Pleased To See Me
By Sioux
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating NC-17
Feedback gratefully received at Sioux_
Slight spoilers for Episode 13, Series One
I didn't bother to look down as the heavy door rolled closed on the hub. Automatically the lights dimmed, leaving me in half darkness. I knew Owen was still around somewhere. He seemed to sleep more here than at his home these days. I pulled the RAF greatcoat closer around myself, more for comfort than for warmth. The coat still held a trace of Jack's scent, but that trace was fading every day. It had been two and a half months since Jack had returned to life and then disappeared completely.
I hadn't really understood why Jack used to come up here to brood, but now I did. It was surprisingly quiet. Mfanwy didn't trouble me when she emerged to feed and no-one else could be bothered to make the trek up the ladders so, for the most part, the rest of the crew left me alone. I had heard Owen threatening to load a tranquilliser gun with retcon and shoot me down, but so far he hadn't made good on his threat. Then again, given that I had shot him, he probably wouldn't have hesitated to chamber a live round or two to follow up, as well.
I came up here when the memories overwhelmed me and I needed to be somewhere quiet and somewhere Jack had been. I could have chosen just about anywhere in the hub, but for some reason, here, balancing on the beam, just felt right.
I was still going over and over in my mind how I could have betrayed Jack when he was depending on me to help him stop the rift opening. I sided with those who had shot Lisa to death, against the man with whom I had shared a bed and my body for long enough. We hadn't advertised the relationship, not once, certainly not like Owen and Gwen had. It had been private, just between us. If it was a relationship. He was there for me when I needed him and I liked to think I was there for him, apart from the twice I lied to him and betrayed him. A sob escaped me. Odd how that one sound echoed loudest of anything. Owen was passing underneath at the time. I heard his exasperated snort then his voice,
"Ianto! Get the fuck down here, before you fall off that beam!"
I didn't mistake his tone for consideration. If I fell he would be one of the ones cleaning up the mess on the floor far below. Being a doctor, Owen knew how tough it was getting blood and guts off the floor. I ignored him and switched my attention to another memory. A time when Jack had been so needy and wanting he was nearly bouncing off the walls. It had been just after Christmas. We were having trouble tracking an alien, a tall thin thing which loved disembowelling people with its teeth. We could never quite catch up with it. It had killed three men before we managed to get hold of it and send it back through to where it had come from. Jack had been quite touchy feely that evening but still sticking to our self-imposed boundaries. When we returned to the hub he took himself off to his office and paced restlessly. He didn't speak to anyone, not even Gwen. I knew what could calm him down but I had to wait until the rest of them left. Eventually they did. Gwen running back to her Rhys, Owen stomping off to a bar and Tosh going back to her flat with a sweet goodbye smile for me as she left. I took the necessary supplies from the back of my secret drawer, did the necessary preparations then went to Jack's office.
Jack was pacing still, running his hands through his hair constantly. I slid into the room, not really sure what my next step would be.
"Ianto, go home," he ordered baldly.
"No."
For a second he stopped, looked at me, then dismissed me from his mind.
"It's not your fault," I said.
"Whose fault is it? We've been tracking that thing for weeks and only when it's taken three men do we get to it."
"It could have been a lot more than three men."
Jack shot me a very dirty look.
"Just think how bad it would have been telling Inspector Gilmore that his boyfriend had been chewed to bits on the top of the moors."
"Ianto, you're not helping!"
"I could."
Jack turned to face me, a dangerous light in his eyes.
"You don't know what you're doing," he said quietly, his tone menacing.
I swallowed, suddenly not too sure myself.
"I think I can translate the principle. Not as if I haven't topped you a few times," I said, mustering as much arrogance as I could.
His eyes seem to turn into blue lasers, boring into me. He was less than four feet away, so I stepped forward smartly, put my hand around the back of his neck and pulled him closer. He resisted, so I stepped even closer and kissed him, hard. He pulled back, but I wasn't giving up without a fight.
"You really don't want to do this, Ianto," he said quietly, his eyes never leaving mine.
I didn't waste time with words, Jack needed to let go of some of that accumulated tension he'd been holding onto for weeks. Two ways he could achieve that; a fight or a good, hard shag.
When Jack had been stuck in 1941, making out with the real Captain Jack Harkness, as Tosh had later told us; Owen had called me Jack's part time shag, and he wasn't wrong.
All those other times Jack was a gentle, considerate lover. Never boring but never out of control either. This time his control was hanging by a thread. I decided to cut that thread when I flicked the buttons on his trousers and let my hand curl around his hardness. We were both out of breath in seconds. He launched himself at my mouth, not so much kissing me, more biting, teeth clashing until I tasted the coppery sweet scent of blood. I pulled back, then dove in again, letting him plunder my mouth. And the man could kiss! Our hands were as busy as our mouths. Pushing and shoving, pulling at shirts and trousers, the odd button pinging across the room as expediency got in the way of decorum. When his fingertips told him I had already prepared myself he turned and slammed me against the wall, leaning heavily against me as he growled in my ear,
"If you didn't bring supplies you're the biggest cock tease in history."
With difficulty I extracted one hand from the bruising lock he had on my arms and took a condom and a small tube out of my pocket and let him take them from my hand. He leaned his weight against me, ensuring I stayed pinned to the wall. After a few seconds manoeuvring he leaned back far enough to get my trousers off then pulled my ruined shirt from my shoulders. I could feel the soft cotton of his undershirt against my back and nothing but the heat of his body further down. He positioned me as he wanted, putting the palms of my hands flat against the wall.
"And keep them there," he hissed.
He put his foot in between my legs and moved my feet further apart. Without giving me time to think about it, he'd breached me. That was the point I thought I should have spent a little extra time on my own preparation. Hell, did it burn! I could feel sweat spring out from my pores within seconds.
I took a deep breath a consciously tried to relax myself before Jack got into his stride. I could feel him trying to hold off as long as possible. His breathing sounded like tiny sobs then his arms were around me, holding me tight. Uncomfortably tight. I pushed back against him and heard him inhale in surprise but he still managed to stay immobile.
I pushed back again, recklessly encouraging him and again until, with a cry, he took over. His hips pushing against mine, his breath gasped out beside my ear. At first his nails dug into my shoulders as he curved his hands back to hold me in place, his teeth worrying at the skin of neck. It was liberating and exhilarating! We were flying, just Jack and me, flying on the rush of adrenaline and sex. It was bloody amazing! The next time I took in anything was after I'd come and decorated the wall in front of me. At some point Jack had entwined his fingers with mine, using his own arms as well as mine to brace us. Sweat was running down my back, front, along my arms and down my shaking legs. I could feel the fine tremors from Jack's shaking legs as well. I bent my arms and rested my head against my hands on the wall. Jack folded me in his arms, his head resting against mine as our breathing slowed.
"Thank you," he whispered so quietly it was a bare disturbance of the air along my skin.
I smiled.
As he slid from my body I turned in the circle of his arms pulling him into mine. His eyes opened, his face as wet and pink as I knew mine must look. The look of satiety in his eyes was my reward. Lazily we exchanged kisses, neither of us up to anything more strenuous, at least for a few minutes.
"Turn around," he said.
"This time it's face to face," I replied.
He smiled then chuckled.
"Next time is going to have to wait a while. Turn round, I want to make sure I haven't hurt you."
"I'll tell you if I'm hurt," I replied.
He raised his eyebrows.
"On my back, in that shelf you call a bed, with my legs wrapped around your waist. And you moving slowly, making it last."
A twitch confirmed he wasn't adverse to the idea. He moaned, his imagination filling in the blanks. I grinned and pushed him, turning him and guiding him to the bed he had tucked away behind his office. On the way past I snagged my trousers, which held the rest of the supplies we'd need.
We threw ourselves down on the bed, facing each other on our sides. For a long time we just stroked and petted and kissed each other. No words spoken, we didn't need them. It was dreamy and comfortable. Even when he pressed me down onto my back, taking his weight on his arms, like a gentleman, it was slow and sensuous. I tried to speed things up, to let him know it was fine to lose control again, but he lifted one hand and put his fingers to my lips mouthing,
"No, my Ianto. Like this. I want to watch you and hold you. I want to remember this."
And he did. It was the most intimate and erotic experience. He looked into me, into my soul, taking away all the darkness and grey useless feelings in there and replacing them with him; a bright, everlasting, searing memory of his body and his face. His eyes telling me that for now, for this march of minutes, we were one. When my back arched from the bed some of the liquid bathing my face and running into my hair were tears, his and mine combined.
He reached for me twice more that night, the last time he wouldn't enter me, saying that I would already be far too sore. Instead we used our hands, rubbed ourselves against each other to a surprisingly satisfying climax then I slept, like the dead. When I awoke my clothes and shoes were piled by the bed, the lamp was lit and there was a cold cup of coffee on the floor. A note was held down under the cup.
'I've told them all you worked late last night and crashed on the camp bed.'
Thinking about it now that was probably when Owen figured out I was Jack's part time shag.
Owen's voice drifted up from below.
"Ianto. Ianto!"
I sighed. Since Owen had become our de-facto leader he'd turned into a persistent little bastard.
"What?" I shouted.
There was silence for a few seconds before he said, more quietly,
"Do you want a drink? I've got a nice bottle of red down here."
I considered the offer for a minute.
"I've got pizza coming, we can share."
I smiled to myself; this was a first, Owen offering food and drink to get me down to ground level. I had been up here a while, my bum had gone numb.
"Alright," I said, getting to my feet.
I looked down on Owen's upturned face and gave him a small smile. He smiled back then put his head down. I walked across the beam towards the ladders. From below a strange grinding noise made me pause. I looked down again wondering what Owen was up to, but he was looking around, seemingly as startled as I was. Then a bone deep shuddering shook the place as the grinding noise got louder. The beam lurched, throwing me off my feet. I landed heavily across the metal feeling my ribs crack at the impact, driving my breath from my lungs. It lurched again throwing me the other way, I scrabbled for purchase but my fingers only found thin air and I was falling. The impact of hitting the hub floor made my teeth rattle in my head. I thought my spine was going to come out through my chest. The RAF greatcoat absorbed a little of the impact but not that much. Oddly, there wasn't any sudden explosion of pain. I was disorientated, I couldn't move my body and my vision was blurred but that was all. I lay still waiting for my world to contract into a fiery ball of hurt. Owen's face came into view above me.
"Ianto! Oh fuck, Ianto!" he gasped.
I managed to turn my head slightly.
"Don't move!" he ordered sharply then whispered to himself, "Oh Christ!"
I wanted to tell him I was alright but my mouth didn't want to cooperate. Another voice shouted,
"Ianto!"
I decided that maybe I wasn't alright, that I had begun hallucinating. That was Jack's voice. I was concentrating so hard on trying to work out how I was hearing Jack's voice I nearly missed him. He was leaning over me, his face twisted in what looked like pain.
"Oh no," he was saying, over and over again. "Oh god, no!"
Owen held up a syringe then stuck it into my neck. I could hear Tosh in the background and I think Gwen was kneeling behind me, stroking my hair. Then Jack was kneeling beside me on the opposite side to Owen, his big warm hand against my cheek. I tried to say his name but all that came out of my mouth was a rush of warm fluid. Jack snatched up a gauze square and wiped it away. The white gauze was stained bright red. It looked like blood, but I didn't know where that much blood had come from. Was Jack injured?
"What happened?" Jack asked.
"He fell off the fucking beam," Owen replied shortly, "And where the fuck have you been? And what's that box and who the hell is he?"
All the time he was asking questions he hadn't once stopped working on me. I knew he was touching me but I couldn't tell what he was doing. I coughed slightly, trying to clear my throat but that made my chest hurt. I winced and coughed again which hurt even more.
"Another five cc's Tosh," Owen ordered.
I felt the tiny prick as he injected the second syringe into me. Now I was starting to find it difficult to breathe. Almost as if he could read my mind Owen put a mask over my face.
"This'll help Ianto."
The oxygen cleared some of the cobwebs from my mind. It really was Jack kneeling beside me. I tried to take his hand but stopped when an excruciating pain shot up my arm and along my shoulder.
"Don't try and move," Owen repeated.
I groaned, it hurt so much.
"Give him some more," I heard Jack say through the white noise in my ears.
"If I give him any more he'll gork," Owen replied.
The unknown man's voice asked,
"How bad?"
"He's broken just about every bone in his body."
"You sure?" Gwen asked.
"Malleus, incus and stapes might be intact, but I wouldn't put a bet on it!" Owen replied sharply. "'Course I'm bloody sure. He fell sixty feet onto a concrete floor, it's a miracle he's still breathing!"
Owen had his stethoscope in his ears and was listening intently to my chest. The pain was really biting into me now. I'm not sure but I think I must have made a noise. He took the earpieces out.
"Can you treat him?" The unknown man asked.
Owen shook his head.
"He needs a full trauma team and we haven't got the time to get him to hospital, his lungs are filling and his heart's failing."
"Could you treat him if you had the time?"
"Maybe, but like I said he doesn't have the time."
I heard a metallic clunk as another tank landed near me. Owen reached over and turned on taps, adjusting flow. He was pulling another plastic mask towards me. I recognised that mask, it was from the tank of anaesthetic gas in the autopsy room. The thought that it wouldn't be long before I was lying on the slab, flickered through my dying brain. The man Jack addressed as Doctor spoke.
"No."
"He's in severe pain," Owen snapped.
"Jack, get out of my way," the Doctor ordered.
Surprisingly, Jack moved. The Doctor leaned over me and took the oxygen mask off my face but didn't put the anaesthetic mask on. He carefully placed his fingers at various points on my face and jaw then pressed down. The pain faded to nothing, then blackness descended and I knew nothing more.
Owen's voice drifted up from below.
"Ianto. Ianto! Get down here now."
I rolled my eyes and kept quiet.
"I mean it. There's a message from Jack!"
I froze.
"You're lying."
"No, I'm not."
"What's it say?" I shouted.
"Jack, colon. Ianto, question mark."
I looked down. Owen was concentrating on the screen in front of him.
"It just keeps on repeating."
"Type something in," I shouted, making my way across the beam. I could hear the keyboard as I put my foot on the first rung of the ladder.
"Well, bugger me!"
"What?"
"He says, 'Not you Owen, I want Ianto'"
I was half way down the ladder by now and moving as fast as I could. Never had that steel stairway seemed so long. Finally I was on the floor and raced across to Owen. Bumping him out of the way I typed,
"I'm here. Where are you?"
The cursor sat there flashing at us. An odd grinding noise began. I looked down at the computer then realised it was coming from behind us. We both turned to look as the noise got louder and a breeze sprang up, fluttering papers around in a mini tornado. The floor shuddered. A blue square was materialising with a flashing light on top. I really thought I'd lost it when the thing became solid, it was an old fashioned police box. The intruder alarms were going off all over the base but neither Owen nor myself could move. The door opened and Jack strode out, followed by a slim man, sporting a brown suit and a manic grin.
"Told you it would work," the man said.
Jack walked right up to me and hugged me hard. I couldn't believe my eyes. I was frozen to the spot. Slowly I brought my arms up and hugged him back then really hugged him back. Jack was laughing delightedly, tears flowing down his face.
"I thought I'd lost you," he said.
"Lost me? I thought we'd never see you again. I thought I'd never see you again."
Like a replay from when he returned to life after sacrificing himself to Abaddon, he kissed me on the lips in front of the whole crew and his new, strange friend.
That's when I knew he really was pleased to see me.
© Sioux 8.1.07