Fic: The System
Apr. 30th, 2008 11:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
buttononthetopTitle: The System
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Thru 2-5 "Adam"
Disclaimer: Jack and Ianto belong to Russell T. Davies and the Mighty Beeb. Just goofin' around!
Summary: Following the events in "Adam" Jack comes up with a new system...
Notes: Suffering from lack of plot bunnies right now, but I wanted to be writing so this is what came out. Comments are like crack to me now. Seriously, I'm addicted!! :o)
A few weeks earlier…
Jack gathered his team in the conference room for the weekly status meeting. After hearing updates from everyone, he stood up and moved to the end of the table.
“Alright, last item. I have a new system that I would like to try out.” He pulled a small red electronic device from his pocket. It was roughly the size and shape of an iPhone.
“It’s not an iPhone,” he said. Gwen, who had sat up eagerly in her chair, fell back with a disappointed sigh.
“Basically this is a pager. Thanks to Toshiko’s brilliance, this device is hooked into the entire operating system of the hub. Any alarm, any fluctuation in the rift monitor, anything – and this little baby will tell us.” Jack passed the device to Owen who was sitting closest to him.
“So this is what I’m proposing,” he paused. “No, actually let me start with why I’m proposing this.” Jack leaned both hands on the table and looked intently at his team. “We’re getting burned out, guys. We’re here late every night, sometimes all night. Now I know things have been bad recently, but we have to learn to step back. And I know this sounds strange coming from me, hell I live here! But we’re treading in dangerous waters. I’ve seen what happens when a Torchwood team breaks down and turns on itself, it’s not pretty.”
Jack paused again, an ineffably sad look on his face. Lost in his own memories of the past, he didn’t see the guilty looks passing between the others. When he noticed them, he laughed without mirth. “I’m not talking about Abbadon. We all survived that. It gets worse.”
Owen finished poking at the pager and passed it to Gwen. “So what’s the plan, Jack?” he asked. “I can say right now I’m in favor of anything that gets me a night off.”
Jack smiled. “Glad to hear that.” He sat down again and told them The Plan. “With that pager, we can monitor the hub and even respond to a lot of the issues remotely. Tosh will go over exactly how it works, but basically this is it: we each take a night to be responsible for the hub. It will rotate between us, so you’ll be on one night, off the next four. This is just for monitoring purposes. We’re still on-call 24/7, that will never change. But with this new system, we’ll all be able to go home at six with the rest of the world, have a real life. Gwen can plan her wedding, Owen can go…do whatever it is you do alone, Owen.”
The others chuckled and shifted in their seats. The idea was tempting, no question.
Gwen asked, “So give us a scenario, Jack. What happens when that thing goes off?”
“Well, you’ll be able to tell what the alarm is on the pager. If it’s something we need to address immediately, you would call me first and then notify the rest of the team in a logical order. For example, Weevil attack – call me, then call Owen, then the rest of the team. Uh…a request for police assistance? Call me, then call Gwen, etc. Common sense. What do you think?”
“Hell yes!” Owen yelled.
“I’m in favor of trying it,” Ianto said, “But it’s really up to you Jack, since you’re the one usually monitoring the hub.”
“Well, after God-knows how many years, I’m ready for a break,” Jack said, smiling at Ianto.
“We can all help,” Tosh said. “The pager is really quite easy to use.”
Gwen, who was still looking at the little red device, handed it to Tosh and said, “I’m in. Show us how it works, Tosh?”
As the others gathered around Toshiko to get the low-down on the pager, Jack leaned his chair back on two legs, braced his foot on the table, watched and smiled. Ever since they’d lost those two days, the team had been, for lack of a better term, freaked out. They’d been spending every waking hour trying to find out what happened, trying to make sure that whatever it was didn’t happen again.
Jack had spent that time thinking about his team and what to do. He didn’t know what had happened during the missing time any more than the others, but he did have vague memories of how he felt. Ret-con didn’t work on him the same as everyone else. The others were left with a total blank for those two days, but Jack always retained a sense of himself during any erased time. It happened whenever he’d been Ret-conned, not that he ever bothered to share this information with Torchwood or anyone else. No need to spill all his secrets after all.
What he remembered, well that wasn’t quite right – what he felt from that time was a division among the team. Something or someone had turned them against each other, against themselves. Jack wouldn’t let that happen. Not again. Not with this team. And there was one more thing. Jack sensed that his feelings for Ianto had somehow played a crucial part in whatever had gone down. He had tried everything he could think of to bring back those two days, or even a part of them, but had failed. Jack just knew in his soul that…well, he might as well admit it to himself, that loving Ianto had saved them.
He watched his lover as he stood behind Tosh, bending a little at the waist to focus on what she was saying. Ianto’s hands were clasped behind his back and he wore a look of concentration which always drove Jack crazy. As if he could feel the weight of Jack’s stare, Ianto’s lips twitched slightly. He stood upright and brought his hands up to straighten his tie, tightening the knot a bit and then smoothing the blue-striped silk over his chest. Jack stifled a groan. Ianto’s lips definitely twitched that time. In fact, he was forced to bite his lip to keep from grinning, an action that had Jack squirming in his chair.
Ianto looked up and met Jack’s eyes, a look of delicious mischief playing across his face. Jack lost himself in that blue gaze, imaging for a moment just exactly what he planned to do with his “four nights off” in the very near future. He was so wrapped up in thoughts of Ianto, sweating, breathing hard, spread naked beneath him that he didn’t realize Tosh had finished her little how-to. Ianto jerked his head at the group and Jack overbalanced, tipping his chair back precariously before slamming it down, banging his knee in the process.
In answer to the questioning looks from his team (well, three were questioning, one was definitely trying not to laugh) Jack said brightly, “So we’re all set then? We go ahead with The Pager System?”
They all nodded in unison.
Gwen, ever the cop, said “What’s the rota?”
“Hmmm, how about seniority?” Owen suggested.
“Alphabetical?” Tosh threw out there.
“First or last names?” Ianto asked.
“Height!” Owen called out and then said, “Ow!” as Gwen whacked him on the shoulder.
Jack stood up and motioned for the pager. Tosh handed it to him, surreptitiously wiping Owen’s fingerprints off the screen as she did. Jack slid it in his pocket and said, “Seniority. So that’s me tonight, Tosh tomorrow, then Owen, Ianto and Gwen. Fair?” More nods. “Alright then, let’s go to work.”
Everyone filed out of the conference room, Ianto staying behind to tidy up their mugs and wipe down the table. He was startled but not surprised when Jack snuck back in to grab him from behind.
“Tosh is a genius. I’m free,” Jack whispered in Ianto’s ear, his lips tickling Ianto’s skin.
Ianto chuckled, “Glad to hear it, sir. I’ll be able to save so much money now.”
“Ha ha ha,” Jack muttered against his neck. “We’re free. No more trying to cram into my bed.” His hands began to move over Ianto’s chest, sliding under his jacket. “No more having to get out of your bed and leave you in the middle of the night, every night.” He turned Ianto in his arms and kissed him, softly at first but then with a growing passion that had Ianto sagging, boneless against him. They both pulled back, breathless, to stare at each other for a moment, desire written plainly across their faces.
Owen’s sharp bark of laughter from below brought them to their senses. Which was just as well, since Jack had been a hairsbreadth from laying Ianto out on the conference table and taking him right there. Ianto reached up to caress Jack’s face with a smile full of promises. “So, any plans tonight sir?” he asked as he picked up the tea tray.
“Oh, I have plans, Ianto,” Jack said, following his lover out the door. “I have lots of plans…”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Some of Jack's Plans can be found here: The System: Night Off and The System: Stress Relief
