"To Your Health"

[invisible_lift]

Title: "To Your Health"
Disclaimer: Being a bloke who likes to slash pretty men doesn't make me RTD, I don't work for the BBC, and as much as I might like to, I don't own Jack or Ianto or any part of Torchwood. I do, however, order pizza under that name on principle.
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Jack/OC
Rating/Notes: Adult for explicit sex, images of war, and murder. Written for December 10. 2008 at tw_calender. Prompt: eggnog. Fleeting reference to "Montmartre." Thanks to gypsylady for suggesting it might have a place at tw_cooks!
Recipe Info: The recipe I used for prompt sections is not mine, though I did edit it for flow. It can be found in its original form here.



In a large bowl, beat the egg yolks together with the sugar.

“Here, try some,” his mother said, and passed him a spoon.

His hands were almost as big as his mother’s, but he still held the spoon in tight in his fist as if he were afraid to drop it. Cautiously, he licked some of the sticky orange mixture away from the wood. It was sweet, and a little bit gritty. “This doesn’t taste like kui cakes.”

“Not yet,” she told him with a smile and tousled his hair. “But when it’s cooked it will, and then we can eat it while you and your friends drink emeka around the bonfires.”

He licked the spoon again, bolder this time. He decided he liked unbaked kui cakes.

Very slowly, add in the bourbon and brandy - just a little at a time.

Life ripped back into him with a fury that left him screaming. He was half-mad with death, and he panicked at the acrid stink that still managed to hold in the frosty air. For a moment he panicked and held his breath in an irrational effort to deny that he was alive, but it was no use. He shivered in the ice and mud.

“I thought you were dead,” a voice said above him in thickly accented English.

“No such luck,” Jack groaned. His belt was undone, and his tunic coat was soaked with blood and filth, but otherwise everything seemed to be in order. He looked up to see a scruffy blond kid – nineteen, maybe twenty under that beard – in a ragged blue wool infantryman’s uniform. “I’m on the French line?”

“Oui,” the kid replied, and passed Jack a flask. “You are American?”

Jack took a pull from the flask and made a face. It was all he could do not to choke on what was positively the rankest, most horrible brandy he’d ever tasted. “More or less. Long story.”

“Of course.” The kid took back his flask and shouted a bit of rapid-fire French back over his shoulder. There was too much noise for it to be intelligible from where Jack crouched, but a few of the other soldiers grumbled and shouted back.

Jack gave him a quizzical look. “What was that all about?”

The kid shrugged. “I am telling them that you are not dead, and therefore they may not have your sidearm. Or your boots. The rest of you we would probably return to the British at the first opportunity.”

“How generous of you.” He extended a hand. “Jack Harkness.”

The boy took it. “Jean-Alexis Courdray. Why are you so far from the British line? Are you…what is the word? Deserting?”

Jack’s laugh was harsh and almost grating. “Lost, actually. My section – my whole platoon, I think – is gone.”

“Missing?”

“Dead.”

“Unlucky.” Jean-Alexis pocketed his flask and gestured for Jack to follow. “My Adjudant saw you awaken. I think he’s gone to ask the Major what to do about you. Strange men do not often fall into our trenches.”

Jack grinned. “Yeah? What happens when they do?”

Jean-Alexis gave Jack an appraising, serious look. “We shoot them.”

When bourbon and brandy have been added, allow the mixture to cool.

“How much did he have on him?” Moira asked and eyed the body on the bed. He hadn’t gone down easy. It’d taken both of them to manage it. Now that he was dead, though, he didn’t seem dangerous anymore. Just dead.

Lizzy giggled. “I’m still counting! He’s rich, this one is. We could go to London!”

“You and London,” Moira huffed and sat down on the mattress. She shoved one of his legs aside and made herself comfortable. “It’s sort of a shame. This one was good with his hands. Sort of pretty, too.”

“Not pretty much longer.”

Moira turned back to look at him. They hadn’t done up his trousers yet. His eyes stared blankly up at the filthy, yellowed ceiling. He’d had nice lips, too. He’d been pretty, and they’d all had a drink and a bit of fun before lovely Lizzy took a bootlace and yanked it tight around his throat. “No, I suppose not.”

“You know,” Lizzy said, low and naughty. “I’ve heard that sometimes, even after they’re dead, it sticks straight up like an iron rod.”

“Oh!” Moira exclaimed, shocked and giggling as she leaned over to shove Jenny. “That’s awful. You’re awful!”

“What’s even more awful is that they can still –“

“Oh!” Moira gasped and covered her mouth. She was repulsed, of course. It was too disgusting to even contemplate. But she was still curious. She peeked at him to see if maybe his prick might be poking up just a little. The sound of a revolver cocking next to her ear stopped her short.

“See something you like?” the man asked, the stillness of death replaced with a lopsided grin.

Moira screamed.

Stir the milk into the chilled yolk mixture. Add ground nutmeg.

“Careful,” Toshiko told him. Her hair was pulled back, but a stray strand hung prettily along her cheek and softened the line of her safety glasses. “It’s highly volatile. If it warms up even a little bit – ”

Jack nodded slowly on the other side of the blast shield. “Kaboom. I know.”

He adjusted his own gloves and safety glasses. They wouldn’t do him any good if things went wrong, obviously. He thought about telling her about the radiation chamber at the end of the world, and how this wasn’t nearly as bad, but that was the beginning of a very long story, and one that he didn’t much feel like telling anyone yet. Not even Ianto. Patient, careful Ianto who would definitely not approve of him putting himself at risk like this, immortality or no.

“Okay, Jack. Go ahead and start mixing in the crystals.”

The granules sparkled blue in the light as he tipped the glass tube to spill them into the amber fluid. With his other hand he stirred so, so gently with a thin glass rod. Distribution was key to stabilization. Otherwise, it was possible to have small pockets of unstable material that could go off at any time.

“Just a bit more,” Toshiko told him. Out of the corner of his eye he could see her scanning the beaker with her PDA. “Just about there. And…perfect.”

“We’re done?” Jack asked and stilled his hands.

Toshiko nodded. “Yep! Give it a couple of hours to gel and it should be safe to incinerate. Or store, I suppose.”

“Yeah, you never know when you’ll want a beaker of glittery blue alien jelly,” he replied with a wink and pulled off his gloves.

Gently fold the egg white mixture into the egg yolk mixture, and then fold the cream into the egg mixture.

Ianto groaned low and writhed in his hands.

“Like that?”

“Oh yes,” Ianto gasped. “Just like –”

Jack twisted his wrist and Ianto’s back arched almost violently. His eyelids fluttered, and he made a sound almost but not quite like whimpering as Jack worked him.

“Ride me. Ride my fingers,” Jack murmured against the skin of Ianto’s thigh and smiled at the way Ianto began to mouth the word ‘yes’ over and over again like a prayer.

Jack licked his lips and took the head of Ianto’s cock into his mouth.

After ladling into cups, garnish with the remainder of the ground nutmeg.

“Is that eggnog?” Ianto asked, baffled.

“Sort of,” Jack said. He had that strange and terrible look in his eyes like he’d remembered something from before being buried. These memories were always somewhat random and intense, and Ianto occasionally found them unsettling. Still, considering that Jack had been buried for two thousand years, they were lucky he could remember anything at all.

“We called it spicy egg cream,” Jack went on excitedly. “We’d drink it in the summer when I was a boy. Here, taste.”

Ianto took the wooden spoon from Jack’s hand and gave it a sniff. It seemed harmless enough.

“I haven’t figured out how to make the cakes that go with it,” Jack went on. “They were made with a sort of fruit paste, I think. I’m not sure.”

“It’s good,” Ianto said, surprised in spite of himself. The flavor was something like vanilla custard and ginger, but sharp and with a little bit of a burn, like if a Thai curry crashed into an ice cream cart.

“Do you want to share a cup with me?” Jack asked, looking a little wild-eyed but also pleased. “We could mix in a little bit of brandy. The grownups would do that sometimes. Well, not brandy, exactly, but –”

“Brandy sounds fine.” Ianto passed Jack a mug and watched in amusement as Jack went prowling through the cupboards for biscuits. He dipped the spoon in the pot for another taste. “What did you say this was called?”

“Spicy egg cream.”

“It’s good. I like it.”

“I like you,” Jack declared as he emerged with a bottle of brandy and a half-empty pack of possibly stale Jammie Dodgers. “Now come on. Let’s enjoy this before it gets cold.”