Back to Jack's POV...

Chapter 12: Sleepers and Awakenings

Edinburgh, Scotland, Present Day

White light.

No sound. No feeling. Just...light.

Everywhere. All around.

Blinding, all-encompassing light.

Maybe it was...'the light.'

You know, the light you were supposed to see. The one at the end of the tunnel. The one at the end of...

...everything.

Maybe I'm really and truly dead, thought Jack. Maybe the light isn't just a hokey metaphor.

Or maybe...

"Fees carting two turn round."

What? What was that? A voice...a familiar voice.

"Year all toast reedy," said another voice. Another familiar, but unintelligible, voice.

The light before his eyes wavered, grew dark. Am I alive? thought Jack. Am I awake?

Is this real? Or is this a dream?

It had to be a dream, because...

There was Ianto's face hovering above him. The light behind his head glowed, shimmered, like the halo on an angel. Jack tried to speak, tried to say what was on his mind:

"Yan...you...you're...an angel."

Ianto's face broke into an amused smile. Then he said, to someone else, someone in his periphery whom he couldn't see: "The drug's made him high."

"Never mind that, we need to get a move on, before the effects completely wear off."

There was a tingling sensation in Jack's limbs; the feeling one has when trying to come around from a particularly deep sleep. He wanted to move his hands, his head, but found he couldn't. He was trapped in a dream. A dream or...

Above him there came the silvery flash of metal, the threatening claws of a steely hand hovering above his face. No! It couldn't be! Not that! Not that! No...

The glove!

The resurrection glove!

Nightmare! It was a nightmare! Jack began to struggle internally, even as his treacherous limbs refused to move. I really am dead, he thought. I am dead, and that is the resurrection glove!

The lights above him flashed: they flickered once, twice, then there was a hissing sound, like a symphony of snakes, and the feel of rain on his skin. A duet of angry voices floated around his head:

"What the hell?"

"The sprinkler system turned on."

"What? Why?"

"Do you hear that? It's the sound of the lift! It's gotta be him. The Doctor."

"Well, don't just stand there. Take care of him. This Doctor is obviously dangerous, particularly if he's the same Doctor who is mentioned in Torchwood's charter..."

The retreating sound of footsteps reverberated through Jack's head, like the echoes inside a cave. Jack tried to speak again: "Ianto...don't go...stay." There was an unpleasant snickering sound, and out of the ether appeared the face of Albert Ferguson, his mouth twisted with disgust. That was alright, because Albert was always disgusted with him, with his performance, one way or the other. Jack was used to it.

"Just sit tight, Harkness. And quit your blathering." Ferguson's face was there and gone, along with the feeling of rain. Then a voice said:

"Thank God for th-"

There was a loud CRASH! and the sound of furniture being overturned. Curses hissed through the air, then were abruptly cut off. Jack began to struggle again; he succeeded in wiggling his fingers, in turning his head, but nothing more. As his head moved, his formerly fuzzy vision grew more focused, and he was able to see a yin-yang body of black and beige tussling with the glove. The glove! Jack began to struggle with renewed fear, with renewed vigor at the sight. The yin-yang broke apart, and the black part of the oval rushed out of his line of vision, taking the glove with him. No!

But wait. The glove. It wasn't on the right hand. No...

It had been on the left...

Jack twitched as something was placed by his head. His eyes focused on it, with effort. Not the glove, but a similar, cylindrical shape. Brown and white, with red eyes like a demon. Red eyes and a tongue. His pupils dilated, focused, and he was finally able to see what it was.

A sock monkey.

There was a high, twittering sound, like a mechanical cricket, the glow of a green light, and suddenly a pressure he hadn't even realized was there fell away from his arms and legs. "Doctor?" Jack whispered, and the Doctor's face appeared before him, his hair even crazier looking than usual, and he heard him say:

"Here's a tip for you Jack: never attempt to strangle an adversary using a sock monkey. It makes a very poor weapon."

"Doctor...the glove...did you see..."

The Doctor's expression grew dark, darker than Jack had seen it in ages. "I saw it. And I don't like it. That...thing has caused more harm than you know, Jack." There was a strange, faraway look on the Doctor's face, an expression Jack couldn't interpret. Then, as if shaking himself out of a bad memory, the Doctor said: "C'mon, let's get you up and moving before they come back."

"They?"

"That man in the coat and the fake Ianto."

"The fake Ianto?" Then suddenly Jack remembered:

"I'm not Ianto..."

With the Doctor's help, Jack tried to stand and immediately fell back into the Doctor's steadying arms. Jack said, with growing alarm, "Doctor, if that isn't Ianto, then...

"...where is the real Ianto?" the Doctor finished for him, as he all but carried him toward the door of the room. "I think I may have the answer to that." Jack turned to look at the Doctor's suddenly stony face, and prompted, "Well?"

"I think I know where Ianto is," said the Doctor, then he added, in a whisper:

"And you won't like it."

Bit by bit, the feeling began to return to his limbs, so that he was no longer dragging his toes across the floor, so that he was no longer relying on the Doctor to help him stand. His nerve endings tingled and tweaked and sang with the bite of too-intense feeling. Everything, everything Jack touched seemed realer than real: the scrape of the tile, the scratch of his own collar on his skin. All of it seemed amplified; the sensations he felt were almost too intense to handle. It was like his muscles, his nervous system, had atrophied in over the space of a half hour, and now that he was up and about again, the light and the sounds were a shock to his system. It was too bright, too loud, too much. It was like he had been lying in a coma for years, and he was just now coming out of it, was just now learning how to feel again. The drug they had used to put him under must have been powerful indeed. His eyes squinted against the dull light of the hall, his ears pricked at the soft echoing sounds of their heels on the floor. Too bright, too loud...

"Here," directed the Doctor. He paused before a white door with a clouded glass window with the words 'INFIRMARY' spelled out in neat block letters underneath the glass. The Doctor gave him an odd look and paused with his hand on the knob. That look prompted Jack to ask:

"What? What is it?"

Hesitation. Then: "I told you, you won't like it."

There was a weird tingling sensation as Jack's brows drew together in a frown. "I know, but...what is it? What's wrong?" Jack craned his head but could see nothing beyond the foggy glass. Finally, he all but pushed the Doctor aside and said, almost angrily:

"Let me see."

The squeak of the door being wrenched open was like the screech of a wounded animal in Jack's ears. Inside was what looked to be a typical hospital room, painted a soothing, antiseptic white. All the overhead lights had been turned off, with only a single bedside lamp left on casting out a dim, amber light. That, along with the multiple, tiny lights given off by the army of machinery that was lined up around the bed. The small room was alive with the whirring sounds of technology: the wheezing, pumping sound of a respirator, the steady, mechanical blip! of a heart monitor. Jack stared with disbelief at the unmoving figure of a young man lying prone in the middle of the bed, blue eyes open and staring off unseeing into space. If it hadn't been for the undeniable presence of the bouncing dot on the monitor, Jack would have mistaken him for dead.

"But...what does it mean?" asked Jack, an alien note of fear edging its way into his voice.

"Jack, you know what it means," said the Doctor, without emotion. No coddling, no joking around.

"Doctor, you can't...you can't be seriously suggesting-"

"-I'm dead serious, Jack. You know that's-"

"-that's not Ianto! I don't believe you!" The sound of panic, of denial. That's not my Ianto! It can't be!

"Stop it, Jack. Saying it like that won't make it so," said the Doctor reasonably. "I assure you, that is Ianto Jones lying in that bed, and the person who once occupied this body is now walking around inside his skin."

"Goddam Albert Ferguson!" Jack suddenly roared, his nostrils flaring with rage. "Wait 'til I get my hands on him-"

"-He's probably not Albert, Jack. Think about it. Look at the situation; look at the body on the bed. This was all a ploy, a trap that was set up to lure you here, so that they could use the glove on you and switch bodies. They just used poor Albert Ferguson as a seemingly legitimate front for carrying out their little plot. I mean, what could be more alluring to a body snatcher than a body that can't die?"

Jack had all but stopped listening to the Doctor. He walked, like a zombie, to the side of the bed. He stared at the body of the young man; then, with hesitating fingers, he reached out to touch his face. Not my Ianto; no, not mine! Jack's fingers were shaking as he ghosted the tips over the waxy skin. No response came from the bed. Behind him, he heard the Doctor say:

"Careful, Jack. His neck's broken."

Jack sucked in a breath at this pronouncement. Inside, emotions he hadn't realized he'd been withholding rose up to the surface. A cloudy film covered his eyes as he whispered to the body on the bed, "Ianto? Ianto can you hear me? Goddam it, blink once if you can hear me..."

Nothing. The blue eyes stared, unmoving.

"Please, Yan..."

"Please, Yan..."

Jack tilts his head, leaning back in his chair like a lazy, contented cat. As promised, he has sent the rest of the team home early so that he and Ianto can play one of Ianto's 'stop watch' games. Currently, Torchwood's resident secretary and 'coffee boy' is kneeling like a supplicant on the floor between Jack's legs; Jack's fly is open, and Ianto's very talented mouth is working a kind of blissful, arcane magic on his cock. On the desk before him, the little silver watch ticks on relentlessly, rhythmically: tickticktickticktick! Jack moans another appreciative moan, and cracks open an eye to stare at the face of the watch: just seven more minutes to go. If he comes before the seven minutes are up, then he loses, and Ianto wins his prize...

There is a sudden jolt of pleasure as clever fingers begin to stroke and press the sensitive area between his cock and balls; Jack's back arches with abandon. Air hisses, unbidden, past clenched teeth. His control is beginning to slip, to vanish against his will.

Damn! At this rate, he's definitely going to lose...

And that is okay, because Jack wants Ianto to have his prize. Jack smiles to himself in erotic bliss, in lustful expectation at his own defeat.

Those skillful, clever fingers press against him mercilessly, teasing the outside of his sweet spot. There is also the ongoing assault of Ianto's tongue on his cock, along with the surprise scrape of teeth, and Jack is panting, is left perilously close to coming. Just a little more friction, just a little harder rhythm, and he's a goner. A definite goner...

"Yan, please..."

Ianto redoubles his efforts, sucks him even harder. Jack stares down at his subordinate's perfectly coiffed head bobbing up and down between his legs; it's a sight he never tires of. Next to him, the watch ticks on: tickticktickticktick! Four minutes and counting. Hmm. He's never going to make it. Never. He's not going to make it, because:

The heady, pounding rhythm, the intensity of the friction is all too much for him to handle. The sight of that beautiful head, that beautiful body between his legs is too much for him to handle. And before he knows it, Jack is coming, coming in a burst of choice swear words, his back arching off the cushions of his chair. He's shoving himself down Ianto's beautiful, magical throat, and all is right with the world. In fact, the very best things in his world all begin and end with the man kneeling before him: from the very first cup of that delicious coffee he brings him in the morning, to the awesome, earth-shattering blowjobs that he gets from him before leaving the hub at night. The very best parts of his day begin and end with Ianto Jones...

Ianto drinks him down, then kneels back, triumphantly, on his haunches. Gorgeous blue eyes stare up into his own as he says: "You lost. Now I believe, sir, that you owe me a prize?"

"Hey, what did I tell you about dropping this 'sir' business," Jack says teasingly before hauling the other man up to his feet, before attacking his mouth with his own lips and tongue, before pressing him back onto the hard surface of the desk. Files, pens, and other forgotten objects fall heedlessly to the floor as Jack spreads Ianto across the desk. Jack's fingers begin to deftly work at his fly, his grin predatory as he says:

"Just lie back and enjoy your prize, Jones. You beat me fair and square." Without waiting, Jack is down between Ianto's legs, his tongue teasing, tormenting the secretary in short, caressing strokes. In this moment, in this act of pure carnal joy, almost everything from earlier in the day is forgotten, all the trials and tragedies and miseries. All the bad things that happened because of the resurrection glove. Because of Suzy and the glove. Even Ianto's words from before are a distant memory, their foreboding prediction forgotten, lost in this moment of undeniable bliss. Ten echoing words, which he suddenly remembers:

"That's the thing about gloves, sir. They come in pairs..."

"Gloves come in pairs," Jack whispered to himself dumbly.

He stood silently and stared at the body in the bed, willing some sort of reaction from it. Please, Yan, please!

Then, with what seemed to be a colossal effort, the eyes slowly blinked, once. Jack released a breath that he hadn't realized he'd been holding. The movement of those eyes was both a victory and a defeat. Victory, because it meant that Ianto was still alive. Defeat, because it also meant that he was trapped inside a broken, paralyzed body. Still, Jack reached out to take the pale, limp hand into his own, and then he said with complete confidence, "Don't worry, Ianto. The Doctor and I will find a way to fix this. You can count on it. We'll put you back where you belong. They won't get away with it."

No response. Jack felt his heart drop a little, felt a tremor pass through his body. So much alien emotion. He felt a hand tapping at his shoulder, and he turned to see the Doctor motioning him away from the bed. Reluctantly, Jack placed the unmoving hand back on the bed and moved away from the strange, useless body that was currently housing the soul of his lover. In confidence, the Doctor bent his head toward Jack's and said in a whisper: "We have to find the other Ianto and the glove now, and bring them both back here so we can perform the switch. We should go."

"I know. You're right," said Jack. Then he looked guiltily back at the bed. "It's just that it feels wrong, leaving him alone like this."

"It has to be done," replied the Doctor stoically. "We need to go now."

"I know, but-"

"-no, you don't know, Jack," the Doctor insisted. "We have to find the other Ianto. Now. Because-" and the Doctor's voice dropped into an even lower whisper:

"-I'm afraid that the clock on that body is very soon going to run out."

End Chapter 12.

There are some references and lines from the episode "They Keep Killing Suzy" in the flashback sequence. There are only a few chapters left in this story; I'm nearing the finish, folks. And if you've made it this far, then I hope you enjoy what's left of the ride...