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invisible_lift Jan. 29th, 2009 05:22 am)
invisible_lift Jan. 29th, 2009 05:22 am)Title: "What They Reap, And What Is Sown"
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: Overall: Ianto/Andy, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Ianto/Andy, with occasional guest cameos.
Rating: Series ranges from relatively safe to hard NC-17. This one is in the R-ish to NC-17 range for a little bit of language and smut.
Notes/Summary: Part #32 of the "It'll End In Tears" cluster, and who knows where it goes on the table, really. Thanks to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sanginmychains and resourceress for giving this the sweet, hot beta-fu. Also, borrowings and refrences to 2x11 ("Adrift") ahoy.
"History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." - Karl Marx
When they’d finished up at the Barrage, it was like a weight off of his shoulders. The thought that maybe Gwen really didn’t know about Jonah Bevan was reassuring. He wanted to believe that she wasn’t caught up in something that hurt people, even if his own recent experiences with Torchwood told him differently. But this was Gwen. She cared about people more fiercely than most people he’d met. He might expect a little bit of secrecy, but he'd been sure Gwen would come through for him.
Stonewalling him, though? He’d definitely not expected that. Nor the way she’d just shrugged him off when he called her on it. “You know what’s happened to you Gwen? You’ve got hard,” he’d said, and she’d just blown it off, gave him some bollocks about how maybe she’d had to.
Well, that was just fine. If she was too Torchwood to help these days, she could sodding well keep Torchwood. Andy, meanwhile, wants to be anywhere but Forte’s. He can think of a million things he’d rather be doing than watching her go back on her word because Jack Harkness is a liar.
Frankly, it stings. It makes Ianto’s betrayal feel that much more palpable as well. Whatever Harkness does to ensure that kind of loyalty can’t be safe. Or legal. Andy buries his hands deeper in his pockets and thinks angrily of just how close he’d been to turning himself over to Jack like that.
His mind throws up an image of Gwen hanging from her wrists like he’d done. He thinks about Jack’s hands all over her, breaking her down until she gives in. It makes him sick.
The only thing that stops him going for a walk is the fact that he's still in uniform, and it really wouldn't do to be mistaken for on-duty in a mood like this. He makes a beeline for his car instead, and yanks the door shut with a fair bit more force than necessary. He jams the key in the ignition and pulls away from the kerb hard enough his tires nearly squeal.
It may be that he takes a couple of turns more aggressively than usual on his way home, or drives a little too fast on the straightaways, but it turns out alright. He strips out of his coat and throws it at whichever piece of furniture he sees first, then digs in his cabinets for the bottle of Gordon’s he’s pretty sure Rebecca left when she moved out. Sure enough, he finds it behind the tinned veg. He wipes away the thin film of dust with a tea towel, twists off the cap, and settles down in front of the telly. Gin has never been his thing, especially not neat, but drinking for pleasure isn’t really his aim tonight.
As an afterthought he checks his alarm. Nikki’s support group thing is tomorrow, and he’d rather not miss it on account of getting bladdered. Plus, going makes him better than Gwen. He might not be able to fix Nikki’s problems, but he can damn well hold the moral high ground, can’t he?
To Torchwood, Andy thinks as he grimaces at his first swig from the bottle. May they all go fuck themselves, the bastards.
# # #
Andy stops in the grass when he spots Gwen. She’s in front of the posting board outside the All Saints Church hall, and the sight of her makes him grit his teeth. There’s no way he could have expected it after last night at Forte’s, and he’s ambivalent about her change of heart. On the one hand, he’s getting sick of her stringing him along. She’s here, though. He might as well take advantage of that.
“You’re looking into it, then,” he says as he approaches.
Gwen looks up, either noticing him for the first time or finally deciding to acknowledge him. “Still the same old me,” she tells him without bothering to conceal the slight edge in her words.
Given a choice Andy would rise to it, but this isn’t about him. It’s about finding a lost boy. “Thank you,” he says, and tries to mean it.
She peels off from the notice board and passes him. “Yeah, well, I don’t know why I bother, you're so rude.”
Same old Gwen, alright.
“How’s Rhys?” he asks, then mutters, “Other than hungry?” just low enough that he doesn’t think she’ll hear. She might, though, if the look she gives him is anything to go by.
They’re the first two in, aside from Nikki, and for a while it looks like the three of them will be the only ones in attendance. After some small talk, he winds up kicking himself quietly for being an arse and quoting Field of Dreams (which apparently neither Nikki nor Gwen has seen). He starts to lose hope until a couple come in looking for Searchlight. Almost right away a Sikh bloke and a middle-aged couple follow them, and then a girl in a grey wool cardigan.
Frankly, it’s all a bit Twilight Zone. He leans over to ask Gwen if she knows what’s happening, but she’s on her feet before he has a chance to speak. Andy follows her to the edge of the room to watch as the room starts to fill up for what looks like the world’s most depressing party. “Bloody hell!” he whispers at her. “How many of them are there?”
Gwen shakes her head and rushes out.
Andy sighs and tries to catch Nikki’s eye. She’s busy, though, and ends up giving him a distracted little wave. He sighs and hurries out after Gwen, who’s dashed out and looks…pained? Panicked?
Not as hard as all that after all.
# # #
As briefings go, Ianto is pretty sure this one couldn’t get much worse. Gwen has managed to stumble onto the Flat Holm project more or less by accident. Toshiko (who doesn’t know) has been helping her. Owen (who does know) is trying to dissuade her. Jack, meanwhile, probably couldn’t bristle more if he’d been descended from hedgehogs.
“We can help them,” Gwen says, clearly desperate to persuade them. “We don't have to be this hard. It's not a badge of hon –“
“Close this down,” Jack barks, and punctuates it with a jab of his finger before he storms off into the corridor.
Gwen shouts after him, but Ianto is already on his feet between them in an effort to placate her. “I’ll talk to him,” he says, and hurries after Jack. It doesn’t stop Gwen making a parting shot about sweeping things under the rug, but it puts her off at least while he catches up.
“Do you think maybe you could be a bit less subtle?”
Jack lets out a little huff and faces him. “You want to have this conversation now?”
“Better now and where she can see us having it than off in some corner where all she can do is speculate. You know that as well as I do.”
“Yeah, and you know perfectly well why she’s in the dark on this.”
Ianto scowls. “Of course I do. This is why. But I also know that now she’s got the scent of it, she’s not going to let it go. I could hide it before, but there’s a difference between keeping something out of sight and –”
“Not in this case, there isn’t,” Jack snaps as Owen brushes past. “I don’t know if you noticed, but she’s not talking about providing these people better care, or healing their wounds. She’s talking about telling their families where they are, what’s happened to them. She’ll blow the lid off of – ”
“She’d do that anyway.” Ianto’s attention wavers as Tosh hurries after Owen. It’s only Gwen left in the room now, and she doesn’t look like she’s moving. “Look, all I’m saying is that we need to control the flow of information.”
“And that’s exactly what I expect you to do. Control it. Cut it off. No excuses.”
Ianto is left standing with his hands on his hips, wondering how the hell he’s meant to execute that order. He looks back at Gwen, who’s got this look like she’s failed somehow, except really she’s done anything but. Hadn’t Jack hired her for her bleeding heart and her unyielding investigative eye? Telling her ‘no’ wouldn’t solve anything but send her off in other directions.
She looks down, and he bites down his frustration enough to go back in to gather the leftover papers from the table and straighten the chairs. “It’s after five.”
Gwen makes a token effort at clearing her spot at the head of the table, which mostly amounts to her stuffing everything into a folder. When she looks up at him again she has that same look about her that he remembers from her first few cases: disappointed and defiant in equal measure. “Thanks for trying, Ianto.” She puts her hand on his shoulder to give it a squeeze before she walks out into the corridor and out of sight.
On the floor, Ianto notices a couple of pages stapled together. They’re not part of the handouts from the briefing, which piques his curiosity. A cursory look reveals them to be a copy of the initial police report on Jonah’s disappearance. There’s a rough timeline, a few people’s names and numbers, that sort of thing. His eyes linger on the handwritten bits, which manage to be both clear and messy through some peculiarity of the penmanship. There’s something quite familiar about it, and he skips to the signature line at the bottom of the page.
A. Davidson.
Jonah was – is? – one of Andy’s cases. Well, of course. How else would Gwen have found out about this without talking to the police? Ianto folds the report into quarters and tucks it into his inside jacket pocket. He doesn’t doubt that Jack could know this, but it’s a safe bet he probably doesn’t. Not yet.
Jack’s chair sits empty at the other end of the table. Ianto doesn’t – can’t – dispute that what Jack does for victims of the Rift is the closest Torchwood has to a right thing. The world isn’t ready for them, and most of them aren’t ready for the world either. As horrible as it is, keeping them hidden is a mercy for their families. Being told that your son or daughter had been irreparably changed by alien forces is a bit like being told they’d gone to Hell, isn’t it? In some cases, that’s not far off. Ianto knows Jonah’s file. He’d been among the first to hear that impossible scream, and he’d had nightmares for a week.
No, better that people like Jonah could stay missing. At least then their loved ones might still hope.
He pushes Gwen’s chair in and picks up his stack of papers. The question isn’t whether to tell the families. Not really. The question is how to teach Gwen the necessity of what Torchwood – and in this case Torchwood definitely means Jack – does. To learn that, she needs to meet it face to face. He can engineer that easily enough. Andy might be a bit of a wild card, but Gwen’s track record for keeping him in the dark where Torchwood is concerned is good enough that Ianto is willing to risk it.
By the time he steps through the tiled archway into the main Hub it’s clear Jack has already dismissed everyone for the night. There’s a light on in Jack’s office, but the door is closed. Resolved, Ianto takes advantage of the moment to pull a GPS unit out of stores, program it, and then stuff it (with the police report) into a battered yellow mailer. He drops it haphazardly on Gwen’s desk in the hope that it won’t seem out of place.
“I thought you’d gone.”
Ianto startles at Jack’s voice, and he throws himself into tidying Gwen’s workstation in an effort not to look guilty. It’s not the first time he’s used busy hands to hide his sins. “Nope, just finishing up. Sometimes I think you’ve sent out a memo asking everyone to leave me a thing or two to clean up before they go.”
“Do you think that would work?” Jack’s face lights up like he’s just had a brilliant idea as he bounds out into the Hub and walks up close behind Ianto. The packet sits in plain sight, just within reach.
“Actually, I think it might be the only thing on the planet capable of making Owen pick up after himself.” Ianto turns his head a little. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to help me carry a couple of mugs over to the kitchenette?”
Jack’s lips brush the side of Ianto’s neck when he speaks. “I might be persuaded, though I had more interesting things in mind.”
“Oh?” Ianto hopes he sounds more idly curious than nervous, and it must work because Jack’s hands slide in under his jacket to rest at his waist. Or maybe it doesn’t and Jack is just coming in for the kill.
“Oh yeah.” Jack’s voice is low and sultry as he presses up against Ianto’s arse and grinds slowly. He’s already half-hard, and Ianto can’t decide whether to feel proud, shocked, or turned on by Jack’s sudden shifts in tone. Considering that not twenty-five minutes ago Jack was actually ordering him around, maybe a mix of all three isn’t totally inappropriate. Jack’s hands feel like he’s only barely keeping them in check, and the thin fabric of his shirt does more to amplify that than dampen it.
Jack nips at the shell of Ianto’s ear. “Show me what you’re hiding,” he murmurs as his hands finally slide down and away from Ianto’s waist to the front of his hips, fingertips just shy of the line of his cock.
“Jack, I –“ he starts to explain, but Jack cuts him off.
“Under that coat. Under your clothes. I want to see your skin,” he whispers as he keeps up his incessant rhythm. Ianto can’t help but push back against him. When he does, Jack’s hands grip at the front of his hips and pull him in even tighter. “Do you want to, Ianto? Like this? Right here? I could make you come all over my hand, make you suck my fingers clean –”
Ianto shakes his head and doesn’t look at the packet because he’s got to squeeze his eyes shut on account of the way Jack’s teasing him with those damned hands of his. “Not here.”
“Where?”
“G-go to the boardroom,” Ianto stammers. It’s the first thing that comes to mind because it’ll get Jack out of the damned Hub. “Count to 100. When you’re done, come find me. I’ll be ready to go.”
Jack draws a shaky breath. “Naked hide-and-seek. Nice.”
“Your idea.” Ianto shifts out of Jack’s grip and starts undoing his tie. “Now hurry up. Wouldn’t want me to get bored or lonely and finish up without you.” He sounds more confident than he feels, but this is familiar territory, and it’s easy to let the old habits take over.
“Never happen,” Jack tells him with a grin that makes him look like the cat that’s got not only the cream, but the canary, and maybe an arrangement with the local fishmonger.
Ianto waits until he’s out of sight to pause and let out a sigh of relief. He’s not caught. Not yet, at any rate. He glares briefly at the packet. It’s a terrible idea, but it’s also the lesser of two evils as far as he can tell. There will probably be hell to pay in any case.
He shucks off his jacket and gets started on the buttons of his shirt.
---
Prev (Pt #31) (Warnings: language.)
-
Next (Pt #33) (Warnings: language and smut)
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: Overall: Ianto/Andy, Jack/Ianto, Jack/Ianto/Andy, with occasional guest cameos.
Rating: Series ranges from relatively safe to hard NC-17. This one is in the R-ish to NC-17 range for a little bit of language and smut.
Notes/Summary: Part #32 of the "It'll End In Tears" cluster, and who knows where it goes on the table, really. Thanks to
sanginmychains and resourceress for giving this the sweet, hot beta-fu. Also, borrowings and refrences to 2x11 ("Adrift") ahoy."History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce." - Karl Marx
When they’d finished up at the Barrage, it was like a weight off of his shoulders. The thought that maybe Gwen really didn’t know about Jonah Bevan was reassuring. He wanted to believe that she wasn’t caught up in something that hurt people, even if his own recent experiences with Torchwood told him differently. But this was Gwen. She cared about people more fiercely than most people he’d met. He might expect a little bit of secrecy, but he'd been sure Gwen would come through for him.
Stonewalling him, though? He’d definitely not expected that. Nor the way she’d just shrugged him off when he called her on it. “You know what’s happened to you Gwen? You’ve got hard,” he’d said, and she’d just blown it off, gave him some bollocks about how maybe she’d had to.
Well, that was just fine. If she was too Torchwood to help these days, she could sodding well keep Torchwood. Andy, meanwhile, wants to be anywhere but Forte’s. He can think of a million things he’d rather be doing than watching her go back on her word because Jack Harkness is a liar.
Frankly, it stings. It makes Ianto’s betrayal feel that much more palpable as well. Whatever Harkness does to ensure that kind of loyalty can’t be safe. Or legal. Andy buries his hands deeper in his pockets and thinks angrily of just how close he’d been to turning himself over to Jack like that.
His mind throws up an image of Gwen hanging from her wrists like he’d done. He thinks about Jack’s hands all over her, breaking her down until she gives in. It makes him sick.
The only thing that stops him going for a walk is the fact that he's still in uniform, and it really wouldn't do to be mistaken for on-duty in a mood like this. He makes a beeline for his car instead, and yanks the door shut with a fair bit more force than necessary. He jams the key in the ignition and pulls away from the kerb hard enough his tires nearly squeal.
It may be that he takes a couple of turns more aggressively than usual on his way home, or drives a little too fast on the straightaways, but it turns out alright. He strips out of his coat and throws it at whichever piece of furniture he sees first, then digs in his cabinets for the bottle of Gordon’s he’s pretty sure Rebecca left when she moved out. Sure enough, he finds it behind the tinned veg. He wipes away the thin film of dust with a tea towel, twists off the cap, and settles down in front of the telly. Gin has never been his thing, especially not neat, but drinking for pleasure isn’t really his aim tonight.
As an afterthought he checks his alarm. Nikki’s support group thing is tomorrow, and he’d rather not miss it on account of getting bladdered. Plus, going makes him better than Gwen. He might not be able to fix Nikki’s problems, but he can damn well hold the moral high ground, can’t he?
To Torchwood, Andy thinks as he grimaces at his first swig from the bottle. May they all go fuck themselves, the bastards.
# # #
Andy stops in the grass when he spots Gwen. She’s in front of the posting board outside the All Saints Church hall, and the sight of her makes him grit his teeth. There’s no way he could have expected it after last night at Forte’s, and he’s ambivalent about her change of heart. On the one hand, he’s getting sick of her stringing him along. She’s here, though. He might as well take advantage of that.
“You’re looking into it, then,” he says as he approaches.
Gwen looks up, either noticing him for the first time or finally deciding to acknowledge him. “Still the same old me,” she tells him without bothering to conceal the slight edge in her words.
Given a choice Andy would rise to it, but this isn’t about him. It’s about finding a lost boy. “Thank you,” he says, and tries to mean it.
She peels off from the notice board and passes him. “Yeah, well, I don’t know why I bother, you're so rude.”
Same old Gwen, alright.
“How’s Rhys?” he asks, then mutters, “Other than hungry?” just low enough that he doesn’t think she’ll hear. She might, though, if the look she gives him is anything to go by.
They’re the first two in, aside from Nikki, and for a while it looks like the three of them will be the only ones in attendance. After some small talk, he winds up kicking himself quietly for being an arse and quoting Field of Dreams (which apparently neither Nikki nor Gwen has seen). He starts to lose hope until a couple come in looking for Searchlight. Almost right away a Sikh bloke and a middle-aged couple follow them, and then a girl in a grey wool cardigan.
Frankly, it’s all a bit Twilight Zone. He leans over to ask Gwen if she knows what’s happening, but she’s on her feet before he has a chance to speak. Andy follows her to the edge of the room to watch as the room starts to fill up for what looks like the world’s most depressing party. “Bloody hell!” he whispers at her. “How many of them are there?”
Gwen shakes her head and rushes out.
Andy sighs and tries to catch Nikki’s eye. She’s busy, though, and ends up giving him a distracted little wave. He sighs and hurries out after Gwen, who’s dashed out and looks…pained? Panicked?
Not as hard as all that after all.
# # #
As briefings go, Ianto is pretty sure this one couldn’t get much worse. Gwen has managed to stumble onto the Flat Holm project more or less by accident. Toshiko (who doesn’t know) has been helping her. Owen (who does know) is trying to dissuade her. Jack, meanwhile, probably couldn’t bristle more if he’d been descended from hedgehogs.
“We can help them,” Gwen says, clearly desperate to persuade them. “We don't have to be this hard. It's not a badge of hon –“
“Close this down,” Jack barks, and punctuates it with a jab of his finger before he storms off into the corridor.
Gwen shouts after him, but Ianto is already on his feet between them in an effort to placate her. “I’ll talk to him,” he says, and hurries after Jack. It doesn’t stop Gwen making a parting shot about sweeping things under the rug, but it puts her off at least while he catches up.
“Do you think maybe you could be a bit less subtle?”
Jack lets out a little huff and faces him. “You want to have this conversation now?”
“Better now and where she can see us having it than off in some corner where all she can do is speculate. You know that as well as I do.”
“Yeah, and you know perfectly well why she’s in the dark on this.”
Ianto scowls. “Of course I do. This is why. But I also know that now she’s got the scent of it, she’s not going to let it go. I could hide it before, but there’s a difference between keeping something out of sight and –”
“Not in this case, there isn’t,” Jack snaps as Owen brushes past. “I don’t know if you noticed, but she’s not talking about providing these people better care, or healing their wounds. She’s talking about telling their families where they are, what’s happened to them. She’ll blow the lid off of – ”
“She’d do that anyway.” Ianto’s attention wavers as Tosh hurries after Owen. It’s only Gwen left in the room now, and she doesn’t look like she’s moving. “Look, all I’m saying is that we need to control the flow of information.”
“And that’s exactly what I expect you to do. Control it. Cut it off. No excuses.”
Ianto is left standing with his hands on his hips, wondering how the hell he’s meant to execute that order. He looks back at Gwen, who’s got this look like she’s failed somehow, except really she’s done anything but. Hadn’t Jack hired her for her bleeding heart and her unyielding investigative eye? Telling her ‘no’ wouldn’t solve anything but send her off in other directions.
She looks down, and he bites down his frustration enough to go back in to gather the leftover papers from the table and straighten the chairs. “It’s after five.”
Gwen makes a token effort at clearing her spot at the head of the table, which mostly amounts to her stuffing everything into a folder. When she looks up at him again she has that same look about her that he remembers from her first few cases: disappointed and defiant in equal measure. “Thanks for trying, Ianto.” She puts her hand on his shoulder to give it a squeeze before she walks out into the corridor and out of sight.
On the floor, Ianto notices a couple of pages stapled together. They’re not part of the handouts from the briefing, which piques his curiosity. A cursory look reveals them to be a copy of the initial police report on Jonah’s disappearance. There’s a rough timeline, a few people’s names and numbers, that sort of thing. His eyes linger on the handwritten bits, which manage to be both clear and messy through some peculiarity of the penmanship. There’s something quite familiar about it, and he skips to the signature line at the bottom of the page.
A. Davidson.
Jonah was – is? – one of Andy’s cases. Well, of course. How else would Gwen have found out about this without talking to the police? Ianto folds the report into quarters and tucks it into his inside jacket pocket. He doesn’t doubt that Jack could know this, but it’s a safe bet he probably doesn’t. Not yet.
Jack’s chair sits empty at the other end of the table. Ianto doesn’t – can’t – dispute that what Jack does for victims of the Rift is the closest Torchwood has to a right thing. The world isn’t ready for them, and most of them aren’t ready for the world either. As horrible as it is, keeping them hidden is a mercy for their families. Being told that your son or daughter had been irreparably changed by alien forces is a bit like being told they’d gone to Hell, isn’t it? In some cases, that’s not far off. Ianto knows Jonah’s file. He’d been among the first to hear that impossible scream, and he’d had nightmares for a week.
No, better that people like Jonah could stay missing. At least then their loved ones might still hope.
He pushes Gwen’s chair in and picks up his stack of papers. The question isn’t whether to tell the families. Not really. The question is how to teach Gwen the necessity of what Torchwood – and in this case Torchwood definitely means Jack – does. To learn that, she needs to meet it face to face. He can engineer that easily enough. Andy might be a bit of a wild card, but Gwen’s track record for keeping him in the dark where Torchwood is concerned is good enough that Ianto is willing to risk it.
By the time he steps through the tiled archway into the main Hub it’s clear Jack has already dismissed everyone for the night. There’s a light on in Jack’s office, but the door is closed. Resolved, Ianto takes advantage of the moment to pull a GPS unit out of stores, program it, and then stuff it (with the police report) into a battered yellow mailer. He drops it haphazardly on Gwen’s desk in the hope that it won’t seem out of place.
“I thought you’d gone.”
Ianto startles at Jack’s voice, and he throws himself into tidying Gwen’s workstation in an effort not to look guilty. It’s not the first time he’s used busy hands to hide his sins. “Nope, just finishing up. Sometimes I think you’ve sent out a memo asking everyone to leave me a thing or two to clean up before they go.”
“Do you think that would work?” Jack’s face lights up like he’s just had a brilliant idea as he bounds out into the Hub and walks up close behind Ianto. The packet sits in plain sight, just within reach.
“Actually, I think it might be the only thing on the planet capable of making Owen pick up after himself.” Ianto turns his head a little. “I don’t suppose I could convince you to help me carry a couple of mugs over to the kitchenette?”
Jack’s lips brush the side of Ianto’s neck when he speaks. “I might be persuaded, though I had more interesting things in mind.”
“Oh?” Ianto hopes he sounds more idly curious than nervous, and it must work because Jack’s hands slide in under his jacket to rest at his waist. Or maybe it doesn’t and Jack is just coming in for the kill.
“Oh yeah.” Jack’s voice is low and sultry as he presses up against Ianto’s arse and grinds slowly. He’s already half-hard, and Ianto can’t decide whether to feel proud, shocked, or turned on by Jack’s sudden shifts in tone. Considering that not twenty-five minutes ago Jack was actually ordering him around, maybe a mix of all three isn’t totally inappropriate. Jack’s hands feel like he’s only barely keeping them in check, and the thin fabric of his shirt does more to amplify that than dampen it.
Jack nips at the shell of Ianto’s ear. “Show me what you’re hiding,” he murmurs as his hands finally slide down and away from Ianto’s waist to the front of his hips, fingertips just shy of the line of his cock.
“Jack, I –“ he starts to explain, but Jack cuts him off.
“Under that coat. Under your clothes. I want to see your skin,” he whispers as he keeps up his incessant rhythm. Ianto can’t help but push back against him. When he does, Jack’s hands grip at the front of his hips and pull him in even tighter. “Do you want to, Ianto? Like this? Right here? I could make you come all over my hand, make you suck my fingers clean –”
Ianto shakes his head and doesn’t look at the packet because he’s got to squeeze his eyes shut on account of the way Jack’s teasing him with those damned hands of his. “Not here.”
“Where?”
“G-go to the boardroom,” Ianto stammers. It’s the first thing that comes to mind because it’ll get Jack out of the damned Hub. “Count to 100. When you’re done, come find me. I’ll be ready to go.”
Jack draws a shaky breath. “Naked hide-and-seek. Nice.”
“Your idea.” Ianto shifts out of Jack’s grip and starts undoing his tie. “Now hurry up. Wouldn’t want me to get bored or lonely and finish up without you.” He sounds more confident than he feels, but this is familiar territory, and it’s easy to let the old habits take over.
“Never happen,” Jack tells him with a grin that makes him look like the cat that’s got not only the cream, but the canary, and maybe an arrangement with the local fishmonger.
Ianto waits until he’s out of sight to pause and let out a sigh of relief. He’s not caught. Not yet, at any rate. He glares briefly at the packet. It’s a terrible idea, but it’s also the lesser of two evils as far as he can tell. There will probably be hell to pay in any case.
He shucks off his jacket and gets started on the buttons of his shirt.
---
Prev (Pt #31) (Warnings: language.)
-
Next (Pt #33) (Warnings: language and smut)