FIC: Rarely Pure and Never Simple, Part 1/3
Title: Rarely Pure and Never Simple, Part 1/3
Pairing: Jack/Ianto by and large, but there are literally half a dozen others touched on.
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 8100 (all parts together)
Summary: Torchwood Three, alcohol, camping and the brilliant idea to play Truth or Dare. This'll end well.
Written for: rounds_of_kink, prompt by deannawol - A bottle of alien Absinthe kink: truth or dare, no pairing specified.
Author's Notes: This is very, very, late. My apologies to ROK and to Deannawol, hopefully the fact that it's 8000+ words and full of sex will make up for that. :) Beta'd by a crew of thousands. Or at least 3. kyrdwyn, invisible_lift and dr_is_in have all said this is safe to read. Title is from the Oscar Wilde quote "The Truth is rarely pure and never simple." And we all know Jack had to have done Oscar at some point. :)
Owen carried on loudly and crassly about his opinion on Jack dragging them out into the countryside once more. Gwen had tried to get into the spirit of the trip. No missing people, no case to investigate, just an honest-to-god camping trip. Ianto and Tosh just worked silently setting up tents and storing provisions. Neither was willing to give in to their fears and complain, but they weren’t quite ready to embrace the wilderness yet either.
“For the last time, Owen, we’re in a public camping park. Our cell phones work. There are flush toilets and hot showers in a little concrete building about five minutes that way,” Jack hiked a thumb up the gravel road they’d traveled in on. “But we need to get out here again. The rift is getting larger and more active. We don’t need to all be freaking out when we actually have to come back out here.”
Tosh pushed her hair out of her face. “Well, in that case, maybe Owen’s doing it right. Get all the pissing and moaning out now, so he won’t be able to when we’re stuck out further from civilization the next time.”
“Grin and bear it, love,” Gwen put in. “We’re here. No point in grousing now.”
“Besides,” Jack said from where he was wrestling something out of his overnight bag in the back of the SUV, “I’ve brought something to make the trip a little less painful.” He brandished a bright blue bottle that he estimated held about a liter and a half.
Owen dropped the mallet he’d been using. “You said no one could drink that! You said it wasn’t fit for human consumption!”
“If I hadn’t it would have been gone before I could get you out here.”
Ianto tugged the last rope taut on his tent before locking it in place. “This is going to end well. A forest, a fire, Owen and alcohol.” He headed to the SUV and grabbed his sleeping bag and Jack’s and tossed them into the now erected tent.
Jack raised an eyebrow and bit his lip to keep from grinning too obviously, but it wasn’t lost on Ianto. “What?” Ianto asked brusquely.
“I didn’t tell you to put my stuff in your tent.”
Ianto flushed under the collar of his Henley. “I just assumed… I mean, I figured… you weren’t bothering to set up another tent…”
Jack grabbed the belt loop of Ianto’s jeans and pulled him in. “That wasn’t a complaint.”
Ianto sighed against Jack’s cheek. “You’re taking the damn thing down and getting it back in that sack.”
Jack smiled and nodded. “Fair enough. Here,” he tossed Ianto his bag. “Put this in there too, yeah?”
Ianto stowed both their bags and came out to hear Owen griping that they better ‘not wake the wildlife’ with whatever they got up to in there.
“Don’t mind him,” Jack said playfully. “He’ll feel better after a few glasses of this.” He held the bottle up again.
“What’s in there?” Gwen asked, brushing the dirt off her fingers.
“Booze!” Owen exclaimed, finally finding something good in the whole miserable adventure.
“Not just booze. It’s the Sheftaxalian version of absinthe. Sneaks up on you and thumps you on the head like a mugger. But the best part? The Sheftaxalian homeworld has this tree and if you age alcohol in barrels made of this tree, the alcohol works, but you don’t feel hung over in the morning. It’s fabulous stuff.”
“Gimme,” Owen said making a grab for the bottle.
Jack pulled it out of reach. “After dinner.”
Owen actually growled as he snagged his duffle and his sleeping bag and threw them into his tent.
“Gwen, we’re done,” Tosh shouted from behind her tent. “Grab our gear, will you?”
Gwen grabbed both overnight bags and a camping mat from the supplies in the SUV.
Jack leaned against the side of the car and watched as everyone finished setting up their gear. They had plans to be out there for an extended weekend as long as the portable rift monitor didn’t give them a reason to head back to the Hub. He was keeping an eye on them all, but Ianto and Tosh especially and so far they seemed to accept that the reason for being out there was to see if they’d ultimately succumb to the panic they felt creeping around them as they’d left Cardiff in the rearview mirror.
Jack caught Ianto’s hand as the other man emerged from their tent to grab another load of gear from the SUV. “How’re you doing?” Jack asked casually.
“So far, so good,” Ianto answered with a shrug. “Ask me again when it’s dark out.” He grabbed two mats and another sleeping bag.
Jack pulled him close again. “We’ll just have to see that you’re distracted tonight.” He poked at the sleeping bag with one finger. “Let’s start with zipping the sleeping bags together.” He raised an eyebrow in question, waiting to see if Ianto balked.
Ianto just grinned. “If I didn’t think sex in the tent was a brilliant idea to begin with, I’d do it just to annoy Owen at this point.”
Jack pulled Ianto in for a long, wet kiss. “Don’t poke the bear,” he warned as they pulled apart.
Ianto grabbed the mats and a camp light and headed back to the tent, tossing a casual look over his shoulder. “It wasn’t the bear I was thinking of doing that to.”
Jack rolled his eyes and sagged against the SUV. It was going to be an interesting night.
~*~*~*~*~
After the tents had been put up, they all began setting up the things they’d need for dinner. Jack let Owen play pyromaniac and didn’t even object once when Owen insisted on using half a bottle of lighter fluid to start the campfire in the well-defined firescar. True to form, Ianto took the rake from the campground’s tool shed and cleared out the space between the fire pit and the ring of large logs that had been set up around it. He even went so far as to take a rag and dust off the tops of the log-seats before sitting on one while Jack and Tosh set up the camp table and Gwen rifled through the cooler looking for the hot dogs.
The sun was setting by the time they’d managed to get a fire burning that didn’t depend on gallons of combustible fluids and had actually cooked more hotdogs than they’d dropped into the flames. Jack, of course, had lived through wars and was used to roughing it and had cooked and eaten two before Gwen had managed one and was quickly put on cooking duty, heating up Owen’s, Gwen’s second and Ianto’s while Tosh managed her own. Ianto had opened a bag of crisps and they’d made their way around the circle and once everyone had a plate of food, they’d all relaxed into the atmosphere of friends, clear skies and firelight. Jack sat next to Ianto, shoulder to shoulder, noticing that as the sun set, Ianto tensed just perceptibly and Jack knew that the Beacons were sitting on the edge of his mind, keeping him from relaxing entirely. Jack balanced his plate on his knee and wrapped his free arm around Ianto’s waist. He smiled when Ianto looked up first in surprise and then in gratitude. No words were spoken, but Jack could feel Ianto relax and was grateful.
Similarly Gwen and Owen had taken up Tosh’s flanks, not sitting quite so close as Jack and Ianto, but close enough that Tosh kept glancing up through her fringe and giving them small smiles.
Once the plates were cleared and rinsed in a bucket full of water and sanitizer, Jack pulled out a handful of tin cups and fished the blue bottle from where he’d stashed it in the SUV. It was full dark now, but the blazing fire made it easy to see. Jack poured everyone half a cup and passed them out before sitting back on his log.
Ianto puttered around the camp table, finishing with the clearing up for a few more minutes. Jack wondered if Ianto thought he was expected to clean up after them even out here, or if it was just a part of Ianto’s fastidious nature. “Ianto, leave it. Anything that would attract critters is sealed up in the coolers and locked in the SUV. We can sort the dishes and things later. Come have a drink.” Jack held out the cup he still held for Ianto.
Ianto finished stowing the camping cookery and came back to the fire. Jack grabbed his arm and pulled him down to sit on the ground between his knees and handed him his cup. Ianto sat where Jack maneuvered him to, but before he could even turn to ask why Jack had done so, Jack had set his cup down next to him and started a strong massage of Ianto’s shoulders through his jacket and shirt.
“Oh… yes… thank you,” he sighed, his eyes drifting shut, his head rolling forward as Jack squeezed and pushed and rubbed.
Knowing it was the eight-hundred pound gorilla around the campfire, Jack finally brought it up. “So… are we all doing better than the last time we tried to come out and camp?”
“I’m fine,” Owen put in quickly.
“Oddly, I’m better now that the sun’s gone down. We weren’t out there at night, everything went to hell in broad daylight,” Ianto muttered to his lap.
Tosh was sipping cautiously from her cup. “Yeah, I was just thinking that too. If anything, this reminds me of when I was in the Girl Guides and we came camping every summer for a week.”
Owen snorted. “You were a Girl Guide?”
“I’ll have you know the Girl Guides are a very respectable organization. They teach girls not to take guff from the likes of men like you,” Gwen chipped in.
“And how to camp, apparently,” Owen mocked. “Very useful skill these days.”
“I’m not the one who had to have Jack make my hotdogs tonight,” Tosh said glaring at Owen.
But it was Gwen who replied, “Yes, well, my troop didn’t camp. We just had slumber parties and badge classes and things.”
Tosh laughed. “Seriously? No camping? That’s a shame.”
Gwen laughed. “I didn’t miss it.”
“It was a week away from home mostly. Playing in the woods during the day and Truth or Dare and I Never at night. It was fun.” Tosh shrugged and went back to her cup.
“Truth or Dare…” Owen echoed. “I can just imagine the lot of us playing Truth or Dare tonight.”
Gwen choked on her drink and Ianto’s head went even further down as Jack continued to work on his neck.
“Could be fun,” Jack said with a sly smile.
“Could be mortifying,” Owen opined.
“Well, now we all want to know what you’re hiding, Owen,” Ianto put in without raising his eyes.
Gwen took a healthy swallow of her absinthe. “I’m in.”
“I want to know what Owen’s hiding,” Ianto said, earning him a sharp poke in the ribs from Jack - a reminder not to poke the bear. “So I’m in,” he said simply.
“You’ll get yours, teaboy,” Owen muttered with a dark look in his eyes, but a grin on his face. “Fine. I’ll play.”
Jack could feel Ianto chuckle under his hands and a lightbulb went on for Jack. This was a friendly rivalry. While he’d been gone, Ianto and Owen had not only learned to respect each other, but had developed something of a brotherly affection between them. Little pokes and all.
“Okay, since it was your idea,” Jack said sipping his drink. “You go first, Tosh.”
Tosh’s eyes got huge, evidence that the drink had already started to work it’s way between her synapses. “Oh… I um…” She took another sip before clearing her throat. “Ianto, truth or dare?”
Part 2
Part 3
Pairing: Jack/Ianto by and large, but there are literally half a dozen others touched on.
Rating: NC-17
Word Count: 8100 (all parts together)
Summary: Torchwood Three, alcohol, camping and the brilliant idea to play Truth or Dare. This'll end well.
Written for: rounds_of_kink, prompt by deannawol - A bottle of alien Absinthe kink: truth or dare, no pairing specified.
Author's Notes: This is very, very, late. My apologies to ROK and to Deannawol, hopefully the fact that it's 8000+ words and full of sex will make up for that. :) Beta'd by a crew of thousands. Or at least 3. kyrdwyn, invisible_lift and dr_is_in have all said this is safe to read. Title is from the Oscar Wilde quote "The Truth is rarely pure and never simple." And we all know Jack had to have done Oscar at some point. :)
Owen carried on loudly and crassly about his opinion on Jack dragging them out into the countryside once more. Gwen had tried to get into the spirit of the trip. No missing people, no case to investigate, just an honest-to-god camping trip. Ianto and Tosh just worked silently setting up tents and storing provisions. Neither was willing to give in to their fears and complain, but they weren’t quite ready to embrace the wilderness yet either.
“For the last time, Owen, we’re in a public camping park. Our cell phones work. There are flush toilets and hot showers in a little concrete building about five minutes that way,” Jack hiked a thumb up the gravel road they’d traveled in on. “But we need to get out here again. The rift is getting larger and more active. We don’t need to all be freaking out when we actually have to come back out here.”
Tosh pushed her hair out of her face. “Well, in that case, maybe Owen’s doing it right. Get all the pissing and moaning out now, so he won’t be able to when we’re stuck out further from civilization the next time.”
“Grin and bear it, love,” Gwen put in. “We’re here. No point in grousing now.”
“Besides,” Jack said from where he was wrestling something out of his overnight bag in the back of the SUV, “I’ve brought something to make the trip a little less painful.” He brandished a bright blue bottle that he estimated held about a liter and a half.
Owen dropped the mallet he’d been using. “You said no one could drink that! You said it wasn’t fit for human consumption!”
“If I hadn’t it would have been gone before I could get you out here.”
Ianto tugged the last rope taut on his tent before locking it in place. “This is going to end well. A forest, a fire, Owen and alcohol.” He headed to the SUV and grabbed his sleeping bag and Jack’s and tossed them into the now erected tent.
Jack raised an eyebrow and bit his lip to keep from grinning too obviously, but it wasn’t lost on Ianto. “What?” Ianto asked brusquely.
“I didn’t tell you to put my stuff in your tent.”
Ianto flushed under the collar of his Henley. “I just assumed… I mean, I figured… you weren’t bothering to set up another tent…”
Jack grabbed the belt loop of Ianto’s jeans and pulled him in. “That wasn’t a complaint.”
Ianto sighed against Jack’s cheek. “You’re taking the damn thing down and getting it back in that sack.”
Jack smiled and nodded. “Fair enough. Here,” he tossed Ianto his bag. “Put this in there too, yeah?”
Ianto stowed both their bags and came out to hear Owen griping that they better ‘not wake the wildlife’ with whatever they got up to in there.
“Don’t mind him,” Jack said playfully. “He’ll feel better after a few glasses of this.” He held the bottle up again.
“What’s in there?” Gwen asked, brushing the dirt off her fingers.
“Booze!” Owen exclaimed, finally finding something good in the whole miserable adventure.
“Not just booze. It’s the Sheftaxalian version of absinthe. Sneaks up on you and thumps you on the head like a mugger. But the best part? The Sheftaxalian homeworld has this tree and if you age alcohol in barrels made of this tree, the alcohol works, but you don’t feel hung over in the morning. It’s fabulous stuff.”
“Gimme,” Owen said making a grab for the bottle.
Jack pulled it out of reach. “After dinner.”
Owen actually growled as he snagged his duffle and his sleeping bag and threw them into his tent.
“Gwen, we’re done,” Tosh shouted from behind her tent. “Grab our gear, will you?”
Gwen grabbed both overnight bags and a camping mat from the supplies in the SUV.
Jack leaned against the side of the car and watched as everyone finished setting up their gear. They had plans to be out there for an extended weekend as long as the portable rift monitor didn’t give them a reason to head back to the Hub. He was keeping an eye on them all, but Ianto and Tosh especially and so far they seemed to accept that the reason for being out there was to see if they’d ultimately succumb to the panic they felt creeping around them as they’d left Cardiff in the rearview mirror.
Jack caught Ianto’s hand as the other man emerged from their tent to grab another load of gear from the SUV. “How’re you doing?” Jack asked casually.
“So far, so good,” Ianto answered with a shrug. “Ask me again when it’s dark out.” He grabbed two mats and another sleeping bag.
Jack pulled him close again. “We’ll just have to see that you’re distracted tonight.” He poked at the sleeping bag with one finger. “Let’s start with zipping the sleeping bags together.” He raised an eyebrow in question, waiting to see if Ianto balked.
Ianto just grinned. “If I didn’t think sex in the tent was a brilliant idea to begin with, I’d do it just to annoy Owen at this point.”
Jack pulled Ianto in for a long, wet kiss. “Don’t poke the bear,” he warned as they pulled apart.
Ianto grabbed the mats and a camp light and headed back to the tent, tossing a casual look over his shoulder. “It wasn’t the bear I was thinking of doing that to.”
Jack rolled his eyes and sagged against the SUV. It was going to be an interesting night.
~*~*~*~*~
After the tents had been put up, they all began setting up the things they’d need for dinner. Jack let Owen play pyromaniac and didn’t even object once when Owen insisted on using half a bottle of lighter fluid to start the campfire in the well-defined firescar. True to form, Ianto took the rake from the campground’s tool shed and cleared out the space between the fire pit and the ring of large logs that had been set up around it. He even went so far as to take a rag and dust off the tops of the log-seats before sitting on one while Jack and Tosh set up the camp table and Gwen rifled through the cooler looking for the hot dogs.
The sun was setting by the time they’d managed to get a fire burning that didn’t depend on gallons of combustible fluids and had actually cooked more hotdogs than they’d dropped into the flames. Jack, of course, had lived through wars and was used to roughing it and had cooked and eaten two before Gwen had managed one and was quickly put on cooking duty, heating up Owen’s, Gwen’s second and Ianto’s while Tosh managed her own. Ianto had opened a bag of crisps and they’d made their way around the circle and once everyone had a plate of food, they’d all relaxed into the atmosphere of friends, clear skies and firelight. Jack sat next to Ianto, shoulder to shoulder, noticing that as the sun set, Ianto tensed just perceptibly and Jack knew that the Beacons were sitting on the edge of his mind, keeping him from relaxing entirely. Jack balanced his plate on his knee and wrapped his free arm around Ianto’s waist. He smiled when Ianto looked up first in surprise and then in gratitude. No words were spoken, but Jack could feel Ianto relax and was grateful.
Similarly Gwen and Owen had taken up Tosh’s flanks, not sitting quite so close as Jack and Ianto, but close enough that Tosh kept glancing up through her fringe and giving them small smiles.
Once the plates were cleared and rinsed in a bucket full of water and sanitizer, Jack pulled out a handful of tin cups and fished the blue bottle from where he’d stashed it in the SUV. It was full dark now, but the blazing fire made it easy to see. Jack poured everyone half a cup and passed them out before sitting back on his log.
Ianto puttered around the camp table, finishing with the clearing up for a few more minutes. Jack wondered if Ianto thought he was expected to clean up after them even out here, or if it was just a part of Ianto’s fastidious nature. “Ianto, leave it. Anything that would attract critters is sealed up in the coolers and locked in the SUV. We can sort the dishes and things later. Come have a drink.” Jack held out the cup he still held for Ianto.
Ianto finished stowing the camping cookery and came back to the fire. Jack grabbed his arm and pulled him down to sit on the ground between his knees and handed him his cup. Ianto sat where Jack maneuvered him to, but before he could even turn to ask why Jack had done so, Jack had set his cup down next to him and started a strong massage of Ianto’s shoulders through his jacket and shirt.
“Oh… yes… thank you,” he sighed, his eyes drifting shut, his head rolling forward as Jack squeezed and pushed and rubbed.
Knowing it was the eight-hundred pound gorilla around the campfire, Jack finally brought it up. “So… are we all doing better than the last time we tried to come out and camp?”
“I’m fine,” Owen put in quickly.
“Oddly, I’m better now that the sun’s gone down. We weren’t out there at night, everything went to hell in broad daylight,” Ianto muttered to his lap.
Tosh was sipping cautiously from her cup. “Yeah, I was just thinking that too. If anything, this reminds me of when I was in the Girl Guides and we came camping every summer for a week.”
Owen snorted. “You were a Girl Guide?”
“I’ll have you know the Girl Guides are a very respectable organization. They teach girls not to take guff from the likes of men like you,” Gwen chipped in.
“And how to camp, apparently,” Owen mocked. “Very useful skill these days.”
“I’m not the one who had to have Jack make my hotdogs tonight,” Tosh said glaring at Owen.
But it was Gwen who replied, “Yes, well, my troop didn’t camp. We just had slumber parties and badge classes and things.”
Tosh laughed. “Seriously? No camping? That’s a shame.”
Gwen laughed. “I didn’t miss it.”
“It was a week away from home mostly. Playing in the woods during the day and Truth or Dare and I Never at night. It was fun.” Tosh shrugged and went back to her cup.
“Truth or Dare…” Owen echoed. “I can just imagine the lot of us playing Truth or Dare tonight.”
Gwen choked on her drink and Ianto’s head went even further down as Jack continued to work on his neck.
“Could be fun,” Jack said with a sly smile.
“Could be mortifying,” Owen opined.
“Well, now we all want to know what you’re hiding, Owen,” Ianto put in without raising his eyes.
Gwen took a healthy swallow of her absinthe. “I’m in.”
“I want to know what Owen’s hiding,” Ianto said, earning him a sharp poke in the ribs from Jack - a reminder not to poke the bear. “So I’m in,” he said simply.
“You’ll get yours, teaboy,” Owen muttered with a dark look in his eyes, but a grin on his face. “Fine. I’ll play.”
Jack could feel Ianto chuckle under his hands and a lightbulb went on for Jack. This was a friendly rivalry. While he’d been gone, Ianto and Owen had not only learned to respect each other, but had developed something of a brotherly affection between them. Little pokes and all.
“Okay, since it was your idea,” Jack said sipping his drink. “You go first, Tosh.”
Tosh’s eyes got huge, evidence that the drink had already started to work it’s way between her synapses. “Oh… I um…” She took another sip before clearing her throat. “Ianto, truth or dare?”
Part 2
Part 3