FIC: ‘Thursday’ Is the Wrong Answer
Title: 'Thursday' Is the Wrong Answer
Characters: Jack/Ianto (with the team)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2454
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Prompt: from the torch_wood challenge: Penblwydd Hapus. enzo_the_rhino wanted to see: Torchwood One always had big celebrations on the anniversary of Torchwood being created. Torchwood Three likes to do things a little differently.
Spoilers: Cyberworman to be sure. A little bit of Everything Changes and They Keep Killing Suzie, but only a very little bit.
Notes: Fabulous beta done by ladykoori.
Summary: Ianto worries about how Torchwood Three will mark their first anniversary. What he fails to realize is that... no one had planned to do anything, until he opened his big mouth.
Jack watched from the railing as everyone went about their work below. It was just after ten and Ianto was coming around with the latest round of coffees. He went into his office so he could corner the other man in something like privacy.
He took the offered mug from the tray with a nod of thanks. He drummed his fingers against the warm ceramic for a minute, studying Ianto. “Ianto, spill,” he finally said.
Ianto looked over the paperwork on the desk. “I spilled, sir?” He didn’t see anything.
Jack’s glare clearly said: don’t play stupid with me. Out loud he simply said, “No. You. You‘ve been walking around all day like you’re waiting for the toilets to explode or something.”
“I’m fine, sir,” Ianto said, straightening his spine under Jack’s scrutiny.
“Bullshit.”
“Sir?” Ianto asked, affronted.
Jack stood up and came around the desk to look Ianto in the eye. “Bull. Shit.”
Ianto just raised an eyebrow, but Jack held his gaze and in the end, Jack’s intense stare took Ianto down. He sighed. “Do you know what today is?” he asked quietly.
Jack blinked rapidly, both from having a stare down with his attaché and from the odd question said attaché had just asked. “Uh… Thursday.”
Ianto actually laughed and the tension Jack had been seeing in him all day seemed to dissipate with that simple answer. “Nevermind, Jack. I’m fine.”
Jack watched him head for the door, realizing that whatever it was ‘Thursday’ wasn’t the right answer. “No, wait!” he called after Ianto. Now it was a riddle and one he was damn determined to solve. “Clearly ‘Thursday’ is the wrong answer.”
Ianto smiled. “No it's not.”
“No, I meant… what the hell are you on about, Ianto?” Jack wanted the answer to his riddle now.
Ianto leaned back against the doorjamb. “Today is the one year anniversary of Torchwood Three’s indoctrination.”
Jack curled his lower lip in thought. “Oh, I guess it is. Why do I get the impression you didn’t want anyone else to remember that?”
Ianto slumped against the wall. He actually needed to get the tourist shop open, and Jack was right - he’d really hoping the day would pass unnoticed. “Let’s just say that a quiet, understated acknowledgment of the day is not what I’m accustomed to.”
Jack waved him into a seat as he took his own again. Clearly this was going to be a teeth-pulling type of information extraction. “What did they do in London?” he asked quietly, knowing that Ianto still preferred not to talk about - not to think about - Torchwood One and Canary Wharf and all the rest.
Ianto dropped into the chair, the empty coffee tray leaning against the legs. “They didn’t do things small in London. The tower was all glass and stainless steel.”
“Bet that had to be a bitch to keep clean,” Jack snarked. The look that passed over Ianto’s face told Jack he’d just made a huge tactical error and that he was going to be at least an hour trying to just get back to middle ground.
“That wasn’t my concern in London,” Ianto said icily.
Jack studied him. He was getting the feeling that he’d long ago lost control of this conversation. “You know, you just kind of showed up here when we were getting up and running. I was glad to have someone who I didn’t need to convince that aliens are real and that they’re living in Cardiff. Not to mention a local who’d know how to keep the rest of the locals completely unaware of us. I didn’t ask a lot of questions when I hired you.”
Ianto smiled. He’d always wondered when Jack would get around to asking him what his qualifications for the Torchwood project were. “No, you didn’t. And since I had a… larger concern at the time, I was very grateful for that.”
“Lisa?” Jack asked softly.
Ianto just nodded.
“So, Mr Jones,” Jack asked, leaning forward on his elbows. “What exactly did you do for Torchwood One?”
Ianto smiled. “I was an administrator. I worked with a team of six other people designing the cataloging system for all of the alien information and artifacts that were showing up on Earth. Torchwood One had the motto of ‘If it’s alien, it’s ours’ and it was my job to be sure that once we had it we could put our hands on it whenever we needed to and to make sure nothing went missing.”
Jack screwed up his face, trying to assimilate that information. “And now you’re here picking up our pizza boxes and feeding the pet pterodactyl?”
“I told you I was an administrative assistant, that was what you interpreted the position to be. I needed to get Lisa somewhere I could take care of her, so I didn’t question what you wanted of me.” Ianto risked a glance up at Jack, wondering if everything was going to unravel now. He could see the wheels turning in Jack’s mind as he took that in. “And, truthfully, I didn’t mind. Cardiff is much more… hands on, more fieldwork. As much as I may be the one here with the longest Torchwood history, I’ve never been a field agent and by and large I’ve been okay with that.”
“We’ve been wasting your talents, haven’t we?” Jack asked, steepling his fingers.
“Not really, sir. Most of London’s artifacts have been sent here or Torchwood Two. I’ve been working with their archivist to recreate the program I was developing in London. The other part… someone has to do it. At first it allowed me to keep a low enough profile that when I went into the catacombs to care for Lisa, no one questioned it. And after… well, it was hardly a high price to pay for the danger I put you all in.”
Jack knew he had a lot of thinking to do. Somehow it didn’t seem right to keep expecting someone who’d been a … a what? Librarian? Computer programmer? Both? It didn’t seem fair to expect him to keep acting as the janitor. At the same time, he was pretty sure Ianto didn’t want to go into all this with the others as he’d have to if Jack told them that they had to start picking up their own take away wrappers and making their own coffee.
Sensing Jack’s thoughts Ianto said quietly, “I like my job the way it is. I’ve long since come to terms with something Lisa told me ages ago. I’m extremely neurotic about keeping things tidy and well… I like taking care of people. I know what I said when…” He took a deep breath before being able to complete his sentence. “I know what I said when the whole situation with Lisa started to spin out of control, but I really don’t mind doing the clearing up. I like my job here the way it is.”
Jack shrugged, if that’s the way Ianto wanted it. “Okay. But don’t be surprised if I start asking you to give Tosh a hand a little more often.”
Ianto smiled. “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”
Jack leaned back in his chair, “A year, huh? We’ve been doing this craziness for a year?”
Ianto nodded, glad the worst of the conversation seemed to have passed. “Some days it feels like ten. Others only a week.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah. So anyway, I finally have you talking about London a little, you were going to tell me about what the anniversaries were like there.”
Ianto rolled his eyes. At first Jack was afraid he’d gotten all he was going to out of him for the time being. Then Ianto smiled softly and shook his head at the memories. “I was there for three years. And every year they had this grand ball - black tie and evening gowns and champaign. A big to-do at a hotel where, it seemed, the entire purpose of the night was to find the highest-ranking Torchwood employee you could and get them back to your room. If some of the stories are to be believed, for three or four days straight.”
Jack grinned, “Sounds like my kind of party.”
Ianto laughed. “I guess it would have been. I suppose I liked the pageantry of it all. I certainly liked Lisa in an evening gown, but the rest of it… well… I won’t complain about spending a night with Lisa in a hotel, but having to pry off her many suitors first was never a good way to end a night.”
“Popular, was she?” Jack asked softly.
“She was beautiful. And fairly highly-ranked,” Ianto added with a bit of a twisted grin.
Jack shook his head. “You know, it’s starting to sound like you make a habit of sleeping with your bosses.”
Ianto laughed at that. “She wasn’t in my division. She was a research director in the medical/biological artifacts division.”
“So it’s just me you’re sleeping your way up the ladder with,” Jack replied cheekily.
Ianto cast a glance at the hatch in the office floor, “Or down it, as the case may be.”
Jack laughed long and hard at that, knowing for the first time since he’d cornered Ianto that morning, that everything really was okay.
*~*~*~*~*
Jack went out that afternoon, not telling anyone where he was going or when he’d be back. But no one was surprised by that any more.
At half-five Jack announced that everyone needed to stick around for a few minutes. “So wrap up what you’re doing in the next ten minutes or so - Owen, that means you, literally -“ he nodded at the rather large, grotesque gray alien splayed all over the autopsy table -“’cause no one wants to look at that if they don’t have to.”
Once all the computers had been set to run over-night or shut down, everyone drifted over to the boardroom and waited for Jack.
“Ianto, what’s this about?” Gwen asked.
Ianto shrugged. “He didn’t tell me,” he replied, which was truth enough, though he suspected that he was about to see how Torchwood Three would handle their anniversary.
Jack waited until everyone had gathered before coming in, dimming the lights has he passed. In his hand was a bottle of wine. Sticking out of the cork was a cheesey light-blue and white striped candle that was clearly made for a child’s birthday cake.
“It was brought to my attention that one year ago today, Torchwood Three began officially cleaning up the detritus of the Cardiff rift.” He pulled glasses off the sideboard in the back and pulled the cork out of the bottle. “Thought we might have just a little acknowledgement of that fact.”
He poured everyone a glass and then raised his own. “To Torchwood Three, the best people I’ve ever worked with.”
Everyone saluted and drank.
Before anyone else could say anything, Owen cleared his throat. “I’d like to make another toast.” Everyone looked at him curiously. “To Suzie. She gave everything she had to this program in less than a year.”
“To Suzie,” everyone chorused.
Tosh was the first who could see that this had the potential to turn into a wake for all that they’d lost in that year so she raised her glass, “And to Gwen, who showed up just in time to remind us that we’re doing this to help people, not just because alien toys are cool.”
Everyone laughed and toasted Gwen, who blushed in the faint light.
Jack filled the couple of glasses that had been drained already, finishing the bottle. “Don’t worry, there’s several more bottles where this came from.” He wasn’t sure if this was going to become a giant piss up or not, but he’d decided to be ready for anything. He raised his own glass. “To Ianto - I think we all forget that he’s been doing this longer than any of us. And we couldn’t do this without him.”
Ianto flushed to beat Gwen’s color under the praise. And while he couldn’t make eye-contact with Jack, it did give him the courage to say what he’d been thinking. “To everyone at Torchwood London. The twelve of us who survived will never forget.”
Everyone let him drink that toast alone.
When the moment had passed Owen spoke up again, “To Captain Jack Harkness. Craziest son of a bitch I have ever worked for. Either that or possibly the only one of us who’s still sane after a year of this. I can never tell.”
Everyone laughed and raised their glass to Jack.
By the end of the night they’d toasted everyone who really had merited it and had moved on to anything and everything including the ducks in Cardiff Bay.
Jack had made sure everyone’s glass had stayed full - especially Ianto’s as the man still looked like he needed an excuse to relax and unwind. Tosh had waved him off after the second glass, citing her need to get home reasonably early since she was taking Friday off to go see her father and couldn’t exactly show up hungover.
Jack checked six or seven times that she was okay to drive when the celebration had finally wound down and then pawned Gwen off on her. He called a cab for Owen and poured him into it ten minutes later.
Which left Ianto, tipsy, but not stupid sitting at the conference table running his finger around the edge of the crystal wine goblet, making it sing. Jack came in and flopped into the seat next to him, weaving his fingers between the ones of Ianto’s free hand. “How are you?”
Ianto looked up with a brilliant smile. Before he could say a word, Jack laughed. “That good, huh? Want to stay?” He pulled Ianto’s head over and rested it on his shoulder. Ianto seemed very pleased to not have to hold up the very heavy weight of his own skull any more and snuggled in, leaving the high pitch of the wine glass tone echoing through the room.
“So even here the objective is to get pissed and screw someone higher up the ladder?” Ianto asked and Jack was glad to hear the humor in his voice. It hadn’t occurred to him that maybe even in his efforts to mark the date in a very different way than Ianto had described from London, there were a few more parallels than were perhaps healthy for Ianto.
“Or down it,” Jack quipped, echoing Ianto’s earlier comment.
“Maybe carrying just a few traditions over from Torchwood One wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Ianto said spinning his chair enough to face Jack and kiss him long and hard.
Characters: Jack/Ianto (with the team)
Rating: PG-13
Words: 2454
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Prompt: from the torch_wood challenge: Penblwydd Hapus. enzo_the_rhino wanted to see: Torchwood One always had big celebrations on the anniversary of Torchwood being created. Torchwood Three likes to do things a little differently.
Spoilers: Cyberworman to be sure. A little bit of Everything Changes and They Keep Killing Suzie, but only a very little bit.
Notes: Fabulous beta done by ladykoori.
Summary: Ianto worries about how Torchwood Three will mark their first anniversary. What he fails to realize is that... no one had planned to do anything, until he opened his big mouth.
Jack watched from the railing as everyone went about their work below. It was just after ten and Ianto was coming around with the latest round of coffees. He went into his office so he could corner the other man in something like privacy.
He took the offered mug from the tray with a nod of thanks. He drummed his fingers against the warm ceramic for a minute, studying Ianto. “Ianto, spill,” he finally said.
Ianto looked over the paperwork on the desk. “I spilled, sir?” He didn’t see anything.
Jack’s glare clearly said: don’t play stupid with me. Out loud he simply said, “No. You. You‘ve been walking around all day like you’re waiting for the toilets to explode or something.”
“I’m fine, sir,” Ianto said, straightening his spine under Jack’s scrutiny.
“Bullshit.”
“Sir?” Ianto asked, affronted.
Jack stood up and came around the desk to look Ianto in the eye. “Bull. Shit.”
Ianto just raised an eyebrow, but Jack held his gaze and in the end, Jack’s intense stare took Ianto down. He sighed. “Do you know what today is?” he asked quietly.
Jack blinked rapidly, both from having a stare down with his attaché and from the odd question said attaché had just asked. “Uh… Thursday.”
Ianto actually laughed and the tension Jack had been seeing in him all day seemed to dissipate with that simple answer. “Nevermind, Jack. I’m fine.”
Jack watched him head for the door, realizing that whatever it was ‘Thursday’ wasn’t the right answer. “No, wait!” he called after Ianto. Now it was a riddle and one he was damn determined to solve. “Clearly ‘Thursday’ is the wrong answer.”
Ianto smiled. “No it's not.”
“No, I meant… what the hell are you on about, Ianto?” Jack wanted the answer to his riddle now.
Ianto leaned back against the doorjamb. “Today is the one year anniversary of Torchwood Three’s indoctrination.”
Jack curled his lower lip in thought. “Oh, I guess it is. Why do I get the impression you didn’t want anyone else to remember that?”
Ianto slumped against the wall. He actually needed to get the tourist shop open, and Jack was right - he’d really hoping the day would pass unnoticed. “Let’s just say that a quiet, understated acknowledgment of the day is not what I’m accustomed to.”
Jack waved him into a seat as he took his own again. Clearly this was going to be a teeth-pulling type of information extraction. “What did they do in London?” he asked quietly, knowing that Ianto still preferred not to talk about - not to think about - Torchwood One and Canary Wharf and all the rest.
Ianto dropped into the chair, the empty coffee tray leaning against the legs. “They didn’t do things small in London. The tower was all glass and stainless steel.”
“Bet that had to be a bitch to keep clean,” Jack snarked. The look that passed over Ianto’s face told Jack he’d just made a huge tactical error and that he was going to be at least an hour trying to just get back to middle ground.
“That wasn’t my concern in London,” Ianto said icily.
Jack studied him. He was getting the feeling that he’d long ago lost control of this conversation. “You know, you just kind of showed up here when we were getting up and running. I was glad to have someone who I didn’t need to convince that aliens are real and that they’re living in Cardiff. Not to mention a local who’d know how to keep the rest of the locals completely unaware of us. I didn’t ask a lot of questions when I hired you.”
Ianto smiled. He’d always wondered when Jack would get around to asking him what his qualifications for the Torchwood project were. “No, you didn’t. And since I had a… larger concern at the time, I was very grateful for that.”
“Lisa?” Jack asked softly.
Ianto just nodded.
“So, Mr Jones,” Jack asked, leaning forward on his elbows. “What exactly did you do for Torchwood One?”
Ianto smiled. “I was an administrator. I worked with a team of six other people designing the cataloging system for all of the alien information and artifacts that were showing up on Earth. Torchwood One had the motto of ‘If it’s alien, it’s ours’ and it was my job to be sure that once we had it we could put our hands on it whenever we needed to and to make sure nothing went missing.”
Jack screwed up his face, trying to assimilate that information. “And now you’re here picking up our pizza boxes and feeding the pet pterodactyl?”
“I told you I was an administrative assistant, that was what you interpreted the position to be. I needed to get Lisa somewhere I could take care of her, so I didn’t question what you wanted of me.” Ianto risked a glance up at Jack, wondering if everything was going to unravel now. He could see the wheels turning in Jack’s mind as he took that in. “And, truthfully, I didn’t mind. Cardiff is much more… hands on, more fieldwork. As much as I may be the one here with the longest Torchwood history, I’ve never been a field agent and by and large I’ve been okay with that.”
“We’ve been wasting your talents, haven’t we?” Jack asked, steepling his fingers.
“Not really, sir. Most of London’s artifacts have been sent here or Torchwood Two. I’ve been working with their archivist to recreate the program I was developing in London. The other part… someone has to do it. At first it allowed me to keep a low enough profile that when I went into the catacombs to care for Lisa, no one questioned it. And after… well, it was hardly a high price to pay for the danger I put you all in.”
Jack knew he had a lot of thinking to do. Somehow it didn’t seem right to keep expecting someone who’d been a … a what? Librarian? Computer programmer? Both? It didn’t seem fair to expect him to keep acting as the janitor. At the same time, he was pretty sure Ianto didn’t want to go into all this with the others as he’d have to if Jack told them that they had to start picking up their own take away wrappers and making their own coffee.
Sensing Jack’s thoughts Ianto said quietly, “I like my job the way it is. I’ve long since come to terms with something Lisa told me ages ago. I’m extremely neurotic about keeping things tidy and well… I like taking care of people. I know what I said when…” He took a deep breath before being able to complete his sentence. “I know what I said when the whole situation with Lisa started to spin out of control, but I really don’t mind doing the clearing up. I like my job here the way it is.”
Jack shrugged, if that’s the way Ianto wanted it. “Okay. But don’t be surprised if I start asking you to give Tosh a hand a little more often.”
Ianto smiled. “I wouldn’t mind that at all.”
Jack leaned back in his chair, “A year, huh? We’ve been doing this craziness for a year?”
Ianto nodded, glad the worst of the conversation seemed to have passed. “Some days it feels like ten. Others only a week.”
Jack nodded. “Yeah. So anyway, I finally have you talking about London a little, you were going to tell me about what the anniversaries were like there.”
Ianto rolled his eyes. At first Jack was afraid he’d gotten all he was going to out of him for the time being. Then Ianto smiled softly and shook his head at the memories. “I was there for three years. And every year they had this grand ball - black tie and evening gowns and champaign. A big to-do at a hotel where, it seemed, the entire purpose of the night was to find the highest-ranking Torchwood employee you could and get them back to your room. If some of the stories are to be believed, for three or four days straight.”
Jack grinned, “Sounds like my kind of party.”
Ianto laughed. “I guess it would have been. I suppose I liked the pageantry of it all. I certainly liked Lisa in an evening gown, but the rest of it… well… I won’t complain about spending a night with Lisa in a hotel, but having to pry off her many suitors first was never a good way to end a night.”
“Popular, was she?” Jack asked softly.
“She was beautiful. And fairly highly-ranked,” Ianto added with a bit of a twisted grin.
Jack shook his head. “You know, it’s starting to sound like you make a habit of sleeping with your bosses.”
Ianto laughed at that. “She wasn’t in my division. She was a research director in the medical/biological artifacts division.”
“So it’s just me you’re sleeping your way up the ladder with,” Jack replied cheekily.
Ianto cast a glance at the hatch in the office floor, “Or down it, as the case may be.”
Jack laughed long and hard at that, knowing for the first time since he’d cornered Ianto that morning, that everything really was okay.
*~*~*~*~*
Jack went out that afternoon, not telling anyone where he was going or when he’d be back. But no one was surprised by that any more.
At half-five Jack announced that everyone needed to stick around for a few minutes. “So wrap up what you’re doing in the next ten minutes or so - Owen, that means you, literally -“ he nodded at the rather large, grotesque gray alien splayed all over the autopsy table -“’cause no one wants to look at that if they don’t have to.”
Once all the computers had been set to run over-night or shut down, everyone drifted over to the boardroom and waited for Jack.
“Ianto, what’s this about?” Gwen asked.
Ianto shrugged. “He didn’t tell me,” he replied, which was truth enough, though he suspected that he was about to see how Torchwood Three would handle their anniversary.
Jack waited until everyone had gathered before coming in, dimming the lights has he passed. In his hand was a bottle of wine. Sticking out of the cork was a cheesey light-blue and white striped candle that was clearly made for a child’s birthday cake.
“It was brought to my attention that one year ago today, Torchwood Three began officially cleaning up the detritus of the Cardiff rift.” He pulled glasses off the sideboard in the back and pulled the cork out of the bottle. “Thought we might have just a little acknowledgement of that fact.”
He poured everyone a glass and then raised his own. “To Torchwood Three, the best people I’ve ever worked with.”
Everyone saluted and drank.
Before anyone else could say anything, Owen cleared his throat. “I’d like to make another toast.” Everyone looked at him curiously. “To Suzie. She gave everything she had to this program in less than a year.”
“To Suzie,” everyone chorused.
Tosh was the first who could see that this had the potential to turn into a wake for all that they’d lost in that year so she raised her glass, “And to Gwen, who showed up just in time to remind us that we’re doing this to help people, not just because alien toys are cool.”
Everyone laughed and toasted Gwen, who blushed in the faint light.
Jack filled the couple of glasses that had been drained already, finishing the bottle. “Don’t worry, there’s several more bottles where this came from.” He wasn’t sure if this was going to become a giant piss up or not, but he’d decided to be ready for anything. He raised his own glass. “To Ianto - I think we all forget that he’s been doing this longer than any of us. And we couldn’t do this without him.”
Ianto flushed to beat Gwen’s color under the praise. And while he couldn’t make eye-contact with Jack, it did give him the courage to say what he’d been thinking. “To everyone at Torchwood London. The twelve of us who survived will never forget.”
Everyone let him drink that toast alone.
When the moment had passed Owen spoke up again, “To Captain Jack Harkness. Craziest son of a bitch I have ever worked for. Either that or possibly the only one of us who’s still sane after a year of this. I can never tell.”
Everyone laughed and raised their glass to Jack.
By the end of the night they’d toasted everyone who really had merited it and had moved on to anything and everything including the ducks in Cardiff Bay.
Jack had made sure everyone’s glass had stayed full - especially Ianto’s as the man still looked like he needed an excuse to relax and unwind. Tosh had waved him off after the second glass, citing her need to get home reasonably early since she was taking Friday off to go see her father and couldn’t exactly show up hungover.
Jack checked six or seven times that she was okay to drive when the celebration had finally wound down and then pawned Gwen off on her. He called a cab for Owen and poured him into it ten minutes later.
Which left Ianto, tipsy, but not stupid sitting at the conference table running his finger around the edge of the crystal wine goblet, making it sing. Jack came in and flopped into the seat next to him, weaving his fingers between the ones of Ianto’s free hand. “How are you?”
Ianto looked up with a brilliant smile. Before he could say a word, Jack laughed. “That good, huh? Want to stay?” He pulled Ianto’s head over and rested it on his shoulder. Ianto seemed very pleased to not have to hold up the very heavy weight of his own skull any more and snuggled in, leaving the high pitch of the wine glass tone echoing through the room.
“So even here the objective is to get pissed and screw someone higher up the ladder?” Ianto asked and Jack was glad to hear the humor in his voice. It hadn’t occurred to him that maybe even in his efforts to mark the date in a very different way than Ianto had described from London, there were a few more parallels than were perhaps healthy for Ianto.
“Or down it,” Jack quipped, echoing Ianto’s earlier comment.
“Maybe carrying just a few traditions over from Torchwood One wouldn’t be such a bad thing,” Ianto said spinning his chair enough to face Jack and kiss him long and hard.