amuly | Gwil's Guide to Growing Up Torchwood: Year 3, Chapter 5

Title: Gwil's Guide to Growing Up Torchwood: Year 3, Chapter 5
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, +Gwil, friends
Word Count: 1,721
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: Gwil has a playdate with some of his friends, putting to the test the seamlessness of their teleportation portal.
Warnings: none
A/N: I'm saying it up here because everyone keeps fretting in the comments: Year 3 is (almost) angst-free! Year 4, on the other hand, is going to be awful. Just FYI.

Previous Chapters:

               Prologue          |          The First Year:          |          The Second Year:          |          The Third Year:
         1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10    1, 1.PWP, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7    1, 2, 3, 4
11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17         8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13

Ianto stood outside their “house”, checking his watch and doing his best not to fiddle with any parts of his suit. He didn't expect anything to go wrong today, but still. It was the first time an outsider would experience the teleportation pad, and therefore the first time the pad would have to stand up to scrutiny. He couldn't forbid Gwil having friends over forever, after all.

Honestly, if the worst happened and Gwil's little friends noticed something amiss – either with the teleport or by somehow escaping out into the main area of the Hub – Ianto had two doses of retcon ready for them. Of course, that wasn't exactly an option he delighted in entertaining.

Right on time, Gwil rounded the bend in the road, two friends tagging along with him. Mentally Ianto placed names to faces he had looked up on the Torchwood computers: shaved head and protruding eyes was Zachary; mass of brown hair and big, brown eyes to match was Tibor. Ianto had told himself he was looking up Gwil's friends to make sure he could be a proper host. If a quick background check on their parents' was involved, too, it didn't hurt anyone.

“How was your day?” Ianto greeted Gwil. He started to bend down and wrap Gwil up in a hug, then hesitated, realizing such a display of affection might not be welcome in front of his friends. Sure enough, Gwil stepped forward and patted Ianto lightly on the arm in greeting. Ianto suppressed a snicker.

“Okay. Tad, this is Tibor and Zachary.”

Ianto greeted the two boys with a nod of his head. “Afternoon. You're the boys who watch the Star Wars show, aren't you?”

Tibor and Zachary bobbed their heads excitedly. Zachary shouted: “And Gwil's got Lego Clone Wars!”

For a moment, Ianto battled between two, completely pointless desires: first, to tell Zachary to use his “inside voice” - even though they were currently standing outside – and second, to correct the nine year old's grammar. Ianto succeeded in suppressing both urges.

“He does,” Ianto confirmed, in lieu of giving any lectures. “Why don't you come in: I have snacks waiting before you start playing.”

Ianto opened the door, staring through it. Beyond the boundaries of where he knew the teleport was, the image of their rooms in the Hub shown out. There wasn't anything to indicate that between one step and the next was a break in space to the other side of Cardiff: not a shimmer in the air or static charge. Still, Ianto had to remind himself to breathe.

Gwil's two friends raced through the front door, oblivious to Ianto's trepidations. With a glance up at his tad, Gwil followed them, waving his hands and pointing to the kitchen. Ianto followed quickly, swinging the door shut behind him.

On the other side, the boys were scrambling in the kitchen at the fridge for the promised snacks. Neither one seemed to have noticed anything amiss. Ianto breathed a sigh of relief, then glanced at the door to the Hub: hidden at the moment in plain sight by a perception filter. Hopefully it would hold up to a pair of ADD, sugar-addled minds. Ianto watched the boys sticking their heads in the refrigerator and laughing. It probably would.

Ushering the boys to the kitchen table like a pile of ducklings, Ianto made them sit down as he pulled out the previously prepared snacks: mixed fruit, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and milk all around.

Ianto hesitated as he placed the glasses of milk in front of the two guests, wondering about spills and tiny hands being unable to grasp normal-sized glasses. But the boys went about their eating and drinking without much trouble, so Ianto allowed himself a moment to breathe as he checked on the remote monitoring systems for the Rift.

“So, are you at home all the time?” Zachary asked around a mouthful of sandwich.

Ianto blinked, turning away from the Rift displays and back to the boys. “Excuse me?”

Zachary continued unperturbed. “'Cause my stepdad stays at home, and my mum works. But my dad works, and then my stepmum stays at home. So do you stay at home, and Gwil's other dad works?”

Nodding his understanding, Ianto slid into the spare seat at the kitchen table, clasping his hands lightly on the tabletop. “No, we both work.” Ianto was just glad the boys didn't seem to have a problem with the idea of Gwil having two dads. Brilliant age, they were living in. For the most part.

“Well then why you home right now?” Zachary continued to ask questions with his mouth full. Ianto frowned.

Gwil spoke up for him, setting down his glass of milk with a soft thud. “Dad is Tad's boss. So he can get time off whenever he needs to.”

Ianto frowned, almost correcting Gwil. Put that way it came off downright nepotistic. Then again, Ianto made sure everyone received equal time off – nepotism notwithstanding. So he let Gwil's explanation stand.

Tibor piped up as he examined a piece of strawberry skeptically. “But you're Gwil's real dad, right?”

Ianto frowned. “Mr. Harkness and I are both Gwil's dad. We adopted him together.”

Tibor pointed between Gwil and Ianto with a piece of cantaloupe he had picked up instead of the strawberry. “But Gwil's yours, right? Like, there was a mummy, and you, and then now there's you and Mr. Harkness?”

Ianto “ah'ed” quietly in understanding. “You think I'm Gwil's biological father.”

Tibor shrugged as he shoved the cantaloupe into his mouth. “Shure,” he mumbled.

“I'm not,” Ianto replied. He glanced over at Gwil, who was watching the conversation, unperturbed. Enough people had commented on the similarities in their appearance for such conversations to just roll off Gwil, like water off a duck. “We get that a lot: people thinking he's actually mine. But Jack... Mr. Harkness... and I adopted him two years ago.”

Poking at his empty plate, Zachary suddenly looked up at Ianto. “Can we go play now? Gwil's dad?”

Ianto blinked at the little boy, temporarily at a loss for words. “Gwil's dad”. That was how he used to refer to his friends parents, when he didn't know their last name. But no one had ever addressed him by such a moniker before. “Yes, of course.”

The boys rushed around him like a little tornado, scrapping chairs violently against kitchen tiles and grabbing for a last piece of fruit with sticky fingers before they were gone, rushing down the halls to Gwil's playroom. For just a moment, Ianto let himself sit at the kitchen table and stare at the empty seats, just the smallest bit overwhelmed. At least the kids were at an age where they could entertain each other on playdates. Ianto wouldn't know what to do otherwise.

On a whim after he had cleaned up the kitchen, Ianto poked his head through Gwil's playroom door. The three boys were sat on the floor in front of the telly – try as he might, Ianto just couldn't get Gwil to sit away from the telly. No matter how many warnings of ruined eyes and glasses Ianto used, Gwil still would invariably manage to creep forward until his nose was centimeters from the glowing box. Jack's delight in sitting just as close as Gwil probably didn't help the matter.

“Oi! You killed me!”

“Did not!”

“Geroff, you wanker!”

Ianto watched as the boys proceeded to scuffle briefly on the floor, wrestling controllers away from each other and throwing them across the room. He considered intervening, but Gwil was right in the middle of the fight, and seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself. After a few moments of flailing arms and slapping hands, Gwil and Tibor emerged with the wiimotes, scrambling back to the telly. Zachary was laughing through his disappointment, gesturing at the telly with one flung-out arm.

“I didn't kill you on purpose!” he clarified.

Tibor muscled Zachary aside as he scooted closer to Gwil on the floor. “Too bad! 's Gwil's turn, anyway.”

Gwil somehow managed to convey he was addressing Zachary without taking his eyes off the screen, head tilting slightly in the other boy's direction. “You can have it back at the end of the level,” he offered. “And you can help spot the targets.”

Zachary's eyes light up at that, and he scrambled to insert himself on Gwil's free side as his eyes scanned the telly. “There!” he screeched, pointing at some light white spot on the left of the telly. Ianto was having a hard time discerning anything going on in the game besides a swirling mass of lasers and quickly-moving colors.

Apparently Gwil managed to hit whatever target Zachary had been pointing at, because he grinned and nudged Zachary with his shoulder. “Thanks!”

With a happy sigh, Ianto slid the door to Gwil's playroom shut. As he walked back to the kitchen, his eyes automatically went to the Rift monitor. Still quiet. He glanced back at the playroom, before making the decision to head up to the Hub and pass out a quick round of coffee. Gwil seemed like he had everything in hand, after all.

Just as he was about to head up, the Rift monitor blipped: just for a second before falling silent again. Ianto frowned, pulling up the device history and scrolling through it. Another blip. He checked his watch, then looked back at the screen. The blip had occurred just when he had been herding the boys into his house – probably why he hadn't noticed it before. Scanning through, Ianto couldn't see anything that resulted from the blip: it appeared, at first glance, to be just a momentary spike in Rift activity. Not even a spike: more like a shudder.

With a frown, Ianto made sure the data was sent up to his workstation up at the Hub. If it still seemed odd once he had a proper look at it, he'd pass it off to Tosh. It was probably nothing, but one could never be too careful when dealing with the Rift.

TBC Monday.