laligin | Plan B (Try, Try Again)

Fandom: Torchwood (shock horror!)
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Word Count: 2916
Summary: Friday night, as promised, Jack's ready to take Ianto out on the town...
Prompt: Jantolution Challenge #6, Prompts - Second Chances, Drops of Jupiter.

A/N: At last, a sequel to Not Quite According To Plan which I wrote for the first Jantolution challenge all the way back in early March. Lots of people wanted Friday Night, and it's finally here...

Oh, and please take note! I'm now officially gone to Dragon*Con! And I won't be back until the 7th September, so forgive me for taking that long to reply to your comments. ;) (Back now, though. And it was brilliant. ;) )

Plan B (Try, Try Again)

Friday night, five fifteen, and Ianto was pacing in the living room, occasionally biting his thumb and glancing at the clock. Or the mirror. He’d spent most of the day (week) thinking about what to wear and generally being skittish and shy around Jack if the two of them were left alone together. With the others watching he’d managed to act normally, but on their own…

Jack hadn’t said a word to the others about this, though. He was thankful for that (the mere thought of what Owen would have had to say on the matter made Ianto want to run and hide) but also slightly nervous – he had no way of knowing whether Jack had even been thinking about this or not, besides the pat on his shoulder (hand lingering far too long) and muttered, “Pick you up at six,” as Ianto had been leaving the Hub earlier that afternoon.

He checked the mirror again, noting the time (five twenty), and frowned anxiously at his reflection. He plucked at his sleeve, eyeing the red silk and wondering if he was overdressed. What would Jack be wearing? He couldn’t judge by last time – that had been more of a mission than anything, and a trip to a club at that… But this, this was a date. A dinner date. It was alright to look smart, he told himself, and it was too late (five twenty two) to work out a whole different outfit now. Though maybe he could just throw on a different shirt. White cotton, top button (maybe two, if he felt daring enough) open – all casual, definitely not reading too much into this whole date issue, no, not him, not getting the idea that this mattered, oh no, because it didn’t, it was just a bit of fun, nothing more to it…

He caught himself edging towards the stairs, and stopped, glaring at himself in the mirror. He’d stick with what he was wearing. He’d decided on it on Wednesday; he was not changing his mind because of last-minute nerves. Oh, God, he was nervous. He really was taking this seriously.

Biting his thumb again, he went back to pacing. Five twenty five.

~*~

Friday night, five twenty five, and Jack was practically jumping up and down in the Hub, waiting for it to be time for him to go. He’d been agonising over every last detail of this date ever since he’d driven away from Ianto at the end of the last one. Although that didn’t really count as a proper date. The running and shooting and getting covered in mud and slime kind of put paid to that, although the first half of the evening had been great. Tonight, though, was the real thing, and it had to be perfect.

He’d booked the table in the restaurant the next day, and scouted round to see what sort of nightlife was available for people who didn’t think dancing required flashing purple lights, or whose objective wasn’t to pick up a good-looking one-night-stand. He’d finally found somewhere he thought Ianto might like on the Wednesday, and then nearly had a panic attack on the Thursday when he went through his entire wardrobe and couldn’t find anything quite right. So, earlier in the day, he’d gone sneaking out of the Hub to do some shopping, vanishing away for three hours, all for the sake of a suit. And a shirt. And socks, though he was wondering now if that had been a moment of panicked madness. Shoes were about the only thing that hadn’t been a problem – he’d dug out a good pair of black leather from the back of his wardrobe, and polished them until they shone when everyone had finally left.

It had only been when he was fully dressed and admiring his look in the mirror that he’d suddenly stopped to wonder what Ianto would be wearing. He’d had a few moments of despair (ten past five, no going back now) before deciding that if it came to it he would just have to be dressed more formally than Ianto for once, and live with it.

He’d debated over flowers most of the day (dithering by more than one florist’s while desperately hunting the perfect shirt) before eventually deciding against the idea. He had no clue if Ianto even liked flowers (or, God forbid, had hayfever) so he couldn’t make a thoughtful gesture like bringing him a bunch of his favourites, and roses would give the impression that he was taking this whole thing far too seriously. Especially if Ianto wasn’t.

He checked the time again, still bouncing on his feet with nervous energy. Not quite five thirty yet. It would take him about fifteen minutes to get to Ianto’s, and he remembered that in Mareshcan culture it was considered dreadfully rude to arrive early, for the inconvenience it could cause to whomever you were calling on.

Deciding that Ianto would probably forgive him, even if thousands of Mareshcans wouldn’t, Jack headed out.

~*~

Slightly before ten to six, the doorbell went, and Ianto, trying in vain to control the butterflies in his stomach (and to look nonchalant enough that Jack would never guess he’d nearly jumped out of his skin when the bell had gone), hurried to open it.

He stopped and stared when he saw Jack, who’d been fussing anxiously with his suit jacket and smoothing down the deep blue shirt he was wearing underneath. The outfit looked new, and though the shoes seemed older, they’d clearly been given a lot of attention – just as Jack was giving a lot of attention to Ianto’s clothes now. Their eyes met when they’d finished looking each other over, and Ianto hesitated, not quite sure what to say. Jack was staring at him, looking vaguely stunned and clearly having the same trouble, but then his expression turned rueful, and he said, “Damn. I should have got roses after all.”

Ianto laughed, and was rewarded with Jack’s grin, and a relaxed, “You ready to go, or am I too early?”

“I’m ready,” Ianto told him. “Just let me grab my jacket, and that’s it. I hope we won’t be needing guns this time.”

“No way,” Jack called, as Ianto went to fetch his jacket from the banister at the bottom of the stairs. “This time is different. This time…” and he waited for Ianto to finish locking the door, coat in one hand, before continuing, “This time, I’m going to take you dancing,” and briefly catching Ianto up to waltz him round.

Ianto let him, smiling, and said, “Sounds like fun.”

Grinning, Jack stepped back and looked him up and down again, then said, “You look… amazing.”

“So do you,” Ianto told him, taking the chance to admire Jack in a suit again. “You should get dressed up more often.”

“Yeah?” Jack asked, grinning more salaciously this time. “I’ll be sure to discuss that with you later…”

Ianto hit his arm, but couldn’t help laughing anyway as Jack led him to the car, eagerly telling him about the places he was going to take him, and how much he hoped Ianto liked them.

~*~

They had dinner not far from the Hub – an upstairs restaurant, looking out over Roald Dahl Plass, which Ianto had never actually been in, despite walking past it almost every day. They got a table by the window, and chatted amiably while they ate, Jack only throwing in a few filthy comments every now and again, just to see if he could make Ianto choke on his wine. He still hadn’t quite managed to ruffle Ianto’s composure by the time they’d finished the main course.

Gazing out of the window, smiling at the sight of the fountain and the Millennium Centre, both lit up and shining decoratively in the night, Ianto was half-listening to Jack telling him about one of his many adventures as a conman when he saw something he hadn’t expected. The fountain disappeared.

He glanced at Jack, who had gone abruptly silent and was also staring out of the window.

“I’m assuming you saw that,” Jack said distantly, as the fountain reappeared again.

“I guess this means we’re skipping dessert,” Ianto sighed, and Jack gave him an intensely grateful look as he got to his feet, pulling a couple of notes from his wallet to pay for what they’d eaten and grabbing his jacket on the way out. Ianto scrambled to follow him, shrugging his coat on as they got downstairs and outside again.

Jack looked both ways along the Plass, towards the Bay and the Millennium Centre, then took off at a run without a word, heading away from the waterfront. With another sigh, Ianto raced after him, managing to catch up when Jack reached the roadside near the Centre, and paused to look both ways again.

“We should stop by the Hub,” Ianto suggested quickly. “Fetch your wrist device and maybe some guns too. We don’t know what we’re up agai–”

“No time,” Jack snapped, as a running figure materialised on the other side of the road, stumbled, and vanished again. “There! Keep up!”

And he dashed across the road, making Ianto flinch by not even bothering to pause and look, and went running up the pavement on the other side. Ianto followed him more cautiously, then sprinted to catch up, more than a little irritated that Jack felt he had to tell him to keep up.

Having overtaken Jack, he took a second to pause and catch sight of a flicker up ahead, where the light from a streetlamp wasn’t quite going where it should, and then he was waving for Jack to follow him, and chasing after their elusive quarry, into the centre of Cardiff.

Pausing near one of the entrances to the main shopping centre, Ianto glanced at Jack, spotting the telltale flicker lurking by the entrance, and Jack made a gesture with his left hand. When Ianto nodded, they started onward again, Jack sticking close to the wall and Ianto walking a little further out, taking care to look around cautiously.

As they drew closer, the flicker crept towards them as well (apparently trying to double back and sneak away), and when it was between them, Jack and Ianto turned and pounced on it. There was a shriek, and then a teenage girl appeared between them, cursing as they grabbed her arms.

“Hand over the device and we’ll let you go,” Jack told her sharply, and she sighed, then said, “It’s not yours.”

“Do you know who it does belong to?” asked Ianto, and she shook her head.

Ianto glanced at Jack, saying quietly, “If the device turns living beings invisible, who’s to say the owner isn’t around here somewhere?”

“And he probably wants it back,” Jack agreed.

“Alright, alright,” the girl sighed, pulling her arm out of Jack’s grip and shoving her hand in her trouser pocket, digging out a matt black circle the size of her palm. “This is it, take it. It doesn’t work properly anyway. What use is being invisible if you have to keep turning the thing back on every ten seconds?”

Jack took it from her, checked it quickly, and told Ianto, “Power’s diverting. I think you might be right.”

“Have you got…?” Ianto asked him vaguely, half expecting Jack to pull an amnesia pill out of his pocket on demand. Instead, Jack shook his head ruefully, saying, “Not this suit.”

To the girl, he said, “You should get out of here. If the owner turns up we won’t tell him you stole it, okay?”

She rolled her eyes, yanked her arm away from Ianto, and told them, “I don’t need it anyway. Tell him what you like,” and turned to go. Jack caught her arm again, suddenly asking, sounding amused, “What’s your name? It’s not Stevenson, is it?”

At that she looked startled, starting to say, “How did you –” and then stopping herself, pulling away again and bolting.

Jack burst out laughing, and Ianto shook his head despairingly, taking the circle from him to investigate it. It was smooth and rounded like a pebble from the beach, but he could feel the buttons give slightly beneath his fingers as he touched it, and was careful not to activate it.

“She,” Jack said, still grinning after the girl, “is going to invent the invisibility cloaking technique that everyone’s going to use in a couple of hundred years.”

“Probably a good thing she came across this, then, if it’s influenced her,” Ianto commented idly, and Jack turned back to him, taking the device again and pushing two of the buttons simultaneously.

“That should deactivate any remaining cloaks it’s powering,” he told Ianto, while Ianto froze, eyes widening, staring at the orange, tentacled creature now looming large behind Jack.

Jack looked up at him, surprised by his silence, and opened his mouth to ask what was wrong, then caught on.

“Oh,” he said softly. And leapt forward, grabbing Ianto’s hand and taking off back towards the Bay.

Ianto glanced back as they ran, and couldn’t help but giggle at the sight of the orange alien chasing after them, squelching along ponderously. And then it stopped, opened its mouth and spat fire at them, and Jack hauled Ianto into the nearest shop doorway, pausing for a moment to catch his breath as flames rushed past. Wrapped up in his arms, his back to Jack’s chest, Ianto asked, “Do all of your dates go this way?”

“Not usually,” Jack protested, waiting for the flames to die down. “Just with you, really. Must be something about us.”

“Such flattery,” Ianto said dryly.

“Always,” Jack responded, and Ianto could hear the grin in his voice. And then (since the fire was still pouring past the doorway, keeping them trapped) he said, “Okay, I think I know what we’re dealing with. Our friend out there’s from Klaayana, a big planet a lot like your Jupiter. Less oxygen in their atmosphere, so he’s probably enjoying the added firepower.”

“A big planet?” Ianto asked, mentally noting your Jupiter for later reference. “But then why is it so slow, if it’s used to higher gravity?”

Jack paused for a moment, and looked over Ianto’s shoulder at the invisibility cloak he still held in his hand, saying, “Good point. It shouldn’t even be able to cope with the atmosphere – nowhere near dense enough. And this thing’s still using power.”

“Some sort of gravity shield?” Ianto suggested, and Jack turned the device over, resting his chin on Ianto’s shoulder as he investigated it further.

“Possible,” he agreed. “I’ve come across shields that can be configured to let certain things in and out while resisting others. That would explain the flamethrower effect.”

“Speaking of which,” Ianto said pointedly, as the flames finally cut out.

Jack manhandled Ianto further into the corner of the doorway, saying, “Wait here a minute, I’m just going to try something,” and then darted out into the open. Ianto watched him stop in the middle of the street, heard the alien roar in fury, and then Jack pushed another few buttons on the device and there was a sudden damp explosion.

After a momentary pause, Ianto cautiously went over to Jack, noting the absence of alien, and the orange gloop all over the street. And Jack.

“I’ll admit,” Jack said, shaking one hand out to try and get some of the stickier strands off his fingers, “this does seem a little familiar. But I promise you it’s just coincidence.”

“You’ve got alien in your hair,” Ianto told him gravely, doing his level best to keep his face straight.

Jack looked at him for a moment, then down at himself and his ruined suit, and then pasted a bright smile on his face, said, “Thanks for that, Ianto,” and grabbed him in a tight bear hug. Ianto squeezed his eyes shut, suppressed a whine as he felt the slime covering Jack start to seep into his own clothes, and then said quietly, “You were right. For this, you should definitely have got roses.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Jack assured him, letting go of him and playfully ruffling his hair – working orange slime into his scalp in the process.

Ianto ducked away with a yelp, then glared at Jack when he sniggered, and told him, “I am going to make you pay for that.”

“Promise?” Jack asked, grinning salaciously for the second time that night. “Only now we’re both filthy –”

“You start the night being filthy,” Ianto grumbled. “Anything you pick up on the way is incidental, compared to your mind.”

“I was only going to say you could shower back at the Hub if you want,” Jack said, apparently trying to sound innocent. “I know you’ve got spare clothes there…”

Ianto smiled a little despite himself, and when Jack held out his hand invitingly, eyebrows raised, he took it, saying, “I think you still owe me a proper date.”

“I think I do too,” Jack agreed easily. “We should look into that.”

“No undercover missions, this time,” Ianto told him. “No aliens. No tech to retrieve. No danger. And definitely no more slime.”

“Just a nice, normal date,” Jack finished for him, then looked at him sideways and asked, “Do you have any idea how difficult that might be?”

“So pessimistic,” Ianto said disapprovingly. “Didn’t you ever learn? If at first you don’t succeed…”

“Go on more dates,” Jack grinned, and took him home.

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beccaelizabeth

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