amuly | Gwil's Guide to Growing Up Torchwood: Chapter 14

Title: Gwil's Guide to Growing Up Torchwood: Chapter 14
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Gwil, Rhiannon, David, Tosh, mentions of everyone else
Word Count: 3,296
Rating: PG
Summary: When a seven-year-old boy falls through the Rift, Ianto and Jack decide to adopt him. This is the story of his life at Torchwood.
Chapter Summary: Ianto runs into Rhiannon at the park; Ianto makes Jack face some unpleasant truths about how to make their lives work.
Warnings: little bit of surprise!angst
A/N: Up a bit late, because 1.] I'm working on the mp_ldws porn drabbles (go on over the 1^st to read some delicious, <300 word Siri/Remi porn!) and 2.] analia_the_1st and I had some stuff to work out with the overall plot/structure for this series. So thanks to her! *hugs*

Previous Chapters:
Prologue
The First Year:
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10
11, 12, 13

Ianto rushed out of his car, glancing at his watch for the umpteenth time. He was supposed to meet Tosh here an hour ago to pick up Gwil from one of their tutoring sessions. Of course, as he and Jack had been en route a Rift alert had come through. Thus had begun the two hour detour where they had to deal with a ship-full of Transporian traders. Luckily they had only been displaced spatially, and not temporally, so it was just a matter of Jack giving them directions back to one of the main trade routes.

Or it would have been that simple if they hadn't wanted to make the best of the situation and gather up some things to sell off-world.

After two hours of listening to Jack speak some headache-inducing language in an attempt to just get the Transporians off-planet, Ianto had looked significantly at his watch and left. Jack could deal with the traders on his own, and if things got problematic, there was always Gwen and Owen back at the Hub.

“I'm sorry! I know: I'm late.” Ianto ignored the headache pounding at his temples and exhaustion seeping out of every muscle as he jogged over to Tosh and Gwil, who seemed to be playing some sort of numbers game. Gwil was sitting on the picnic table, staring intently at the numbered cards in front of him. Tosh seemed to be maneuvering the cards, setting up little equations or puzzles, and Gwil would reach out and rearrange the cards into his answer.

Tosh looked up, pushing her hair back from her face. She smiled as Ianto drew nearer, patting Gwil on the leg and pointing him in his direction.

“Tad!” With a squeal Gwil clambered off the table, launching himself at Ianto until he was wrapped firmly around his leg. Ianto brought a hand down to his shoulder, squeezing it in greeting.

“Did you have fun with Auntie Tosh today?”

Gwil nodded, gazing up at Ianto with adoring eyes as they awkwardly walk-hugged their way back to the picnic table, where Tosh was packing up her supplies. “How's he doing?”

Smiling as she fitted the cover over her box of cards, Tosh glanced up at Ianto. “Brilliantly. If we worked a little bit harder, he might be ready to start school come autumn.”

Ianto's grip tightened on Gwil's shoulder, and he shook his head. “Not...” he took a breath and forced a smile. “I think it's best he wait another year. Introduce him a bit more to normal life.” When Tosh looked like she didn't believe him, Ianto continued on quickly: “Well, can't exactly have him telling his classmates about his pet pteranodon, or the giant fountain that runs through the center of his underground home.”

Finished cramming everything into her over-sized purse, Tosh swung it over her shoulder with a smile. “I suppose...” she relented. Still, as she started away she patted Ianto's arm. “But he will have to go the next year.”

Swallowing thickly, Ianto nodded. “I know,” he whispered.

With that, Tosh was off, leaving Ianto and Gwil alone in the park. “Where's Dad?”

Ianto glanced down at Gwil, who was still attached to his leg. He was peering around it toward the car park. When he spotted Ianto's car, rather than the SUV, he frowned. “Oh. He's working, isn't he?”

Forcing a smile, Ianto patted Gwil on the shoulder. “He's almost done. He said he'd meet us here, then we could get dinner.”

Gwil's face lit up at that, and he took a step away from the protective shadow of Ianto's leg. “Chips?”

Narrowing his eyes in mock-consideration, Ianto finally drawled out. “Maybe. If you're good.” Ianto looked around the park, noticing the other children shouting and playing on the playground. “Why don't you go play with some of the other kids?” He nodded in the direction of the playground. “I'll wait over here for your dad.”

Gwil nodded and started off toward the monkey bars. Ianto, in turn, did his best to control his impulse to leap up and hover over Gwil's every move. He'd be fine. After all, it was just monkey bars. Millions of kids all over the world went on them every day.

Ianto twitched violently as Gwil's hand slipped and he hung on with one arm. Then he was righting himself, swinging hand over hand again across the bars. With a long, shuddering breath, Ianto eased himself back onto the picnic bench. It was fine. Jack would be here in a few minutes, and then they'd all have chips. Ianto shifted slightly in his seat, feeling the paunch that threatened around his middle. Well, maybe he'd have a salad. It was the least he could do, considering he'd been too busy to cook these last few months, much less get a proper workout in.

“David! David, don't you dare! David, if you don't get down from there this instant, I swear...”

Ianto's head whipped around so fast he was sure he pulled something. Sure enough, there was his sister, running across the playground and over to David, who was dangling from the roof of one of the playground towers. He laughed and shot her two fingers, returning to climbing around where he most decidedly was not supposed to.

Rhiannon gasped at the gesture, dashing toward her son with renewed fury. “That's it! Just for that, no Xbox for a week! And if you don't get down from there now, I'll make it two.” David just shouted and kept climbing. Rhiannon was now beneath him, hands on her hips in a gesture Ianto recognized as hereditary. “You're going to get it when your tad gets home! I'll tell him what you did, and when he's finished with you, you won't be able to sit down for a week, you hear me?”

From where he was observing the proceedings at his picnic bench, Ianto ducked his head and smirked. With great reluctance and more than a bit of defiance, David crawled down from the tower and back over to his mam. She snatched his arm up, pushing him back toward a bench. Ianto could see her purse and another woman on the bench that he could only assume Rhiannon had been sat at. “Now, you sit over here with me for five minutes before I let you loose again.”

Too late, Ianto saw his sister's gaze drift in his direction. Shock was quickly replaced by a grin, and she hurried over, David still tightly in hand. “Ianto! What are you doing here?”

Grasping about for an answer, he nodded at her. “Might ask the same of you. What brings you into Cardiff?”

She nodded over her shoulder at the woman waiting for her on the park bench. “Friend of mine moved here a few months back. Thought we could catch up while the kids had a play date.” Letting go of David's hand, she pointed at the picnic bench. “Sit!” she commanded. She turned back to Ianto with her arms crossed. “But come on, now: you didn't answer my question. What're you doing at a park?”

Ianto thought he could have come up with a convincing lie. Unfortunately, Gwil chose that moment to run over, pointing at a scraped knee. “Tad? You told me to tell you if I got hurted.”

“Hurt,” Ianto mumbled absently, already squatting down to examine the knee. “Are you okay?” Gwil shrugged, apparently unperturbed by the scrape. Ianto nodded and patted the side of his leg. “It's fine. Try to keep dirt out of it until your dad arrives.”

Taking that as a dismissal, Gwil hurried back off to the playground. Ianto stayed squatting for a moment, as if he could avoid his sister's inquisition by not standing up. He knew he had to face her, of course, and so with only a moment's more procrastination, he straightened from his crouch.

Rhiannon was alternately gasping and grinning madly. “Was...was that your...son? Do you have a son? How could you have not told me this, you daft bastard!”

Ianto put on his best apologetic face. “I'm sorry. He just sort of...fell into our laps. It's only been...” Ianto paused, counting in his mind. Actually, it had been almost a year. Ten months or so. “...A few months,” he fibbed.

Rhiannon slapped his arm – a bit hard, Ianto felt – and giggled madly. “Oh, my gracious, he's absolutely precious! Look at how well-behaved he is!” Ianto turned to the playground to see that Gwil was helping a smaller girl onto a swing. “What's his name?”

“Gwil.” Rhiannon's nose scrunched up in delight and she cooed.

“So, wait, he's not yours, then? You adopted him? With who?”

Jack, with his usual flair for dramatically perfect timing, chose that moment to pull up in the SUV and bound out. Gwil spotted him first, and it was his racing over to the car park that brought Ianto's attention to Jack. Behind him, Rhiannon followed his gaze and gasped. “He is not yours! Is he? Oh my Lord, I had heard rumors...”

Ianto waited for Jack to come over to him, Gwil hoisted high in his arms. Jack started to lean in for a kiss but stopped, noticing Rhiannon and eyeing Ianto questioningly. “Who is this lovely lady you're talking to?”

Ianto sighed, tugging Gwil from Jack into his arms. “Jack, this is my sister: Rhiannon. Rhiannon: Jack. He's Gwil's dad.”

Rhiannon hesitated, pointing between the two men. “Wait, wait, explain it to me. Are either of you the biological father?”

“No, we just...adopted him. Together.” Hiding a blush, Ianto's attention returned to Gwil's scraped knee, and he frowned. He'd best get some antiseptic on it and a plaster before the grime from the park settled in. This, of course, was not an excuse to get away from his sister, though he did hesitate at the thought of leaving Jack alone with her. With a speculative glance between the two of them, Ianto gave Jack a sharp look. “I'm going to clean up Gwil's knee with the kit in the SUV. I won't be long.” He glanced significantly over to his sister, then back at Jack. “Be good.”

Jack grinned and winked. “I'm always good.”

When Ianto returned, Gwil racing off to the playground again with a fresh dinosaur plaster on his knee, he found Rhiannon laughing and turning bright red. “What has he said?” he grumbled, sliding onto the bench next to Jack.

Beneath the table Jack nudged his thigh against Ianto's. Ianto had to remind himself not to pull away.

Rhiannon was waving her hands, still gasping with laughter. “I knew you'd be an overprotective parent! Jack was telling me about Gwil's first temperature.”

Ianto blushed. “I was worried. Something could have happened. And Jack was a nervous wreck, too,” he pointed out. Eyes narrowing slyly, he looked across at his sister. “Besides, the better story is Gwil's first kiss.”

Rhiannon gasped. “At his age? He can't be older'n six!”

“Seven, actually.” Ianto frowned. “He's small for his age.” Yet another reason to keep him out of school a year more. Ianto felt his headache return in earnest at the thought of sending Gwil off to school.

Reaching across the table, Rhiannon tapped Ianto's hand. “Well, go on! Tell me!”

Jack leaned forward conspiratorially. “It was at football practice. With a fellow teammate: Owen.”

Rhiannon gasped appropriately. “No!”

“Yes!”

Ianto wanted to thunk his head on the table. He didn't do family. And he hadn't thought Jack did, either. But here he was, gossiping with his sister like they were old mates. He lifted a hand to his temple. He should have grabbed paracetamol from the kit when he was there.

An hour later, and Ianto was dragging Jack and Gwil back to the cars. By then he had already been roped into two dinner dates for the families and a weekend play date for the kids. “What did you think you were doing?” he hissed at Jack once they were at the SUV.

Jack looked surprised. “I was being nice to your sister. I thought that's what you wanted.”

Ianto shook his head, refusing to look at Jack. With a huff he opened his car door, nudging Gwil inside and focusing all his attention on buckling his seatbelt. When he closed the door and turned back to Jack, Ianto's face was a storm cloud. “Polite, fine. But getting chummy, accepting dinner invitations...” Ianto put his hands on his hips. “What exactly do you think is goning to happen when we have to cancel on her because of a Rift alert? And then have to cancel the raincheck because of another alert? And when we have to race off from Gwil's play date because a spaceship crashed just outside of Newport?”

Ianto took a breath, rubbing his forehead.

“I'm just saying it's hard, Jack. It's hard to do the life-outside-of-Torchwood. Which is why I've never tried.”

Jack frowned, reaching out and taking Ianto's hand in his. “Well, maybe it's time you did.”

Ianto scoffed derisively. “Yeah, well, how many of us do you see making it work? One out of five? Not very good odds, Jack.”

Jack's face took on that thunderous quality it sometimes got, and Ianto knew he had struck a nerve. At the moment, he didn't care: he was tired, his head was killing him, and all he could think of was the fact that Gwen hadn't had to deal with the alien spider invasion last weekend because she was off with Rhys. So he pressed on. “The only one out of all of us who gets to have it all is Gwen, and you know it. Doesn't matter that I'm raising a Rift child, one that you insisted we keep – no, Gwen's got to be the one who has weekends off, who gets to go on dinner dates and even take our son on trips to the park: trips we never go on with him, except for these fleeting moments in between disasters!”

Ianto took a breath. Jack's face had shut down: a blank mask. He shouldn't have been so angry, Ianto knew. He was tired. No, not tired: he was absolutely exhausted. And it really wasn't Gwen's fault, Ianto knew. She had been a great help to them, taking Gwil out when neither Jack nor he had the time. It just sometimes felt like she was the privileged, spoilt youngest sibling of their twisted family, and Ianto was a mix of long-suffering mother and servant. And Gwen was three years older than him!

Jack's response was quiet. “I thought you wanted him. I thought...I thought you loved him.”

Ianto's anger faded and resolve crumbled as he looked up at Jack's face. To anyone else, his expression was completely neutral, devoid of any emotion. But Ianto knew him better than that. He hadn't made him angry: he had hurt him.

“Jack, I didn't mean-” Ianto made to reach out for Jack, but he pulled away and turned to the SUV.

“I'll see you at the Hub.”

Ianto winced as the door slammed and Jack pulled out, tires screeching as he peeled away.

He slid into the driver's seat of his own sedan and sat for a moment, unblinking, staring at the dash.

“Tad?”

Wiping his face – not tears, never tears over one Mr. Jack Harkness – Ianto turned around. “Yup? You alright back there, Gwil?”

“You and Dad were fighting.”

Ianto offered Gwil a tight smile. “It'll be fine. Just...grown-up stuff. Now come on,” he tapped Gwil's leg, “Why don't we stop at that chip place on the way home? Like you wanted.” Gwil's face lit up, and Ianto turned back around feeling self-satisfied. At least there was one person he could make happy.

Sending off a quick text to Jack to let him know they were picking up dinner – not that it matters, probably going off to a roof to brood, leaving us alone for the night – Ianto pulled away from the park and set off for food and the Hub.

As Ianto tried to herd Gwil into their living quarters while carrying bags full of food and their dry cleaning, he heard Jack's voice shouting orders. It was a surprise – Ianto had honestly thought Jack would be gone for the night in one of his sulks, only to slip into bed just before dawn. As if Ianto didn't know that he had been out; as if Ianto didn't know exactly when he came back.

Ianto rounded the corner of the tunnels into the main area of the Hub, just in time to see Gwen, Owen, and Tosh all filing out through the cog door. Jack's back was to Gwil and Ianto, as he watched the other team members file out.

Gwil hurried away from Ianto, scrambling over to his dad and tugging at his leg. “Dad? Tad bought you chips.” Big eyes stared up at Jack beseechingly. “And he got you the coleslaw that you like, even though he said you didn't deserve it for being a wanker. But he said it makes you happy.”

Ianto coughed delicately, shifting the food in his grip. “Gwil, language.” He risked a glance at Jack, who was looking like he didn't know whether to laugh or hug him. “I didn't say wanker,” he muttered. “Must have picked that up from Owen.”

Extracting himself from Gwil's grip, Jack took the bags from Ianto and kissed him on the cheek. “Let's go eat. The Rift is supposed to be quiet tonight, so I sent everyone else home.” His eyes were pleading as he looked at Ianto. “I was going to cook, before I got your text. But I still sent them all off, so we'd have a family dinner.”

Ianto smiled. Jack was trying. Really, honestly trying. He reached out and squeezed Jack's arm. “Thank you.”

Later that night, when Gwil was safely tucked up in bed and Ianto in Jack's arms, Ianto felt Jack nuzzle at his hair before pressing a small kiss above his ear. “I'll get you more time off, to spend with Gwil. And I'll try to spend more time with him, too.”

Ianto shifted, trying to turn around to look Jack in the eye. But Jack's arms stayed firm around him, holding him in place. “I didn't mean it, Jack. I was just tired and hadn't had enough caffeine. It does happen, on occasion.”

Ianto felt Jack's breath tickle his ear as he sighed. “No, I'm asking too much of you. If you were still just on administrative support, it might be doable. But you're a field agent, as well as run the entire archives and liaise with everyone I don't want to – which is everyone.” There was a pause, then Jack continued. “I'm going to hire more staff. That way we can have a proper rotary going, with real time off. Not 'time off Rift-willing'.”

Ianto hummed, not really taking anything Jack was saying seriously. “Got anyone in mind? Or would you like me to start poaching UNIT?”

“Well...” Jack drew the word out slowly, letting a pregnant pause fill the air. “What do you think about Andy?”

End of Chapter A/N: Hurm? Was I completely pulling from my little brother and mine's relationship for Ianto and Gwen's, except reverse genders and ages? What? Who said that?

And yes, Andy is totally coming on board. And will be there to stay ^.^ Because Torchwood needs more Andy!

Continue on to Chapter 15.

Current Mood: depressed
Current Location: Desk
Current Music: South Park epis

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

aige09.livejournal.com

Oh good, I love Andy.
And Ianto has every right to feel that way, Jack does let Gwen get away with a lot more than the others purely because she has Rhys. If my boss did that, I'd be furious.
At least Jack tries to fix it at the end. Of course I await with interest to see how long the changes actually last for.

From:

Sometimes Sexy, Always Slashy

Gwil's Guide to Growing Up Torchwood: Chapter 14

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