Bars, and a rolling cog wheel of a door. Before Canary Wharf, Ianto might have called it cool – he remembered with disbelief how young he used to be then. Now the surface of his mind noted the noise, the time it took, the fact that, when he stepped through into the open, cathedral like hub, three people had already turned to watch him. Beneath the surface a deeper layer of pain was thinking of engineering, how everything in his life had become enslaved to the machine. With an effort, he buried the anguish further inside, smiled, bland as his suit.
"What's this, Jack?" A slight man with a gash for a mouth fixed him with a narrowed, hostile stare, "visit from the auditors? Didn't think we did taxes."
In the centre of the steel and tile space, (smelling of damp, stains on the walls) a woman sitting among the mainframes looked up, birdlike, uncertain. Closer to, a dark haired, strong faced woman was a second bird – this one a raptor.
Captain Jack Harkness made his entrance, sweeping down the stairs with his coat in flight behind him. A movie-star entrance, charisma aglow like the radiance of the big artificial smile. "Owen, Suzie, Tosh, this is Jones, Ianto Jones."
Ianto didn't know if it was a joke or a dig at his composure. He pulled his calm closer like a silver anti-shock blanket. The captain's appraising look slowly stroked over his neatly laundered suit and crisp white shirt, lingered a little on Ianto's mouth – he felt the corners try to tug down in response and hauled them up into a polite uncertain smile.
"Ianto's joining us from Torchwood One," said Jack, his hands making a circling motion in front of his waist. It seemed it should mean something - the 'o' of a one, a protective circle - but whether it left him inside or out was less certain.
"To do what?" That was Suzie, welcoming as a drawn blade, but Owen's mouth was open too, and he nodded, stripping off green-crusted surgeon's gloves and dropping them idly on the floor.
Ianto breathed in, forced himself to look appealingly at Jack. I'm a lost boy. Your lost boy. Tried not to wonder what it would be like if it was true.
Jack tilted his head, smiled rakishly and settled a warm, possessive hand on Ianto's shoulder, accepting the silent request. "To do whatever I tell him to do. You know I had an assistant once who…" he laughed, "well let's say he used to tie his shoelaces with his tongue. Quite the life of the party he was, every office should have one."
Owen's workstation ticked over within a ring of dropped pizza boxes, examination gloves, old socks, crisp-packets, post it notes and orphaned roasted peanuts. Ianto knew because he was studying the floor. It seemed Jack honestly had no idea what to do with him – the job offer had been adrenaline and the promise of sex, no reason behind it at all.
The trail of debris continued over the desks; ice cream cartons, hob-nob packets, alien tech, cups half full of last week's drinks with floating islands of mould in the centre. If he was to become indispensable, he had better start by finding himself something to do, or more innuendo seemed likely to follow. "I'll put the coffee on, shall I?"
Jars of instant coffee, and sugar clumped into a seeping mass, stood by a sink full of teabags. A pint of milk warmed on the draining board, and as he took his jacket off, rolled up his sleeves to wash the tower of mugs, he could feel Owen's fury marking out a space about the man like the white lines the police drew around the bodies at Canary Wharf.
"I thought you recruited us because we were the best. What's he? What is he, Jack? Your lapdog – followed you home begging? I thought we had standards."
A coffee machine, Ianto thought, the scorn running off his profound unconcern. He could start by requisitioning a coffee machine. And a fridge. Get them used to him bringing in crates. Better still, there must be something in the vaults that needed a containment system. If they couldn't keep their sugar in a jar, the chances were high that they stacked their insanely dangerous alien artefacts in cardboard boxes in the cellar. Standards? Ha! None of them would get past the door of Torchwood One.
"Hello." Tosh had ventured down from her place among the screens to give him a half bow and a gentle sideways smile. "Don't mind him. He's always cranky on a Monday. After a little while it helps you to remember what day it is. Is there anything you need to know?"
She had bright, sympathetic eyes, and a fragile look. For one appalling moment he saw the knives coming down, the clamps holding her head in place so saws could expose her brain – but no, she was glass, she would shatter like the windows, like the monitors, like the walls of his old life. Heart stuttering in his chest, he picked up the tea towel—don't touch, don't touch me, don't come close—began to dry cups.
As if she shared the fear, she kept away, not even leaning forward, and he felt an unwanted burst of liking for her for not intruding, uninvited, on his universe. "Well, I'll start with who takes what."
Later, with the detritus shovelled into bin bags and put out by the door of the tourist office, he found a clipboard and decided it made him look innocent enough to explore the cellars. He had already written two lists.
'To do:
Phone Tourist information for up-to-date leaflets.
Unblock drain in staff showers.
Mouse-traps.
Bulk order with butchers for pterodactyl.
Replenish retcon stocks.
Clear space in morgue - scrub filters in incinerator.
Chocolate biscuits?
And beneath that, hidden in the centre of ten sheets of blank paper:
Find wiring plan of basement.
Hack mainframe.
Cannibalize CCTV wiring for power.
Is there a garage/delivery entrance?
New identity papers for Lisa.
Tosh's password was neatly written beside 'hack mainframe'. After only half a day he had managed to become ubiquitous enough, invisible enough, to turn up by her shoulder with a cup of coffee just as she was logging on; to watch and remember.
Catching the way her featherlike black hair swept down into her eyes as she tapped away almost made him think of betrayal; but who in their right minds would not want to restore even a single victim of the conversion chambers? She would help him, if he asked—he was sure of it. So why cause her trouble by asking?
In Torchwood One employees who stepped out of line were routinely retconned and dumped on the street, a hole where years of their life had been. He did not dare assume it was any different here.
"So how're you doing?"
Ianto judged it acceptable to jump, to show how his heart had hit him in the throat, choking him. He spun, laughed shakily when Jack loomed out of the dimness of the corridor, too silent for such a big man, summoned as if by guilty thought.
"I… uh," Ianto said, clutching the clipboard to his chest. "I… uh. Sorry - still a little jittery." He inclined his head at the receding darkness to either side of them. "Corridors. You know."
Jack stepped forward, the flaring edges of his coat swooping into Ianto's space, almost touching. Ianto backed away, his shoulders hitting the wall. Not taking the hint, Jack kept coming, planting a hand on the wall next to Ianto's cheek, leaning in, all casual threat and allure. He smelled hot and bright, like an arching electric chord soaring over the packed, sweaty floor of a dance club; Ianto could almost feel the heartbeat, the dance beat, offering to sweep him into its trance. He let his head fall back against the wall, licked his lips.
"How are you settling in, Ianto?"
Ianto closed his eyes, fought down misery, opened them again quickly, defensive. This was not exactly a surprise, after all. Not since that not-quite-kiss on the warehouse floor. An expectation had been set up; he had received the job, he supposed he shouldn't complain at the price. "Filing requests for paperclips doesn't change much from office to office, sir."
Jack's head tilted, and he gave a wicked, roguish smirk. "What about the butlering part?"
"Are you sure you want to let me loose on your stains?"
The grin widened; it would have been lascivious, had there been any shame behind it. "Oh I want to see how many of them you can cause."
Another step and they were in contact, Jack's heat bleeding through his clothes. Opening his hands – the clipboard slithering to the floor – he reached out, not sure if he wanted to push away or to touch, felt the soft roughness of linen, the softer cotton t-shirt beneath it, and beneath that the hard resilient line of Jack's body. Lust earthed itself through him like lighting. He could slide his hands down the almost suede-like softness of those military dress trousers, smooth them over Jack's fantastic arse and pull him in, grind up against him, touch him, kiss him – someone human, someone who would laugh and kiss back, and slam him into the wall and make him forget everything. Make him forget… Lisa.
She lay in a packing crate back at the flat. In agony, unable to scream. She didn't deserve that.
Panting, hard, he pushed the man away, turned his face to the wall. Jack huffed in disapproval, pressed forward slightly. The wave of pleasure left Ianto trembling. His mouth dried. He gasped in scented air; Jack's 51st Century pheromones inside him, invading him. He was going to snap, give in, God, Lisa I'm sorry, and Jack stepped back.
"I'm sensing a certain amount of mixed signals here."
Screwing his eyes shut, Ianto forced his breathing under control, ashamed of himself for being disappointed it had stopped. He brought out the excuse he had prepared earlier, "I'm… not gay." The appropriate amount of self loathing did not need to be feigned at this point.
Fortunately Jack seemed amused. "Parts of you are very much telling me otherwise."
"Yes, well I try to do my thinking with the other head, sir."
Jack laughed, took his hand off the wall and stepped away, looking – if anything – smug, as if he took the statement as a challenge. "We encourage a certain amount of flexibility here at Torchwood Three."
Ianto remembered Yvonne mentioning 'Jack Harkness and his bunch of perverts,' as she floated past from one high level meeting to another. Taken by surprise by laughter, he snorted into his hand, tried not to feel a kind of shaky gratitude at getting off so easily. "That's… going to take a little getting used to."
It had seemed like such a good solution; he could use his tortured conscience, his slow coming out process, to keep Jack at a distance until Lisa was better and could charge to his rescue. But never had fidelity felt so much like a betrayal.
Jack reached out, squeezed his arm reassuringly. "I'm sure it will come for you in time."
He managed not to flinch.