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Title: Opportunities/One door closes...and a window opens (2/?)
Rating: PG – I think. There is talk of sex and some ‘adult’ moments but nothing explicit. My son watches TV with more gratuitous moments than this story. It’s the smarm you need to worry about!
Genre: AU! No aliens but some familiar names may still be used
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Estelle
Summary: The holiday season is coming up and Ianto Jones is stuck without a job, with very little money and not too many prospects. So when he is offered a job for two weeks, he readily accepts. But this new job may become complicated when he realises that the man who broke his heart years before is the grandson of his new employer.
A/N: Thank you all so much for the great comments for the intro to this silly little story. Thank you, too, for the great suggestions. I think I have almost decided on the business type - it's a toss-up between two! Anyway, onwards to the next part.
*~*
Chapter Two
Ianto smoothed a yawn and tried not to look at the clock posted high on the foyer’s opposite wall. The event was over, and most of the crowd was gone, but his nerves were still thrumming from the encounter with Jack Harkness. He couldn’t let his guard down yet, however, he had to stay in the cloakroom until the very last garment was claimed or turned over to lost property once the security officers declared that the building was empty of guests.
The double doors of the banquet room opened and one of his co-workers emerged pushing a full cart. She looked hot and tired, and Ianto wished he could go and lend a hand. Though the work was harder, he’d much rather draw dining room duty than tend the cloakroom. He’d rather be busy than sitting around doing nothing. The time went faster, and there was no opportunity to think...
He glanced at glass jar on the bench, a recent and sometimes beneficial addition. Not much in it tonight, except for the nice-sized pound note Jack Harkness had put inside. A big enough note that he half regretted not giving him his real number. Not that he would have given him a real one under any circumstances, because Jack Harkness was the epitome of trouble, he’d learned that lesson long ago. But he could have just told him no.
He hoped he wouldn’t actually call. No, he amended, what he really hoped is that the owner of that number wouldn’t take offense if he actually did.
He’d never really needed a backup before, because the time and temperature number usually served its purpose well through the years. Until tonight—when he’d blurted out the truth to Jack Harkness. But why had he told him about his ploy? To show off how clever he was? To very delicately let him know that he hadn’t been interested in the other guy? To hint that he needed such stratagems to hold off the vast numbers of suitors hanging around him? To point out that even though Jack wasn’t interested in him, others were?
He smothered a snort at his own foolishness. As if any of that would matter to Harkness. A man with success, and the good looks to match—dark brown hair, blue-gray eyes, a chiselled profile, the cutest dimple in his chin and a smile that attracted anybody still able to breathe.
Maybe he did hope he’d call that number. It would do him good to have is ego trimmed back a bit. And if Ianto could be the one to do it...Somebody has to start a trend.
Besides, if he’d coldly refused to give him the information he wanted, he might have started to wonder why. This was the better—he wouldn’t call, and so he would never have reason to question why the man from the cloakroom was immune to his charm. He’d probably never give him a second thought.
His long evening shut up in the cloakroom should have meant plenty of time to finish reviewing his notes for his political science exam the next morning. But of course, it hadn’t happened that way. Despite his best efforts, he hadn’t been able to
Concentrate. A dozen times he’d started to study, only to find himself straining to listen to the speeches coming from the ballroom instead.
Well, it was too late to go to the library. He’d walk straight home instead, look over his notes again, and then get some sleep. And once his last exam was done, and he had worked his only remaining dining room shift tomorrow, the semester would be officially over and he would have no other obligations until January first.
No obligations—but also no income. For with school out of session the student union would close as well.
Ianto bit his lip. He had enough cash tucked away to survive two weeks without pay—and the idea of two weeks of freedom, with no time-clock to punch, no boss to answer to, was sheer heaven.
A crash made him jump and look toward the hall. Another of the dining room staff had misjudged and rammed a cart full of crockery into the edge of the door. An awkward stack of half-empty glass dessert plates wobbled on the corner of the cart.
Ianto swung himself onto the cloakroom counter and across, jumping off just as the stack of dishes overbalanced. He slapped his hand down on the top plate, stopping it from falling but splashing leftover caramel sauce over the front of his and the waitresses shirts. ‘Sorry about making such a mess, Sam.’
‘No problem. I’d rather clean out a shirt than clean glass shards out of the carpet. I think the stack will stay in place now.’
‘Now that I’ve squashed the plates together and spread dessert all over the foyer you mean?’ Ianto cautiously lifted his hand. Caramel sauce oozed between his fingers. ‘Maybe I should just lick it off.’
‘I wouldn’t advise it—those things never taste as good as they look.’
Ianto reached for a crumpled napkin and tried without much success to wipe off the sticky sauce from his fingers.
Their supervisor appeared from the room behind them. ‘What’s the hold up, people? And why aren’t you in the cloakroom, Mr Jones?’
‘There are only two coats left, and no one seems likely to collect them at this hour,’ Ianto said. ‘So I was giving Sam a hand with the cart.’ Ianto didn’t climb over the counter this time; he very properly went through the door and back into the cloakroom.
‘Very admirable but Sam needs to learn to manage on her own.’ The supervisor eyed the glass jar. ‘You seem to have done rather well this evening. The contributions of young patrons, by any chance? Perhaps I should make it clear,
Mr Jones, that the cloakroom is not a dating service. If I hear again that you are giving out your phone number...’
‘Yes, ma’am.’ Ianto didn’t bother to explain. He suspected that his boss wouldn’t see the humour in time and temperature. And right now he didn’t even want to think about how his supervisor had heard about the whole thing.
‘All the guests have gone. Lock up the rest of the coats, and then you may go,’ the supervisor said.
Ianto was relieved to be outside, away from the overheated and stale atmosphere of the banquet room. Now that the traffic had died down the snow was getting very deep—though he could see a pair of ploughs running up the nearest main street, trying to keep the centre lanes clear. He slung his backpack over his shoulder, took a deep breath of crisp air, let a snowflake melt on his tongue and started for home.
Though it was only a few blocks away, it took him almost an hour to struggle through the snow, and by the time he reached the house he was cold and wet. There were still lights on upstairs, but the main level was mercifully dark and relatively quiet. With a sigh of relief he unlocked the sliding door which separated his tiny studio flat—which in better days had been the back parlour of a once-stately home—from the main hallway.
The fireplace no longer worked, of course, but the mantel served nicely as a display shelf for a few precious objects, and in the centre he’d put his Christmas tree. It was just twelve inches tall, the top section of an artificial tree which had been discarded years ago, stuck in a makeshift stand. There were no lights and only half a dozen ornaments. It was a little bit of holiday cheer, a reminder of better days, a symbol of future hopes...
He frowned and looked more closely. There had been half a dozen ornaments that afternoon when he’d gone to work. Now there were five. On the rug below the mantel were a few shards of iridescent glass where the sixth ornament, an angel, had shattered.
Someone must have slammed a door, he told himself, and the vibration had made the angel fall. But he knew better. The fact that there were only a few tell-tale slivers meant the ornament had not simply been broken, but the mess had been hastily swept up.
But no one was supposed to be in his room, ever.
Ianto’s breath froze. He spun around to the stack of plastic crates which held almost everything he owned and rummaged through the bottom one, looking for his dictionary. In the back of it, under the embroidered cover, was an envelope where he kept his spare cash. He’d tucked it there, secure in the thought that no other occupant in the house would be caught dead looking up a word even if they did invade his privacy to snoop through his room, as he’d suspected some of them might do.
The envelope was still there, but it was empty. Someone had raided his room, searched his meagre belongings and walked away with his miniscule savings. All the money he had left in the world was now in his pocket—the tips he’d taken from the jar before he left work that evening.
He had to remind himself to breathe. You’ve survived hard times before. You can do it again. There would be a pay waiting for him when the student union reopened after the holidays, pay for the hours he’d worked in the last two weeks.
But in the meantime, to find himself essentially without funds and with no immediate means of earning any...
Maybe, he through wryly, he should have given Jack Harkness his real number after all. At least then, if by chance he had actually called him, he could hit him up for a loan, for old time’s sake...
*~*
Ok, next choice for your interactive pleasure.
One thing I asked for was suggestions of a name for the fic because I wasn't very happy with my own choice. Even though I am slowly warming up to it, I did get a great suggestion for a title which basically means the same thing but said a different way. 'The Second Window' is the term used when a space shuttle launch is scrubbed because of bad weather or technical problems, and they have to wait for the next launch window.
Do I keep the current name or use the new one?