Work Text:
In the end, Jack went with the cryogenics. It allowed his existence to be useful occasionally, yet prevented the suffering of the mortal world. Would have been perfect, however, to his annoyance it ended up being a bit more than just once in awhile...
2011:
Awareness came in increments, as his body was slowly warmed from it's frozen sleep. Jack floated, dozed for hours, covered with a blanket and on a cot in the New Hub infirmary. Machines beeped above him, keeping track of his vitals. Finally, a loud alarm coincided with the fog lifting, and he saw the person standing by the bed.
“What's happening?” Jack asked Mickey Smith, about to swing his legs off the bed and spring into action saving the world from whatever threat, well, threatened. His brain wasn't quite in gear yet, but he was sure he still looked dashing.
“Hi ya, Sleeping beauty. Do you have the password to the hidden archives on level ten?”
Jack blinked. “That's not why you de-thawed me, right?!” Surely it couldn't be...
“How else are we supposed to get into the files?!”
Jack only gave them the code after they'd promised to put him in cryo again immediately and without an argument. They really wanted that code.
2013:
Jack coughed, shrugging off the lingering cold and turning to face whatever threat awaited. He wasn't even out of the unit this time, must be something urgent. Someone he didn't know was waiting for him this time. A beautiful blond to be exact, but he didn't have the time to flirt.
“Hey Harkness, do you speak Xflorien?” she asked.
Jack blinked. “Uh, no.”
The blond hit the button that started up the cryo process again and slammed the door shut.
2017:
They'd stopped bothering with the long process of defrosting him somewhere along the way, after they'd found out that letting him die and come back to life was quicker, cheaper, and easier.
“It better be important this time, I need my beauty sleep,” Jack quipped after gasping back to life.
Yet another new face stood in front of him, a thin framed male who looked barely out of his teens, with acne to match. “Felix pushed the big button on the alien tech we brought in, and now he's only two feet tall. You know how to reverse it, don't you?”
Jack blinked twice and counted to ten.
2020:
Awareness came slowly and gently this time, but it didn't improve Jack's mood. After all, to him it was as if they were pestering him for some trivial thing every few minutes. The passage of time didn't affect him in cryo, so he really couldn't grasp the reality of how long had passed.
“The world better be ending!” Jack growled to the room even before opening his eyes.
“The world's always ending,” said a very familiar, much loved voice. A voice he thought he'd never hear again...
Jack jumped off the table so fast he would have stumbled, if not for the hand that reached out to steady him. His eyes followed the hand up an immaculately dressed arm, to a red tie, and finally to a face. That face.
Ianto Jones.
Ianto quirked an eyebrow at him. “I would say, took you long enough, but you didn't actually do what I told you to,” he said with both reproach and fondness, as only Ianto could.
Jack rubbed his eyes, hard, to be sure it wasn't a mirage. “Uh--” he stuttered intelligently. He would have thought he was dreaming except that there were no dreams in cryo. Therefore it had to be real. With that, his voice returned. The shakiness of it was from disuse, and he was sticking to that excuse if anyone asked. “I know you aren't much of a talker, but you might have told me exactly how to do it.”
“Guess I don't know everything, after all.”
And then Jack was pulling him in, lips covering the inviting mouth and kissing him like there was no tomorrow.
He wasn't dreaming.
It really was Ianto.
And he didn't care about anything else.
07/11/19