ground. She was glad she opted for trainers--maybe Torchwood was having more of an effect on her than she noticed, because she couldn't remember the last time she went out for a night on the town in a pair of her impractical heels.
"I don't see anyone," Gwen said. She wandered over to one of the consoles. Some of the technology was very obviously alien, but she was starting to think they were in a factory downtown. Most of the computers were current day Earth technology, wired shoddily into the alien parts.
"Oh, they are terrible at this," Ianto muttered. He poked at one of the loose bits of wire with the plastic end of the screwdriver. "Total amateurs. Jack is going to mock us for weeks when he finds out who captured us. Take the front bank of computers. See if you can see where our hosts are and how to get out of here."
Gwen glanced quickly at each internal CCTV screen before moving onto the next. There were several screens that were filled with an incomprehensible alien language and several showing schematics that she didn't understand. She didn't see any hint of the aliens who captured them, but on the fifth screen, she noticed a heavy warehouse door.
"Ianto!" she called. When she turned around, Ianto was no where to be seen. "Ianto?"
He popped up from underneath one of the consoles, grinning and holding up a metal box.
"Our weapons and mobiles," he announced, getting to his feet and quickly walking over to her. "What have you got?"
"They really are bad at this," Gwen murmured, but she took her phone and tucked her gun into her waistband. "No signal," she said.
Ianto wasn't paying attention, though. He was staring at the CCTV screen over her shoulder.
"I know this block of warehouses," he said. "I know that door." He quickly stepped around her and sat down at the computer, typing away frantically. "This will be almost embarrassingly simple, I think."
"Well, that's good, I suppose," Gwen said. "We still don't know where the aliens are. I'll look through the rest of the screens."
"Good idea," Ianto said. "Now, what was it you were saying at the pub? Before we were interrupted. Something about Rhys...?"
Gwen thought back, past the blackness and the fuzziness and the running. What had she--oh, right. The bloody dishes.
"His bloody fixation with the washing up," she hissed, irritation flooding back to her as she did a quick sweep of the monitors. "He cooks, which I adore because I'm rubbish at it, but that leaves the washing up to me. And it's like he thinks I'm a bloody slob just because I don't start washing pots the second I've swallowed the last of my dinner."
"Ah," Ianto said. He was still typing and Gwen felt rather useless walking up and down the row of computers. She kept meaning to ask Tosh for some basic tech training, but she still had trouble working her iPod sometimes and figured that handling alien tech on a regular basis could only end in disaster.
"It's not like I'm going to let them pile up forever!" Gwen insisted. "It's just that I barely have a chance to have a nice, sit-down dinner with him in the first place, and I'd like to relax a bit before I leap to my feet and start the chores."
"I know exactly what you're talking about," Ianto said. "Lisa used to call it the Filth Threshold."
"The Filth Threshold?" Ianto didn't talk about Lisa at all, if he could help it. Gwen understood, in a way. Even though he was working for Torchwood in London, from what the others have told her and Ianto has implied, it was a wholly different kind of Torchwood. A Torchwood where he didn't expect to die young and led a wholly different kind of life. She imagined that life felt separate from the one he was living in Cardiff. She was with the same man she was with before Torchwood, living in the same flat, and even she had trouble remembering what it was like to be happy and carefree.
Hearing Lisa's name on Ianto's lips without a wince or downcast eyes was refreshing. It made Gwen's heart twist pleasantly, so she kept monitoring the computers and let him continue, hoping to hear more.
"Yes," he said without looking up. "For each household task, there's always going to be one roommate who gets fed up with the filth before the other. For example, like Rhys, I need to have the washing up done right after dinner. I get uncomfortable when dishes are left in the sink for too long. Lisa preferred to relax after dinner and do the dishes later or in the morning before breakfast. She had every intention of doing them, but her threshold for how long they could sit there was much higher than mine."
"So you would get so twitchy you'd end up doing them yourself," Gwen surmised. Ianto glanced up and nodded, rolling his eyes.
"It irritated me incredibly," he admitted, turning back to the screen. "On the flip side, I would happily put off laundry until I was out of clothes, but Lisa insisted on doing her laundry every Sunday afternoon, regardless of how much or how little there was to be done. So we compromised. I did the dishes all the time and she did the laundry all the time. Otherwise, we'd have gone mad."
"The Filth Threshold," Gwen says again. "I like it. I'll have to mention it to Rhys."
She did another pass of the computer monitors and joined Ianto, glancing over his shoulder as he frowned and clicked through several screens worth of text. He typed a few commands and the internal CCTV popped up again. He cycled through each camera, but there was still no sign of the aliens who had nabbed them off the street.
"I don't like this," Ianto said quietly. "There's something not right about this."
"Then we'll have to be careful," Gwen said. She felt it too, the prickly unease. She wondered if this was really some kind of test or if they were just hiding in some corner of the warehouse that was out of the CCTV range. "Can you get us to the door?"
"Sure," Ianto said, minimizing the CCTV and clicking to a different screen. "But first I have to get it open. It's mechanical. I think I can do it from here. If we can open it and there's nothing waiting outside, we can run for it."
He leaned over the keyboard and frowned, but then started typing again. There was a deep crease in his forehead and Gwen struggled to maintain the casual calm. The banter was a nice diversion from the fact that they were both tensing up. Gwen pulled her mobile out and checked again, but there was still no signal.
"What about you and Jack?" she heard herself asking as she shoved the phone back in her pocket and rested her fingers lightly on her gun. "How do you divvy up chores?"
"Jack doesn't live with me," Ianto said firmly. Gwen rolled her eyes, relaxing immediately into the patter of accusation and denial.
"Oh, come off it," she said, eyeing each of the exits from the room and then returning to stalk the long rows of computer monitors. "He practically does. We've all noticed he spends most his nights at yours these days. Well, I've noticed at least. Can't speak for the others. He doesn't make fun of your dishes fixation?"
"It's not a fixation," Ianto says. "I just prefer to do the washing up before I get distracted and forget about it."
"Bet Jack's more than willing to offer up a distraction."
"He tries, but he knows he'll never win."
They slipped back into silence as Ianto tinkered and murmured to himself about alien languages and wishing Tosh were around. Gwen wished Tosh was with them too; these things always seemed less frightening when they were together as a team.
"But Jack doesn't help you out around the flat?" she asked when the silence got to be too much. "Even after all the time he spends there?"
"He doesn't spend that much time there," Ianto said. "I don't spend that much time there. But, um."
His hands froze over the keyboards and Gwen felt her mouth slip into an involuntary smile. "C'mon, out with it!"
"He does the laundry," Ianto said. He crouched down even lower over the monitor, but Gwen could see the tips of his ears going red. "Not--it's not a formal arrangement. It's not the same as the arrangement I had with Lisa. He just... well, he doesn't sleep much. I don't know if it's the immortality or if no one in the 51st century has to get much sleep."
Gwen frowned. "He once told me he didn't sleep at all."
Ianto rolled his eyes and snorted, looking up to raise his eyebrows in a way that made it very clear what he thought of that explanation. "That is a pack of lies designed to make him seem mysterious. No, he sleeps. He just doesn't need quite as much to function. Four hours a night, maybe."
Gwen took a moment to digest the information. She wasn't entirely surprised; fibbing about his past seemed to be second nature to Jack and he did love to look as mysterious as possible.
"So what does not sleeping have to do with the laundry?" she finally asked.
"He gets... bored." Ianto shrugged. "Doesn't much care for late night telly, and my building doesn't have roof access."
"No brooding, eh?" Gwen asked with a snort.
"You should have seen his pout the first time he tried to get up there." Gwen could hear Ianto's smirk without even seeing it. "But sometimes he reads and sometimes he does paper work and sometimes he goes back to the Hub, but he's started... doing the laundry, if there's any to be done."
"He gets bored and does your household chores? Christ, Ianto, you should send him over to our flat. We've got plenty." Gwen strolled through the computers again. The CCTV was still blank. Looking at all the empty screens was starting to make her skin itch. She remembered dozens of horror movies and Twilight Zone episodes where people just disappeared into empty worlds. At least she had Ianto.
"He doesn't do everything," Ianto continued obliviously. "Just the laundry. I don't know why. I don't question it. I bloody hate laundry."
"I'm surprised! You certainly like clothing."
Ianto got up from the computer and quickly walked over to another one, before sitting down there and typing just as fiercely as before. He reached over and pulled the internal CCTV up on a third monitor and frowned slightly as he flipped through several camera views of the same thing Gwen was seeing--nothing. She was glad she wasn't the only one becoming concerned, but she had also secretly hoped that Ianto had some sort of magic answer to it all.
"Suits can be dry-cleaned," he said almost absently, before he forced himself to look away from the CCTV and focus on the monitor in front of him. "That means someone else deals with it. Laundry just takes so long and there's nothing you can do about it. You just have to... wait."
Gwen fingered her gun again, but the room was just as silent as before and the cameras just as empty."You could always hire a laundry service."
"Gwen, you've seen the stains wrought by a day at Torchwood. How the hell would I explain that to a laundry service?"
"Point. So Jack does your laundry."
"Yes. Frequently. And. Well." Another lengthy pause. Gwen glanced over to see if Ianto had found anything, but, no. It was a Jack-related pause. She could tell by the blush staining his ears and neck.
"Yes?" she said as the pause drew out.
"He has this thing," Ianto said. "About kitchen cabinets."
Gwen waited for further explanation.
"He thinks that there's a certain logical order that kitchen cabinets should be arranged in." Ianto was back to typing furiously. Gwen wondered how much of it was devotion to the task at hand and how much of it was self-preservation. "It's bollocks is what it is, but he keeps trying to move my things around while I'm asleep. I have to fix them all the next day. It's incredibly frustrating."
"Why does he--"
"I don't know! He won't stop!"
"You could just leave it his way."
"I won't give him that satisfaction. It's not his bloody flat! He doesn't get a say in where I put my salad bowls!"
Gwen had to bite back laughter, swallow against the swell of it in her throat, because there was conversation that distracted them from the peril it seemed they might be in while allowing them to do their jobs, and then there was conversation that was so distracting that they forgot that the reptilian aliens who had captured them had seemingly vanished.
She needn't worry how to proceed, though, because at that moment, Ianto jumped to his feet.
"Got it!" he said. He pointed at the CCTV, which very clearly showed the door opening into a parking lot. It was empty, save for a rat scuttling in the garbage. Gwen breathed a sight of relief, though she wasn't sure if it was for the escape route or the sign of life.
"So what's the plan?" she asked, fingers on her gun again.
"Based on the CCTV scans, we need to get out of here, make a right at the end of the hallway, and the end of that hallway should lead us to the door," Ianto said. He took his gun out as well. "I don't know what's waiting for us. The CCTV doesn't show anything, but... I don't know if we can trust that."
Gwen nodded. "I'll take point," she said.
"Right behind you," Ianto said.
Gwen led the way to the door and glanced out the small, dirty glass window. She opened the door slowly and quietly. A brief glance at the hall indicated that it was as empty as the CCTV showed it to be. She stepped out, and when no one came running, she gestured for Ianto to follow.
The easy banter from before slipped into alert silence. Gwen's eyes were constantly roaming the hallways around them, looking quickly in the window on each door they passed. She didn't know whether to be relieved at the lack of interference or further concerned.
"Right down there," Ianto said to her, voice barely a whisper. She nodded and slowly approached the corner before edging around, gun first.
All clear.
The door to the exit was in sight, now, and Gwen began to walk faster. She could hear Ianto's pace picking up behind her, his shoes softer than expected on the concrete, but not as silent as her trainers. They were thirty meters away. Twenty-eight meters away. Twenty-five meters away.
And then Gwen nearly leapt five feet in the air when her mobile began to vibrate in her pocket.
"Shit!" she wheezed, panic abating but adrenaline still running through her system. "I guess that means we--"
She didn't see the panel open up in the floor in front of them, or the three burly reptilian aliens climb out of it holding large energy weapons. She didn't see much of all, actually, except Ianto's chest as he tackled her through the closest open doorway, a sizzling sound reverberating in her ears as they rolled across the concrete. The air smelled singed and Gwen reached for her gun and rolled to her feet without even thinking about it.
"Christ!" she said. "They were underground!"
The hallway was illuminated by red flashes that were growing steadily closer. Gwen looked down at her handgun; they didn't stand a chance.
"Forget what I said about gaining weight, love," she continued, backing up slightly, gun still pointed unwaveringly at the door. "Your elbows are bloody bony." Maybe she could at least take out one of them when they came round. Maybe if she and Ianto stayed close to the ground, the creatures would aim high and give the two of them a fighting chance.
"Stay low," she whispered. When there was no reply, she stole a glance at Ianto.
She didn't have to worry about him staying low. He was sprawled on the ground, bloody trickling out of a wound on his shoulder, eyes glassy.
"Shit!" she shouted. A million scenarios started to whirl through her mind, medical training, survival rates, escape plans. She didn't know what to do, and it was only the thumping of her heart that kept her from bursting into tears and giving up. She crawled over to Ianto. She couldn't remember if you were supposed to put pressure on a wound from an energy weapon or leave it open. The blood was starting to pool more quickly, though, and she couldn't imagine that was good. She tore off the sleeve of her shirt and pressed it against the wound.
Ianto's eyes closed and didn't open again.
She was trained for this. There was nothing she could do for Ianto until they got out, which meant she needed to get them out first.
She crouched in front of his body and aimed her gun at the door, whispering a prayer to a god she hadn't believed in for years.
***
In the end, the preparations didn't matter at all, because that was the moment when the dashing captain deigned to make his appearance and the two of them were finally rescued.
***
Gwen was sitting next to Ianto when he finally opened his eyes.
It was nearly a day later, twenty-two hours of fretting and panic. Granted, most of the fretting and panic were from Jack, who disguised them as brooding and anger, but Gwen caught the way his fingers lingered over the bandage on Ianto's shoulder and saw him smooth the hair off of Ianto's forehead too many times to buy into stoic hero facade.
Well, that and the fact that Jack hadn't left Ianto's side for most of those twenty-two hours.
He was gone now, though, run down to the Chinese place on the corner to buy some soup at Gwen's insistence. He was going to be bloody incensed that he missed Ianto's return to consciousness.
"Gwen?" Ianto murmured. He closed his eyes again and then opened them, squinting at the light. Gwen obligingly turned off the bedside lamp and let the light from the open blinds illuminate the room.
"Hello, sweetheart," she said. She felt his forehead, brushing her thumb through the soft curls gathered on top of it. "You've been asleep for a bit."
"Few hours?" he asked.
"More like a day," she said. Ianto's eyes widened. "It's Wednesday."
"Shit," he said. "What was in that fucking gun?"
Gwen couldn't help her smile. "Tosh is probably figuring it out as we speak," she said. Or maybe not. It was late, after all, and they had all been up since the night before with little time for more than a cat nap on the couch.
"Jack?" Ianto asked. He was too tired to hide the longing and affection in his voice. That made Gwen smile too.
"Down on the corner getting you some soup," she said. "He hasn't eaten since last night, so I was hoping to convince him to have some too."
"When I'm not around, someone needs to remind him to eat," Ianto said. Gwen was amazed at how well he could chastise her while lying under a pile of blankets, fuzzy from twenty-two hours of unconsciousness.
"He wouldn't leave," Gwen said. "Well, we had you at the Hub during the day, so he still worked, he just... lurked over autopsy. We brought you back here a few hours ago and he started lurking in front of your bay window."
"No roof access," Ianto reminded her.
"Yeah, the window doesn't do him justice. No wind to blow the coat around."
They shared a smile and lapsed into silence. Gwen took Ianto's hand and held it between both her own, a thumb pressed to his wrist. His pulse beat heavy and steady and she let go of a long breath and she sat, feeling it. Her head was still a mess of emotions that she hadn't been able to put order to, even in the hours she was frozen next to Ianto's still body.
"What happened in the warehouse," she finally said. "Ianto, I've never been so scared."
"I know," Ianto said. "I never imagined scales could be such a putrid orange color."
He tried to smile, but it slipped off his face, replaced by that deep worry line in his forehead.
"That's not what I meant," she said softly.
He didn't have to say anything for her to understand that he knew that as well.
"Twice that night you stepped in front of a blast meant for me," she said. "I don't know--I can't--"
"Don't," Ianto said. His voice was level and calm, but there was just a moment of hesitance in it, a tiny sliver of fear. "Please, Gwen. Let me do this. Let me have this."
"Let you sacrifice yourself?" Gwen snapped. "I think not!"
"Please!" Ianto said. "Gwen--"
He stopped talking, eyes downcast. He couldn't look at her, which was all right. She couldn't look at him either.
"This," he finally said, "is all I have. Torchwood and Jack and...and you. It's all I'll ever have. If I have the chance to save you, I am going to do it again and again and again. I will always choose to save you." He paused. "I'm sorry."
Gwen wiped her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Bloody fucking Torchwood. Torchwood, ruining Ianto's life, leaving him in a place where it seemed like trading his safety for hers was a viable option. Bloody fucking Torchwood, that gave her this wonderful person in her life and would probably take him away again.
He was tired and wrung out. He had deep purple circles under his eyes and a bandage on his shoulder. He had bedhead and stubble and pillow creases on his cheek.
With a sigh, she leaned over and kissed his forehead soundly.
"I'm sorry, too," she said, her lips still brushing his skin.
"Don't be," Ianto said. "Please."
She stayed bent over him for a moment, her hands still wrapped around his, her nose in his hair, just breathing.
When she stood up again, she was smiling. She sat on the edge of the bed and leaned against the headboard, looking down at him.
"So," she said, with a smile that felt more real than she expected. "Tell me more about Jack and the kitchen cabinets."
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto + Gwen (with canon pairings)
Rating: PG
Length: ~5800
Summary: Ianto and Gwen have a conversation, get captured by aliens, have a conversation, escape, have a conversation, run for their lives, and have another conversation.
Notes: For spoggly who bid on me for help_haiti. She wanted Gwen+Ianto friendship fic, possibly while captured by aliens, with some hurt/comfort. Sorry I'm a little late, but I hope you enjoy.
Thanks to solsticezero for the beta. She remains lovely and talented.
***
It took Gwen a moment to come back to herself. Things were slowly slotting into place in her mind, cutting through a fuzzy cloud, circling until she could snatch them from the fog and focus on them clearly. She wasn't in her bed. There was something lumpy under her head. She didn't remember drinking. No--no, she remembered drinking, she was drinking with Ianto, but then--
She opened her eyes.
Definitely not in bed. Not anywhere she recognized at all.
"Oh, good."
She turned her head, wincing at jackhammer that was suddenly drilling into her brain, and the world came back into focus on Ianto lounging against the wall. His jacket was missing and his sleeves were rolled up. He looked bored.
"I was wondering when you were going to come to," he continued, straightening up and getting to his feet. "I was unconscious when they brought you in. I didn't know how long you'd been out."
Very, very tentatively, Gwen pressed her palms to the floor and lifted herself up. The room didn't swim quite as much as it had when she first opened her eyes. Progress.
"You know," she said, her voice creaking from disuse. "We really need to talk about your habit of sacrificing yourself to the aliens so that one of us can get away."
Ianto crouched down next to her and helped her sit up against the wall of their--well, cell.
"The last time," he reminded her, "it wasn't aliens. Just to be clear."
Gwen leaned against the wall with a thud and closed her eyes. The evening was coming back to her in rough fragments. Leaving the Hub. Going home to change. Kissing Rhys as he left to meet Daf. Meeting Ianto at the pub. She was telling Ianto some story about Rhys when they spotted the six foot iguana-like creature outside. They were chasing it, it raised its gun to fire at her, Ianto shoved her out of the way, and then everything got fuzzy.
"So we were captured, then?" she asked. She opened her eyes again. Ianto was picking his suit jacket--her impromptu pillow--up off of the floor and brushing the dust off of it.
"Mm," Ianto hummed. "So it seems. I don't remember much after the initial running and trying to call Jack."
"Didn't even get to the trying to call Jack part myself," Gwen said. She watched as Ianto put his suit jacket back on, dusted off his hands, and then sat on the ground next to her. "So, what's the plan, then?"
"Why does there always have to be a plan?" Ianto asked. "I would like, just once, to be able to spend my night off being... off. I would like to be able to have a drink without needing to rush in for back up or clean up or to save the world. Just once, I'd like someone else to do the rescuing."
"A dashing captain, perhaps?" Gwen suggested with a wink. Ianto rolled his eyes.
"At this point I'll take a technological genius or a surly medic." He rolled his shoulders and got to his feet, offering Gwen his hand. "But no," he continued. "Once again, it's up to us."
"We're a good team at least," Gwen said. "Imagine if you'd gotten captured with Owen. Remember that time the two of you had to get me and Tosh out of that pit thing?"
"Unfortunately yes," Ianto said. "No matter how hard I try to forget."
They were old hat at trying to escape from alien prisons, by this point. While Jack did perform quite a dashing rescue when given the chance, they couldn't be certain that Jack knew where they were or that the aliens would let them live long enough for Jack, Tosh, and Owen to figure out how to find them. It was easier to rescue themselves.
They both turned to the wall and started walking the length of the cell in opposite directions. It looked more like something out of an action film than a scifi film. Gwen wondered if they weren't in the basement of some warehouse.
"Got a duct," she said, pointing to a panel in the wall about seven feet off the ground. It was flush with the rest of the wall and the air slats were nothing more than thin slits in the metal. Still, it was very obviously a separate panel and Gwen had confidence that, between the two of them, they could pry it loose.
"They're not very good at this," Ianto said. "They took my coat and my weapon but not my wallet." He fished a small screwdriver out of it, the kind people carried to fix their glasses. They stood back and looked at the panel again.
"On your shoulders, I think," Gwen said. Ianto nodded.
"I hope you haven't put on weight."
Gwen smacked his arm. "I'm three pounds lighter than last week, thank you very much. Got to fit into that wedding dress."
Ianto knelt down and Gwen took the screwdriver and put it between her teeth. She climbed easily onto Ianto's shoulders and he lifted her up almost as easily.
"I don't understand that," he said as Gwen plucked the screwdriver from between her lips and started running it along the seam of the panel. "Why not just buy a dress that fits?"
"I did," Gwen insisted. "But you know how it goes--you eat an extra slice of pizza, you forget to go to the gym, you spend a week with a sprained ankle after tripping over a weevil. You should know."
"Are you implying that I've gained weight?" Ianto asked.
"Not in a bad way," Gwen said absently. The screwdriver was definitely bumping against something and if she pried it up just right, she might have the bottom corner free. "You were too skinny, before. You've filled out a little. It looks good. I'm surprised Jack hasn't commented." Something in the panel popped and Gwen slid her fingers beneath it eagerly. It looked like there was a stud every ten or so centimeters. If they were all that easy to pop out, it wouldn't be long until they were free.
"Jack doesn't really notice things like that," Ianto said.
"Jack doesn't notice how your body looks? Ianto, Jack spends a third of his day staring a hole through your suit."
"Yes, but he doesn't care much about things like that. He doesn't..." Gwen could tell he wanted to shrug, which was impossible with Gwen on his shoulders. "He notices, but it doesn't matter to him. Like when I change the way I do my hair or something. I don't know how to explain it. It's actually rather fascinating."
"Oh, fascinating, eh?" Gwen asked, prying up two more studs. "I'm sure that's what you find so fascinating."
"You'd be surprised," Ianto murmured wryly.
"Oh, I'm sure I would," Gwen said. "I bet it has nothing to do with his cock."
Ianto snorted. "Not as much as you'd think. You wouldn't be so focused on his cock if you knew what he could do with his hands. I remember this one time--"
"Right!" Gwen said. Three more studs pulled away in rapid succession as she gave the cover of the vent a sharp tug. "Let's stop talking about Jack's assets and focus more on getting out of here, yeah?"
"You were the one who brought it up," Ianto said mildly. "And you can't pretend you weren't dying to hear about it at the pub earlier."
"Time and a place, love. Give me a little more boost. I can't get enough leverage to get the top off."
Ianto did something that lifted her another three inches in the air. She had a terrible feeling he was balancing on his toes.
"Anyway," she said, straining to pull at the top of the vent, "you like telling as much as I like asking. I love Rhys with all my heart, but there's something about Jack that makes you... curious. All that time alive, all those places he's seen. You can't help but wonder."
"I know," Ianto says, breathlessly. "I wonder sometimes, with all he has to offer, why he's with me."
Gwen froze, her fingers wrapped tight around a stud. "Oh, Ianto," she said. "You're--"
"No, no," Ianto said quickly. "Not in some kind of self-pitying way. I'm honestly curious why he's with me. He could be out shagging half the universe and he limits himself to me."
Gwen could feel a smile slipping across her face as she quickly moved down the rest of the line of studs. Ianto's breathing was labored and she didn't know how much longer he could hold her up this high. She pulled out the last stud and barely caught the panel before it hit the ground. She tugged his hair with her freehand.
"Down, pet," she said, and Ianto nearly sagged forward in his haste to get her on the ground. He rolled his shoulders once he straightened up, and cracked his neck. "So," Gwen said, leaning the panel against the wall and smirking involuntarily. "He limits himself, eh?"
"We... don't really talk about it," Ianto said, looking up at the hole in the wall and purposely not at Gwen.
"Because every time he brings it up you panic and change the subject?"
"You're right," Ianto said. "Time and a place. Let's focus on getting out of here. You want me to give you a boost?"
Gwen sighed, but filed the admission away for later interrogation. They had another night off coming to them to make up for this, and she was going to pry a confession of Ianto, even if it took all night and half a bottle of whiskey to do it.
"No," she said. "Better I boost you. I don't know that I'd be able to pull you up after me."
"Is that another dig at my weight?" Ianto asked, but he stepped forward and wrapped his fingers around the edge of the duct, stepping obligingly into Gwen's knit fingers. It was a little more difficult launching him into the duct than it would have been to get her up, but they managed to use the momentum to their advantage. It only took Ianto a minute or two to pull himself up and turn his body around enough to lean out of the duct and slide his hands under Gwen's sleeves to grasp her forearms.
"It looks clear further down," he said to her. "There's not much light, though, and they took the torch from my jacket pocket."
"We'll manage," Gwen assured him. "Ready?"
Ianto squeezed her forearms affirmatively, so Gwen pushed off the ground and struggled to push off the wall as Ianto pulled her upwards. The edge of the duct scraped along her stomach where her shirt rode up, but she was in the duct, nearly on top of Ianto, in no time at all.
"All right, then," Ianto said, sliding back as best he could. "Shall we?"
"Best if we do," Gwen said. "Wouldn't want our hosts to come calling and notice we've gone."
They crawled forward on their hands and knees. The top of the duct grazed the top of Gwen's head, and Ianto had to stoop down lower than was comfortable to keep it from hitting his as well. He led the way with the same silent efficiency he demonstrated in all other parts of his job. The duct seemed to be leading in a straight line, and Ianto squinted quickly out the slats in each vent before moving forward at a pace that was brisk enough to give them a lengthy head-start on their captors.
He stopped abruptly near the first turn in the duct. Gwen nearly ran right into him.
"Some sort of control room," he said quietly. "Can I have my screwdriver back?"
Gwen groped into her pocket for the screwdriver and managed to pass it back into Ianto's hands without dropping it. He scratched at something along the duct, then used the screwdriver as a sort of chisel and hit it with his fist. There was a loud clanging and they both froze.
Seconds passed long and anxious until Ianto, apparently, determined they hadn't been heard. His shoulders relaxed and he started again, hitting the screwdriver with his fist in five or six strategic places until he could push the edge of the vent away from the wall. After that, he worked his fingers around it and pried it off the rest of the way with his hands.
"This is too easy," he murmured, sliding the screwdriver into his pocket and dropping easily to the floor. He extended his hand up to Gwen and she accepted it out of politeness, though she hardly needed help jumping the few feet to the ground. She was glad she opted for trainers--maybe Torchwood was having more of an effect on her than she noticed, because she couldn't remember the last time she went out for a night on the town in a pair of her impractical heels.
"I don't see anyone," Gwen said. She wandered over to one of the consoles. Some of the technology was very obviously alien, but she was starting to think they were in a factory downtown. Most of the computers were current day Earth technology, wired shoddily into the alien parts.
"Oh, they are terrible at this," Ianto muttered. He poked at one of the loose bits of wire with the plastic end of the screwdriver. "Total amateurs. Jack is going to mock us for weeks when he finds out who captured us. Take the front bank of computers. See if you can see where our hosts are and how to get out of here."
Gwen glanced quickly at each internal CCTV screen before moving onto the next. There were several screens that were filled with an incomprehensible alien language and several showing schematics that she didn't understand. She didn't see any hint of the aliens who captured them, but on the fifth screen, she noticed a heavy warehouse door.
"Ianto!" she called. When she turned around, Ianto was no where to be seen. "Ianto?"
He popped up from underneath one of the consoles, grinning and holding up a metal box.
"Our weapons and mobiles," he announced, getting to his feet and quickly walking over to her. "What have you got?"
"They really are bad at this," Gwen murmured, but she took her phone and tucked her gun into her waistband. "No signal," she said.
Ianto wasn't paying attention, though. He was staring at the CCTV screen over her shoulder.
"I know this block of warehouses," he said. "I know that door." He quickly stepped around her and sat down at the computer, typing away frantically. "This will be almost embarrassingly simple, I think."
"Well, that's good, I suppose," Gwen said. "We still don't know where the aliens are. I'll look through the rest of the screens."
"Good idea," Ianto said. "Now, what was it you were saying at the pub? Before we were interrupted. Something about Rhys...?"
Gwen thought back, past the blackness and the fuzziness and the running. What had she--oh, right. The bloody dishes.
"His bloody fixation with the washing up," she hissed, irritation flooding back to her as she did a quick sweep of the monitors. "He cooks, which I adore because I'm rubbish at it, but that leaves the washing up to me. And it's like he thinks I'm a bloody slob just because I don't start washing pots the second I've swallowed the last of my dinner."
"Ah," Ianto said. He was still typing and Gwen felt rather useless walking up and down the row of computers. She kept meaning to ask Tosh for some basic tech training, but she still had trouble working her iPod sometimes and figured that handling alien tech on a regular basis could only end in disaster.
"It's not like I'm going to let them pile up forever!" Gwen insisted. "It's just that I barely have a chance to have a nice, sit-down dinner with him in the first place, and I'd like to relax a bit before I leap to my feet and start the chores."
"I know exactly what you're talking about," Ianto said. "Lisa used to call it the Filth Threshold."
"The Filth Threshold?" Ianto didn't talk about Lisa at all, if he could help it. Gwen understood, in a way. Even though he was working for Torchwood in London, from what the others have told her and Ianto has implied, it was a wholly different kind of Torchwood. A Torchwood where he didn't expect to die young and led a wholly different kind of life. She imagined that life felt separate from the one he was living in Cardiff. She was with the same man she was with before Torchwood, living in the same flat, and even she had trouble remembering what it was like to be happy and carefree.
Hearing Lisa's name on Ianto's lips without a wince or downcast eyes was refreshing. It made Gwen's heart twist pleasantly, so she kept monitoring the computers and let him continue, hoping to hear more.
"Yes," he said without looking up. "For each household task, there's always going to be one roommate who gets fed up with the filth before the other. For example, like Rhys, I need to have the washing up done right after dinner. I get uncomfortable when dishes are left in the sink for too long. Lisa preferred to relax after dinner and do the dishes later or in the morning before breakfast. She had every intention of doing them, but her threshold for how long they could sit there was much higher than mine."
"So you would get so twitchy you'd end up doing them yourself," Gwen surmised. Ianto glanced up and nodded, rolling his eyes.
"It irritated me incredibly," he admitted, turning back to the screen. "On the flip side, I would happily put off laundry until I was out of clothes, but Lisa insisted on doing her laundry every Sunday afternoon, regardless of how much or how little there was to be done. So we compromised. I did the dishes all the time and she did the laundry all the time. Otherwise, we'd have gone mad."
"The Filth Threshold," Gwen says again. "I like it. I'll have to mention it to Rhys."
She did another pass of the computer monitors and joined Ianto, glancing over his shoulder as he frowned and clicked through several screens worth of text. He typed a few commands and the internal CCTV popped up again. He cycled through each camera, but there was still no sign of the aliens who had nabbed them off the street.
"I don't like this," Ianto said quietly. "There's something not right about this."
"Then we'll have to be careful," Gwen said. She felt it too, the prickly unease. She wondered if this was really some kind of test or if they were just hiding in some corner of the warehouse that was out of the CCTV range. "Can you get us to the door?"
"Sure," Ianto said, minimizing the CCTV and clicking to a different screen. "But first I have to get it open. It's mechanical. I think I can do it from here. If we can open it and there's nothing waiting outside, we can run for it."
He leaned over the keyboard and frowned, but then started typing again. There was a deep crease in his forehead and Gwen struggled to maintain the casual calm. The banter was a nice diversion from the fact that they were both tensing up. Gwen pulled her mobile out and checked again, but there was still no signal.
"What about you and Jack?" she heard herself asking as she shoved the phone back in her pocket and rested her fingers lightly on her gun. "How do you divvy up chores?"
"Jack doesn't live with me," Ianto said firmly. Gwen rolled her eyes, relaxing immediately into the patter of accusation and denial.
"Oh, come off it," she said, eyeing each of the exits from the room and then returning to stalk the long rows of computer monitors. "He practically does. We've all noticed he spends most his nights at yours these days. Well, I've noticed at least. Can't speak for the others. He doesn't make fun of your dishes fixation?"
"It's not a fixation," Ianto says. "I just prefer to do the washing up before I get distracted and forget about it."
"Bet Jack's more than willing to offer up a distraction."
"He tries, but he knows he'll never win."
They slipped back into silence as Ianto tinkered and murmured to himself about alien languages and wishing Tosh were around. Gwen wished Tosh was with them too; these things always seemed less frightening when they were together as a team.
"But Jack doesn't help you out around the flat?" she asked when the silence got to be too much. "Even after all the time he spends there?"
"He doesn't spend that much time there," Ianto said. "I don't spend that much time there. But, um."
His hands froze over the keyboards and Gwen felt her mouth slip into an involuntary smile. "C'mon, out with it!"
"He does the laundry," Ianto said. He crouched down even lower over the monitor, but Gwen could see the tips of his ears going red. "Not--it's not a formal arrangement. It's not the same as the arrangement I had with Lisa. He just... well, he doesn't sleep much. I don't know if it's the immortality or if no one in the 51st century has to get much sleep."
Gwen frowned. "He once told me he didn't sleep at all."
Ianto rolled his eyes and snorted, looking up to raise his eyebrows in a way that made it very clear what he thought of that explanation. "That is a pack of lies designed to make him seem mysterious. No, he sleeps. He just doesn't need quite as much to function. Four hours a night, maybe."
Gwen took a moment to digest the information. She wasn't entirely surprised; fibbing about his past seemed to be second nature to Jack and he did love to look as mysterious as possible.
"So what does not sleeping have to do with the laundry?" she finally asked.
"He gets... bored." Ianto shrugged. "Doesn't much care for late night telly, and my building doesn't have roof access."
"No brooding, eh?" Gwen asked with a snort.
"You should have seen his pout the first time he tried to get up there." Gwen could hear Ianto's smirk without even seeing it. "But sometimes he reads and sometimes he does paper work and sometimes he goes back to the Hub, but he's started... doing the laundry, if there's any to be done."
"He gets bored and does your household chores? Christ, Ianto, you should send him over to our flat. We've got plenty." Gwen strolled through the computers again. The CCTV was still blank. Looking at all the empty screens was starting to make her skin itch. She remembered dozens of horror movies and Twilight Zone episodes where people just disappeared into empty worlds. At least she had Ianto.
"He doesn't do everything," Ianto continued obliviously. "Just the laundry. I don't know why. I don't question it. I bloody hate laundry."
"I'm surprised! You certainly like clothing."
Ianto got up from the computer and quickly walked over to another one, before sitting down there and typing just as fiercely as before. He reached over and pulled the internal CCTV up on a third monitor and frowned slightly as he flipped through several camera views of the same thing Gwen was seeing--nothing. She was glad she wasn't the only one becoming concerned, but she had also secretly hoped that Ianto had some sort of magic answer to it all.
"Suits can be dry-cleaned," he said almost absently, before he forced himself to look away from the CCTV and focus on the monitor in front of him. "That means someone else deals with it. Laundry just takes so long and there's nothing you can do about it. You just have to... wait."
Gwen fingered her gun again, but the room was just as silent as before and the cameras just as empty."You could always hire a laundry service."
"Gwen, you've seen the stains wrought by a day at Torchwood. How the hell would I explain that to a laundry service?"
"Point. So Jack does your laundry."
"Yes. Frequently. And. Well." Another lengthy pause. Gwen glanced over to see if Ianto had found anything, but, no. It was a Jack-related pause. She could tell by the blush staining his ears and neck.
"Yes?" she said as the pause drew out.
"He has this thing," Ianto said. "About kitchen cabinets."
Gwen waited for further explanation.
"He thinks that there's a certain logical order that kitchen cabinets should be arranged in." Ianto was back to typing furiously. Gwen wondered how much of it was devotion to the task at hand and how much of it was self-preservation. "It's bollocks is what it is, but he keeps trying to move my things around while I'm asleep. I have to fix them all the next day. It's incredibly frustrating."
"Why does he--"
"I don't know! He won't stop!"
"You could just leave it his way."
"I won't give him that satisfaction. It's not his bloody flat! He doesn't get a say in where I put my salad bowls!"
Gwen had to bite back laughter, swallow against the swell of it in her throat, because there was conversation that distracted them from the peril it seemed they might be in while allowing them to do their jobs, and then there was conversation that was so distracting that they forgot that the reptilian aliens who had captured them had seemingly vanished.
She needn't worry how to proceed, though, because at that moment, Ianto jumped to his feet.
"Got it!" he said. He pointed at the CCTV, which very clearly showed the door opening into a parking lot. It was empty, save for a rat scuttling in the garbage. Gwen breathed a sight of relief, though she wasn't sure if it was for the escape route or the sign of life.
"So what's the plan?" she asked, fingers on her gun again.
"Based on the CCTV scans, we need to get out of here, make a right at the end of the hallway, and the end of that hallway should lead us to the door," Ianto said. He took his gun out as well. "I don't know what's waiting for us. The CCTV doesn't show anything, but... I don't know if we can trust that."
Gwen nodded. "I'll take point," she said.
"Right behind you," Ianto said.
Gwen led the way to the door and glanced out the small, dirty glass window. She opened the door slowly and quietly. A brief glance at the hall indicated that it was as empty as the CCTV showed it to be. She stepped out, and when no one came running, she gestured for Ianto to follow.
The easy banter from before slipped into alert silence. Gwen's eyes were constantly roaming the hallways around them, looking quickly in the window on each door they passed. She didn't know whether to be relieved at the lack of interference or further concerned.
"Right down there," Ianto said to her, voice barely a whisper. She nodded and slowly approached the corner before edging around, gun first.
All clear.
The door to the exit was in sight, now, and Gwen began to walk faster. She could hear Ianto's pace picking up behind her, his shoes softer than expected on the concrete, but not as silent as her trainers. They were thirty meters away. Twenty-eight meters away. Twenty-five meters away.
And then Gwen nearly leapt five feet in the air when her mobile began to vibrate in her pocket.
"Shit!" she wheezed, panic abating but adrenaline still running through her system. "I guess that means we--"
She didn't see the panel open up in the floor in front of them, or the three burly reptilian aliens climb out of it holding large energy weapons. She didn't see much of all, actually, except Ianto's chest as he tackled her through the closest open doorway, a sizzling sound reverberating in her ears as they rolled across the concrete. The air smelled singed and Gwen reached for her gun and rolled to her feet without even thinking about it.
"Christ!" she said. "They were underground!"
The hallway was illuminated by red flashes that were growing steadily closer. Gwen looked down at her handgun; they didn't stand a chance.
"Forget what I said about gaining weight, love," she continued, backing up slightly, gun still pointed unwaveringly at the door. "Your elbows are bloody bony." Maybe she could at least take out one of them when they came round. Maybe if she and Ianto stayed close to the ground, the creatures would aim high and give the two of them a fighting chance.
"Stay low," she whispered. When there was no reply, she stole a glance at Ianto.
She didn't have to worry about him staying low. He was sprawled on the ground, bloody trickling out of a wound on his shoulder, eyes glassy.
"Shit!" she shouted. A million scenarios started to whirl through her mind, medical training, survival rates, escape plans. She didn't know what to do, and it was only the thumping of her heart that kept her from bursting into tears and giving up. She crawled over to Ianto. She couldn't remember if you were supposed to put pressure on a wound from an energy weapon or leave it open. The blood was starting to pool more quickly, though, and she couldn't imagine that was good. She tore off the sleeve of her shirt and pressed it against the wound.
Ianto's eyes closed and didn't open again.
She was trained for this. There was nothing she could do for Ianto until they got out, which meant she needed to get them out first.
She crouched in front of his body and aimed her gun at the door, whispering a prayer to a god she hadn't believed in for years.
***
In the end, the preparations didn't matter at all, because that was the moment when the dashing captain deigned to make his appearance and the two of them were finally rescued.
***
Gwen was sitting next to Ianto when he finally opened his eyes.
It was nearly a day later, twenty-two hours of fretting and panic. Granted, most of the fretting and panic were from Jack, who disguised them as brooding and anger, but Gwen caught the way his fingers lingered over the bandage on Ianto's shoulder and saw him smooth the hair off of Ianto's forehead too many times to buy into stoic hero facade.
Well, that and the fact that Jack hadn't left Ianto's side for most of those twenty-two hours.
He was gone now, though, run down to the Chinese place on the corner to buy some soup at Gwen's insistence. He was going to be bloody incensed that he missed Ianto's return to consciousness.
"Gwen?" Ianto murmured. He closed his eyes again and then opened them, squinting at the light. Gwen obligingly turned off the bedside lamp and let the light from the open blinds illuminate the room.
"Hello, sweetheart," she said. She felt his forehead, brushing her thumb through the soft curls gathered on top of it. "You've been asleep for a bit."
"Few hours?" he asked.
"More like a day," she said. Ianto's eyes widened. "It's Wednesday."
"Shit," he said. "What was in that fucking gun?"
Gwen couldn't help her smile. "Tosh is probably figuring it out as we speak," she said. Or maybe not. It was late, after all, and they had all been up since the night before with little time for more than a cat nap on the couch.
"Jack?" Ianto asked. He was too tired to hide the longing and affection in his voice. That made Gwen smile too.
"Down on the corner getting you some soup," she said. "He hasn't eaten since last night, so I was hoping to convince him to have some too."
"When I'm not around, someone needs to remind him to eat," Ianto said. Gwen was amazed at how well he could chastise her while lying under a pile of blankets, fuzzy from twenty-two hours of unconsciousness.
"He wouldn't leave," Gwen said. "Well, we had you at the Hub during the day, so he still worked, he just... lurked over autopsy. We brought you back here a few hours ago and he started lurking in front of your bay window."
"No roof access," Ianto reminded her.
"Yeah, the window doesn't do him justice. No wind to blow the coat around."
They shared a smile and lapsed into silence. Gwen took Ianto's hand and held it between both her own, a thumb pressed to his wrist. His pulse beat heavy and steady and she let go of a long breath and she sat, feeling it. Her head was still a mess of emotions that she hadn't been able to put order to, even in the hours she was frozen next to Ianto's still body.
"What happened in the warehouse," she finally said. "Ianto, I've never been so scared."
"I know," Ianto said. "I never imagined scales could be such a putrid orange color."
He tried to smile, but it slipped off his face, replaced by that deep worry line in his forehead.
"That's not what I meant," she said softly.
He didn't have to say anything for her to understand that he knew that as well.
"Twice that night you stepped in front of a blast meant for me," she said. "I don't know--I can't--"
"Don't," Ianto said. His voice was level and calm, but there was just a moment of hesitance in it, a tiny sliver of fear. "Please, Gwen. Let me do this. Let me have this."
"Let you sacrifice yourself?" Gwen snapped. "I think not!"
"Please!" Ianto said. "Gwen--"
He stopped talking, eyes downcast. He couldn't look at her, which was all right. She couldn't look at him either.
"This," he finally said, "is all I have. Torchwood and Jack and...and you. It's all I'll ever have. If I have the chance to save you, I am going to do it again and again and again. I will always choose to save you." He paused. "I'm sorry."
Gwen wiped her eyes and stared at the ceiling. Bloody fucking Torchwood. Torchwood, ruining Ianto's life, leaving him in a place where it seemed like trading his safety for hers was a viable option. Bloody fucking Torchwood, that gave her this wonderful person in her life and would probably take him away again.
He was tired and wrung out. He had deep purple circles under his eyes and a bandage on his shoulder. He had bedhead and stubble and pillow creases on his cheek.
With a sigh, she leaned over and kissed his forehead soundly.
"I'm sorry, too," she said, her lips still brushing his skin.
"Don't be," Ianto said. "Please."
She stayed bent over him for a moment, her hands still wrapped around his, her nose in his hair, just breathing.
When she stood up again, she was smiling. She sat on the edge of the bed and leaned against the headboard, looking down at him.
"So," she said, with a smile that felt more real than she expected. "Tell me more about Jack and the kitchen cabinets."