Fic: A Nostalgic Yearning 10/16
TITLE: A Nostalgic Yearning 10/16
AUTHOR: Erin Giles
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood and it’s characters are property of the BBC. Finn, Rhiannon, Chris and all other characters are property of me. Although why you’d want them is beyond me.
RATING: PG-13
PAIRINGS/CHARACTERS: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Tosh, OC’s
SUMMARY: Take two men, a small child, a seaside town, throw in a few locals, some Welsh rain and you’ve got a perfect holiday. Don’t you?
AUTHOR NOTES: Second in the 'Footprints In The Sand' Series.
This chapter is for EVERYONE. All of you that have been commenting every week and telling me how much you love Finn and how adorable the fic is and how much you love domestic!Jack. This is for all of you that keep me going! ;)
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 |
“Hello?” Jack answered cheerily, not bothering to look at the caller ID as he watched Ianto crawling around on the living room floor with Finn on his back.
“Jack?”
“Gwen?” Jack’s back suddenly straightened. “Everything alright? Nothing’s happened has it?”
“No.” He heard Gwen laugh slightly. “Everything’s fine, been quite quiet actually except when Owen accidentally let the rats out the cages yesterday afternoon and they chewed through some of the computer cables.”
Jack let out a bark of laughter, both at Gwen’s story and the fact that the tunnel had caved in on both the train and engine driver being too low for both of them to get through.
“Tosh isn’t speaking to Owen but I don’t think Owen’s even noticed,” Gwen continued. “I was just phoning to see how your holiday was going?”
Jack let out another laugh as Finn the Engine driver tried to rescue his Ianto train from underneath the rubble of the cushion tunnel.
“Quite well from the sounds of it?” Gwen chuckled.
“A few minor mishaps, mostly on Ianto’s part, but we’ve had fun. We’re going to the beach tomorrow hopefully, just across the road from us. We were dolphin watching earlier on tonight,” Jack enthused down the phone.
“How is Ianto?” Gwen’s voice was dripping with concern.
“I would let you speak to him,” Jack replied, trying to stop himself from giggling as Finn continued to try and dig Ianto out from under the cushions, tugging fruitlessly on Ianto’s right arm, “but he’s slightly indisposed at the moment. There was an accident on the train line and the tunnel collapsed.” Jack laughed outright as Finn started pushing Ianto, trying to roll him over onto his back to check he wasn’t actually dead.
“What?” came Gwen’s cry of slight hysteria down the phone.
“Gwen don’t worry, Ianto’s the train. I think he’s an expired train though.” Jack smiled again as Finn started tickling Ianto. He watched as the young Welshmen tried valiantly not to react to the chubby fingers attacking his armpits and ribs. It was a losing battle though.
“Oh no, he’s alive again now. Tickling revived him.”
“Jack are you making this up or has Ianto had a personality transplant while you’ve been away? Are you sure he didn’t bang his head harder than we thought?” Gwen’s voice was still full of concern.
“No, he’s still Ianto.” Jack smiled down the phone as Finn screamed, Ianto getting his vengeance as Finn tried to hide under the mound of sofa cushions that had once been a train tunnel. He worried though when Ianto stopped and whispered something in Finn’s ear, a mischievous glint in his eyes.
“Anyway Gwen I’m going to go before I get attacked by two monsters,” Jack said standing up from where he was perched on the armchair, watching warily as Finn and Ianto started crawling towards him. “Not literal monsters,” he added as an afterthought.
“Ok Jack. We’ll see you on Monday then?” Gwen sounded dubious.
“No! Stop it!” Jack all but squeaked as he leapt away from Ianto who was trying to tickle him only to be attacked by Finn grabbing at the back of his knees.
“Yup. Monday evening. Bye Gwen!” Jack said a little breathlessly. The last thing Gwen heard was a cry of, ‘You are so dead Ianto Jones.’ before the line went dead.
“They having a good holiday?” Tosh asked from where she was sat under her desk, masking tape in one hand and screwdriver in the other.
“I think something’s possessed them,” Gwen replied after a moment, putting her phone down on her desk hesitantly. Tosh looked at her quizzically.
“They were acting, odd. I think Ianto was pretending to be a train, and then pretending to be a monster, and then tickling Jack. The last thing I heard was Jack squealing, at least I think it was Jack, I’ve never heard him squeal before.” Gwen looked slightly wide eyed at her phone before giving Toshiko a bemused look.
Tosh laughed in reply. “That’s what happens when you take care of children, you regress back to a child yourself.”
“Yeah, but he squealed.”
**
Ianto heard the heavy tread of Jack’s bare feet padding across the living room to where Ianto was sat in the window seat staring out to sea. He had the window open, and he let out a shiver as the sea breeze whipped round him.
“What are you still doing up? You were knackered earlier,” Jack asked softly, a hand going to Ianto’s shoulder.
Ianto shrugged, shivering slightly again. He felt Jack’s hand disappear from his shoulder, footsteps retreating. Jack returned, placing his greatcoat round Ianto’s shoulders. Ianto smiled up at him gratefully before looking back out to sea again, watching the stars twinkling on the horizon.
“What was it like out there?” Ianto asked quietly. “Travelling with him,” Ianto added for clarification. Jack didn’t need any though. He didn’t reply for a moment, sinking down onto the window seat beside Ianto and playing with a thread on one of the sleeves of his coat.
“It was,” Jack paused, he couldn’t think of one word to describe what it was like to go travelling with the doctor. “Thrilling. Terrifying. Horrible. Heart-breaking. Amazing,” Jack answered a little breathlessly.
“Would you go back?”
“He asked me to go travelling with him, but I asked to come home to you.”
“That doesn’t answer my question Jack.”
“I wouldn’t pass up the chance to go again,” Jack answered truthfully, watching Ianto who was still staring out the window to sea. “But I wouldn’t disappear on you this time.”
Ianto didn’t say anything, just pulled Jack’s coat round him with one hand, hugging his knees with the other.
“Travelling with the Doctor has it’s moments and the running, I miss the running.” Jack smiled. “But things happened to me while I was away that have just put things into prospective, made me prioritise.”
“What things?” Ianto was looking at Jack now, his gaze piercing in it’s intensity. Jack looked away.
“That’s the thing Jack. You know me so well now and yet I know hardly anything about you. You know all the horrible things I’ve lived through. You know my family, how I got that scar on my arm, how Lisa and I met. I feel sometimes that I don’t know anything about you. I don’t even know your real name,” Ianto argued.
“In my defence you’re only 24, whereas I’m bordering on 150 and technically I’m not even born yet.” Jack tried to lighten the situation.
“I don’t even know whether to take you seriously or not sometimes.” Ianto sighed.
“Everything I tell you is the truth Ianto. I just-” Jack crinkled his nose, frowning like he was trying to hold back tears. “I’m not used to sharing with someone, I’m just so used to being alone that I think I’ve forgotten how not to be.”
“But you’ve had Elizabeth, Estelle, Alex, Michael, The Doctor, Rose, Martha, countless others I don’t know anything about.” Ianto looked confused.
“You know that old saying of being surrounded by people yet feeling totally alone.” Jack shrugged slightly. “I guess like you I’m missing a few key words from my dictionary.” Jack tried to smile but couldn’t quite bring himself to mean it. Ianto managed a sad smile in return as they both turned to look back out to sea, getting lost somewhere beyond the horizon.
“Is there a reason we’ve been having all these serious conversations?” Jack asked after a long moment.
“I guess the fact that I’ve just had time to think about things without the next alien invasion getting in the way.” Ianto shrugged before yawning. “That and I think there’s only so many conversations in one day that I can have about Thomas the Tank Engine.”
Ianto smiled reassuringly, but it quickly descended into a yawn as he pulled himself to his feet, pulling Jack’s coat from round his shoulders.
“I’m going to bed, you coming?” Ianto asked as he hung Jack’s coat on the hook at the back of the door.
“Yeah, in a minute,” Jack replied, not turning to look at Ianto. He felt Ianto’s hand on his shoulder and a kiss in his hair before Ianto’s even footfalls disappeared down the corridor.
Jack let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as he continued to watch the horizon, so dark now the sky and sea blended into each other in a black vastness that still scared him. It was like looking into the depths of space, a step into the unknown. It was like that horrible jolting feeling when you missed the last rung of a ladder, but sometimes it was that horrible jolting feeling that Jack lived for. Jack suddenly realised even though he would follow the Doctor to the end of the universe he would always come back again. Walk a mile in a man’s shoes before you truly know him. The problem was Ianto was now like a pair of old slippers; so comfy you couldn’t bear to part with them; and that frightened Jack.
He thought of another cliché as he slipped underneath the duvet next to Ianto, kissing him on the back of the neck. They say the grass is always greener on the other side, but it looked pretty rosy on this side of the fence from where Jack was sitting.
**
Ianto was woken in the middle of the night by a persistent tug on the fingers of his left hand. He tried to swat it away at first, thinking it was just Jack being annoying, but soon a scared voice came out of the darkness.
“Uncy Yan?” Finn was tugging at his hand again, more persistent now. Ianto blinked blearily in the half-light finding the four year old staring at him with tears in his eyes.
“Finn?” Ianto rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, sitting up in bed as Jack shifted towards him, “What is it?”
“There’s a monster under my bed,” Finn whispered as if it was some conspiracy.
“There’s a what? What kind of monster?” Jack was suddenly awake beside Ianto now, hair sticking out at odd angles a wild look on his face as he made to grab for his gun. Ianto put a hand on his arm to stop him, giving him a pointed look.
“It’s tummy’s all grumbly. I think it wants to eat me!” Finn sniffed, sticking his thumb in his mouth.
“Ah, the grumbly tummy monster. Jack and me fight them all the time, don’t we Jack?” Ianto turned to look at Jack as recognition that this was a child’s imagination and not some Torchwood dilemma dawned on his face.
Jack nodded in earnest. “All the time.”
Ianto was pulling himself out from under the covers now, taking Finn’s hand and leading him back into the other room.
“Did you know that grumbly tummy monsters prefer Jaffa cakes to little boys?” Ianto was questioning as Jack smiled to himself, lying back down in the bed. There was a gasp of realisation from Finn.
“We’ve still got-ed some from lunch!” Finn said excitedly. Jack heard the rustling of Ianto in his rucksack and the mumbled comfort he gave his nephew as Jack rolled over onto Ianto’s side of the bed; he could still smell Ianto on the pillows as his eyes drifted closed. Taking care of children was harder work than chasing weevils.
When Jack awoke some hours later he was still alone in the double bed, the smell of Ianto still lingering on the sheets. He stifled a yawn as he clawed his way out from under the sheets to investigate where Ianto had gotten to. What he found made his heart swell.
Ianto was asleep in Finn’s bed, his arm curled around Finn protectively as one of Finn’s hands clung onto Ianto’s larger one while the other hand clutched at a rather moth eaten looking rabbit. They both looked the picture of innocence as they slept serenely. He could just make out the shape of a Jaffa cake on a plate at the foot of the bed beside Finn’s slippers. Jack smiled to himself before he stepped lightly into the room, crossing to the Jaffa cake and taking a rather sizable bite out of it.
In the morning, he was woken by an excitable four-year old, jumping up and down on the bed, waving the half eaten Jaffa cake with sticky fingers in Jack’s face.
“Jack! LOOK! The grumbly tummy monster eat-ed it!”
“So I see,” Jack said, smiling as Ianto emerged back into their room, rubbing at his eyes as he shook his head. Jack’s stomach chose that moment to make itself known causing Ianto to laugh.
“I think we’ve got a grumbly tummy monster in our bed Finn!”
There was another gasp of excitement from Finn before he was shoving the sticky jaffa cake into Jack’s hands. “Quick Jack! Before it eats you!”
**
Jack disappeared into the shower to try and remove the remains of Jaffa Cake from his face and hair while Ianto made breakfast and Finn ambitiously tried to mimic Andy Warhol on the living room floor.
“If you and Jack got-ed married does that mean that I get two Uncles?” Finn asked abruptly.
“Uh,” Ianto flailed for an answer as his nephew looked up at him innocently. “I don’t think me and Jack will be getting married Finn.”
“Why? Do you not love each other?” Finn pressed, obviously not noticing Ianto’s discomfort, or relishing in it like the devil spawn child Ianto secretly believed him to be.
“We do, we just don’t think we should get married,” Ianto said finally while trying to extract himself from the living room without arousing suspicion. Finn wasn’t finished his interrogation though.
“Penny Evans said that a man can’t marry another man, ‘cause they’re not allowed,” Finn stated matter-of-factly as he went back to colouring in. “Is that why you and Jack aren’t getting married? ‘Cause you’re not allowed?”
“No.” Ianto frowned, how to explain this to a four year old? “Men are allowed to marry other men.”
“But Penny Evans said,” Finn tried to interrupt, looking back up at Ianto.
“Well Penny Evans is wrong, because men are allowed to marry other men now, but me and Jack are quite happy just being me and Jack,” Ianto tried to explain to his nephew, who - if the confused look on his face was anything to go by - blatantly wasn’t understanding.
“So I can’t ever call him Uncle Jack?” This seemed to be the crux of the situation and what was bothering Finn the most.
Ianto smirked. “You can if you want to Finn, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”
“Okay.” A huge grin broke out of Finlay’s face before he turned back to his colouring-in again, swinging his legs happily in the air as he rendered a sheep blue.
“I’m going to give this one to Uncle Jack,” Finn mused to himself as Ianto tried to bite back his own grin.
On to Part 11
AUTHOR: Erin Giles
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood and it’s characters are property of the BBC. Finn, Rhiannon, Chris and all other characters are property of me. Although why you’d want them is beyond me.
RATING: PG-13
PAIRINGS/CHARACTERS: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Tosh, OC’s
SUMMARY: Take two men, a small child, a seaside town, throw in a few locals, some Welsh rain and you’ve got a perfect holiday. Don’t you?
AUTHOR NOTES: Second in the 'Footprints In The Sand' Series.
This chapter is for EVERYONE. All of you that have been commenting every week and telling me how much you love Finn and how adorable the fic is and how much you love domestic!Jack. This is for all of you that keep me going! ;)
| Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 |
“Hello?” Jack answered cheerily, not bothering to look at the caller ID as he watched Ianto crawling around on the living room floor with Finn on his back.
“Jack?”
“Gwen?” Jack’s back suddenly straightened. “Everything alright? Nothing’s happened has it?”
“No.” He heard Gwen laugh slightly. “Everything’s fine, been quite quiet actually except when Owen accidentally let the rats out the cages yesterday afternoon and they chewed through some of the computer cables.”
Jack let out a bark of laughter, both at Gwen’s story and the fact that the tunnel had caved in on both the train and engine driver being too low for both of them to get through.
“Tosh isn’t speaking to Owen but I don’t think Owen’s even noticed,” Gwen continued. “I was just phoning to see how your holiday was going?”
Jack let out another laugh as Finn the Engine driver tried to rescue his Ianto train from underneath the rubble of the cushion tunnel.
“Quite well from the sounds of it?” Gwen chuckled.
“A few minor mishaps, mostly on Ianto’s part, but we’ve had fun. We’re going to the beach tomorrow hopefully, just across the road from us. We were dolphin watching earlier on tonight,” Jack enthused down the phone.
“How is Ianto?” Gwen’s voice was dripping with concern.
“I would let you speak to him,” Jack replied, trying to stop himself from giggling as Finn continued to try and dig Ianto out from under the cushions, tugging fruitlessly on Ianto’s right arm, “but he’s slightly indisposed at the moment. There was an accident on the train line and the tunnel collapsed.” Jack laughed outright as Finn started pushing Ianto, trying to roll him over onto his back to check he wasn’t actually dead.
“What?” came Gwen’s cry of slight hysteria down the phone.
“Gwen don’t worry, Ianto’s the train. I think he’s an expired train though.” Jack smiled again as Finn started tickling Ianto. He watched as the young Welshmen tried valiantly not to react to the chubby fingers attacking his armpits and ribs. It was a losing battle though.
“Oh no, he’s alive again now. Tickling revived him.”
“Jack are you making this up or has Ianto had a personality transplant while you’ve been away? Are you sure he didn’t bang his head harder than we thought?” Gwen’s voice was still full of concern.
“No, he’s still Ianto.” Jack smiled down the phone as Finn screamed, Ianto getting his vengeance as Finn tried to hide under the mound of sofa cushions that had once been a train tunnel. He worried though when Ianto stopped and whispered something in Finn’s ear, a mischievous glint in his eyes.
“Anyway Gwen I’m going to go before I get attacked by two monsters,” Jack said standing up from where he was perched on the armchair, watching warily as Finn and Ianto started crawling towards him. “Not literal monsters,” he added as an afterthought.
“Ok Jack. We’ll see you on Monday then?” Gwen sounded dubious.
“No! Stop it!” Jack all but squeaked as he leapt away from Ianto who was trying to tickle him only to be attacked by Finn grabbing at the back of his knees.
“Yup. Monday evening. Bye Gwen!” Jack said a little breathlessly. The last thing Gwen heard was a cry of, ‘You are so dead Ianto Jones.’ before the line went dead.
“They having a good holiday?” Tosh asked from where she was sat under her desk, masking tape in one hand and screwdriver in the other.
“I think something’s possessed them,” Gwen replied after a moment, putting her phone down on her desk hesitantly. Tosh looked at her quizzically.
“They were acting, odd. I think Ianto was pretending to be a train, and then pretending to be a monster, and then tickling Jack. The last thing I heard was Jack squealing, at least I think it was Jack, I’ve never heard him squeal before.” Gwen looked slightly wide eyed at her phone before giving Toshiko a bemused look.
Tosh laughed in reply. “That’s what happens when you take care of children, you regress back to a child yourself.”
“Yeah, but he squealed.”
**
Ianto heard the heavy tread of Jack’s bare feet padding across the living room to where Ianto was sat in the window seat staring out to sea. He had the window open, and he let out a shiver as the sea breeze whipped round him.
“What are you still doing up? You were knackered earlier,” Jack asked softly, a hand going to Ianto’s shoulder.
Ianto shrugged, shivering slightly again. He felt Jack’s hand disappear from his shoulder, footsteps retreating. Jack returned, placing his greatcoat round Ianto’s shoulders. Ianto smiled up at him gratefully before looking back out to sea again, watching the stars twinkling on the horizon.
“What was it like out there?” Ianto asked quietly. “Travelling with him,” Ianto added for clarification. Jack didn’t need any though. He didn’t reply for a moment, sinking down onto the window seat beside Ianto and playing with a thread on one of the sleeves of his coat.
“It was,” Jack paused, he couldn’t think of one word to describe what it was like to go travelling with the doctor. “Thrilling. Terrifying. Horrible. Heart-breaking. Amazing,” Jack answered a little breathlessly.
“Would you go back?”
“He asked me to go travelling with him, but I asked to come home to you.”
“That doesn’t answer my question Jack.”
“I wouldn’t pass up the chance to go again,” Jack answered truthfully, watching Ianto who was still staring out the window to sea. “But I wouldn’t disappear on you this time.”
Ianto didn’t say anything, just pulled Jack’s coat round him with one hand, hugging his knees with the other.
“Travelling with the Doctor has it’s moments and the running, I miss the running.” Jack smiled. “But things happened to me while I was away that have just put things into prospective, made me prioritise.”
“What things?” Ianto was looking at Jack now, his gaze piercing in it’s intensity. Jack looked away.
“That’s the thing Jack. You know me so well now and yet I know hardly anything about you. You know all the horrible things I’ve lived through. You know my family, how I got that scar on my arm, how Lisa and I met. I feel sometimes that I don’t know anything about you. I don’t even know your real name,” Ianto argued.
“In my defence you’re only 24, whereas I’m bordering on 150 and technically I’m not even born yet.” Jack tried to lighten the situation.
“I don’t even know whether to take you seriously or not sometimes.” Ianto sighed.
“Everything I tell you is the truth Ianto. I just-” Jack crinkled his nose, frowning like he was trying to hold back tears. “I’m not used to sharing with someone, I’m just so used to being alone that I think I’ve forgotten how not to be.”
“But you’ve had Elizabeth, Estelle, Alex, Michael, The Doctor, Rose, Martha, countless others I don’t know anything about.” Ianto looked confused.
“You know that old saying of being surrounded by people yet feeling totally alone.” Jack shrugged slightly. “I guess like you I’m missing a few key words from my dictionary.” Jack tried to smile but couldn’t quite bring himself to mean it. Ianto managed a sad smile in return as they both turned to look back out to sea, getting lost somewhere beyond the horizon.
“Is there a reason we’ve been having all these serious conversations?” Jack asked after a long moment.
“I guess the fact that I’ve just had time to think about things without the next alien invasion getting in the way.” Ianto shrugged before yawning. “That and I think there’s only so many conversations in one day that I can have about Thomas the Tank Engine.”
Ianto smiled reassuringly, but it quickly descended into a yawn as he pulled himself to his feet, pulling Jack’s coat from round his shoulders.
“I’m going to bed, you coming?” Ianto asked as he hung Jack’s coat on the hook at the back of the door.
“Yeah, in a minute,” Jack replied, not turning to look at Ianto. He felt Ianto’s hand on his shoulder and a kiss in his hair before Ianto’s even footfalls disappeared down the corridor.
Jack let out a breath he didn’t know he’d been holding as he continued to watch the horizon, so dark now the sky and sea blended into each other in a black vastness that still scared him. It was like looking into the depths of space, a step into the unknown. It was like that horrible jolting feeling when you missed the last rung of a ladder, but sometimes it was that horrible jolting feeling that Jack lived for. Jack suddenly realised even though he would follow the Doctor to the end of the universe he would always come back again. Walk a mile in a man’s shoes before you truly know him. The problem was Ianto was now like a pair of old slippers; so comfy you couldn’t bear to part with them; and that frightened Jack.
He thought of another cliché as he slipped underneath the duvet next to Ianto, kissing him on the back of the neck. They say the grass is always greener on the other side, but it looked pretty rosy on this side of the fence from where Jack was sitting.
**
Ianto was woken in the middle of the night by a persistent tug on the fingers of his left hand. He tried to swat it away at first, thinking it was just Jack being annoying, but soon a scared voice came out of the darkness.
“Uncy Yan?” Finn was tugging at his hand again, more persistent now. Ianto blinked blearily in the half-light finding the four year old staring at him with tears in his eyes.
“Finn?” Ianto rubbed the sleep out of his eyes, sitting up in bed as Jack shifted towards him, “What is it?”
“There’s a monster under my bed,” Finn whispered as if it was some conspiracy.
“There’s a what? What kind of monster?” Jack was suddenly awake beside Ianto now, hair sticking out at odd angles a wild look on his face as he made to grab for his gun. Ianto put a hand on his arm to stop him, giving him a pointed look.
“It’s tummy’s all grumbly. I think it wants to eat me!” Finn sniffed, sticking his thumb in his mouth.
“Ah, the grumbly tummy monster. Jack and me fight them all the time, don’t we Jack?” Ianto turned to look at Jack as recognition that this was a child’s imagination and not some Torchwood dilemma dawned on his face.
Jack nodded in earnest. “All the time.”
Ianto was pulling himself out from under the covers now, taking Finn’s hand and leading him back into the other room.
“Did you know that grumbly tummy monsters prefer Jaffa cakes to little boys?” Ianto was questioning as Jack smiled to himself, lying back down in the bed. There was a gasp of realisation from Finn.
“We’ve still got-ed some from lunch!” Finn said excitedly. Jack heard the rustling of Ianto in his rucksack and the mumbled comfort he gave his nephew as Jack rolled over onto Ianto’s side of the bed; he could still smell Ianto on the pillows as his eyes drifted closed. Taking care of children was harder work than chasing weevils.
When Jack awoke some hours later he was still alone in the double bed, the smell of Ianto still lingering on the sheets. He stifled a yawn as he clawed his way out from under the sheets to investigate where Ianto had gotten to. What he found made his heart swell.
Ianto was asleep in Finn’s bed, his arm curled around Finn protectively as one of Finn’s hands clung onto Ianto’s larger one while the other hand clutched at a rather moth eaten looking rabbit. They both looked the picture of innocence as they slept serenely. He could just make out the shape of a Jaffa cake on a plate at the foot of the bed beside Finn’s slippers. Jack smiled to himself before he stepped lightly into the room, crossing to the Jaffa cake and taking a rather sizable bite out of it.
In the morning, he was woken by an excitable four-year old, jumping up and down on the bed, waving the half eaten Jaffa cake with sticky fingers in Jack’s face.
“Jack! LOOK! The grumbly tummy monster eat-ed it!”
“So I see,” Jack said, smiling as Ianto emerged back into their room, rubbing at his eyes as he shook his head. Jack’s stomach chose that moment to make itself known causing Ianto to laugh.
“I think we’ve got a grumbly tummy monster in our bed Finn!”
There was another gasp of excitement from Finn before he was shoving the sticky jaffa cake into Jack’s hands. “Quick Jack! Before it eats you!”
**
Jack disappeared into the shower to try and remove the remains of Jaffa Cake from his face and hair while Ianto made breakfast and Finn ambitiously tried to mimic Andy Warhol on the living room floor.
“If you and Jack got-ed married does that mean that I get two Uncles?” Finn asked abruptly.
“Uh,” Ianto flailed for an answer as his nephew looked up at him innocently. “I don’t think me and Jack will be getting married Finn.”
“Why? Do you not love each other?” Finn pressed, obviously not noticing Ianto’s discomfort, or relishing in it like the devil spawn child Ianto secretly believed him to be.
“We do, we just don’t think we should get married,” Ianto said finally while trying to extract himself from the living room without arousing suspicion. Finn wasn’t finished his interrogation though.
“Penny Evans said that a man can’t marry another man, ‘cause they’re not allowed,” Finn stated matter-of-factly as he went back to colouring in. “Is that why you and Jack aren’t getting married? ‘Cause you’re not allowed?”
“No.” Ianto frowned, how to explain this to a four year old? “Men are allowed to marry other men.”
“But Penny Evans said,” Finn tried to interrupt, looking back up at Ianto.
“Well Penny Evans is wrong, because men are allowed to marry other men now, but me and Jack are quite happy just being me and Jack,” Ianto tried to explain to his nephew, who - if the confused look on his face was anything to go by - blatantly wasn’t understanding.
“So I can’t ever call him Uncle Jack?” This seemed to be the crux of the situation and what was bothering Finn the most.
Ianto smirked. “You can if you want to Finn, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind.”
“Okay.” A huge grin broke out of Finlay’s face before he turned back to his colouring-in again, swinging his legs happily in the air as he rendered a sheep blue.
“I’m going to give this one to Uncle Jack,” Finn mused to himself as Ianto tried to bite back his own grin.
On to Part 11