A/N: Hello and HAPPY NEW YEAR! Sorry that this is up so late tonight (well I know they are always up late, but usually before it is technically Tuesday) but I hada bit of a crisis moment: I accidentally set my microsoft word default language to Spanish and spent ages trying to set it right. Oh to be a child of the technology age... anyway, I hope you enjoy the chapter! Hannah xxx
If you didn't already know that Jack was immortal, then one might assume that that man has a death wish. It's the day before Gwen's wedding and he is simply doing everything he can to wind her up as much as humanly possible, and the worst part is, I'm not even sure whether it's on purpose or whether he just hasn't realised! On the one hand, it's hard to believe that he would fail to realise that cracking jokes about swapping Banana Boat for a Weevil as Rhys's best man, or how he might use cooked rice instead of raw to throw as they leave, or how he's going to have a cheek bite of the wedding cake before they've even cut it…. Yet on the other hand, I just can't get my head around the idea of him purposefully wanting to wind her up.
We all love Gwen, but I don't think any of us would shy away from admitting that she is bloody terrifying when she's angry. The thought of spending some quality one on one time with Janet in her cell is actually more appealing than the idea of incurring the wrath of Miss Cooper, soon to be Williams. Normally she's fine, perhaps a little feisty if you choose the wrong words or whatever, but not as snappy as she has been lately, which is of course purely down to the wedding. She is so very stressed about the wedding going as smoothly to plan as she would like, all of us (aside from Jack) are doing our best to be as sweet and gentle with her as possible, because none of us particularly fancy a black eye. She's yet to offer more than a growl and a quickly fired hand gesture… but if he carries on the way he's going…
Oh god, so it's not only Jack that she now wants to throttle… I think I might have inadvertently insulted her… I was honestly only trying to be helpful! But I can see now that I made a fatal error. We'd all been busy and working hard this afternoon on our various little tasks, I had just finished compiling a dossier on the Silurians that we've been tracking underground for the past month or so, which Jack has a feeling might be about to surface, and Gwen, well Gwen was sat at her desk frantically finishing off her report on the werewolf we encountered a few days ago before she went out with Owen to check out a crash site. Seeing that she was bogged down with work, and rapidly trying to hurry everything along before she had to leave again, I did the gentlemanly thing (and what I'm paid to do) and went to offer her a coffee:
"Would you like a coffee at all Gwen?" I asked, walking over to where she was working and placing a hand on her shoulder.
"Uh yeah that would be great" She replied, offering a tired looking smile.
I left, giving her shoulder a squeeze before I did so, and started heading over to the coffee machine.
"Actually Ianto, could you make it a decaf?" She shouted across to me.
"If you're sure, I mean you look like you could use the caffeine" I replied, ever so innocently.
"What are you trying to say exactly? Can I really look that terrible that I'm suddenly desperately in need of a caffeine boost to liven me up a bit?" She asked, somewhat haughtily.
"I just err, I only meant…" I said getting a little flustered.
"You're for it now mate" Owen whispered and chuckled as he brushed past my shoulder.
"Yes, what did you mean?" She asked, a little impatient.
"One decaffeinated coffee coming right up" I said, plastering on a smile, trying to diffuse the situation.
I hope it worked, that was a few hours ago and she's gone home now to get ready for this evening, left without speaking to me again. Well, arguably, that could be because I had been avoiding her like the plague… I didn't want to upset her or make her angry again so I thought it best just to leave it. I'm sure everything will be fine once tomorrow's over and she's back and well rested from her honey moon, all will be forgotten… I hope. Of course, if she gets wind of the fact that we are all staying behind at the hub for a drink without her this evening, if she finds out about that then she could be annoyed with all of us for quite a while, and quite rightly so. I said that we should have invited her, if out of courtesy than nothing else, I mean she probably would have declined due to her hen night this evening, but at least if we had offered then she couldn't have been angry with us. Of course Owen's theory was that there was a small chance that she might ditch the hen party and say yes and "spoil our night by being Miss fucking-perfectionist-grumpy-boots" and after that I was overruled by the others, so in about twenty minutes or so the four of us will be settling down for that drink. By god I hope she doesn't find out.
In the end I guess it doesn't matter whether she found out or not, or whether she would have stayed, because we never did get around to that drink after all.
Once the last few lines of our paper work were completed, and Owen had (miraculously) finished clearing up the autopsy bay, and I had given the hub a quick sweep for rubbish, and Tosh had shut down the system for the night, I went up out to the kitchenette to get the couple of bottles of wine which I had left cooling in the fridge. Jack came up quietly behind me, circling his arms around my waist and catching me by surprise, almost making me drop the wine bottle straight to the ground but I somehow fought against my instinctive response and contained my reaction.
"Buenas tardes, hermosa" He whispered in my ear.
"Is that Spanish" I asked, not turning around to face him yet.
"It might be…" He whispered again, planting kisses down the back of my neck.
"And what might it mean?"
"You'll have to look that one up for youself…" He teased.
"Why are you speaking to me in Spanish anyway?"
"I thought it was more interesting that hello" He said, again kissing the back of my neck in just that place…
"So I was thinking" He began, turning me to face him now. "That in a little while… we could tell them that there's a rift alert and sneak off for a spot of Weevil hunting… if you know what I mean" He winked enthusiastically.
"Yes Jack, of course I know what you mean" I rolled my eyes "Perhaps" I smiled.
"Awesome" He grinned, starting to walk away.
"Oh and Jack, are you winding Gwen up like that on purpose or what, cause it's really not funny… you'd better be nice to her tomorrow" I said, in a mock chastising tone.
"Hypocrite" He stuck his tongue out.
I blushed a little, "well I didn't mean to wind her up… it just sort of happened!" I said, a little flustered.
"Well I didn't either" He replied.
"Oh sure, don't try and play innocent with me Sir, I know what you're like!"
"Oh really, well then… you know that I can be as innocent as you want me to be" He practically purred, causing my blush to deepen from pink to fuchsia in a matter of seconds.
"Oh hell" Owen called from behind the corner of the room, "So that's why you to have been taking so long with the alcohol!"
"How long have you been stood there?" I asked nervously, blush growing from fuchsia to claret.
"Long enough to know that if you two ever say you're going Weevil hunting again then I am certainly not tagging along"
"Oh dear…" I half whispered.
Jack just laughed in response while I rolled my eyes at his reaction, honestly I don't think I'll ever get used to how comfortably upfront he is!
Of course, it was about now when the alarm for the rift started flaring loud and clear throughout the hub and we all groaned in unison as we realised that our plans for the evening had been well and truly scuppered.
Of course Jack insisted on calling Gwen back in to help us handle the situation, I told him not to but of course he just winked at me and started dialling her number; I doubt that she'd even left the house to go to her party, never mind got there yet. It's going to be a long and difficult evening I'm sure.
It was some sort of human eating shape shifter, a particularly nasty piece of work I might add. After the best part of an hour of trying to track it down in the centre of Cardiff, Jack managed to shoot it down; but not of course before it managed to bite Gwen on the arm. Although Owen did a grand job of cleaning it up and putting in a few stitches, I expect it will still stand out tomorrow; she looked as if she was ready to kill all four of us at that point.
We were all exhausted after that and no one could be bothered to go back to the hub for that drink anymore so we all went our separate ways; Tosh back to her flat, Owen off goodness knows where, Gwen to her hen do and Jack and I back to my apartment for a bit of TV and some Weevil hunting.
So… It's the big day and in an interesting, if a little awkward and unusual turn of events, Gwen is pregnant; sort of. Owen and Jack have just gone round to her flat now to check up on her and work out just how much danger she might be in, and how long this situation might last for. She rang the hub in quite a state this morning bless her, and none of us could really understand what she was going on about, but we thought it best to go and see if she was alright. It's such a shame that it's happened today of all days, I expect they're going to have to cancel the wedding now and Gwen, despite the stress, has been so looking forward to it!
Or maybe not, apparently the wedding is still set to go ahead! Gwen just wouldn't take no for an answer, which is understandable really, after all the hard work and time and money that has been put in to organising this, not to mention the sacredness of the act itself, I mean I wouldn't want to cancel something this important unless I was on death's door! But how she is going to explain to Rhys, to her family, that she is suddenly pregnant with a non-human life form is beyond me. And I know Jack was joking but what if she really did give birth (I mean, will she be giving birth?) to that thing in the middle of the service and it did eat all of the guests? Or injure them at least… we're going to need to pack a serious amount of retcon. Tosh is heading down there shortly to keep an eye on things, make sure that nothing kicks off before we all arrive.
Oh and did I mention, I am on project wedding dress, not too sure how I'm going to find one that fits her, and that she likes, without her being present at the time of purchase, but I'm sure I'll figure it out somehow.
I did work it out in the end, managed to use the hub's security laser scans to calculate her measurements and then went out for a rather awkward shopping trip. I am convinced that the sales assistant believed that I was shopping for myself, can you imagine! Do people really do that, men I mean, just buy wedding dresses for themselves? The thought of it is, well, more than a little bit odd to be perfectly honest! After shaking off the sales assistant I eventually settled on a design that I hope she'll like, classic cut, white of course, not to frilly or too fancy but not too plain either. Then again, I suppose in the condition that she is prepared to walk up the isle in, as long as she is wearing a dress, then it won't really matter to her which one.
Jack seemed to like the one I had picked at least; after I showed him the brochure he was dead certain that I'd made the right choice. He also seemed very impressed with my method of working out the correct size, and my reference to measuring men's inside leg lengths and the 'old family eye' went down a treat… even if I did tell a little white lie… I mean yes, my Dad was a master tailor back before he started drinking, and I don't want to think of inheriting anything from that man… but I don't want to get into that. Thankfully when Owen walked in on us that time I managed to recover without the hint of a blush.
He'd finished dissecting the creature and had determined that it was a Nostrovite on discovery of a proteous gland, the thing responsible for its ability to shape shift, aka we had trouble. I wasn't sure what the big deal was at first, I mean, this one was dead wasn't it? But Owen said that Nostrovites mate for life, that the male carries the fertilised eggs and injects them into a host through a bite, while the mother… the mother rips open the host to set the offspring free. Shit.
Amidst all of that, Tosh just sent me the funniest text; apparently Banana Boat has started hitting on her! I don't blame him to be honest, she looked wonderful before she left, but by her accounts he was as cheesy as can be. I would have loved to have seen the look on his face when she, ever so wittily, turned him down. And she had taken Gwen's new wedding dress with her, and thankfully it both fits and is to her liking, but of course that's now the least of our worries, we have to get over there to help Gwen and fast!
It took a while to reach the venue, after all it was out in the sticks and I was driving rather than Jack or Owen and I simply refuse to drive like a complete reckless idiot no matter what the circumstances. Jack couldn't seem to understand why they would go all the way out into the middle of nowhere to get married, or rather he said he didn't see the point of it, I'm not sure if it's his 51st Century attitude talking, or if he is trying to hide the fact that he regrets not being able to have a normal, married life like Gwen is about to enter into. I say normal; of course this is probably the most abnormal start a marriage could ever have.
With the Nostrovite mother on the prowl and no time to waste Jack was forced to burst in on the ceremony, disrupting the services and angering both Rhys and Gwen to no end, but it had to be done unless one of them or the guests wanted to end up dead.
Meanwhile, Owen and I set off trying to find Toshiko who, since we entered the vehicle, had been un-contactable, though her comms were still switched on so I managed to get a fix on them to track her down. We found her trapped in some sort of sticky black web formed by the mother Nostrovite, along with whom else other than Banana Boat. Poor Tosh, stuck together so closely with that man for goodness knows how long, but at least that thing hadn't attacked and lunched on either of them like she had done with that D.J. If only that bridesmaid hadn't arrived to find him dead and decapitated on the bedroom floor, and then proceeded to flee from the room screaming at the top of her lungs. I tried to contain the situation, and keep all of the other guests out of the loop of things but she got to the hall before I could and alerted every single guest to what had happened. At least I managed to get to the SUV and block the phone lines before and of them tried to contact the emergency services.
Jack headed back into the hall now, with Toshiko this time, both of them guns blazing (there was just not point in trying to be inconspicuous now that they all knew about the murder) ready to fight of this creature while Owen and Rhys protected Gwen. Of course, keeping up with the day's tradition with nothing going quite to plan, after Jack and Tosh chased the Nostrovite out of the wedding hall, it took on the form of Rhys's mother and fled to the room where they were keeping Gwen... or so we thought. "Get back you ugly bitch!" Jack shouted as we entered and every time I remember him saying it I can't help but start laughing, especially when it turned out not to be the Nostrovite, but in fact Rhys's actual mother, oh and that punch that Rhys gave him… Thank goodness he heals quickly, or else he might have been pouting about a bruise on his 'perfect jaw' for the rest of the evening. Obviously none of this was even a bit funny at the time, at the time realising that it was simply just Brenda meant that the real beast was out there somewhere and potentially about to murder all of the wedding guests… but now it's really rather hilarious… anyway.
Immediately we all took off, trying to track down the true Nostrovite before she killed or injured anyone; when we arrived she had Gwen's mother restrained and we were all so nervous that she was about to do something reckless. She proposed a deal, Gwen's mother for her baby, but we were not about to give into that. We stood; guns poised and at the ready as Gwen slowly approached her mother and the alien, ready to shoot when the opportunity arose.
Whilst it had temporarily run off wounded and potentially on its way to death, Owen prepared Rhys to operate on Gwen with the singularity scalpel. Even though I had ultimately sided with him in the car about whether or not it should be used – much to Jack's chagrin – I did have my doubts and I think deep down even he did. Which is why I think in the end he got Rhys to do it, that and because he only had the one good hand.
After Owen had completely ripped in to the monstrous creature, the bullets were still having absolutely no effect whatsoever, so Jack and I went out to the SUV for a little 'Ikea weaponry' time and built up the ultimate weapon to blow it off its feet.
And then somehow, by some sweet miracle or act of god or just good luck, things turned out sort of ok, even Rhys's mum was borderline happy by the end of the evening. The, now rather dishevelled, bride and groom married in front of a set of confused and dazed wedding guests, and neither of them could have been happier than anyone else in the world at that moment. In the absence of the dear departed D.J I had to take on the role of master of the decks, and was happy to just stand there and play cheesy but brilliant and classic wedding music as I watched the happy couple, and Owen and Tosh I might add, dancing the night away. For a short while I left my duties on the decks to go and dance myself, I had originally intended to cut in and swap places with Jack and take my turn at dancing with the beautiful bride, but suddenly I changed my mind and went to dance with Jack instead. I think I surprised myself as much as I surprised him with the gesture, we were in such a public place after all… but it just felt I don't know, like the right thing to do. And it was wonderful, dancing together so closely, soft music playing in the background and being able to not care what the others around us were thinking because they were all too worn out to make a big deal about it.
"That was unexpected" He whispered in my ear as we moved together.
"I know, it just sort of happened" I whispered back, a smile colouring my tone.
He chucked back at that "Well it's a nice surprise"
"Good"
"Ianto do you ever…" He began, still whispering. "Oh never mind" he sighed a little.
"Do I ever what?" I asked, inquisitive now.
"Do you ever wish that you could have any of this, have a normal life and get married like normal people do?"
I knew what he was getting at, he'd asked me before if I would prefer not to be working for Torchwood, to be able to work in a normal office or school or library or whatever, and have a normal 3 bed 2 bathroom house, a wife a couple of children, a cat… and yeah, maybe at one point that's what I wanted, but not now, not now I've seen so much, not now that I've met Jack.
"In a way… yes, but well… you know I love you" I whispered, a little awkwardly, I still felt nervous confessing that. "And right now, this is what I want, no matter how unorthodox and unusual this way of life – the fighting aliens part I mean – I wouldn't want to get rid of any of it, not ever. Because get rid of that, and I get rid of you. I don't care what's supposed to be considered normal… I just want you. And besides, today has hardly been what you could describe as a typical wedding…" I said, laughing lightly by the end.
He joined in my laughter. "Yes, you're right there, it certainly hasn't"
"How about you… do you ever wish you could have this?" I asked, realising suddenly that I never had asked him before.
He sighed a little. "Yes and No" I felt my stomach tighten a little with nerves, worried that he may confirm the doubts I had banished months ago. "Yes, because I hate the fact that I can't ever have it, even if I wanted to. How can you have that when you know that you're going to outlive your other half by thousands of lives, when you know that you're ultimately going to end up alone?" I brushed my hand lightly across his cheek, trying to take his sudden sadness away with it.
It seemed to work a little, as he smiled before finishing the other half of his answer. "And no, because if I had had normal, I would have died before you were even born Mr Jones and that would have been a terrible shame." He winked and smiled again.
I smiled too.
"You know that if I could give normal to you then I would" He whispered, drawing me in even closer. "If I could switch off this curse now and just be, be like a normal human being, so that I could, we could…. I would do it for you."
I was surprised to hear him say such things, I mean I don't dare think that I am the only person he's ever been in love with (I'm still not 100 percent certain if what he feels for me is love or just… I mean he's never said it explicitly but they say actions speak louder than words and well… oh anyway) let alone that I would be the only person that he has said this to or felt this way about. But it was still so lovely and so sad in a way, to hear it said out loud to me then, that I matter to him. "Thank you" I whispered lovingly back, planting a soft kiss on his cheek. "But this is enough; you don't have to change anything"
"Did I ever tell you that you're wonderful?"
"Only once or twice…" I winked.
"Cheeky!" He said, rather more loudly than we had been speaking in the last few minutes or so, and pinched my backside… typical Jack.
After the happy couple had had their fill of champagne and dancing, and we had started to clear up, we set to work on the guests. It's a very good job we packed all of that retcon.