Chapter Eight

Good evening, darlings. Here we have the latest instalment, in which our heroes spend a little time apart and ponder on where their loyalties lie. I'm a little unsure of this one, so feedback would be received with a megawatt smile from me.

It occurred to me while writing this chapter, with no small sense of mortification, that all of the women so far are painted in a horrible light. In fairness the majority of the women in the Jeeves stories are a pain in the arse, and that's sort of the point because it pulls focus directly to Jeeves and Wooster and their relationship, which absolutely transcends love. In my story, I exaggerate the women much further because this version is distinctly less innocent than Wodehouse's, shall we say, so there's a difference in context. So let's agree that I'm NOT setting feminism back, okay? I'm also not slagging off the 'real' Gwen (I will continue to state this because I will always defend her).

Enjoy!


By the time Jack dragged himself out of bed the next morning, head throbbing with the pain of his damaged nose, his valet was already gone. It was Ianto's day off but even so, Jack discovered as he padded to the kitchen in his pyjamas that the young man had left a pot of coffee simmering for him. He couldn't help but grin as he poured himself a generous sweetened cupful. Since their misunderstanding and the subsequent clearing up of the issue, he'd felt a renewed freedom and a warming affection towards Ianto, without wasting too much time examining it. He believed that Ianto too, who had never quite been conventional in his role from the start, was beginning to treat Jack as a chum. A chum who he happened to serve, wake up, tuck into bed, and call 'sir'.

As he shuffled into the lounge with a second cup of coffee and a badly-sliced piece of burnt toast, Jack formulated a magnificent day plan that involved not seeing anybody or doing anything at all until 5PM, at which point he would depart to the Torchwood club, then return home with hopefully more than a little fine alcohol in him and a stolen policeman's helmet pitifully hidden beneath his coat.


Queuing at the post office as he patiently awaited his package of fine imported coffee beans, Ianto had to wonder why he was wasting his day off completing tasks which were technically part of his job and therefore could wait until tomorrow. It was not as if the large bean jar in the pantry wasn't still at least a third full… and it wasn't even that he was looking forward to taste-testing this new blend which he had painstakingly ordered after hearing exceptional reviews of its rich flavour. No – he realised with mild sense of disbelief – it was the inherent desire to please his employer.

"Mr I. Jones?" somebody called, jolting him from his introspection. He stepped forward to sign for the parcel, offering a polite nod of thanks before working his way out onto the relative calm of the Sunday afternoon pavement. Keeping Mr Harkness contented is your job, he reasoned with himself, but it was more than that. He longed for Jack's approval because… they were friends.

Ianto wasn't a man who made friends with any sense of ease. Oh he was liked, certainly; his wit and his humour made him an attractive conversational partner, but he struggled with the openness that friendship demanded. Any companions he had once had tired of his (what some thought of as) almost robotic persona, and he never fought to keep them. He even struggled to feel close to his own relations, and they to him as a result. It hadn't been a wrench to leave them behind in Newport and move from master to master in London, where the ageing bachelors had far more money than sense and liked the way he silently cleaned up their messes.

Ianto remained faintly baffled by the immediate and ever-growing levels of intimacy he shared with Jack Harkness. In his more peaceful moments, it was so very easy to think of him with a warm sense of sentimentality, knowing that each little thing he did for the man resulted in the sincerest gratitude and one of those dazzling smiles that told the recipient you've made me happy. Exactly the reasoning behind the procurement of the fresh batch of coffee, in fact. Yet in those slightly darker times in which he made the spectacular mistake of reflecting upon his own life, he knew it was futile to think of Jack in that way. For all his faults, one day the other man would most probably marry, and married men almost never kept their valets. Jack might retain his services as a butler perhaps, but either way they would not be the companions they were now. However, Ianto also knew that he would stay with Jack until Jack no longer needed him.

At his employer's apartment building, Ianto decided against personally taking his cargo up to the flat, instead handing it to one of the porters and turning on his heel once more. He needed some time alone, and besides if Jack was at home he would shoo him away, saying that he should be enjoying his day off. Ianto struggled to think of much he enjoyed more than losing himself in the soothing monotony of housework and making superb coffee, but deciding to live a little, he headed to a pub he knew from his childhood as comfortable and dark with local beer and a dart board.

Perfect.


"Knobby!" Jack waved on seeing his friend propping up the bar and stuffing his face with vol-au-vents. He slapped him heartily on the back and Owen grinned with pastry flakes decorating his teeth.

"Jackie! I was about to give up on you, what time do you call this? And what the hell happened to your ugly mug?"

"Cocktail hour old man, that's what I call it. And… I had a small disagreement with somebody's fist. But never mind that, where's the goddamned barman?"

Jack ordered a very large, very dry martini and settled himself in what was, at the very least, his second home. In the main dining room a group of lads he semi-knew from university were tossing shuttlecocks and playing cards towards the ceiling, attempting to land them inside the light shades. He shook his head with only minor affection and turned to Owen, who looked even more self-satisfied than usual.

"Alright, what have you done this time?"

Owen widened his dark eyes in a show of false innocence.

"What on earth do you mean?" he asked.

"I mean, why do you look as if you shagged Marlene Dietrich in a police box on your way here?"

Owen choked on his drink with a wicked bark of laughter while Jack continued to eye him suspiciously.

"It wasn't Marlene, I had to let her down gently this time" Owen chuckled.

"So who has you looking like an overstuffed Cheshire cat?"

"Well, if you must know… it's your ex-fiancée."

Jack gaped at him. "Toshiko? The woman loathes you!"

"What? No! Not Toshiko! Wait… she loathes me?"

"Yes, but that's not important right now… good lord Knobby, I assumed you meant the most recent fiancée, you're going to have to be more specific than that."

"Well I thought she was your most recent fiancée! Actually, I'm talking about Gwen Cooper."

It was Jack's turn to choke; only his coughing fit was so vicious that Owen had to thump him between the shoulder blades hard enough to cause bruising. When Jack came up for air his eyes were bulging in astonishment.

"You… and Gwen?" he gasped. "But she's engaged to Jingo Williams! I saw the announcement in the paper just this morning!"

It had given Jack no small amount of joy to discover that. In fact, he'd gone so far as to leap around the flat singing 'Anything Goes' at the top of his lungs, knowing that the Cooper girl would never again harass him… but apparently a little thing like being engaged to a decent man didn't stop her.

Owen shifted in his seat. "Yes, well… how was I to know she'd be so bloody… seducible!"

"Please, I've no wish to hear any more detail than that" Jack shuddered. "Gwen Cooper is a scourge to mankind."

"Says you" Owen snorted. "You'd think differently if you'd at least allowed her to get close enough to slip her tongue inside your-"

"Knobby, do you mind?"

"I was going to say 'ear'."

"Of course you were" Jack sighed. "Have you thought about the repercussions of this? How Jingo is going to feel?"

"He probably won't find out" Owen shrugged. "I'm not the one who's got anything to lose here. She's still on the rebound after you and Jingo clearly isn't giving her what she needs."

"She never had me. And Jingo's hardly been given a chance! You're an idiot, Knobby Harper. She clearly doesn't know what she's doing."

Owen ignored him and held up another vol-au-vent, lapping the salmon mousse from within and showing it to Jack.

"Oi Jackie, this looks just like Gwen's-"

"RIGHT, I'm leaving."

For the second time in a few short weeks, Jack found himself unwillingly storming out of the Torchwood Club and wondering why on earth he was friends with Owen Harper at all. Or any of the regular lot who wasted all of their time there, for that matter. It occurred to him that since Ianto's arrival, the evenings spent at home with a glass of something amber and his valet's unobtrusive but ever-enthralling company were immeasurably more satisfying than those at the club with his 'friends'. He was torn between a sense of vague contempt for them and a nostalgic affection for his long-gone youth. Had he really grown up and left them all behind? If he had, it was extremely sudden and correlated directly with hiring Ianto. His relationship with the young man continued to prove to him precisely what he'd been missing.

Jack stood listlessly at the corner of the road, tilting his pocket watch towards the street light above. He realised that he'd been in the club for less than an hour before leaving in fear of violent illness; it was an embarrassingly early time to return to the flat. Making a quick decision he hailed a taxi, requested the nearest drinking hole and five minutes later stepped out in front of somewhere that looked from the outside charmingly… quaint. Wholly the opposite of Torchwood. Excellent!


"Where did you learn to play like that, Mr Jones?" the awe-stricken and airheaded barmaid gasped at Ianto, who for the third time had just plunged his dart effortlessly into the centre of the board.

"Practice, ma'am" he smiled, raising his glass once more to his lips. The evening had been quiet and reasonably pleasant, but for the unwanted attentions of she who continued to provide him with bitter. He was beginning to dread returning to the bar as she batted her lashes continuously up at him. Retiring to a plush seat near to the fireplace, he rolled his eyes when the woman followed and covered her actions by stoking the flames in a manner she clearly felt was subtle.

Beaming at him, she straightened herself once more and brushed the ash from her apron, flicking her hair in what she seemed to think was an alluring manner.

"Mr Jones" she purred, "are you… married, sir?"

Well, that was predictably direct. "No ma'am."

She bit her lip and he resisted the urge to sigh.

"In which case, would you like-"

"Jones!" a familiar voice called, and Ianto glanced up towards the open pub door to find his immaculately-dressed employer filling the space, grinning that flawless Harkness grin. "Fancy seeing you here!"

"Sir" he smiled back, astounding himself with just how welcome the prospect of Jack's company was. It didn't seem to matter that it was the same man he saw all day, every day… he was exactly who Ianto wanted to see at that precise moment.