No spoilers
Beta-ed: GlassSplinter
Ianto sat down and ate a good meal. Those were the instructions, sit down and eat a good meal, he actually wrote it down. It wasn't too sexy but if Jack hadn't put it down like that, he would've probably just grabbed something and eaten it on the move. This way he stared at the sidewalk and the people passing through. How often did he really see the people, ordinary new faces, just walking along, doing simple things? He could go out and join them, disappear in the crowd. He could live a safe life, as safe any life could be, you could be hit by a truck on the road any day. Jack would let him, he knew that now, knew that about Jack, that he let people go.
We are the ones holding on to him, searching for some bigger life, and he take us for a ride. Ianto smiled to himself, it was a good ride.
Ianto looked at the list; he's done most of it. He'd bought bottles of water, chocolate for the ever suspicious Owen, ordered take out from that restaurant, picked up the wine, and the lube. It was a bit uncomfortable to order such an amount of lube tubes, he didn't have practice in buying these things, but it wasn't that bad when he hid one in a pile of things. This time the things were hidden in the pile of the lubes. God he hoped that Owen would be gone when he showed up with bags full of lube. He still needed to go and buy a pillow, a big pillow in a shape of a horseshoe. What in the hell did he need that for?
He came into the Hub with hands full of bags and a big colourful pillow pressed under his arm. He didn't find any other kind, and he had to go to pregnancy shop to get it. Apparently it was used to support the big bellies of future mothers. That was awkward. The shop girl saw the lube in his bag and she assumed that he was preparing for a birth at home. That freaked him out a little. It shouldn't have, he'd seen such terrible and disgusting things in Torchwood that child birth should be a piece of cake, but still it was kind of disturbing. He was never any good at children; he'd considered it only because he thought Lisa would take care of it all. He covered that picture with Jack, he had other ideas with that pillow, and all of them would freak future mothers out. He smiled at that notion and went down. If Owen was still there Jack would surely find a simple and disturbing explanation for his wishes.
It was dark around work stations, and music floated through the air from Jack's office. He paced slowly up the stairs. Jack was sitting down behind his desk, reading something.
"Oh, you're early." He had a little smile while he was getting up. He leaned and pulled the wine out of the bag.
"Nice one," he said. "I remember that year, 1964, it was a nice year, warm summer and funny music. People were finally becoming looser; it wasn't a moment too soon." He took out two glasses from the cabinet and opened up the wine. "You can shove the rest down the hole." He pointed at the open manhole that leads down to his bedroom, Ianto looked worried. "Don't worry, it'll fall down on the bed."
Ianto shrugged his shoulders and threw the bags down, and the pillow followed them. They fell and spread around but he didn't care about that. Order wasn't on the menu tonight. He accepted the glass with red liquid from Jack. It was inviting to imagine Jack landed into the sixties, all those innocent and unsuspecting people. Did the rift take him there, or did he have some kind of device? He loved to toss and turn the mystery that was Jack; in a more than allegorical way. He felt his posture changing from his usual tightness to something, well, provoking. He felt like he could unravel in front of Jack.