Simple Gifts
I've been ill the past few days (started when on the boat – I blame the fishies! :-P) so I've had quite some time to muse about story ideas. I rewatched "Meat", and got so mad with Jack that I just had to write this… It's a post-meat fic, and I hope you all enjoy!
"Jack."
Jack didn't look around from the computer screen. "Not now, Tosh."
"Jack."
"I said, not now."
"I'm not leaving until I've said this."
Jack swung around and stared at her, surprised by her stubborn tone. "What?"
Toshiko crossed her arms and met his gaze evenly. "Do you even realise half the things you said out there?"
Jack frowned. "What d'you mean?"
"Did you even stop to think about how it sounded to the rest of us?" she asked quietly. "How it sounded to him?"
"Who?" Jack reached out a hand and switched off the CCTV feed.
Toshiko looked incredulous. "Who do you think?"
Jack's expression remained blank.
Tosh sighed. "Ianto," she said.
"I don't see what Ianto's got to do with it," Jack said, confused.
"You're together," she said, "so how do you think he felt when you practically told all of us that you love Gwen?"
"I didn't--"
"I never said you did, but it sounded like it," Toshiko said, "and that upset him. He's hiding in the archives right now."
"Ianto vanishes into the archives all the time," Jack said. "It doesn't mean that he's upset."
"He's upset."
"What do you want me to do about it? If he's in a strop, then--"
"Will you stop being an idiot and listen?"
Jack scowled. "What?"
"Have you even taken him out for that date yet?" she asked.
Jack blinked at the sudden change of topic. "No, I--"
"Then don't you think that it's high time for that?" She fixed him with a stern glare.
"I can't now--"
"Yes, you can," she interrupted. "Owen and I will Rift-sit tonight - you go out and give Ianto a good time."
Jack smirked. "I always give him a good--"
"Jack."
"Tosh."
"Stop it," she said sharply. "Go down, find Ianto, and take him out for a nice meal and a film. He deserves it, after how you behaved."
"How I behaved?" Jack asked incredulously. "What did I do?"
"I'm not getting into this again," Toshiko said firmly. "Just go."
Jack sighed. "Fine. I'll do it."
She smiled, though without any of her usual warmth; he shivered slightly at it. "If you don't apologise, I promise you that you'll regret it," she warned.
Jack frowned at her. "Why do you care so much?"
"Ianto's my friend," she said simply.
-T-
"Owen?"
"Yeah?"
"Where's Ianto? He doesn't seem to be in the archives." Jack checked his watch.
"He hasn't gone home, has he?"
"What if he has?" Owen asked defensively, not looking up from the weevil in a state of autopsy. "You really cocked up big this time."
"I know, and I want to make it up to him," Jack said, sliding his hands into his pockets.
Owen smirked. "Well, you can try, I guess," he said. He seemed entertained by the idea.
"Why do you say that?" Jack asked cautiously. "What did he say to you?"
Owen took his time in replying, picking over each word carefully. "He said something about getting completely pissed and finding a good lay." He snorted. "I told him good luck with that."
"Do you know which pub he went to?"
"How should I know?" The medic sniffed, picking up a scalpel. "S'not like he would tell me something like that."
"When did he leave?" Jack asked anxiously.
Owen shrugged, poking around at the weevil's throat. "Haven't a clue. Ten minutes ago, maybe more?"
"Right." Jack raced across to Toshiko's workstation, quickly opening the tracking system. He frowned at the readout. "Are you sure he went to a pub?"
"S'what he said," Owen called back. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I have an autopsy to conduct."
Jack jumped up from the chair and started to the cog-wheel-door. "I'm heading to Ianto's," he shouted. "Only call me if the city's about to be blown up."
"Will do."
-T-
Jack rapped smartly on Ianto's door. He briefly checked his watch, and growled impatiently when he realised that it was too late for the earlier film.
The door was yanked open, and Jack was greeted by a grumpy-faced Ianto, who didn't even attempt to hide his disappointment when he saw it was Jack. "Oh. It's you," he said.
"Who else did you expect?" Jack asked with hastily faked grin. "The Queen?"
Ianto yawned and stepped back, letting Jack through the door. "Not you, at any rate." He scrubbed a hand over his face; Jack noticed the five o'clock shadow dusting his face. "Help yourself to stuff in the fridge. If it's not off, anyway."
Jack shuffled uncomfortably in the hallway, unsure how to phrase what he wanted to say. "I… I was actually thinking of taking you out tonight," he admitted. "Y'know… dinner, movie."
Ianto spared him a disparaging glance. "Thanks for the warning."
"Warning?"
Ianto rolled his eyes and picked up his coat from the stand. "Well, before you take somebody on a date, you usually tell them at least the day before, so that they won't make any plans," he said, slipping his socked feet into his dress-shoes and lacing them up with understated, efficient movements.
"But you haven't made any plans, have you?" Jack asked. He felt a flicker of worry flutter into life in his stomach.
Ianto checked his tie in the hall mirror and picked up his wallet from the shelf beneath. "No," he said carefully, "but it's generally considered common courtesy."
"Sorry," Jack replied, abashed. He shoved his hands into the pockets of his great-coat and wondered if he should have brought flowers. "Should I have brought flowers, too?"
Ianto stared at him incredulously. "Flowers?"
"Maybe not, then." Jack checked his watch again. "I was thinking, there's this cute little restaurant down Mermaid Quay way…" He shrugged. "That sound okay?"
Ianto's eyes softened, and he reached out to squeeze Jack's arm. "That sounds great," he said quietly, the tips of his ears blushing crimson. He looked down for a moment, then met Jack's curious gaze with an amused smile. "Owen said that I should be completely pissed off with you," he confided. "I probably should be, but I'm too tired at the moment."
"We can do this another time?" Jack offered. "Tomorrow evening?"
Ianto considered it, his head tipping slightly to one side and his eyes narrowing in thought. "Tomorrow," he agreed, "lets just have a night in, tonight."
Jack smiled and chanced a delicate kiss on Ianto's lips. "Fine by me. Shall I nip out and get a pizza?"
Ianto shook his head, stifling another yawn that threatened to split his face. "I've got pasta in," he said, his accent thick with his exhaustion. "I'll do a Bolognese. Or something."
Jack eased his coat off his shoulders, relishing in the subtle normality of the action. He was beginning to understand why Ianto liked to do it. "I can do the cooking."
Ianto pulled a mock-horrified expression. "Captain!" he said, in as scandalised a tone as he could muster. "I couldn't possibly—"
"I promise to not blow up your kitchen," Jack interrupted with a grin that was real, this time round. "Or any part of your flat."
"I don't think I trust you," Ianto teased back automatically, a lopsided grin brightening his features. "You can stick to the washing-up."
Jack pulled a face, slinging their coats onto the stand. "You're no fun."
"I'm a lot of fun," Ianto replied primly, "when in the bedroom."
"Or the hothouse," Jack added. "Or the archives. Or the—"
Ianto grabbed him into a swift, fierce kiss that left Jack breathless and tingling all over. "Shut up already," he ordered. "Pick out a film you want – not Die Hard, whatever you do – and I'll get the food going."
"Can't you get me going instead?" Jack said automatically, switching smoothly into flirt-mode.
Ianto swatted him on the backside and escaped to the kitchen before Jack's wandering hands could start anything they'd regret later. "Be off with you!"
"If—"
"Shut up!" Ianto yelled, cutting off anything Jack might have been about to say.
Jack poked his head into the kitchen. "I was only going to ask if this is date one, or whether that's tomorrow."
Ianto chuckled, a sound that made Jack's heart skip a beat, and the captain smiled involuntarily. "Your call."
"I asked you out, so tomorrow should really be the first date," Jack said after a moment's thought.
"I'm not sure that we can really number the dates, Jack," Ianto pointed out, emptying a packet of spaghetti into the pan of water. "After all, we see each other practically twenty-four-seven."
"Don't be a spoil-sport," Jack said, wandering into the sitting room and flicking through Ianto's DVD collection. "I haven't done the dating thing for decades."
"That's because you're an old, old man," Ianto retorted good-naturedly. "We should really be looking at getting you a Zimmer-frame, sometime soon."
"Hey!" Jack protested. "I'm the one who pays you, so watch it."
"You just sign away on anything," Ianto said. "The other day, Owen tried to get you to sign on installing a Wii in the Hub."
"Really?" Jack examined the back-cover of Titanic. He pulled a face when he realised that the protagonists were called Jack and Rose, and picked up another.
"He nearly got away with it, too, if I hadn't been checking all the request forms over." There was the sound of a drawer being opened and plates being taken out. "Found a film yet?"
"Not exactly…" Jack only had three films left to choose from, now. "Can we just see what's on TV?"
"Nothing about wars, mind," Ianto warned. "Not exactly what I want to be having dinner in front of."
"Sure, sure…" Jack waved an airy hand in the air and shoved the pile of DVD cases to one side. "Where's the remote?"
"There's this thing called a button on the actual TV, Jack. See if you can find it."
Jack refrained from the acute urge to roll his eyes in a very Iantonian manner. "I'm not an idiot," he complained. "I can find the 'on' button."
Five minutes later, Ianto walked in, balancing two plates of pasta, to find Jack still examining every inch of the TV. "Try round the back," Ianto said dryly, not bothering to hide his amusement.
Jack flicked him an irritated look. "What's the point in it being so complicated?" he asked, leaning back against Ianto's legs and trying his best to look pathetic.
Ianto handed him a steaming plate and a fork. "Sorry about the lack of Bolognese. I thought I had some frozen in the freezer, but I must have been wrong."
"Ianto Jones? Wrong? Do my ears deceive me?" Jack tipped his head back so that he could grin up at Ianto. "Where's the cat?"
Ianto shrugged, twisting spaghetti around the prongs of his fork. "No idea. Probably hiding in the airing-cupboard again." He carefully lifted the forkful to his mouth, swallowing down the last of it before he continued. "Or stuck under my bed."
"Shouldn't you be rather more worried?" Jack enquired.
Ianto wrinkled his nose and forked another mouthful of spaghetti. "Probably. But he'll come out when he's hungry."
"Not if he's stuck," Jack pointed out, finally starting on his own plate. Neither of them was paying any attention to the television, which was chattering away to itself in the corner.
Ianto shrugged and grinned through spaghetti. "He's a cat. He'll be fine."
"Cat's are actually aliens, y'know," Jack informed him soberly.
Ianto choked on his pasta. Eyes watering, he blinked at Jack in disbelief. "You're serious?"
"No." Jack considered. "Though they might be, I don't actually know."
Ianto shook his head. "You're impossible, you are," he said. "I don't know what my Dad would think."
"He'd be far too overwhelmed by my charisma and charm to think anything other than good of me," Jack said, grinning smugly. "Works every time."
Ianto groaned. "God, that's the last idea I need in my head! You flirting with my Dad…"
"I never said that I'd flirt with him," Jack replied, trying to sound hurt. "I do have some restraint, y'know."
"Which I'm still waiting for proof of," Ianto muttered.
"I'm just sitting here and eating with you, aren't I?" Jack said. "I haven't even tried to jump you yet."
"Yet."
"Are you saying that you don't want me to have my wicked way with you later?" Jack asked, surprised.
"Unlike you, I do not have an endless appetite for sex," Ianto said. "I'm sure you can manage one night without it."
"Still get it in the morning, though?"
Ianto sighed and wound his fingers into Jack's hair. "If you're good."
"I'm always—"
"Shut up already," Ianto said, once again.
"Ooh, déjà vu," Jack mocked.
Ianto tugged gently at his hair, chuckling. "Okay, you win."
"Does that mean I get—"
"No. Shut up and eat before the pasta gets cold," Ianto ordered, winding up another forkful. Jack waited until the forkful was at his head-level before lunging forward and stealing it straight off Ianto's fork.
"S'good stuff," he mumbled through it. Ianto simply sighed and fed him another forkful.
Okay, this is getting long enough! ;-) There will be another chapter up sometime soon, about their (eventual!) date, so watch this space!
REVIEWS = HAPPY WRITER = PRODUCTIVE WRITER = MORE, LONGER CHAPTERS, FASTER