Author's note: Spoilers for 'Adrift' and lesser ones for 'Cyberwoman' and 'Fragments'
Duty
"You think I was harsh with you, but you needed someone to show you where your duty really lay, because you were at a loss, my friend. You may not thank me now but you will eventually." (Captain Bligh – The Bounty)
Now
Jack's hard cock's slippery in his hand and Ianto can feel the heat from the other man's body as his own chest brushes it; they're both naked from the waist up, and sweaty, and breathing hard. It's dark and humid in the hot house and it feels as though the plants are closing in on them, whispering obscene thoughts from out of the lush green gloom; hell, perhaps they are closing in – they're alien, after all. The shadows are striated across Jack's handsome face and chest and Ianto tightens his grip; carefully calibrating it so the expression of pleasure intensifies on the other man's face. This is what he lives for; making Jack come; getting him to lose control. The hitched breath and sudden tension around Jack's neck and shoulders tells Ianto he's close, so he leans in and kisses him, tongue and teeth, tasting sweat and salt and the coffee they drank earlier.
As Jack starts to moan his climax into his mouth, Ianto feels an icy draught swirl around his side and up his damp back. The door is open, and this confuses him momentarily, until he notices Gwen standing there with an almost comical expression of shock on her face. Jack makes a low, soft sound of frustration as Ianto suddenly loosens his grip and steps away, reaching with a muffled exclamation for his shirt where it's lying half on the floor and half draped over a potted fern. Jack starts to laugh, although the expression in his eyes is not humorous in the slightest.
Ianto follows Gwen out, doing buttons up as he goes, with difficulty, because his fingers are sticky and none too steady. He's never been an exhibitionist in the slightest, but a tiny, reprehensible part of him is enjoying the look of mingled horror and hilarity on his colleague's face. He almost loses it altogether when Jack strides out, shirt hanging loose, trousers at half mast and says We could have used you an hour ago. Jack has the upper hand. Of course he does. It won't be the first time he's had to break off sex to conduct a business discussion and Ianto doubts very much it'll be the last.
Jack is cold and uncompromising, and Ianto can almost see the energy crackling between them as Gwen argues her case. She doesn't back down; it's impressive.
"Did she bite?" Jack enquires, as soon as Ianto's shut the door behind them.
"Yup; easy but not too easy, just like you said."
Ianto considers objecting to the tone in which Jack just threw Coming? work to do, over his shoulder – he's not a dog – but seeing as Jack's already got his shirt off, he's not minded to make a fuss.
They watch the CCTV on Jack's wrist device for a few seconds. Gwen opens the package on her desk, tips it open and regards the GPS device briefly, before making a phone call.
"You were right," says Jack, appreciatively. "Now, I doubt we're going to see her again tonight, but just in case she decides to come back and quiz me some more?"
Ianto raises an eyebrow. Jack gets down onto his knees, shaking his head, presumably at Ianto's temerity in having done his trousers up again.
"I was always told it was rude to talk with my mouth full," he finishes, grinning. He pulls Ianto's fly zip down with his teeth, for no reason other than that he can.
Then
After Lisa's death, Jack sent him home and told him he was suspended for a fortnight. Dimly, Ianto wondered why his boss didn't just retcon him straight away, but provisionally concluded the man wanted him to suffer first. Or maybe he was giving Ianto the opportunity to kill himself tidily, away from the Hub. Work-related stress, they could put on the report, before allocating him a morgue drawer of his very own.
Maybe it would have been kinder if Jack had shot him, Ianto thought, after a long night of lying awake, replaying the image of the mutilated bodies: Lisa's; Dr Tanizaki's; the pizza delivery girl. Three people dead because of him. And that wasn't even the worst thing; no, that was the memory of what he'd felt, watching as his team-mates gunned Lisa down.
Relief.
--
Owen came round a few days later, near-silent and twitchy, bringing a dusty cardboard box that he dumped in the middle of Ianto's immaculately hoovered carpet. He couldn't meet Ianto's eye and didn't stay in the house a moment longer than necessary; you'd have thought from his body language that his colleague had a contagious disease. Ianto didn't blame him. Despair was catching; Lisa had passed it on to him a long time ago.
When Owen had gone, he unsealed the box, expecting it to be his personal effects, but it wasn't. Inside, he found a smaller storage box from the archives, although he didn't recognise the classification; which was odd, as he thought he was familiar with all of them. The box held cassette tapes in plastic boxes; numbered one to fifteen in faded fountain-pen ink. The numbers were in Jack's writing, as was the envelope labelled Ianto taped to the top, although that had been written recently. The box also contained a walkman-style cassette player and several packets of batteries.
Please listen to these case histories and note all substantive details, says the letter. I don't need every word transcribed; just a list of names, places, dates, and any information that might be useful if we encounter a similar case in future. CJH.
Now
Ianto doesn't hate Gwen and despite what others might sometimes think, he's not jealous of her either. Or not in the sexual sense, anyway. Would Jack sleep with her, if the opportunity arose? Of course he would. So would Ianto, come to that; he's not blind, and he sees the way men look at her: Owen, Rhys, Andy; he's no different. He doesn't care that Jack loves her, either. Jack's no more monogamous in his emotions than he is in any other way, and some of the things he cares about don't bear close contemplation – that semi-sentient hand, ugh.
No, what Ianto's jealous of is Gwen's optimism; her unclouded faith that it'll all come out right in the end. He knows for sure that it never, ever does and he can't understand how she doesn't.
It's something he's working on.
Then
At some point during his first day listening to the tapes, Ianto realised it wasn't going to be a problem that he couldn't sleep. That was because after today, he wouldn't want to close his eyes ever again.
The tapes held interviews, one per cassette; although the gaps and repetitions made it obvious that they'd been recorded in several sessions. The interviewer was Jack, or any rate, it was on the three he'd listened to so far. Jack gave his own name, the date and the subject's name – where he could establish it – at the beginning of each side of tape and he could be heard asking questions and prompting the subject where necessary. The interviews were all conducted between January and March 2000 and the subjects appeared to be human.
The stories were terrible, and it seemed wrong to rank them in any way, but the one Ianto listened to as the weak sunlight of afternoon lengthened into the shadows of evening was the worst. He heard the description of how the subject was taken by the Rift and found herself on an alien farm where humans were used as breeding stock. Four full-term pregnancies later, she finally found out what happened to the babies. Ianto had never been a particularly keen meat-eater, but he thought he'd probably be giving veal a miss from now on.
He did sleep that night, after all, although he was woken at dawn from a nightmare by the phone ringing. It was a wrong number, but the details of the dream – the flesh burning off his bones – were still too vivid for there to be any point in him lying back down. So he made some coffee and started on tape number seven.
--
Ianto's doorbell rang on the Tuesday of the following week. It was no surprise when he looked through the spy hole and saw Jack standing there, large as life and improbably exotic for this part of Roath, peopled as it was mostly by scruffy students and the elderly. From Jack's poorly concealed look of shock as he let him in, Ianto thought maybe he looked as bad as he felt.
"It's finished," he said, indicating the box of tapes, which was sitting on the hall table next to the phone.
Jack pulled his coat off, threw it accurately over the banisters and then went through uninvited into Ianto's living room and sat down on the sofa. Ianto followed him; he thought about taking the only other seat, an armchair that almost, but not quite, matched the sofa, but he decided he preferred to stand.
Jack looked around him with apparent interest, as though the bare magnolia woodchip walls and faded blue-and-grey striped curtains might hold the key to his employee's unexpected meltdown; Ianto could have told him not to bother. There wasn't a thing in the house he'd chosen himself.
"So, what do you think?" Jack asked, leaning back on the cheap chenille sofa as though he owned it, hands behind his head.
"What do I think?"
His voice felt scratchy and unused; probably because it was. He hadn't spoken to anyone in a week.
"In your opinion, can we release any of these people into a civilian psychiatric hospital? Inform their families?" He looked up and studied Ianto's face. "Didn't Owen tell you anything?"
"No, he just left the box."
Jack's expression darkened for a moment, and then he sat up. "Do you know why I asked you to transcribe those interviews?"
"Of course," Ianto said dully, noticing that the carpet needed cleaning. "A punishment."
Jack's expression was startled.
"Jesus, Ianto, is that what you thought? Torchwood's been keeping some of these people locked up for decades. I've moved them to a dedicated facility, but I'm still basically doing the same. I wanted a second opinion. From someone I can trust."
That Jack could use the word trust at all in the circumstances, just undid Ianto, and he sat down heavily on the other end of the sofa and looked down at his lap, while he swallowed the lump in his throat and tried to stop the pathetic watering of his eyes through sheer force of will.
"Why me?" he managed hoarsely.
"Because you can clearly keep a secret," Jack said, matter-of-factly. "Ianto, do you know how long it's been since someone's pulled a fast one on me? You conned your way into my organisation entirely for your own reasons, you've lied to me for months and put the whole team in danger, while still doing the job I actually hired you for; very effectively, I might add."
Ianto cleared his throat. "I thought you'd asked me to transcribe them, seeing as you'd be retconning me anyway, when you fired me; it would save time."
"Do you want me to fire you?" Jack asked, neutrally.
Ianto thought about his options. Considered, dreamily, taking retcon and returning to a life without nightmares about Lisa, cybermen and unspeakable alien tortures. Then he thought about never seeing Jack again, and shook his head.
"Good. You can't just hire in skills like yours from a recruitment agency, you know. So, I suggest you shower," Jack sniffed the air in distaste. "Maybe twice; eat something, and get to work. I want a full report on my desk by the end of the week suggesting what action we can, or should, take about these Rift returnees. Oh, and Ianto? Not a word to Tosh or Gwen. Especially Gwen."
Ianto nodded. He doubted either of them were going to be speaking to him any time soon, anyway.
Now
Captain Jack takes tough decisions; tries to protect his team; can be hard, grim; does what's necessary; shoots first and asks questions afterwards, if at all. Jack the man likes trashy novels and greasy takeaway food, uses far too much hair product and is unreasonably attached to his impractical RAF greatcoat. Ianto has two identical coats safely stored away, against the day the original finally gets damaged beyond repair (thank God for e-Bay).
Jack loves playing games – not the psychological kind; mostly the sort that an indulged Victorian child might have used to pass the time on a long wet afternoon. Whist, canasta, consequences and hide-and-seek all take their turn, usually in inimitable Jack versions involving alcohol, time challenges, nudity or all three. Although, thinks Ianto, as he somehow selects the short skewer for the third time running, he should ban naked speed spillikins on health and safety grounds alone, even setting aside the fact that Jack is clearly cheating. No, you wouldn't want to be a Weevil that pisses the Captain off in a dark Cardiff alley, but being his boyfriend – if that is what Ianto is, he's not at all sure – well, that has its compensations.
When he says to Owen, "It's not like that, me and Jack," this is what he means, although he doubts he makes himself clear. He's not shagging the Captain, his boss. He's shagging Jack.
Then
Ianto agreed with Jack, at first; they shouldn't be keeping these people if they didn't have to. Soon he Ianto had a file a foot thick with details of all of the mental hospitals within a fifty mile radius of Cardiff; the consultants, the facilities; the chances of Torchwood managing to off-load twenty or so seriously damaged individuals onto them without exciting undue comment. That sort of thing.
It took him a while to work out the terminology; it had changed a bit in the ten years since his mother was sectioned. They hadn't called it 'sectioned' then, either. 'Gone away for a while' was the phrase of choice, he thought.
Visiting some of the more promising places, Ianto puzzled over what forensic mental health might be, imagining labs not unlike Owen's, where doctors did something Taggart-like with chemicals. What exactly, though? Eventually, a helpful psychiatrist at Providence Park explained, "Forensics is what we call the criminally insane, now we're not allowed to use words like 'criminal' and 'insane'."
After a month, he gave up. They couldn't let those people go, not to other secure institutions, not even to their families. Some of them were disfigured in ways that would be almost impossible to explain; others had aged much more than their calendar years. There were days when Ianto yearned to tell their families, especially after he matched a dozen of them to missing person files. And then he imagined the conversation he was never going to have with Lisa's mother and realised he couldn't do something to a stranger's mother he wasn't prepared to do to the one of someone he'd loved.
Looking after Lisa had given him useful skills, he realised, after another grim day spent attempting to turn the military bunkers at Flat Holm into something approaching a properly equipped psychiatric hospital. The staffing rotas alone were an utter nightmare. The seventeen internees needed one-to-one care as well as feeding, clothing and the rudiments of entertainment (they weren't all froot loops all the time; there was one guy who did crosswords whenever he wasn't hiding in the corner barking like a dog; and they didn't even try to take the books off him at meal times any more since he'd nearly strangled that orderly). And oh God – the one that screamed.
How the hell Jack had managed all this time, Ianto didn't know. From the staff turnover and the fact that so many seem to suddenly have the funds to go back to their homes in the Caribbean and Africa and live in grand style, he suspected his boss had been handing the retcon out like Smarties, with a cash chaser to help it go down. Twenty-odd staff multiplied by three eight hour shifts a day was a lot of people to keep quiet, and then there was the added hassle of getting them to and from a supposedly deserted island without attracting too much attention.
At some point, he must get the place redecorated. True, most of the patients couldn't tell you which way was up most days, never mind whether they'd prefer NHS baby blue or council garden gate green on the walls, but Ianto couldn't help feeling the flaking scabby paint and the pervasive sense that there were probably rats skulking in the corners wasn't doing much for the already shaky staff morale.
"You shouldn't be here," Jack said to him, a couple of days after his return to work, and anyone watching would think he meant, "So soon after Lisa's death." But Ianto knew he meant he should be out at Flat Holm, retconning boat skippers with very carefully judged doses. And Jack should be there, too, because Helen, their most reliable ward sister, was getting increasingly anxious about the provenance of the patients and asking difficult questions; and she hadn't known Ianto long enough to trust his answers.
Now
Weevil hunting sometimes means seeing what the two of them can get away with in a straight club before they get thrown out; a surprising amount, usually, although Ianto's not sure if that's because the door staff know Jack's armed or because they secretly enjoy watching him with his top off.
Sometimes it means they put clean clothes on and go to a restaurant. There's an Italian place they both like, down a grotty side-street a couple of miles away from the Hub. The restaurant's been there forever, and has remained resolutely untouched by the current trend for minimalist interiors. San Lorenzo still has its cheerful red and white checked tablecloths and guttering candles in wine bottles jacketed in drips of wax. Sickly-looking spider plants in macramé holders hang either side of the specials blackboard and the specials never, ever change.
Sometimes Weevil hunting really is Weevil hunting, and if Ianto's lucky, he gets a blow job in the front of the SUV afterwards. Those tinted windows often come in handy, because if there's one thing that turns Jack on, it's the chase.
Then
"You should go home," Jack said, as Ianto tidied around him, a couple of days after their return from Brynblaidd. He eyed the bruises that were still visible around Ianto's jawline and wrists meaningfully.
"No point," said Ianto. "I never really sleep; might as well make myself useful here."
"There are other ways than retcon to forget things, temporarily at least," Jack offered. "Alcohol, sex?"
"I thought you'd never ask," deadpanned Ianto, and then he thought, suddenly, what the hell. He got a flashback to when the two of them'd captured Myfanwy; lying on top of Jack, so close they could have kissed. He remembered the precise moment he realised he could feel the other man's erection though his trousers. He remembered realising he'd written a cheque Jack was most certainly going to want to cash.
They'd been dancing around this for so long. It wasn't like they hadn't kissed; they'd done that before the first week was up, down in the archives and Ianto could still feel the way the filing cabinet handle dug into his back. He hadn't minded the pain – it was a way to anchor himself in the queasy maelstrom of fear, guilt and undeniable mutual sexual attraction. It was also the best way Ianto could think of at the time to distract Jack from looking around any further. The end justified the means, and he could forgive himself for the snog, but not for enjoying it. Not then, and not the dozen times that followed. Jack had never pushed it; he seemed to be waiting for Ianto to take things further, and Ianto was absolutely sure now the gun to his head hadn't just been for violating every rule in the Torchwood book, but for the very personal betrayal.
Now, Jack pushed his chair back from the desk; rolled his head from side to side to work the tension out of his muscles and stood up. Away from the desk lamp, his face fell into shadow and Ianto couldn't see the expression in his eyes. Ianto put the papers he was holding down neatly on a corner of the desk and took a step towards him.
"You don't have to do this, you know. It's not a job requirement."
Jack's tone was mild; his head tilted to one side as he looked Ianto up and down. Having Jack's full attention on him was a little unnerving; he imagined a hawk scanning the featureless countryside, looking for the slight movement that would make it dive.
"I know." Ianto had to suppress the urge to add, "It's a perk."
And that's how he continued to think of it, that night and all the others that followed. Sleeping with Jack Harkness wasn't hard. Not sleeping with Jack; that had been the difficult thing. There was so much destruction in what they did; so much death. An orgasm now and again seemed reasonable recompense.
Now
Gwen's investigation into the missing people is thorough and effective, and Ianto's sure she would have found Flat Holm fairly quickly, with or without his help. He expected nothing less from a former copper.
To an outside observer, it might look like Jack's trying to protect his newest employee, but Ianto knows it's not that simple. It's Torchwood. Of course it's not that simple. There's more at stake here than Gwen's sense of duty, and she's not the only one who wants to be sure they've done all they can. That keeping those people locked up really is the only practical option.
Ianto wonders if you could describe it as cruel, what Jack's doing. Is it worse than making him listen to those case histories when he did? What about Owen? He could warn Gwen off, but Ianto notices he doesn't. The doctor takes as little interest as possible in the island, doing essential medical visits when he absolutely has to, and nothing more. There's nothing Owen hates as much as feeling helpless.
--
Ianto watches on the monitor as Gwen dismantles her makeshift incident room. Tonight, he'll take Jack home with him, and they'll fuck, and his lover will smile and the shadows in his eyes will lift, just for an instant. At some point, Jack will ask him, "Do you think I did the right thing?" And Ianto will say yes, because the truth is, he doesn't even think there is a right thing, not this time.
Sometimes he feels like he might as well be cast adrift, thirty five hundred miles from a port of call. Things will not be all right in the end. People will suffer, and die, and they won't be able to stop it.
He examines Gwen's face, grainy in the monitor; thinks she knows this now. You do the things you have to, and you try not to worry too much about the consequences.
It doesn't make him feel better to have a fellow-traveller; doesn't make him feel worse.
It makes him feel exactly nothing at all.
End.