Looking out over the Plass Jenny shivered slightly, the drizzle was gone but the air still had a chill and Ianto hadn't given her a jacket. The clothes weren't her style more grungy than she would like and while the jeans fitted on the hips the waist was too big. Gwen stepped off the platform to the slight surprise of a couple sat at what they thought was the bottom of the tower, she pulled Jenny with her as she whistled for a taxi by the Millennium Centre and ordered it to go to St Davids. Jenny also noted that she hadn't shut up in the five minutes since they had left the hub but she hadn't heard a word of it.
As soon as the pavement had closed again Jacks shoulders had slumped and he had turned round to walk back up to his own office.
"Team go home, that's an order."
Owen checked his watch, big wow it was four in the afternoon and getting dark outside and he hadn't left for 48 hours. He grabbed his coat and ran up behind Tosh
"Get your coat love you've pulled"
Tosh turned round with a smile on her face, then she remembered,
"You want a lift home you mean." She said setting the computer running on another complex programme and then turning the screen off so the flickering didn't disturb Jack. Ever since Owen had found sensation difficult it had been decided that driving wasn't the best option for him, as Ianto had pointed out he was likely to kill himself all over again if he hit the accelerator rather than the brake and take someone else with him.
"Well yes that would be an added bonus but you can stop and get pizza and wine for yourself and talk at me for a few hours if you want." He flashed one of his strange smiles.
Tosh picked up her giant bag and fished around for car keys, picking up a DVD case,
"Fancy the new comic book franchise thriller?"
"I have no idea how you get hold of some of these things, in another life you could have been brilliant in industrial espionage."
She smiled nervously at him and then shouted her goodbyes at Jack, passing Ianto with a black plastic sack and both of them mumbling at him. He smiled at them as he always did but they could tell that it was one of his forced ones, just like the weeks after Lisa and not really knowing what to say they both walked a little faster and not looking back till after the garage door had finally locked shut behind them
Ianto watched them pass and smiled as he really didn't want to engage in any sort of conversation with anyone. He didn't think he was a possessive man and anyone one who had been around as long as Jack had to have a past, it was just the way he knew so little about it that occasionally it caught him unawares. He finished clearing up and took the bag to the incinerator hidden in the vaults a simple way to ensure that Torchwood secrets didn't get left in a bin bag on a tip in Merthyr, plus it provided most of the power for the hub via the nifty little alien conversion unit they had appropriated. He nearly jumped out of his skin when he turned around to find Jack leaning against the doorframe.
"Little jumpy aren't yah?"
"Just wasn't expecting anyone, you seem to have been holed up in your office all afternoon." He said wiping his hands on the towel he had neatly placed there for that purpose and avoiding looking directly at Jack.
"Yes well I had a few things to clean up after that Weevil hunt this morning, can't have Torchwood getting another speeding ticket."
Ianto grunted, speeding tickets were easy to disappear when the car that belonged to the number plates didn't really exist, but it was when that car was clocked at over 150 on the Heads of the Valleys road with all its' twists and turns that took the hard work. Ianto was trapped and he knew it, he had to walk past Jack and through the same narrow doorway and to ensure he didn't get dust and mould on his suit he would have to get close to Jack and he didn't want to do that just at the moment. He needed a little time to think about what it was that was actually bothering him and as soon as they touched he knew Jack would manage to take his mind off it.
Jack watched Ianto as he folded the already folded towel again he was stalling and Jack wanted to know why but experience told him there was more than one way to catch a monkey.
"How do you fancy checking out the new restaurant up on Mermaid Quay later, I feel like I need some normality for a while." He said straightening up and stepping back out of the door way slightly.
"It's vegetarian you know." Said Ianto taking the opportunity to move towards the door.
"Variety is the spice of life." Said Jack following Ianto up the corridor, "Be ready in twenty minutes."
Ianto nodded and turned off to another part of the achieves, Jack thought about following him but decided that discretion might well be the better part of valour and if Ianto needed space well the vaults provided plenty of that.
Ianto stood with his head back against the wall tense for a few seconds till he was sure Jack had left him alone. This was a time for a mind map and the best place to do that was a little room just down the arched passageway, Owen called it the pink and fluffy room where they all occasionally went to chill out. It was the storage space where they put all the things fallen through the rift that seems to belong to children and fun. It was where Tosh had got her super strength Tamagotchi from, Gwen liked all the furry things, though when Jack had pointed out that one she was cuddling like a two year old one afternoon was probably a petrified alien with a distinct crocodilian jaw line she had dropped it like a hot stone. Ianto just liked the fact that this room had some of the normal flotsam and jetsam of growing up in it and wondered what feel through from Cardiff. What did aliens make of Monopoly? He pulled out a small old fashioned looking slate, which of course because it was Torchwood was not all that it seemed. This slate sensed the biorhythms of the person writing on it and only they could see what they had written on it, so it was safe even from Jack – unlike his diary which Jack took great glee in occasionally opening up.
At the appointed time Ianto appeared in the hub and Jack took his arm as they walked out of the cog door, both acting as if nothing had happened. Since his disappearance Jack was much less jumpy about leaving the computers on auto and the rift predictor was getting more accurate as it processed more and more data, tonight it predicted a low probability of rift activity, which was fine until it did spew something through then all the percentages in the world meant nothing. The weather was still a bit unseasonable so they didn't hang around and walked directly to the restaurant, taking a table near the door, so they could leave quickly, and ordering their normal drinks of tap water and a bottle of imported beer. They made small talk over the ordering and through the main meal which seemed to going swimmingly until Jack made some crack about how long it would take Gwen to choose shoes. Ianto tensed up immediately and Jack put a hand over his, getting a dirty look from the straight lace at the next table, and for the first time that night looked directly at him.
"Are you going to tell me what is eating you, or do I have to guess." Said Jack throwing the same foul look back at the Neanderthal on the next table.
Ianto took a swig from the bottle and found it empty, using it as an excuse to remove his hand he signalled to the waitress that he wanted another, perhaps drunk was the way to do this.
"What like I always have to guess with you?" he hissed as the waitress brought the bottle over, Jack stopped her for the bill.
"Finally we get round to what has been eating you all day." Said Jack "Are we going to talk about it or are you going to lock it away?"
"Not here, people are watching." Said Ianto quietly and resolving to make things look normal he slapped down enough money to pay the bill and drained the bottle in one.
"Interesting trick, you've got to teach me that one." Said Jack looking on in amazement and very little left on earth had the power to amaze him any more.
Ianto just started walking and Jack followed two paces behind, stepped onto the secret lift and waited for Jack to step behind him. They didn't touch, which was difficult on a slab that size, and waited while anyone who was really watching would see them decend slowly until they disappeared and a new slab replaced the missing one.
As soon as the stone closed Ianto spun on the spot and turned to Jack,
"Tonight you are going to tell me everything and leave nothing out. I am sick of being caught unawares by your past Jack. I know nothing about you and you know everything about me." He paused as they reached the floor and stopped with a thunk, all this bloody alien technology and it couldn't have a soft stop. "I don't care that I'm not the first and I won't be the last, you know I don't even care that I'm not the only one now, I just hate the uncertainty of what is going to get thrown in my face next." Ianto stepped onto the metal gantry with a thump and stormed off to hang his coat on the hat stand at the other side of the hub, leaving Jack poleaxed on the slab.
At about a similar time Jenny was following Gwen up the stairs to her flat, both of them carrying more than one expensive looking bag, a quick trip to the vast nationals of the St David centre had turned into a wander round the slightly more chic shops of the Victorian Lanes and somehow ended up in the IKEA over the other side of the bay. However Gwen was happy she not only had the new sofa on order she and Rhys had been arguing over but she also had shoes, three pairs actually, two to go with the dress because she couldn't decide which would go best and a pair of boots to go away with. No sneakers on honeymoon, look like a real woman instead of being ready for action permanently. On the journey to IKEA Jenny had been routing round in her bag to find her phone, then realised she had left it with the clothes in the car at the beach head. She should have bought a pay as you go in town.
"I don't suppose I could borrow your phone could I?" She asked Gwen
"Sure" she said also trying to find it at the bottom of her bag, she was so used to using the Bluetooth she hardly ever got it out now it even charged itself with all the energy whizzing round in the Hub. "Who do you need to call?" She didn't even realise when she was being nosey, it was just second nature.
"Oh just a hotel for the night" she said quietly.
Gwen covered her mouth when she had realised what she had done, and in her normal way started to over compensate.
"Oh you don't need to do that, as long as you don't mind the sofa that is, Rhys won't mind in fact he might be out tonight, give us chance to chat a bit eh, we can get a take away."
"Thank you but I wouldn't want to impose, I'll be fine."
"I won't take no for an answer, besides it could be interesting learning a bit more about what went on in London." Jenny smiled and rubbed at her shoulder wondering how Gwen would have got on in the ultra quiet, ask no questions, world that Torchwood had been for her, well until she became property anyways.
"I'll order pizza, if I get it now it shouldn't take too long to get there after we arrive, the local does a very good Hawaiian."
Jenny nodded Gwen was a force of nature that was possibly unstoppable so there wasn't much point in trying. She listened to Gwen ordering the pizza with her Welsh vowels and wondered how much of the Welsh she knew would be understood, thinking about it nobody understood it 300 years ago so why should now be any different. They pulled up at the house that had been converted into flats and went up to the small apartment in the roof space that Gwen called home. Jenny sat down on the sofa, the walk up the stairs had tired her out which was very unusual for her even after a significant injury as her body just repaired and got on with it. Gwen was in the fridge and shaking a bottle of wine at her and she nodded, she sometimes drank it but with little effect, it had been a useful trick in the past to get people to open up to her. Gwen sank down next to her and Jenny knew exactly what she had to do to get a bit of a rest.
"So Gwen tell me about this Rhys chap then."
Four hours, three bottles of wine, two large pizzas and a chocolate sponge from the fridge later Rhys walked in. The women lay giggling on the couch and took little notice as he grabbed a beer and joined them, both of then he noted were even more drunk than he was, respect he thought. The impromptu party had broken up less than half an hour later when Jenny had fallen asleep and Gwen had gone to the airing cupboard to get a spare blanket trying to be quiet and shushing Rhys as he tried to help, even though she sounded like a herd of elephants to the downstairs neighbours. Finally after lifting her feet and covering her gently Rhys had pulled Gwen into the bedroom and closed the door. Firmly.