here a mist, and there a mist
Feb. 10th, 2024 07:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jupiter2932Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Rhiannon, Team Torchwood
Word Count: 2726
Rating: Uh, T/M?
Content Notes: Direct sequel to our share of night, so it deals with the aftermath of rape.
Author's Note: Written for Febuwhump 2024, day 5: rope burns; sequel to our share of night
Summary: Ianto doesn't need to talk to anyone about what happened when he was kidnapped. What he needs is for everyone to let him focus on his work and get over it.
The best thing that could happen, he thinks, is if no one ever brings it up again.
The zip ties dug into his wrists.
It doesn't make sense when he thinks about it—because Ianto wasn't struggling, wasn't trying to get out of them at all, since he couldn't move—but he realizes the third night, when he's alone in his flat and can't fall asleep, that they must have come from after his second dose of the muscle relaxants, when they gave him the overdose. His body must have slumped forward, sagged in the chair a bit and put pressure on the ties.
The marks aren't too bad. Twin lines dug into the tops of his wrist, already healing up after just two days. They sting a little when he rubs them, and one of them might leave a half-inch scar, but Ianto doubts it'll be noticeable, even with short sleeves, unless you're looking for it on purpose.
It won't be more than a week or two before nobody notices them at all, except for him.
This is good, he thinks, because it's exactly what he wants.
Jack leaves it up to him, going on field missions for the time being.
He calls Ianto into his office before the morning briefing, the fourth day after, and tells him that he's sending Tosh to take readings of an area of Bute Town if he wants to tag along.
It's basically a milk run; they're looking into an unusual spike in weevil activity in the area, but the chances of actually running into a weevil are fairly low. It's about as safe as it gets, with Torchwood.
It's not a problem at all, Ianto says, as long as he can skip his time in the tourist's office that afternoon to catch up on his work on the archive.
It's just weevils.
Tosh doesn't badger him with concern like he was worried she might. She does open with a, "How are you doing, Ianto?" in warm, worried tones once they're out on the road, alone, but she lets him be when he says he's fine, switches over to talking about the weevil readings and segues into chit-chat about an experiment she's running with Owen in the hothouse.
They're spending more time together, she and Owen, and Owen's spending less time with Gwen; and keeping tabs on his colleagues' personal relationships isn't polite, maybe, or professional, or any number of things he could describe it as, but he manages to steer the conversation in that direction for a while, and by the time they get to the site of the weevil issue Tosh is well and truly distracted.
She doesn't ask him how he's doing again that day, and when they get back to the Hub she leaves him behind to hoover the SUV without a second thought when he says he's been meaning to get to it.
He tells himself he did well, keeping it together, and ignores the gnawing disappointment in his gut. The knowing, tight-lipped look Jack throws him when he slinks back in later is harder to shake off.
Jack offers, the third night, to give Ianto a ride home—which they both know is code for staying the night again; Ianto almost takes him up on it, but he shakes his head and says thanks, but he's catching a ride with Gwen, and Owen's cleared him to drive himself in the next morning.
They get word, that day, that a team of UNIT soldiers has taken all the men who kidnapped him into custody, along with two executives and several scientists at Novalabs.
He doesn't sleep a lot that night, nor the next, nor the night after that.
Gwen and Owen, he realizes over the coffee machine the next morning, have broken up, or broken things off, or stopped whatever it was they were doing at Owen's flat after work.
It's the way Gwen carefully doesn't avoid Owen, taking several of the pastries Ianto brought in and passing them out to him and Tosh, making sure to set one in Jack's place; the way Owen sees something funny, apparently, in one of the reports he flips through, and laughs to himself but doesn't point it out to Gwen.
It's not like it matters, really, but it's probably why they're both in a mood and why, when Jack offhand assigns Gwen and Tosh to follow up on some of the people in Butetown and see if they need Retcon—even though they've been sent out the last three times, for Retcon duty—Gwen huffs and doesn't quite snap, "Why can't Ianto do it? It's his turn."
And Ianto stops breathing and thinks, No, and can't hear for the rushing in his ears, but he sees Jack look over at Gwen and knows Jack's going to see she's having a bad morning and shove it off on him because Ianto didn't balk at going out to that energy reading with Tosh yesterday so Ianto must be fine with field work (and Ianto thought Ianto was fine with field work until just now, so Ianto can't blame him, but)—
"Sorry," Owen says. "Ianto's helping me prep reports for monthly for UNIT. They wanted some of my dissection results early."
That stops Jack short, because it's a flat-out lie; he looks at Owen, who's looking at the wall between Jack and Gwen, and then Jack's eyes shift over to Ianto, who realizes he's white-knuckling his manila folder; Ianto looks at the other side of the table, where Tosh is frowning, just a little bit, down at her own notes, and Gwen is sitting thin-lipped, looking at Owen and very loudly not saying anything, and he lands eventually back on Jack, who's ticking off a line on a list of bullet points he's got in front of him—and wasn't Ianto so pleased when he finally got Jack to make an agenda for every meeting—and clearly ready to move on.
"Right, if you can get those to me by EOD," he says, with a quick nod at Owen. "Speaking of, Tosh, I've got a request from UNIT for help with a software patch, if you've got the time to look it over this week."
He follows Jack to his office, after the meeting, and tries to—to explain and apologize and something he can't put into words—but Jack just says it's fine, not to worry about it, Ianto can take all the time he needs, it's fine if he only wants to cut back on field missions for a while. And that's fine, then, it's not like there isn't plenty for him to do around the Hub, especially if he's still feeling up to do weevil retrievals—yeah, that's fine then.
He's matter of fact and compassionate but not patronizing at all, and it's fine, it's perfectly fine, but Ianto spends the next two hours attacking the heavy machinery stacks in the Archives before he makes himself go out to help Owen with his UNIT dissection reports.
"I don't actually need to finish them today," is what Owen says, and Ianto replies with a, "Yeah, I know," and pulls up a stool to one of the counters. "Of course, if you want to do them all by yourself—"
Owen's next to him in a flash, stool rolling over the tile floor. "Don't let me stop you."
And it's fine. Ianto keeps his back to the autopsy table the whole time—which is only sensible, because they're working on the counters which are opposite the table—and it's quiet in the morgue, much quieter than the tourist office where he normally does his desk work, so it's maybe even more fine when Owen puts some music on low, and it's even farther fine when they break for lunch and decide to finish up in the conference room because the table's just so much more comfortable, and Owen's an old man with an old man's back, and it's fine, it's fine, it's fine when they get the reports sent in to Jack, just as Gwen and Tosh come in, and Ianto escapes to the front office and sits behind the desk and rests his head on the edge of his keyboard and doesn't hyperventilate until a pair of tourists come in and ask for directions to the nearest metro station.
Tosh comes to him before she leaves that evening, looking a little worn but smiling.
"Gwen and I are heading to the Pub tonight," she tells him. "You should come along."
He has, he knows, an entire book's worth of excuses to fall back on when he needs to get out of social things, always several plausible lies at the ready; but this one time he finds himself completely blank.
"Uh," he says. "I'm—Jack needs a report for—"
"Oh, Jack said he was going to kick you out if you tried to stay late again." She doesn't reach out and touch him, but she rests her arm on the edge of the information desk and leans in. "You don't have to if you don't want to, but it'll be quiet. Just a drink at a nice pub. Keep me and Gwen company so no one tries to hit on us."
He ends up going, of course, because Tosh means it when she says he doesn't have to but Gwen basically shoves his coat at him and asks if he likes shepherd's pie, because her local has a good cook and a special on tonight.
They head straight for a corner booth, once in, but let him have his choice of seating—with his back to the corner, where no one's going to pass by and bump into him on accident—and then, when he runs out of things to say after answering Gwen's first two questions about his plans for St. David's, they just sort of leave him be. He's welcome to join in the conversation, they make it obvious, but they stop asking him specific things and let him push his food around his plate and sip his beer in peace.
They don't stay long, either; Gwen stops herself after two beers, when she starts going on about 'bloody Owen' and notices it, and Tosh, who drove them, has a club soda with lemon and ushers them out after an hour.
He's home safe and sober by half past eight, and watches two episodes of Lewis and wakes up in a cold sweat at three in the morning.
"Rough night?" Jack asks him when he walks in, gaze inquiring.
He shrugs. "Not too bad."
Jack looks at him for another second or two but nods and says, "Good to hear," and Ianto thinks, Good, because that's what he wants, of course, and when Jack leaves he bites his lip and shuts his eyes and snaps them open right away again with a start at the feeling of phantom hands yanking at the hair on the nape of his neck, and he doesn't head up to make the conference coffee until he catches his breath, and he thinks, It's good he wasn't here to see that, and he remembers to himself that this is exactly how he wants things to be.
The sixth night after he gets kidnapped he has the next day off, and he's gritty-eyed and aching and so tired Jack actually makes him leave the Hub at a quarter past nine; he drives all the way home and steps into his flat and takes one look at the cold, dark space and calls his sister.
His flat has a burst pipe, he tells her, and he's exhausted from a long week and doesn't want to be fucked with finding a hotel. Does she mind if he borrows her couch, just for the night?
His first thought was actually to call his mam, but he took half a second to think about it and knew he wouldn't be able to keep it from her. She'd suss out that something happened, and his mam's always been his weak spot when it comes to lying. She'd get the truth—or something close enough to it—out of him, and he can't—
He can't have that. He doesn't give two shits about the top secret part at this point, but he can't tell his mam what happened to him. He just can't.
Of course Rhiannon says it's fine, though. She's surprised—hasn't heard from him since Christmas, when he thinks about it—and she's maybe a bit put out about that, and about him waiting til late to call her, but she says yeah, course, I'll make up the couch, the kids are in bed already so don't ring the bell when you get here.
He feels like he should get her something, some sort of hostess apology gift, so he pulls off into a Tesco's on his way there and roams the aisles for twenty minutes before he takes his mobile out to text someone for opinions on what to get.
He has it on his contacts screen before he realizes everyone he'd text about that sort of thing is dead.
Sometimes he goes days without thinking about Canary Wharf, now. Not without thinking of Lisa; that's still too fresh. But he's had a whole week of nights where he doesn't dream about the fire, about the screams, about the blood so thick on the floor he kept slipping in it when he dragged Lisa out.
It's there now, though, up front, all a jumble in his head, the burning heat of the conversion unit under his palms and the damp warmth of sweaty hands on his hips and dry, scorching air on his back and moist, ragged puffs on his neck and all the friends he made in London who died scared and screaming and alone, and Ianto walks out to his car and sits in it in the cold and breathes and breathes and breathes and holds onto the steering wheel so hard his fingers go numb and watches the air mist in front of his face until he's fine, he's fine, he's fine again.
It's late when he finally makes it in, but Rhiannon's still up, alone in the downstairs, tidying up the living room for him to sleep in. The sofa bed's pulled out and she's made it up, two warm blankets spread out over her spare sheets because their heating went through the roof last year and they're trying not to overspend, like she told him when his mam bullied him into that family supper after Lisa—after Lisa—
"Jesus Christ," Rhiannon says, because he's stepped inside and she's seen his face, now, and Ianto thinks maybe he should have stayed longer in the parking lot. "What happened?"
"I'm fine," he says, and steps back and wishes he'd gone back in and bought something to bring because he didn't but it would make a great distraction now. "I'm fine," he repeats, and goes for a smile but doesn't do it right. Then—
"Oh," he murmurs, looking at his empty hand. "I forgot my bag. With my things. Left it at home."
Rhiannon's lower lip scrunches up in the middle, underneath, and shifts back an inch or two to give him space.
"Ianto," she says. "Sweetheart."
She pauses. Looks him up and down where his coat's dripping the few drops it caught on the way in from the car.
"You're scaring me," Rhiannon says.
He thinks, Sorry, and he thinks, Don't be, it's just been a long week, and he thinks, Really, Rhi, I'm fine, it's nothing, and none of them actually make it to his mouth.
He presses the back of his hand to his lips and finds they're wobbling. His eyes sting, and he jerks his head away and stares out her kitchen window.
"Shit," he says, and this time the, "Sorry," makes it out all right.
"It's okay," Rhiannon tells him, and she reaches up with a warm, tight hug and pulls him into it, sets her hand at the top of his back and pushes down so his head's buried in her shoulder like she did the night his dad got himself kicked out of their home for good. "I'm here now, Ianto, we'll figure this out."
He nods into her shoulder; his breath hitches; and he brings his arm up around her and hangs on tight.
Characters: Ianto, Rhiannon, Team Torchwood
Word Count: 2726
Rating: Uh, T/M?
Content Notes: Direct sequel to our share of night, so it deals with the aftermath of rape.
Author's Note: Written for Febuwhump 2024, day 5: rope burns; sequel to our share of night
Summary: Ianto doesn't need to talk to anyone about what happened when he was kidnapped. What he needs is for everyone to let him focus on his work and get over it.
The best thing that could happen, he thinks, is if no one ever brings it up again.
The zip ties dug into his wrists.
It doesn't make sense when he thinks about it—because Ianto wasn't struggling, wasn't trying to get out of them at all, since he couldn't move—but he realizes the third night, when he's alone in his flat and can't fall asleep, that they must have come from after his second dose of the muscle relaxants, when they gave him the overdose. His body must have slumped forward, sagged in the chair a bit and put pressure on the ties.
The marks aren't too bad. Twin lines dug into the tops of his wrist, already healing up after just two days. They sting a little when he rubs them, and one of them might leave a half-inch scar, but Ianto doubts it'll be noticeable, even with short sleeves, unless you're looking for it on purpose.
It won't be more than a week or two before nobody notices them at all, except for him.
This is good, he thinks, because it's exactly what he wants.
Jack leaves it up to him, going on field missions for the time being.
He calls Ianto into his office before the morning briefing, the fourth day after, and tells him that he's sending Tosh to take readings of an area of Bute Town if he wants to tag along.
It's basically a milk run; they're looking into an unusual spike in weevil activity in the area, but the chances of actually running into a weevil are fairly low. It's about as safe as it gets, with Torchwood.
It's not a problem at all, Ianto says, as long as he can skip his time in the tourist's office that afternoon to catch up on his work on the archive.
It's just weevils.
Tosh doesn't badger him with concern like he was worried she might. She does open with a, "How are you doing, Ianto?" in warm, worried tones once they're out on the road, alone, but she lets him be when he says he's fine, switches over to talking about the weevil readings and segues into chit-chat about an experiment she's running with Owen in the hothouse.
They're spending more time together, she and Owen, and Owen's spending less time with Gwen; and keeping tabs on his colleagues' personal relationships isn't polite, maybe, or professional, or any number of things he could describe it as, but he manages to steer the conversation in that direction for a while, and by the time they get to the site of the weevil issue Tosh is well and truly distracted.
She doesn't ask him how he's doing again that day, and when they get back to the Hub she leaves him behind to hoover the SUV without a second thought when he says he's been meaning to get to it.
He tells himself he did well, keeping it together, and ignores the gnawing disappointment in his gut. The knowing, tight-lipped look Jack throws him when he slinks back in later is harder to shake off.
Jack offers, the third night, to give Ianto a ride home—which they both know is code for staying the night again; Ianto almost takes him up on it, but he shakes his head and says thanks, but he's catching a ride with Gwen, and Owen's cleared him to drive himself in the next morning.
They get word, that day, that a team of UNIT soldiers has taken all the men who kidnapped him into custody, along with two executives and several scientists at Novalabs.
He doesn't sleep a lot that night, nor the next, nor the night after that.
Gwen and Owen, he realizes over the coffee machine the next morning, have broken up, or broken things off, or stopped whatever it was they were doing at Owen's flat after work.
It's the way Gwen carefully doesn't avoid Owen, taking several of the pastries Ianto brought in and passing them out to him and Tosh, making sure to set one in Jack's place; the way Owen sees something funny, apparently, in one of the reports he flips through, and laughs to himself but doesn't point it out to Gwen.
It's not like it matters, really, but it's probably why they're both in a mood and why, when Jack offhand assigns Gwen and Tosh to follow up on some of the people in Butetown and see if they need Retcon—even though they've been sent out the last three times, for Retcon duty—Gwen huffs and doesn't quite snap, "Why can't Ianto do it? It's his turn."
And Ianto stops breathing and thinks, No, and can't hear for the rushing in his ears, but he sees Jack look over at Gwen and knows Jack's going to see she's having a bad morning and shove it off on him because Ianto didn't balk at going out to that energy reading with Tosh yesterday so Ianto must be fine with field work (and Ianto thought Ianto was fine with field work until just now, so Ianto can't blame him, but)—
"Sorry," Owen says. "Ianto's helping me prep reports for monthly for UNIT. They wanted some of my dissection results early."
That stops Jack short, because it's a flat-out lie; he looks at Owen, who's looking at the wall between Jack and Gwen, and then Jack's eyes shift over to Ianto, who realizes he's white-knuckling his manila folder; Ianto looks at the other side of the table, where Tosh is frowning, just a little bit, down at her own notes, and Gwen is sitting thin-lipped, looking at Owen and very loudly not saying anything, and he lands eventually back on Jack, who's ticking off a line on a list of bullet points he's got in front of him—and wasn't Ianto so pleased when he finally got Jack to make an agenda for every meeting—and clearly ready to move on.
"Right, if you can get those to me by EOD," he says, with a quick nod at Owen. "Speaking of, Tosh, I've got a request from UNIT for help with a software patch, if you've got the time to look it over this week."
He follows Jack to his office, after the meeting, and tries to—to explain and apologize and something he can't put into words—but Jack just says it's fine, not to worry about it, Ianto can take all the time he needs, it's fine if he only wants to cut back on field missions for a while. And that's fine, then, it's not like there isn't plenty for him to do around the Hub, especially if he's still feeling up to do weevil retrievals—yeah, that's fine then.
He's matter of fact and compassionate but not patronizing at all, and it's fine, it's perfectly fine, but Ianto spends the next two hours attacking the heavy machinery stacks in the Archives before he makes himself go out to help Owen with his UNIT dissection reports.
"I don't actually need to finish them today," is what Owen says, and Ianto replies with a, "Yeah, I know," and pulls up a stool to one of the counters. "Of course, if you want to do them all by yourself—"
Owen's next to him in a flash, stool rolling over the tile floor. "Don't let me stop you."
And it's fine. Ianto keeps his back to the autopsy table the whole time—which is only sensible, because they're working on the counters which are opposite the table—and it's quiet in the morgue, much quieter than the tourist office where he normally does his desk work, so it's maybe even more fine when Owen puts some music on low, and it's even farther fine when they break for lunch and decide to finish up in the conference room because the table's just so much more comfortable, and Owen's an old man with an old man's back, and it's fine, it's fine, it's fine when they get the reports sent in to Jack, just as Gwen and Tosh come in, and Ianto escapes to the front office and sits behind the desk and rests his head on the edge of his keyboard and doesn't hyperventilate until a pair of tourists come in and ask for directions to the nearest metro station.
Tosh comes to him before she leaves that evening, looking a little worn but smiling.
"Gwen and I are heading to the Pub tonight," she tells him. "You should come along."
He has, he knows, an entire book's worth of excuses to fall back on when he needs to get out of social things, always several plausible lies at the ready; but this one time he finds himself completely blank.
"Uh," he says. "I'm—Jack needs a report for—"
"Oh, Jack said he was going to kick you out if you tried to stay late again." She doesn't reach out and touch him, but she rests her arm on the edge of the information desk and leans in. "You don't have to if you don't want to, but it'll be quiet. Just a drink at a nice pub. Keep me and Gwen company so no one tries to hit on us."
He ends up going, of course, because Tosh means it when she says he doesn't have to but Gwen basically shoves his coat at him and asks if he likes shepherd's pie, because her local has a good cook and a special on tonight.
They head straight for a corner booth, once in, but let him have his choice of seating—with his back to the corner, where no one's going to pass by and bump into him on accident—and then, when he runs out of things to say after answering Gwen's first two questions about his plans for St. David's, they just sort of leave him be. He's welcome to join in the conversation, they make it obvious, but they stop asking him specific things and let him push his food around his plate and sip his beer in peace.
They don't stay long, either; Gwen stops herself after two beers, when she starts going on about 'bloody Owen' and notices it, and Tosh, who drove them, has a club soda with lemon and ushers them out after an hour.
He's home safe and sober by half past eight, and watches two episodes of Lewis and wakes up in a cold sweat at three in the morning.
"Rough night?" Jack asks him when he walks in, gaze inquiring.
He shrugs. "Not too bad."
Jack looks at him for another second or two but nods and says, "Good to hear," and Ianto thinks, Good, because that's what he wants, of course, and when Jack leaves he bites his lip and shuts his eyes and snaps them open right away again with a start at the feeling of phantom hands yanking at the hair on the nape of his neck, and he doesn't head up to make the conference coffee until he catches his breath, and he thinks, It's good he wasn't here to see that, and he remembers to himself that this is exactly how he wants things to be.
The sixth night after he gets kidnapped he has the next day off, and he's gritty-eyed and aching and so tired Jack actually makes him leave the Hub at a quarter past nine; he drives all the way home and steps into his flat and takes one look at the cold, dark space and calls his sister.
His flat has a burst pipe, he tells her, and he's exhausted from a long week and doesn't want to be fucked with finding a hotel. Does she mind if he borrows her couch, just for the night?
His first thought was actually to call his mam, but he took half a second to think about it and knew he wouldn't be able to keep it from her. She'd suss out that something happened, and his mam's always been his weak spot when it comes to lying. She'd get the truth—or something close enough to it—out of him, and he can't—
He can't have that. He doesn't give two shits about the top secret part at this point, but he can't tell his mam what happened to him. He just can't.
Of course Rhiannon says it's fine, though. She's surprised—hasn't heard from him since Christmas, when he thinks about it—and she's maybe a bit put out about that, and about him waiting til late to call her, but she says yeah, course, I'll make up the couch, the kids are in bed already so don't ring the bell when you get here.
He feels like he should get her something, some sort of hostess apology gift, so he pulls off into a Tesco's on his way there and roams the aisles for twenty minutes before he takes his mobile out to text someone for opinions on what to get.
He has it on his contacts screen before he realizes everyone he'd text about that sort of thing is dead.
Sometimes he goes days without thinking about Canary Wharf, now. Not without thinking of Lisa; that's still too fresh. But he's had a whole week of nights where he doesn't dream about the fire, about the screams, about the blood so thick on the floor he kept slipping in it when he dragged Lisa out.
It's there now, though, up front, all a jumble in his head, the burning heat of the conversion unit under his palms and the damp warmth of sweaty hands on his hips and dry, scorching air on his back and moist, ragged puffs on his neck and all the friends he made in London who died scared and screaming and alone, and Ianto walks out to his car and sits in it in the cold and breathes and breathes and breathes and holds onto the steering wheel so hard his fingers go numb and watches the air mist in front of his face until he's fine, he's fine, he's fine again.
It's late when he finally makes it in, but Rhiannon's still up, alone in the downstairs, tidying up the living room for him to sleep in. The sofa bed's pulled out and she's made it up, two warm blankets spread out over her spare sheets because their heating went through the roof last year and they're trying not to overspend, like she told him when his mam bullied him into that family supper after Lisa—after Lisa—
"Jesus Christ," Rhiannon says, because he's stepped inside and she's seen his face, now, and Ianto thinks maybe he should have stayed longer in the parking lot. "What happened?"
"I'm fine," he says, and steps back and wishes he'd gone back in and bought something to bring because he didn't but it would make a great distraction now. "I'm fine," he repeats, and goes for a smile but doesn't do it right. Then—
"Oh," he murmurs, looking at his empty hand. "I forgot my bag. With my things. Left it at home."
Rhiannon's lower lip scrunches up in the middle, underneath, and shifts back an inch or two to give him space.
"Ianto," she says. "Sweetheart."
She pauses. Looks him up and down where his coat's dripping the few drops it caught on the way in from the car.
"You're scaring me," Rhiannon says.
He thinks, Sorry, and he thinks, Don't be, it's just been a long week, and he thinks, Really, Rhi, I'm fine, it's nothing, and none of them actually make it to his mouth.
He presses the back of his hand to his lips and finds they're wobbling. His eyes sting, and he jerks his head away and stares out her kitchen window.
"Shit," he says, and this time the, "Sorry," makes it out all right.
"It's okay," Rhiannon tells him, and she reaches up with a warm, tight hug and pulls him into it, sets her hand at the top of his back and pushes down so his head's buried in her shoulder like she did the night his dad got himself kicked out of their home for good. "I'm here now, Ianto, we'll figure this out."
He nods into her shoulder; his breath hitches; and he brings his arm up around her and hangs on tight.
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