Born This Way - Chapter 7
Jul. 16th, 2012 08:09 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madbottomsTitle: Born This Way 7
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, John, Gray, Owen, Toshiko/Tommy, Suzie, OCs
Rating: NC-17
Warnings/Contains: Supernatural themes, character death, drug references, dub-con.
Summary: Sequel to Choices - Ianto Jones was born and raised in Hell, but he isn’t feeling as demonic as usual lately—thanks to Jack Harkness. But you can’t desert Hell without consequences and suddenly Ianto’s and Jack’s happily ever after may not be so happy.
7
*~*
From Within
*~*
Jack
Ianto is parked where he always is: under the enormous tree near the fence across the street. I can just barely make out the front bumper of the Shelby, shining through the flutter of the leaves in the moonlight. But I’ve been staring at it for hours, since Ianto dropped me off, imagining being out there with him.
I lift my chin off my arms where they’re propped on the windowsill and rub the crimp out of my aching neck. I grab my mobile phone from the nightstand, meaning to call Ianto, but I stare at it in my hand for a long minute before speed-dialling John instead.
It doesn’t even ring before the automated voice picks up, telling me what I already knew. I’m not gonna be able to reach John by phone. It’s disconnected.
I think about calling to him with my mind—sending him a message that I need his help. Would he come?
I groan internally and pull myself off the bed. John left for a reason. I could sit here and convince myself we need him to come back, but it’s really just me. It’s stupid and unfair for me to call him back here just because I miss him.
I sigh and pull jeans on under the baggy T-shirt I sleep in. Cracking open the door, I peek out into the quiet, dark hall. The hinges whine as I push the door slowly open, and I make a mental note to oil them. As I tiptoe down the stairs, I make more mental notes. I knew about the squeaky stair at the bottom, but there are others that protest more quietly under my weight.
My pulse pounds in my ears as I reach for the front door handle. With a final glance up the stairs, I pull it open and step quickly out onto the porch.
Ianto climbs out of the car and races across the street when he sees me. He grabs my hand and hurries me toward the Shelby. “What is it? What’s wrong?” he asks, his eyes darting wildly around my yard.
“I—”
“Is she here? Damn! How did I miss her?” He pushes me into the passenger seat of his car.
“No. It’s not that. I just—”
“What did she do, Jack?” He crouches next to me and looks me over with panicked eyes.
I taste the coffee on his lips as I lean forward, twist my hand into his hair, and press my lips into his. His wired muscles don’t relax, but the tension changes. His attention shifts from out there to right here. To me. Which is where I want it. After a minute, he presses into me and cups the back of my neck with his hand, pulling me deeper into the kiss. Finally, I push back.
“I didn’t want to be alone.”
Ianto pulls me out of the car by my hand and crushes me into the curve of his body. “It’s not safe for you to be out here,” he says softly into my hair. “You need to stay in the house, behind your dad’s field.”
I push back from him. “My dad’s what?”
His lips press into a line as he contemplates how he wants to answer that. “There’s something about your father, Jack. I don’t know what it is, but I couldn’t read him… when I was a demon.” His eyes slide over the street then back to me. “I also couldn’t phase into your house, which can happen only if there’s a celestial field.”
I think about Dad: Mr. Proper and all. “You think there’s something wrong with my dad?”
He shakes his head, but his brow is creased, still contemplating. “Not wrong, but he’s connected upstairs. You don’t know of any reason—?”
“No. There’s nothing weird about my dad…well, except that he actually likes brussel sprouts.” I feel my face involuntarily scrunch.
Ianto’s black eyes sparkle in the silver moonlight as he smiles and loops his arm around my waist, guiding me back to the house. “What time is it?”
“I don’t know…maybe four.”
“You should be asleep.”
I smile up at him. “So should you. Your first day on the job starts in, what, six hours? Don’t want to fall asleep and drool on the books.”
He turns concerned eyes on me. “Not after what happened at the Williams’ tonight. Suzie’s lurking. I’m not letting you out of my sight.”
We reach my doorstep and he pushes the door slowly open. He pulls me into a kiss and when he tries to pull back, I don’t let him. When I smooth my hands over his chest, I can feel the thrum of his heart under my fingers, almost as fast as mine. His lips trace a path from my mouth to my ear and down my neck.
I peel myself away and look into his eyes. “I think that means you have to come upstairs with me,” I whisper.
I twine my trembling fingers into his and pull him through the door. He hesitates at the threshold and shakes his head.
Please. Please. Please come in.
He draws a deep breath. A guilty smile curls one side of his lips as he steps through. His eyes question me and I answer by turning and leading him quickly up the stairs to my room, hoping the creaking stairs aren’t really as loud as they seem.
I close my door and press into him, listening for any sound in the hall. After a minute, when all stays quiet, I relax and look up at Ianto.
In the pale silver light of the moon, his eyes sparkle. An electric tingle whispers over my skin when he leans in and kisses me again, raising goose bumps. I pull him to the bed and slide my jeans off. He lets out a shaky sigh as I climb in and hold an arm out to him.
“Jack…,” he whispers, his hand reaching back for the doorknob.
I hold a finger to my lips, then hold my arm out again.
He shoots a glance to the door, then kicks off his boots and slides into my bed. I burrow into him, nuzzling into his neck.
“This is a really bad idea,” he whispers into my hair. But as I glide my hands along his chest, his stomach, lower, I can tell his body likes the idea just fine.
I nibble my way up to his ear. “I think it’s the best idea I’ve ever had.” I press into him and kiss him hard. “You have way too many clothes on,” I whisper into his lips. He props up on an elbow and I pull his T-shirt over his head, then my own. He just stares at my near nakedness for a minute, and I try not to let him see me shake.
“Jack…,” he whispers again, and I realise I’m not the only one who’s shaking.
I twist my fist into his hair and bring his lips back to mine. His mouth slides to my ear. “So much for not using your Sway on people.”
I shudder at his hot breath in my ear and smile. “You’re the one who told me I need to practice.”
When he lies back on the pillow, his expression is strained. “I was hoping you might choose a different target. You already know your Sway works on me.” He covers me with the sheet, tucking it around me, and sweeps my tangled hair from my face with a finger.
Rolling onto my back, I blow out a frustrated breath. “You want me to use my Sway to lure someone else into my bed? Most guys wouldn’t need to be talked into sleeping with their boyfriends.”
“I would think by now you would know I’m not ‘most guys.’” His finger traces the line of my eyebrow. “I’ve spent seven millennia doing the wrong thing. This is one thing I want to do right.”
“But I love you. It’s not wrong to want to be with you.”
His face darkens and his eyes go distant. “I’m fairly certain that everything about you being with me is wrong.”
“Don’t make me use my Sway on you again,” I say, touching his cheek and bringing him back to the room.
When his eyes lock on mine, they’re deep. “Jack…”
He trails off and shifts onto an elbow above me, still gazing into my eyes. “You don’t have to use your Sway on me to make me want you. In all my existence, I’ve never wanted anyone more. But I need this,” he gestures between us, “to be about more than sex.” He cups my cheek in his palm. “I don’t want to mess it up. You’re still so young Jack. I think we might have been a little rash in jumping into bed so quickly.”
I shove him. “Are you implying I have some communicable disease?”
He stifles a laugh and tucks in next to me on the bed, wrapping his arms around me and nuzzling his face into my hair.
I want to be mad, but he might be right. I feel strangely content as I settle into the crook of his shoulder and lose myself in the silk of his skin.
Until there’s a crash in the hall.
In a flash, Ianto is over the side of the bed and onto the floor, between the bed and the window. I grab my T-shirt off the floor, but when I pull it over my head, I smell cinnamon. I’ve got Ianto’s instead. I yank it on anyway and walk to the door.
The light in the hall flips on and I hear doors opening as my whole family empties into the hall. After a minute, there’s a knock on my door.
“Huh,” I say, trying to appear groggy even though my heart is hammering and I can barely breathe. I’m about as far from sleepy as I can possibly get. I’m so wired.
The door cracks open and Dad peeks through. He looks around and says, “You okay?”
“Uh-huh. What was that?”
“The mirror in the hall fell off the wall. The nail must have given way.”
“Okay,” I say. I return to my bed and roll over, pretending to go back to sleep. After a long moment, the door closes.
I lie perfectly still as the house quiets back down and the light in the hall is turned off. After forever, Ianto pokes his head up over the edge of the bed. “I told you this was a bad idea,” he whispers with a nervous smirk. “If your parents caught me in here…”
He doesn’t need to finish the thought. We’ve just started making some headway with my parents. They don’t really like Ianto, but they don’t seem to hate him anymore either.
I sit up in the bed and he notices my T-shirt. “I like that on you.”
“Sorry,” I say, and start to lift it over my head.
He holds up a hand, a hint of panic in his expression. “Don’t. I have my button-down in the car.”
I smile, liking the way he looks without it. I hold my arm up to him again, but he shakes his head even as a slow smile creeps across his face. “I think we’ve pressed our luck as far as it will go.”
He moves to the window, looks down, and hesitates. “This would be so much easier if I could phase out of here.”
I climb out of bed and move to his side. “You’re gonna break your neck. You should stay.” I take his hand and wrap his arm around me.
Stay with me.
“Jack, please. It was your Sway that got me up here in the first place, against my better judgment, I might add. But I really have to go.”
He kisses me, then looks back out into the tree. With a hammering heart, I watch him pull the screen from the window and climb onto the window frame. He reaches up for a branch and tugs it a few times, then grasps it with both hands and swings away from the house. The branch sags under his weight. I gasp when I hear a crack, but it holds him long enough for his foot to catch a larger branch lower down and closer to the trunk. He reminds me of a lithe feline as he shifts from one branch to another, sure- footed and steady, and eventually swings himself to the ground. I realise I’m holding my breath and let it out in a slow, shaky puff as he steps back to look up at me. And God, he’s beautiful.
The horizon is beginning to turn pink with the start of a new day. He backs away slowly toward his car and my heart aches more with every step.
“What the Hell is wrong with you?” Gray’s hiss in my ear scares the hell out of me.
I bite back a shout, then turn to look at him. He’s scowling at me, and when he sees my T-shirt, he rolls his eyes. “Here? You were going to do that here? With Mum and Dad just down the hall? It’ s bad enough you’ve done it already.”
My face is on fire and I have to fight to keep my voice a whisper. “You were watching?”
He backs off a few steps. “I’m an angel, not a voyeur. I wasn’t watching. But it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that you aren’t dragging your boyfriend into your room in the middle of the night to talk.”
“For your information, we were just talking, because Ianto stopped.”
“Yeah. That’s why you’re wearing his T-shirt.” His smile is sour.
I turn to hide my flaming cheeks. “And anyway, it’s none of your business what Ianto and I do. Or where.”
“It’s exactly my business. My job is to protect you, even if it is from your stupid self. I’m not going to let you do this, Jack. I’m not going to let you ruin your life.”
Rage erupts out of my emotional black pit when it hits me…what he did. I stand up and shove him as hard as I can. “You ripped that mirror off the wall. Didn’t you?”
He staggers back a few steps, and a grim smile curls his lips.
“Jesus, Gray!” I grab fistfuls of my hair and yank before groaning and turning toward the window. I look out at the Shelby, still parked outside, and breathe deep, then turn back to Gray. “Can we talk about this later?”
His face softening, he nods and disappears.
I climb into bed and pull the sheet over my head. After a long minute, I lift my head out from under the sheet and scan the room. Still empty.
I trace the path of Ianto’s lips with my hand, still feeling the tingle of my skin from his touch. Closing my eyes, I bring his T-shirt to my face, breathing my heart back to a normal rhythm.
I’m so glad to have Gray back, but who knew having a guardian angel would turn out to be such an epic buzz kill? Even though I swore I wouldn’t use my Sway on family, maybe I should try it on Gray, just to get him to lighten up a little. I need practice, after all.
I smile, remembering how well it almost worked on Ianto.
Of course, I really didn’t mean to use it. I finally doze off with the smell of cinnamon in my nose and the tingle of fire under my skin. And in my dream, Gray doesn’t interrupt us.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
on 2012-07-16 12:24 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-16 09:25 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-16 01:52 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-16 09:26 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-16 03:37 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-16 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-16 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-16 09:27 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-16 10:08 pm (UTC)I'm worried about Jack thinking so much in John.
no subject
on 2012-07-17 06:40 am (UTC)no subject
on 2012-07-30 03:50 am (UTC)Somehow I don't think it has anything at all to do with John's angelic nature, but of course I could be wrong. I really don't think so, but I guess it's possible.
You know for an angel, Gray's just a bit on the hypocritical side. He smashes the mirror in the hall to stop Jack from doing with Ianto exactly what he's been fantasizing about doing with Elle? I don't think him dumping Ianto's groceries on the floor and thinking about the possibility of becoming visible to "certain" people can be put down to the purity of his thoughts.
I'm rather intrigued about Ianto's idea that Jack's dad has the power to put a celestial field around the house. Kinda makes you wonder just what kind of connections he may have with certain higher-ups.
no subject
on 2012-07-30 07:57 am (UTC)Gray is a bit like that. He is definitely not playing by the rules.
The celestial field? Well, Jack's dad may have something special about him. Read on to find out.
Cheers for all the comments.