Torchwood snippets
May. 22nd, 2007 06:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
noteverymisslucyjane's post here, I've decided to post up some snippets from Torchwood fics I never got round to finishing (though I'm really tempted to now I've collected them to post here). One is short, one is longer, and one is several hundred words long.Angel was an original 'sketch' for a one-off fic about the dangers of spacetime strangers that I'm really tempted to finish. Not fluffy at all, and full of communication problems, deceptive appearances, and misplaced trust. Orders seems to have been something porntastic, though I can't remember my initial plans for it. Ripples was intended as the beginning of a long, episode-style fic focused on several murders in the Brecon Beacons and their alien culprits; it incorporates a little of the porniness from Orders. The 'Apple' in this shows clear developmental references to the 'Apple' from Angel, but the concept is morphed. If I continued this, I'd change the name and seperate the two characters entirely.
These snippets contain adult content. Which means sex. Mostly of the Jack/Ianto variety. And there are spoilers for pretty much the whole series. Anything you have to say about them'd be welcomed, too.
Beauty always promises, but never gives anything. – Simone Weil
They call him Gabriel, because of his hair and his eyes and his beauty and where he came from. Toshiko finds herself sneaking his eyes open one or twice, just for a peek. Gwen twists and coils her fingers through his hair; watches the way it catches the light, marvels at its honey-blonde colour. Owen masturbates over him once.
Ianto tucks him in at night and breathes in the sweet smell of his skin.
When he gets back, Jack corrects them: “Apple. His name is Apple.”
He shows them the nametag; explains the symbols and numbers.
And Ianto watches, and wants so badly.
Ianto has never been given work-related orders whilst engaging in mutual masturbation before. There is, he considers -- gripping the matter in hand a little tighter and executing the deft flick of his wrist which Jack likes so much -- a first time for everything.
"So you just stay in the Hub, tell us if there are any more spikes, okay?" Jack gasps, thrusting forward into Ianto's fist as he quickens the movements of his own hand. "Keep an eye on the -- measurements."
"Did you intend for those orders to be full of innuendo, sir?"
"Are you intending to strip away all of my aura of mystery?"
Ianto bites down a moan, presses a little closer to the other man's body. "Well, I've stripped away everything else, sir."
"But that --" and here Ianto is strangely proud to see Jack swallowing a moan, fighting for control, struggling to keep his voice falsely hurt -- "that's the only thing that makes me attractive."
Ianto snorts, at that; slides down his left hand to twist fingers with his right as if praying, quickly sliding Jack's cock between his palms.
"With all due respect, sir, I can think of several inches of another reason, too."
*
As Ianto climbs down the steps from the upper office, bringing the roadmaps which Jack asked for, he is treated to a the final rather tuneless bars of Owen's current favourite tune -- Ianto and Myfanwy, Sitting in a Tree -- before he reaches the Hub proper.
The place is a mess, and he itches to clear it up. Toshiko's workstation is wreathed in wires and hardware. Gwen is perched on the couch, stuffing unfolded waterproofs into a backpack. Owen's desk looks like, well, Owen's desk: two mugs of half-finished, fully-cold coffee by the keyboard; important documents bent and crumpled here and there, one of them with the stain of a greasy finger in the corner; a soft-porn magazine carelessly left beneath a Nammapraxian Music Ball.
"Ianto! What a coincidence." Owen grins wide, getting to his feet and turning away from Tosh -- who is blushing a vivid shade of scarlet. "I was just singing one of my favourite songs to Tosh."
Ianto grimace-smiles in Owen's direction. "I heard. Not exactly the best voice in Wales, and it doesn't show much originality, but I'm sure your mother would be proud."
"Owen, do us a favour, pet, and stop being a cock," Gwen says in a singsong voice from the couch. "Just because you're jealous that Ianto gets to stay in the warm while you go to climb a tower in the rain doesn't mean you have to get your knickers in a twist, does it?"
Ianto is expecting Owen to bite her head off, is even raising his hands in a peacekeeping gesture, getting ready to step between them -- but to his surprise Owen just looks blank for a few moments before a grin spreads over his lips and, with a bit of a laugh, he flops back down into his swivel chair.
"Whatever you say, babe. I'll save my musical talents for someone who appreciates them."
Something, Ianto reflects as he offers to help Tosh pack the technical equipment for the trip, is up.
*
Something presses up against Ianto from behind -- something with an erect cock, to be specific, so that narrows the possibilities of whom down a bit -- and Ianto has to stop himself straightening up in shock and hitting his head on the roof of the car.
"Sir?"
Jack's arms loop around Ianto's middle and he grinds a little closer, breath hot on the back of Ianto's neck. "Sorry. Am I bothering you?"
"Well, sir," Ianto remarks with composure, "it makes it somewhat harder to pack everything into the car, but I'm sure I'll manage."
"Oh, yeah. I suppose it's a bit distracting. Having me here."
Ianto does his best to get the delicate S45Q-resonator strapped down in the boot of the SUV as quickly as possible, just in case Jack wants to take this further than teasing. "It doesn't make it easy, no, sir. But I'm not complaining."
"You never do, do you, Ianto?" Jack says, very quiet, against Ianto's ear.
Ianto swallows, braces his hands against the floor of the boot to hold his weight and pauses for a moment, finding the right words before replying. "If Owen finds us like this, sir, he might change the words of Ianto and Myfanway to Ianto and the Captain."
Jack laughs, at that, the sound vibrating in his sternum, against Ianto's spine. "Mmm. I guess so. But would that be so bad?"
"It would probably disrupt work, sir," Ianto says honestly.
Prologue
Cardiff, 1958
A tremor runs through the house, and all of Hilda’s dead mother’s best china falls to the floor.
“Oh, -- ugh!”
Her little boy giggles from his seat at the table, wriggling around on his chair. “That was fun, Mummy! Make it happen again.”
*
Cardiff, 2357
“Oh-four-hundred hours. Monitors are showing excessive Rift activity. I repeat, monitors are showing excessive Rift activity. All units on alert.”
Apple is awoken by the siren. Grunting and swearing he kicks off the sheets and slithers out of his bunk, fumbling for his jumpsuit from its hook, pulling it on while he is still sleep-blinded, stumbling as he tries to force his leg into an armhole.
“Wakey-wakey, rise and shine,” Nix croons in a sugar-sweet voice, slapping Apple’s arse as he passes on his way out of the dorm. “You moving or what, pretty boy? Rift’ll have fixed itself up by the time you get out there.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Apple growls back, tugging up the zip on the ‘suit, reaching for his Identipass –
The jolt is strong enough to shake the Base to its foundations. The moment seems almost to pass slow-motion for Apple – he feels himself fly through the air, sees the edge of the metal bunk come closer, closer, closer. He anticipates the pain, but he does not anticipate the sudden oblivion that the impact offers.
*
Cardiff, 1st Century BC
“Luciana,” Publius says after a pause. His breath mists on the freezing air, and he shivers as he smiles. “Her breasts… her lips… Her husband’s a lucky man.”
Claudius snorts, shakes his head as he leans his weight against his spear. “Luciana? Is the cold playing games with your brain? Now that girl we saw on patrol yesterday…”
“Going native? You’re one sick, sick man –”
And that’s when it happens: the earth shakes, and the gods themselves scream – a soul-wrenching, heart-tearing noise that swallows up the men’s shouts, that drowns out Publius’ cry for aid. The fort shakes to its very core. And then – nothing, just unearthly silence over the dark cold land.
The torch has fallen to the floor and become extinguished. Suddenly there is only the light of the full moon above them, and the glow of the millions of stars.
Claudius raises himself up from the floor, brings a hand to his face. When he draws it back, he can just make out a dark smear of blood over his skin. From somewhere nearby in the gloom, Publius swears.
“What was –”
Something in the shadows growls.
*
part one: before
*
chapter one: night
*
It is three-thirty-seven a.m.
The summer heat has made it impossible for Ianto to sleep. He can’t remember June being this hot since one freak year when he was a boy, when he and his brothers would lie awake at night whispering in their room – planning petty thefts and runaways, slipping coins from their mother’s purse to buy ice cream, rubber balls, pointless lengths of string. In the cloying, muggy atmosphere of his flat, Ianto feels suddenly lonely as he hasn’t for years. At University he worked his way past missing them (Aled’s laugh, Emrys’ clothes all over the floor, Rhosyn’s shy smile as he picked her up and whirled her around), and since then it’s always been bearable – except for now, when it hits him with a sudden pang.
Homesickness.
He rolls off the bed and stands, rubbing his eyes blearily, glad for the cool of the floorboards beneath his feet; glad to be distracted from the dull ache in his belly and the sudden tightness in his throat. Both his curtains and window are open; the noise of nighttime Cardiff drifts in, a cityscape collage of car engines, drunken laughter, the couple in the apartment above having sex.
Ianto leans out and gulps in deep, calming breaths of city air. He hasn’t felt this alone for years.
*
It is three-thirty-seven a.m.
Owen is asleep, spread-eagled naked on top of his sheets, mouth open slightly. A thin sheen of sweat glistens over his skin, though Suzie couldn’t say whether it was caused by the sex or just by the simmering heat of the night. She watches him from where she stands in the doorway, though it’s not with him that her attention lies – all of her body, it seems, is suddenly compacted into the line of skin above her spine, and she shivers as cold water drips from her hair.
A half-hour in a cold bath and still she is too hot, feeling herself go mad as the relentless heat slithers under her skin.
*
It is three-thirty-seven a.m.
Toshiko is woken by her mobile phone, vibrating angrily on the bedside table. Yawning, breathing in a deep mouthful of heat-sticky air, she reaches over an arm to fumble for it, pushing aside a half-full cup of water, a novel by Zadie Smith, and a packet of cough sweets before her fingers brush the plastic shape of the phone. Rolling over to it, she brushes her hair from her face, kicks away the sweaty sheets, slides her left index finger under the elastic band of her knickers to tug them up a little.
“Jack? It’s three-thirty.”
*
It is three-forty-two a.m.
Jack sits in the hub, keeping company with the beeping and whirring of computers, and waits for them. On the screen before him numbers flash and rearrange themselves constantly; a real-time graph fluctuates, occasionally spikes purple. Frown-lines furrowing his brow, hands fisted at either side of the keyboard, Jack watches, powerless, as the universe threatens to tear them all apart.
*
It is three-forty-five a.m.
Gwen cannot sleep, and it is not because of the heat – though that does not help. She lies on her side, far over on the bed, keeping as much distance between her and Rhys as possible. Though used by now to his snoring, to his occasional twitches, she cannot, tonight, deal with the heat of his body; she feels as if she is going to combust at any moment, drown in the smothering warmth of the night.
What is keeping her awake is something entirely different; some nagging worry, some unsettledness in the air. Her stomach and throat are, for some reason, tight; her chest heavy, making every breath a chore. She can almost feel the adrenaline coursing through her veins; considers waking Rhys, risking boiling to death for the sake of a hug, a reassuring word, that gruff voice telling her not be stupid, that what does she think, the world is ending?
Gwen doesn’t wake him. She lies there, alone, and shivers as the Rift widens.
*
chapter two: the early bird
*
Owen rubs his eyes with a grunt, leaning back in his chair. “Right. So what happened, exactly, that was important enough to wake me up before a decent hour? Better have been something good, Harkness.”
Jack leans back against his desk with his arms crossed, nodding towards the monitor beside him. “See for yourself.”
“And if we don’t speak binary?”
“It’s the Rift,” Tosh says quickly in her best peacemaker voice. “It widened for a brief moment at three-thirty-four a.m. this morning. A couple of minutes, that’s all.”
Suzie looks over the top of her glasses. “’Widened’…?”
“Was torn a little by something,” Tosh corrects herself, quickly stepping over to the computer to pull up a few files. “We haven’t finished going through all the data yet, but from what we can see, it seems that there was some kind of alien energy spike somewhere in the Breacon Beacons which was the catalyst for the Rift’s activity. The sudden surge of power destabilized the Rift –” Ianto can see how hard Tosh is working to ignore Owen, who is doodling breasts (probably Suzie’s) on the desk – “and led to it tearing a little further open for a short period of time.”
“Since you’re all alive now, obviously the tear wasn’t that major,” Jack says with a look to Owen that implies he’d prefer it if one particular member of the team had died in their sleep. “So we have some kind of alien power in the Brecon Beacons. A big enough rip in the Rift to set off the alarm bells in here, which means we have some more cleaning up to do – can’t do anything about the sheep that were probably pulled back to the Middle Ages, but if anything new has washed up, we need to take care of it. Right now, I just want to get us in the car and up there to see what’s going on – the police have been notified and they’re cordoning off the area.”
“It’s. Five. O’clock. In the morning,” Owen says very slowly.
Ianto forces a smile, leans forward to take Owen’s empty mug away. “Another coffee for the road, then?”
“Five o’clock,” Owen stresses again, elocution perfect. “Five. Are you people insane?”
Suzie rolls her eyes at him, getting to her feet quickly and picking up her file. “I’ll go and get the equipment.”
“It’s five –”
Jack slaps Owen on the back so hard Ianto is surprised he doesn’t lose teeth. “Didn’t your mother tell you, Owen? Early bird catches the worm.” On his way out, he says over his shoulder, nonchalant: “you can stay here, Ianto. Don’t want you going out without any firearm training. Meet me in my office in five and I’ll give you detailed orders.”
*
Ianto has never been given detailed orders whilst engaging in mutual masturbation before. There is, he considers -- gripping the matter in hand a little tighter and executing the deft flick of his wrist which Jack likes so much -- a first time for everything."So you just tell us if there are any more spikes, okay?" Jack gasps, thrusting forward into Ianto's fist as he quickens the movements of his own hand. "Keep an eye on the -- measurements."
"Did you intend for those orders to be full of innuendo, sir?"
"Are you intending to strip away all of my aura of mystery?"
Ianto bites down a moan, presses a little closer to the other man's body. "Well, I've stripped away everything else, sir."
"But that --" and here Ianto is strangely proud to see Jack swallowing a moan, fighting for control -- "that's the only thing that makes me attractive."
Ianto snorts, at that; slides down his left hand to twist fingers with his right as if praying, quickly sliding Jack's cock between his palms.
"With all due respect, sir, I can think of several inches of another reason too."
*
In several other parts of Wales, many different things happen at once.
A woman named Gwen Cooper finally falls asleep, though it will not do her much good: she is restless and full of strange dreams that leave her disorientated and nervous.
An ambulance arrives in a quiet, residential Llanrumney street, lights flashing but siren quiet with respect for the early-morning hush. In the middle of the road are a small cluster of people in pyjamas and hastily-grabbed jackets, shocked and pale: one woman rushes to a paramedic saying over and over, “I just heard him fall, I don’t know where he can have come from, but there was a noise –”
Far out in the Brecon Beacons, a distressed mewling noise comes from within a large patch of ferns. Protruding a few inches from the greenery is a small, black tail.
*
chapter three: lost and found
*
Ianto stays there all day and takes their messages, monitors the Rift. He doesn’t mind: after all, this means he can spend time with Lisa. He takes his laptop down into her room and they sit there together, listening to the radio and giggling like school kids between kisses.
“Farmer by the name of Mark Gail says he’s lost two horses,” Owen reports in a bored voice a little after midday. “Have fun listing that.”
“We can’t find any alien objects,” Suzie buzzes in slightly after that, “but there are some surprising readings.”
Ianto tears himself away from Lisa’s lips, grinning like a fool, to reply to Suzie, pressing the ‘send’ button on his earpiece: “surprising how?”
“Lots of energy. Maybe something was here until recently.”
“Mmm. I’ll check that no one’s reported any UFO sightings,” Ianto replies – but he already has his fingers on Lisa’s skin, is already breathing on her stomach, already not listening. (A little later, he checks: there are no sightings, perhaps not unreasonable for a relatively lowly-inhabited National Park before dawn).
It is only at four p.m. that a more interesting message comes – and this time it is the telephone which rings.
“You’re through to the Cardiff Information Centre, Mr Jones speaking. How may I help you?”
A female voice, young and pretty, with a faint tremor of shyness. “I’m calling for an organization called Touchwood. Sorry. Torchwood.”
Ianto stiffens, at that; momentarily pauses before replying, “may I ask who’s speaking?”
“Patricia Gray. From Cardiff Head Office. The police. We have something we think you’d like to see.”
*
“Captain, it’s Ianto.”
“I can tell. Is this important? Toshiko and I are busy following some strange kind of trail up here.”
“They have a man for us in the hospital, sir.”
For a moment, the only noise on the other end of the line is wind.
“…I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Also: does anyone with free time on their hands feel like reading a much longer incomplete fic (we're talking 12,000 or so words) and telling me if it's remotely interesting? The plot is completed and it just needs to be actually written, but after an intense period of work on it several months ago (before RL became suddenly busy) I've found myself unable to go back to it, and I'm unsure if it's even remotely interesting. It's rated 18/NC-17, and contains sexual content and OCs introduced for the sake of plot.
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