Torchwood Smut: "Do Him Ease" Part 2 of 2
Title: "Do Him Ease" 2 of 2
Author: Spiderine
Rating: NC-17; Adults Only
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Warnings: D/s, light bondage, rough sex (woohoo!)
Spoilers: Nothing beyond Series 1, but at this point I'd better call it AU.
Disclaimer: Torchwood and its characters are, unfortunately, not owned by me. Neither is Have His Carcase, which was written by Dorothy L. Sayers and published by Harper Collins.
Series: " A Close and Holy Darkness". Previous stories can be accessed through the link. You need to read those to understand what's going on here, and to decide whether you like this sort of thing. If you don't like those stories, you won't like this.
Author’s Notes: YES, I FINALLY FINISHED IT! \O/ This is part 2 of 2. The beginning of this story is here; go read that first. Please note that I wrote the first story in the series, "Proper For the Workplace," before Ianto's canon back story was revealed; I put in a bit of back story for him in "Proper" which has since been jossed (or Daviesed, if you want to be specific). This story contains references to Ianto's canon back story. At some point, I hope to go back and rework "Proper" to reflect canon, but until then (*handwavy*) PLEASE CONSIDER YOURSELF RETCONNED. Thank you kindly.
This is entirely unbeta'd because I just wanted to get it the fuck posted already. Thank you for reading, and for your comments.
*******
"Oh, that's just disgusting."
It was the next day. Gwen was at her desk putting her notes on the Weevil infestation into her computer, when she looked up to see Jack and Owen carrying the plastic-wrapped corpse of a Weevil through the Hub into Owen's lab, leaving a trail of blood and body fluids in their wake.
Over at the document shredder, Ianto sighed. He was going to have to mop up again. He fed three pages of memoranda from the Home Secretary into the shredder and smiled. The sound of the machine gobbling up bureaucratic puffery and complaints was always gratifying.
"It's just a cadaver," Owen said, heaving the body onto his autopsy table.
"It's a person," Gwen protested.
"It's a Weevil," Jack corrected her. "We don't know if they're sentient. And it's dead now." He clasped his hands in facetious prayer and intoned, "Rest in peace, Otto, valiant loser of the battle for the favours of fair Janet."
Grumbling, "I am not a Weevil obstetrician," Owen unwrapped the plastic. He picked up a laser scalpel and flicked the switch with a nasty grin. "But I have been wanting to get at the central nervous system of these things for a while."
Tosh stared at him. "You're a ghoul."
Owen shrugged and started his Y-incision. "You do your job, I'll do mine."
Tosh shuddered, but a moment after looking back at her computer screen she was all smiles. "Jack, you want to see this. It was sunspots, all right. But they're gone now. It's very weird."
Jack finished washing and drying his hands and came over to her work station. "Show me." He peered at the screen and said, "Nice. Where'd you get it?"
"I hijacked the Hubble telescope!" she said proudly. "I have definite fluxon anomalies, and a surge in tachyon variation, and look!" She pointed. "Blue shift!"
Ianto smiled and fed the latest whinging from the Royal Astronomical Society into the shredder. Tosh was like a girl with a new toy, she was. But Jack didn't seem so pleased. He frowned at the screen and said, "What do you mean, blue shift?"
"Right here! Watch carefully or you'll miss it. It's just a blink - poof, there it goes!" She grinned. "And all the phenomena go with it. It's fantastic!"
Jack's face clouded over like a thunderstorm about to break. "Fantastic," he muttered. "I'll say. Tosh, I want that phenomenon monitored. Anything you can get on that kind of blue shift -- or red shift, for that matter. If that ever happens again, I want to know immediately. I want you breathing down its neck, understand me?"
"Sure." Tosh frowned in concern. "Is there something wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong. Everything's peachy," Jack spat. "Just fucking fantastic." He turned, stalked off into his office, and slammed the door behind him.
All activity in the Hub stopped dead as everyone stared at each other. Then, slowly, one by one, they all turned their heads to look at Ianto, who stood with a sheaf of documents in hand, as gobsmacked as anybody else. "Don't look at me," he said. "I haven't the foggiest." Tosh and Gwen quickly turned back to their work, and after shooting Ianto a smug *yeah, right* look, Owen did as well.
Ianto carefully placed the sheaf of documents on the desk by the shredder. Blue shift, he thought. Something that set off alarms in Jack that were impossible to hide. It felt almost familiar, like something on the tip of his mind's tongue, as it were. But nothing came to the fore, and Ianto knew that picking at it wouldn't be any help in figuring it out. Best to let it sit on the back burner until it bubbled to the surface.
Honest work, he reminded himself, and physical activity - the best cure for just about anything; too bad there would be no sudden acquisition of wealth to go with it. He smirked and dragged out the mop, and addressed himself to the Weevil guts on the floor.
Jack didn't come out of his office all day. By about six in the evening, the crew had given up all pretense of work and were just hovering around, daring each other with their eyes to go check on him. Tosh had compiled a report on all blue and red shift phenomena in the vicinity of Earth for the past ten years, with an analysis of concurrent tachyon fluctuation for the past five thrown in for good measure. She sat by her desk, worrying at the print-out with her fingers until the edges were curled.
Gently, Ianto took it from her. "I'll do it," he said. "Go home." He turned to Owen and Gwen and told them to go home as well.
"So you're the boss now, telling us to come and go?" Owen sneered.
Ianto looked at him blandly. "I'm the one who's going to go in there and see what's what. Unless you'd like to."
Funny how quickly the Hub cleared out after that, Ianto thought. Taking a deep breath, he picked up the report and a mug of fresh coffee, knocked on Jack's office door, and walked in without waiting for an answer.
Jack didn't look up or speak when Ianto entered. He was sitting at his desk with his feet up, sipping whisky from a cut-glass decanter, the abandoned glass on the desk beside him. Also on the desk, and the object of Jack's intense gaze, was a Pyrex containment cylinder filled with liquid in which bobbed a human hand cut off just past the wrist.
The Mysterious Hand In A Jar, Owen had called it. Noone but Jack knew where it had come from or what it signified, but whatever it was, it was so precious to Jack that he'd let a life-force vampire escape the Hub and go on a killing spree rather than sacrifice it.
And, Ianto thought, it evidently had something to do with the Mysterious Blue Shift. He cleared his throat. "Tosh has prepared a preliminary report on the history of the blue shift, sir." He placed the print-out on the desk. "It only goes back ten years, but that's as long as any data have been kept that she could find. Torchwood's records don't go back very far, since so much was lost at Canary Wharf." At the words "Canary Wharf", Jack's head snapped around and his gaze locked onto Ianto, his eyes a nadir of pain.
Canary Wharf, Ianto thought. Blue shift. Hand in a jar. He set the mug down next to the report. "I thought you might like some coffee," he said gently, and waited.
Something in Jack's face shut down, like a door being slammed. He swung his feet off the desk and faced Ianto in tensely contained anger. "Don't ask," he warned in a low, rough voice.
"I'm not," Ianto assured him. He put his hand on the doorknob as if he were going to leave, which he had no intention of doing. "I'm sorry, sir."
"S'all right," Jack grunted, his eyes already back on the Hand.
"No. I mean for whatever hurt you so badly. I'm so sorry. I wish there were something I could do."
"Well, there isn't," said Jack, refusing to look at him. "There's nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do."
Such despair, Ianto thought; it made his own heart like to break. "I can give you a hand that's not in a jar, Jack. Two, even."
Jack surged to his feet, knocking over the decanter and spilling whisky onto Tosh's report. "Get out." Ianto took an automatic step backward, but stood his ground. Jack was shaking with barely restrained fury, but Ianto was familiar with that kind of fury - it was the kind that masked a grief so profound that to give in to it would be to shatter like glass.
"I'm not going anywhere, sir."
"I said, get out." Jack's hand moved to the holster at his hip. "That's an order."
Ianto straightened his back and said, "You're drunk, sir. I'll leave you alone, but only to keep you from doing something you'll regret." He nodded at the cup of coffee on the desk, sitting in a puddle of whisky beside the ruined report. "You might consider drinking that before it gets cold."
He turned and left without a further glance, shutting the door just in time to hear the crash of crockery hitting it behind him. Exhaling heavily, he sat down in the nearest chair he could find. His hands were trembling; he clenched and unclenched his fists a couple of times to steady them. Hand in a jar, he thought. Blue shift. Canary Wharf.
Jack had not been at Canary Wharf. Ianto knew that for sure, because he had been there. The world had nearly ended at Canary Wharf, and Ianto had once thought his own world had ended there as well. Since then, he'd learned that the world had an irritating habit of not ending simply because one wished it to.
There had been nothing he could do then, and there was nothing he could do now. God knew Ianto was familiar with the desperate hope a man could cling to beyond all reason. Whatever hell Jack was in right now was one he'd have to climb from without help, because the only hand Jack wanted to hold was locked in a jar.
Ianto spent much of the evening digging through every shred of data he could glean from the Torchwood archive that had survived Canary Wharf. That was a hell in and of itself; the last thing he wanted to do was revive his own memories of that battle and its aftermath. Desperate hope, desperate measures indeed.
At some point in those long hours, he must have fallen asleep at the desk, because he could feel Torchwood burning, but it was both Torchwood Three and Torchwood One at the same time, and there was nothing he could do. Torchwood was being overrun by the consequences of its own hubris, turned into a battleground for two unfathomably powerful alien species who considered their internecine war merely a prelude to the destruction of the human race. He could feel the flames and smoke searing his lungs; he could hear the screams of the dying. He twitched and moaned in his uneasy sleep, and he knew somehow that he was dreaming, but he was powerless to wake. Powerless and helpless. All he could do was run away, save his own sorry arse, dragging along the mutilated body of the woman he loved. She was already dead, her brain and body only kept functioning by horrible alien technology that had turned her into a monstrous machine, but Ianto refused to believe that. He would do everything in his power and beyond to try to save her. He wept and swore he would cling to her through murder and treachery, be his fate death or Retcon, but when he bent to kiss her, her face was Jack's. It was Jack welded into a brutal half-finished cyber body and Jack's eyes staring wide and blank, and Ianto swore he would save him but there was nothing he could do, because when he looked down at himself he realized he had no hands, and when he screamed he had no voice, and when he jerked and startled awake he saw the Cardiff Hub around him, dark and still, and it was too late to save anyone, least of all himself.
Ianto rubbed his face and heaved a long sigh that faltered on the point of a sob. He had no idea what time it was, but surely it was long past time for bed. He turned in his chair to get up, and came face to face with Jack, who'd been standing behind him watching him for god only knew how long. Jack's eyes were red, his hair and clothing mussed. He stared at Ianto with an expression of fear and longing and defiance, as if he were daring Ianto to say anything about his distraught condition. Of course. Captain Jack Harkness would never let himself be seen in such torment; it wouldn't do to appear anything less than cavalier.
With a sudden clarity, Ianto thought: What an idiot he is. I love him.
He didn't say anything. Neither of them did. Ianto felt the moment stretch like an elastic; he felt that if he so much as breathed Jack would snap, and he knew Jack would hate that.
Then Jack reached out his hand, and Ianto took it. Just like that. Such a simple gesture, after all.
Without a word, Jack tugged Ianto to his feet and led him down the ladder to his quarters. His intent gaze never left Ianto's face as he removed Ianto's clothing deliberately, piece by piece. Ianto stood still and let him, meeting his eyes calmly, not wanting to break into whatever Jack felt he needed to do. Even when Jack dropped his suit jacket to the floor in a rumpled heap, Ianto buried his wince, telling himself not to be an ass about it in an internal voice that sounded suspiciously like Jack's.
Jack pulled the duvet to the foot of his bed and gestured for Ianto to lie down on his back. He grabbed the long coil of soft rope from the bookcase and then, still fully clothed, climbed into the bed to straddle Ianto's chest. Without prompting, Ianto held out both hands, palms up. It made Jack squeeze his eyes shut, just for a moment, and take a deep shuddering breath. When he opened his eyes, he took both Ianto's wrists in his hands and moved them up so Ianto could grasp the rails of the old iron headboard. He tied one end of the rope around Ianto's wrist, passed the coil through the rails and tied the other wrist, letting the long end of the rope dangle behind the bed.
He took both Ianto's hands in his, bent down over him so his mouth was right by Ianto's ear, and said in a hoarse, low voice, "You're not going anywhere."
"I'm not," Ianto whispered. "I swear it."
Jack cupped Ianto's face with both hands and pressed their lips together softly. As kisses went, it was strangely chaste, but it didn't last. A moment later, all the tension in the air just snapped, and Jack was ravaging Ianto's mouth, sucking at his tongue as if there were real sustenance to be found there, all the while clutching Ianto's hands tightly.
Ianto arched his back and moaned into Jack's mouth. There wasn't much he could do, pinned down as he was, but that didn't stop him from trying. He wanted -- oh how he wanted, he wanted everything he could have, all at once. He pulled at Jack's hands and the ropes around his wrists, struggling simply for something to struggle against. Jack pulled away from his mouth with a gasp and released his hands, then dove in again, moving back down Ianto's body to gnaw at his earlobe and neck. He slid his hands along Ianto's chest to find his nipples, and he pinched them, twisting slightly. The pain of it was sharp, and the feeling of Jack's mouth against the pulse of his neck and ear utterly maddening; it made Ianto groan and buck upward, but that was good, he wanted to struggle, and the more he squirmed the more his nipples were wrung between Jack's fingers, which made him writhe all the more. He tried to thrust his hips upward, aching for something to rub his stiffening cock against, but Jack was astride his stomach and Ianto whined and groaned in frustration because he couldn't even brush the head of his cock against the back of Jack's trousers.
Then Jack once again moved down Ianto's body to straddle his thighs. He sat up and stared at Ianto, wild and desperate, his grey blue eyes rimmed in red, clothes and hair in complete disarray but still fully dressed down to his braces and boots. And Ianto looked back at him, panting, pleading with his eyes although he couldn't have said for what, but somehow knowing that he shouldn't speak, that right now all the words were Jack's, and if Jack wanted words he would ask for them.
Jack looked down at Ianto as expressions of fear and love, mourning and longing rolled over his face like storm clouds passing over the sun. He screwed his eyes shut, grabbed Ianto's nipples and twisted them sharply. Ianto screamed out loud, just on the verge of begging Jack to stop, when Jack did. He stretched himself over Ianto's body and began licking the nipples he'd just abused so cruelly, soothing them and suckling gently, one after the other. Ianto sobbed with relief, but even more because he could feel Jack's wool trousers sliding against his groin. His own erection had abated somewhat from pain, but it was slowly returning as Jack's wet tongue teased his sensitive nipples and the strange sensation of the wool, soft and scratchy, tantalized his cock. He moaned softly in his throat and wriggled, pulling against the rope tying his hands to the bed and feeling oddly satisfied when it held securely.
Jack ran his hands and mouth along Ianto's chest and used his knees to push Ianto's legs apart. Ianto quickly complied, spreading his thighs as wide as he could, drawing his knees up with his feet flat on the bed so Jack could settle between his legs and rub their groins together. Ianto thrust up, gasping, again and again. It felt so good, Jack's hands so sure, his tongue so soft and his cock so hard, and the wool just scratchy enough to make him squirm and sigh. But it wasn't enough; the more aroused Ianto got, the more he felt a deep, almost animal hunger that settled behind his bollocks and made him groan out loud with the realization that what he wanted, in fact, was a right hard buggering.
He grunted and pulled at the rails of the headboard, using the leverage to crunch in his stomach muscles against Jack's body and pull his thighs up so his legs were in the air and he could rub his balls and arse against Jack's groin. Jack backed off with a snort of surprise but then broke out into a smile that was, to Ianto's eyes, like the sun emerging after a storm. Ianto blushed a bit and looked away; he knew he must be quite the spectacle, spread out like this, offering himself like - like something that he didn't want to think about, much less name. But he didn't move away, even though his legs were beginning to shake from strain.
Jack took Ianto's chin in his hand and turned his head so they were face to face. He leaned in, still smiling broadly, and as if he were sharing a secret, whispered into Ianto's ear, "Mine."
Ianto nodded and answered, simply, "Yes."
While Jack rolled off him and reached under the bed for condoms and lubricant, Ianto groaned and let his legs down to rest his feet on the mattress. Grand gestures were all well and good, but they looked stupid and were ruddy hell on the thigh muscles besides.
Quickly, without preliminaries, Jack shrugged out of his braces, dropped his trousers and rolled on a condom. He was back between Ianto's legs in a moment, hoisting them onto his shoulders, and a few moments after that, as if he could barely spare time to slather gel over his cock, slowly and purposefully pushed his way into Ianto's hole.
Ianto threw back his head with a groan and willed himself to relax. It took quite a few rough, burning strokes for Jack to fully stretch him, but Ianto reveled in it. Every time Jack would withdraw and shove himself in more deeply Ianto would moan and shudder and clench. He was spread bit by bit, with a feeling of voluptuous torture, until finally the last bit of tension gave way and Jack's cock slid freely, huge and thick and deep up Ianto's slick arse, meeting no resistance whatsoever.
Ianto twisted his hands around the ropes binding his wrists and bucked upward to meet Jack's thrusts. Give him everything, he told himself, everything you can. Talk to him in the language he understands. It was a language of grimaces and grunts and whimpers, of shudders and moans. Jack spoke it like a native, but Ianto was learning. God, was he learning. He rolled his head up and back, baring his throat with a sob -- and Jack understood. Jack growled and snapped his hips forward, making Ianto cry out sharply with renewed pain that only increased when Jack surged over him and bit down over the pulse in Ianto's throat. It wasn't hard enough to break the skin, but it make Ianto begin to shake with a visceral, almost primal terror. Jack had him folded nearly in two with his legs bent up as far as they would go; his hands were clamped around Ianto's wrists, pinning him to the bed; his hot breath ghosted over Ianto's throat and he was fucking into Ianto roughly, viciously. It hurt. There was no way around admitting it. Ianto had entirely lost his erection and tears were welling in his eyes when at last Jack came with deep, driving strokes and a sound muffled in Ianto's neck that was like keening.
For a few short, endless moments, Jack just lay there, shaking, panting. Then he lifted his head from Ianto's neck. Their gazes met, and Ianto saw the tears in Jack's eyes as well.
Ianto said, "Still not going anywhere."
Jack sucked in a long, shuddering breath. He let go of Ianto's wrists and backed out of Ianto's body with a grimace as if he ached as much as Ianto did. Which, Ianto thought as he laborously unfolded himself, was patently impossible.
Ianto didn't know how long the two of them just lay there side by side, without looking at each other or saying a word. It occurred to Ianto that he hadn't come. But that wasn't the point, was it now. That wasn't the point at all.
Jack reached over and untied one of Ianto's wrists. He pulled the loose end of the rope through the headboard and tied it to one of the rails. It formed a leash attached to Ianto's other wrist -- rather a useless one, really, since it would have been quite easy for Ianto to untie himself.
But that wasn't the point at all.
Jack rolled and sprawled himself half over Ianto's body, still half-dressed, his head on Ianto's chest. He grabbed a coil of the rope and brought it up to clasp Ianto's hand, entwining the leash between their fingers.
Jack wouldn't sleep; Ianto knew that Jack rarely if ever slept. But he felt Jack relax, heavy against Ianto's chest, and he felt Jack's breath grow slow and deep as his fingers stroked against Ianto's palm, the rope between them speaking volumes in the language Jack spoke like a native.
My hand is ready, Ianto thought. May it do him ease.
~fin~
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hand below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.
-- The Taming of the Shrew, Act V, Scene II
Author: Spiderine
Rating: NC-17; Adults Only
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Warnings: D/s, light bondage, rough sex (woohoo!)
Spoilers: Nothing beyond Series 1, but at this point I'd better call it AU.
Disclaimer: Torchwood and its characters are, unfortunately, not owned by me. Neither is Have His Carcase, which was written by Dorothy L. Sayers and published by Harper Collins.
Series: " A Close and Holy Darkness". Previous stories can be accessed through the link. You need to read those to understand what's going on here, and to decide whether you like this sort of thing. If you don't like those stories, you won't like this.
Author’s Notes: YES, I FINALLY FINISHED IT! \O/ This is part 2 of 2. The beginning of this story is here; go read that first. Please note that I wrote the first story in the series, "Proper For the Workplace," before Ianto's canon back story was revealed; I put in a bit of back story for him in "Proper" which has since been jossed (or Daviesed, if you want to be specific). This story contains references to Ianto's canon back story. At some point, I hope to go back and rework "Proper" to reflect canon, but until then (*handwavy*) PLEASE CONSIDER YOURSELF RETCONNED. Thank you kindly.
This is entirely unbeta'd because I just wanted to get it the fuck posted already. Thank you for reading, and for your comments.
*******
"Oh, that's just disgusting."
It was the next day. Gwen was at her desk putting her notes on the Weevil infestation into her computer, when she looked up to see Jack and Owen carrying the plastic-wrapped corpse of a Weevil through the Hub into Owen's lab, leaving a trail of blood and body fluids in their wake.
Over at the document shredder, Ianto sighed. He was going to have to mop up again. He fed three pages of memoranda from the Home Secretary into the shredder and smiled. The sound of the machine gobbling up bureaucratic puffery and complaints was always gratifying.
"It's just a cadaver," Owen said, heaving the body onto his autopsy table.
"It's a person," Gwen protested.
"It's a Weevil," Jack corrected her. "We don't know if they're sentient. And it's dead now." He clasped his hands in facetious prayer and intoned, "Rest in peace, Otto, valiant loser of the battle for the favours of fair Janet."
Grumbling, "I am not a Weevil obstetrician," Owen unwrapped the plastic. He picked up a laser scalpel and flicked the switch with a nasty grin. "But I have been wanting to get at the central nervous system of these things for a while."
Tosh stared at him. "You're a ghoul."
Owen shrugged and started his Y-incision. "You do your job, I'll do mine."
Tosh shuddered, but a moment after looking back at her computer screen she was all smiles. "Jack, you want to see this. It was sunspots, all right. But they're gone now. It's very weird."
Jack finished washing and drying his hands and came over to her work station. "Show me." He peered at the screen and said, "Nice. Where'd you get it?"
"I hijacked the Hubble telescope!" she said proudly. "I have definite fluxon anomalies, and a surge in tachyon variation, and look!" She pointed. "Blue shift!"
Ianto smiled and fed the latest whinging from the Royal Astronomical Society into the shredder. Tosh was like a girl with a new toy, she was. But Jack didn't seem so pleased. He frowned at the screen and said, "What do you mean, blue shift?"
"Right here! Watch carefully or you'll miss it. It's just a blink - poof, there it goes!" She grinned. "And all the phenomena go with it. It's fantastic!"
Jack's face clouded over like a thunderstorm about to break. "Fantastic," he muttered. "I'll say. Tosh, I want that phenomenon monitored. Anything you can get on that kind of blue shift -- or red shift, for that matter. If that ever happens again, I want to know immediately. I want you breathing down its neck, understand me?"
"Sure." Tosh frowned in concern. "Is there something wrong?"
"Nothing's wrong. Everything's peachy," Jack spat. "Just fucking fantastic." He turned, stalked off into his office, and slammed the door behind him.
All activity in the Hub stopped dead as everyone stared at each other. Then, slowly, one by one, they all turned their heads to look at Ianto, who stood with a sheaf of documents in hand, as gobsmacked as anybody else. "Don't look at me," he said. "I haven't the foggiest." Tosh and Gwen quickly turned back to their work, and after shooting Ianto a smug *yeah, right* look, Owen did as well.
Ianto carefully placed the sheaf of documents on the desk by the shredder. Blue shift, he thought. Something that set off alarms in Jack that were impossible to hide. It felt almost familiar, like something on the tip of his mind's tongue, as it were. But nothing came to the fore, and Ianto knew that picking at it wouldn't be any help in figuring it out. Best to let it sit on the back burner until it bubbled to the surface.
Honest work, he reminded himself, and physical activity - the best cure for just about anything; too bad there would be no sudden acquisition of wealth to go with it. He smirked and dragged out the mop, and addressed himself to the Weevil guts on the floor.
Jack didn't come out of his office all day. By about six in the evening, the crew had given up all pretense of work and were just hovering around, daring each other with their eyes to go check on him. Tosh had compiled a report on all blue and red shift phenomena in the vicinity of Earth for the past ten years, with an analysis of concurrent tachyon fluctuation for the past five thrown in for good measure. She sat by her desk, worrying at the print-out with her fingers until the edges were curled.
Gently, Ianto took it from her. "I'll do it," he said. "Go home." He turned to Owen and Gwen and told them to go home as well.
"So you're the boss now, telling us to come and go?" Owen sneered.
Ianto looked at him blandly. "I'm the one who's going to go in there and see what's what. Unless you'd like to."
Funny how quickly the Hub cleared out after that, Ianto thought. Taking a deep breath, he picked up the report and a mug of fresh coffee, knocked on Jack's office door, and walked in without waiting for an answer.
Jack didn't look up or speak when Ianto entered. He was sitting at his desk with his feet up, sipping whisky from a cut-glass decanter, the abandoned glass on the desk beside him. Also on the desk, and the object of Jack's intense gaze, was a Pyrex containment cylinder filled with liquid in which bobbed a human hand cut off just past the wrist.
The Mysterious Hand In A Jar, Owen had called it. Noone but Jack knew where it had come from or what it signified, but whatever it was, it was so precious to Jack that he'd let a life-force vampire escape the Hub and go on a killing spree rather than sacrifice it.
And, Ianto thought, it evidently had something to do with the Mysterious Blue Shift. He cleared his throat. "Tosh has prepared a preliminary report on the history of the blue shift, sir." He placed the print-out on the desk. "It only goes back ten years, but that's as long as any data have been kept that she could find. Torchwood's records don't go back very far, since so much was lost at Canary Wharf." At the words "Canary Wharf", Jack's head snapped around and his gaze locked onto Ianto, his eyes a nadir of pain.
Canary Wharf, Ianto thought. Blue shift. Hand in a jar. He set the mug down next to the report. "I thought you might like some coffee," he said gently, and waited.
Something in Jack's face shut down, like a door being slammed. He swung his feet off the desk and faced Ianto in tensely contained anger. "Don't ask," he warned in a low, rough voice.
"I'm not," Ianto assured him. He put his hand on the doorknob as if he were going to leave, which he had no intention of doing. "I'm sorry, sir."
"S'all right," Jack grunted, his eyes already back on the Hand.
"No. I mean for whatever hurt you so badly. I'm so sorry. I wish there were something I could do."
"Well, there isn't," said Jack, refusing to look at him. "There's nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do."
Such despair, Ianto thought; it made his own heart like to break. "I can give you a hand that's not in a jar, Jack. Two, even."
Jack surged to his feet, knocking over the decanter and spilling whisky onto Tosh's report. "Get out." Ianto took an automatic step backward, but stood his ground. Jack was shaking with barely restrained fury, but Ianto was familiar with that kind of fury - it was the kind that masked a grief so profound that to give in to it would be to shatter like glass.
"I'm not going anywhere, sir."
"I said, get out." Jack's hand moved to the holster at his hip. "That's an order."
Ianto straightened his back and said, "You're drunk, sir. I'll leave you alone, but only to keep you from doing something you'll regret." He nodded at the cup of coffee on the desk, sitting in a puddle of whisky beside the ruined report. "You might consider drinking that before it gets cold."
He turned and left without a further glance, shutting the door just in time to hear the crash of crockery hitting it behind him. Exhaling heavily, he sat down in the nearest chair he could find. His hands were trembling; he clenched and unclenched his fists a couple of times to steady them. Hand in a jar, he thought. Blue shift. Canary Wharf.
Jack had not been at Canary Wharf. Ianto knew that for sure, because he had been there. The world had nearly ended at Canary Wharf, and Ianto had once thought his own world had ended there as well. Since then, he'd learned that the world had an irritating habit of not ending simply because one wished it to.
There had been nothing he could do then, and there was nothing he could do now. God knew Ianto was familiar with the desperate hope a man could cling to beyond all reason. Whatever hell Jack was in right now was one he'd have to climb from without help, because the only hand Jack wanted to hold was locked in a jar.
Ianto spent much of the evening digging through every shred of data he could glean from the Torchwood archive that had survived Canary Wharf. That was a hell in and of itself; the last thing he wanted to do was revive his own memories of that battle and its aftermath. Desperate hope, desperate measures indeed.
At some point in those long hours, he must have fallen asleep at the desk, because he could feel Torchwood burning, but it was both Torchwood Three and Torchwood One at the same time, and there was nothing he could do. Torchwood was being overrun by the consequences of its own hubris, turned into a battleground for two unfathomably powerful alien species who considered their internecine war merely a prelude to the destruction of the human race. He could feel the flames and smoke searing his lungs; he could hear the screams of the dying. He twitched and moaned in his uneasy sleep, and he knew somehow that he was dreaming, but he was powerless to wake. Powerless and helpless. All he could do was run away, save his own sorry arse, dragging along the mutilated body of the woman he loved. She was already dead, her brain and body only kept functioning by horrible alien technology that had turned her into a monstrous machine, but Ianto refused to believe that. He would do everything in his power and beyond to try to save her. He wept and swore he would cling to her through murder and treachery, be his fate death or Retcon, but when he bent to kiss her, her face was Jack's. It was Jack welded into a brutal half-finished cyber body and Jack's eyes staring wide and blank, and Ianto swore he would save him but there was nothing he could do, because when he looked down at himself he realized he had no hands, and when he screamed he had no voice, and when he jerked and startled awake he saw the Cardiff Hub around him, dark and still, and it was too late to save anyone, least of all himself.
Ianto rubbed his face and heaved a long sigh that faltered on the point of a sob. He had no idea what time it was, but surely it was long past time for bed. He turned in his chair to get up, and came face to face with Jack, who'd been standing behind him watching him for god only knew how long. Jack's eyes were red, his hair and clothing mussed. He stared at Ianto with an expression of fear and longing and defiance, as if he were daring Ianto to say anything about his distraught condition. Of course. Captain Jack Harkness would never let himself be seen in such torment; it wouldn't do to appear anything less than cavalier.
With a sudden clarity, Ianto thought: What an idiot he is. I love him.
He didn't say anything. Neither of them did. Ianto felt the moment stretch like an elastic; he felt that if he so much as breathed Jack would snap, and he knew Jack would hate that.
Then Jack reached out his hand, and Ianto took it. Just like that. Such a simple gesture, after all.
Without a word, Jack tugged Ianto to his feet and led him down the ladder to his quarters. His intent gaze never left Ianto's face as he removed Ianto's clothing deliberately, piece by piece. Ianto stood still and let him, meeting his eyes calmly, not wanting to break into whatever Jack felt he needed to do. Even when Jack dropped his suit jacket to the floor in a rumpled heap, Ianto buried his wince, telling himself not to be an ass about it in an internal voice that sounded suspiciously like Jack's.
Jack pulled the duvet to the foot of his bed and gestured for Ianto to lie down on his back. He grabbed the long coil of soft rope from the bookcase and then, still fully clothed, climbed into the bed to straddle Ianto's chest. Without prompting, Ianto held out both hands, palms up. It made Jack squeeze his eyes shut, just for a moment, and take a deep shuddering breath. When he opened his eyes, he took both Ianto's wrists in his hands and moved them up so Ianto could grasp the rails of the old iron headboard. He tied one end of the rope around Ianto's wrist, passed the coil through the rails and tied the other wrist, letting the long end of the rope dangle behind the bed.
He took both Ianto's hands in his, bent down over him so his mouth was right by Ianto's ear, and said in a hoarse, low voice, "You're not going anywhere."
"I'm not," Ianto whispered. "I swear it."
Jack cupped Ianto's face with both hands and pressed their lips together softly. As kisses went, it was strangely chaste, but it didn't last. A moment later, all the tension in the air just snapped, and Jack was ravaging Ianto's mouth, sucking at his tongue as if there were real sustenance to be found there, all the while clutching Ianto's hands tightly.
Ianto arched his back and moaned into Jack's mouth. There wasn't much he could do, pinned down as he was, but that didn't stop him from trying. He wanted -- oh how he wanted, he wanted everything he could have, all at once. He pulled at Jack's hands and the ropes around his wrists, struggling simply for something to struggle against. Jack pulled away from his mouth with a gasp and released his hands, then dove in again, moving back down Ianto's body to gnaw at his earlobe and neck. He slid his hands along Ianto's chest to find his nipples, and he pinched them, twisting slightly. The pain of it was sharp, and the feeling of Jack's mouth against the pulse of his neck and ear utterly maddening; it made Ianto groan and buck upward, but that was good, he wanted to struggle, and the more he squirmed the more his nipples were wrung between Jack's fingers, which made him writhe all the more. He tried to thrust his hips upward, aching for something to rub his stiffening cock against, but Jack was astride his stomach and Ianto whined and groaned in frustration because he couldn't even brush the head of his cock against the back of Jack's trousers.
Then Jack once again moved down Ianto's body to straddle his thighs. He sat up and stared at Ianto, wild and desperate, his grey blue eyes rimmed in red, clothes and hair in complete disarray but still fully dressed down to his braces and boots. And Ianto looked back at him, panting, pleading with his eyes although he couldn't have said for what, but somehow knowing that he shouldn't speak, that right now all the words were Jack's, and if Jack wanted words he would ask for them.
Jack looked down at Ianto as expressions of fear and love, mourning and longing rolled over his face like storm clouds passing over the sun. He screwed his eyes shut, grabbed Ianto's nipples and twisted them sharply. Ianto screamed out loud, just on the verge of begging Jack to stop, when Jack did. He stretched himself over Ianto's body and began licking the nipples he'd just abused so cruelly, soothing them and suckling gently, one after the other. Ianto sobbed with relief, but even more because he could feel Jack's wool trousers sliding against his groin. His own erection had abated somewhat from pain, but it was slowly returning as Jack's wet tongue teased his sensitive nipples and the strange sensation of the wool, soft and scratchy, tantalized his cock. He moaned softly in his throat and wriggled, pulling against the rope tying his hands to the bed and feeling oddly satisfied when it held securely.
Jack ran his hands and mouth along Ianto's chest and used his knees to push Ianto's legs apart. Ianto quickly complied, spreading his thighs as wide as he could, drawing his knees up with his feet flat on the bed so Jack could settle between his legs and rub their groins together. Ianto thrust up, gasping, again and again. It felt so good, Jack's hands so sure, his tongue so soft and his cock so hard, and the wool just scratchy enough to make him squirm and sigh. But it wasn't enough; the more aroused Ianto got, the more he felt a deep, almost animal hunger that settled behind his bollocks and made him groan out loud with the realization that what he wanted, in fact, was a right hard buggering.
He grunted and pulled at the rails of the headboard, using the leverage to crunch in his stomach muscles against Jack's body and pull his thighs up so his legs were in the air and he could rub his balls and arse against Jack's groin. Jack backed off with a snort of surprise but then broke out into a smile that was, to Ianto's eyes, like the sun emerging after a storm. Ianto blushed a bit and looked away; he knew he must be quite the spectacle, spread out like this, offering himself like - like something that he didn't want to think about, much less name. But he didn't move away, even though his legs were beginning to shake from strain.
Jack took Ianto's chin in his hand and turned his head so they were face to face. He leaned in, still smiling broadly, and as if he were sharing a secret, whispered into Ianto's ear, "Mine."
Ianto nodded and answered, simply, "Yes."
While Jack rolled off him and reached under the bed for condoms and lubricant, Ianto groaned and let his legs down to rest his feet on the mattress. Grand gestures were all well and good, but they looked stupid and were ruddy hell on the thigh muscles besides.
Quickly, without preliminaries, Jack shrugged out of his braces, dropped his trousers and rolled on a condom. He was back between Ianto's legs in a moment, hoisting them onto his shoulders, and a few moments after that, as if he could barely spare time to slather gel over his cock, slowly and purposefully pushed his way into Ianto's hole.
Ianto threw back his head with a groan and willed himself to relax. It took quite a few rough, burning strokes for Jack to fully stretch him, but Ianto reveled in it. Every time Jack would withdraw and shove himself in more deeply Ianto would moan and shudder and clench. He was spread bit by bit, with a feeling of voluptuous torture, until finally the last bit of tension gave way and Jack's cock slid freely, huge and thick and deep up Ianto's slick arse, meeting no resistance whatsoever.
Ianto twisted his hands around the ropes binding his wrists and bucked upward to meet Jack's thrusts. Give him everything, he told himself, everything you can. Talk to him in the language he understands. It was a language of grimaces and grunts and whimpers, of shudders and moans. Jack spoke it like a native, but Ianto was learning. God, was he learning. He rolled his head up and back, baring his throat with a sob -- and Jack understood. Jack growled and snapped his hips forward, making Ianto cry out sharply with renewed pain that only increased when Jack surged over him and bit down over the pulse in Ianto's throat. It wasn't hard enough to break the skin, but it make Ianto begin to shake with a visceral, almost primal terror. Jack had him folded nearly in two with his legs bent up as far as they would go; his hands were clamped around Ianto's wrists, pinning him to the bed; his hot breath ghosted over Ianto's throat and he was fucking into Ianto roughly, viciously. It hurt. There was no way around admitting it. Ianto had entirely lost his erection and tears were welling in his eyes when at last Jack came with deep, driving strokes and a sound muffled in Ianto's neck that was like keening.
For a few short, endless moments, Jack just lay there, shaking, panting. Then he lifted his head from Ianto's neck. Their gazes met, and Ianto saw the tears in Jack's eyes as well.
Ianto said, "Still not going anywhere."
Jack sucked in a long, shuddering breath. He let go of Ianto's wrists and backed out of Ianto's body with a grimace as if he ached as much as Ianto did. Which, Ianto thought as he laborously unfolded himself, was patently impossible.
Ianto didn't know how long the two of them just lay there side by side, without looking at each other or saying a word. It occurred to Ianto that he hadn't come. But that wasn't the point, was it now. That wasn't the point at all.
Jack reached over and untied one of Ianto's wrists. He pulled the loose end of the rope through the headboard and tied it to one of the rails. It formed a leash attached to Ianto's other wrist -- rather a useless one, really, since it would have been quite easy for Ianto to untie himself.
But that wasn't the point at all.
Jack rolled and sprawled himself half over Ianto's body, still half-dressed, his head on Ianto's chest. He grabbed a coil of the rope and brought it up to clasp Ianto's hand, entwining the leash between their fingers.
Jack wouldn't sleep; Ianto knew that Jack rarely if ever slept. But he felt Jack relax, heavy against Ianto's chest, and he felt Jack's breath grow slow and deep as his fingers stroked against Ianto's palm, the rope between them speaking volumes in the language Jack spoke like a native.
My hand is ready, Ianto thought. May it do him ease.
~fin~
Then vail your stomachs, for it is no boot,
And place your hand below your husband's foot:
In token of which duty, if he please,
My hand is ready; may it do him ease.
-- The Taming of the Shrew, Act V, Scene II