invisible_lift (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
invisible_lift) wrote2009-04-10 05:54 am
invisible_lift) wrote2009-04-10 05:54 am
It'll End in Tears #34: Persistent and Lasting
Title: "Persistent and Lasting"
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 PG-ish range.
Notes/Summary: Part #34 of the "It'll End In Tears" cluster. 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, minor borrowings and refrences to 2x11-2x13 ahoy. This is, admittedly, both short in words and long in coming, for which I apologize (and commend you all on your patience). It's also the next to last chunk, and #35 is already in the hands of my betas. Doom.
By the time Jack returns to the Hub, afternoon has slipped uncomfortably into evening. Ianto has waited for him, more or less, by working slowly through his maintenance checklist. He’s dotted every t and crossed every i with the certain knowledge that Jack will very probably use words like “insubordination” and “betrayal” to describe his actions, and that those are words which may or may not come with other words.
Like, for example, “suspension.”
If he’s going to be in that sort of trouble, Ianto prefers to do it properly.
The list isn’t infinite, though, and eventually he has to move on to the little things that everyone keeps putting off: labeling old files, making minor adjustments to equipment that no one ever uses, updating various bits of documentation. Busy work, really. He could just as easily sit and wait, but that feels uncomfortably close to waiting for the headmaster to arrive. Going home, though, would look like evasion.
He is seated at Suzie’s old work table making fine adjustments to a piece of equipment that hasn’t been used since about 1987 when the entry alarm sounds. Gwen doesn’t notice him when she comes in. She simply crosses the Hub and disappears down a set of steps, presumably to clear out the room she’s been using to collect evidence pertaining to the Rift spikes that led her to Flat Holm.
Jack arrives two minutes after and enters through the garage. He looks at the work table more than he looks at Ianto as he breezes past. “I forgot we even had that thing,” he says without stopping and disappears into his office.
Ianto closes his eyes, sighs, and puts down the soldering iron. Time to bite the bullet.
Jack is already at his desk when Ianto enters. Ianto watches in silence as Jack sorts through a stack of papers, signs something, and moves on. He clears his throat and Jack looks up only briefly, and then goes back to his stack.
“So,” Ianto says. He tries to sound casual.
Jack puts down his pen and sits back. “You know, for a power struggle, this seems awfully domestic.”
“I think your sense of domesticity has been hopelessly skewed by the media,” Ianto says as he fidgets with one of his cuffs. “And it isn’t a power struggle. You gave me an impossible order. I fulfilled it as appropriately as I could under the circumstances.”
Jack gives Ianto a skeptical look then turns his chair slightly so that he can switch on his monitors. He brings up the CCTV monitoring software on his workstation and displays a feed of Gwen dismantling her makeshift work room. She moves through it systematically, taking down the maps, photos, and notes she’s collected and puts them into files. “At what point did ‘keep her in the dark’ turn into ‘give her a map to Flat Holm?’”
“Right about the time you confirmed that you’d prefer it if she didn’t ‘blow the lid off,’ I think.” Ianto crosses his arms, looks down. “You don’t think it’s humane, do you? Flat Holm.”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
Ianto closes his eyes and nods, tries not to think of Lisa, and how she’d been confined to the dark those last few months, neither truly dead nor alive. Compared to some of the other unsavory, morally questionable aspects of his work, Flat Holm is relatively benign. “Yes. It is.”
Jack doesn’t reply.
“You had good intentions,” Ianto says as he reaches down to straighten a stack of papers on Jack’s desk. “But sometimes I think you can’t decide whether to protect her or idealize her. You keep sticking Gwen on the wrong pedestal.”
“And which pedestal would you put her on?”
“I wouldn’t.”
The two of them watch her in silence. If Jack is angry, he doesn’t show it. Ianto suspects that Jack’s feelings are more complex than that, which means an explanation is almost certainly out of the question. Jack’s silence is rarely comforting, this particular bout included.
Jack stands when she’s nearly finished and walks out of the office. While he never quite comes into the camera’s view, Ianto watches anyway and knows from the sound of footsteps and from the way Gwen nearly but doesn’t quite look up that Jack has gone to watch her finish up. If the two of them speak on the way back into the Hub, Ianto has no way of telling. He watches from Jack’s office door as the two of them exchange an awkward ‘see you tomorrow.’
When Gwen leaves, Ianto tries to imagine the sort of night she’ll have at home. He wonders if she’ll tell Rhys about Flat Holm.
Jack looks his way. “Go home, Ianto.”
“Pardon?”
Jack leans against the post of Tosh’s workstation. “Go home. Get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ianto doesn’t bother arguing. He merely wonders idly if Jack’s propensity to brood has always been so well-established or if immortality brought it out in him. Just another question he’ll never get an answer to.
As he’s walking to his car, Ianto feels Andy’s bracelet in his coat pocket. Even now, he can’t quite bring himself to dispose of it. He strokes the soft leather with his thumb and sighs.
# # #
With Nikki gone, Andy’s life edges perilously close to normal. He realizes this one morning while he’s shaving and rinsing his razor under the tap. The last few months feel like the sort of hazy, uncomfortable dream you drag yourself out of before the alarm goes off. The distance is relief enough to temper some of the anger and the loneliness. The whole thing is too weird, too terribly fucked, but he made it through. It’s hard to imagine living that way now.
Work is work, and he enjoys it for the most part. Off-nights he goes to the pub, or watches videos, or goes jogging. He takes a weekend off to visit his family and helps his father clean the gutters. It’s his old life, and it’s pleasantly familiar.
He spots Torchwood only twice out on his beat, and he studiously ignores them. Afterward, he wonders more than he’d like whether or not the feeling is mutual. Whether Ianto sees him. Whether Gwen is sorry. When he writes in his notebooks, he leaves that out of it. He’d rather not acknowledge the feeling. It’s too much like tempting fate.
So when he hears the first of the screams and sees the first gout of blood spray onto the tiled corridor walls, his first thought is No. I have worked too hard for this. Stop taking my life away from me.
His second thought is to run.
---
Prev (Pt #33) (Warnings: language, smut, and potentially problematic kink (dominance play, edgeplay/breathplay) reference to voyeurism.
-
Next (Pt #35) (Warnings: Smiths references, language, post-EW angst.)
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 PG-ish range.
Notes/Summary: Part #34 of the "It'll End In Tears" cluster. Thanks to
sanginmychains and resourceress for giving this the sweet, hot beta-fu. Also, minor borrowings and refrences to 2x11-2x13 ahoy. This is, admittedly, both short in words and long in coming, for which I apologize (and commend you all on your patience). It's also the next to last chunk, and #35 is already in the hands of my betas. Doom.By the time Jack returns to the Hub, afternoon has slipped uncomfortably into evening. Ianto has waited for him, more or less, by working slowly through his maintenance checklist. He’s dotted every t and crossed every i with the certain knowledge that Jack will very probably use words like “insubordination” and “betrayal” to describe his actions, and that those are words which may or may not come with other words.
Like, for example, “suspension.”
If he’s going to be in that sort of trouble, Ianto prefers to do it properly.
The list isn’t infinite, though, and eventually he has to move on to the little things that everyone keeps putting off: labeling old files, making minor adjustments to equipment that no one ever uses, updating various bits of documentation. Busy work, really. He could just as easily sit and wait, but that feels uncomfortably close to waiting for the headmaster to arrive. Going home, though, would look like evasion.
He is seated at Suzie’s old work table making fine adjustments to a piece of equipment that hasn’t been used since about 1987 when the entry alarm sounds. Gwen doesn’t notice him when she comes in. She simply crosses the Hub and disappears down a set of steps, presumably to clear out the room she’s been using to collect evidence pertaining to the Rift spikes that led her to Flat Holm.
Jack arrives two minutes after and enters through the garage. He looks at the work table more than he looks at Ianto as he breezes past. “I forgot we even had that thing,” he says without stopping and disappears into his office.
Ianto closes his eyes, sighs, and puts down the soldering iron. Time to bite the bullet.
Jack is already at his desk when Ianto enters. Ianto watches in silence as Jack sorts through a stack of papers, signs something, and moves on. He clears his throat and Jack looks up only briefly, and then goes back to his stack.
“So,” Ianto says. He tries to sound casual.
Jack puts down his pen and sits back. “You know, for a power struggle, this seems awfully domestic.”
“I think your sense of domesticity has been hopelessly skewed by the media,” Ianto says as he fidgets with one of his cuffs. “And it isn’t a power struggle. You gave me an impossible order. I fulfilled it as appropriately as I could under the circumstances.”
Jack gives Ianto a skeptical look then turns his chair slightly so that he can switch on his monitors. He brings up the CCTV monitoring software on his workstation and displays a feed of Gwen dismantling her makeshift work room. She moves through it systematically, taking down the maps, photos, and notes she’s collected and puts them into files. “At what point did ‘keep her in the dark’ turn into ‘give her a map to Flat Holm?’”
“Right about the time you confirmed that you’d prefer it if she didn’t ‘blow the lid off,’ I think.” Ianto crosses his arms, looks down. “You don’t think it’s humane, do you? Flat Holm.”
“It’s better than the alternative.”
Ianto closes his eyes and nods, tries not to think of Lisa, and how she’d been confined to the dark those last few months, neither truly dead nor alive. Compared to some of the other unsavory, morally questionable aspects of his work, Flat Holm is relatively benign. “Yes. It is.”
Jack doesn’t reply.
“You had good intentions,” Ianto says as he reaches down to straighten a stack of papers on Jack’s desk. “But sometimes I think you can’t decide whether to protect her or idealize her. You keep sticking Gwen on the wrong pedestal.”
“And which pedestal would you put her on?”
“I wouldn’t.”
The two of them watch her in silence. If Jack is angry, he doesn’t show it. Ianto suspects that Jack’s feelings are more complex than that, which means an explanation is almost certainly out of the question. Jack’s silence is rarely comforting, this particular bout included.
Jack stands when she’s nearly finished and walks out of the office. While he never quite comes into the camera’s view, Ianto watches anyway and knows from the sound of footsteps and from the way Gwen nearly but doesn’t quite look up that Jack has gone to watch her finish up. If the two of them speak on the way back into the Hub, Ianto has no way of telling. He watches from Jack’s office door as the two of them exchange an awkward ‘see you tomorrow.’
When Gwen leaves, Ianto tries to imagine the sort of night she’ll have at home. He wonders if she’ll tell Rhys about Flat Holm.
Jack looks his way. “Go home, Ianto.”
“Pardon?”
Jack leans against the post of Tosh’s workstation. “Go home. Get some rest. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Ianto doesn’t bother arguing. He merely wonders idly if Jack’s propensity to brood has always been so well-established or if immortality brought it out in him. Just another question he’ll never get an answer to.
As he’s walking to his car, Ianto feels Andy’s bracelet in his coat pocket. Even now, he can’t quite bring himself to dispose of it. He strokes the soft leather with his thumb and sighs.
# # #
With Nikki gone, Andy’s life edges perilously close to normal. He realizes this one morning while he’s shaving and rinsing his razor under the tap. The last few months feel like the sort of hazy, uncomfortable dream you drag yourself out of before the alarm goes off. The distance is relief enough to temper some of the anger and the loneliness. The whole thing is too weird, too terribly fucked, but he made it through. It’s hard to imagine living that way now.
Work is work, and he enjoys it for the most part. Off-nights he goes to the pub, or watches videos, or goes jogging. He takes a weekend off to visit his family and helps his father clean the gutters. It’s his old life, and it’s pleasantly familiar.
He spots Torchwood only twice out on his beat, and he studiously ignores them. Afterward, he wonders more than he’d like whether or not the feeling is mutual. Whether Ianto sees him. Whether Gwen is sorry. When he writes in his notebooks, he leaves that out of it. He’d rather not acknowledge the feeling. It’s too much like tempting fate.
So when he hears the first of the screams and sees the first gout of blood spray onto the tiled corridor walls, his first thought is No. I have worked too hard for this. Stop taking my life away from me.
His second thought is to run.
---
Prev (Pt #33) (Warnings: language, smut, and potentially problematic kink (dominance play, edgeplay/breathplay) reference to voyeurism.
-
Next (Pt #35) (Warnings: Smiths references, language, post-EW angst.)