Some Things Can't Wait (Torchwood)
May. 5th, 2015 07:25 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
starfishstarSummary:
Jack burst into Ianto’s flat without knocking (typical Jack), framed himself dramatically in the doorway, and declared, “You were told about Flat Holm in the strictest confidence, Ianto!”
Ianto looked up from where he was making pizza – making enough for two, because Jack was so very predictable sometimes – and smiled at the picture Jack made, there in the doorway, indignant but never without his flare for the dramatic.
Characters/Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Words: ~1,200
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Set directly following “Adrift” (2x11). Also compliant with the “Captain’s Blog” entry for that episode (even if it may not seem like it at first!)
Also, partially inspired by a small bit in Chapter 3 of
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif){kind=small}
copperbadge’s story “Nicholas Redux.”Story also at AO3!
~ ~ ~ ~ ~
SOME THINGS CAN'T WAIT
Jack knew immediately, of course. One didn’t live through as many centuries as Jack had done without learning to put two and two together.
He burst into Ianto’s flat without knocking (typical Jack), framed himself dramatically in the doorway, and declared, “You were told about Flat Holm in the strictest confidence, Ianto!”
Ianto looked up from where he was making pizza – making enough for two, because Jack was so very predictable sometimes – and smiled at the picture Jack made, there in the doorway, indignant but never without his flare for the dramatic.
“Yes,” Ianto said, reaching for a kitchen towel to dust the flour off his hands. “And in turn, I told Gwen about it in confidence, and it seems to me her response has been entirely appropriate. And entirely in character,” he added.
“Which is why you never should have told her anything about it! Gwen is stubborn, she never lets a thing go once she’s got hold of it.”
“No,” Ianto retorted, more snappish than he’d intended, “you’re wrong.” He dropped the towel onto the worktop and put his hands on his hips, to resist the urge to stride across the room and shake Jack firmly by the shoulders. “She never lets a thing go until she gets hold of it. You keeping her in the dark, Jack, that’s what made her determined to search until she figured out what you were hiding. Now that she’s got her answer, she’s come around to understanding it. But if she hadn’t seen Flat Holm with her own eyes, she would have gone on looking forever.”
Very suddenly, Jack seemed to deflate, slumping to the side against the doorframe. “Ianto –” he said brokenly.
Alarmed, Ianto started towards him, but Jack waved him off and crossed the flat instead, through the living room and into the open doorway of the kitchen in a few long strides, coming to lean cockily with his hip against one end of the worktop. He appeared to be pulling his defiant air back around himself, and mostly succeeding. Ianto gave him an assessing look, then returned to rolling out the dough into a round pizza crust. Jack, incorrigible, reached in to steal slices of bell pepper from the bowls of chopped vegetables Ianto had set out as his mise en place. Ianto slapped his hand away, but not before Jack had got hold of several pieces of pepper, chuckling. He brought them to his mouth and crunched loudly.
“Seriously,” Jack said, when he’d finished. He was leaning in close to Ianto’s personal space and making it hard to think. “You cannot second-guess my orders. When I tell you something is confidential, it has to stay confidential. Torchwood business stays within Torchwood.”
“Is that why you told me about Flat Holm here, then, in my flat?” Ianto asked mildly, his eyes following the lovely swath of smoothness left behind by his rolling pin.
Jack was strangely silent for so long that Ianto finally looked up, and found Jack’s eyes fixed on him, shockingly wide and blue.
“Ianto –” Jack said again, and again broke off unfinished.
Ianto looked down at his flour-covered hands, and up again at Jack. “That wasn’t meant as an accusation,” he said finally.
“I can’t be the captain all the time,” Jack said, his voice low and rushed. “I need – I have to be able to set it aside, for a little while, sometimes. There are so many burdens, Ianto –”
Ianto remembered when Jack had told him about Flat Holm, a fervent whisper in the dark, when he’d thought Jack was long since asleep. And he remembered Jack jauntily swinging into his trousers and braces the next morning, all smiles and ribald jokes, as if the horrors he’d described in the night had never existed. Maybe Jack tried, whenever he could, to believe they didn’t exist.
“She needed to know,” Ianto said softly. It seemed a poor answer to such a breach of trust. He’d made use of knowledge he’d gained only because Jack could no longer bear to carry it all alone. And yet, Ianto knew he hadn’t been wrong. “And sometimes, you make mistakes. I have to be allowed to tell you when you make mistakes.”
Jack nodded, slowly, as if the weight of the world rode on the gesture. He was only a hand’s breadth away from Ianto now.
“That’s why you brought Gwen into the team,” Ianto continued. “To be our heart, our conscience. So you have to let her know these things. She won’t be satisfied with not knowing.”
“She’s not the only one,” Jack murmured, his eyes seeming to drill hot holes straight through Ianto. Ianto felt himself start to sweat from the sheer proximity of Jack. Jack being his terrifying, beautiful, extraordinary self.
“Not sure I catch your meaning, sir,” Ianto murmured back. His hands hovered by Jack’s sides, still covered in flour. He doubted Jack would mind.
“You,” Jack said, his voice pitched low and electrifying. “Some days I think you’re the brain and the heart.”
“What part does that make you, then?” Ianto asked. It was so easy to slip into the saucily nonchalant tone he knew Jack loved.
Jack smirked. “Oh, I think you know.”
“Care to show me?”
Jack smirked and smirked, but his eyes went sad as he reached for Ianto. “Yes,” he whispered into Ianto’s ear.
Ianto hastily brushed away as much of the flour as he could, then pressed his hands into Jack’s back, pulling him tightly to his chest. “What about the pizza?” he murmured back.
“Sod the pizza.”
Ianto snorted. “I hope that’s not an indictment of my cookery.”
The smile returned to Jack’s voice. “Never. But your cookery will be just as good a few hours from now. Whereas there are other things that can’t wait so long.”
Ianto slid one hand higher, to rest against Jack’s neck, and Jack dropped his head onto Ianto’s shoulder.
“Is it really so terrible?” Ianto murmured into Jack’s soft hair. “To give up control just occasionally?”
“Not if you’re the one I’m giving up to,” Jack mumbled, his voice obscured somewhere around Ianto’s shirt collar, and Ianto’s breath caught. Jack smiled, a warm motion against Ianto’s throat. “Plenty more where that came from,” he muttered huskily into Ianto’s skin. But, despite his words, Jack’s hands showed no sign of getting enthusiastically grope-y, like they usually would do. Jack just rested his head on Ianto’s shoulder and sighed.
This wasn’t Jack the commander, or Jack the suave seducer. This was Jack who had seen too many terrible things, many lifetimes’ worth of terrible things, and once in a great while needed a place where he could fall to pieces. Ianto quietly resolved, as he had resolved so often before, to be that place where Jack could fall apart.
“Come on,” Ianto said softly, his breath ruffling the hair at the crown of Jack’s head. “I’m taking you to bed.”
Jack smirked against his collarbone and started up a renewed litany of lewd innuendos, which Ianto smiled and gently ignored, as he led Jack to his room.
End note: From the BBC's "Captain's Blog" for this episode:
"Gwen would never have found the facility if Ianto hadn’t helped her. He was wrong to do that. But, of course, he was actually right in the end. There’s no way Gwen would have let it go. I should have trusted her with the information, but I knew what it would do to her. Sometimes, the only way to realise that you shouldn’t look behind that door is to actually go and look. [...] Seeing Gwen experience it for the first time took me right back to when I first heard that terrible scream. After Gwen had gone home, I just held on to Ianto for a couple of hours, as tightly as I could."
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no subject
Date: 2015-05-06 08:46 am (UTC)Oh, another wonderful story, I love their interaction.
This paragraph starting with “I can’t be the captain all the time,” reminded me of a story by nancybrown called Promotion. If you haven't read it I think you'd enjoy it - and if you have read it you'll know what I mean.
And Nicholas, yay - I love the Rules!verse so much, even after all these years.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-06 06:51 pm (UTC)Rulesverse! Sam is my favorite fanfic author, bar none, and I'm so pleased that now that I know Torchwood, it opens up a whole new wing of his fic to me. Still working my way through his longfic, but he's already influenced my conception of the characters immeasurably.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-11 04:57 am (UTC)Luckily you don't need to have seen CoE to read Promotion, all you need to know is it's set after the end of s2 and they have acquired some new staff - one's from the past (Perry) and a couple are from a pesky incident with the 456 (which did not end up killing a certain favourite team member). All is well.
ETA - something weird happened the first time I submitted this comment.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-11 05:58 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-06 08:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-05-06 06:59 pm (UTC)That was one of the first and only things I knew about Torchwood before I started watching it: That fans didn't have to invent gay, bi, etc. characters and relationships because they actually exist in canon on Torchwood. Yes, more of that in mainstream media, please!
Torchwood is ridiculous, over-the-top and sometimes hilariously bad...but when it's good, it's so, so good. And the characters won my heart, instantly and completely.
no subject
Date: 2015-05-06 07:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-18 03:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-06-18 09:55 pm (UTC)