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amythest_n_ice) wrote2008-04-13 03:03 am
Hope (Part 11)
Link to Part 10
http://amythest-n-ice.livejournal.com/41185.html
Link to Part 12
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Ianto looked from one to the other of them, wide eyed, his mouth opening and closing silently as he tried to process what they were asking him.
“You’re serious, aren’t you?” he finally managed to squeak.
“Yes, of course we’re serious Ianto. We’re not expecting you to answer right now, we know it’s a big decision, and if you need time to think about it, we’ll give you all the time you need,” Jack said softly.
“I….yes, I need to think. I…..” Ianto shook his head wordlessly and pushed out from between them on the sofa, heading toward the door. He turned back to look at them in the doorway, meeting both pairs of eyes.
“Just give me a couple of hours to myself, let me get my head straight, please?” he asked them.
“We meant it Ianto, all the time you need,” the Doctor quickly assured him.
Ianto nodded, and left the room, his footsteps vanishing off in the direction of the gardens.
“What do you think?” the Doctor asked Jack.
“He didn’t say no. If he said he’ll think about it, he will. If the idea disgusted him, or freaked him out beyond any hope of getting over it, he would have said no outright.”
The Doctor twined his fingers with Jack’s, tucking the younger man in against him on the comfortable sofa, and they settled down to grab a little relaxation for themselves.
**
Halfway to the gardens, Ianto changed his mind and set off in search of Martha instead. She had been a good sounding board for his confusions prior to this and some advice from someone else from his own time would be good too. He wanted what they were offering, he wanted it badly, but he wasn’t sure it would, or could work out.
He found Martha in the media room, watching a Friends DVD on the big TV.
“You a Friends fan?” he asked, surprised. He would have thought her comedy tastes ran more toward Scrubs, or the IT crowd.
“Not really, but there was nothing else I fancied watching. Every single one of the DVD’s is in that cupboard there, I think they might have been Rose’s. What did those two want with you?” she asked, picking up a can of diet coke and taking a swallow.
“They wanted to ask me to think about joining them in a trinary relationship,” he said.
Martha choked, a fine mist of coke spraying across the room and shooting from her nose. She coughed and spluttered, clearing her airway and eventually blowing her nose in a tissue Ianto handed her.
“Fuck, Ianto. A little warning next time,” she gasped, looking up at him, expecting to see him wearing a ‘ha, got you with my joke’ smirk, but his face was serious.
“You’re serious?”
“Yes.”
“What did you say?” she asked, agog.
“Nothing yet, I told them I needed time to think. I was hoping to talk to you about it,” he said.
“Really? Ok, take a seat then,” she said, picking up the remote and stopping the DVD before turning the TV off.
He took the other end of the sofa from her, and they turned sideways on so they could look at each other.
“So, why did you want to talk to me?” she asked.
“You’ve always proved to have a good ear on the other things I’ve needed to talk about.”
“Ok, so, the biggie first. Does the idea of it repulse you?” she asked.
“Oh, no. Definitely no repulsion,” he said firmly.
“You want it, don’t you?”
“What?”
“I saw it in your eyes just then; you want what they’ve offered you.”
“Yes,” he whispered, blushing.
“Then what is there to think about? Grab it with both hands and don’t let go,” she said.
“It isn’t that easy Martha. How do I know it’s going to work, that one of us isn’t going to get their heart shredded somewhere along the line?”
“You don’t have any guarantees on that with any relationship Ianto, you know that better than most,” she pointed out, referring to a late night conversation in this very room that had involved a lot of wine, and tales of their woeful love lives.
“I know, but there is a hell of a difference between a conventional couple, heterosexual or not, and a threesome.”
“I knew a polyandrous trio when I was in Uni; it seemed to work ok for them. They argued a hell of a lot less than most of the couples I knew. They were older than me, they ran one of the bars off campus, and they were a lot more fun to talk to than some of my fellow students. They’d been together fifteen years by the end,”
“By the end? What happened to them?”
“Patrick and Sarah were killed in a car crash, my second year of med school, Laura couldn’t cope with losing both of them, so she stepped in front of a train the night of their funerals. They loved each other that much Ianto, I think whichever one had been left would have committed suicide. If the love is there, I don’t think much else matters.”
“So, what I really need to think about isn’t if I want the relationship, but if I love them enough to make it work?”
Martha shrugged, and he nodded, getting up from the sofa.
“Thanks Martha, you’ve helped clear up some of the confusion.”
“There is another advantage you have too Ianto,” she said when he was almost out of the door,
“What’s that?” he asked, pausing to look back at her. She twisted around to look over the back of the sofa.
“Jack’s advanced pregnancy means that the three of you could work on cementing the relationship before sex comes in to complicate things.”
He blushed again, but nodded once before leaving the room, this time heading for the gardens without diversion.
Martha picked up the remote, turning the TV and DVD back on and letting her thoughts drift back to where they had been before Ianto came in and unwittingly put another piece in the puzzle of what she was going to do with her life. Jack and the Doctor having sorted themselves out, and now asking Ianto to join them, she was very fast becoming odd man out/gooseberry, and it wasn’t what she wanted for her life. She didn’t think any of them were marginalizing her deliberately; otherwise she would have made the Doctor take her home already. They just all had so much on their minds; they didn’t have the attention left to notice her. It was by necessity going to get worse after the baby was born, and she couldn’t begrudge an unborn child the attention of its parents. She realized her decision was already made; she just hadn’t wanted to acknowledge it. Stay long enough to make sure they were all OK, and see the baby born, and then move on to make something of her own life. She already knew where she could probably go too, if they would have her.
**
The Doctor looked up as Ianto wandered into the console room that night.
“Hello, I thought you might have gone to bed. It’s late.”
“I’ve been in the gardens, thinking.”
“You’ve made a decision?”
“Yes, but I thought it would be better if I told you and Jack together, only fair as you asked me together.”
“He said he was going to bed about an hour ago, his back was aching I think,”
“Come on then, if he isn’t asleep, I can talk to you both now,”
“Right,” the Doctor said nervously, allowing Ianto to lead the way out of the room.
Jack was in the small kitchen, gulping down a glass of water when they got to the suite, which the Doctor absently noticed was now only two corridors away from the console room. Jack had obviously been sleeping not long before, his hair was sticking up in all directions, and his eyes were sleep dulled, but he waved vaguely in their direction to acknowledge their entry. The Doctor frowned faintly as he noted a faint flush over his cheeks and forehead.
“Are you all right Jack?” the Doctor asked as Jack refilled the water glass.
“Hmm, yeah, I just woke up because I was hot, I think I need a lighter quilt,” Jack said, gulping down the second glass of water.
“Oh, ok. Ianto wanted to talk to us, he’s made his decision,” the Doctor said, still watching Jack with a little concern.
“Really?” Jack looked at Ianto, hope in his blue eyes restrained by a tiny hint of nerves.
“Really. I…I really want to be in a relationship with you both, I want to be another parent to the baby, I want to be part of the family, and I’ll put everything I am into making it work,” he said in a rush.
Jack grinned brightly, his eyes sparkling as he and the Doctor moved to catch Ianto in a three way hug. The three hugged tightly until the baby kicked hard to indicate its displeasure at the restriction of its already cramped living space. Jack moaned at the discomfort, stepping back from the others and rubbing one hand lightly over the abused area.
“Damn it kid, that wasn’t nice,” he groaned.
“Language,” Ianto and the Doctor chided as one.
Jack raised an eyebrow at the two of them, and he snorted.
“You two have your insides used for kickboxing training for a few months and see if you can restrain your language,” he snarked, making the other two snigger slightly.
Jack shook his head at them, and then turned to move quickly to the sofa when the action elicited a swirl of dizziness. He never made it, his vision went black abruptly, leaving him with only vague awareness of floating gently to the floor –floating? - he wondered as he felt the floor gently settle under his body. A cacophony of voices seemed to be yelling his name, and deciding it was all too much to process, his mind followed his vision into the soothing, quiet darkness.
Ianto and the Doctor hurried forward as soon as the force field cocoon surrounding Jack dissipated the moment it had lowered the unmoving man to the floor.
tbc
What? What are you yelling at me for? I answered the question they asked Ianto at the end of the last instalment, didn’t I? What more do you want?
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*glares*
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(Umm, by the way, I liked this part a lot. I'm glad Ianto had time to get his head on straight before making the commitment.)
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