Chapter Five
Jack's eyes were still half-closed and his mouth half-quirked and his torso pushed forward as though he had been frozen mid-movement. Ianto watched him blink and gradually lean back, lazily, watched his mouth relax into a full smile. Finally, he turned the ignition over and began to inch his way back into traffic. The wipers swept a river's worth of water off his windshield and came back too soon, squeaking loudly.
"Yeah. We could do that," he said. "Gwen lives close to you, right?"
Ianto frowned, but kept watching the road. "Are we inviting her to dinner?"
Jack was oddly quiet, but Ianto couldn't risk taking his eyes away from the length of space that was inching closer. With one quick flick of his wrist and appropriately applied pressure to the pedal, he swooped in gracefully. Finally, he glanced over.
"You're always so practical until you feel threatened, you know that?" Jack chuckled. "No, I was thinking we could have her go check it out. She could bring Rhys."
"He'd like that," Ianto said, smiling fondly, and then he frowned. "But I don't feel threatened."
Jack's hand found its way back to his leg, a firm pressure rather than teasing strokes, as though one of them was anchored to the other. It was a nice feeling, really, and maybe it was a little possessive. But it wasn't uncomfortable. Jack was humming along with the soft music on the radio, something Ianto didn't instantly recognize, which wasn't saying much as he didn't recognize most classical pieces. It went with the rain, though, and the beat of the wipers and the slosh of the other cars.
"We don't have much," Jack said mid-hum.
Ianto blinked at the taillights of the car in front of him, trying to decipher the cryptic message until he just gave up. "We? What?"
"To cook, at home. There's just some tins of soup and dried pasta and things, but I don't think there's any sauce. And I think the milk's about to go off, and we used the last of the bread the other day."
Ianto considered this for a moment. The sky had darkened considerably. He switched on the lights and then turned the wipers up a notch, too, while he was at it.
"There's a Tesco's just up here on the left," he told Jack. He dug back into his memory, trying to figure out if he'd ever seen Jack set foot in a Tesco's before. It seemed like some kind of strange anachronism, though he was sure it had to happen from time to time. After all, Jack had, on very rare occasions, been known to procure last minute supplies for the Hub. He had to have gotten them from somewhere.
Jack just murmured some kind of agreement, his attention still on the radio, and whatever piece it was they were playing.
"Schubert," he said eventually, after the piece had ended. "Trout Quintet. One of my favorites…"
Ianto nodded, a little blankly, at the sheet of rain that was washing back and forth across the windshield. "I'm not all that familiar with Schubert," he offered, feeling a bit out of his depth. He suddenly wished he'd paid more attention in some of those compulsory music classes back when he'd had the chance.
Jack squeezed his knee. "We should take in a concert or two every once in a while. The university has evening chamber concerts on Tuesdays." Jack raised his eyebrows hopefully.
Ianto blinked again, glancing in his side mirror as he changed lanes. "Sure," he told Jack, surprised by the tiny bubble of excitement that rippled in his chest at the thought. "Rift permitting, of course," he added, with just a quirk of a smile.
"Of course." Jack grinned. "You'll like it, I promise."
Ianto couldn't help but agree.
As they pulled into the Tesco car park, the rain eased a little, as if sensing their approach.
"I'll call Gwen," Jack told him as they stepped out of the car. "Let her know we'll be over in," he glanced at his watch, "less than thirty minutes to drop off the kit for her and Rhys. She should have test strips, but who knows what she'll find out at the pool – they're better off taking it all."
Ianto nodded and then glanced up at the darkening sky. Together they made a run for it, jogging across the length of the car park in between the slowing raindrops.
They were wet when they got to the doors and the blast of cold air that hit them was startling. Music was playing, something Ianto couldn't distinguish that was probably supposed to increase his desire to spend money. He stood, considering the best way to tackle the list he had mentally composed on the short drive over, when he realized Jack had wandered off to collect a trolley. Sighing, he walked over.
"Do we really need it?" he asked and Jack grinned.
"Can't hurt, right?"
"No, I suppose not. I could pick up the biscuits Gwen asked for, and we need more –"
Jack cut him off with a glare. "No. We're not buying stuff for the Hub now."
"But –"
"We're buying things for the flat."
Ianto frowned even as his heart stuttered a bit in his chest. There it was again. 'Home,' not 'Ianto's.' 'The' flat, not 'your' flat. And sure, Jack had his things there, that was simply practical. But now he had somehow managed to verbally move himself in and – and it had never occurred to Ianto to correct him, even now.
"So," he said, ignoring it in favor of something less terrifying, "I'll have to make two trips to the store instead of one?"
Jack just shook his head, bemused, like Ianto wasn't getting something important and thatwas unnerving. He walked off, pushing the trolley, and Ianto followed. Jack stopped in front of a display of dark red apples, apparently on sale and stacked in a way that encouraged toppling, and turned to Ianto.
"I pay you to shop for supplies," he said quietly and Ianto stared. "What do you want for dinner?"
"Depends. Who's cooking?"
Jack leaned forward slightly, smiling, until their faces were inches apart. "Me."
"Well," Ianto cleared his throat, "then whatever you feel like cooking will be fine. And you still need to call Gwen."
By the time they finally pulled up to Ianto's flat, he was starving, despite their late lunch back at the Hub. To be honest, even before all of this had started with the water samples and the test strips, his eating habits hadn't exactly been regular. He'd gotten used to grabbing whatever he could get his hands on between long shifts at the Hub, and then once he was there, it was pizza or cheap Indian carryout from around the corner. This was probably the first day in weeks where he'd even come close to having three full meals in a twenty-four-hour period.
The fact that they'd all involved Jack was not lost on him.
He brought in the mail and handed Jack his key so that he could start on unloading the groceries. As he approached the door, he flipped idly though the envelopes - bill, political advert (as he if had the time or interest to concern himself with local politics), another bill, and an obscenely oversized set of coupons for the local drycleaners. He folded the coupons neatly and slid them into his jacket pocket as he opened the door to his flat.
Jack was already unpacking the groceries and humming to himself. Not the same tune as in the car-Trout, he remembered-something else.
Ianto's mobile buzzed in his pocket.
"Hi Gwen," he answered, depositing the mail on the coffee table and toeing off his shoes. "What's going on? You find everything alright?"
A few minutes later, Ianto watched in a state of awe as Jack sautéed at least three varieties of mushrooms in a skillet that he hadn't seen outside of his cupboard in years.
"Everything okay with Gwen?" Jack asked, looking up at Ianto, the mushrooms sizzling in the pan on the stove. It was so normal, Ianto was speechless for a moment.
"She..." he started, and then cleared his throat. "She's fine. Rhys broke one of the vials, and she wanted to know if she needed to find a store open out that way for a replacement. I told her it wasn't necessary, though how he managed to do it, I have no idea. They're supposed to be almost indestructible."
Jack nodded. "At this point, the water out there is just for comparison anyway. And it's likely Owen will find the same results from one vial as he would from twenty collected at that pool."
"That's exactly what I told her."
Ianto watched Jack wheel around on his heels, reaching for some spice that he must have picked up on their grocery run, because Ianto didn't recognize it at all. Jack raised his eyebrows at Ianto curiously as he sprinkled a little of the mystery powder into the pan.
Ianto just shook his head. He had no idea who this man breezing around his kitchen as if he owned the place even was anymore.
And it was absolutely the most exciting thing that had happened to him all week. By a long shot.
Almost as though he had been enchanted, Ianto stepped forward and pressed himself against Jack's back, wrapping his arms around his waist. Jack stilled and they stood like that for a moment before Ianto stepped away.
"It smells good," he said, his voice rough. He opened the door to the refrigerator and rummaged around, pulling out a slender cobalt bottle.
Jack grinned. "Told you there was some left!"
"It's an ice wine," he muttered, regarding the label and rolling the bottle around in his hands. "It's meant for dessert."
"Then we'll have it with dessert." Jack shrugged and turned back to the stove, adding rice and a bit of heated broth and wine to the saucepan. "I don't think I'll use all of the white. We can drink that."
Ianto nodded, even though Jack couldn't see him, and put the bottle back in the refrigerator. He stretched and watched as Jack stirred, and added, and tasted. It was a bit hypnotizing, like staring at passing traffic out of a window. Jack was an assured, strong presence, standing on the faded linoleum, but he didn't take any of it seriously. The way he just added blindly, without measuring, made Ianto twitch even as it held him fascinated.
"How do you know what to do?" he asked. He walked over to his liquor cabinet and pulled out a bottle of Glenlivet. He settled it on the counter and reached over Jack to remove two crystal tumblers. He poured a measure of liquid into each glass and handed one to Jack.
"I don't," Jack said and took the drink. "I mean, I know enough of the technical and the rest I just make up as I go." Their hands brushed against each other and Jack smiled softly. "I just guess based on what goes well together, trial and error. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and I learn from the mistakes."
Ianto blinked dazedly, wondering whether Jack was talking about cooking or something more, and raised the tumbler to his lips to stall for time. Jack lifted his drink, too.
"To…" Jack paused, as if in deep thought, and then shrugged. "Well, to this," he said, gesturing around the kitchenette with his free hand.
"To my kitchen," Ianto said seriously, enjoying the pleasant warmth that crept down his throat from the alcohol, and smiled at Jack. "Don't think I've ever toasted to my kitchen before."
Jack laughed and the sound filled the space. Then he shrugged, gesturing to the room around them, which, of course, included Ianto, too.
"Well, I like it," Jack said and went back to stirring, glancing at Ianto.
"Me, too," Ianto said quietly. "I like it a lot. Kind of snuck up on me, but..."
Ianto shuffled his feet back and forth on the floor, not sure why he was suddenly buzzing with nervous energy. This was dangerous, uncharted territory, much like a lot of the past few days had been, and when he started thinking about it that way, it only made him more jumpy. It was as if a trajectory had been set at some point and they just kept moving along in the direction that'd been decided - no matter how many times they veered away from it along the way, they always ended up here.
When he looked up again, after taking a generous sip from his drink and savoring the burn as it warmed his throat and settled in his stomach, Jack was watching him, fixing him with a strange smile.
"It snuck up on me, too," Jack said, and Ianto thought he might like to bury himself under the coffee table in the living room, maybe - anything to hide the ridiculous heat creeping into his cheeks. He knew Jack would notice. Jack alwaysnoticed.
He just turned away for a moment, though, reaching for the salt before he resumed stirring. The muscles under Jack's shirt shifted, his shoulders, his stomach. Ianto watched, distracted, and wondered if he was still blushing.
"I like it, though," Jack said finally. "The surprise. Not knowing what comes next." He raised his eyebrows at Ianto. "Wouldn't have it any other way, really."
"Yeah?" Ianto asked. He ran a hand through his hair and sighed. "Yeah. Me too."
"Good," Jack said, as though Ianto had answered an important question, and then he chuckled hollowly. "I'm not sure what I'd do if you didn't."
It was meant to be a brush off, Ianto was sure, but its disguise was so thin that he could see right through it. He felt something like a shiver, a jolt, go through him and he settled his drink on the counter. He picked it up again, looked at it, and put it back down. The sky outside was the dark electric blue of twilight and everything against it was black. He stared out the window as he listened to the swishing and tapping of Jack's cooking. Jack had started to hum softly again, too, brokenly, skipping notes here and there.
Taking a deep breath, Ianto turned and placed his hand on Jack's hip. It wasn't normal behavior, but then none of this was. Jack shot him a look over his shoulder and then smiled.
"How long?" Ianto asked, nodding to the pan.
"Another thirty minutes, give or take."
Despite their best intentions of eating a proper meal, they still ended up in front of the telly, flicking through the channels. It wasn't often that they had a night to themselves, though, and damned if they weren't going to eke as much normalcy out of it as possible.
There were benefits, too, to eating on the sofa. Their bodies were pressed close together and, even though Ianto pretended it annoyed him outwardly, Jack would touch him gently on his thigh, his shoulder, anywhere he could reach, in between bites. Ianto wasn't really sure whyhe pretended it annoyed him, when clearly it didn't deter Jack at all. Jack probably knew how much he enjoyed it, anyway, and the fact that he let Ianto get away with his protestations warmed him.
"How is it?" Jack asked after a while, once they'd settled on some sort of police drama.
Ianto lifted his glass from the coffee table and took a sip. "Good," he said, smiling. "Really good."
"We should eat at home more often," Jack said softly, distantly. "I wish –" He shook his head.
"I know." Ianto looked at him, bathed in blue-green light from the screen, and took another bite of his food.
Jack just nodded and for a while they turned their attention back to the screen in front of them. A police car screamed around a corner, its lights flashing, and the police officer - the lead on the show, Ianto guessed - got out and drew his gun. He started to run down the dark alleyway in front of him. He was in pursuit.
Ianto stared at the screen, but all he could really hear was Jack's breathing next to him. The clink of his glass as he set it down on the table. The shuffle of fabric against fabric when he crossed one ankle over the other.
Ianto had cut him off because he didn't want to have this conversation again. The one where Jack told him that they'd make more time, that they'd take more days off, more nights, more weekends, more holidays. That they'd rent a cabin in Snowdonia. Sometimes he wondered if they'd know what to do with all that extra time if they had it. It made his stomach churn, thinking about it. He downed the last of his wine and leaned back against the sofa. Jack's shoulder pressed against his, a line of warmth, of presence that continued on down Ianto's side, all the way to his calves, his ankles, his toes. He didn't need more time with Jack. He just needed the time they had to matter.
It hadn't always, with Lisa. She'd planned everything, always looking to the future. He'd been guilty of it, too, of course, of waiting for that perfect holiday, for that weekend where one or both of them wouldn't be called in to work overtime. Even after Canary Wharf, he wished he'd just spent more time talking to her, getting to know her. Less time waiting for a miracle that never came.
He watched Jack's eyes darting across the screen, following the images there, so many tiny movements to track, just in that one millisecond of observation.
It should have been different with Jack. With no illusions that this would last forever, through old age, it really should have been different. Maybe it was.
He heard Jack scrape his metal fork across the porcelain dish and turned, cringing slightly at the sound. The dish was placed on the coffee table, but Ianto didn't have the energy to open his mouth and complain. Besides, if Jack placed it on the floor, he'd probably step on it later and break it into large sharp shards. It was just a coffee table, after all.
And damn it if everything wasn't just one bloody metaphor after the next.
Jack placed a hand on his knee and Ianto put his own plate down next to Jack's in defiance of himself, perhaps, or of his upbringing, or of something else he couldn't name. Fear, maybe. Of shattered dishes and scratched coffee table surfaces and what they stood for.
He considered his need for sleep, but it was only just gone eight and he wanted this time with Jack, quiet and domestic and ridiculously exciting. He leaned back against him and Jack's arm went around his shoulder and he felt warm, full, relaxed.
Someone was being interrogated on the dark screen, snarling and full of denial. Ianto had no idea who she was, couldn't even remember what the crime had been from only thirty minutes before. Probably murder of some sort; it was always murder.
Jack's hand traveled up his thigh and he pressed a kiss behind Ianto's ear, and Ianto's eyes slid shut.
"No, please! You don't understand!" the woman shouted. "I had to, he gave me no –"
Jack must've turned off the telly, because now the only sound in the room that Ianto could hear was their breathing and the soft, wet noises of Jack's mouth as it toyed with his ear.
Turning his head, Ianto caught Jack's lips and kissed him until they were both panting between bouts of pressure, never fully pulling away like eager teenagers.
Jack pulled him back along the sofa, his hands roving wherever they could find purchase, lingering for a moment to tease and then moving on again, and Ianto was grateful that he hadn't put his plate down on the cushion.
He exhaled slowly, a long breath that seemed to have been drawn from deep within his body. Its volume was of an unknown quantity that just kept coming, taking with it the tension of the day, and of their conversations, too, the ones he'd had with Jack and the ones he'd had with himself.
The ones that fell somewhere in between were possibly still there, hanging in the air somewhere, or between the sofa cushions, poised to crop up at any moment.
Above him (well, mostly above him, and also somewhat pressed against his side, wedged in between Ianto's hips and the back of the sofa) Jack was nuzzling at his neck. Ianto turned slightly to provide a better angle and hummed at the shiver that it brought down his spine when he felt Jack's teeth graze his skin playfully.
Ianto traced underneath Jack's braces. Through familiar layers of cotton, he felt the muscles tense for a moment, and then go slack again, as Jack leaned into the touch, rolling his tongue back and forth along the skin behind Ianto's ear. Over the thump of his heart in his chest, and the rush of blood in his ears, Ianto heard the creak of the springs under them as the sofa protested the movement and the weight of Jack's hips rutting against his thigh, Jack's knee moving up between his legs.
Without the light of the telly, it was getting dark, the blue-black of twilight fading to a moonless night sky. Ianto cracked his eyes open and could see the light from a streetlamp creeping under the blinds - a tiny sliver that wouldn't help anyone navigate anywhere, but that lay there on the floor next to the sofa all the same.
There wasn't much space left between them at all now, but Jack used it to his advantage, sliding his hand up and under the edge of Ianto's shirt, teasing him, his fingers dancing around Ianto's stomach, feather-light, just enough to raise the hairs on the surface of the skin. Just enough to make Ianto's abdominals clench and release, too, over and over in anticipation, until finally he pushed up on his elbows to claim Jack's lips with a groan, forcing Jack's hand to splay out instinctively and then slide a little further, the thrust of Ianto's hips guiding his movement.
He groaned when Jack came so close to providing the friction he needed and then slipped away with a smirk and a soft, hushing sound.
"Not here," Jack said, even as he bent his head to kiss him again, his fingertips still mapping out the planes of Ianto's stomach. "You've got a perfectly good bed in there, and your neck won't get sore."
This, from the man who had had him bent over a desk just last week. Because thathadn't wreaked havoc on his neck (or his hips, or his calves, or various other parts of his body). Still, it was a solid idea and would give them a lot more room than this.
He let Jack help him up and they both bumped into the coffee table.
"I can't see," Jack hissed by way of apology and Ianto chuckled.
"I'm sure you know your way to my bedroom. Probably got it memorized."
He blushed as Jack laughed, grateful that it was too dark for Jack to see, and was tugged forward. There was a thump as Jack fumbled around for the door knob. He must've found it, because suddenly, Ianto found himself pushing Jack into the room, their lips interlocked and their hands fumbling with clothing. He shoved Jack so that he was sitting on the edge of the bed and he was pulled to stand in between Jack's legs.
It was nearly pitch black, but his eyes were adjusting. He could just make out the general shapes of Jack; the curve of his shoulder, the line of his arm, the slope of his neck as he turned. Jack tugged on his belt buckle, needy and impatient.
He grabbed Jack's hands and brought them to his face. He wasn't sure why he did it, or why he then pressed his lips to each palm in turn, but he did. It could be analyzed later, along with the desperate sound that escaped Jack's throat.
"God," Jack breathed. "You…I –"
Ianto shut him up properly, afraid of what he might say.
The next few moments were a flutter of movement and Ianto thought briefly about folding his trousers on the floor next to the bed. But Jack's fingers were already grasping at his hips impatiently and, in the end, he kicked the wool fabric aside hastily, not caring how wrinkled they'd end up tomorrow. As he started to pull his shirt over his head, Jack tugged him close.
Jack chuckled against his stomach - a familiar sound that brought a spontaneous smile to Ianto's face, one that felt bright and free, even in the darkness. Then Jack pressed his nose against the waistband of Ianto's briefs, and Ianto gasped in surprise, even though he should have seen it coming a mile off. His breath was so warm and Ianto could practically feel Jack's mouth against his skin, as if the thin cotton had vanished already.
"What I was going to say," Jack murmured, placing a quick kiss to the inside of Ianto's thigh, and then his stomach, "when I was so rudely interrupted, is that you..." Jack paused to flick his tongue across the soft pucker of Ianto's belly button, "...are amazing."
Ianto's hands had frozen over his head several moments ago, and when he was able to move again, he moved quickly.
"Flattery will only get you so far," Ianto murmured and grasped Jack's shoulders tightly. He pushed Jack onto his back and straddled his waist, as Jack struggled to kick his trousers off under the weight.
In the darkness, Jack beamed up at him, a flash of white that made Ianto's stomach clench suddenly.
"Oh, I don't know, I think it's gotten me far enough," Jack observed, and Ianto really couldn't argue as Jack shifted underneath him and rolled them over onto the bed.