[LOG WITH SULU][forward-dated to valentine's day]
Ianto had gotten back from Owen's birthday party and immediately gone to the fridge to get himself a lager. He had intended to leave early that night to sober up, but. He needed the alcohol. Needed the burn and the haze to get over the fact that he had just been talking to a friend that would be dead in a few months time. A friend who he'd watched
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That was stupid, and of course he was going to go. He didn't dress up, deciding to forgo the blazer and sweatervest combo for... well, a tee-shirt. And his leather jacket, because really, why not? And he did feel a little awkward with the half-dozen roses, which he was sure was way too much, plus the bottle of Risan wine - oh. Who cared. Ianto appreciated the gestures, even if he didn't like the gifts, so Sulu just had to bite the bullet and go.
Which is exactly what he did, reaching into his pocket to touch the watch he'd tucked away in there and appearing a split-second later in Ianto's flat. "Ianto?"
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He took another sip and shook his head. "I don't think there's exactly a standard emotion for this situation, so. His... What happens to him isn't really like what happened to you?" He doesn't want to bring up Ianto's death, but there's no getting around it. "It's not something we can bring him back from?"
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He fiddled with his wine glass. "I... Owen was shot. We were on the case of someone messing with alien biology to produce pharmaceuticals to cure all sorts of things, but. They were wrong. Torturing and imprisoning their experiments. We... We had to kill them all. And then... The man. The owner. He shot him, right in front of us. And Jack killed that man straight after, but. It was too late. Owen bled out right there, on the ground."
He sighed. "The problem with Owen is that...that's not where it ended. I..." He paused, trying to collect his thoughts. Explanations were hard, when you were tipsy. "Do you remember me telling you about the Resurrection Gauntlet, when I gave you the tour of the archives, that time?"
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He paused at the question, though, honestly trying to remember. It had been a long time since they'd gone through the archives - he mentally reeled a little at just how long ago it seemed - and he had to think about it before he remembered. "Yeah, I remember you showing me that. It... brought people back after they'd died, but just for a few minutes, right?"
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But still. If there was no body - who knew. Time was a strange thing when the community was involved - like a black hole, it could mess up any timeline and make things happen differently. He imagined that Ianto's fate would've been different, if he hadn't been on the community... and that made him chew his lip a little, fretting it as he thought about the implications of that. Shaking his head clear, he finally nodded at what Ianto was saying. "You're not whining, Ianto. Never think that, okay?" He reached out with his free hand and put it on Ianto's knee. "Don't worry about it. But... I think you might. I mean... You might have an idea there. it's something to consider, at least. For all you know, that's what ends up happening to him...'
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Ianto took his free hand and laid it over on top of Sulu's on his knee, moving to lace his fingers between the other man's. He sat leaning against his side, no even pretending that they weren't just sitting there, enjoying each other's presence and support.
He raised his glass in a bit of a toast. "I... I'll talk to Jack, then. In the meantime..." He smiled slightly. "Happy Valentine's Day, yeah?"
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He took a sip of his wine, mostly because he could use the extra courage alcohol gave, but also because he really did enjoy Risan wine. It was just one of those things. He added after a moment, smile turning a bit sly, "Not that I don't mind embarrassing you so much, so long as we're not around anyone."
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He chuckled slightly, ducking his head, slightly flustered. "You just like to make me blush," he said. "It's not hard to do so, I'll have you know, when I'm already as sloshed as I am. Not that I'm condoning you getting me sloshed just for that. Although..." he took another sip. "The wine is nice. What did you say it was again? I mean, I know it was a gift, but. Whatever it was, it didn't sound like anything I've ever had. Doesn't taste like anything I've had before either." Then again, Ianto wasn't a connoisseur of wines, or anything, but. There was definitely something different about it.
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He looked at the bottle of wine briefly, before looking back to Ianto. "As for the wine, it's from Risa - it's sort of like a vacation planet. It's got all of the usual tourist trappings, and they make really good wine. I... really don't know too much about it; I've never been. But I hear it's nice." Maybe sometime he could go, and take Ianto with him. Of course, that was a long way down the line... but hey. Ianto was going to be around then, right?
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He tried to remember where Sulu had gone after his flower rant there. Oh yes. "...there are vacation planets?" he asked, cocking his head to the side, genuinely curious.
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He shrugged at the question, though, looking back up to Ianto, "Yeah... well, sort of. Risa is pretty much the only real planet meant to be a resort, but people sometimes go to other Federation planets for vacations. Or the moon. But it's not like taking a week off to go to Florida, or something, you have to plan for it and you're usually gone for more than a week. Risa's really just a giant resort, with beaches and that sort of thing."
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At the topic of the resort planet, though, he quickly perked his ears up, intrigued by the idea of it. "Has it always been that way?" Ianto asked, intrigued. "I mean. Were there natives to it?" That sounded like an all-too familiar situation, after all. Kicking out the natives and building a resort planet on their home soil.
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"As for Risa, though - the Risians actually run the planet, so it's not as though we took over or anything. They're part of the Federation, and all. We don't do hostile takeovers - the closest you'll ever see to us commandeering a planet is when there's no life on it and we can use it for resources. Otherwise, the Federation tries not to interfere with non-Federation planets." He knew what Ianto was getting at - it was a human legacy, taking over places at the expense of the people who already lived there. But the Federation didn't do things like that, and even though Sulu sometimes had to wonder if it was because of the other races and not because the human race had evolved past that need for warfare, he knew that they were just better than that.
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He had to wonder at the description of Risa, though. The fact that it was a vacation planet and yet it had a species that ran it, that had a culture and wines and foods and the likes was definitely boggling to the mind, at least for Ianto. He couldn't figure out whether they were always a vacation planet for other people, or whether someone had come by and commercialized them. He wasn't sure that he wanted to know, though, didn't want to get carried away on that topic, so he settled for, "well. It's good, this."
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