Title: Precariously Yours
By: sqyd
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: NC 17
Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Tosh
Word Count: 4548 - or thereabouts
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters, just borrowing them.
Spoilers: S1, S2, CoE
Warning: slash, angst, death (duh!)
Summary: A chronological collection of snippets, plot bunnies, missing scenes and plot fillers.
Credits: Thanks to alicatt13 for beta, and for pushing me to the right direction.

"Old lies and fireflies
Carve angels on your eyes"

Unusual Curses

One of the cruelest jokes of fate is when it gives you exactly what you wish for. Ianto's world started unravelling - more than it already was - the moment fate gave him the one thing he desired so desperately, but seemed so unlikely to receive. After a couple of false starts he finally got the captain where he wanted, and all he had to do was to move in for the finish, but he couldn't do it. He was playing a role, playing the Captain - he had his justifications -, but unexpectedly the lie became truth, and he could not go through with it. He had to flee. And it was exactly that which earned him what he came for. Little did he know that going through with the plan would have earned him a quick shag and a retcon. Instead he got the grand prize: Entry to Torchwood Three. It was a good thing that the Captain couldn't see Ianto's face twist in pain instead of joy at that moment.

********************

Bloody Business

Ianto kneeled on the cold concrete floor in the puddle of blood. The bodies were gone, but there was still the blood, so much blood... It soaked through his trousers, stuck to his skin. He couldn't feel anything, couldn't even cry any more. He just wanted it all to end, he was willing his heart to stop, but it wouldn't, and his lungs kept sucking in air. Betrayed by his organs - he would have laughed if he knew how.

"Get up!" - He heard the angry voice, but couldn't move, he wouldn't move. This was a good spot, he would stay.

Jack looked at the unresponsive figure, his fury pounded in his ears, hand slid to his gun. He circled around to face the kneeling figure.

"I said, get up!"

The other raised up his face, distant and ghostly serene.

"It's all right, sir... - the voice was hushed and encouraging - ...you can shoot now."

FUCK. Jack had been in enough wars to know that look. There was nothing for him to do now.

"OWEN!" - He bellowed.

Jack made Owen to shoot Ianto full of sedatives, and then take him home. Owen saw the murder in Jack's eyes, and carried out the orders without a word.

********************

Four Weeks, No Funeral

Ianto woke up groggy. He pushed the duvet off and surveyed the remains. Most of his clothes were stripped off, in a pile on the floor, but there were smears of dried blood on his skin, and some of it on the duvet. He climbed out of bed, shedding the rest of his clothes. It was in the shower, leaning against the tiles when he noticed the silvery bracelet on his wrist. Ah, tracking device, made sense - he thought. It looked like ordinary jewelry - not something he would normally wear, but inconspicuous. What he didn't know was that it also monitored vital signs.

He pulled some clean clothes on, collected the pile of bloody ones from the bedroom floor and threw them in the kitchen trash. He tied the bag and took it out. He was shoving the duvet in the washer when his mobile rang. It was the Captain.

"You're on four weeks suspension, pending an investigation. You keep your mobile on, answer when I call, and only when I call." Click.

He spent most of the day sitting on the couch. He felt dazed, yet couldn't stop his mind from racing. It was dark when his doorbell rang. It was Owen looking put out - not a stretch for him - pushing a brown takeaway bag and a small medicine bottle at Ianto.

"Sleeping pills." - He said and left.

Ianto shook the bottle. Light rattle. Not enough to off himself. Thoughtful. Opened the bag. Indian. He realized how hungry he was. He remember last time he and Lisa were out in an Indian restaurant. There were tears running down his cheek while shoving food into his mouth. This was fucked up. He took two pills and went to bed.

On day two he forced himself to take stock of his situation. He had two choices: He could cease to exist, or he could go on. He thought back to all the times he should have died, but didn't. The first one was when he was ten. It was a rare family vacation at the beach. The undertow pulled him in, and he knew that was it. He stopped struggling, let go, and felt a strange sense of peacefulness. Just then the ocean inexplicably released him. He was shaking, lying on the sandy beach till he could pull himself together. His family never knew, and he was never able to tell anyone about it. Then there was Canary Wharf - he survived that by a fluke. He should have been there and died with the others, but was sent on an errand just in time to be saved, and to save Lisa - or so he thought. Yesterday... no, two days days ago, Lisa, or rather the thing she became, could have killed him, and he thought for a second she did. The captain could have justifiably shot him several times during the night. Yet he was still here. He hated himself intensely, but didn't have enough self-pity to kill himself, he knew that. But to be able to go on he needed to move, needed structure, so he set up the routines that would get him through these four weeks, till he could go back to those other routines.

********************

Jack had Tosh check the computer system for any signs of tampering. There was nothing. Ianto apparently streamlined their filing system, cleaned up the backlog, and created a calendar with everything on it, from Jack's dry cleaning to SUV maintenance.

Jack checked the CCTV logs. Only parts missing were a block around Dr. Tanazaki's arrival, and another one, months ago that had to be when Ianto moved Lisa and the conversion unit into the hub. Jack recalled the date, it was when he was in London at UNIT's request. Other than that, it was all there. Ianto arrived to the hub every morning at 6 am, via the lift, probably because it was quieter, and disappeared into the lower levels. At 7:30 he was making coffee, at 7:55 went upstairs and opened the tourist office. During the day disappeared into the lower levels for 10-15 minutes.

Jack kept the cameras trained on the current Ianto as well. Ianto emerged on the third day long enough to get groceries and to stop at the book store (several books on botany). On the fourth day the regimented pattern emerged: Ianto left his flat at 6 am in sweats, ran till he looked like he couldn't take another step, then turned around and ran back. He stayed in his flat till dark, when he set off on foot, wandering for hours all over town. Aside from ordering books on a wide range of science subjects online, Ianto didn't use the internet. After a week, Jack picked up the phone and made the call.

********************

The meeting place was a fish and chips shop between the hub and Ianto's apartment. Jack arrived five minutes early, but Ianto was already there. Jack ordered for both of them, since the other seemed completely disinterested in food.

Ianto was wearing jeans and a hoodie, but it was to an altogether different effect than the rentboy look of their first encounter. He looked even paler than usual, dark circles under hollow eyes. Looking at Ianto like that, Jack understood that the suits served Ianto as a protective exoskeleton. Without them he looked vulnerable, almost naked, and so very young, far too young for Torchwood. And now, he was sitting across him, completely defenseless, yet doing his damnest to keep himself up straight, face whatever was coming at him. Jack was looking at the boy who was keeping himself from unraveling by willpower alone, possibly clinging to the rest of the world, life, only by a slender thread. And then Jack realized that it was probably him who held the other end of that thread, and that made him a little scared.

Their food arrived. Ianto picked at it.

"This is how it's going to go." Jack started. "After you come back you'll be on a trial period till I decide to end it. During that time you are not allowed in the hub before 8am and after 8pm...."

"7:30am" - Ianto cut in.

"What?" Jack didn't know how to react to this baffling insurrection.

"Tosh and Gwen are in by eight, sometimes even Owen. They get restless without their coffee."

"Arright, 7:30 then." - Jack replied with a smile in his voice. - "You get a limited access to the computer system. If you want to do anything outside your usual duties, you ask permission."

Ianto nodded. The bracelet clicked on the Formica table top as he reached for his beer. He could have hidden it under the sleeve of the hoodie, but didn't bother. He obediently slipped into the roles others assigned to him - survival skill, Jack figured.

"Eat your food, we  are not leaving till you finish." - Jack said.

It sounded ridiculous, and Ianto couldn't quite stifle a bitter-amused chuckle, but he shoved some food in his mouth and started chewing.

"And stop wandering around town at night, you'll get mugged."

Ianto knew already that he was probably watched, and had neither the energy or will to pick a fight about it, so he just shrugged.

"What do you do all day?" - Jack continued.

"Read, but you already know that."

"Botany?"

"We have a green house, and four weeks is a long time doing nothing."

"We" - that's good, Jack silently noted.

"Some of those books you got are total rubbish. I could teach you much more useful information."

"That would be nice." - For the first time there was some life in Ianto's voice.

********************

Over the next weeks they met almost daily for lunch. They discussed a wide range of subjects, but never anything personal. Usually Ianto brought one of his books, and Jack explained what it got right and wrong, while watching the other eat. This neutral ground seemed to bring Ianto out, but once back in the hub, he just faded into the background again, staying out of everyone's way. It was not like the others were trying to make him uncomfortable at any way. Gwen was a touchy-feely type of person anyway, and Tosh really had nothing but sympathy for him. Even Owen kept his mouth shut - maybe because of the stern warnings from Jack, or maybe because he was pensive enough to remember his own loss and wonder what he would have done to undo it. It was hard to tell with Owen; he was a bastard, but maybe more out of habit than real conviction.

None of them had complaints, having Ianto around was useful, things piled up while he was gone, and worked much smoother once he was back. So they all just fell back into the old patterns. Jack didn't want this and set out to shake things up. He succeeded, though it really was not how he wanted it to go down. Brecon Beacons was a watershed. "Bacon Beacons" - Ianto named it. When he first said it, they all looked at him agape, too stunned even to protest. It was so deeply sick, yet fitting, and delivered so calm and dry - it shocked them more than all that cyber business did. Jack wondered how deep that darkness went.

Still, after the Beacons Ianto stopped hiding, and started pushing forward, asserting himself. He was long off his probation period, tracking bracelet removed, but still he asked Jack's permission to digitize the old, pre-computer age parts of the archives. He got it.

********************

Law of Desire - pt. 1

It was after the Beacons that Ianto decided that he had to have Jack. He was jolted awake by that unsurpassable sense of fear he felt as the butcher's cleaver pressed into the soft flesh of his neck, split seconds away from a major artery. Life was too short to spend steeped in misery. The memory of Lisa, his grief, would always be part of his life, you don't 'get over' scars like that, but it didn't have to be his whole life, he could put it in its proper place. The guilt and self-loathing - that he could get over. Past that he could focus on what he wanted, needed to feel alive again - and that for him was Jack in all his infuriating, luscious self.

He had been attracted to him practically from the very beginning, but back then it just added another dimension to his miseries. Now it was different; it was the only thing that remained when everything else unravelled. Still, considering who he was, who they both were, their not too distant history of pointing guns at each others' heads, he had to navigate his way back to Jack, and the direct route was not the surest one. In a way - he realized with some unease - he was playing the Captain again. It started in small measures, imperceptible to anyone but him; only few inches of difference of the position of his body in correlation to the other's in perfectly ordinary situations, a couple seconds difference in a look, or a gesture, a careful choice of words, a finger brushing against Jack's neck while he helped on his coat. They were moves that worked in a subliminal level to turn him from a semi-invisible thing into a warm body within the Captain's field of vision. They would move forward from there.

There was a game he played with himself: He imagined a certain body part of the Captain - something fairly safe at first, like an earlobe or the hollow of his throat. He kept concentrating on it - mentally touching, nipping, licking - while doing routine jobs like cleaning up the hub, or minding the tourist office. Eventually he moved on to more adventurous body parts, but he had to work form imagination - at least till the incident with the acid-blooded alien that necessitated Jack shedding most of his clothing. Just for fun he kept timing how long he could do it before he either lost concentration or got interrupted by someone, something. Maybe Jack had ESP, because after a while Ianto barely had a few minutes of peaceful fantasizing before Jack's voice crackled in the intercom, or shouted for him through the hub. This game later evolved into the Naked Hide and Seek, though he never told Jack where the idea came from.

It wasn't entirely clear at which point Jack became aware of being seduced slowly and resolutely, or perhaps he thought he was doing the seducing all along. It became the undercurrent of their days, except when the rift alarm went off. By then they were far past subtle, and Ianto had a discrete feeling that the rest of the team caught on too. Jack was flirting with everyone, it was nothing unusual - he rationalized to himself, but Tosh kept shooting those happy little smiles in his direction. No matter, this game of teasing, alluring the Captain was oh so thrilling. Still, it was time for him to put both of them out of their miseries, or he could not be held accountable for the actions of either of them. Ianto was starting to have the urge jump Jack's bones during team meetings. His discovery of the alien stopwatches in the archives gave him the perfect plan. The tricky part was getting the Captain stuck busy in his office, while having the others leave the hub at the same time - he didn't need long, a few minutes would suffice. He was incredibly nervous, but it worked out better than he could have ever expected.

Sex with Jack was different than anything he ever experienced before. Jack could make him beg, ache with pleasure, do to him, make him do things he didn't have the words for. It was not only about physical pleasure either: Jack was little by little undoing the coils of restriction that were put on him by others and by himself, regarding who he was, could be, what he was capable of, the potentials he had. Jack wasn't just shagging him, he was rearranging him, and the more he surrendered to Jack, the more liberated he felt. In exchange he could give small measures of comfort to Jack, allowing him to be more human, the freedom to feel. He could allow himself believe that Jack needed him.

********************

Team Torchwood

Despite everything, he betrayed Jack again. They all did. It was a full-scale mutiny, and he held out longer than that wanker Owen, but it made no difference in the end. They opened the rift and Jack was dead, really dead this time, it seemed. Gwen believed Jack would revive as always, but it was Gwen - Gwen who could simply not accept that things could be broken beyond repair. It was admirable, really, even if aggravating at times. This time though Gwen was proven right, Jack came back, and he forgave them, even Owen, because that's what Jack did. Ianto didn't know where he and Jack stood, but Jack made it clear: Embraced him and kissed him in front of all the others for the first time. Everything was going to be alright. Or not.

By the time they got back from the coffee shop Jack was gone. He ran off, took that blasted hand in a jar with him too. Ianto felt like he was kicked in the chest, and the others were pretty dejected too. Jack abandoned them, but truth to be told, they broke faith with him before that. Anger and shame make bad combination, and they might have turned on each other, but in an appropriate turn of irony they were saved by the rift. It became more volatile as ever before -  as Jack had said it would - puking up all sorts of nastiness at them relentlessly, and they had to drop everything else and deal with it.

There was no time for petty squabbles, they all had to step up, grow up, and really become a team. Gwen took over leadership, despite being the most junior, simply because they all knew she was the best choice. Ianto did not have the option to fade into the background now. With Jack's encyclopedic understanding of everything alien gone, he and his knowledge of the archives was invaluable, and all kinds of previously untapped skills of his came in handy. Tosh of course was brilliant as always, but even she pushed herself further than before. The rift prediction software, even uncompleted was a huge help. Owen and Ianto struck up a truce, agreeing that with everything said and done, they were even. There was even a faint sense of affection between the two of them: Owen felt guiltier than the others about their mutiny, and he saw Ianto as an obscure sort of connection between them and Jack, a barometer on the likelihood of Jack returning.

Jack deserting them turned them into brothers in arms, and made Ianto fully part of the team at last. He found it bitterly amusing. He was far too busy to wallow in misery, and most of all, he would never allow himself to back to that place again, but emotionally he was in a holding pattern. He couldn't, wouldn't go backwards, and there was nothing to go forwards for, so he waited.

********************
********************

O Captain! My Captain!

Jack returned, and first he looked the same, but he wasn't. He was broken a little, and needed mending, so Ianto let his own hurt and resentment drop, because Jack needed him, and he needed Jack. They had their dinner and a movie, and many more, but he took Jack to his bed before that, because while rituals mattered, other things mattered more. When they lay together Jack traced new unfamiliar scars on Ianto's body - records of their time spent apart - like learning him all over again.

********************

Dead Man Sulking

Owen became far more agreeable after he died. Not right away maybe, but being killed and brought back to life (of sorts) is not an easy transition for anyone. It broke Ianto's heart a little; Owen was not the most considerate person, but when the chips were down he always took care of them, was a great doctor, and truly cared about their well-being. Being undead made Owen a touch more thoughtful. Ianto wished Owen had gotten to that stage while he was still alive - then he and Tosh might have had a chance. Though, who knows? Owen's obliviousness knew no bounds, and Tosh really deserved better.

********************

Law of Desire - pt. 2

Jack was not one to be bothered with 21st century labels and mores, and Ianto was not one to ask for them. However he had a tenacity that would have distinguished him in any century. Ianto didn't demand anything, not love, not promises, not commitment. Ianto just pushed into Jack's space, into his life, and sort of took over. Jack only half-heartedly resisted, too amused. The closer Ianto pushed, the more he revealed of himself, and the more he revealed, the more puzzling he turned out to be. Ianto was anything but simple. Under the shy, subservient surface there was something damaged and dark and entirely different; as if Ianto was two people, both shattered and their pieces mixed together. Jack had suspicion that the history of the damage started long before Canary Wharf, though he didn't push for it, and Ianto didn't volunteer. Ianto's tightly wound self-control was hiding dark secrets and desires, and they would come tumbling out if shaken just right - and Jack was good at shaking things up. He was thrilled that he could still make Ianto blush after all their mutual debauchery. The contrast between the prim and proper, reserved public Ianto and his private kinky, depraved Ianto made him shiver. It was all a bit warped, but they both were, in their own ways, and somehow it all fit.

********************

Glass Houses

Jack was furious. Jack was shouting. Jack was scary.

"You told her, when I specifically forbade you! What did you think, that I wasn't going to find out? I trusted you, and again you just..." - Jack's voice was echoing through the hub. But Ianto was not having any of it.

"Don't you fucking dare to go there!" - Ianto growled at him at a deep, dangerous voice. He stepped forward, into Jack's personal space, eyes narrow, his voice lower now, but just as menacing. - "I knew you'd find out, I wasn't the one hiding secrets. I was doing my job, keeping you from fucking up, cleaning up your mess. You were going to lose her, Jack. There were a number of possible ways of handling it, the best being just telling Gwen the truth. But you, being the bloody-minded twat you are, you had to choose the one that wasn't going to work. What the fuck were you thinking, Jack? That she was just going to roll over, and forget your nasty looking little secret without an explanation? She would have spun her wheels till she ran out of the last drop of energy, and ended up hating you. Is that what you wanted?"

Jack of course knew already that Ianto was right, but was too wrapped up in his own frustration to admit it. But this... Ianto like this, it was so unexpected. He forgot sometimes the impossible tangle of contradictions that Ianto was. Shy and reserved, so eager to submit himself to Jack, yet stubborn to the point of madness, exactly in the moments when common sense would have dictated otherwise. Those were the moments when Ianto threw all his carefully cultivated skills of self-preservation into to the wind, and just followed that inner compass of his with a reckless determination. Ianto always managed to surprise him somehow, when he least expected it, and he was hooked. He wasn't going to win this fight or bully his way through it, he knew that.

"I just wanted to protect her." Jack said, in a far more conciliatory tone.

"We are not children, Jack, and you really can't protect us, in the end. Plus, we are talking about Gwen bloody Cooper here. She is strong, stronger than me, and you told me about Flat Holm." - Ianto's voice was softening now too.

"Nobody is stronger than you, Ianto Jones." - Replied Jack with a waggle of his eyebrows. He knew how to be a graceful loser, and he really meant it too.

Ianto snickered, then moved a little closer, just close enough that their bodies didn't quite touch. He tipped his head so that his lips almost touched Jack's ear.

"You know, if you want, you could still punish me." - Ianto's whispered huskily. - "At my place, after work?"

Ianto wasn't averse to light bondage, and just the thought of it was getting Jack hard, but Ianto was at the door already, back into his dutiful assistant persona.

"Eight o'clock. And don't be late, sir." - He smiled politely, and walked out.

Jack was left wondering what the fuck just happened.

********************

Partings

Things always go to shit when let your guard down, when you allow yourself a little happiness, when you settle into a comfortable pattern, and think 'this is it'. That's when the house falls on your head (literally), the world explodes (parts of it anyway), and everything just falls apart. 'Captain' bloody Hart had to be involved of course, and another person - Gray? - and the pain in Jack's eyes, Tosh bleeding to death in the medical bay, Owen dead again, for good this time... And then there was just the three of them.

********************
********************

Love in Time of Cholera

Careless words will haunt you.

Sins of the past will catch up with you.

Sometimes there is no good choice, only evil and lesser evil, and you won't be forgiven either way. Especially not by you.

When you take someone for granted, and they are gone, you'll wish you said the things you didn't.

There are no last minute rescues.

You don't deserve to be loved.


These are the lessons Captain Jack Harkness learned before leaving Earth.

********************

Ianto felt his life ebbing away. A pang of pain, realizing Jack didn't think he deserved to be loved - by Ianto, by anyone. His desperate need for Jack, now, forever. Jack's voice begging, willing him to stay. Feeling like drowning, but without the panic, just slipping under, letting go, adrift into the darkness...

********************

Epilogue

"La Mer

And when the day arrives
I'll become the sky
And I'll become the sea

And the sea will come to kiss me
For I am going home

Nothing can stop me now"


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Musical credit:
Tunng - Bullets
Nine Inch Nails - La Mer

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Alternate Ending: CoE never happened. Someone pass the retcon, please!

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Author's note:

1. Some fanfics are just so superb that they have became my personal canon. They have ideas that I can't top, so I won't even try, instead I just refer to them.

The true and definitive explanation of Naked Hide and Seek has been provided by sam_storyteller in Not What you're Thinking.

2. There are parts of this fic that allude to previous stories of mine. To get the smut that goes with "Law of Desire - pt. 1" read Some Kinda Blue - Or: How young Ianto Jones got to bed the handsome Captain Jack, if you haven't yet. There is more to "O Captain! My Captain!" in This Time With Feeling(now with smut, in case you've read it before).