Chapter Text
Back off boogaloo, I said back off boogaloo...
The eerie music played so loud they could barely stand it.
Wake up meathead, don't pretend that you are dead...
“Not funny,” Ianto told it.
“You want us to back off, is that it?!” Jack yelled over the noise. “How about you leave us alone?!”
Ianto grabbed his head in both hands, overwhelmed and confused. “Shut up!” he screamed.
Surprisingly, all fell silent, save for the echoes of the song fading into the shadows of the dream-building.
“Thanks,” Jack told him. “So I guess it is the bogeyman. Boogaloo?”
“Boogaloo is a style of dance,” Ianto informed.
“Yes, I know that, Mr. Trivia,” Jack answered irritably.
“That's it...it's trivia,” Ianto began thinking aloud. “Ringo Starr's video for that song had monsters in it. This dream, nightmare, it's a bunch of nonsense, tied together with threads of reality.”
“O—kay,” Jack's word and tone disagreed with one another. “It said wake up. How do we do that?”
Ianto stared at Jack. The pieces were coming together in his head, but the question was...if he was correct, did they have the courage it was going to take to defeat it? “I think...” Before he could finish, the growling started up again, like before. He was careful to try and stay as far away from the walls as possible this time, so as not to be in striking distance.
“Trying to scare us, is that it?!” Jack shouted angrily. “Why don't you show yourself and face us?!”
“I don't really think that's such a good—”
Before Ianto had a chance to finish, something swooped down from the ceiling, and he felt long talons swiping at his neck. Jack pushed him out of the way seconds before it would have slashed his throat.
Jack pulled Ianto behind him protectively and continued taunting the creature. “You haven't attacked me yet, you coward,” he told it. “C'mon, give me your best shot!” He held out his arms in a familiar come-and-get-me gesture.
Warmth infused Ianto at Jack offering up himself to take the attention away from him, but the flash of intuition he'd gotten told him it would be futile. “Jack, listen to me,” he began urgently, grabbing his shoulders. “How do you defeat the Boogeyman?”
“If I knew that--”
“No, think!” he insisted, remembering the things he'd read on the internet. “The Boogeyman preys on fear. It creates terror. It's the nightmares we have as children, and the shadows of past trauma we carry as adults.”
Jack went still. “We're feeding it,” he realized.
Ianto nodded. “Playing right into its hands. Or claws. Or...”
“If we have to heal our past traumas before we get rid of it, we're going to be here a long time,” Jack admitted with a snort. God knew they both had more than their share of those.
“No,” Ianto began, swallowing nervously. “We have to fight the fear.”
“With what?” Jack demanded.
Ianto turned and faced the blackness. He took a deep breath and let feelings of love fill him, crowding out the fear and doubt. “You have no power over me! I'm grateful for the second chance I was given,” he told it, with a quick glance in Jack's direction. “I'm happy to be alive,” he insisted. “Blessed to have my family and friends. Tosh, Gwen, Owen.”
Jack caught on and followed Ianto's lead. “I'm grateful too,” he said. “For all the people I've had the opportunity to know, to love. No matter what the price, it's worth it.”
The blackness seemed to be fading, the shadows getting noticeably brighter.
Now, the hardest part. The part that caused the greatest fear, but had to be done. It was the only way to escape the clutches of doubt and negativity. Ianto grabbed Jack's face in both hands and kissed him with all of the pent-up emotions inside of him. “I love you, Jack,” he told him, struggling to defeat the terror that wanted to mute him. “More than I've ever loved anyone,” Ianto revealed his most closely guarded secret.
It was light enough now to see Jack's stunned look; they were connected enough to sense his inner struggle.
“I tried really hard not to,” Jack admitted, resting his forehead against Ianto's. “Failed spectacularly. “I'm in love with you, too,” he confessed, just a breath against Ianto's lips, then they were kissing again.
The next thing Ianto knew, he was blinking in the bright lights of the Hub, still sitting at his station. Owen was peering at him, skin bluish in the glow from the computer monitor.
“Oi, Tosh, he's awake!” Owen bellowed, just as Toshiko and Jack came running out of the office.
“So's Jack,” Tosh announced.
“Lights are back on,” Owen added to the unnecessary pronouncements.
“I need a stiff drink,” Ianto informed them, and that was probably obvious too.
“Make mine a double,” Came wholeheartedly from Jack.
XXX
A short time later, they were back in the conference room for an informal debriefing. Even Jack had a shot of whiskey in front of him, rather than his usual water.
“Mostepians,” Tosh said, passing around the printouts she'd made. “A species that exists on wavelengths we humans can't usually interact with. Animals can sometimes sense them, maybe your cat is staring at nothing, or your dog whining in fear for no reason. No one even knows if they're from another planet, or really the bogeymen of myth. They feed on fear. Only positive emotions can defeat them.”
Toshiko had finally found a scrawled addendum in an ancient file that hadn't been categorized correctly, leading to a few more paragraphs elsewhere. They hadn't found anything on the Mostepians right away because, honestly, they usually weren't very... dangerous. Easily overlooked as mundane nuisance, some obscure footnotes to otherwise routine reports. A plague of nightmares that faded away when the sufferer dealt with them, by counseling or medication. The biggest danger was from the fear itself.
“How'd you kill it? Give it a big ol' snog?” Owen joked.
“Something like that,” Ianto said, glancing at Jack.
Love defeats fear.
“Well, if that's sorted, time for Tosh to go home for a kip and me to get the hell out of here,” Owen proclaimed, rising from his seat. “Don't let the bedbugs bite,” he joked. “Or Jack,” he added mischievously.
Tosh shook her head in exasperation. “Goodnight,” she told her colleagues, following out behind Owen.
The silence in the room after they left was deafening.
Jack broke it first. “Why us?”
“I believe we're the poster children for 'past trauma'.”
“A veritable smorgasbord for the creature, then.”
Ianto gave a halfhearted laugh. It was awkward now, and he hated it. He needed to believe they would get past it though, after all, they'd overcome some pretty big fears already. What point would reluctance serve now? Still, he felt the need to be conciliatory. “Look, Jack, if you--”
Jack cut him off, but his voice was carefully casual. “That's not exactly how I would have chosen to go about it.”
“I'm sorry.” Ianto couldn't help the guilt, as if the creature had targeted him specifically, even if had been both of them. Jack had just as much reason to be attractive to the Mostepian, probably more.
“Me too,” Jack told him. “I would have, you know. Eventually.”
“You would?”
“Maybe an intimate candlelight dinner, moonlight stroll...”
“Sounds romantic,” Ianto murmured, keeping the yearning from his tone.
“Not your thing, I guess,” Jack said, but with the whisper of a question behind it.
“You could try me. Sometime,” Ianto answered, with a small smile.
Jack smiled too, as he rose and headed for the door. He turned back at the threshold. “In that case, prepared to be wooed.”
Ianto watched him make his way back to the office. Then he got up too, turning off the light before leaving the room. He couldn't help wondering. Would they have ever gotten around to declarations? Or would they have waited out of fear, until it was too late?
“Thank you,” Ianto told the darkness, then he closed the door and went to join Jack.
THE END
9/23/19