Obsession

Title: Obsession
Author: Ningengirai
Rating: NC-17
Pairing: Owen/Ianto
Length: 9,379

Warnings: Urethral sounding. If you have no clue what that is and want to know, or aren't sure if you'll be squicked by it, Wikipedia is only one of many places to go to for more information.

Author notes: I was originally aiming for a PWP. I think the story is largely PWP, with the tiniest bit of a hint of plot strewn in. Aw, who the hell am I kidding: almost 10,000 words of kink, no redeeming qualities whatsoever. I hope anonymous person enjoys my quaint offering to the meme. This was written for the TW Kink Meme on LJ.


Obsession

Owen notes the bruises just as he’s about to step out of the shower. He almost doesn’t; they’ve had a rough day ( week, month, fucking year ) and Jack’s still gone and Owen wants nothing more than to get out of the Hub, grab a couple of pints at a quiet pub, and then fall straight into bed. His own bed, not those rickety camp deals Ianto’s dug up god knows where and set up next to each work station, just in case the world really ends and they need to sleep at the Hub.

At least they didn’t come back covered in alien goo this time, small mercies and all that. Owen is a doctor, is intimately familiar with all the visceral, stinking secrets a body can hold, but even he has his limits, and picking yards and yards of slimy, sticky intestine off his skin crosses far too many of them. No, this time, it’s simply Weevil stench they wash off, Ianto and he, while Tosh and Gwen are doing the same one room over.

Weevil stench, and Ianto has no reason, no good reason at all, to be sporting those bruises. With the shield of Jack’s brashness and bravado ( and, Owen adds cynically, immortality ) gone between them and the aliens, Owen’s taken to doing weekly check-ups. They’re already one member short, they can’t afford to lose another to something as simple as an infection, scratch or weird alien disease, not when they’re already stretched thin as it is.

For all of his edges, his violence, his arbitrary mood changes and abrasive personality, Owen’s a damn good doctor.

Gwen and Tosh bitch at first, making jokes about him just wanting to get his hands on them, while Ianto looks positively sick at the idea of letting Owen anywhere near him.

But then, a fortnight later, Gwen comes down with severe muscle cramps from what Owen determines is an infected scratch from that alien from three days ago, and they trickle in: Gwen because she’s already there, shucking her clothes and joking, ‘’s not like you haven’t seen it before,’ Tosh determined, almost demonstrative, and Ianto so stiff and tense that Owen wonders if his medical instruments will bend and break against the younger man’s pale skin.

Owen’s a good doctor. He doesn’t grope any of them, takes notes, takes note, remembers.

Ianto didn’t have those bruises three days ago, during the weekly check-up in the medical bay. Owen steps into Ianto’s shower cubicle, pays no attention to how the younger man tenses, and pokes a finger into the irritated-looking, purplish-blue stretch of skin just above Ianto’s hip. “What’s this?”

Ianto flinches, hisses, but then, that’s the whole point. Owen lives for getting a reaction out of people, any reaction. “Bumped into the shelves, down in the archives.”

The bruises are going from Ianto’s hip up to almost the middle of his back, a bit strange for getting them from banging into a shelf, but it’s late, he’s tired, he wants a beer, and Ianto’s been moving around all day without complaining, so he lets it go. Owen steps back, shrugs, and reaches for his towel. “Be more careful.”

He walks out before Ianto can come up with a response and, two hours and five pints later, has forgotten about the bruises entirely.

*****

A week later, during one of those rare stretches of being stuck at the Hub with nothing to do but slowly go crazy, Owen finds himself watching their teaboy because he has nothing better to do. Gwen’s on the phone with one of her old colleagues from the force, chatting away a mile an hour, Tosh is quietly working on a giant toaster that Owen’s pretty sure isn’t a toaster but some kind of alien death ray, and Ianto…

Ianto isn’t sitting down.

Gwen’s ordered the tourist office shut for the day, so Ianto’s down in the Hub with them, quietly puttering around, doing Ianto-things. Ianto’s promotion to fully-fledged field agent happened quietly – so quietly, in fact, that one day Owen blinked to find him sitting in the SUV with them and wondered when the hell that happened – but he doesn’t really have a specialty.

All right, so that’s a lie. Ianto makes a mean coffee and Owen’s pretty sure that they’d already been suffocated by forms in triplicate if it wasn’t for Ianto’s archiving skills, but on quiet, slow days, when they aren’t running about like a bunch of headless chicken trying to find out how to kill that thing that identified itself as ‘Throg’daur, come to usurp this worthless backwater rock’, Ianto isn’t doing much of anything.

Owen is playing Tetris, has been for the last six hours, when he isn’t watching Ianto… and he hasn’t seen him sit down once.

Owen notes a certain tension in the younger man’s posture, a certain kind of way he moves, and then remembers the bruises. Injuries of that kind often have a way of becoming a problem later on, when no one’s wasting any thought on them anymore. Owen bounces off his chair so quickly that Tosh looks up, startled, and Gwen covers the mouthpiece of the telephone with a palm, frowning. He shoots them a grin, nothing to worry about, and makes for the med bay. “Ianto, a hand, please?”

Torchwood Three’s med bay isn’t what you’d call ‘private’ by any stretch of the imagination. Owen flips on a monitor showing the main body of the Hub to keep an eye on Tosh and Gwen, looks over his shoulder at Ianto’s slowly approaching footsteps, and ushers him down the nautilus stairs. “Jacket and shirt off.”

“Excuse me?”

Owen’s already putting on his lab coat. “Hard of hearing? I said, jacket and shirt off.”

Ianto’s standing stiffly, arms crossed over his chest. “I already had my check-up.”

“Yeah, and two days ago you weren’t creeping around the Hub as though you’re 85.” Locating the box with disposable gloves, Owen pulls out a pair, motioning impatiently. “Come on, come on, we haven’t got all day.”

“We do,” Ianto points out, rolling his eyes. “Also, no. I’m not going to let you poke me just because you’re bored.”

There’s just enough of a hint of a ‘fuck you’ in Ianto’s tone of voice to rile Owen up. They’ve always been at each other’s throat, sometimes for the sheer heck of it. Owen likes to fight, true, but there’s something about Ianto that makes him want to prod the younger man just that little bit harder than strictly necessary. If he’s honest with himself, and Owen always is, he still resents him for bringing that cyber menace into the Hub, not to mention the bullet he’s had to dig out of his shoulder after Ianto shot him. Sometimes, revenge is a dish best served over a long period of time.

Whatever it is, it’s enough to put venom in Owen’s voice. “You’re going to let me poke you because I’m Torchwood Three’s official medical officer and perfectly capable of suspending you from duty.”

“Gwen wouldn’t -”

“Gwen would back me up on it because she knows shit all about medicine, because she’s fraying at the edges just like the rest of us, and frankly, I outrank her in this.” Owen feels his lips stretch into an ugly smile. “I could have you suspended for anything medical I can come up with on the spot and she wouldn’t be able to do shit about it.” He feels the need to drive it home. “And neither would Jack, for that matter.”

Ianto closes his eyes, breathes in through his nose, out through his teeth, just once. His arms are still crossed over his chest, but now his fingers are clenched in the fine material of his immaculate suit. “Don’t.”

“Don’t what, teaboy? ‘Don’t mention Jack’, or ‘don’t suspend me’?”

“Just… don’t.”

That cinches it. Maybe Ianto’s really just taken a fall down the archive stairs or bumped into another shelf, but he’s taken off his clothes readily enough, before, and it’s not like Owen’s asking him to donate a kidney. They stare at each other, and surprisingly it’s Ianto who looks away first, hands clenched into fists, jaw muscles working.

Owen doesn’t raise his voice. “Ianto, I want you to come here, sit down, and take off your jacket and shirt. Now.”

Ianto moves at the pace of molasses, enough to make even Buddha impatient. Grabbing him by the arm, Owen yanks him down onto the examination table, hard, free hand already reaching for the collar of Ianto’s jacket to pull it off of him.

Ianto whimpers.

Owen’s hands stutter to a stop, fingers hooked into the collar, his knuckles brushing the back of Ianto’s neck. The sound’s gone so quickly he can’t be sure he heard it in the first place. He finishes pulling off Ianto’s jacket, throws it aside. Ianto’s crisp shirt rustles beneath his fingertips, but when Owen makes to unbutton it, Ianto brushes his hands away and does it himself.

“You’re a bastard,” Ianto mutters.

“And you’re probably still suffering from PTSD from Canary Wharf and your girlfriend’s death,” Owen shoots back, turning away to pull on gloves and ready his equipment. “At least I’m working on my issues.”

“Yeah, and that turned out so well, didn’t it?”

Ianto doesn’t specify what he’s referring to, but he doesn’t have to. Conveniently, Owen’s mind fills in the tempting blanks. Diane. Shooting Jack. Almost causing the end of the world, if Jack Bloody Harkness hadn’t done the heroic thing and let himself be eaten by that monstrosity, Abbadon, dying and again coming back to life and throwing them all for a loop, all smiles and forgiving grace. Owen has to close his eyes for a moment, has to fold and clench his fingers, because the urge to turn around and punch Ianto in the face is all he can think about.

You’re a doctor, you’ve sworn an oath to not let people be in pain, but, god help me, there’s nothing in that oath about not beating them into a pulp before you treat them…

The urge passes, leaving him with a slightly bitter taste in the back of his mouth. He glances at the monitor – Tosh’s still working at her station, Gwen’s still talking on the phone, laughing at something – and turns. “You’re a right shit, you know that? We -”

Ianto is folding his shirt, laying it neatly over the end of the examination table. Owen stares, can only stare, dumbly, at the diverse array of marks spread out over Ianto’s pale skin. They’re on and below his shoulder blades, trail in a lazy arc down his ribs to his hips. They’re scattered over the small of his back, disappear into the waistband of his trousers, and – Owen sucks in a breath when Ianto turns around and leans against the edge of the table – dot his front from bellybutton to clavicle.

“What,” Owen says slowly, “the fuck?”

Ianto isn’t sitting down. He’s leaning against the table, all strained lines and tension, his shoulders hunched.

“What the fuck,” Owen repeats, for good measure. “That – those weren’t there two days ago. What the hell did you do?”

“Fell down,” Ianto mutters. At Owen’s snort, he glances up, staring Owen in the face, deadly calm, daring him to say something, anything. “A lot.”

Owen steps closer, doesn’t know where to put his hands first, and refuses, for a moment, to think about Ianto’s words. These aren’t old bruises, they’re fresh. Some of them are pinpricked with red, blood too close to the surface of the skin but not breaking through. Long, narrow, round, uneven – there isn’t a geometric shape in the world that’s not on Ianto’s skin.

Owen’s gaze drops to the waistband of Ianto’s pants. Not sitting down aligns itself perfectly with whimpering in Owen’s mind, offering up a plethora of possibilities, all of them ugly, all of them insane. Ianto isn’t the type – wouldn’t – doesn’t –

Ianto is the type, Owen realizes. All that stiff-backed control of himself, of the situations he’s in. Owen’s been in a couple of situations where he was asked to take control from someone; hell, if there’s one thing Owen wants more of, it’s control over the situations he is in, and if there’s one thing he can’t imagine, then it’s willingly surrendering it. He isn’t Ianto, though, he didn’t ever have to keep a tight check of his emotions and actions for so long, and, perhaps the most important difference of all, he wasn’t in London when Canary Wharf happened, where no one at all had any control.

“Undress,” Owen orders. “Trousers off.”

“No.” It’s just a whisper, a puff of breath against Owen’s face, letting him realize how close he’s standing to the younger man. “Fuck off, Owen.”

“Why?” He looks up, teeth bared. “So you can go back to falling down?”

“What I do privately is none of your business,” Ianto says.

“It is when it’s impeding your functionality,” Owen snaps.

“I am functioning, am I not?” There’s an ugly undertone in Ianto’s voice now, just this side of challenging. “I come to work, I do my job, I function, I functioned for Jack and I function for you, you pathetic excuse for a human being, and I swear to God that if you don’t leave me – this – alone, or tell Gwen or Tosh, I’ll fucking kill you.”

Ianto’s leaning forward, almost away from the table, well into Owen’s already compromised comfort zone, and for a fraction of a second, Owen is afraid of him, of the disillusioned anger in Ianto’s eyes. They stare at each other, caught in the moment.

Then he remembers that this is Ianto, the guy who cried when they shot his girlfriend, the guy who bends himself over backward for Jack Harkness, for them, for Torchwood…

“So,” he says calmly, “your response to discovering that Jack doesn’t give enough of a fuck about you is to let yourself be beaten up?” Reaching out, Owen flicks his fingers against Ianto’s belly, just below his navel. “Starting your own fight club? Or taking it up the ass from some random stranger because Jack isn’t around to do it anymore? Tell me, how far down do those bruises go?”

Ianto’s eyes widen, just a fraction.

Owen’s had enough. He takes half a step back and punches Ianto in the face for all he’s worth, nearly breaks his own fingers in the process, and grabs for the syringe lying on the tray along with his other instruments while Ianto reels from the blow. He’s recovering quickly, though, one flailing arm pushing a stack of medical files and gadgets off the trolley next to the table, sending a semi-loud crash through the Hub. Owen ignores the mess, sidesteps it. Ianto’s hand is still holding his jaw, his other now pushing against the table to get him back to his feet. Big mistake, that. Ruthlessly, Owen takes advantage of the relative vulnerability of Ianto’s midsection and punches him right in the solar plexus.

Ianto folds up like a house of cards, gasping for air.

“Owen? Ianto?” Tosh. Owen glances at the monitor, pulls the cap off the syringe with his teeth. She’s still at her work station, but getting up now, and Gwen’s got her palm over the mouthpiece of the phone again.

“Just dropped something,” Owen shouts, and jabs the needle into Ianto’s thigh, pressing the plunger down. His free hand comes up to cover Ianto’s mouth, latex slipping over spit-covered lips as he bears the younger man down against the examination table, ignoring the way Ianto’s hands seem to want to go for his throat.

“Do you need any help?” Gwen, this time.

I don’t, he thinks, but Ianto here needs lots and lots of therapy. “No, it’s all right. Be with you in a minute.”

Ianto makes a furious sound, already slumping. Only Torchwood medics would have a syringe filled with a strong sedative handy at all times, Owen thinks somewhat bitterly ( just as Torchwood’s probably the only place on earth where the autopsy tables have restraints ), but he doesn’t let go of Ianto until his eyes flutter shut and he goes slack.

Owen recaps the syringe, steps away from the table. His hands are shaking, he notes with disgust, snapping off the gloves. With a last look at the man slumped untidily on his examination table, Owen hurries toward the main body of the Hub, to head off Gwen and Tosh before they come looking for him and discover that he’s just forcibly sedated a member of their team.

*****

“…and tell Ianto to go home and get some sleep,” Gwen says, already half through the cogwheel door. She stops, looking around with a frown. “Where is he, anyway?”

It’s two hours later. Tosh has already gone home, yawning, and Owen is anxious to see Gwen leave, too. The sedative will keep Ianto down for at least an hour more, but Owen isn’t worried about discovery any longer: he wants to finish his examination before Ianto wakes up. He can’t do that with Gwen hovering, though. “Tracking down something in the archives for me,” he lies, easily. “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it.”

Gwen goes, but it isn’t until he sees her heading across the Plass and getting into her car that Owen exhales, tension flooding out of him. He heads toward his work station and rigs an alarm to the cogwheel door, to alert him if Gwen or Tosh come back unexpectedly – wouldn’t be the first time – and prays that the fucking Rift will keep its ugly gob shut for one night. Not too much to ask, is it? Still, this is Torchwood: giving you what you least expected, while taking everything else away.

Ianto is still in the same position when Owen returns to the med bay. He’s still sedated, but his eyes are moving beneath their lids. Owen sits down on the nautilus stairs, watches him, and begins to wrap his mind around several facts.

1. Ianto has possibly been having sex with someone other than Jack. Perhaps even several someones. Owen isn’t big on fidelity himself, not even after Diane, but Ianto? The guy who would have destroyed the world for his erstwhile girlfriend-turned-menace? The guy who clung to the CCTV monitors for two weeks straight after Jack disappeared?

2. Perhaps it isn’t sex. Perhaps it really is fighting; Cardiff isn’t London, but you can get into a spot of trouble with no trouble at all. Owen has firsthand experience there. Not one of his proudest moments, but it happened, and he’s over it.

3. Unless the other guy(s) has/have at least as many bruises as Ianto does, Ianto’s letting himself be beat up.

Owen gets up, rubs both hands over his face. He manhandles Ianto into a better position on the table, pulls off shoes and socks, unbuckles Ianto’s belt. Sex or fighting – there are easy ways to find out more.

4. Ianto’s a member of Owen’s team, damn it. His team, his responsibility, as much as he hates it sometimes. His team, and when the fuck did he start being so damn possessive, so caring?

Owen hooks his thumbs into Ianto’s trousers and underwear and pulls both off, dropping the clothes on top of Ianto’s jacket and shirt. The med bay’s stark light throws the marks on his skin into sharp relief against the surrounding pallor, and yeah, fuck, those bruises do go quite a bit further down. Owen dons another pair of gloves.

Goosebumps dot Ianto’s chest and thighs as Owen arranges and rearranges him, but he doesn’t wake up. Not yet. Owen follows the rabbit’s trail to the insides of Ianto’s thighs, bends one leg up and back and to the side and gets confirmation that it isn’t fighting that marked the younger man. Aside from the methodical stripes criss-crossing the insides of Ianto’s thighs, he marks a slight swelling of the anus and perineum. No obvious tearing, though. And there, yeah: on the curve of Ianto’s arse, more criss-crossing stripes, the explanation why he didn’t sit down all day.

Owen catches a glint of metal as he looks up and nearly drops Ianto’s leg in surprise.

And beats down viciously on the surge of arousal spiking through his gut.

“Fucking hell,” he mutters.

Ianto’s cock is soft and small, nestled in a tidy bed of dark curls. Owen lifts it gently, the glint of metal more pronounced now that he knows where to look for it. He needs a moment to figure out how to open the narrow, silver ring fastened just below the head of Ianto’s cock, gloved fingers slipping on the smooth metal before he manages to catch the tiny screw.

Ianto snuffles, shoulders shifting, when Owen carefully pulls the ring off. The thin, round length of metal attached to the ring slides out of his cock easily, and Owen is surprised by the weight of the thing when he finally holds it in the palm of his hand. It’s a good two inches long and inflexible and Owen doesn’t even want to begin to think about what would’ve happened if he’d decided to kick Ianto in the balls, like he did last time they fought. He drops the ring and its attachment onto a tray, lets go of Ianto’s cock after making sure there isn’t any tearing there, and steps away again.

5. Ianto is one hell of a kinky bugger, or at least masochistic enough to let someone do this to him. Owen’s had his share of experimentation, on the giving end, but Ianto has outclassed him here, willingly or not.

Owen covers Ianto with a sheet, stares at the ring again, and settles down to wait for him to wake up.

*****

Ianto wakes slowly, first opening his eyes to blink at the ceiling, screwing them shut again with a low sound of pain at the harsh light. Owen keeps watching him, sitting on the nautilus stairs again, drinking the last of the coffee he eventually went to make, when waiting got boring. He has another syringe ready, in the pocket of his lab coat – always be prepared for all eventualities – and the ring is dangling from his finger, cleaned.

“You’re bloody stupid,” Owen says when he’s sure Ianto’s marginally awake. “Do you have any idea of the damage you could cause yourself if, say, a Weevil, got a hold of your goods and gave them a good squeeze? You’d be pissing through a second hole.”

Ianto rolls his head on the table, myopic gaze fixing on Owen with some difficulty. He blinks again, eyes widening when he sees what Owen’s holding out, and groans under his breath, squeezing his eyes shut.

“Look, mate,” Owen begins, getting up and standing at the edge of the table, “I don’t know why you’re doing this. Well, I know why you’re doing this, but there’s got to be another way.”

Ianto’s voice is soft, sleep-rough. “Like you give a fuck.”

Owen rolls his eyes. “Don’t pull that emo shit on me. I know you’re hurting – doesn’t mean I can do anything about it. This isn’t a wound I can sew shut. Fuck, we’re all hurting – you’re not that special. We all miss Jack, bless his arrogant arse.” Ianto pulls the sheet up higher, possibly to burrow under it, but Owen isn’t finished. “I don’t care if you go out and get shagged stupid as long as you’re not contracting any STDs that I’ll have to deal with in the end, I don’t even care if you’ve discovered BDSM as your personal holy grail of penance, but I draw the line at this.”

He brandishes the ring, the attached length of metal dangling back and forth, and now Ianto’s really pulling the covers over his head, like a child: what I can’t see can’t touch me. Owen has no idea how to deal with this. He doesn’t want to, frankly; he has enough weird shit in his head without adding Ianto’s, and it’s not the sexual components he’s thinking about. With a sigh, he drops the ring onto Ianto’s chest. “I’m stepping up your check-ups. Twice a week, and I’ll be picking when.”

“Go away, Owen.”

“I don’t care about bruising. Don’t care about what gets shoved where as long as you don’t carry it into the Hub and jeopardize us all.” Owen lowers his mouth to where he approximates Ianto’s ear is. “You take a hit with this in you and if you go down because of it, and if any of us get hurt as a result…”

“Go away,” Ianto repeats.

Owen shrugs. He tried, and he’s suddenly tired, a lot more tired than he can remember ever being before. The shock, the novelty of his discovery has worn off to be replaced by actual medical concerns, the spike of lust buried under slight irritation and a general feeling of helplessness.

He leaves Ianto on the table and goes home.

*****

Three weeks and about, oh, five gazillion Weevils later, Owen begins to admit to himself that he’s developing an obsession. He’s at home, exhausted and lying in a hot bath, hand wrapped around his cock and stroking lazily. His mind’s wandering, lingering longest over the smooth curve of Diane’s spine, slips to the firm warmth of Gwen’s breasts, the anonymous guy’s arse from a week ago. It’s inevitable that the imagery changes, and the pace of his stroking changes with it.

( The first time his personal peepshow provides him with an image of Ianto’s cock, plugged and still leaking around metal, Owen comes, hard and fast and violent. Afterward, he tries to exorcise that particular demon, but imagination is imagination, and Owen’s always believed that if it feels good and gets you off and all involved parties are happy, there’s nothing wrong with it. )

He thinks he can feel the softness of Ianto’s skin under his fingers, and that’s just plain – wrong.

…only, it isn’t so much wrong as new. Up to now, Ianto hasn’t been featured in Owen’s imagination, not because he’s male, but because he’s Ianto, and Ianto’s had ‘Property of Jack Harkness’ stamped all over him from nearly the very beginning, even before that shit with his girlfriend went down. Ianto’s irritating, with his endless politeness, his suits, his polished leather shoes and a million and one issues, none of which Owen wants anything to do with, thank you.

That, and Ianto shot him. Enough reasons for Owen to firmly cross him off his list of masturbation material… and yet, here Owen sits, cock twitching again at the mere thought of pulling that bit of metal out of Ianto’s cock. Having him. Helpless. Putting the toy back in, one slow inch after the other.

“Oh, god,” Owen mutters, but that’s Torchwood all over again: giving you what you least expected, including detailed, pornographic thoughts about your very attractive co-workers, male and female both.

And just like that, it’s almost all he can think about in the weeks to come. Ianto, with ill grace, does submit to check-ups twice a week, turns up with new bruises every now and then, but no bits of metal hidden anywhere. Owen runs scanners over him to be sure, causing snorts of contempt. If Ianto didn’t hate him before, now he certainly does – not so entertaining now, that concept, not when Owen begins to want to run his hands all over Ianto’s pale skin, splay him open, fuck him senseless.

Owen adds another bullet point to his list:

6. Ianto’s masochistic and likes to be dominated, or needs to be dominated, and there’s a surprise, ha ha. As if the demure demeanor that carried on even after Lisa’s death wasn’t a dead giveaway in the first place. Well, okay, so this is garden variety psychology, but Owen honestly doesn’t care, not when he’s about to start a list for himself.

( 1. Owen Harper wants to do something to Ianto Jones’ body that would have most men cringe away in terror.

This is how the list starts. Owen’s adding new bullet points to it almost every day. )

*****

A week later, they’re separated from Gwen and Tosh and nearly die. It’s a routine mission, nothing spectacular: reported UFO sightings at the docks, and off they go in their shiny, black SUV, armed to the teeth and ready to put a few bullets into anything alien that so much as looks at them the wrong way. They’re so well-prepared that Owen doesn’t quite understand how and why he and Ianto are suddenly running for their lives, chased by something large, hairy and in possession of far too many teeth. He only knows that he doesn’t want to die, not now, not so young, and that Ianto’s going to give their position away, gunning for violence as he is, madness burning in his eyes.

Owen shoves his pistol into his side holster and makes a grab for Ianto, who’s clearly ( suicidal ) out of his mind, apparently intent on bursting out from behind their nice stack of crates and going down in a hail of bite-sized pieces after putting one, maybe two bullets into that thing. Owen manages to get a hold of Ianto’s upper arms and yanks, forcing them back to chest, nearly causing them to fall. His hands slide from Ianto’s arms to his wrists, encircling them firmly and pressing them against Ianto’s hips.

“Don’t move,” Owen hisses, the ‘idiot’ something he doesn’t have to say out loud. Ianto makes as if to break away – Owen yanks him back again, presses his thumbs into the soft insides of Ianto’s wrists in warning, and repeats, “Don’t. Move.”

Less than twenty feet away from them, just at the entrance to the storage building they stumbled into, the alien hesitates. Owen can see it through the cracks between the crates, and it really is big and hairy and ugly, and obviously bloodthirsty. It snuffles the ground, then the air, making a strange, bellowing sound in the back of its throat – like a congested dog, Owen thinks, randomly – before it ambles slowly into the building and right toward the stack of crates Ianto and he are hiding behind.

Ianto is thrumming against him, so tense that he feels about to snap, to break in two. Owen, still watching the alien, rubs his thumbs into Ianto’s palms without thinking about it, attempting to project calm, security, anything to keep Ianto where he is and not give their position away.

It doesn’t occur to him until much later – after Tosh suddenly shows up with the biggest gun Owen’s ever seen in all his life and fucking obliterates the alien – that when he finally let go of Ianto, the younger man’s fingers had relaxed completely, gently brushing his when Owen pulled away. It is this feeling, Ianto’s relaxed fingers brushing his, and not his back to Owen’s chest or his ass to Owen’s groin, that follows Owen into his most detailed, complex fantasies.

*****

Something has to give, and it’s most likely going to be Owen’s mind, if his dick doesn’t fall off first from all the furious wanking.

*****

They hit another slow stretch, right in the middle of Month 5 ( by Torchwood Counting; they started a new year when Jack disappeared ), plenty of time for Owen to take a step back from his obsession and consider his possibilities. He has to; Ianto, for all his idiosyncrasies, doesn’t suffer idiots, aliens or sex-hungry co-workers well ( unless they’re called Jack Harkness, but then, what is ever the norm with their absent captain? ). He wouldn’t even be considering this – it’s Ianto, for fuck’s sake – if there weren’t the lingering glances the younger man keeps giving him. Of course, whenever Owen looks, Ianto’s already turned his back and is doing something else.

This dancing around the subject is giving Owen a permanent headache. Ianto’s under his skin now, like an itch he can’t scratch, a taste that lingers on the back of his tongue. To exorcize your demons, you have to meet them head-on: Owen would rather suffer through a potentially embarrassing brush-off or even a fist to the face, than continue this dancing around the subject. Conversations can be held without uttering a single word. Ianto and he, they’ve talked enough to fill an entire library. It’s time to do something about this tension between them.

Owen tracks him down in the archives, precariously near to where Ianto stored Lisa, and blocks his way when Ianto tries to step around him. He takes a stack of files out of Ianto’s arms and carelessly drops them on the floor – teaboy can pick them up later – while he carefully watches his expression. It’s blank, as always, but there are cracks in the façade: the slightest twitch of lips, the slightest curve to an eyebrow. Owen doesn’t do anything for a minute or so and notes that Ianto doesn’t do anything, either: he doesn’t bitch about the dropped files, or about the way Owen’s all but right in his face.

Slowly, Owen lifts both hands and slides them under the lapels of Ianto’s suit jacket. He lays his palms flat against Ianto’s chest and, again, doesn’t do anything for a minute, staring at Ianto staring at him.

Ianto’s gaze flicks down, centers somewhere below Owen’s chin.

The air in the archives is dry and cool, climate-controlled: they have documents going back several decades, sometimes more, which need to be kept in as pristine a condition as can be managed. Ianto’s been down here for several hours and shouldn’t be this… warm. It’s more than normal body heat – Owen feels it against his palms as he begins to slowly slide them back and forth, Ianto’s shirt smooth against his skin. Ianto’s nipples pucker and peak and the gaze fixed on Owen wavers, flicks further down.

Slowly, feeling for them beneath the shirt, Owen captures a nipple each between thumb and index finger and twists. Gently. Slowly. He feels Ianto’s chest expand as the younger man takes a deeper breath, and Ianto’s eyes flutter shut, his teeth digging gently into his lower lip. It’s a fascinating sight, one Owen wants to prolong. He twists harder, holds, and Ianto’s rocking forward ever so slightly, his hands loose and open by his sides. A flush is creeping up his neck, toward his cheeks.

Owen doesn’t ask Ianto to open his eyes; he’s content with what he’s seeing. Besides, he’s not finished yet.

Ianto’s eyes stay shut, even when Owen pulls his hands away and drops them to the waistband of Ianto’s trousers instead. A quick flick and tug later, the belt hangs open and Owen’s fingertips dance over the button of the fly, the zipper beneath. The ratchety click-click-click of metal is unnaturally loud in the narrow hallway and its many doors, but when Owen reaches into his fly and cups him through his underwear, Ianto’s shunted breath is louder.

“Easy,” Owen murmurs, and pulls his hand away. He takes Ianto’s wrists and holds them in the same position he had in the warehouse, against Ianto’s hips. “Slow breaths.”

It takes five, six breaths and a small nod, consent not asked for but readily given. Ianto’s standing rock-still when Owen lets go of him again, doesn’t even move when Owen slowly walks around him. This is a test, of Ianto as much as of Owen, and when Owen murmurs, “Lift up your shirt, and spread your legs a little more,” Ianto obeys without question.

It’s fucking beautiful. It’s not where he ever expected to find himself, standing in the bowels of Torchwood behind Ianto, staring at Ianto’s firm, still covered arse, but it’s exactly where Owen wants to be right now. He cups Ianto’s arse cheeks, squeezes slowly, then hooks his thumbs into Ianto’s underwear and suit trousers and pulls them down to just below the curve of his arse, and there’s something incredibly dirty, incredibly pornographic about the way Ianto’s standing before him, naked from sternum to mid-thigh, awaiting his next order, his next touch. It’s better than any fantasy Owen’s ever entertained about the younger man.

Ianto’s arse cheeks clench slightly when Owen pulls them apart after rubbing both his thumbs down his crack, exposing the puckered anus at their center. It’s not swollen anymore, no sign of recent use, making Owen wonder if Ianto’s been waiting for him to start something, to take the first step. He lets Ianto feel the cool archive air against his sphincter, revels in the way Ianto goes through a short phase of seeming to want to move before accepting Owen’s hold and Owen’s choice of exposing him like that. The power he has over the younger man goes straight to his head, seating him deeply in the knowledge that right here and now, he could shove Ianto against the wall and fuck him, and Ianto would let him, and, oh god, Owen’s dick twitches and fills at that thought.

But, no. For Owen, a lot of this is purely a head game – it’s not about forcing Ianto to do what he wants him to, it’s about making Ianto let him, about Ianto submitting, and that’s far more rewarding than bending him in half and fucking him out of his mind.

Owen rubs the pad of one thumb over the tight ring of muscle and pulls away. Ianto doesn’t protest, doesn’t make a move, patiently waiting. In the unsteady light of the corridor, Owen unwraps the butt plug he brought, rips open the foil packet of lube that’s been burning a hole in his pocket for the last five minutes. The plug isn’t all that thick or long; it will be just enough to remind Ianto that it’s there, with every step he takes and every time he sits down, and that, too, is enough for Owen.

“Ianto,” he says, softly, quickly slicking up the butt plug, “I want you to keep this in until we’re off tonight. You’re allowed to take it out if you have to go to the bathroom, but you’ll put it back in. Do you understand?”

Ianto nods.

“Say it.”

There’s the clearing of a throat, and Ianto sounds deliciously breathless when he finally manages, “I understand.”

Owen gently works the butt plug in and leans forward, chest to Ianto’s back, to bite at the back of his neck. He doesn’t linger over this task and pulls away, but can’t keep his hands off of Ianto as he walks around to stand face to face with him. The flush has spread to Ianto’s cheeks fully now, and he must have been biting his lips, because they’re swollen and shiny even in the unsteady light of the archives. Unable to resist that cupid’s bow of a mouth, Owen rubs a fingertip over the lower curve. “We’re going to my place after work tonight. Find me when it’s time.”

He walks away, leaving Ianto to right his clothing, his composure, possibly to rearrange his mind. Something has given, but it’s not nearly enough.

*****

The night can’t come quickly enough, and once again Owen finds himself praying to whatever gods care, for the Rift not to open, for the Weevils to stick to their sewers, and finally, for Gwen and Tosh to pack it in and head home. They do, eventually, bickering over the same thing Owen hasn’t been paying attention to for the last two hours. He feels Ianto’s presence at his shoulder the moment the cogwheel door shuts. Ianto’s standing in the same spot he used to with Jack, slightly behind, a silent, supportive, attentive ghost ready to whisk away and do your every bidding. Owen rolls his head to loosen the tension that’s been tightening his shoulders and back, then makes an appreciative grunt when Ianto’s long fingers dig into the area, unerringly finding a knot and undoing it with deft strokes. Owen starts powering down the work stations, sets the night alarms and the surveillance system, dims the lights. Torchwood doesn’t allow its minions a 9 to 5 day, much less a regular life, but tonight, he hopes, the universe will have mercy on him.

“I want this,” Ianto says evenly, though it’s only a whisper. His palm rests against the back of Owen’s neck, warm and steady.

Carefully, because this is important, Owen asks, “Is there anything you don’t want?”

“Humiliation. Public exhibition.” The fingers resting loosely against the side of Owen’s throat twitch. “And there are several body fluids I’d rather not become too closely acquainted with.”

“So, no pissing and shitting, then?” Owens says it out loud, vulgarly, just to see Ianto’s reflection in his computer screen draw a face. “Not my thing, either.” The rest, he guesses, will come out when it happens. He has a little surprise planned for Ianto, later, but isn’t going to mention it before he has him tied down somewhere – literally. “Let’s go.”

He takes Ianto by the wrist without looking back at the younger man, thumb resting on Ianto’s pulse, and leads the way to the cogwheel door.

*****

Owen’s flat lends itself to wide open spaces, near-Spartan furnishing, and the occasional heap of untidiness in this or that corner. It’s lived in, comfortable, even if lately he hasn’t been spending a lot of time here, with Jack gone and them running in circles. Leaving Ianto by the door, Owen walks around switching on lights and dimming them, leaving the corners of the flat in a comfortable gloom. Owen associates bright, stark lights with medical bays and autopsy tables, not something he wants to be reminded of now, when Ianto’s slowly taking off his coat, toeing off his shoes. He looks up when he notices Owen watching him.

“Go on,” Owen tells him, dropping to sit on the edge of his bed and kicking off his shoes, taking off his socks, “take it all off. And then come here.”

Ianto’s lean lines and nicely distributed muscles, pale skin, and eyes made dark by the light or anticipation, or both. He leaves his clothes in a tidy heap by the door and crosses the space between them, measured steps until he’s standing knee to knee with Owen, completely at ease with his nudity. It’s not something one would guess after seeing him in suits and polished shoes and that damn control he keeps wrapped around himself like a second layer of clothing, but then, Ianto’s keeps surprising him with new facets to his otherwise bland personality. Owen takes him by the hips, just holding, thumbs rubbing circles over warm skin as he looks up at him, letting the moment stretch before he speaks.

“You’re going to do what I tell you, when I tell you. You’re going to answer me when I ask you a question.” Owen tugs him forward by the hips, rubs his cheek against the soft skin below Ianto’s bellybutton. “Who was the last guy who fucked you?”

Perhaps surprised that the first question comes so quickly, Ianto doesn’t answer at once, but hurries to when Owen tugs on his hips again, bumping their knees together. “Just some guy. Didn’t ask his name.”

“Where did you meet him?”

Ianto names a place, a bar Owen’s been to twice, once on a dare, the second time to drag one of his old colleagues out. It’s not a place he’d ever envisioned Ianto to frequent – wouldn’t, himself, for all that his taste sometimes runs in that direction. Owen finds all that posturing and the colour-coded hankies ridiculous, and the sight of grown men calling other grown men ‘daddy’ and letting themselves be lead around on chains does absolutely nothing for him.

Owen’s hands are wandering, sliding over Ianto’s hips, to the small of his back, onto his arse. “What did he use on you?”

“A cane. His hands.”

“I’m not going to use either.” Well, he was going to use his hands, but after weeks and weeks of being the cause for Owen’s stewing in his own juices, Ianto deserves to be left wondering for a bit. Owen looks up, smiles at the sight of dilated pupils and slightly parted lips, and then hooks one leg behind Ianto’s knees, and shoves with one shoulder, and tumbles the younger man onto the bed. Ianto lands face-first, a surprised exclamation muffled in the bedspread, but makes no move to get up, instead lifting his head and looking at Owen over his shoulder.

Owen gets up, licks his lips. “Turn onto your back. Arms above your head, legs straight.” He makes no move to take off his own clothes. That will come later. For now, he watches Ianto get into position, admires the clean lines of the younger man’s body when it’s stretched out on his bed. “Don’t move now.”

He’s prepared for this night – has been, for a while – and wastes no time, pulling out a hidden drawer from underneath his bed. Taking out a pair of padded cuffs, Owen rounds the bed, reaching for Ianto’s wrists. The cuffs are made from leather, wide and sturdy, connected by a five-inch chain that fits nicely into the D-ring fixed to the head of Owen’s bed case. Making sure that Ianto’s circulation isn’t cut off, Owen returns to the foot of the bed and wraps his hands around Ianto’s ankles, pulling until Ianto’s arms are straight. Ankle restraints are next, a wider variation of the cuffs. Ianto’s left stretched, but not unbearably so, just a bit of tension in his chest and thighs, which Owen traces with his fingertips as he stands back to admire the result of his work.

He takes a final item from the drawer, a length of simple, black cloth, folds it twice lengthwise. There’s the slightest bit of a downward tilt to Ianto’s mouth when Owen blindfolds him, but he doesn’t protest, just takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. Owen strokes his cheek with the backs of his fingers, traces the small frown with his knuckles. For long minutes, that’s all he does, sitting on the bed by Ianto’s head and touching him gently, face, neck, shoulders and arms, never straying beneath an invisible line he’s drawn across Ianto’s middle.

Ianto sags into the restraints, mouth losing that downward tilt. His hands are still in fists, but they unfold when Owen rubs into the palms. The contact between them isn’t sexual, isn’t meant to be. Owen wants Ianto to relax, to give himself over to the knowledge that there’s no way he can get out of the restraints without help or serious injury to himself, to submit to the darkness and the unknown behind the blindfold. When it happens, he can literally feel the tension draining out of the younger man, and it makes him smile, that shift of control slipping seamlessly between them until it rests solely in his hands, subject to his whims.

Owen gets up. There are a few things he needs to gather up, things he didn’t want Ianto to see before he had him on the bed. He doesn’t hurry, even when the slow roil of anticipation begins to bleed into lust. He even stops by Ianto’s clothes and digs for his cell phone, shoving it into a kitchen drawer along with his own. There is no way Owen’s going to cut this short. The world can burn, for all he cares, if it gets him this one night, these few, precious hours.

He settles back down on the bed by Ianto’s hips, arranging his supplies. Ianto’s head tilts slightly in his direction, the younger man listening to the sounds Owen is making, probably trying to figure out what he’s doing. Unhurried, Owen finishes his arrangement, then rests one hand on Ianto’s thigh. “Do you have any idea what you’ve been doing to me for the last weeks?”

Another tilt of the head; Ianto apparently isn’t sure how to answer this question. “…no?”

“You’ve been driving me crazy.” Owen slides his palm to the inside of Ianto’s thigh, scratching lightly at the thinner, more sensitive skin there. “Imagine my surprise when I peeled you out of your clothes and found that small piece of metal stuck in your dick. I was so bloody pissed at you for being so careless. Just a small bit of metal… but it’s been doing things to my imagination.” He digs his fingernails into Ianto’s thigh, giving him a sliver of the pain he was probably still expecting. “Did you ask for it to be put in?”

Muscles tensing slightly, Ianto shakes his head. “No.”

“But you left it in.”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

Ianto whispers, “I liked the feeling.”

Owen makes a sound that could quite possibly be defined as a purr. He slides his hand up until his fingertips dip into the cleft of Ianto’s arse, feeling for and finding the hard base of the butt plug still firmly in place, but makes sure that he isn’t touching Ianto’s cock. “You have no idea what I’m going to do to you, do you?”

Mutely, Ianto shakes his head. He’s still relaxed, but his fingers are beginning to fold back into fists, loosely still but getting there. His tongue darts out, a quick flick across his lower lip. “No.”

Owen doesn’t say anything. He withdraws his hand and opens the flat, red-lined case sitting by his knee, surveying his tools. He’s done this before, probably a hundred times, in his function as a doctor, but never in a setting like this, and the lust slowly simmering in his gut spikes sharply, once. He picks up the syringe he prepared earlier, fitted with a small, rounded rubber tip, and scoots a little closer, free hand lifting Ianto’s cock. The touch is nearly impersonal – and probably very confusing to the younger man – but it’s paramount that Ianto stays soft for this. The tip of the syringe fits neatly into the opening at the tip of Ianto’s cock, but Ianto shifts nevertheless, breathing out of synch for a moment when Owen slowly depresses the plunger and sends a generous amount of lubricant into his cock. Half the syringe empty, Owen pulls it out, leaving a daub of lube sitting atop Ianto’s cock like a pearl.

Ianto’s probably expecting Owen to fit him with a toy similar to the one he’s worn beforn, but Owen is planning no such thing. He leaves Ianto in his belief while he sets the syringe aside and peruses his choices, finally selecting one that’s just slightly narrower than the smooth metal that started this whole obsession in the first place. The medical term – Van Buren sound – flits through Owen’s mind and is promptly shoved into a corner; he doesn’t want to think in medical terms now, not with the dim lights glinting off the 15 inches of smooth, stainless steel he’s lifting out of the case by his knee.

Ianto flinches a bit at the first touch of cool metal, and Owen murmurs, “Sshh,”, and gives him no choice at all as he fits the rounded tip of the sound into the tip of Ianto’s cock and then changes the angle of his hold a bit. Gravity does all the work for him. Owen keeps a secure grip on the sound, doesn’t push, just directs it. Ianto’s breathing hitches when it goes deeper than that toy’s been in him. His mouth opens in a wordless protest, but what comes out is a low, broken moan that goes straight to Owen’s cock. Muscles tensing incrementally, Ianto keeps making that sound until Owen slowly lowers his cock, changes the angle of entry, and the sound slips a bit and seems to bottom out.

Ianto’s head snaps back against the pillow as he pants out a breathless, “Oh. Oh, god.” His fingers clench and relax rapidly, muscles tensing all along his lean frame, even his toes are curling, and Owen drinks the sight in like a parched man. He makes no comment, doesn’t even move, just waits until Ianto has finished going through the revelation of having been penetrated like this – so deep, so gentle, so intimate and in a place that leaves him completely, utterly vulnerable and helpless, more so than a cock up his arse ever would – and gradually calms down, just a little.

Owen gently pulls on the metal spearing Ianto’s cock, forcing the younger man’s hips up off the bed as he tries to follow the motion. “Owen -”

“Right here,” Owen says soothingly, and keeps pulling, slow but steady, until the sound finally slips free of Ianto’s cock and Ianto shudders, all muscles relaxing at once, a bit of lubricant leaking out of him. He isn’t given much of a reprise, though – Owen’s already discarded the used sound and is picking up the next one, slightly larger and, by his estimate, exactly the right size.

“Owen,” Ianto says, voice tight and just the barest hint of a plea behind the tone, when Owen lifts his cock into position once more. He’s flushed again, his nipples stiff and dark against the rise of his chest, but his cock remains soft as Owen lets the second sound slide into him, as carefully and as slowly as the first. But this one’s larger, slightly so, and Ianto seems to feel the difference acutely. He whimpers, keens, and when the second sound bottoms out and Owen nudges it back and forth, cups Ianto’s cock like a wounded bird and gently blows on the tip before flicking his tongue over the soft skin stretched just a bit around the metal shaft, sobs out Owen’s name again, like a prayer.

Owen is so hard he thinks he might come just from the sight and the sounds Ianto is making. Keeping Ianto’s cock in a gentle, secure hold, he shifts position until he can lower his mouth to Ianto’s ear, nipping at the lobe before whispering, “I could make you come like this, and there’s nothing you can do about it.” He grins when Ianto tries to formulate a response and fails, chest heaving. “It’s resting right on your prostate. There isn’t a muscle you can move to keep me from making you come. I could have you on this bed for hours, Ianto.”

Ianto shudders again, moans brokenly. Owen shifts his hold a little, thumb and index finger gripping the end of the sound to pull it out an inch, letting gravity pull it back in. He listens to the cadence of Ianto’s moans, pleas and whimpers, increasingly frayed, and lowers his mouth to one of Ianto’s nipples, teasing the peaked flesh with gentle bites and flicks of tongue that only seem to drive Ianto even more into incoherency, until he’s all but shuddering apart on the bed.

Owen doesn’t stop the gentle torture until he’s paid attention to Ianto’s other nipple as well, until Ianto’s cock is starting to fill and stiffen around the metal. By then, Ianto’s flushed all over, sweat breaking out on his hot skin, and Owen’s reaching the end of his rope. There’s only so much a man can take, and Ianto’s been moaning his name on every second breath. Sitting up, Owen stops his ministrations and allows Ianto – and himself – to cool off. Van Burens are impossible to get out if there’s an erection; watching Ianto slowly come down from the new high he’s experiencing, frustrated now and whispering filth at Owen, is just the cherry on top of this. Who knew their teaboy could beg like this, lush and throaty and absolutely shameless? Owen leans over him and catches the words, kissing Ianto’s spit-slick lips, nipping at his tongue, swallowing every plea down like decadent candy.

He’s going to fuck Ianto, here on this bed, and the restraints will keep playing a role. Owen has control, all of it, for the rest of the night and possibly a few nights to come, if he has anything to say in the matter. Renewing his attempts to steal the words right out of Ianto’s mouth, Owen finds himself praying again, praying that maybe, just maybe, Jack Harkness will remain gone just a little while longer.