The next morning Ianto woke up in as bad a mood as every day since their arrival in D.C. He rolled off the bed, careful not to push Myfanwy off, as she kept sleeping peacefully on his duvet. Still groggy, he dragged his feet to the bathroom and splashed his face with water to wake himself up. Slowly, he began to remember that there could be some improvement in his miserable American high school plight, and along with sleepiness, his bad mood went away.
Even his long trip on the capital's public transport didn't take the budding cheerfulness away from him. He jogged up the majestic entrance of the school with a fresh wave of the optimism that he'd been convinced he had left somewhere in Wales.
For whatever reason, he was surprised Jack wasn't waiting for him, leaning on one of the columns in front of the main entrance. But obviously, it would've been ridiculous to actually expect him to. So Ianto just sighed at his stupidity and went in.
He saw a couple of Jack's friends during recess, but never said a word to them, since well, they hadn't been introduced and he didn't want to assume they wanted him to talk to them. And then he saw Jack in their AP English class, but they didn't have a chance to talk either, especially when Jack bolted out of the classroom as soon as the bell rang.
So Ianto's enthusiasm waned.
For a glorious few hours he'd had this fantasy of living a wonderful life as if taken out of Beverly Hills 90210 that he used to catch reruns of in secret back in Wales. The absolute cliché of the life of teenagers in America. But now he had to try unwillingly to remove the daydream from his mind, and face reality: he was going to be lonelier and more miserable than he used to be in Cardiff. There he at least had those few mates he could hang out with on a regular basis. And Lisa.
But Lisa didn't even want to try long-distance. She had told him that point-blank. "I don't think it could work out, we're too young to commit like that, Ianto. It's better to save ourselves the heartbreak," she'd said. She hadn't foreseen that with that she could break Ianto's heart. And break his heart she did.
He wasn't really counting on being popular or dating a new girl every month. He just hoped for any distraction from his painful loneliness. From the fact that the last he'd heard from anyone back home that he wasn't related to was an hour after landing. Since then, radio silence. He kept checking his Facebook constantly, but it was as empty as ever. His phone was silent, too, but considering the expenses, it was understandable. Yet it still stung.
At lunchtime, he entered the cafeteria with his head hung low, focused entirely on getting his portion of spaghetti with meatballs, a bottle of water and an apple. Attending to such trivial things kept his mind off his disappointment. It also made him much less aware of the people around him and where he was going, so he accidentally bumped his tray into someone, causing his water bottle to do a backflip towards the floor.
'Sorry,' Ianto muttered as he immediately dropped to his knees to retrieve it.
'Whoa, whoa, whoa, hold your horses, cowboy,' a voice said a little too close to be coming from someone standing up.
Ianto looked up, straight into the brilliance of Jack Harkness' blue eyes.
'We had an appointment,' Jack said lightly, putting his hand on the bottle at the same moment as Ianto. Their fingers brushed against each other, and the latter boy recoiled from the touch, letting Jack place the bottle back on his tray.
He had no idea why he did either of those things.
'Did we?'
'Maybe not exactly an appointment, but I do recall an offer,' Jack said, standing up. 'Come on, we sit through there.'
'I know.'
Only when Jack quirked his eyebrow in response, did Ianto realise he answered a little too fast. He sounded desperate. Feeling the heat of a blush creeping onto his cheeks, he followed Jack to the table.
'Everyone, this is Ianto, as you may already know,' Jack said, putting his hands on the boy's shoulder, as if he needed to be pointed out to them. It was very casual, especially coming from Jack, but it was something entirely new for Ianto. 'Ianto, this is everyone.' He flashed him his number five smile.
'Hi, er- everyone,' Ianto stammered and tried smiling, too.
'Hey,' said the shy Asian girl he'd seen in his AP Algebra class. 'I'm Tosh.'
'More like Toshiko Actual-All-Around-Genius Sato,' said the boy opposite her, who was fiddling with his chips, and she turned crimson. Uh-huh, she was blatantly in love with him and he seemed oblivious. 'Owen Harper,' he added, extending his hand for Ianto to shake, which Ianto did, balancing his tray on one hand.
Jack hurried to make room for him to sit, and surprised him by taking Ianto's food out of his hands.
The last person to introduce herself was a dark-haired girl with huge round hazel eyes.
'Gwen. Cooper,' she said, tearing her lips away from the straw she was using to drink the contents of a juice box. Ianto noticed she was really pretty despite the sizeable gap between her upper front incisors.
He sat down finally, on the edge of the only empty chair, which was clearly waiting for him. He wasn't exactly comfortable being around a group of strangers and their familiarity between one another only made things worse.
'Jack introduced himself already, I'm sure,' Owen sniggered, never stopping chewing his chips.
'He did, yeah,' Ianto said, before catching on. There was an inside joke hidden somewhere in Owen's words. Gwen raised an eyebrow. Tosh bore her gaze into her plate of spaghetti, fighting a giggle. Jack rolled his eyes. 'Or not.'
Owen snorted, 'Your time's gonna come, mate.'
'If you say so, but for what exactly?,' Ianto asked cautiously.
'For making out with Jack, obviously,' Gwen said with a gap-toothed grin.
It turned out that was the worst moment to take a sip of water, and Ianto spluttered the drink out, thankfully no further than his own tray (but still to Owen and Gwen's amusement; Jack and Tosh kept silent).
'Ex- Excuse me?' He stared incredulously at his new group of friends. They sure where amused, but they didn't seem to be joking. 'Have you all- snogged Jack?'
'I haven't,' Jack deadpanned.
'I'm gonna ignore it and pretend it wasn't creepy,' Ianto said. 'But seriously, all of you?'
Three heads nodded in sync.
'Seriously?'
Identical, unified nod.
'At least tell me it wasn't an orgy.'
'Well...,' Jack said. 'No. Not that I didn't suggest.'
It took Ianto a second to get over a sudden urge to slap Jack over the head.
'That is a little comforting. I was beginning to worry I ended up with sex-crazed Americans who haven't ended up on Teen Mom only by some miracle or excellent knowledge of contraception methods.'
Jack opened his mouth to say something, but a glare from Ianto silenced him.
'Okay, so I wanna hear the stories.'
Tosh giggled. 'So, I actually made out with everyone, too. 'Cause I had mistletoe last Christmas.'
'And too much eggnog, Tosh,' Gwen added.
'True,' she admitted willingly. 'But that's pretty much the whole story.'
'Owen, your turn,' Jack prompted with a devilish smile.
The other boy laughed. 'We didn't make out then, Harkness, and you know it.'
'But it's a good story.' Jack shrugged.
'Sure is,' Gwen said, nodding and attempting to hide an excited smile. She definitely knew the story by heart and loved hearing it again.
Without a word, Ianto stuffed his mouth full of pasta and waved at the others to go on telling the story.
'So, we were like eight or nine,' Owen said. Somehow Ianto's ability to be surprised was running out. 'We were at this camp somewhere in the middle of nowhere.'
'We were cub scouts together,' Jack added. He was rocking himself in his chair, with a smile caught somewhere between arrogance and nostalgia. An odd combination, especially on the face of a seventeen-year-old boy.
'Yep, so we were there, and we were like, I don't know, getting firewood or something, and it was just the two of us for a while, and we got to talking about girls.'
'And, as you can imagine, we weren't the most inexperienced of eight-year-olds.' Jack gave Ianto a wink.
'So Jack was bragging that he kissed a girl, her name was Jessica and she was the prettiest girl at school...'
'And poor Owen confessed to him that he'd never kissed anyone,' Gwen interjected excitedly.
Her friend rolled her eyes at her. 'I've had a lot of practice since then, thank you very much.' He turned back to Ianto. 'So Jack offered to teach me how to kiss. He wasn't half bad for an eight-year-old.'
'I've always been a great kisser, Harper, just admit it,' Jack teased.
'Believe what you want, Harkness. But the bottom line is that I said yes, and our leader found us kissing, and we got kicked out, end of story.' Owen grinned happily, as if getting kicked out of cub scouts was one of his finest moments.
'Wait, was it because you were eight, or because you're both guys?,' Ianto asked.
'The latter,' Jack sighed. 'Those were good times. The first time I was grounded for kissing a guy.'
'How does that make it "good times"?'
'He likes being the rebel,' Tosh said, doing a bad impression of Jack.
'Don't mock me! I'm fighting the system!' Jack folded his arms over his chest.
'No, sweetheart, you're doing all you can to excel in the art of pissing off your dad,' Gwen laughed.
'That's a side effect.'
Ianto cleared his throat. 'Okay, so what was the end of the story?'
'Like Owen said,' Jack answered. 'They kicked us out for being gay. Problem was that we didn't even know what it meant. And that they were wrong, those ignorant bigots.'
'Wrong?'
'Yeah, neither of us turned out to be gay after all.'
Ianto frowned. 'Last night you seemed quite gay indeed.'
'Last night?,' Gwen asked, suddenly serious and alert.
'He almost walked in on me and,' Jack lowered his voice, 'the other J.H. in Rock Creek Park.'
Owen burst out laughing.
'You're taking little Johnny for romantic walks to get him to let you fuck him again?'
The only response he got from Jack was a glare.
'Oh,' Gwen said with what seemed like relief.
'Thing is, my dear friend, I find beauty in all people,' Jack said with faux-solemnity.
Owen snorted, 'Nope, you find all people fuckable. If we'd give you a primate, you'd probably find it fuckable, too.'
'I resent that implication,' Jack protested. 'But, say, a hot humanoid alien? I wouldn't say no to a third-degree encounter.'
'You're one sick man, Harkness.' Gwen shook her head, but her expression said something completely different.
'God, you are all sick,' Ianto sighed.
But he smiled at that, too. He realised he liked them. They were all warped, obnoxious, inappropriate and probably morally loose, but he didn't really mind. They didn't make him feel like a stranger.
Before he knew it, the lunch break was over and he felt a little bit like he belonged.
A/N: An update after just over a week! But you probably shouldn't ged to it, 'cause as much as I'd like it keep it up, I have very limited writing time (and I often suffer from writer's block), and the pre-written chapters are gonna end way too soon. I'll do my best, though!
Oh, although the story focuses on Janto, there is another pairing that I will explore to some extent. Or even more than one. Just so you know.
All feedback is very highly appreciated!
