A/N: Sexual Content Alert! This chapter NSFW!
I was nearly squeezed to pieces when I walked back into the Hub unscathed. First Gwen and Martha sandwiched me between them, Laura joining them a moment later. She pressed her forehead to mine, crying openly. Ianto was crying, too. I could see him over Laura's shoulder. I pushed her aside as gently as I could, murmuring that I was all right to Gwen and Martha so they'd let me go.
Ianto pulled me close, crying into the crook of my neck. "I'm sorry, sweetheart," I murmured to him. "I had to."
"I know," he said, his voice constricted. "You should have told me, though. I wouldn't have stopped you."
"It was too dangerous, and you would have wanted to come," I pointed out. "Where's Jack?" He released me from the tight embrace, then moved aside so I could see where Jack was, standing behind him with his arms crossed as he'd been since my arrival. "Oh."
A small smile formed at the corners of Jack's mouth in spite of his display of grave annoyance, and finally he opened his arms to me. I ran to him, and he picked me up off my feet, holding me at eye-level. "Did they hurt you?" he asked me. I shook my head. "Really?"
"Really, Jack. I'm fine."
"And John?"
"Shaken, but fine," I told him. "He sent you this," I told him, passing on the kiss.
He chuckled. "Yeah, he's fine. What exactly did he say that made you run off to his rescue like that?"
I pressed a button on my wrist strap, still balanced in Jack's arms, and John's voice said in hushed, desperate tones. "Sage, I need to talk to you. You're the only one who can help. I think someone is—"
"'Following me'," I completed the sentence after the audio cut off. "I heard it," I said tapping my temple. "I had to go alone," I told him. "I couldn't risk any of you getting hurt, but I owed it to him. In spite of everything, I owed him."
"You are your father's daughter," he murmured. "He'd have been so proud of you."
"Not for pulling a gun on the Arteran Seek," I admitted, blushing. "I was expecting Castus Maximus's clockwork soldiers when I took the gun."
"What did you shoot?" he asked me. I noticed he didn't ask who.
"The floor."
"Definitely the Doctor's daughter," he remarked, kissing me tenderly. "You taste like sangría."
"Well, you know how John gets after a good fight," I put in. Jack laughed, but his laughter didn't last long. I'd gone pale and clammy. I heard him calling out to Ianto from several miles away.
"No, get the brandy from my office," he said to something Ianto had asked about dehydration. "The brain needs alcohol after an encounter with the Seek. I guess she didn't have enough."
"John must be fine then," Gwen remarked, coming to where Jack had laid me on the couch. "You all right, Sage?" I reached for her hand and missed. She clasped it and held it tightly.
Jack was saying something to Martha about a needle. "Intravenous brandy, Jack? Don't ever tell anyone I actually made someone a brandy IV; I'll never live it down."
"Laura. Laura!" Jack was saying, annoyed. "Oh, just get out of the way." He pushed her firmly into one of the office chairs. She was still sitting there when I came out of my daze about half an hour later.
"I can't believe that worked," Martha said, checking my pupils, then removing the IV.
"I smell like the pub on Ladies' Night," I remarked, making her laugh.
"Well, you're sweating out brandy. Are you going to be hung-over?"
I shook my head. "What you saw earlier, that was the hang-over. I should have had more to drink, but I wanted to get back so badly... Where's Ianto?"
"Right here," he spoke up, patting my ankle, as he was sitting by my feet.
"And Jack?"
"On the phone with the Prime Minister. Again. Gwen's right over there ordering us pizza," she pointed, "and Laura... well, she hasn't moved for the past fifteen minutes or so," she remarked. "Laura? You all right?"
"Hmm?"
"Sage is awake. Are you okay?" Martha asked her again.
"Not really," Laura admitted, still looking dazed. "I thought I'd be doing admin. Fixing computers. This place is mad," she said softly.
"You won't last long if you don't show some backbone," Martha told her, firmly but not unkindly. "The universe is mad. You have to learn to beat it at its own game." She approached and told her softly, "You have to turn love into strength, not a weakness. Even when it's unrequited. It's the only way you can keep everyone safe... Sometimes you lose people. Even the Doctor has lost people. Still, he never stops fighting for what's right and what's good; he never loses faith in us. Find your strength, Laura Harding. Take a stand before you fall."
"I don't know how," Laura admitted.
"You'll learn," Martha told her. "We all have."
I took a shower before sitting down to pizza with the others, but my skin was still bleeding brandy. I'd put on an old sundress from the '30s that was overdue to be disposed of and a pair of ballet flats that was much newer but equally worn out.
I sat across from Ianto, Jack between us at the head of the table. Gwen pinched her nose shut to tease me.
"Oh, I know. I reek," I said apologetically.
"I may get a hangover just from the fumes," she added, elbowing me gently in the side.
"I prefer to take my alcohol direct-route," Jack put in, then came around the table and bent to run his tongue across my shoulder, then up my neck, in small, sensual circles. My eyes fluttered closed in arousal, and when I opened them again I saw Ianto watching us with raw hunger. "Excuse us," Jack said lightly, then lifted me out of my chair and over his shoulder in one smooth movement.
"Jack!" I protested, giggling.
"Coming, Ianto?" he inquired.
"I hope so," he said, standing.
"Don't call unless the Hub's on fire," Jack told Gwen, then used my wrist strap to teleport the three of us out of there...
...and directly into Ianto's bedroom. He set me down gently on the edge of the bed, tipping my chin up so I was looking directly into his eyes as he unzipped the back of my dress. "Remember when it was considered sinful for a woman to wear clothing with a zipper?" he murmured as he drew the tab slowly downward.
"They said it made one's clothes come off too fast," I remarked, thinking I would spontaneously combust if he moved any slower.
"Ianto," he beckoned, standing aside. "Help Sage with her dress."
Ianto knelt at my feet, slipping the straps off my shoulders, baring my breasts to his hands and mouth. I hardly noticed he'd pulled Jack down beside him until I felt a mouth suckling at each breast, a tongue toying with each taut nipple. Jack grazed his teeth across my left in that way he knew I loved, and I gasped, desire pooling between my legs. It was Ianto that pressed me down onto the bed and pulled my dress the rest of the way off, Jack that pressed his mouth to my mons through my plain cotton panties, Ianto that took off my shoes, running his hands and mouth caressingly up my thighs.
I had thought I'd be confused the first time we engaged in a sexual act together; that I would lose track of limbs and mouths and who was touching what; but I didn't. Ianto's hands were softer, his touch more urgent and passionate. Jack had the skill of patience and long practice. I found the contrast incredibly arousing.
Jack moved back up to my breasts and mouth. Ianto divested himself of his tie and me of my underwear, plunging his tongue into the core of me, not bothering to tease me as Jack would have. I had a hand loosely coiled in the unruly hair of each of the men I loved, and with their own hands and mouths they brought me to my peak, the climax rushing over me in a wave so intense that I cried out.
They held me as my body relaxed, then moved on to the business of pleasuring each other, face to face, pressed between each other's thighs, their clothes loosened but, for the most part, still on. I watched and listened, and when I could tell Ianto was near climax I drew Jack's earlobe into my mouth and bit down on it gently so that they would come together. After that I just laid still, pressed up against Jack as they dozed hand in hand.
"I wish we could bottle that," Jack murmured after a long while, holding Ianto's hand and mine, drawing them together so they met over his heart.
"I love you, too," Ianto and I both murmured at the same time. Jack chuckled.
"I hate to have to say this, but we'd better go back," he told us.
"You'll need to wash these sheets, Ianto, but at least I'm not leaking booze anymore," I said, then giggled.
"We all need to shower now," he remarked. "For... various reasons."
"One at a time," Jack told us. "We'll never get out of here otherwise," he pointed out when we looked at him inquiringly.
There was suddenly a space between Ianto and me, but it didn't take us long to remedy that. His mouth tasted of coffee and brandy, Jack and Ianto, and of myself. We were so lost in long, languid kisses that we didn't notice when Jack emerged from the bathroom, smelling of Ianto's soap, until he touched Ianto's shoulder.
Then it was Jack I sat with, and he sang Cole Porter's "In the Still of the Night" softly with his cheek against the top of my head, kissing me softly between verses.
I sang "Caro Nome" from Verdi's Rigoletto as I showered. I often slip back into Opera in the bath. I think it's the acoustics. Or maybe my mother listened to Old Earth Opera while I was in the womb. That was a question I intended to pose to my father. That and my mother's name. She was human, not a Time Lord, and had died giving birth to me. That was all I knew. The rest I'd never had the opportunity to ask.
The boys had tidied while I was bathing, and we teleported into the room off Ianto's mock office where my suitcase was so that I could change into something fresh. Jack kissed each of us before going back into the Hub. As I was changing into jeans and a peasant blouse, Ianto surprised me by singing "Pretty Women" from Stephen Sondheim's Sweeney Todd in a soft baritone that was rather unlike his slightly gruff speaking voice. I believe I may have blushed every possible shade of pink in existence before he was done.
John is a tenor and Gwen says Tosh had a very lovely soprano voice. Pity we'll never be able to have Musical Torchwood, as Ianto is so shy he won't even sing in front of Jack. Only for me. Ironic, that. But Johnny was really on to something when he said Ianto reminded him of me from the first.