Best Laid Plans

Chapter Two

The second the clock strikes noon, Jenny just about leaps from her chair, gallops to the coffee machine where Ianto is making himself a cup, grabs him by the hand and tows him to the autopsy area. Martha is there, cataloguing and generally making herself seem a lot busier than she is, and she looks up as the two arrive. Jenny hangs over the railing, arms swinging lazily, beaming at the woman, and Martha gives her an apologetic smile back. Or, what she thinks is an apologetic smile; it turns out to be more of an exaggerated, pained grimace.

"Lunchtime already?" Martha asks, and the blonde girl nods vigorously. "Um, I'm really sorry, Jenny, but I can't. I'm way too swamped."

Jenny's face falls, and it's a good thing Ianto's standing behind her and can't see this, or else he'd be feeling a strong urge to throw something at Martha. "So we can't go?" Jenny asks sadly; she loves the feeling of having friends, of being included, and the idea of going out to lunch with a group of them gives her as warm and fuzzy a feeling as she's ever experienced. In this respect, she's very much like a puppy (and, Jack would say, very much like her dad).

"Oh, you guys can still go out," Martha says hurriedly, raising her hands placatingly. "I'll just come next time, yeah?" Jenny brightens a little but still looks rather crestfallen, so Martha adds, "Sorry, Jenny. I'll make it up to you tomorrow, I promise."

"Yeah, all right." Jenny smiles and grabs Ianto's hand again - he hopes she can't hear his heart pounding when she does so - and bounds off to find Mickey, who's over at his computer, typing boredly.

"Ready to go, Mickety Mick Mickey?" she asks excitedly, and receives an odd look from him following the nickname. This quickly dissolves into the same expression Martha bore, and Ianto's eyebrows shoot up in suspicion.

"Sorry, Jen," Mickey says. "Lot o' work to do, looks like I'm gonna have to skip lunch today. And I'm bloody starving too. Ah well."

Jenny frowns, brow knitting in slightly hurt puzzlement. She whips round to face Ianto. "Well...you're still coming, aren't you, Ianto?"

Ianto hasn't been paying much attention in the past few seconds, as he's too busy glowing with happiness inside. No Mickey and no Martha. That means just him and Jenny. Jack and Gwen are still off chasing down that Weevil, so just him and Jenny. Ianto doublechecks this in his mind over and over again, making sure he hasn't forgotten to factor someone else in - the pterodactyl, perhaps? - but is snapped out of it when Jenny asks her question. He gives her a smile, his first real one since before that morning's trodden-on-sandcastle incident. "Yeah. Yeah, of course I am."

--

And so here they are, sitting in an ice cream parlor on rickety metal chairs, the establishment's air conditioning only serving to melt their ice creams faster. Ianto had asked Jenny where she wanted to go, and she confessed that she'd never tried ice cream before, so he immediately led her here, and she's now contentedly licking her scoop of mint chocolate chip as Ianto nurses his cappucino-flavoured ice cream and watches her. She seems not entirely sure how to handle an ice cream cone, and little melted streams of froth are causing her fingers to become sticky. Rather than be annoyed by this, however, Jenny's smile has only grown wider. She's absolutely delighted by most everything that happens, and Ianto can't help but wonder how in the hell she can stay so happy in a world full of such misery.

This, he realises, is one of the reasons he was drawn to her so quickly. Jenny's a light in the darkness - as cliched as that sounds - and Ianto has seen plenty of darkness in his life; light is a nice change, to say the least. Of course, he was happy with Jack, but Jack was never anywhere near as bright and excited and exuberant as Jenny is. Ianto basks in her joyful glow, only ceasing to gaze at her when she finishes off the cone and smiles up at him, a dab of ice cream going unnoticed on the tip of her nose. "Where to now?" she asks him. "We've still got about half an hour to kill."

Ianto almost laughs, reaching up and tapping his own nose with a finger. "Jenny, you've, er...you've got some ice cream..."

"Oh, have I?" Jenny takes a napkin from the holder and wipes it off. Then she grins, which turns into a spirited giggle that she seems unable to stop, and soon Ianto has joined in, laughing with her and asking the universe where this wonderful girl who makes every day so enjoyable has been up until a week ago.

After a short time, their laughter dissolves into silence, but not the uncomfortable kind; it's companionable, contented. Not the kind where neither party can find words to fill it, but the kind where they don't need to. Jenny and Ianto sit at their table a little longer, allowing Ianto time to finish the last of his ice cream, before getting up and heading off, back in the general direction of the Plass because it's getting close to the end of lunch, but prepared to stop anywhere that takes their fancy.

They buy coffees from a little roadside vendor and hover near it while they drink them, chatting away about films - turns out Jenny's never seen one, and Ianto has made plans in his head to take her to the movies in a flash - until Jenny takes her fourth sip of coffee and screws her dainty little nose up at it. "This isn't nearly as good as yours," she remarks, and Ianto can tell she's not just being nice, she's totally honest.

He gives her a smile. "Well, not everyone's born with the gift," he says jokingly, and she grins at him. And then her grin turns to a thoughtful frown and she pauses, her expression odd. One Ianto's never seen her with before. He begins to worry a little.

"Ianto..." Jenny begins, not quite looking him in the eye, but then they're interrupted as a pair of large hands clamp each of their shoulders - Ianto's right, Jenny's left - gently but firmly. Startled, both look up into the face of the man to whom the hands belong, and he looks back at them, mouth twisting into the kind of smile that one would generally find on a cartoon shark that's cornered a pair of goldfish. Ianto gives the man a sheepish, guilty, caught-with-a-hand-in-the-cookie-jar glance in reply to this smile, whereas Jenny's gaze turns, puzzled and slightly upset, to the woman standing a short distance from them. Gwen's face is deeply apologetic.

"What have we here?" Jack asks the pair, slyly.

To be continued.