The Hunt

Disclaimer: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones and Andy Davidson do not belong to me, but to their wonderful writers, Russell T Davies, the BBC, and to John Barrowman, Gareth David-Lloyd and Tom Price for being brilliant and good at acting. I’m just borrowing them, and promise I will put all three of them in the shower together before the end. I make no money from this, please don’t sue me.


The Hunt – Chapter Seven

“Yeah…” The voice that echoed out into the office from the other end of the telephone line was heavy and deep, and just a little rough around the edges. The speaker suddenly inhaled, making it noisy, letting the breath out again in a low intermittent groan. It conjured up a perfect image of someone being woken by a phone call, and Ianto smiled. Jack didn’t.

“You’re working tonight,” Jack informed Andy over the loudspeaker on his office telephone. It was the first thing he said, and Ianto could almost feel Andy’s disorientation in the short silence that followed.

“Oh, it’s you,” Andy said in the end, not an ounce of surprise in it, and then his voice changed. “Hi, Andy!” he said brightly. “Well, hello again, Jack! Killed any aliens lately?” Ianto resisted the urge to smile again, while Jack just glanced briefly at the telephone, unimpressed.

“And no, I’m not,” Andy argued tiredly without waiting for a reply, dropping the sarcasm, still not quite awake enough to really understand what he was involved in. “I was on a long shift already this morning and I need to sleep.”

Momentarily, Ianto reflected on his own day, during which he and Jack had not only put in a day’s work, but had also caught up on their own sleep. Obviously, Andy didn’t keep a clock near the bed, something that he proved with his next sleepy question. “What time is it?”

“Eleven-thirty.” Jack replied, making Ianto check his watch even though he knew it was a lie. There was a kind of sudden rustling, a somewhat painful-sounding bang, and a muffled curse from the other end of the phone. Jack smiled at last - coldly. “Minus one hour.”

“…” The stony silence from the other end could have been filled with any number of colourful and derogatory names. It was just that kind of silence.

“We’ll be expecting you,” Jack said.

“Expect away,” returned Andy, careless, the huff clearly carrying into the office. “I’m not getting out of bed.”

“Yes, you are.” Jack would not be argued with. Ianto looked to the phone as if it might have the answer. Eventually, Andy replied.

“You know, you could always try asking me to come around,” Andy pointed out. “I know it’s old-fashioned, but…” There was a pause that was filled with movement, and Ianto could quite clearly imagine Andy sat on the side of the bed now, phone held to his ear. “I mean, I have been known to turn down invitations before, but I’m sure I wouldn’t do that to you, Jack.” It wasn’t quite sarcasm, just teasing, and Ianto saw Jack almost smile at Andy’s words. “Not when it’s such good coffee.” Jack’s eyes flickered to him, a searching look in them, and Ianto kept the eye contact. “Even if it is a tad too much like Russian Roulette.”

“I’m giving you one hour,” Jack said after a short pause, dropping his gaze and looking away from Ianto back to the phone.

“Aye, aye, Captain!” And if a phone could salute – it surely did. Ianto resisted the urge to giggle at Jack’s genuine astonishment. “Incidentally, how much sleep does he get?” And Ianto’s amusement vanished, just like that.

“He gets me up,” Jack confided to Andy after a short deliberating breath and a sidelong glance at Ianto, as though he was talking to a sympathetic friend. He did actually remember waking Jack up, but it hadn’t been at all like this – had it? Actually, now he kind of remembered Jack wanting to sleep in a bit longer, but it had been easy to convince him otherwise. Well, five minutes worth of easy, anyway.

“Really?” Andy said, coughing a little, taking Jack’s words literally. “When I get there, I’ll have questions.”

Jack wasn’t fazed at all by the way Andy had deliberately mistaken his words. “Good. You now have less than one hour to come up with them.”

“All right! All right!” Andy snapped back, clearly tired of being bullied. “There’s no need to get the whip out.” Ianto cringed slightly. Not the best thing Andy could have said to Jack Harkness. As he expected, Jack didn’t even miss a beat.

“If that’s what it takes to make you –” he began with a smile, and then stopped when the phone line came out with an endless electronic drone. Andy had put the phone down on his end. Calm and collected, with barely a raised eyebrow, Jack leaned forward and ended the call. Then he graced Ianto with a slight nod and a look of satisfied accomplishment.

“He’s on his way.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

“Where do you want to start this time?” Ianto asked, deliberately turning away from the sight of Andy to bring up all of the screens they would need. One monitor for the PNC, another for the electronic files they kept here, and yet another for the CCTV footage Torchwood had. They didn’t keep all of it, but the last two weeks were stored just in case it could be used on an investigation. It would probably come in handy for this.

Andy had turned up while he was getting refreshments ready, and Ianto had returned to find Jack and Andy getting along like old friends. What might have been awkward after the night before didn’t turn out to be so fearsome at all. It was probably helped by the fact that Andy wasn’t in uniform. But then, why should he be?

Ianto tried to put the image of Andy wearing jeans and a casual t-shirt out of his mind, even though it was looking really good on him. Strange that Jack, for being the one to suggest they get on with the list, didn’t seem to want to be involved in the making of it. He’d excused himself more or less straight away without hanging around at all. Odd – though there was paperwork for him to do. Ianto remembered putting it on his desk earlier.

Maybe it might have been best to face what had happened between them all though, since now Ianto couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it, all too aware of where Andy was in relation to him, as if he had developed some strange new sense for the proximity of policemen.

He found himself glancing briefly at the glass wall to Jack’s office, but there wasn’t anyone there, peering out. Jack appeared to have truly left them alone together, and Ianto didn’t want to examine his vague feeling of disappointment too closely.

Once all of the passwords were put in, Ianto turned his chair again, realising Andy hadn’t replied to his question while he’d been lost in thought. Andy was frowning at the screens, dissatisfied in some way. “Do you know what we could really do with?”

Ianto suppressed a sigh, for the third time able to predict the way Andy’s thoughts were going before he even said it. “She wouldn’t do it with you,” Ianto pointed out with a roll of his eyes, surprised to feel a bit resentful at being overlooked. He meant more than one thing by the statement.

“How do you know?” Andy questioned, obviously troubled at being so easily read. Really, it was clear to everyone, and Ianto just shook his head slightly. He cast his eyes down to where the files were that they had begun the night before, and said something he knew was cruel.

“Because she hasn’t done it without you.” It was harsh – needlessly so, and he was sorry to be saying something so wrong about Gwen, yet he wanted to make the point. The thing that Ianto had seen in Andy, the integrity that had made him go for this idea existed in Gwen, but to a lesser extent now. She was becoming less of a police officer, and more a member of Torchwood – which was as it should be. It was what Jack expected her to be. And despite the cruelty of the statement, it was the truth. Gwen hadn’t made this list, and now she never would.

None of that meant he didn’t want to immediately take it back when he saw the effect of it on Andy. He knew full well what Ianto meant by it, and just nodded, saying nothing, swallowing. They’d worked together before Gwen joined Jack and Torchwood. For Ianto, Gwen was slowly changing. For Andy, Gwen was lost. Ianto felt terrible, and it was all going wrong. Really – where was Jack when you needed him?

Ianto sighed and closed his eyes briefly. “Look, just forget I ever –”

“No.” Andy stopped him before he could apologise, and immediately gained more of Ianto’s respect. “You’re right. She wouldn’t – not anymore.”

“But?” Ianto prompted, and Andy just smiled with a little cynicism, as if it were obvious.

“But you would,” he pointed out. And it was obvious, but it wasn’t fair on Gwen. Ianto shook his head in denial.

“That’s not the same thing,” he replied firmly, wishing the conversation could be over now.

“Isn’t it?” Andy asked earnestly, and for a moment Ianto remembered all the things he had done, all the things he had endured to be in this place right here and now. No. It couldn’t ever be the same. It was worse. Much, much worse. He was worse.

He was sure then, for a second, that Andy could see all of that in him. Something about Andy’s regard was so forthright and knowing. Really – how did someone get to be so confident and yet still manage to be easy to hurt? He was like a puzzle Ianto wanted to solve, and Ianto realised right then that for all he knew of Gwen, he didn’t know what Andy’s world was like. Torchwood wasn’t the same thing at all, and that was why it was changing Gwen.

“I think we should remind ourselves about what we have,” Andy said gently, breaking the eye contact and reaching across Ianto’s body to pick up the files that were piled on the other side of the desk before the monitors. “What’s this one set up for?” he asked, gesturing at the monitor before him as he sat down that Ianto had set up for the CCTV footage.

Ianto was glad Andy was looking at the monitor instead of at him, because for a second it was difficult to breathe. Just that brief fleeting touch of Andy’s arm across his chest, and he’d felt the heat of the other man through his shirt. It brought back everything that had happened the night before in such clarity Ianto took a couple of seconds to recover from the strong desire to just move closer to Andy. Again, he looked at the glass, and again, Jack wasn’t stood there watching.

“CCTV footage,” Ianto explained briefly, standing up and reaching around Andy to take control of the mouse, bringing up a couple of the cameras as examples. “Most of Cardiff City centre, and some of the main roads leading out.”

At Andy’s fleeting backwards questioning glance, Ianto smiled, feeling a little pleased with himself. He and Toshiko had worked on it between them as a kind of special project. Now, all of the council’s security cameras were included, as well as some of the privately owned ones too. “We intercept the returning signal and send a stream back here where it’s recorded and kept on hand for two weeks.”

“And then?” Andy asked, watching the screen as Ianto showed some of the different cameras they were linked up to. Ianto inhaled quietly, enjoying standing so close. He could feel Andy’s body heat prickling between them like sparks.

“Then, the space is recycled,” he explained, something warm in his voice as he breathed in the scent of Andy’s aftershave. Well, at least it was warm to him, Andy probably didn’t even notice it. The system they had installed virtually ran itself with hardly any maintenance. It was brilliant, and that might well be because Toshiko was brilliant.

“Incredible,” Andy commented, sounding rather overwhelmed by the scale of it.

“It is,” Ianto said enthusiastically. “Let me show you this…” He moved closer behind Andy’s chair and manipulated one of the live images, closing in on a couple of men who were stood together on a street corner as he laid a casual hand on the back of Andy’s chair.

“Bloodyhell!” Andy spluttered, genuinely shocked. “What are you – big brother?” On the screen before them, some cash exchanged hands, and at that Andy raised a speculative eyebrow. “Or maybe the Inland Revenue?”

Ianto took a short, sudden breath of awareness in before he smiled. “Don’t say that to Jack,” he advised in amusement.

“What, big brother?” Andy asked, then turned around slightly in his chair to look up when Ianto didn’t respond. Ianto shook his head a little, not wanting to admit to it. “Inland Revenue?”

There was a short pause as Andy studied his face, and the rather uncomfortable flush that was creeping up to his cheekbones. Only Jack could have a fetish for VAT. Only Jack could pass that same little kink onto someone else. “Incredible,” Andy commented. He was either impressed, or that was sarcasm. Ianto thought it might be the latter.

“Can you think of anything else to say?” he asked, frowning slightly.

“Well, yes,” Andy said with a small smile, “but you’re close enough that I don’t have to.” He hadn’t known he was that obvious, and he stepped back suddenly, almost stumbling.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“And you sound so sincere,” Andy said in amusement, quite obviously flirting, but he stopped when he saw Ianto glance at the glass of Jack’s office again. “You also keep looking up there. He’s not watching us,” Andy said pointedly, a little bit of a suggestion there.

“I know,” Ianto replied, wishing he could have avoided letting the disappointment creep in. Andy just looked at him for a long moment, and then blew the breath out of his mouth as if something had just surprised him.

“I know,” Ianto forestalled, beginning to get slightly annoyed at how much Andy seemed to find out without even uttering a question. “Incredible. Can we get on with it?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The first few were easy. They left the cases they had been working on in favour of the most recent since this time they had the CCTV footage to pick from. They were all unsolved murders, and it was pretty obvious what had happened to them. All they had to do was establish the victim’s movements and that there wasn’t any other possible motive for their death.

Ianto followed Andy’s instructions, and duly made up an evidence log for each of them. There was something about setting out the events in chronological order that brought everything together perfectly. It was so much easier to see what had happened then, and before long, they had several names already for the list. But then there was a slight hiccup.

“This one,” Ianto said hesitantly, frowning at the event log he had made up, dissatisfied with it because of one thing. Andy left his own work to pay attention and look over it.

“Horrible bloody death, check,” Andy said with a kind of black humour. “Witness, check.” Then he took in a deep breath of understanding. “Ahh…”

The victim was a male in his mid-thirties. He’d been attacked in his own garden that backed out onto an alley. The lone witness was his partner of ten years, who said she’d seen him attacked and killed by a monster from the kitchen window where she’d been stood washing the pots. Neighbours had seen nothing, but they’d heard her screams and found her with him, holding him in her arms as he bled to death. She’d been alone.

After the fact, and in light of her statement to police, she’d been examined by a psychiatrist who’d diagnosed schizophrenia and she had been deemed unfit to face trial.

“She didn’t do it,” Ianto said in horror, staring at a picture on his screen of a pretty blonde woman who didn’t look her age, who didn’t look strong enough to murder a man. Andy sighed.

“They can’t diagnose the difference between latent and reactive schizophrenia,” he remarked, his voice uncharacteristically sombre. There was a pause, and Ianto looked away from the screen at Andy. “It’s reasonable doubt.”

“How can you say that?” Ianto asked hotly, gesturing at the screen and shaking his head. “You know she didn’t do it.”

“We’re not finding victims,” Andy said for the first time, so serious that it cooled Ianto down a little. “We’re looking for the doubt. If it’s there, we can’t include them.”

Ianto took a deep, calming breath and sat back in his chair, rolling his head on his shoulders. “Right,” he said. “Reasonable doubt.” And really, even if he could have included this one, it wouldn’t save her. She was lost to the world now because of what she had seen. There wasn’t any doubt in Ianto’s mind, but he knew what Andy meant. There was the slightest chance – unthinkable, but it was there. He sighed, then caught Andy watching him and sat up straight suddenly. For a second, he felt that stare continue before Andy turned back to his own list of names. Ianto put the man aside. He wouldn’t be going onto the list.

It might have been an hour or two before he came upon the next one like that. A woman on her own in the middle of town. They had the CCTV for it, and she’d ducked into a side street to use her mobile phone and hidden herself from the view of the camera. It was harrowing to hear the screams a few seconds later without the image to go with them. Eventually, a skinny kid came out of the side street and ran off, shoes pounding the pavement.

Ianto compiled the evidence. The police had found the kid almost straight away – a local heroin addict and recently homeless. They’d had to face him with a ton of circumstantial and DNA evidence before he’d agreed to being near the scene at all. It took telling him that he had her blood under his fingernails and his image on the CCTV before he admitted to stealing from the body. Phone, purse, jewellery.

Shivering, Ianto studied it. Because she’d gone out of view, you couldn’t see what had attacked her, and because he’d stolen from her, suddenly there was a motive for the murder. Albeit extremely unlikely, but in the normal world, much more likely than death by alien involvement. There must be a sewer entrance on that street – he checked and there was – but that didn’t eliminate the doubt. He played the scene again and again, staring at it, listening to it, looking for the clue that would give it away. Was there a glimpse of the weevil fleeing the scene that he was missing every time? Ianto sighed heavily and went back to the beginning again.

“Look away from it,” Andy said suddenly, as if in realisation, and Ianto didn’t even blink as he stared at the screen.

“No, not yet,” he replied, frowning. “I just want to find it. It’s there somewhere – I know it is. It must be there.” There was an urgency to his words, but she was already gone. He knew how it ended, because he heard that quiet, disturbing scream again, and yet, he needed to find that one piece of evidence that would put her murder beyond doubt. He must have missed it. It was opportunism, that’s all. Everything pointed to it, and it was all he could think about. An image of the crime scene from earlier came to the forefront of his mind, taunting him, and Ianto shook his head a little, trying to dismiss it.

“Look away,” Andy repeated, his voice lower this time, and more commanding than Ianto could remember. Andy was the police officer now, and before he could refuse again, a strong hand held his jaw, forcing him to turn his head from the screen and to look at Andy. Ianto stareed into Andy’s eyes as if the answer to it all might be in those blue depths.

“You could put her name on the list eventually,” Andy said quietly, gently, as if he was aware of everything, “but you can’t save her.” He did hear the words, and they made sense to him somewhere in a more orderly part of his mind – but all he could feel was her terror, and the warmth of Andy’s fingers against his jaw. All he could remember was what it was like to stare death in the face, and the way he and Andy had kissed the night before. All he could imagine was the horror Jack must have witnessed in his long life, and then there was the sudden epiphany that Andy did that very thing too, with or without aliens or Torchwood. In the time it took for his heart to beat, Ianto realised that Andy understood his sense of desperate frustration. He understood it because he felt it himself. It was so clearly there behind the callous joking and the sarcasm, behind the calm reason, kept at bay now only because he had experience in dealing with it.

For the first time, it was occurring to Ianto just what kind of work Andy did. Beyond the idea of it, there really was work. There were awful things to be faced, and the terrible things that people did to each other – like stealing from someone who was still warm beneath their fingertips. Had she still been alive? It was all about people. A flash of the village came to him then, everyone maddened and bloodthirsty. “It’s too late,” Andy advised, but Ianto had forgotten all about the victim now. There was action required on his part, and he reached out to pull Andy closer to him as he leaned forward, completely unable to stop himself any more. After all this time spent together, he could almost taste that kiss again – wanted it more than anything.

The first brush of their lips was electric, as if the entire world was in agreement, and Ianto was hardly aware of standing up, of bringing Andy with him, or of pushing him back against the workstation as the kiss between them deepened and took hold.

After all of their work on the list – and it was still around them – stark photographs, witness statements, autopsy reports, and gruesome discoveries. After all of that, Andy felt so alive in his hands, strong and vital, almost trembling with all the ferocity of life. He tasted the same as the night before, and this time it was wonderfully familiar. Ianto broke the kiss to hold Andy close for a second, pressing against him when he felt Andy’s arms close around his lower back.

“Unless you mean it, don’t –” he began, and then stopped short when Ianto breathed hotly into his ear.

“Just…” He wanted to say so many things, but they were all jumbled up in his head. He wanted to bring up what had happened between them the night before, and explain it – explain that he’d wanted it from the very beginning. He wanted to say that he’d been touched by Andy’s integrity and the idea of the list – so much so that he’d risked all that he had, including his memories, by agreeing to it. He wanted to explain that this new thing that was between them had everything and nothing to do with Jack, but he couldn’t. Not so that it made sense. He wanted to say that he wanted this to happen, with or without Jack watching, but he couldn’t find the words.

“Just… breathe,” Ianto advised, his voice rough, wanting to hear it, feel it, needing to experience it along with him. Not this. Not senseless violence and sad endings and prisons full of people that used to be little children. And then Andy did breathe, a puff of warmth in a sigh against his neck. He could hear the breath being pulled in and out of his lungs, just a little faster.

“Feel,” Ianto almost pleaded, “for me.” He slid a palm down that white t-shirt so that he could touch the contours of Andy’s body, feel one hard nipple stiffening against his palm.

“Live,” he demanded, sure that he could almost be a killer himself just because he desired to feel Andy’s fragile heart beating in the palm of his hand. But then he wasn’t alone, because Andy suddenly dropped the façade and became as hungry for it as he was, as desperate for heat and action. He might have found it amusing but there weren’t words for what was happening between them. To be understood and recognised. To be answered. To be given everything he wanted.

They changed position, moving each other around as they relieved each other of their clothing. The t-shirt ended up draped over the back of a chair along with Ianto’s tie. His shirt on the seat of another and it felt so good as they fought to get closer, shortened fingernails scratching so that it almost hurt, fingertips pressing just a little too hard, leaving tiny bruises in their wake. But it wasn’t violence, it was power.

The blood was burning in him, moving the right way, and it was working. Here and now, in this moment, nothing could weaken him. Not Canary Wharf, not anything he’d been through at Torchwood, and not the list. Their desire burnt it all away before them and made it all meaningless. They were unified in their need for each other, and whatever strength he was taking from this, he knew Andy was taking just as much.

This was almost what he had with Jack at times. The two of them, desperate and lusting, generating enough strength between them to save each other from the dark, and Ianto knew he could never have shared a moment like it with Lisa, however much he loved her. She needed him in a completely different way to Jack. But Jack needed him too, and now…

He couldn’t have said if it was the exactly the same kind of sexual desire as he’d felt before. It was intensely passionate and needy, and he wanted to touch every part of Andy that he could, wanted to touch him deep, make him cry out, beg, anything just as long as it garnered a response. The force of it was taking his own breath away, but he couldn’t hold anything back and they turned again as he pressed Andy back against the workstation once more. His fingers worked at the belt on his jeans as Andy gasped, looking up and behind him, and Ianto noted it for what it was – what it had to be.

“He’s watching,” Andy said, putting into words something that Ianto already knew, but it made him hot and suddenly aware of everything he was doing. Jack was watching from behind him. The belt open, he applied himself to the button and the zip, drawing Andy’s gaze back down to him, and as their eyes met, he only said one word.

“Good.”


To be continued…


Author’s Note: Thank you for reading. I hope you’re enjoying it.