Torchwood Fic: They tell me it happened on a Wednesday (Jack/Ianto, Adult, Part I/III)

[marita_c]

Title: They tell me it happened on a Wednesday
Word count: ~27,000
Rating/warnings: NC-17, for adult situations, sex, language, procreation and very bad things that happen to good people. 
Characters/pairings: Mainly Jack/Ianto, but there are other characters and pairings that I'm not mentioning here so as not to spoil the story.
Spoilers: Up to "Exit Wounds".
Disclaimer: Not mine, no profit.
Thanks to the lovely used_songs and the brilliant smtfhw , for helping me make this story so much better!  

Summary: "If someone had suggested to Ianto Jones two years ago that he'd end up leaving Torchwood voluntarily he would have laughed in their faces…"
 

 

Prologue If someone had suggested to Ianto Jones two years ago that he'd end up leaving Torchwood voluntarily he would have laughed in their faces, or maybe referred them to his therapist. Funny, that, as she was the one who suggested it in the first place. At the time, he did laugh, but for an entirely different reason. * * * He was in pieces back then, just after Lisa died. In those first few days, the pain was so intense Ianto thought it would end up ripping him from the inside. He remembers passing the first days of his suspension staring at the bottom of a bottle of Scotch. Jack came over to check up on him at one point, probably to make sure Ianto hadn't slit his wrists yet. He opened the door, just a crack, looked at Jack with tired, red eyes, told him to sod off and then shut the door again, picking up a fresh bottle of Scotch on his way back to the sofa. On the fourth day, Ianto found some old painkillers in a kitchen drawer. He hadn't been looking for them, really, but the small plastic bottle felt almost like comfort in his hand, and when he downed three pills with a mouthful of Scotch, they provided just the sort of relief he was aching for. Jack came by again at some point. Ianto wasn't sure how long it had been — everything was blurry back then. He must have passed out; too much to drink, too many pills, because he didn't hear the knocking, and, eventually, Jack just let himself in. Ianto came to when Jack slapped him. He had blearily looked up into Jack's stricken face, then looked around the dimly lit living room. "It doesn't hurt as much, now," he mumbled before closing his eyes again, returning to nothingness. The flat was empty when he woke up next. Jack was gone, and so were his drugs and alcohol. He dragged himself into the shower and only under the scalding water did the sharpness return, along with that terrible ache in his chest, which made him wish for numbness again. He didn't bother towelling off after, just wrapped his robe around himself, and stepped barefoot into the kitchen. Poured himself a glass of water, gulped it down, then poured another. Afterwards he sat at the kitchen table, staring off into space, the occasional drop of water from his hair coursing down his neck and making him shiver. Jack let himself into the apartment then, not even bothering to knock this time around. He seemed somewhat relived to see Ianto in an upright position. Ianto mostly ignored him, reluctant to make conversation. Jack pulled out a business card, placed it on the table in front of Ianto, who glanced at it briefly and then away again. "I don't need a shrink," he rasped. Jack tried to convince him at first, telling him how good she was, that she regularly worked with UNIT, how he saw her himself once. When Ianto continued to ignore him, Jack said he'd make it an order if he had to. Later, in her office, Ianto mused that if Jack could hear what Dr. Altman was saying, he probably would have regretted sending him to her. "You're twenty three," she'd said. "You have your whole life ahead of you. Stay at Torchwood and you'll be lucky to see thirty. Look what this job did to you, Ianto. Get out while you can." Ianto just laughed, told her it was too little, too late. That he was in it for life — as short as it might turn out to be. He couldn't foresee then, of course, what would happen in the next two years. The events that would eventually lead him to take Dr. Altman's advice. * * * He remembers watching the CCTV footage several months later. Watching his boss running out of the base towards a blue police box. The others did not realize, of course, what this meant, and he was not about to enlighten them. Months later, Jack told him, "I won't leave you again," when they were alone, on the floor of the hothouse, sweat drying on their naked bodies. Ianto believed him. * * * About a week and a half after Toshiko and Owen died, Ianto woke in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, feeling that something was wrong yet unable to put his finger on it. He dressed quickly and drove to the Hub. The place was empty. Jack wasn't in his office or his private quarters. Then Ianto saw the note on Jack's desk. "Taking a short trip," it had read. "If everything works out as planned, I'll be back before you even read this. J." Ianto didn't bother looking up the CCTV footage this time. He knew what it would show. He figured he should feel grateful Jack had actually bothered to leave a note this time around. He sat at Jack's desk until morning, wanting to believe Jack would come in at any second. He didn't. He told Gwen the truth when she came in, that Jack had gone with the Doctor. That he could be back at any moment. Gwen just thinned her lips, then suggested that he make a phone call. Jack didn't return that day, or the next one, or the next. * * * Ianto never wanted to be the head of Torchwood Three. As it turned out, he was better at it than he could have possibly anticipated. * * * Martha joined them almost immediately. Her experience at UNIT had made her a truly gifted medic, as talented as Owen was, minus the bitter sarcasm. Some days, Ianto missed Owen's sarcasm. Gwen would have been the logical option for a leader. She took over things that first time Jack left them, and Ianto expected her to do it again, but Gwen had her own way of dealing with Owen and Tosh's death. She came to work one morning and told him and Martha that she was pregnant. She didn't say it in so many words, but it was clear that the new life growing inside her filled the void left by the ones they had lost. The fact that Gwen was more or less banned from fieldwork after that left them with a severe shortage of manpower, which became even more pronounced during a particularly trying case, involving the crash of an alien ship, leaving six alien survivors on board. They weren't friendly. Captain John Hart showed up at the height of the chaos. He was looking for Jack, naturally, and Ianto barely spared him a glance before telling him through gritted teeth (he was struggling to drag a sedated alien into a cell at the time) that Jack was nowhere to be found, and that he should really bugger off, because they were busy. As if to spite him, John stuck around, helping them out through the crisis, and proving more than adequate in handling the high-tech angle in the process. Ianto figured he must be losing his mind, when he later asked John to stay and work for them while he was waiting for Jack. Oddly enough, John agreed. By the following week, he was even calling Ianto by his name. The people over at UNIT loved Ianto. After years of dealing with Jack, they cherished the opportunity to interact with a head of Torchwood Three who could carry on an entirely professional conversation in a polite manner and with no innuendo. They loved Ianto so much, in fact, that the director of UNIT, in one of their conversations, had offered him a job. Ianto, polite as ever, had asked him to put it in writing and promised to think it over. Ianto was good at ignoring John's innuendoes. After all, he'd had more than enough practice at this with Jack. He gave John's flirting no thought at all, really, until the day he invited him into his bed. There was nothing special that day. The week was more or less typical for Torchwood, yet as they were leaving for the night, and John made one of his usual comments about how someone as pretty as Ianto shouldn't be going home alone at the end of the day, Ianto stopped in the process of rolling his eyes and turned to face John instead. "Come with me, then," he'd said, and John grinned as he followed him home. John smelled a little like Jack. He fucked a little like him too, and like Jack, he couldn't keep his mouth shut even for three seconds while they were fucking. Ianto started worrying that he was developing a fetish for arrogant, eternally horny time travellers, but the truth was that he was lonely. Lonely and unhappy, and despite the fact that Ianto didn't even like John most days, sleeping with him was proving to be an adequate distraction. One night found him alone in the Hub, doing work that could easily have waited until the following day, because he was reluctant to return to an empty flat. That night, he got angry. Not at Jack, for leaving again, but at himself, for allowing himself to become so vulnerable. He vowed then, that he'd never let it happen again.

Continue to Chapter 1