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Entry tags:
Seek
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Word Count: 2109
Summary: When the Rift whisks Ianto away in the middle of a game, he's less than prepared for where he ends up...
A/N: This is my 50th Jantolution fic... I should celebrate somehow.
Prompt: Jantolution Challenge #17, Cliches, Mythical Creatures, James Bond
Seek
Rain tapped at his eyelids, and a lump of sandpaper rubbed at his cheek. He batted it away, opening his mouth to protest and promptly choking on fierce water and hot air.
Coughing, Ianto rolled over and opened his eyes, mud oozing between his fingers and sliding under his knees. Water poured over his head and neck, sluicing mud down his spine and into his eyes. He squeezed them shut again, waiting for the rain to wash his face clear, pretending for a moment that there were no trees beyond his eyelids. He hadn’t just woken up naked in the mud and rain in a forest somewhere when the last thing he remembered was waiting in the archives for Jack to come and find him.
The sandpaper rubbed at his face again, and there was a chirrup near his ear. He opened his eyes.
A lizard-like creature, with wings fluttering frantically, hovered in front of his face. It chirped again, eyes fixed on his, then abruptly darted forwards, butting its snout against his mouth. It made a strange purring sound.
Ianto scrambled back away from it, eyes wide, but it followed him, alighting on his knee then slithering down his thigh. He stared at it, as claws prickled his skin and it blinked up at him, then settled its head on his stomach and curled up in the hollow of his hip.
“Er,” said Ianto, then paused. The lizard looked up at him, and held his faze for a moment with far more than animal intelligence in its eyes. He touched his lips, then reached a fingertip towards the creature in his lap, saying tentatively, “Jack?”
The lizard ducked its head and spread its wings, shaking them out and then tucking them in close to its back, snuggling into his skin.
“Right,” Ianto said, stroking its head with one finger and looking around at the trees stretching up into the rain. “We need to work out where we are and how to get back, then we can work on turning you human again. But to do all that we have to survive the night. So. We should find a dry spot and get a fire going.”
Jack chirped, and Ianto moved him up to one shoulder, managing not to flinch as claws nipped him and a long tail wrapped around his neck. He got to his feet, shivering, and headed into the trees.
The branches above him were so thickly entwined that even the sound of the rain faded. He forced his way through ferns and vines until he found a bare, dry spot at the base of one tree. There were enough stones – and bones – around for him to block off a circle, and he found a few handfuls of dry twigs and leaves to put in the centre, but there was little else, and he had no luck finding two appropriate sticks to rub together. He huddled up against the huge, smooth tree trunk, and stared despondently at his neat little stack of leaves and kindling. A perfectly formed fire was no good without a spark.
Jack nudged his cheek, and he raised a hand to stroke his scaly chest, sighing.
“Sorry,” he said aloud. “My lighter’s back at the Hub. If we’d been snatched while I had my trousers on, we’d all be better off. As it is, we have very little dry wood, we’re both soaking wet, and while you might survive the night if you’re a cold-blooded lizard, I’m not so sure about me.”
Jack snuggled against his neck, then fluttered from his shoulder to the ground, swaggered up to the stones, and snorted fire straight into the leaves.
“Showoff,” Ianto muttered, but found a few dry sticks to feed the flames.
Jack fluttered back to his shoulder, preening with a smug purr.
~*~
By the time Ianto was dry and feeling warmer, huddling by the fire with Jack somewhere up in the branches snapping off some more kindling, he was coming to the unpleasant conclusion that he wasn’t going to be able to walk out of this one. The trees were tall, too tall, too wide, overshadowing plants he’d seen fossilized more often than in the flesh. That and the three foot wide footprint nearby gave him a nasty idea of where – or more accurately, when – he might be.
Suddenly, Jack came swooping down so close his wings and tail smacked Ianto’s head. He landed by the fire and started clawing up dirt, scattering it over the fire frantically.
“Hey!” Ianto shouted, and Jack hissed at him, eyes huge, tail lashing. Ianto was halfway towards grabbing him to stop the destruction of their only source of light and warmth, when he heard the rustle in the bushes.
“Maybe you’re right,” he whispered, and stooped to grab some dirt.
The move saved his life. Claws tore at his back as the velociraptor went hurtling straight over the top of him and landed in the fire. Jack roared a miniature roar of pure rage, and belched fire at the shrieking dinosaur even as it flailed, scattering burning sticks everywhere. One hit Ianto’s arm just as he raised it to protect his eyes.
At his yelp of pain, Jack left off attacking the velociraptor and darted over to him. He wrapped his tail around Ianto’s wrist and dragged him, with surprising strength, into the trees as the rest of the pack of dinosaurs bounded into the clearing.
With his back to the fire and lights still sparking across his eyes, Ianto followed blindly where Jack pulled him. Behind him, the velociraptors gave a rattling cry in chorus, and branches crackled as they plunged among the trees in pursuit. He gritted his teeth against pain and terror, and let Jack pull him until his hand was dragged up and hit a branch. Jack dived to grab his other hand as well, and Ianto got the idea. With a strength born of terror, he hauled himself up onto the branch, letting Jack guide his hands to higher branches and scrambling up, climbing for his life.
One of the branches below him cracked and splintered, and he yanked his feet up to the next branch. He glanced down to find five dinosaurs circling below him, leaping up and snapping at the branches every now and again. Jack nudged him higher.
“I’m well out of their reach now,” Ianto protested, but Jack butted at his elbow, then tugged at his hand. “What? Jack, even if I climb right to the top I doubt I’d be able to see anything useful. There weren’t many roads around in the Cretaceous.”
Jack creeled at him, and tugged at his hand.
“No, look,” Ianto began, and the velociraptors darted into the ferns with sudden rapid shrieks. He stared, then started climbing again, trying not to think too much of Jurassic Park.
It took him a moment to realise that it was getting considerably brighter – and hotter – as he went. The sharp scent of woodsmoke reached him suddenly, and then he had to cling to the tree trunk, eyes squeezed shut and trying not to breathe in as clouds of smoke billowed over him. Jack guided him higher as the forest burned below them.
~*~
Somehow, despite the pain in his back and arm, and the flames feasting on the forest floor, he must have fallen asleep, since the next thing he knew was sunshine streaming in through the leaves and Jack snuffling in his ear.
The breeze was cool, and the forest was quiet, and though he peered down at blackened, ash-covered ground, there was not a flame in sight, and his tree was still standing. All things considered, right now he was very grateful for those two facts.
He lifted Jack down from his shoulder, and told him, “You seem to know your away around here better than I do. Now what?”
Jack yawned mightily, then wriggled out of Ianto’s grip, butted his snout against Ianto’s lips and started slithering and fluttering down towards the ground. Ianto followed at a more sedate pace, then looked around at the cold ash. Jack chirped at him, then flitted from tree to tree ahead, looking back occasionally.
“Do you expect me to walk?” Ianto asked, raising an eyebrow, then sighed and trudged after him, muttering, “No, Mr Jones, we expect you to die.”
Somehow he couldn’t find it amusing.
~*~
A couple of hours later, Ianto sat among blackened tree roots, watching through a gap in the charred trees as a line of smoke and fire swept downhill before him. His stomach rumbled.
Jack landed in front of him with a small, very dead dinosaur dangling by its broken neck from his mouth. He gave Ianto a proud look, then huffed fire over the carcass and ripped it open.
“I’m not hungry,” Ianto told him, and looked away as Jack shrugged and proceeded to devour the dinosaur from the inside out. Finishing with a burp, he licked his lips clean, then fluttered up to nudge at Ianto’s lips. Ianto recoiled, and scrubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. With a chirp, Jack grinned at him and flew back the way he’d come.
Ianto poked at the bloody skin, and sighed.
And then a screech filled the air, and the skin tumbled end over end away from a sudden blast of wind. Ianto looked up as a blue police box faded into view. He scrambled to his feet, yelling, “Jack! Jack, get back here!”
The door opened, and the Doctor, clutching at the frame to hold himself upright, blinked at him, then grinned far too wide and said brightly, “Oh, it’s you! Have you seen an Andraxian around here, by any chance?”
Ianto opened his mouth, then stopped, wondering how to explain that he had no idea what an Andraxian was.
“Ianto!”
The Doctor hit the ground face first as another form shoved him out of the way, and Ianto barely kept his footing as Jack barrelled into his arms and clutched him so tight he could hardly breathe.
“Oh, yes, that too,” the Doctor managed, sitting up and clutching at his head. “Ow. Fresh air hurts.”
Jack, meanwhile, was wailing all sorts of incomprehensible things about Rift energy in the Hub and searching for him everywhere and calling the Doctor away from sightseeing with Andraxian tourists and one of them getting lost and the smoke in the TARDIS being full of sparkles.
At that point he stopped weeping hysterically and started giggling. He also seemed to realise that Ianto wasn’t wearing anything, and his hands started wandering.
“Ah, Doctor,” came another voice, and Ianto looked up as Ja- as the...
The lizard. Dragon...
“Oh, there you are,” the Doctor said dizzily, and hauled himself to his feet on the TARDIS door frame. “Stay... stay there. I’ll call your parents. Enough smoke in here already.”
The little dragon fluttered down to the ground between Ianto and Jack and the TARDIS, and turned to look at him.
“I must thank you for your company,” it said formally. “Though I only wish you could understand me.”
“I... can now,” Ianto managed.
“Oh, excellent,” the Andraxian replied, with a grin. Above them all, a silver spaceship came zooming down through the clouds, and it looked up, wings fluttering, saying, “Well, I see you’ve found your people again as well, and I believe this is my family here. Perhaps next time we visit the zoo they won’t be foolish enough to forget me. Travel safely. And I do suggest you allow my parents’ smoke to clear from your friend’s ship before you reenter. It appears to have had a somewhat detrimental effect on your people’s mental states.”
“You mean they’re high,” Ianto clarified, pulling Jack’s hands further up his back.
“That description would suffice,” the Andraxian agreed, and fluttered up towards the hovering ship. “Fare well.”
“Um,” said Ianto, with Jack wrapping tighter around him. “Bye.”
The dragon vanished into the ship above, the ship zoomed into the sky, and the Doctor staggered back out, asking, “So, home again?”
“How did you find me?” Ianto asked, curiously.
“The Andraxians noticed your Rift energy when you got dropped here,” the Doctor said easily. “They didn’t think anything of it until they came to ask for me help finding their son. Piece of luck, that. Then we saw your smoke signal – and good idea, there, by the way, that was visible from orbit...”
“I’m hungry,” Jack said abruptly, and the Doctor gestured to the TARDIS with a flourish.
“Who’s for pizza?”
Ianto hugged Jack, and sighed.
“Sounds good to me.”
Rating: PG-13
Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Word Count: 2109
Summary: When the Rift whisks Ianto away in the middle of a game, he's less than prepared for where he ends up...
A/N: This is my 50th Jantolution fic... I should celebrate somehow.
Prompt: Jantolution Challenge #17, Cliches, Mythical Creatures, James Bond
Seek
Rain tapped at his eyelids, and a lump of sandpaper rubbed at his cheek. He batted it away, opening his mouth to protest and promptly choking on fierce water and hot air.
Coughing, Ianto rolled over and opened his eyes, mud oozing between his fingers and sliding under his knees. Water poured over his head and neck, sluicing mud down his spine and into his eyes. He squeezed them shut again, waiting for the rain to wash his face clear, pretending for a moment that there were no trees beyond his eyelids. He hadn’t just woken up naked in the mud and rain in a forest somewhere when the last thing he remembered was waiting in the archives for Jack to come and find him.
The sandpaper rubbed at his face again, and there was a chirrup near his ear. He opened his eyes.
A lizard-like creature, with wings fluttering frantically, hovered in front of his face. It chirped again, eyes fixed on his, then abruptly darted forwards, butting its snout against his mouth. It made a strange purring sound.
Ianto scrambled back away from it, eyes wide, but it followed him, alighting on his knee then slithering down his thigh. He stared at it, as claws prickled his skin and it blinked up at him, then settled its head on his stomach and curled up in the hollow of his hip.
“Er,” said Ianto, then paused. The lizard looked up at him, and held his faze for a moment with far more than animal intelligence in its eyes. He touched his lips, then reached a fingertip towards the creature in his lap, saying tentatively, “Jack?”
The lizard ducked its head and spread its wings, shaking them out and then tucking them in close to its back, snuggling into his skin.
“Right,” Ianto said, stroking its head with one finger and looking around at the trees stretching up into the rain. “We need to work out where we are and how to get back, then we can work on turning you human again. But to do all that we have to survive the night. So. We should find a dry spot and get a fire going.”
Jack chirped, and Ianto moved him up to one shoulder, managing not to flinch as claws nipped him and a long tail wrapped around his neck. He got to his feet, shivering, and headed into the trees.
The branches above him were so thickly entwined that even the sound of the rain faded. He forced his way through ferns and vines until he found a bare, dry spot at the base of one tree. There were enough stones – and bones – around for him to block off a circle, and he found a few handfuls of dry twigs and leaves to put in the centre, but there was little else, and he had no luck finding two appropriate sticks to rub together. He huddled up against the huge, smooth tree trunk, and stared despondently at his neat little stack of leaves and kindling. A perfectly formed fire was no good without a spark.
Jack nudged his cheek, and he raised a hand to stroke his scaly chest, sighing.
“Sorry,” he said aloud. “My lighter’s back at the Hub. If we’d been snatched while I had my trousers on, we’d all be better off. As it is, we have very little dry wood, we’re both soaking wet, and while you might survive the night if you’re a cold-blooded lizard, I’m not so sure about me.”
Jack snuggled against his neck, then fluttered from his shoulder to the ground, swaggered up to the stones, and snorted fire straight into the leaves.
“Showoff,” Ianto muttered, but found a few dry sticks to feed the flames.
Jack fluttered back to his shoulder, preening with a smug purr.
By the time Ianto was dry and feeling warmer, huddling by the fire with Jack somewhere up in the branches snapping off some more kindling, he was coming to the unpleasant conclusion that he wasn’t going to be able to walk out of this one. The trees were tall, too tall, too wide, overshadowing plants he’d seen fossilized more often than in the flesh. That and the three foot wide footprint nearby gave him a nasty idea of where – or more accurately, when – he might be.
Suddenly, Jack came swooping down so close his wings and tail smacked Ianto’s head. He landed by the fire and started clawing up dirt, scattering it over the fire frantically.
“Hey!” Ianto shouted, and Jack hissed at him, eyes huge, tail lashing. Ianto was halfway towards grabbing him to stop the destruction of their only source of light and warmth, when he heard the rustle in the bushes.
“Maybe you’re right,” he whispered, and stooped to grab some dirt.
The move saved his life. Claws tore at his back as the velociraptor went hurtling straight over the top of him and landed in the fire. Jack roared a miniature roar of pure rage, and belched fire at the shrieking dinosaur even as it flailed, scattering burning sticks everywhere. One hit Ianto’s arm just as he raised it to protect his eyes.
At his yelp of pain, Jack left off attacking the velociraptor and darted over to him. He wrapped his tail around Ianto’s wrist and dragged him, with surprising strength, into the trees as the rest of the pack of dinosaurs bounded into the clearing.
With his back to the fire and lights still sparking across his eyes, Ianto followed blindly where Jack pulled him. Behind him, the velociraptors gave a rattling cry in chorus, and branches crackled as they plunged among the trees in pursuit. He gritted his teeth against pain and terror, and let Jack pull him until his hand was dragged up and hit a branch. Jack dived to grab his other hand as well, and Ianto got the idea. With a strength born of terror, he hauled himself up onto the branch, letting Jack guide his hands to higher branches and scrambling up, climbing for his life.
One of the branches below him cracked and splintered, and he yanked his feet up to the next branch. He glanced down to find five dinosaurs circling below him, leaping up and snapping at the branches every now and again. Jack nudged him higher.
“I’m well out of their reach now,” Ianto protested, but Jack butted at his elbow, then tugged at his hand. “What? Jack, even if I climb right to the top I doubt I’d be able to see anything useful. There weren’t many roads around in the Cretaceous.”
Jack creeled at him, and tugged at his hand.
“No, look,” Ianto began, and the velociraptors darted into the ferns with sudden rapid shrieks. He stared, then started climbing again, trying not to think too much of Jurassic Park.
It took him a moment to realise that it was getting considerably brighter – and hotter – as he went. The sharp scent of woodsmoke reached him suddenly, and then he had to cling to the tree trunk, eyes squeezed shut and trying not to breathe in as clouds of smoke billowed over him. Jack guided him higher as the forest burned below them.
Somehow, despite the pain in his back and arm, and the flames feasting on the forest floor, he must have fallen asleep, since the next thing he knew was sunshine streaming in through the leaves and Jack snuffling in his ear.
The breeze was cool, and the forest was quiet, and though he peered down at blackened, ash-covered ground, there was not a flame in sight, and his tree was still standing. All things considered, right now he was very grateful for those two facts.
He lifted Jack down from his shoulder, and told him, “You seem to know your away around here better than I do. Now what?”
Jack yawned mightily, then wriggled out of Ianto’s grip, butted his snout against Ianto’s lips and started slithering and fluttering down towards the ground. Ianto followed at a more sedate pace, then looked around at the cold ash. Jack chirped at him, then flitted from tree to tree ahead, looking back occasionally.
“Do you expect me to walk?” Ianto asked, raising an eyebrow, then sighed and trudged after him, muttering, “No, Mr Jones, we expect you to die.”
Somehow he couldn’t find it amusing.
A couple of hours later, Ianto sat among blackened tree roots, watching through a gap in the charred trees as a line of smoke and fire swept downhill before him. His stomach rumbled.
Jack landed in front of him with a small, very dead dinosaur dangling by its broken neck from his mouth. He gave Ianto a proud look, then huffed fire over the carcass and ripped it open.
“I’m not hungry,” Ianto told him, and looked away as Jack shrugged and proceeded to devour the dinosaur from the inside out. Finishing with a burp, he licked his lips clean, then fluttered up to nudge at Ianto’s lips. Ianto recoiled, and scrubbed at his mouth with the back of his hand. With a chirp, Jack grinned at him and flew back the way he’d come.
Ianto poked at the bloody skin, and sighed.
And then a screech filled the air, and the skin tumbled end over end away from a sudden blast of wind. Ianto looked up as a blue police box faded into view. He scrambled to his feet, yelling, “Jack! Jack, get back here!”
The door opened, and the Doctor, clutching at the frame to hold himself upright, blinked at him, then grinned far too wide and said brightly, “Oh, it’s you! Have you seen an Andraxian around here, by any chance?”
Ianto opened his mouth, then stopped, wondering how to explain that he had no idea what an Andraxian was.
“Ianto!”
The Doctor hit the ground face first as another form shoved him out of the way, and Ianto barely kept his footing as Jack barrelled into his arms and clutched him so tight he could hardly breathe.
“Oh, yes, that too,” the Doctor managed, sitting up and clutching at his head. “Ow. Fresh air hurts.”
Jack, meanwhile, was wailing all sorts of incomprehensible things about Rift energy in the Hub and searching for him everywhere and calling the Doctor away from sightseeing with Andraxian tourists and one of them getting lost and the smoke in the TARDIS being full of sparkles.
At that point he stopped weeping hysterically and started giggling. He also seemed to realise that Ianto wasn’t wearing anything, and his hands started wandering.
“Ah, Doctor,” came another voice, and Ianto looked up as Ja- as the...
The lizard. Dragon...
“Oh, there you are,” the Doctor said dizzily, and hauled himself to his feet on the TARDIS door frame. “Stay... stay there. I’ll call your parents. Enough smoke in here already.”
The little dragon fluttered down to the ground between Ianto and Jack and the TARDIS, and turned to look at him.
“I must thank you for your company,” it said formally. “Though I only wish you could understand me.”
“I... can now,” Ianto managed.
“Oh, excellent,” the Andraxian replied, with a grin. Above them all, a silver spaceship came zooming down through the clouds, and it looked up, wings fluttering, saying, “Well, I see you’ve found your people again as well, and I believe this is my family here. Perhaps next time we visit the zoo they won’t be foolish enough to forget me. Travel safely. And I do suggest you allow my parents’ smoke to clear from your friend’s ship before you reenter. It appears to have had a somewhat detrimental effect on your people’s mental states.”
“You mean they’re high,” Ianto clarified, pulling Jack’s hands further up his back.
“That description would suffice,” the Andraxian agreed, and fluttered up towards the hovering ship. “Fare well.”
“Um,” said Ianto, with Jack wrapping tighter around him. “Bye.”
The dragon vanished into the ship above, the ship zoomed into the sky, and the Doctor staggered back out, asking, “So, home again?”
“How did you find me?” Ianto asked, curiously.
“The Andraxians noticed your Rift energy when you got dropped here,” the Doctor said easily. “They didn’t think anything of it until they came to ask for me help finding their son. Piece of luck, that. Then we saw your smoke signal – and good idea, there, by the way, that was visible from orbit...”
“I’m hungry,” Jack said abruptly, and the Doctor gestured to the TARDIS with a flourish.
“Who’s for pizza?”
Ianto hugged Jack, and sighed.
“Sounds good to me.”
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