Chapter 8: Jack Harkness does NOT cuddle
It was 1030 at night and Owen and Gwen had left the HUB about an hour ago, Ianto was finished with his work for the day and barring any weevil sightings - which he had taken to helping Jack with - he was on his own time. Making one last trip to the kitchenette he prepared three drinks, a cup of Jack's usual industrial strength coffee and two hot chocolates, he loaded them onto a tray and stopped in front of Tosh's desk handing the tired, harassed looking woman her drink.
"You okay Tosh?"
"Fine, I'll be fine Ianto, thanks." She indicated the hot drink and went back to preparing the list for UNIT.
Ianto had confirmed his suspicions, sure "I'll be fine" was a far cry from "help me" and Jack would probably laugh at him for reading too much into semantics but he remembered that phrase well... the whole time he had been hiding Lisa in the basement he had never been able to truthfully say that he was fine when someone asked him how he was, "I'll be fine" became his go-to answer because it wasn't really a lie, he just didn't feel like sharing everything with his colleagues. He hoped that Tosh would ask for help before whatever problem she had escalated like his did. Just in case he'd ask Jack to keep an eye out. He arrived at Jack's office and with one last look at Tosh sat behind her desk, he knocked on the door and entered.
Inside, Ianto set Jack's coffee on his desk where he was engrossed with another alien brainteaser and took his own drink over to the couch.
"The rift predictor says that there'll be a spike in about two hours"
"Hm..." Jack was still occupied with his toy
"I just don't think it's worth me going home"
"Hm..."
"Me, Tosh and Janet just had a threesome in the kitchen" Ianto was sure he wasn't listening
"Hm..."
"Jack!" Ianto put his mug down on the table
"What?" he stopped fiddling with the thing in his hand but didn't put it down
"I said" Ianto unbuttoned the cuffs of his shirt and took off his tie "there's going to be some rift activity in a few hours so it's not worth my going home, I thought I'd just stay here and kill some time, but if you're busy?" he glanced at the silver box in Jack's hand.
Jack threw the toy over his shoulder where it landed on top of the filing cabinet with a clang, then walked over to Ianto. The Welshman smirked and met him half way, satisfied that he had won he pulled his lover in for a kiss.
"What now sir? He asked, raising an eyebrow and watching Jack's reaction to his calling him "sir". It was one of the many things Ianto had discovered about Jack and his weird kinks in the past few weeks.
"How long have we got?"
Ianto checked his PDA "2 hours, give or take six minutes, there's a glitch in the predictor's program I'm working on with Tosh but it's fairly..." Jack cut him off with another kiss and they struggled down the ladder to Jack's bunker without breaking their hold on one another.
One hour and sixteen minutes later, Ianto thought to check his PDA to see how much was left before the rift spike was expected. "How long?"
"Still at least forty minutes"
"Then put that damned thing down and come back to bed"
Ianto resumed his previous position, lying at Jack's side with his head on Jack's arm, staring at the ceiling while one hand absently traced patterns on the other man's stomach.
"You know sir, I never expected you to be the cuddling type"
Jack turned to face him "This isn't cuddling, this is just us basking in the afterglow"
Ianto was quiet for minute but continued his hand movements, "feels like cuddling to me" he said, so quiet that without his superior 51st Century hearing, Jack wouldn't have heard it.
"Really?" a mischievous grin settled on Jack's face "and what does this feel like" he sat up and started tickling Ianto, paying special attention the space under his ribs and the back of his neck where he knew the young man was extra ticklish.
Ianto surrendered pretty quickly and Jack settled back against the pillows satisfied that he had won that argument, he may not jump right out of bed after sex but he did not cuddle. Ianto just decided to give him this one as Jack knew all of his ticklish spots and wasn't afraid to use the knowledge against him, he lay back with the other man and looked around. This wasn't the first time he had been in Jack's bunker but it always surprised him just how homely it seemed. Somehow he had always expected a camp bed in a tiny, low ceilinged hole whereas in reality, Jack's room was about the size of Ianto's own bedroom, painted yellow with a soft rug on the floor and a large bed which dominated the room. On one wall was a door which led to Jack's private bathroom and the walls were mainly covered in shelves, some held books but most just had artefacts which Ianto – as hard as he tried – could find no record of in the Torchwood archive.
He picked up his PDA from the night stand and seeing that there was only half an hour until the next predicted rift spike he got out of bed before Jack could persuade him otherwise and moved to pick up his clothes. Once he had on his pants and shirt he started throwing clothes at Jack until he finally got the message and moved. A few minutes later they were both dressed and on their way up through the HUB. Tosh must have gone home while they were downstairs and she had powered down the computers and turned off most of the lights, Ianto smiled at her thoughtfulness, nobody else ever bothered to power down the HUB so it was always left to him.
The rift spike had turned out to be an alien animal, which looked kind of like a dog but green, four feet tall and with eyes like an insect. Jack had wanted to keep it as a pet but once it tried to maul Ianto he shot it in the head, nobody mauled Ianto Jones: nobody but him that was. Jack thought that he might even shoot Janet if she tried to do it. They got the body into the back of the SUV and drove back to the HUB, Jack carried the creature down to the autopsy area for Owen to dissect when he came in while Ianto went to take a shower, his clothes were covered in green blood and he honestly didn't think it was going to come out – yet another suit ruined in the name of Torchwood.
When half an hour had passed and Ianto had not reappeared Jack decided to investigate, he found the young Welshman sat on the bench in the locker room next to the shower room in a towel scrubbing at his stained shirt with a bowl of hot water next to him. He looked up as he heard Jack enter
"I can't get it out, whatever that thing was, it's got blood like tar"
Jack laughed
"It's not funny Jack, this was a good suit, and between you ripping off buttons whenever you're too impatient to let me undo them and the alien gunk I get on them at work I go through far too many of them"
"Look, I'll buy you another suit"
"It's not about the money Jack, it's just annoying." rant over, Ianto gave up on the shirt and threw it into the bin on the other side of the room. He looked at Jack apologetically, Jack knew that Ianto was very careful with his clothes, because his tad was a tailor he had always had good quality clothes which lasted, he wasn't used to the Torchwood attitude of "hey a bullet hole, oh well that's another shirt for the bin".
It was after three and Jack had decided that rather than letting Ianto go home, only to have to come back in in a few hours he would let him stay here. They had never spent an entire night together but they were both too tired to realise the step they were taking by this point. When he was just about to drift off to sleep Ianto remembered what he wanted to talk to Jack about when he had brought him coffee earlier that night. He knew that Jack didn't really sleep, just dozed a little so he saw no harm in speaking up.
"Jack"
"mmhmm.."
"I'm worried about Tosh" there was silence in the bunker for a moment while Jack woke himself up a little.
"Why?" he still sounded sleepy
"Because she's been acting strangely and she..."
"No, I mean why now? "
Ianto rearranged the pillow and shifted so that he was lying on his front talking to Jack
"Because I just remembered, I tried to tell you before but we got distracted."
"Okay, well I'm listening"
"She's been jumpy and she looks so tired, I don't know what's going on but I think she might be in trouble and I wanted to let you know"
"I'll look into it" he rolled onto his back and but his arms behind his head "now get some sleep, the others will be in in a few hours"
"Yes sir" he couldn't help but smile as he rolled over to face the wall and went to sleep, knowing exactly what he was doing to Jack.
AN/ Well, there's a nice little chapter for you before we get into Greeks bearing gifts... I felt like I needed this...actually I felt like I needed a much dirtier version of this but then I remembered that I'm trying to keep this to a T rating so it got much less graphic.
