Café Mocha: Essential Child Raising Agent Chapter Two
Title: Café Mocha: Essential Child Raising Agent
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Genre: Romance, Humour
Rating/Warning/Spoilers: Adult concepts, Possibilities of some strong language, Subtle hints for season three
Summary: One night something unexpected comes through the rift and shocks the team.
In which Ianto finds a part of him he never knew he had, and Jack pervs on babies.
Author's Notes: Kudos to my wonderful beta Aaya, whose help has been immeasurable.
Disclaimer: I own nothing: it all belongs to Russell T. Davies. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Previous parts: 1
“Well,” Jack said inspecting the baby and putting his gun away, “I wasn’t expecting that.”
Tosh sounded worried, “What is it?”
“A baby,” Ianto answered, frowning, “she looks like someone I should know.”
Jack noticed that he used a female pronoun, and raised an eyebrow delicately. “How can you tell it’s a girl?"
Ianto shrugged, pulling out a device which detected remnants of rift activity and waving it over the bundle of white. “I don’t know. She just looked like one.”
“Well, anyway, what you got?” Jack asked, as he picked up the baby and cradled her in his arms.
“She’s covered in residual rift activity,” Ianto confirmed, and looked up at Jack who had taken the blanket off the bottom half of the baby in bemusement. “What are you doing?”
Jack looked up from his examination of the baby, “Well, two things; I was determining the gender of the baby and-”
“And nothing,” Ianto interrupted with a mischievous grin, “the fact of the matter is, you were perving on a baby.”
At that moment, Gwen’s voice came across the com, clearly horrified, “Jack! That’s disgusting!”
Jack sighed at his team’s antics. “Let’s not focus on me!” he deflected quickly, “This baby is our number one priority, we need to find out if it’s human, alien or what.”
Ianto agreed, “We need to get her back to the Hub,” and took the baby out of Jack’s arms. She had woken up at all the shouting and was staring at him with wide eyes.
“She likes you,” Jack commented as the two of them walked slowly back down the footpath, carefully watching Ianto interact with the baby.
Not that the baby did anything apart from stare, and Jack suspected that she was too young to do much else.
“Err… Jack,” Ianto babbled, turning round to face his lover, “What do we do with her? I mean, if she was mine, I wouldn’t want my baby riding round in an enclosed space with Weevils. And what if we crash? I mean, she has no car seat and I know I’m good at a lot of things Jack, but even I wouldn’t be able to stop a baby flying through the wind-”
Jack stepped closer to Ianto and silenced him with a kiss. It worked because Ianto calmed down, and although he was very aware of the baby, only grasping at Jack with one hand, she started to cry.
Things were awkward as the two men scrabbled away from each other.
“I think she’s hungry,” Ianto said abruptly as he stared at her.
Jack was curious, “What makes you say that?”
In response, she was thrust unceremoniously in his face, “Well she doesn’t smell does she?”
Jack’s hands flew to his face in horror. “Eugh! Ianto!”
Ianto pulled the crying baby away from Jack’s face before she could get hit and cradled her in his arms again trying to soothe her, his eyes sparkling in amusement at Jack’s expressions.
“Give her to me; I’ve dealt with a few babies in my time.” Jack said at last, reaching over to take the crying baby off Ianto.
“Babes, maybe. Babies, no,” Ianto muttered, frowning as he tried to imagine Jack with a baby.
Jack ignored him and held the baby close to his chest, which inadvertently made her cry more.
Panicking, he thrust the baby back into Ianto’s arms and watched in fascination as she quietened down immediately.
“Maybe she likes me more because she saw me first?” Ianto suggested.
Jack shrugged nonchalantly as he ushered Ianto into the passenger seat, drew the seatbelt across Ianto and baby, then shut the door.
The two sat in a companionable silence while Jack drove the short distance back to the Hub.
“Earlier,” Ianto started, interrupting the silence and capturing Jack’s attention, “I was thinking about us.”
Jack looked surprised as he parked the SUV but his reply was cut off as the baby started crying again.
“Let’s get inside,” Ianto sighed, unbuckling himself and sliding out of the car, “we have milk in the fridge.”
Jack nodded and the two men hurried in through the back entrance.
“We’re here!” Jack called out flamboyantly, waving his arms around.
“Good,” replied Owen as he walked up to the pair with an expectant look on his face, “so where’s the food?”
Ianto interjected, “Here is a crying baby,” as he stepped from behind Jack and headed over to the kitchen, “who needs feeding.”
The team followed him over and he pulled milk out the fridge and poured it into a mug.
He finished his explanation, “We have milk, we have a hungry baby; how do we get the milk into the baby?”
“She’s gorgeous,” cooed Gwen, rushing over to Ianto and grabbing her out of his arms to rock her expertly.
“She is cute,” agreed Tosh, crooning softly over the baby in Gwen’s arms, “but is she human? I mean, she came through the rift.”
Jack nodded in agreement. “Well, I figured as soon as she was fed, we could work that out.”
“So how do we feed her?” Gwen asked, repeating Ianto’s earlier question. The baby started crying again, and she was passed around till she eventually reached Ianto again and quietened down.
“We don’t have any bottles around the place,” Ianto added thoughtfully, cradling the baby to his chest, “and there’s no place to buy one near here.” He paused, thinking the situation over. “And none of them would be open at this time of night.”
“No need to panic,” Owen yelled, setting the baby off again, as he ran up the stairs from the autopsy bay, “I’m bloody brilliant, that’s what I am.”
“So brilliant you made a baby cry,” Jack muttered, rolling his eyes as Owen ran into view, holding up a baby bottle and formula milk triumphantly.
Tosh asked the question that was on everyone’s mind, “Where’d you get that?”
Owen shrugged, “Doctors have to be ready for all kinds of circumstances.” He turned to Ianto and handed him both items. “You need to heat that milk up.”
Jack poured the formula milk into the bottle then put both in the microwave, while he wondered how Owen managed to put them in an expense report without him noticing.
“How do you know all these things about babies?” Gwen asked, looking at Owen suspiciously.
“It’s called medical school,” replied Owen sarcastically before he moved over to Ianto to show him how to feed the baby.
“Relax,” Ianto said as he fobbed Owen off, “I’ve fed babies before, I do have a niece and nephew.”
The baby was quiet, and everybody was appreciating the peace.
“What are we going to do with her?” Tosh asked quietly, “If she is an alien, that is. She’s not a threat, she’s just a baby, but we can’t put her in an orphanage or-”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jack said as he leaned on the counter next to Ianto, “It depends; she’s probably harmless and she could go all her life without having to know she’s an alien, if not, well, we’ll cross that bridge we come to it.”
He was leaning close enough to Ianto to feel the man repress a shudder, presumably at the thought of having to kill this innocent baby. He sighed; things got complicated when emotions got involved.
“She’s fallen asleep,” Ianto announced to the team, pleased. The announcement elicited the typical fuss from Tosh and Gwen, who moved to try and surround the baby again.
“Good,” nodded Owen as he took her from Ianto, deftly pulling her out of Gwen’s reach, “I was planning on that; it’ll make the tests easier.”
Gwen asked the question that Ianto wanted to, “Tests?”
“Yeah, I’m just going to take a sample of her DNA to analyse, then give her a quick medical examination to make sure she’s not injured,” Owen explained as he walked to the Autopsy Bay with the sleeping baby.
“I’ll come with you,” Gwen said hastily as she trailed after him babbling about babies.
Tosh excused herself to her workstation to leave Jack and Ianto alone together.
“You’re getting emotionally attached,” Jack said as he pulled Ianto into his arms.
Ianto sighed, “I don’t know why. I can’t understand it.” He paused and rested his forehead against Jack’s nose, “I never have before; I just feel really attached to her.”
“There is something familiar about her,” he agreed. “I’ll tell you a secret,” Jack bent his head so that his forehead lined up with Ianto’s, “I think I’m beginning to feel attached to her too. She is one of the cutest babies I’ve ever seen in my life.”
Ianto nodded and rested his head on Jack’s shoulder, which Jack took as an invitation to kiss him.
“Guys!” Owen yelled, forgetting that he had a patient who was alive, and would wake up at any and every undue noise. He picked her up, rocking her in his arms, “Argh, you miserable little baby.”
“You got the results?” Gwen asked, hurrying down to join him in the Autopsy Bay.
“Yup,” Owen nodded, busy with the crying baby, “Look, can you get Ianto here? He’s the only one she’s quiet for.”
“It’s all right,” Ianto interrupted as he squeezed past Jack and Tosh, who had crowded around in no time, “I’m here.”
Owen was relieved, shoving the crying bundle into Ianto’s arms rather unceremoniously. “Thank God. I’m remembering why I don’t like people under ten again.”
Everyone turned to him questioningly, but Owen ignored them and presented the results.
“Right, well.” He turned to the screen projected on the wall behind him, “She is human. She is a she and she is two weeks old.”
The team collectively breathed a sigh of relief.
“You’re sure she’s two weeks?” asked Ianto, “She has a full head of hair already.”
Owen shrugged, “Every baby’s different.”
“I knew she was human from the start,” Gwen said as she cooed at the baby, waggling her finger, “She is soooo cute. Yes she is. Yes she is.”
Ianto rolled his eyes and handed the baby over to her, much to Gwen’s delight. “So what do we do now?”
“Orphanage most likely,” Jack answered, looking grim.
“Well, isn’t there anything we can do?” Gwen asked, engrossed in the baby, “I mean, find some relatives.”
Tosh agreed, “She needs a good home.”
Jack sighed as his team ganged up on him when it came to the welfare of the child, “Fine, fine. Owen, send Tosh the DNA. Tosh, you compare it to all the samples we have in the databases.”
Tosh ran off whilst Owen was busy sending her the sample which left Jack, Ianto and Gwen with the baby.
“She needs a name,” Jack decided.
Ianto was bitter, “Why? We’re just going to get rid of her anyway.”
Gwen looked between the two men and her intuition flickered. She narrowed her eyes, “Right, you two, what’s going on here? I m-”
“You might want to have a look at this,” Tosh shouted across the Hub, “No, really, you’ll all want to have a look at this.”
Worried, the rest of the team hurried up the stairs to crowd round Tosh’s workstation.
“So, I started by running her DNA through all the government agencies and I got an instantaneous match.” She hit a button on her keyboard to bring up her findings, “It’s Ianto-he’s her father.”
Everyone was glad Ianto wasn’t holding the baby when his eyes rolled into the back of his head and Jack had to catch him when he fainted.
AN: My beta and I have been arguing about names. We've spent ages having heated discussions (well let's face it, sometimes it gets nasty) and we are no closer to finding a name for this baby then we were two days ago. Any suggestions are welcome, though there is a fair chance that my beta will just find one that she likes a lot and bully me into using it... Would a picture of what she'll look like when she's four/five/six help?
Chapter Three