Title: Home Away From Home
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: Teen
Characters: Jack/Ianto, brief mention of team plus Jane & Cassandra Austen
Word Count: ~1150
Summary: The teleporter not actually being broken, and hurling himself and Ianto approximately 200 years into the past, had been an unwelcome addition to his plans.
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or the Austen sisters.

Authors Notes: This is a birthday fic for misswinterhill. This was originally going to be much longer – I actually have a scene that is heavily influenced by Pride & Prejudice mostly written – but my muses abandoned me halfway through writing it. However, I quite liked the beginning so I re-wrote bits of it and edited it. Based on the prompts for jantolution challenge 14.

This is unbeated so please forgive the mistakes. Someday, I will get one of these stories finished in time for my beta to look over it before the deadline.

Home Away From Home

Jack lay on his side, watching the snow slowly drift down from the heavens, before settling on the small round window. Ianto lay next to him, their arms and legs wrapped tightly around each other in a futile attempt to stave off the cold. The small bedroom at the inn they had found accommodation in was basic, containing only a single bed, a small table and one chair.

It was also bloody freezing.

Jack let his thoughts wander – How had they gotten into this mess? Why did he always end up stuck somewhere that was either cold, wet or both? Why do his t-shirts look even better on Ianto? – hoping that watching the snow would help lull him into sleep, even if it was only for a few hours.

What had started as a simple find and retrieve mission had quickly escalated out of control. The plan had been straightforward: find the artifact that had triggered the alarm, contain it, then put it in temporary storage for Tosh to look over when she arrived at work in a few hours time. Therefore, when he and Ianto had arrived at a deserted street in Bute-Town – most of Cardiff was deserted at three-thirty on a Wednesday morning – and had found a broken teleporter, Jack had been quietly confident that they would be back in the small room under his office sooner rather than later.

The teleporter not actually being broken, and hurling himself and Ianto approximately 200 years into the past, had been an unwelcome addition to his plans. And to make things just that little bit more complicated, it transpired that this teleporter did not jump through time alone; it also jumped through space...or across country's at least, as Jack and Ianto had found themselves in a small Hampshire town called Steventon.

Once the pair had picked themselves up and realised they were no longer in Cardiff – the bright sun-light as opposed to the dark night they had just left, was a slight give-away that all was not right – Jack took control of the situation. His time-agent training immediately came into force, promptly finding them accommodation and new clothes so they blended in with the locals.

Ianto quickly decided he was better off not knowing how Jack was paying for all of these things.

"What are you thinking about?" Jack jumped at the quietly spoken question. He had been so lost in his thoughts he had not noticed Ianto waking up. He kissed Ianto's forehead before pulling the thin sheet tighter around them.
"Just about how we ended up here." Ianto hmmmed sleepily.
"How long does that thing take to recharge? A week?" Jack nodded. "It's an early model; it can only jump once a week. Once it's re-charged, I'll be able to set it to take us back to when we left, within an hour or two."

Jack wrapped his arms tighter around Ianto's shivering frame as he spoke. Ianto happily snuggled further into the embrace; Jack was providing more warmth than his t-shirt and the sheet combined. "You okay?" Jack asked. "Apart from the cold."
"Yep." Ianto replied. "Although, it would be nice to go on a trip for once that didn't involve either you fighting or homicidal aliens." Jack frowned.
"Bad things don't happen every time I leave Cardiff. Besides, I haven't seen any homicidal aliens since we got here…or gotten into any fights."
"Yes they do and you haven't gotten into any fights yet. I would be a bit more cautious tomorrow. You really freaked out those two Austen sisters...and I'm sure they have a handful of brothers as well."
"How was I to know she would react like that?" Ianto raised his head from where it was resting against Jack's shoulder. His eyes shone with amusement.
"Public nudity is frowned upon in the 21st century, never mind the 18th. Therefore, it would be natural to assume that offering to let Jane Austen feel your 'torso of steel' – did that chat-up line ever work – 'or anything else she wanted to cop a feel of' would be a supremely bad idea."
"...It's not that bad a chat-up line." Ianto laughed.
"Even Owen would have thought twice about using it." Jack rolled his eyes before pulling Ianto back down again, tucking Ianto's head under his chin. He smiled when he heard Ianto sigh with contentment.

"Okay, so it's not my best chat-up line." Ianto snorted with derision but otherwise didn't comment. "That still doesn't explain why you think bad things happen whenever I leave Cardiff."
"It's not that bad things happen, as such," Ianto replied without moving from his position on Jacks chest, "just some sort of incident always occurs that I then spend the next three day's fixing." Jack laughed. Ianto prodded him in the chest with one of his long fingers.

"You wouldn't be laughing had I left you on your own to fix that mess with Unit a few months ago."
"That was an accident." Jack replied slowly.
"How about the disaster that was our team outing to Torchwood Two?"
"Hey. That wasn't my fault. I think you'll find that it was Owen in the cupboard."
"But you didn't tell him that it was Archie's grand-daughter in there with him." Jack smirked.
"Yeah, but it was worth it. I wished I'd taken a picture of Archie's face when he opened that door."
"How about that weekend we spent in Swansea?"
"...Yeah okay, that one was my fault."

Ianto yawned, Jack was warming him up like a hot-water bottle. However, this did not stop a violent shudder ripping through his body. Jack scanned the room, looking for anything that would help warm Ianto up. His gaze fell on the far corner of the room. He grinned, wondering why he hadn't thought of that earlier.

"Lift up a minute." He told Ianto, who grudgingly obliged. Jack jumped out of the bed, ran over to the chair, and removed his thick RAF coat from the back of it. He quickly crawled back into bed, pulling the sheet tight up around their shoulders before spreading his coat out on top. Ianto moaned happily at the extra warmth before wrapping himself back around Jack.

"Better?" Jack asked wrapping one arm around Ianto's back.
"Much." Ianto said into his shoulder.

Jack rubbed Ianto's back lazily as he watched the younger man fall back into a peaceful sleep. If it wasn't for the extreme cold - and the fact that he could see the moon, shining through the bare window – he could almost believe that they were in the small room under his office. After a long day spent chasing Weevils, drinking Ianto's orgasmic coffee and dealing with whatever gift the Rift had spat out that week; Jack enjoyed nothing more than lying in the small bed under his office, listening to Ianto breathe quietly as he slept, and the hum of the Hub computers, always scanning for Rift activity or alien life-forms.

Jack closed his eyes. This wasn't quite home, but it was close enough.