Chapter Text
“Come on, you can come home with us,” Jack said, leading them toward the door.
“Is that an offer?”
“In an empty cell. This time we might even leave the door open.”
“Awww, I was so hoping, I still have those handcuffs…”
“Be good, or Ianto really will make you sleep in a cell.”
“I can work with that.”
It was quiet in the room that Jack and Ianto had called home for over a year. Ianto closed the door behind him, careful not to spill the tray with the coffee. Jack Harkness was lying back on the settee in the underground room that served as living quarters for the two of them as Ianto came in with the last coffee of the evening. “Comfortable?” he asked. His lover had changed, putting on the silk robe that Ianto had bought him, one of the presents that they had decided to exchange privately. While the team knew about them, some things just needed to stay private, like the new handmade leather journal with his initials and the Torchwood logo tooled into the cover, proof that Jack knew him very well.
“Getting there,” Jack said with a smile, patting the space beside him. Looking at him, hair still slightly damp from the shower, blue eyes sparkling with a combination of mischief and desire, reminded Ianto of some of the other presents, definitely private. Jack had presented him with a small mountain of gifts, but when he objected, the immortal had simply said if there wasn’t anything he could do to make their lives less than insane, the least he could do was let him spoil him a bit. It wasn’t like any other part of their lives was normal. Ianto had thought about protesting, but the obvious pleasure it gave Jack had been enough to shut him up. He’d merely asked his lover to pick a couple of appropriate ones for the public exchange and then amended it to things that he, Ianto, would find appropriate in public. Over a hundred years on Earth and still Jack had some funny ideas about what was and was not appropriate.
“Everything all right out there? She hasn’t killed him yet, has she?” Jack asked.
They had brought John Hart back with them from dinner. It turned out that the ex-time agent had literally just blown into town and yet, like Jack, Ianto figured having him where they could keep an eye on him was better than either having to bail him out or clean up after him. What neither of them counted on was his reaction to Johnson. When they had entered the Hub bearing an overloaded plate of leftovers (Jack had never heard of portion control either) and a gift from him and Jack that had accidentally gotten in the wrong pile, she had been surprised. Johnson knew that the team was uncertain about her, but that hadn’t seemed to bother her. Being included in the gift exchange had surprised her, though she had gifts for them. Everything about the woman made Ianto curious, but not enough to ask.
John Hart had laid eyes on her and was instantly smitten though, and not in the way he usually was with just about anything moving. Jack had seemed only slightly surprised before shrugging. John liked to play it dangerously, they both knew that. After introductions, Johnson opened her gift, an extremely rare book on orchids Jack had found. Ianto, usually the first to know anything, had not even known she liked orchids, much less that raising them was her hobby, but Johnson was even more private than he was, and that took work.
All the while, John Hart had sat nearby just watching. Johnson had blushed, actually blushed, and stammered her thanks while Ianto offered to heat her dinner and Jack practically dragged John off the show him to show him where he was sleeping and probably warn him off, though maybe not. After a status update, Ianto had suggested a shower for Jack, who had been in the kitchen all day, while he made coffee. When he emerged, John Hart had returned to his place on the edge of the desk, in full flirt mode, while discussing the merits of various firearms in medium range combat situations. He left them to it, having much better things to do with his time.
“Not yet,” he answered, setting the coffee down and tugging off the burgundy jumper that Gwen and Rhys had given him. “I trust that if she does, she’ll have him taken care of, with the paperwork filled in, by morning. Unlike some people, she knows how to follow procedure,” he said, as Jack pulled him down against him. For a few moments there was no sound but rustling fabric and the odd creak as the two men got comfortable together on the old couch, not as easy as it might seem for two men who were of a height.
Once they were comfortable with their coffee, Jack went back to the subject at hand. “Are you saying I don’t know how to handle paperwork?”
“No, I am saying you choose not to.”
“Hmmmm,” was Jack’s only response as he relaxed slowly against his lover.
“Overall, I think it went well,” Ianto said after a moment.
“Yeah, the kids got on well. Lucy and Micah exchanged email addresses and I think Rhys and Johnny made plans for the rugby,” Jack said, trying to pull Ianto back as he reached for the coffee but unsuccessfully.
“We’re invited as well, barring alien invasion, and Andy managed to get the nerve to ask Lois for coffee when they left. Very successful, I’d say.”
“Good, I was thinking of doing it again.” Ianto, in the process of sipping his coffee, took a deep breath while forgetting to swallow and dissolved in coughing.
“Not until next year, I was thinking Easter?” Jack said, after the coughing had subsided. Ianto gave him a baleful look, but Jack carried on. “Right now, I am more interested in putting at least one more of those gifts to use.” Before Ianto could do more than smile, Jack had him and the box in question gathered and was guiding him behind the screen that hid their bed. Everything would take care of itself, Ianto decided. After all, it was Christmas. “I’m thinking lamb…”