notevery | Torchwood fic: Loneliness

Title: Loneliness
Rating: NC-17. Sex.
Characters: Ianto/Toshiko
Spoilers: Countrycide; Greeks Bearing Gifts.

Beta: Betaread by eternie (for everything, and with amazing speed!) and azdaja_dafema (for sex and perfect creation of moments). Massive thanks to both of them!

Comments and constructive criticism welcomed!

Summary: Ianto cooks Tosh dinner.

Ianto can cook. Toshiko – from her perch on the counter-top, a glass of red wine in her hand – watches him as he moves: selecting the right knife for the onions, searching through her cupboards for a chopping board and, when he finds one, cutting the vegetables with the deft speed that Toshiko has never seen in him before, his left hand resting lightly on top of the blade.

“Who taught you to cook?” she asks finally, awkward in the homely silence, unsure if he is as happy with this moment as she is.

Ianto shrugs, the movement of his shoulders fluid under the thin fabric of his shirt. His jacket is several feet away, draped over the back of Toshiko’s couch; when he half-turns to reach for his own wineglass, her eyes are drawn to the little slither of skin revealed underneath his opened top button.

“I just picked it up. You know, watching people.”

And then there is silence again, the silence that gradually reveals itself as noise: the faint, near-inaudible hum of the traffic several storeys below. The bubbling of the water boiling in the pot. The slick slicing sound of the knife sliding through plump tomatoes. Ianto’s breathing, so soft that Toshiko thinks she almost imagines it. She looks at him, steadily, freed from the rudeness of staring by his turned back: she examines the width of his shoulders, the hair on the back of his arms where his sleeves are rolled up, the unselfconscious way he stands. It is strange to see him like this: domestic, flushed in the warmth of the kitchen, engaged in a task so far from Torchwood that it makes him seem almost a different person. In the window before him she can almost see his face, catching glimpses of his downcast eyes and earnest expression even despite the condensation over the glass.

Outside it is autumn, nighttime, dark and cold – and Toshiko can still not yet quite grasp that she is here, inside her apartment, with Ianto; that, even more surprisingly, she feels happier than she can remember for a long time. In a strange way, she feels suffused with light; wants to hug herself, to clasp her arms around her shoulders and squeeze, to bathe in this content.

“Where did you say the garlic was?” Ianto asks, turning to look at her with a faintly preoccupied expression, and Tosh feels a little tingle run over her skin, her fingers trembling slightly as she lays down her wineglass. As she slides down from the counter her somber work skirt slides up a little; the tiles are chill under her feet, every groove and join tangible through the thin silk of her tights. Retrieving a few cloves from the appropriate rack she hands them over to Ianto, her fingertips brushing his palms.

“Thank you.”

She swallows, quickly; comes to stand beside him and look at the chopping board with its neatly ordered piles of onion, tomatoes, green leaves that she couldn’t name. As the first garlic clove cracks in the crusher, she starts.

“Tosh?” Ianto asks, looking down to her with concern. “Are you all right?”

Finding a smile and a bright laugh, Toshiko reaches for the parmesan, a little bowl, and the grater, desperate for something to do with her hands – anything to keep her from looking at him and from thinking, wondering whether it’s only the wine that’s making her feel so content.

“Of course. I just feel – guilty. For not helping more.”

Ianto lays down the garlic crusher, firmly removes the grater and cheese from her hands. “If I remember correctly, I wasn’t the one who was nearly killed by a Weevil today. You deserve to relax.”

Toshiko makes a few vague noises before she finds words. “But it wasn’t even close, not really. I mean, I managed to lock myself inside one of the cages…”

“And then you stayed there for five hours until we got back,” Ianto says, deadpan.

Awkward, unsure of what to do with herself, Toshiko just nods.

“Anyway,” Ianto adds in a quiet voice, focus back on the food, “I said that I'd cook for you. Everyone needs to be taken care of sometimes.”

It feels strange, leaving Ianto alone in her flat after she hasn’t had a guest – beyond Mary, and that thought catches in her chest – for so long, but he had said that dinner was still nearly an hour away, and the lure of a hot bath was too much to resist. Every inch of Toshiko’s skin aches, every muscle tensing and becoming taut as her thoughts stray back to earlier: the sudden warning siren that she had forgotten the meaning of. The growling. Running faster than she had ever run in her life; fumbling with the code for the pens. And then sitting there for hours, with the Weevil separated from her by only a thin layer of reinforced glass, waiting for her…

She runs the bath hot and deep, listening to the sounds of Ianto cooking: the faint noise of the radio; the sizzle of the meat; the clink of glass on glass. It feels strangely comforting, this: almost like living with someone again, getting used to their independent life interlacing with yours, their existence comfortably nestled beside your own. An end to loneliness. A place to belong.

Here, separated from him by walls and a locked door, Toshiko can think in peace. Can reassure herself. Of course she trusts him: you have to trust your colleagues when you work in a place like Torchwood. And of course she likes him, too: he’s a nice man. Even Jack likes him, and after what Ianto did to Torchwood… that’s no mean feat.

But, she thinks, turning off the taps and starting to strip, unzipping her skirt and sitting on the edge of the bath to peel off her tights, that doesn’t explain why there are hundreds of tiny butterflies in her belly. Why she finds herself hoping, thinking…

When she goes back to her room to dry her hair, creeping along the hallway in only a towel – Ianto never turns to look – she hides the birthday card from Owen in a drawer.

She avoids thinking about why.

They eat dinner at the table, which Ianto has laid for two with the neatness that Toshiko finds endearing to a level that makes her chest ache. As Ianto brings through the plates – neatly filled with spaghetti and Bolognese sauce, a sprig of something green on top – she notices that he’s taken off his tie; has undone another button. When he smiles at her, the look seems more genuine than anything shown by work-Ianto.

“Nice bath?”

“Very. And thank you – this looks great.”

Ianto grins, picks up the wine bottle. “Refill?”

“Please.”

She watches him as he pours them both another glass, allowing her eyes to linger on his face. (How did she not notice he was handsome, not for all these years? Or at least, not really notice – she knew, of course, isn’t blind. But she has never felt it before.)

She remembers the way, after Mary, that he approached her as she was leaving – Toshiko, wait – and, after an awkward pause, just hugged her. Remembers what he did for her that day in the Brecon Beacons, in that house…

“Tosh? Are you all right?”

Shaking her head quickly, Toshiko smiles, tugs herself back to reality. “I’m sorry, I was – thinking.” Seeing that he’s holding his glass up, she reaches quickly for hers too.

“To surviving another introduction to aliens,” Ianto says, with a little smile, and after they clink their glasses together he responds to her ‘cheers’ with a quiet “lechyd da”.

At first they are silent as they eat; something up tempo quietly drifts in from the kitchen radio, their cutlery scrapes over the plates, and that’s all. Toshiko wishes that she’d dried her hair a little more thoroughly, the occasional trickle of moisture sliding down the nape of her neck and under her shirt, which is crumpled after having fallen to the floor whilst she was in the bath.

“It tastes delicious,” she says finally, earnestly – and it does, is rich and smooth and perfectly spiced.

A smile spreads over Ianto’s face, and he looks her straight in the eye as he says, “clearly I have magical powers.”

When Toshiko comes back from washing the pots and pans – which she had insisted on doing herself – she finds Ianto with a faraway look in his eyes. He catches himself when he sees her, straightens and smiles his obliging smile, but for a moment, it is there. For a moment, he looks more alone than anyone Tosh has ever seen.

Somehow, she does not get round to sending him home. The clock on the living room wall reads eight-fifty, nine-twenty, ten-oh-five – and still Toshiko cannot quite make herself say “I should sleep now”, and for some reason Ianto doesn’t get to his feet, say that it’s getting late.

Toshiko finds herself hoping that he won’t, hoping that this strange, stolen evening – these hours of warmth and conversation and companionship – won’t have to end. Since she started to work for Torchwood, she has always felt alone.

Now, late and wine-mellowed, they half-sit, half-lie together on the couch: facing each other along the length of it, leaning back against the armrests, legs up and tangled together. Ianto’s hand is resting lightly against Toshiko’s bare calf, but she is hardly aware of that. A million times more mesmerizing is this moment itself, the sight of his face: Ianto, defenses down, relaxed; Ianto, not thinking about the words that are coming out of his mouth.

Toshiko feels breathless and expectant, worried, somehow, that Ianto will suddenly snap back in on himself, that once more he will sit straight, redo his top button, talk about the weather. But instead he’s speaking low and steady, his accent stronger after the alcohol: “sometimes I feel like this work is killing me, Tosh. Like it’s going to stop me ever being myself again.”

Even to Toshiko her little laugh sounds false, dwarfed by the truth. “Of course it won’t. It’s only a job.”

Ianto looks at her, steady, and she feels as if she’s about to fall into the sky.

“Do you really believe that, Tosh?”

Even as he’s slowly leaning forward, even as he reaches up to touch her cheek, even when all she can see is his eyes and the distance between them is paper-thin she shakes her head, breathes a ‘no’ –

And then there is him, and there is a moment, a moment that is still despite the movement of their lips, the pounding of her heart, the slide of his fingers into her hair.

Oh.

After that, it is all movement. It is as if – and Tosh cannot even think rational thought, now, can only grasp and press and try to have every inch of her skin on his – something tight and wrapped about her has snapped, and suddenly she is being torn apart by long-buried-loneliness and reaching, fumbling for the nearest person, and it feels like nothing so much as finding another shipwreck in stormy seas, grasping tight, treading water together, choking with fear and the need to be close –

Dizzy with the force of hungry kisses, pressing up against him, she reaches for his shirt, tugs it up and off and fumbles with little buttons, gasping as her fingertips finally find his skin. His flesh is hot and real under her touch, and it hits her with physical force – that this is happening and that she is rushing through the darkness at a million miles an hour and she’s not sure whether she’s falling or flying.

His mouth on her neck, trailing kisses down over her skin, sliding his tongue into the dip of her collarbone. His fingers undoing her shirt with impatience even as he shrugs off his own. His little whimper as she rubs her hip up against his erection, grinds close.

“Toshiko,” he gasps against her chest, and she feels as if she’s about to faint. Under her fingertips, her nails, his back is smooth; she traces the line of this muscle and that, raises herself to allow him to undo her bra, and then oh arches her back with a cry as he licks her nipple with teasing, infuriating swipes. The heat of his mouth, the damp of his tongue, brings memories fluttering back to the surface of her mind, and for a moment she can see Mary there, imagines that it’s Mary’s fingers pulling down her skirt – but that’s okay, that’s okay: she can feel his fumbles, the times he mistakes her body for another he is more familiar with.

And that’s okay, she knows, pressing the back of her hand to her lips to stifle a moan as he kisses lower, lower – imperfect is okay, as long as it does not mean alone.

She watches him, as he trails his tongue down over her belly; reaches down to rest her hands on his shoulders, fingernails digging into his skin as he gets closer, closer; shivers running over her skin. She can hardly breathe, it is so hot; as he slides down between her legs she finds herself panting with it, panting and quivering and murmuring, over and over, “Ianto, Ianto, Ianto –”

And then there is his mouth and she cannot stop herself arching, crying out, pressing up against him – but he grips her hips and holds her down, holds her there for him, placing teasing kisses along her inner thighs before finally, finally –

Even with her eyes tight-shut Toshiko feels as if she can see stars.

He takes his time, taking her apart, breaking down her defenses, stripping away every last detail of her till she is just a nameless being, moaning and writhing and damp with sweat; kisses and licks and swirls his tongue around sensitive flesh and nips till she cries out, all sense of decorum gone, with something that is so intense it doesn’t have a name, just oh –

And what pushes her over the edge is the way he looks up at her, flushed and ruffled, and just whispers to her, “you’re not alone, Tosh.”

She’s barely aware of him rearranging her, after: she’s caught up in trying to breathe, in gasping in deep mouthfuls of warm air. She feels him move upwards over her, suddenly sees his eyes: stares at him, still stunned, as he rests his forehead against hers, presses his sticky lips to hers.

“All right?”

It is all she can do to nod; to open her mouth to him for a hungry, passionate kiss – which he breaks.

“Do you have…?”

As she slowly regains her higher brain functions she can only feel annoyance at the delay; drapes a limp arm over the couch in the direction of her bedroom. Her voice sounds foreign in her ears; slow, husky.

“The top drawer. By my bed.”

He makes her smile, though – the way he rolls away very, very quickly; hurries into the next room as if his life depends on it. A moment later, he is back: pulling off his belt as he walks, kicking off his shoes and socks, slipping down his boxers.

He kisses her softly – forehead and cheeks and lips and neck – and all she can hear is the crinkling of the foil package. The skin of his outer thighs is cold again as he settles between her legs; his back shivers under her fingertips. His voice, when he speaks, is so quiet and so far away that Toshiko wants to pull him close and hold him forever, keep him away from all the bad things in the world.

“Tosh?”

It’s not permission for sex – it is something deeper than that, infinitely more important, infinitely more painful – but she still reaches down between them to guide him into her, presses her lips to his ear in a reassuring kiss.

“It’s all right. It’s all right.”

When they move together, all of Toshiko’s doubts fall away. They fit well together, moving in tandem – his little whimpers between thrusts, her breath heavy and hot on the skin of his neck. Her legs wrapped around his hips, pulling him closer, pulling him in; her hands in his hair, stroking and caressing. His mouth, finally, against her neck, breath coming in gasps, choking out words that are almost tears: “Tosh. Tosh. Tosh. Tosh.”

She slides her fingers over the small of his back, brushing aside pools of sweat, and watches him with a wondering smile – his face buried against her neck, his fingers grasping at her skin, his thrusts beginning to lose rhythm and regularity. Childlike he whimpers, gasps, sound muffled against her skin – and Tosh glows, moans, pulls him close as he comes undone.

When he gets up, after, to throw away the condom she aches with loneliness again, pain real and almost unbearable; pulls him to her as soon as he is close again, cradling him to her. He presses a chain of feather light kisses to her cheek and neck; slides his arms around her; rests his forehead, finally, against hers.

“That card from Owen,” he whispers, and Tosh’s heart, for a moment, stops beating.

“Yes?”

For a long moment he is silent, and Tosh feels as if she’s being crushed, a weight on her chest, before finally he kisses her again, tongue briefly, momentarily in her mouth.

“Nothing.”

She swallows, tilts her head to him, slides her fingertips through his hair. “You and Jack?”

“Yes?”

And she smiles, lets her eyes close, curls up against him. “Nothing.”

In that moment, coiled together on the couch, his breath on her skin and her heart pounding in her chest, she can’t tell which one of them is holding the other up.

Current Mood: mellow
Current Music: Banlieue 13

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Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

gem-pinkeh.livejournal.com

That was so lovely and ace. Yay IanTosh *g*
Although maybe reading smut and grinning insanely isn't clever when you're in a room with your housemates =P

From:

Torchwood fic: Loneliness

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