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Title: The Bone Shared: A Tale in the Life of Ianto Jones
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
chasingtides
Fandoms: Torchwood, Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Torchwood Season 2, Supernatural Season 3
Disclaimer: None of this, sadly, is mine. I am just playing in several people's sandboxes, though I think some of them are not copyrighted sandboxes.
Summary: A Torchwood employee could never have a quiet night at the pub or a normal family life. Ianto and Tosh go to America and chaos ensues.
Author's Notes Before Reading: I'd like to thank the awesomesilwyna for the beta job. As this is Torchwood and Supernatural, there are relationships of all sorts and all sorts of strange things happening. Also, Moodus Noises are, in fact, a real thing. Feedback is love.
They had all headed out to a local pub after a Weevil hunt. Everyone had made it through mostly unscathed, so when Owen suggested drinks to celebrate their good fortune, no one objected. The pub was warm and bright compared to the cold night outside.
The table was a worn, sticky gold and somehow they found themselves listening to one of Jack’s more outlandish stories about an incident with a man, a female alien, and a misused sex toy. Gwen was giggling in her seat, with one hand over her mouth. Ianto looked as though he wanted to say something, but simply smirked indulgently instead.
Jack drained his glass and got up to get everyone another round. Tosh was giggling at something Owen said when Ianto’s cell phone rang. Gwen cast him an odd look; in all the months their leader had been away Ianto had only seemed to interact with the team and they were all sitting around the table.
“Hello?” the Welshman asked hesitantly into his earpiece. “Bethan! What are you… Wait, hold on…” He grabbed a napkin and pen and began to rapidly written something on the paper. “What do you mean, you’re hurt? What about Patrick? What? I – Yes, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Who was that?” Gwen asked, full of concern for her rapidly paling coworker.
Ianto hesitated for a moment before replying. “It was my sister. I’m going to need to take a few personal days. There are some family problems.”
“I didn’t realize you had a sister,” Gwen said carefully. “You’ve never mentioned her.”
“We don’t really talk,” Ianto said curtly. “I’ve got to go make some arrangements; I think I can get a flight to America sometime tomorrow if I hurry.”
Just then Jack returned with the drinks. “You wouldn’t believe what the bartender -” He stopped midsentence when he saw how pale Ianto was and put the drinks down. “What happened?”
Ianto pulled on his jacket. “I need some personal days, Jack.”
“Whoa, personal days?”
“It’s my sister,” Ianto explained hurriedly. “I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but she wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t an emergency. I haven’t taken any personal days since I started and I won’t be gone for more than a few days.”
“Of course, you can take a few days, but -”
“Thank you,” Ianto said as he headed toward the door. “I’ll let you know when I will be back.”
Shocked, Jack stared at Ianto’s retreating back. “What was that?” Jack asked, thoroughly confused, as he took his seat at the table.
Gwen frowned. “His sister called when you were up at the bar. He said something about her being hurt and that he would see her soon.”
“He doesn’t have a sister,” Owen said from the other side of the table. When everyone stared at him, he continued, “I’ve got access to his medical records. Ianto Jones, only child. There’s no Bethan Jones accounted for.”
“No, he’s told me about his sister before,” Tosh disagreed. “After – after Mary, we spent a bit of time getting to know each other. He told me a bit about Bethan and her her husband.”
“Well, he lied then, he’s got no sister,” Owen shot back.
“Does it particularly matter?” Gwen asked. “With the way he’s been behaving, he shouldn’t be haring off to America to take care of a sick sister – cousin, lover, whatever she happens to be.”
“Nothing short of locking him in the cells will keep him away from this Bethan, judging from the look on his face,” Jack told her. “And as much as I would love that, I did just give him those personal days.”
“Brilliant, boss.” Owen smirked.
“Why doesn’t someone go with him then?” Tosh suggested. “To keep an eye on him and see who this woman really is.”
Jack clapped her on the back. “Good idea, you’ll go with him.”
“What?”
“If he’s already told you about her, he’s less likely to be upset about you joining him,” Gwen said, biting her lower lip. “And I don’t think anyone else could leave right now.”
Tosh’s eyes flicked over to Jack as she contemplated protesting, before she sighed in resignation. “I won’t be the one to tell him.”
*
“We’re landing.”
Tosh stirred and grimaced for a moment at the pain in her back from falling asleep while seated. “Already?”
“You fell asleep.” Ianto looked tense in his dark suit and white shirt. “A car should be ready for us after we navigate customs.”
“I do hope you aren’t upset that I’m along,” Tosh said, touching his arm.
Ianto smiled at her, but did not loosen his grip on the armrests. “I bought two tickets; I knew one of you would be coming. Better you than Owen.”
Before Tosh could respond and defend Owen, the airplane made its noisy final descent. The other passengers began to rouse from their transatlantic stupor and the pilot reminded everyone to remain seated until they reached their gate. Once they were allowed to leave the plane, Ianto grabbed Tosh’s carry-on bag from the overhead compartment and handed it to her without a word.
She followed him out of the airplane and through the maze of the airport to customs. She did not have many worries about the Americans searching their bags; both had their Torchwood identification with them and while Jack was closemouthed about his relationship with U.N.I.T., Tosh knew that they had worked closely with Torchwood in the past. However, the tension Ianto was radiating was clearly making the other travelers nervous. He held his bags with white knuckles and jumped when he was asked to step out of line so that he could be privately searched. Tosh stepped out to follow him.
“No, miss,” the uniformed man told her, with a gentle smile for her. “Just him. You can stay in line.”
“We’re together,” she hurriedly explained.
The agent took Ianto by the arm, but Ianto was not having any of it.
“You know, if you keep touching me like that, my boyfriend is going to get jealous,” he said with a grin.
Tosh knew the grin that Ianto was giving the burly man and also knew that this would not end well. She fished in her bag for her official identification and cursed Ianto for not being able to keep his mouth shut. When her fingers finally wrapped around the plastic card, she stepped forward, following Ianto and the disgruntled Homeland Security agent.
“Excuse me, but we’re with Torchwood,” she said quickly, before the men had a chance to disappear.
“Ma’am, you’re going to have to get back in line.” The man’s gentle smile had been replaced with a look of strained impatience.
“We’re here on official business,” Tosh explained. “Torchwood. We’re British intelligence.”
The man looked at Tosh’s I. D. and then turned to look at Ianto, who was holding out his I. D., grinning. He glared at them, but, after a moment, let them go.
Tosh did not say a word to Ianto as they went to find their luggage, only glaring at him angrily when he went to get their rental car. She knew the other night in the pub that she had pulled the short straw when Jack had told her to go to America with Ianto, but she had not been expecting this. It was less tiring to babysit her cousin’s young son. Ianto looked as though he should be a responsible adult, but then he would open his mouth…. She sighed and hoped that there would be a hotel near the airport. All she wanted right now was a clean, empty bed. Tosh had never slept well on airplanes and had spent most of the previous night packing for the trip rather than sleeping.
“I’ve got the car,” Ianto said from behind her.
“Thank god,” Tosh murmured. “I’m just about falling asleep standing up.”
Ianto dangled the keys, ringing them like bells or dog tags. “Once more into the breach, through New England we go.”
“To a hotel,” Tosh told him.
“Oh, yes,” he agreed. “In Connecticut. It’s not far.”
*
“When you said not far,” Tosh began, half an hour later, “I thought you meant near the airport.” They had left Boston and Logan Airport far behind them and were currently entrenched in the New England countryside. It gave her chills down her spine.
Ianto shrugged as he swerved into a new lane. “It isn’t. Only about three and half hours. You slept on the plane; you can sleep here.”
Tosh sighed. She could not get over the feeling of being on the wrong side of the road and this highway, in particular, felt unsafe with the speed and recklessness of the other drivers. Not that Ianto was much better. In fact, she was beginning to believe that both Owen and Jack were better drivers than Ianto if this were an accurate demonstration of his skill. She wondered what the hospitals in the United States were like.
“Think,” Ianto told her, turning down the music. “You could be here with Owen. ‘No driving, you’ll screw up the seat.’”
How had Jack and Gwen convinced her that she was the one who could best keep an eye on this Welshman? “How long until we reach the hotel? I’m dying for clean sheets.”
“We are still in Massachusetts,” Ianto explained. “The Hosmer Hill Resort is in Connecticut.”
“Hosmer Hill Resort?” Tosh asked, intrigued by the idea of staying at a resort. While she had traveled a fair bit, she had never been to America. Hosmer Hill Resort had a nice sound to it, she thought, images of spas and restful scenery flitting through her head.
“Yes, it’s where Bethan is staying. There aren’t many places in East Haddam, so she made sure they had rooms for us.”
“She’s your sister?”
Ianto nodded.
“Jack said he didn’t know about her. I thought that, even after everything, you were getting close to him again.”
“Am I shagging the boss? Is that what you’re asking?” Ianto asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You know I didn’t mean it like that!” Tosh protested, offended.
“We’re shagging, but that doesn’t mean I tell him my secrets. He has more secrets than I do.”
“I don’t see how your sister could be a secret.” Tosh yawned. “She’s your sister, not a lover or some illegitimate daughter or anything.”
“You would be surprised. She’s her own secret, not mine. Isn’t everyone their own secret, in the end?”
Tosh had no idea what Ianto meant, but made a mental note of it anyway. “So, Bethan, what is she like? Is she like you?”
Ianto laughed. “Like me? I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in years, since before I graduated university. I don’t know that she’ll recognize me when we arrive.”
They rode in silence for a little while, passing through the muddy New England hills. Tosh thought about how little she, or anyone in Torchwood, knew about Ianto. Even after the incident with Lisa, none of them had taken more than a passing interest in his life and here he had a family that, according to Owen, had just appeared out of the ground. “So, growing up it was just you and your sister?”
If Ianto was surprised by the question, he didn’t show it. “It was mostly me. Everyone else was practically grown up. Bethan was my babysitter. Mair was married by the time I was walking and Maddoc was never home much anyway.”
“Are they still in Wales?”
“Mair’s in London,” Ianto said shortly.
“You never talk about them.”
“You never ask.”
Tosh did not really have an answer for that. Ianto turned the music back up and she began to read the road signs. Some of the names were familiar and she would have sworn she was home, if the place were not so foreign looking. It began to rain and the hills on the side of the highway turned from muddy beds for crows and the odd deer to small brown rivers. The drums on the radio beat in time to the rain falling on the roof and Ianto only occasionally cursed at the other drivers on the road. The combination of the noise and her exhausted lulled Tosh to a restless sleep.
She woke again as they crossed a bridge. It was darker outside and the rain had slowed a bit. The rental car’s headlights lit up a sign that read ‘Welcome to Moodus, Town of East Haddam.’ Ianto appeared just as tense, but had turned off the radio at some point between the Massachusetts border and this sleepy town. He drove them through the little town and into the hills beyond it before turning up a drive marked as their resort.
“This is Hosmer Hill Resort?” Tosh asked, disappointed, as she looked around at the run down cabins.
“That’s what the sign says. Unless you think they stole the sign from the real Hosmer Hill Resort?”
Tosh glared at him, but bit back a retort. Suppressing another yawn, she followed him out of the car.
“Why, Ianto, you didn’t tell me you were going to bring a friend.”
Startled, Tosh turned and saw a woman standing under a battered awning who could only have been Bethan. She was smaller than Ianto and had longer hair, but she was unmistakably related. Tosh gave a brief thanks that Jack had not been the one sent to watch Ianto because everything would have ended badly.
“If you had to bring someone, I thought that you would have had the sense to bring Lisa,” the woman continued. “She might have been able to help. Or has Torchwood finally removed anything resembling common sense from my baby brother’s head?”
Author:
chasingtidesFandoms: Torchwood, Supernatural
Rating: PG-13
Spoilers: Torchwood Season 2, Supernatural Season 3
Disclaimer: None of this, sadly, is mine. I am just playing in several people's sandboxes, though I think some of them are not copyrighted sandboxes.
Summary: A Torchwood employee could never have a quiet night at the pub or a normal family life. Ianto and Tosh go to America and chaos ensues.
Author's Notes Before Reading: I'd like to thank the awesome
silwyna for the beta job. As this is Torchwood and Supernatural, there are relationships of all sorts and all sorts of strange things happening. Also, Moodus Noises are, in fact, a real thing. Feedback is love.They had all headed out to a local pub after a Weevil hunt. Everyone had made it through mostly unscathed, so when Owen suggested drinks to celebrate their good fortune, no one objected. The pub was warm and bright compared to the cold night outside.
The table was a worn, sticky gold and somehow they found themselves listening to one of Jack’s more outlandish stories about an incident with a man, a female alien, and a misused sex toy. Gwen was giggling in her seat, with one hand over her mouth. Ianto looked as though he wanted to say something, but simply smirked indulgently instead.
Jack drained his glass and got up to get everyone another round. Tosh was giggling at something Owen said when Ianto’s cell phone rang. Gwen cast him an odd look; in all the months their leader had been away Ianto had only seemed to interact with the team and they were all sitting around the table.
“Hello?” the Welshman asked hesitantly into his earpiece. “Bethan! What are you… Wait, hold on…” He grabbed a napkin and pen and began to rapidly written something on the paper. “What do you mean, you’re hurt? What about Patrick? What? I – Yes, I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Who was that?” Gwen asked, full of concern for her rapidly paling coworker.
Ianto hesitated for a moment before replying. “It was my sister. I’m going to need to take a few personal days. There are some family problems.”
“I didn’t realize you had a sister,” Gwen said carefully. “You’ve never mentioned her.”
“We don’t really talk,” Ianto said curtly. “I’ve got to go make some arrangements; I think I can get a flight to America sometime tomorrow if I hurry.”
Just then Jack returned with the drinks. “You wouldn’t believe what the bartender -” He stopped midsentence when he saw how pale Ianto was and put the drinks down. “What happened?”
Ianto pulled on his jacket. “I need some personal days, Jack.”
“Whoa, personal days?”
“It’s my sister,” Ianto explained hurriedly. “I’m not entirely sure what’s going on, but she wouldn’t have called if it wasn’t an emergency. I haven’t taken any personal days since I started and I won’t be gone for more than a few days.”
“Of course, you can take a few days, but -”
“Thank you,” Ianto said as he headed toward the door. “I’ll let you know when I will be back.”
Shocked, Jack stared at Ianto’s retreating back. “What was that?” Jack asked, thoroughly confused, as he took his seat at the table.
Gwen frowned. “His sister called when you were up at the bar. He said something about her being hurt and that he would see her soon.”
“He doesn’t have a sister,” Owen said from the other side of the table. When everyone stared at him, he continued, “I’ve got access to his medical records. Ianto Jones, only child. There’s no Bethan Jones accounted for.”
“No, he’s told me about his sister before,” Tosh disagreed. “After – after Mary, we spent a bit of time getting to know each other. He told me a bit about Bethan and her her husband.”
“Well, he lied then, he’s got no sister,” Owen shot back.
“Does it particularly matter?” Gwen asked. “With the way he’s been behaving, he shouldn’t be haring off to America to take care of a sick sister – cousin, lover, whatever she happens to be.”
“Nothing short of locking him in the cells will keep him away from this Bethan, judging from the look on his face,” Jack told her. “And as much as I would love that, I did just give him those personal days.”
“Brilliant, boss.” Owen smirked.
“Why doesn’t someone go with him then?” Tosh suggested. “To keep an eye on him and see who this woman really is.”
Jack clapped her on the back. “Good idea, you’ll go with him.”
“What?”
“If he’s already told you about her, he’s less likely to be upset about you joining him,” Gwen said, biting her lower lip. “And I don’t think anyone else could leave right now.”
Tosh’s eyes flicked over to Jack as she contemplated protesting, before she sighed in resignation. “I won’t be the one to tell him.”
*
“We’re landing.”
Tosh stirred and grimaced for a moment at the pain in her back from falling asleep while seated. “Already?”
“You fell asleep.” Ianto looked tense in his dark suit and white shirt. “A car should be ready for us after we navigate customs.”
“I do hope you aren’t upset that I’m along,” Tosh said, touching his arm.
Ianto smiled at her, but did not loosen his grip on the armrests. “I bought two tickets; I knew one of you would be coming. Better you than Owen.”
Before Tosh could respond and defend Owen, the airplane made its noisy final descent. The other passengers began to rouse from their transatlantic stupor and the pilot reminded everyone to remain seated until they reached their gate. Once they were allowed to leave the plane, Ianto grabbed Tosh’s carry-on bag from the overhead compartment and handed it to her without a word.
She followed him out of the airplane and through the maze of the airport to customs. She did not have many worries about the Americans searching their bags; both had their Torchwood identification with them and while Jack was closemouthed about his relationship with U.N.I.T., Tosh knew that they had worked closely with Torchwood in the past. However, the tension Ianto was radiating was clearly making the other travelers nervous. He held his bags with white knuckles and jumped when he was asked to step out of line so that he could be privately searched. Tosh stepped out to follow him.
“No, miss,” the uniformed man told her, with a gentle smile for her. “Just him. You can stay in line.”
“We’re together,” she hurriedly explained.
The agent took Ianto by the arm, but Ianto was not having any of it.
“You know, if you keep touching me like that, my boyfriend is going to get jealous,” he said with a grin.
Tosh knew the grin that Ianto was giving the burly man and also knew that this would not end well. She fished in her bag for her official identification and cursed Ianto for not being able to keep his mouth shut. When her fingers finally wrapped around the plastic card, she stepped forward, following Ianto and the disgruntled Homeland Security agent.
“Excuse me, but we’re with Torchwood,” she said quickly, before the men had a chance to disappear.
“Ma’am, you’re going to have to get back in line.” The man’s gentle smile had been replaced with a look of strained impatience.
“We’re here on official business,” Tosh explained. “Torchwood. We’re British intelligence.”
The man looked at Tosh’s I. D. and then turned to look at Ianto, who was holding out his I. D., grinning. He glared at them, but, after a moment, let them go.
Tosh did not say a word to Ianto as they went to find their luggage, only glaring at him angrily when he went to get their rental car. She knew the other night in the pub that she had pulled the short straw when Jack had told her to go to America with Ianto, but she had not been expecting this. It was less tiring to babysit her cousin’s young son. Ianto looked as though he should be a responsible adult, but then he would open his mouth…. She sighed and hoped that there would be a hotel near the airport. All she wanted right now was a clean, empty bed. Tosh had never slept well on airplanes and had spent most of the previous night packing for the trip rather than sleeping.
“I’ve got the car,” Ianto said from behind her.
“Thank god,” Tosh murmured. “I’m just about falling asleep standing up.”
Ianto dangled the keys, ringing them like bells or dog tags. “Once more into the breach, through New England we go.”
“To a hotel,” Tosh told him.
“Oh, yes,” he agreed. “In Connecticut. It’s not far.”
*
“When you said not far,” Tosh began, half an hour later, “I thought you meant near the airport.” They had left Boston and Logan Airport far behind them and were currently entrenched in the New England countryside. It gave her chills down her spine.
Ianto shrugged as he swerved into a new lane. “It isn’t. Only about three and half hours. You slept on the plane; you can sleep here.”
Tosh sighed. She could not get over the feeling of being on the wrong side of the road and this highway, in particular, felt unsafe with the speed and recklessness of the other drivers. Not that Ianto was much better. In fact, she was beginning to believe that both Owen and Jack were better drivers than Ianto if this were an accurate demonstration of his skill. She wondered what the hospitals in the United States were like.
“Think,” Ianto told her, turning down the music. “You could be here with Owen. ‘No driving, you’ll screw up the seat.’”
How had Jack and Gwen convinced her that she was the one who could best keep an eye on this Welshman? “How long until we reach the hotel? I’m dying for clean sheets.”
“We are still in Massachusetts,” Ianto explained. “The Hosmer Hill Resort is in Connecticut.”
“Hosmer Hill Resort?” Tosh asked, intrigued by the idea of staying at a resort. While she had traveled a fair bit, she had never been to America. Hosmer Hill Resort had a nice sound to it, she thought, images of spas and restful scenery flitting through her head.
“Yes, it’s where Bethan is staying. There aren’t many places in East Haddam, so she made sure they had rooms for us.”
“She’s your sister?”
Ianto nodded.
“Jack said he didn’t know about her. I thought that, even after everything, you were getting close to him again.”
“Am I shagging the boss? Is that what you’re asking?” Ianto asked with a raised eyebrow.
“You know I didn’t mean it like that!” Tosh protested, offended.
“We’re shagging, but that doesn’t mean I tell him my secrets. He has more secrets than I do.”
“I don’t see how your sister could be a secret.” Tosh yawned. “She’s your sister, not a lover or some illegitimate daughter or anything.”
“You would be surprised. She’s her own secret, not mine. Isn’t everyone their own secret, in the end?”
Tosh had no idea what Ianto meant, but made a mental note of it anyway. “So, Bethan, what is she like? Is she like you?”
Ianto laughed. “Like me? I don’t know. I haven’t seen her in years, since before I graduated university. I don’t know that she’ll recognize me when we arrive.”
They rode in silence for a little while, passing through the muddy New England hills. Tosh thought about how little she, or anyone in Torchwood, knew about Ianto. Even after the incident with Lisa, none of them had taken more than a passing interest in his life and here he had a family that, according to Owen, had just appeared out of the ground. “So, growing up it was just you and your sister?”
If Ianto was surprised by the question, he didn’t show it. “It was mostly me. Everyone else was practically grown up. Bethan was my babysitter. Mair was married by the time I was walking and Maddoc was never home much anyway.”
“Are they still in Wales?”
“Mair’s in London,” Ianto said shortly.
“You never talk about them.”
“You never ask.”
Tosh did not really have an answer for that. Ianto turned the music back up and she began to read the road signs. Some of the names were familiar and she would have sworn she was home, if the place were not so foreign looking. It began to rain and the hills on the side of the highway turned from muddy beds for crows and the odd deer to small brown rivers. The drums on the radio beat in time to the rain falling on the roof and Ianto only occasionally cursed at the other drivers on the road. The combination of the noise and her exhausted lulled Tosh to a restless sleep.
She woke again as they crossed a bridge. It was darker outside and the rain had slowed a bit. The rental car’s headlights lit up a sign that read ‘Welcome to Moodus, Town of East Haddam.’ Ianto appeared just as tense, but had turned off the radio at some point between the Massachusetts border and this sleepy town. He drove them through the little town and into the hills beyond it before turning up a drive marked as their resort.
“This is Hosmer Hill Resort?” Tosh asked, disappointed, as she looked around at the run down cabins.
“That’s what the sign says. Unless you think they stole the sign from the real Hosmer Hill Resort?”
Tosh glared at him, but bit back a retort. Suppressing another yawn, she followed him out of the car.
“Why, Ianto, you didn’t tell me you were going to bring a friend.”
Startled, Tosh turned and saw a woman standing under a battered awning who could only have been Bethan. She was smaller than Ianto and had longer hair, but she was unmistakably related. Tosh gave a brief thanks that Jack had not been the one sent to watch Ianto because everything would have ended badly.
“If you had to bring someone, I thought that you would have had the sense to bring Lisa,” the woman continued. “She might have been able to help. Or has Torchwood finally removed anything resembling common sense from my baby brother’s head?”
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Can't wait for more ;)
Ooooh! Tosh/Dean!
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Have you seen S2 of Torchwood? They really cross the line into the Supernatural 'verse there (hello, episode 7, let's use the same freaking effects). I admit, there might have been some flailing.
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