Fic: Reunited (7/15)

[aibhinn_fics]

Title: Reunited (7/15)
Author: aibhinn
Pairings: Jack/Rose, Jack/Ten, Jack/Ten/Rose, Ten/Rose, mentions of (past) Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13.
Spoilers: Doctor Who through "Doomsday", Torchwood through "End of Days".
Summary: The Rift is much more active than it was, and has been disgorging aliens and out-of-time people at an alarming rate… including one person Jack never expected to see again.
Disclaimer: Not mine. Everything belongs to Auntie Beeb. I'm stuck here on the far side of the wrong continent, playing in her sandbox.
Author's note: Many, many thanks must go to my betas, rabid1st, larielromeniel, joely_jo, and sensiblecat, for their assistance. Particularly Jo and Ruth, who actually betaed this on Easter. It wouldn't be the same without you, ladies!


Part I | Part II | Part III | Part IV | Part V | Part VI | Part VIII | Part IX | Part X | Part XI | Part XII | Part XIII | Part XIV | Part XV





It had been years since Rose had awakened in a lover's arms. She'd almost forgotten what it felt like. Sighing happily, she stretched and arched backward into Jack's chest. He chuckled, pressing a kiss against her shoulder. "Good morning, sleepy."

"'Mornin'." She smiled, turning over so she could kiss him properly. It took a moment for what she was seeing to register. "You're dressed!"

"Yep. Breakfast in bed: just one more service we provide." He waggled his eyebrows playfully and treated her to one of his thousand-watt smiles, then bounced off the bed. "I went out and got take-aways. Let's see, if I remember correctly, and if you haven't gone and done something evil like change your tastes over the sixty years we've been apart, you'd be looking for hot, sweet tea—" He handed her a paper take-away cup and she took an exploratory sip. Heaven. "—and something breadish." He brought out a Styrofoam container and handed it to her; she put the tea down and opened it to find a toasted bagel. "That ought to last you until we get to a restaurant and I can feed you properly."

"You—" She reached out for him, grabbing him by one of his braces and tugging him forward. He shifted willingly, and she kissed him again, harder. "—are wonderful." She looked around him. "Didn't you get any for yourself?"

"Ate it on the way back. You put me through a hell of a workout last night, woman. I need my strength."

Rose let her eyes twinkle at him as she bit into her bagel. "Once you've fed me properly, I'll see what I can do to make up for it," she teased. But there was a weight on her heart at his words, and it took her a bit to work out what it was. Finally she finished her last bite of bagel and said, "Jack?"

"Mmm?" He grinned at her and proffered a paper serviette.

She wiped her face, trying to put the feeling in words. Finally, she said, "I need to find a job. And a flat, as soon as I can."

"We'll find you a flat within a day or two, I promise," he said, shifting to lie stretched out beside her, propped up on an elbow. "And a job as well." He cocked his head and looked at her as she sipped her tea. She still wasn't quite comfortable and something of that must have showed, for he added, "Something wrong?"

"It's just… all this…" She waved her hand to indicate the room, the shopping from yesterday, the empty food container, her cup of tea. "You bought all this, not me. I didn't pay for any of it. And it makes me…uncomfortable, I suppose."

Jack sat up slowly. "You don't think I took you to bed as an exchange for—"

"God, no!" she blurted, horrified, and his face cleared. "No, no, no. We slept together last night because we're both adults and we both wanted it. But that's part of the problem, Jack—I'm an adult, and it's been almost seventy years since the last time someone else supported me without my giving anything in return. I want to pay my own way. I need to. Otherwise, I'm…a pet, or something." A small, wistful smile curved her mouth as she remembered something Mickey had said long, long ago. "The tin dog."

Jack gently took the tea from her grasp and set it down, then took both of her hands in both of his. "Rose Tyler," he said firmly, "you are not a pet of any sort, tin or otherwise. You are my friend, and my lover, and I hope with all my heart you will continue to be both of those, but you are not a pet. If you really need to find a job in order to be comfortable, then we'll find you a job and a flat that you can afford, and go from there. But please, let me take care of you until then, all right? Just the basics," he added, as she opened her mouth to protest. "Nothing fancy—well, beyond whatever you bought at the lingerie shop last night." She flushed slightly, and although he was grinning as he spoke, she thought she sensed the beginnings of anger, or perhaps hurt, in his tone of voice. Maybe it had been a little to early to raise such a delicate issue between them.

"You are not, and never will be, my kept woman," he continued, "and I'm not trying to be your sugar daddy. I'm just…helping you out for the moment, okay?"

She looked in his eyes, and nodded slowly. "Yeah, okay." But another nudge from her conscience made her say, "You don't think I was saying you were doing any of that on purpose, do you?"

"Of course not." Jack scooted back so he was sitting against the headboard, and held out his arms to her. "Come here."

She let him turn her round and tug her so she was sitting sideways in his lap, feet in the spot she'd just vacated. He stroked a hand over her back. "Look," he said quietly. "We've still got a lot of learning to do. We've got to get to know each other all over again. There are bound to be confusions, misunderstandings, and outright mistakes. We just have to be sure we talk. No holding things in, or ignoring problems hoping they'll go away. And we have to listen to each other, too. Okay?"

"Never go to bed angry," Rose said, remembering the advice her mum had given her just before her wedding to Don.

"Exactly." He kissed her. "I'm willing to stay up all night talking things out, if we need to. But you have to be willing as well. Are you?"

He really means this, Rose thought, looking into his intensely blue eyes. He means for us to have a serious relationship, not just something casual because I'm handy and he's randy. The unintentional rhyme made her grin almost as much as the realisation did, and she reached up to place her hands on his cheeks. "Absolutely," she said, and kissed him again.

The kiss quickly became complex, and with Jack's enthusiastic help Rose climbed fully into his lap, straddling him as she tugged his braces down and pulled his shirt out of his trousers, working the buttons loose. His hands cupped her breasts, thumbing her nipples, as she whimpered softly into his mouth, feeling the slick heat of arousal beginning to pool within her. Being faithful to Mickey, though it was the only route she could possibly have taken, had meant she'd not had a lover in a very, very long time, and her body was reminding her just how long it had been.

The door burst open without warning and Rose found herself shoved across the bed and onto the floor. Her training kicked in even before she was completely aware of what had happened, and she managed to cushion her fall and then flattened herself against the floor in case of gunfire. When no shots rang out, she pulled herself cautiously forward along the cheap carpet to peer around the corner of the bed. Jack was also on the floor, but on his side with his revolver in his hand, as though he'd dived there and grabbed his gun on the way. The revolver was aimed unerringly at the heart of one of the blokes from Torchwood—the young one—who held his hands up, clearly unarmed.

"Ianto," Jack said with mixed relief and irritation. He un-cocked the gun and set it down on the bedside table, climbing to his feet. "You could've knocked."

"We didn't know for certain where you were, sir," Ianto said, lowering his hands and straightening his suit very slightly. "You weren't answering your headset."

"Left it in the SUV." Jack turned to Rose, who was still flat on the floor. "You okay?"

"Yeah." With a bit of effort, she dragged the cheap quilt off the untidy bed and wrapped it around herself, rising to her feet once she was covered. "Thanks," she added. "For getting me out of the way when I was unarmed." She'd have bruises later, but it wasn't like she'd never had bruises before; and the way he'd tossed her one direction and thrown himself the opposite way would have confused any gunman. He'd better not do that when I am armed, though, she thought, and then realised she was thinking as though she'd be working with him.

Ianto was determinedly not looking at her. "We've got a bit of a situation, sir," he said, and hesitated uncomfortably. It was clear to Rose that he wasn't sure he should say anything with her in the room. Fair enough; he had no reason to trust her, and certainly no reason to think she should be privy to anything that might be considered need-to-know information. Yet Ianto's suspicion was more of a shock to her than she might have expected.

"I'll just go for a shower," she said diplomatically. Holding up the hem of the quilt, she slipped past the foot of the bed and between Ianto and Jack to where yesterday's shopping waited. She picked up the bag with her second set of clothing, and also the bag from the chemist's, and disappeared through the door into the bathroom.

***

The door clicked shut, and Jack heard the taps turn on. "All right," he said, sitting down on the edge of the bed and beginning to button his shirt back up. "What's the situation?" He spoke a little more harshly than he'd meant to; it annoyed him that Ianto wasn't willing to trust Rose, though he knew that in Ianto's place, he wouldn't have trusted her yet either.

"We've got two teams out on calls," Ianto said. "Gwen's out following up a lead on a child dressed in medieval peasant clothing, and Tosh and Owen are looking for an alien that's been sighted down by the docks. But Tosh's Rift-activity program is showing multiple spots of disturbance. I think we're going to have even more come-throughs today—and I'm afraid it could get nasty."

"So why are you here, and not back at the Hub monitoring the computer?" Jack asked logically, standing to tuck his shirt back in and pull his braces up.

"Because we didn't know where you were!" Ianto snapped. Jack blinked at the ferocity in his voice. "Because someone had to come and find you! You went off with this Rose person; nobody knows who she is but you claim to have known her years before, and you're suddenly completely obsessed with her, wrapped up in her to the point of leaving work yesterday and going out with her all day, then spending the night with her. And then you're not answering your headset. Doesn't that strike you as odd, Jack? A little out of character? Something that might indicate tampering, or possession, or any of a number of really bad things that should make us worry?"

"Or, it could be that she's exactly what she seems to be, and I was looking after her," Jack pointed out as he slid his arms into the sleeves of his greatcoat. He understood more than ever why the Doctor had worn his black leather jacket constantly: it was a form of armour, and putting it on was like getting into uniform, only more so. "You could have trusted me, if not her."

"Could we?" asked Ianto, staring at him so directly that Jack had to fight the impulse to look away. "And if you'd been fooled? What if she was some sort of alien who could reach into your mind and become whoever you wanted her to be?"

"Which she wasn't." Jack's teeth were gritted. Not because he was angry at Ianto—because he was irritated with himself for not having thought of this. His joy at having found Rose again had blinded him to the dangers, and he'd run off without a thought for the concern his employees—his friends—would be feeling when they saw him suddenly so wrapped up in this stranger. "But you didn't know that," he admitted.

"No, we didn't."

Jack sighed, rubbing his face with his hands before letting them drop back to his sides. "Okay. You're right. I'm sorry; I should've paid more attention to the way this looked to everyone else."

"Or at least kept your headset with you." The water turned off, and they both glanced toward the bathroom door. "I'll leave you two alone so Rose can get dressed," Ianto said. "But then we could use you. Will she be all right here alone?"

Jack grinned mirthlessly. "Oh, yes. If I can convince her to stay—which I can't."

"You're not going to take her with you? Into the field?"

Jack chuckled. "Ianto," he said, resting a hand on the younger man's shoulder, "trust me, she's got more field experience than you'd ever believe."

Ianto gave a slight, uncomfortable flinch, and Jack was suddenly aware of the picture the two of them must have presented when he'd come in: Jack with his shirt undone, Rose naked and straddling his lap. He hesitated. "About…this," he said carefully. "Rose and me. Does it—I mean, are you…okay with it?"

Ianto gave him an unreadable look. "Our…relationship…was never meant to be long-term, Jack," he said quietly. "We both knew that. If she is who you think she is…then I'm glad you're happy."

There were too many questions left unanswered by that statement, but Jack didn't get to ask any of them. The door to the bathroom opened in a cloud of steam, and Ianto slipped out from his grasp and left, shutting the bedroom door behind him.

***

Rose sighed and leaned back against the basin, fingers tapping idly against the ceramic as she considered what she was overhearing. She didn't wanted to listen, she really didn't, but the walls were thin, and the water pressure low, and there was no way to avoid hearing the two of them.

Ianto brought up some good points—some very good points. Points that she herself would have thought of immediately, had she been in his shoes. Jack knew for certain she was who she said she was because of their previous relationship and the terrible secret of immortality that they'd shared with each other, but nobody else knew anything about her. And given what Torchwood worked with, the possibility of alien influence was something none of them could dismiss.

Nothing for it: she was going to have to prove herself to them. Whether she decided to take Jack up on his offer to work for Torchwood or not—which would open up its own can of worms, if they were to be lovers while he was technically her boss, and was something else they'd have to discuss—she would need to prove to the rest of the Torchwood team that she was worthy of him. She winced at the phrase; it sounded so corny, so melodramatic. But having been part of a close-knit team herself for many years, she knew how protective they could get of one another, and how possessive they could be over relationships. If she didn't find a way to prove herself straightaway, the others would find ways to create difficulties. And that was the last thing she wanted, for herself or Jack.

Turning back to the mirror, she pulled her hair up into a loose, damp ponytail high on her head, out of the way, and opened the door. She met Jack's concerned gaze with feigned equanimity, and smiled. "So," she said as the bedroom door closed. "What does a girl have to do to get her firearms qualifications round here?"