FIC: Torchwood - "Friendship" (1/1)

[fajrdrako_fic]

Title: Friendship
Author: fajrdrako
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Gwen, references to Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2621 words
Disclaimer: Not mine, no claims, all property of the BBC.
Notes: Spoilers for Torchwood series 1. Many thanks to my beta-readers gypsylady, jadesfire2808, and justinej. Cross-posted to torch_wood, torchwood_fic, and my LJ.


Friendship

Jack had left them six weeks ago, when he left Torchwood in a flurry of loose paper, smiling. They saw the smile in the CCTV footage, which they obsessively studied for clues they could not find. Jack had disappeared, leaving no hint of his destination behind him. He had taken the coat on his back and the hand in the jar.

"What the fuck does he want with a severed hand?" Owen had asked. No one on the team had an answer.

The team was left floundering, used to being dependent on Jack with all his knowledge of arcane technology and his fine skill with strategy. Gwen fought through the pain of loss, and the anger which followed it. To hell with him if he'd started something he couldn't finish. She'd trusted him - to lead them, to let them know what was going on, to explain what they should do, and then (bitter thought) comfort them through the bad times. She'd cared about him, and had thought he cared for her, too. Their relationship was deep and unclassifiable. More than friendship, it was a tighter bond than any other in her life, except that with Rhys - and it was hardly less. Had it been so much less for Jack?

The others too were reeling from the shock of loss. Ianto was pale and silent. Owen went away by himself to do a lot of hard, cathartic work in the gym and the shooting gallery. Tosh concentrated on her work until her eyes were tired and red. She jumped at every unexpected noise.

There was no point in expecting Jack back any minute. Hours; days; weeks; a person could only wait so long. It was up to the team to cope without him, Gwen decided, and up to her to make sure they could. After a few weeks, they all stopped speculating about where Jack might have gone. Considering it was Jack, there was no limit to the number of possibilities, terrestrial and otherwise.

After insisting that Jack had left them for hot sex with marauding space pirates, Owen stopped talking about him at all.

Tosh sometimes started sentences with, "Jack says..." and then would correct that to, "Jack used to say...." Ianto too often pointed out what Jack would think, or say, or tell them to do, usually earning a sneer from Owen.

So it was Gwen who took Torchwood in hand. Owen wouldn't, Ianto couldn't, and Tosh was too busy with her research. Gwen faced the inevitable with a certain thrill, and took charge.

Owen accepted this as natural. Tosh loved it - she didn't have to worry about knowing where they stood. Ianto took to calling her 'sir', which drove her crazy. Every time he said it, she replied, "Call me Gwen." He smiled enigmatically, nodded, and then - ten minutes later, a day later, whatever - did it again.

Finally she snapped. "I'm not Yvonne, and I'm sure as hell not Jack. Can it, Ianto."

He blinked. "What do you know about Yvonne?"

"Only what Jack told me - she ran Torchwood One, and she was a bitch. Do I remind you of her?"

His mouth curled. It was the closest thing she'd seen to a smile on his face for weeks. "Not in the least. Jack and Yvonne never got along. She had a few colourful things to say about him."

"Clashing personalities?"

"That wasn't the problem. She threatened his precious Doctor. Jack took it personally."

Which meant Ianto, too, had heard of the Doctor. Jack had said little enough about him to her, only that he was looking for "the right kind of Doctor" who could tell him how he became immortal. It took her a while to realize he mean a specific person. There was nothing about this Doctor in Torchwood files - had Jack removed all records of him?

"Do you know anything about Jack's Doctor?"

"Jack never talked about him. Except once. He said Yvonne was wrong. The Doctor wasn't the enemy."

"Jack was too mysterious for his own good." If only he'd told them more. If only he'd trusted them enough to confide in them. Even if he'd only just told her....

Ianto's shook his head. "Too mysterious for our good, I'd say. He was doing fine."

He never called her 'sir' again, but he didn't smile again, either.

There were too many unknowns surrounding Jack, starting with "where has be gone?" and "why?" Owen's "hot sex with alien pirates" theory began to look good, especially given Jack's broad grin, which she had seen replayed so often now on the monitor screen. She told herself firmly to stop looking at it. There were no clues there. Obsession was pointless.

She wondered how much else Ianto could tell her if she asked. Could trust her enough to confide in her? There was something between him and Jack... Flirtation? Definitely. More than that? Jack flirted with a lot of people, but what had happened between Jack and Ianto on the day Lisa died had been intense for them both. Afterwards, Jack had treated Ianto with care, as bit by bit Ianto's despair and depression lifted. Jack had given Ianto understanding and friendship - was there more to it than that? She thought of the way Jack had kissed Ianto after coming back from death, kissed him as if he had the right. Was that just Jack being Jack, or did it mean something more? Ianto had not pushed him away. But who would? This was Jack, the man with magic in him. She wished Jack had kissed her like that, just once.

Gwen buried herself in Torchwood work. She not only had to do all Jack's normal work, but also had to figure out what that was before she could do it. As far as she could tell, Jack never slept. She needed a decent night's sleep more often than not, and the comfort of Rhys's bed too, if she didn't want to go stark raving mad. Sometimes she thought she would never catch up to Jack. At other times, she relished the challenge. She didn't need to know what Jack knew, or do what Jack did. She just had to keep Torchwood going until he came back.

Jack was organized, she had to give him that - the official Torchwood records, with Ianto's help, were immaculate. There were the neat and clear records of their cases and the ongoing work, the daily tasks, the many anomalies they were keeping an eye on in Cardiff and around the world. Many of the notes had annotations and additions from Ianto.

Then there were Jack's private records: a hand-written notebook of passwords and cryptic comments. His handwriting was neat and precise and oddly old-fashioned. One of his passwords was 'barrage balloon', which amused Gwen, as she wondered what it meant to him - something about wartime? Interspersed with the records were notes intended for his successor; they were invaluable. Damned if she could figure out half of it, though. And some of it was meant to be for his eyes only - written in a strange language and even stranger script that not even Tosh's database could recognize. "It must be alien," said Tosh. "It's no known Earth language. It might be a code."

"Decipher it," said Gwen, and left her to it. But Toshiko and her computers were stymied.

Given her recent involvement with Owen, Gwen thought she might have insubordination issues there, but in his own jaundiced way, Owen was cooperative, even supportive. She knew better than to expect an apology from him for past offences, but she didn't need one. The friendship he offered was apology enough. She knew Owen missed Jack. They all did. He mourned also for Diane, whom he would never see again. Time would bring healing. Perhaps it was the experience of being fired from Torchwood - of being personally rejected by Jack, and then forgiven - that gave him a new lease on life. He no longer fought Weevils bare-handed, or drank himself unconscious, or shagged people whose names he didn't know. Owen was going to be all right.

It was Ianto that Gwen worried about. It felt as if he were slipping away from her. Not from Torchwood - he worked obsessively and diligently. Always a quiet man, he almost stopped talking altogether. Polite, detatched, he did his work like a ghost. Still strung out about Lisa? No. More than that.

She needed to get him to talk about it. Forty-seven days of silence was enough.

She called him into her office - Jack's office - and moved a chair for him to sit while they talked. The door was closed. Ianto didn't sit. She said, hoping she had the right tone of professionalism and personal concern: "What's wrong?"

"Nothing I know of," he said.

Which meant he was going to be stubborn. Calm, courteous Ianto was keeping his thoughts to himself as usual.

"Don't give me that. The Rift is a cataclysm waiting to happen, we still don't know where Bilis came from or what he'll do next, Jack has been gone forty-seven days now, there are more Weevil attacks than ever, Tosh can't identify that alien goo from the schoolyard, and you go around with a face like Marvin the Paranoid Android. Let me ask again: what's wrong?"

"Nothing," said Ianto, his face expressionless. He was still standing.

She was going about this all wrong. He was like a schoolboy caught misbehaving in the classroom, acting oblivious in front of the headmaster. She mustn't make herself the opponent here.

"Ianto." She rested her elbows on the desk, steepling her fingers. Then she realized (with sudden horror) that she was copying Jack's mannerisms, and she dropped her hands, sitting back in the chair. "If we're going to make a go of Torchwood without Jack, and we are, all we have is each other. We have to trust each other. We have to get to know each other. We have to make ourselves a tight, unified team. If we become people who don't care about each other, we become like Suzie." She stopped abruptly, blinking as she realized her eyes were wet. Sod it, getting emotional about this wasn't going to help. Find a balance. Find the balance. Find the balance the way Jack usually did.

"I'm all right," said Ianto.

She took a deep breath. Time for the big guns. "So, then. Tell me what Jack is like in bed."

His eyes met hers, quickly. He still showed no expression, and she couldn't decipher his thought. Anger? Fear? Was he going to hit her? Curse her and walk out? Or was he about to laugh?

Ianto did none of those things. Instead, he perched on the side of Jack's desk, her desk, and with his eyes on her face, he said, "He's amazing." His voice was clear but soft, and she had to strain to hear him, to perceive the layers of bittersweet memory revealed to her at last. "You'd expect him to be experienced, and he is. But he treats every time like a first time, like an adventure in touch. He's warm and loving and generous and exciting. He's good at guessing moods - he can be rough and strong and dangerous, if he thinks that's what I need, or he can be playful, or tender." His voice was stronger now, reliving the happiness of the thought. "Flexible, always flexible. There's something about his energy - it's beautiful and it's addictive. I thought at first this would be just a sexual thing, easy to handle. It wasn't. It isn't."

"You fell in love with him," said Gwen. He hadn't said so many words at one time in weeks.

For the first time since he had started to speak, Ianto looked away. "Yes."

"And you miss him."

"Sometimes I can't stand it."

"But you can."

"I will."

"He'll come back, Ianto."

He looked at her again, afraid to believe. "I'd like to think that," he said. "But he never made me promises."

"Nothing but death could keep him away from us, and he can't die." She took his hand and gave it a squeeze. "Believe it, Ianto. Torchwood is his. He wouldn't leave it behind. He wouldn't leave you behind. He kissed you before he left, remember?"

Ianto shrugged. "He kissed me. He hugged Owen. It just means he likes kissing and hugging. He was feeling mellow, happy to be alive."

"He hugged us all. That meant something important to him. Your kiss meant even more."

"Maybe it meant 'good-bye'."

"I don't think so," said Gwen firmly.

He nodded thoughtfully. "Is that how you guessed we were shagging? His kiss? Or did something else give it away? We were trying to be discreet."

"It was the way you looked at him...." So sweet, she thought, but she didn't want to embarrass him, or admit how it had warmed her heart even when it was no more than guessing on her part. "You hid it well, but sometimes your heart showed. And sometimes he looked at you the same way. Why'd you keep it a secret? Why not tell us?"

"It wasn't a secret, not really. We didn't talk about why, we just kept it quiet. He's very private. Myself, I didn't want Owen to make fun of me, and I didn't want you...."

"What?"

"To be jealous. Or hurt."

"Don't be silly," she said. "I have Rhys. I don't want Jack."

He stared at her until she flushed. "Liar," he said mildly.

She shook her head. "I wouldn't do anything with him, Ianto. You know that."

He didn't believe her, she could tell. She wasn't sure she believed herself. But there was no sense thinking about an opportunity Jack had never given her, and now almost certainly never would.

"I know that," Ianto conceded, and if the reply was a lie intended to be kind, she did not want to know. She wondered if that was pity lurking in his tone. He added, "I'm not sorry about anything. He was the best thing that ever happened to me. But it hurts, now. Losing him."

"You haven't lost him," she said sharply. "You'll see. Trust me."

"I do," he said. "I will. You're right, that we need trust. You're good at this. If... when he comes back, he'll be pleased."

"He'll be glad to see that we're friends, too," said Gwen. Was she pushing too hard? She suddenly realized that, regardless of what else Ianto meant to Jack. This steady intelligence and broad knowledge were as important to Torchwood's leader as the high tech surrounding them. Jack was only human, and so was she... even more so. "If we are friends."

Ianto nodded, his expression softer than it had been in weeks. "You were his friend. Let me be yours. That's something I can offer. Friendship. It's something I need."

"We all do."

She held out her hand. He took it, and gave it a squeeze. A shake; a pact. A practical business arrangement that went very much deeper.

Letting go, he added, "So - was what I said about Jack TMI?"

She grinned at him, teasing. "Course not. I thought for a minute you were going to tell me how big his cock is."

Ianto considered. "Large. Very large. Not bigger than mine, of course."

She made a face, hiding her laugh. "You're as bad as he is. You're such... boys."

"And proud of it." He got off her desk, with a "time to get back to work" expression on his face. "Care for some coffee?"

That was when the Rift alarm sounded.

- end -