[#153] Alone Again (Torchwood)

[badly_knitted]

Theme Prompt: #153 – Insomnia
Title: Alone Again
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating/Warnings: PG / None.
Bonus: Yes
Word Count: 1000
Summary: Ianto wakes up in the cot beneath Jack’s office, alone yet again.



Waking up alone in Jack’s bunker for the umpteenth time, Ianto lay there in the dim light filtering through the open manhole, listening to quiet rustling sounds coming from the office above. According to his wristwatch, it was just after three-thirty in the morning; he didn’t need to get up for another three hours. He considered rolling over and going back to sleep the way he usually did, maybe Jack would join him again in a little while… not that he ever had. Finally, after several minutes, he slipped out of the narrow cot, pulled on the robe he kept there, and climbed the ladder.

As he’d expected, his lover was sitting at his desk, fully dressed, doing paperwork. Ianto suspected the main reason Jack let it pile up during the day was so that he’d have something to occupy himself with late at night, once Ianto grew too tired to entertain him any longer.

“Do you ever sleep?” he asked, shoving his hands in his robe pockets. This late at night, the Hub seemed colder than it did during the day.

Jack glanced at him with a faint smile; his eyes looked tired. “I sleep. Not a lot, but I do sleep.”

“That’s not what Gwen says. I overheard her once telling Tosh that you don’t sleep at all.”

“Ah, that. She was getting too personal, wanted to know where I slept, so I lied. If I’d told her I had a room beneath my office, I have a feeling she’d have taken that as an invitation.” Jack huffed a laugh. “It was right after her first firearms training session, and I think she might have got the wrong idea.”

“Really.” Ianto was smirking. “I can’t imagine why.”

“Hey! My teaching methods may be a bit unorthodox, but you can’t deny they’re effective. My team can keep focused on what they’re aiming at regardless of distractions.”

“And I suppose you don’t enjoy the groping at all.”

“I never said that. It’s… a perk of the job, and I stop if I’m threatened with bodily harm.”

“Not that you can be harmed, not permanently,” Ianto pointed out.

“That’s not the point. It still hurts.”

Ianto inclined his head. “Fair enough. So…” He perched on the corner of Jack’s desk. “Is the not sleeping much an immortal thing?”

Jack was tempted to say yes, but he found himself strangely reluctant to lie to Ianto.

“Not really, it’s more of an insomnia thing. If I’ve had to heal from a serious injury then I might sleep for seven or eight hours, given the chance, but the rest of the time it’s… not so easy. The falling asleep part’s not so hard, especially if someone wears me out first.” Jack tried for a leer, but it was lacking its usual vigour and it quickly faded. “Staying asleep though…” He trailed off with a shrug.

“Nightmares?” Ianto hazarded.

“Nightmares, worries, doubts, a whole host of what ifs.” Jack sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose between thumb and forefinger. “I wake up, for whatever reason, and then I’m just lying there, thinking about all the things I manage to block out during the day, and I can’t stop.”

“So you get up and try to distract yourself with work.”

“Sometimes I’ll try to go back to sleep, but when you’re here… I don’t want to wake you. Pretty sure you need sleep more than I do. I can go without for weeks if I have to, just taking the occasional catnap, but you don’t have that luxury, and I’m not going to put your life at risk. You work too hard as it is.”

“You’re saying if I wasn’t here, you would’ve stayed in bed?”

“Maybe, maybe not. It depends.”

“On what, exactly?”

“A lot of things. What woke me up, what’s on my mind. Sometimes I do some work to take my mind off what I was dreaming about and then I can go back to sleep. Boring paperwork is good for that.”

Smiling a bit sadly, Ianto leaned over to kiss Jack on the forehead. “What am I going to do about you?”

“Why do you need to do anything?” It still baffled Jack that Ianto cared so much about his wellbeing. He was immortal; nothing affected him for long, and if he died, he just reset. Sometimes that was quicker and easier than trying to get enough sleep.

“Come back to bed.”

“But I’ll keep you awake.”

“I’m already awake, in case you didn’t notice. I always wake up when you’re gone; the bed gets cold without you.”

“I could buy a duvet,” Jack suggested.

“Might not be a bad idea; it’ll be winter soon and I think we’d both appreciate the extra warmth, but a duvet won’t fix everything. Tomorrow night…” Ianto paused, shaking his head. “It’s already tomorrow. Tonight, come home with me. My bed’s a lot bigger than yours; if you wake up, you won’t have to get up to avoid disturbing me, and if you do get up, there are books to read, or you can watch TV in the living room until you fall asleep again, provided you keep the volume down. Just wrap yourself in a blanket and relax.”

“You really wouldn’t mind?”

“’Course not. How long has it been since you last slept in a proper bed anyway? And no, your cot does not count as a proper bed. My five-year-old niece’s bed is bigger, not to mention more comfortable.”

Jack pouted. “There’s nothing wrong with my cot!”

“You only think that because you’ve forgotten what it feels like to sleep on something big enough that you can turn over without risking falling off the edge. Are you coming back to bed or not?”

“What about my paperwork?”

“It’s not going anywhere; you can finish in the morning.”

“But what if I can’t get back to sleep?”

Ianto raised an eyebrow. “Who said anything about sleeping?”

Jack grinned. “In that case, lead the way.”


The End