Stimulus: envelope
Spoilers: None – but it's set before the Tosh and Owen died (note to self: murder RTD)
POV: Yours?
Dedication: Aunty Jane – who drove me bloody insane by giving me a sealed envelope for my birthday two weeks before it! GAH!
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood. .
AN: enjoy, my dearests :) sorry for the delay with this one – I've been so unbelievably uninspired these past few weeks. Plus I've been so busy working on (well, trying to) One More Day – I really need a beta! HELP!!! Oh, and gernumblies? I through the giant mushroom thing in at the end just to annoy you ;)
-x-
He'd been tortured. He'd been shot, stabbed, beaten, buried, thrown, shat on and even thrown to the sharks a couple of times (he still got such a kick out of telling that one)… but this? This was the worst. This topped them all.
The envelope on the table drew his eyes like magnets; or, in a more fitting description, like a corpse attracts the gaze of a murderer. Try as he might, he could not look away.
Ianto had been the one to inflict this torture – on the day that they guessed to be Jack's birthday, gifts and celebration had NOT been permitted (that was the revised version – the first had involved a list of 'acceptable gifts' that a very firm Ianto and a slightly disturbed Owen had insisted the girls did NOT want to see). But then Ianto had never really been one for rules.
"Don't open it 'til I'm back, ok?" The Welshman had warned. "I mean it. If you do, I'll make you choose between coffee and sex." Jack had paled then and pledged his unswerving allegiance to this insane cause.
That had been five minutes ago.
Five oh eight, oh nine, ten…
When he reached twenty six, he couldn't take it any more.
It was painstakingly easy to slit open the seal and fold open the paper to find…
Ianto's stopwatch?
It was counting upwards – he clicked the red button cautiously, and it stopped. He frowned at it for a moment before returning to the envelope. A card.
Lot of things you can do with a stopwatch… it read. Jack grinned. You're so predictable. I hope you made it past six minutes at least. Don't lie to me. You didn't, did you? I knew it. You have two minutes to get to the roof or I am leaving. Bring wine. And the stopwatch. As I said before, lot of things you can do with a stopwatch…
I x
Jack grinned again and stood. Yes, been tortured. He'd been shot, stabbed, beaten, buried, thrown, shat on and even thrown to the sharks a couple of times – not to mention that giant mushroom…
But it was so, so worth it.