I DECLARE DISCLAIMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
A/N: So just getting going on a series of moments in Ianto's life, fill ins and additions to my other stories as I work on them too. Updates for both this and He and Mr. Jones should be up soon.
Ianto had the faintest of memories of when he was about five years old. He could picture himself, a composite of all his childhood and baby pictures, a boy with too many golden-brown curls and too-short spaceship jim-jams after a recent growth spurt. It was Christmas Eve. And there was a fire warming them all. He had sat in front of it until it felt like his back was burning, and then he had escaped to the more bearable heat of the settee.
That was where their father sat, having just put in a film that he told them every year had been his favourite when he was a child. When they got older, all the kids would agree that it had probably still been his favourite then too. Ianto climbed, one knee up then his whole small, soft tummied body onto the space beside his father.
"Come here Yan." His father's hands lifted him up from beneath his arms and settled Ianto on his lap, wrapping an arm around him securely. His hands were large, long fingered and calloused at the tips. But always gentle. Ianto had let his head curl against his father's chest and took in the smell that was so familiar. Later, after his father was gone, he would feel a terrifyingly sad pull at his chest and stomach for months at the scent of cotton and wool and oiled wood.
"This was my favourite film when I was a lad your age." Ianto nodded, chewing on the end of his thumb. Not sucking on it, he had been firmly told to stop that at the age of three years and six months. But he was able to get away with a subtle gnaw still.
Aoife, finally in her nightgown with brushed, gapped teeth ran in and jumped on the couch. But he just reached out to her, ran a hand over her curls and patted the spot beside him. She didn't hesitate for a moment as she burrowed in, covering her legs with a spare pillow and absently wrapping her hand in the cloth of her father's jumper.
Ainsley smiled from her spot on the floor, hugging a pillow as she lay on her stomach.
"Just waiting for Lew?" She held the remote with an air of authority. She was fifteen now, old enough to be part of the grown up organization, but still young enough to be kitted up in pyjamas, her long hair in two trailing braids that threatened to dip in her mug of tea at times.
"I'm here." Lew appeared, lanky and always a bit bashful these days, with a plate of biscuits. "Go on then Ains." He placed the plate on the side table and sat down, leaning his back against the couch. His shoulder pressed against his father's leg, the closest contact and affection his adolescent pride would allow him. He barely ducked though, when his father reached over and messed his hair.
"I'm pressing play. Is everyone ready then?" Ainsley said, only a little imperiously.
"Go ahead." Iain smiled. He was a busy man, a husband, a friend, a brother. But above that, all those things, he would always have time for this. For them. As long as he was allowed it.