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Honorable Titles
Title: Honorable Titles
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
sariagray
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Tosh
Word Count: ~1840
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None explicitly mentioned, but up through Season 2, to be safe.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, its characters, or its environs, nor do I receive any monetary gain.
Beta:analineblue <3
Summary: Some jobs never change, not really.
Author’s Note: Written for the![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
redisourcolor challenge #21. The theme is "Job" and the words are "icing," "expedite," and "mossy." The phrase is "Animal, mineral or vegetable?"
Honorable Titles
It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles. -Niccolo Machiavelli
There are five mugs placed carefully on the silver tray around a small plate of biscuits. The biscuits are untried, something new with a bit of chocolate icing that Jack had tossed into the carriage on their last trip to the shops when he thought Ianto hadn’t been looking. If they don’t go over well, there’s still a full packet of custard creams in the cupboard.
It’s early in the day still, but Ianto’s already on his second round of coffee deliveries. Gwen had pleaded with big, bright eyes underscored by dark semicircles of sleeplessness and he hadn’t been able to say no. He never really could say no to her, but then, she rarely asked much of him beyond a file retrieval or a top-up of caffeine or perhaps to do Thai for lunch.
Ianto goes to her first and she looks up at him with that huge smile, like it’s Christmas morning or something. There are papers all over her workstation, stacks of them, files tipped this way and that. A couple of dossiers dangle precariously from the edge of the surface. He uses his knee to nudge them further up to safety.
Gwen laughs a little and shakes her head. “I know, I know. I promise I’ll clean up, Tad.” She reaches for her mug and takes two biscuits from the plate. “What’re these, then?”
“Found their way into my carriage,” he says, shrugging. “Either some five year old got turned around or Jack snuck them in. There’s still custard creams if you’d rather.”
“It’s got chocolate, can’t be all bad.” She grins again and picks up a packet of paper. It’s stamped Classified and held together by one of those thick industrial strength fasteners. “Thanks.”
He nods and moves on. There is as much art to carrying the tray as there is to brewing the coffee, maybe even more. When he’s working the machine, he’s generally left alone, but no one seems to think that disturbing the man balancing four or five mugs of scalding hot liquid is a bad idea. It takes grace to dodge flung basketballs or swooping pteranodons or fleeing teammates without spilling a drop or a crumb.
Ianto had learned it all during his brief stint as a barista, back in the days when he was a rebellious youth and his father had forced him into employment. “I’ve not raised a thief,” he’d said. “You earn your money like a man or else you starve.”
At the time, he’d thought it the worst job imaginable. Kowtowing to society with a smile while they patronized or berated, burning his hands on the steam wand, smelling of dried milk and sickly sweet syrup, his feet and legs aching at the end of his shift. He’d taken up smoking then, just to have an excuse to get out of the building every once in a while.
Looking back, of course, the time is smoothed over with the golden glow of nostalgia. He was relatively carefree then, and there’d always been a handful of customers who would stay and chat, ask him about his life and talk about their own. He’d learned a lot about people that year, like the man who came in every morning before work to buy a coffee and paw through the South Wales Echo, doling out pieces of wisdom to any willing ear. “You’re not in the right job if you’re calling it a job,” he’d once told Ianto. “But you’re young yet.”
As he approaches Toshiko’s station, he nearly gets his foot tangled in an errant cable, but he catches himself in time and detours around it lightly, like he’d always known it was there.
“Coffee, Tosh?” he asks from just behind her.
“Hmm. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She’s completely distracted, squinting at the seemingly endless stream of numbers on the screen, as though narrowing her eyes at the problem might expedite the solution. Ianto clears his throat.
“What? Oh! Sorry, Ianto. Yes, please. Thank you.” She blushes prettily and gives a small, self-deprecating smile. She gently lifts her mug from the tray, all delicate grace, and picks up a biscuit with her thumb and forefinger. “I meant to tell you that I got the archival system back up and running last night. It should be foolproof now, what with all the command windows. I’ve also created a backdoor so that you can override them. I’ve sent you the instructions. Let me know if there’s a problem?”
“Sure,” he says, smiling. “Thanks.”
There was this one woman who used to come into the coffee shop every morning with her toddler. She was nice enough, though always distracted by her son’s innate ability to get into everything at once. Ianto had almost tripped over him a few times as he crawled from beneath the tables, all blonde curly hair and cherubic cheeks. The boy called his mother’s daily latte ‘mummy juice’ and would always point at the pain au chocolat and ask for a cup of milk. Soon enough, Ianto learned to have their order ready just before they arrived. He knew their names once, but they’d long since been forgotten.
Even before entering the autopsy bay, Ianto can hear Owen humming to himself while prodding a scalpel at some mossy green blob. It’s a tune Ianto doesn’t recognize, but maybe Owen’s just making it up as he goes along. That wouldn’t be much of a shock, really.
“Animal, mineral or vegetable?” he asks, standing on the top step and glancing down.
Owen looks up and shrugs, splattering viscous matter onto the floor with a sickly plop. “Alien. It’s only just stopped glowing.”
He steps away from the blob and peels off his gloves as Ianto carefully descends the stairs. As soon as he gets to the bottom, Owen grabs his mug and a handful of biscuits with such force that it nearly upends the tray. He dumps the biscuits on top of a folded polypropylene scrub top and gulps down almost half of the coffee before Ianto gets to the top of the stairs.
“Cheers, mate,” Owen calls out and begins humming again.
Once a week at the little shop, on Thursdays, an elderly couple would stop in for two cups of coffee and a four-cheese Panini that they would split between themselves. They were always quiet and succinct, giving their order without even so much as a hello. They barely even spoke to each other the whole time they were there, existing in a silence that appeared strained. Ianto didn’t hate them, per se, but their curtness was an annoyance.
Then, on Christmas Eve when he was working alone, he watched as their car pulled up to the front. It was a slow day, and by the time they made it to the counter, Ianto had their food and drink ready for them. They smiled brightly, wished him the merriest Christmas, and handed him fifty pounds as tip. After they’d eaten, they left holding hands.
Ianto rests the tray against the railing to the autopsy bay and shifts the last two mugs and the plate of biscuits to the center. He has one last stop, and then maybe he can settle down and test Toshiko’s updates to the archival program. It’s been a good day to play catch-up, Tosh’s assurances that the Rift would be relatively calm until the end of the week proving correct so far.
He pauses just outside of Jack’s office and listens. He twists his wrist to check his watch, careful not to disturb the drinks; Jack should be finishing with his conference call soon.
“-both know it’s the only option,” Jack says wearily into the phone, though he doesn’t sound infuriated, which Ianto takes as a really positive sign. “Alright, thank you, General.”
Ianto listens to the phone slam down and the subsequent exasperated sigh that has become so familiar, he could time it. Still, he’s seen and heard worse, so he figures Jack probably got whatever it was that he wanted in the end. He takes a deep breath and knocks lightly on the doorframe.
Jack looks up, still pensively tapping the corner of his mouth with a pencil, and breaks out into a sudden smile that eases the lines of worry on his forehead. The pencil is dropped onto the blotter and Jack leans back in his chair. It creaks noisily and Ianto makes a mental note to oil the swivel.
“Perfect timing,” Jack says.
Ianto hums in agreement and shifts to free his right hand. He settles Jack’s mug and the plate in front of him, then picks up his own mug and tucks the tray underneath his arm.
A couple of months before he left the coffee shop, a businesswoman (new in town, Ianto later found out) began to visit regularly on her lunch break. Every day, seven minutes passed noon, she’d walk in and order a cappuccino and a chocolate-hazelnut biscotti. About ten minutes after she arrived, a man in full mechanics’ uniform would come in, get a coffee, and sit with her. The staff made wild speculations about them, creating scenarios of illicit affairs or clandestine meetings between spies. Ianto always shook his head at the romantic imaginations of his coworkers and would go wash dishes or stock the shelves to get away from it all.
One day, she came in alone, her eyes red-rimmed and wet. They’d just gotten a sample shipment of a local bakery’s chocolate fairy cakes. They were meant to be tried by the employees, but there were almost two dozen of them, and so Ianto took one out, placed it on a plate, and carried it over to her with her cappuccino and biscotti. She didn’t say a word, just looked up at him in surprise and squeezed his hand, once, when he winked at her.
Jack is watching him, his momentary ponderousness replaced with contentment. He glances down at the biscuits and smiles again, brightly. Ianto chuckles.
“Those fell into the carriage by mistake, it seems,” he teases and Jack laughs.
“I’m surprised you didn’t put them back.”
Ianto shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee. “If they’re awful, I’ve told the others to blame you. They look decent enough, though. Did you need anything else?”
Jack shakes his head as he picks up one of the remaining biscuits and then freezes, the treat halfway to his mouth. “Yes, actually. I do. Stay awhile?”
Ianto considers the piles of new pamphlets in the tourist office that need sorting, and the supplies that Owen ordered that need to be put away, and the updates to the archival program that need to be checked, and the list of files Gwen had given him earlier that need pulling. He leans over Jack’s desk to pick up a biscuit, but Jack grabs his hand loosely and looks at him.
“Please?” He lifts Ianto’s hand, turns it around, and presses a kiss to the inside of his wrist, never breaking eye contact.
Ianto smiles softly. “All right.”
The End
Author:
sariagrayCharacters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, Owen, Tosh
Word Count: ~1840
Rating: PG
Spoilers: None explicitly mentioned, but up through Season 2, to be safe.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, its characters, or its environs, nor do I receive any monetary gain.
Beta:
analineblue <3Summary: Some jobs never change, not really.
Author’s Note: Written for the
redisourcolor challenge #21. The theme is "Job" and the words are "icing," "expedite," and "mossy." The phrase is "Animal, mineral or vegetable?"It is not titles that honor men, but men that honor titles. -Niccolo Machiavelli
There are five mugs placed carefully on the silver tray around a small plate of biscuits. The biscuits are untried, something new with a bit of chocolate icing that Jack had tossed into the carriage on their last trip to the shops when he thought Ianto hadn’t been looking. If they don’t go over well, there’s still a full packet of custard creams in the cupboard.
It’s early in the day still, but Ianto’s already on his second round of coffee deliveries. Gwen had pleaded with big, bright eyes underscored by dark semicircles of sleeplessness and he hadn’t been able to say no. He never really could say no to her, but then, she rarely asked much of him beyond a file retrieval or a top-up of caffeine or perhaps to do Thai for lunch.
Ianto goes to her first and she looks up at him with that huge smile, like it’s Christmas morning or something. There are papers all over her workstation, stacks of them, files tipped this way and that. A couple of dossiers dangle precariously from the edge of the surface. He uses his knee to nudge them further up to safety.
Gwen laughs a little and shakes her head. “I know, I know. I promise I’ll clean up, Tad.” She reaches for her mug and takes two biscuits from the plate. “What’re these, then?”
“Found their way into my carriage,” he says, shrugging. “Either some five year old got turned around or Jack snuck them in. There’s still custard creams if you’d rather.”
“It’s got chocolate, can’t be all bad.” She grins again and picks up a packet of paper. It’s stamped Classified and held together by one of those thick industrial strength fasteners. “Thanks.”
He nods and moves on. There is as much art to carrying the tray as there is to brewing the coffee, maybe even more. When he’s working the machine, he’s generally left alone, but no one seems to think that disturbing the man balancing four or five mugs of scalding hot liquid is a bad idea. It takes grace to dodge flung basketballs or swooping pteranodons or fleeing teammates without spilling a drop or a crumb.
Ianto had learned it all during his brief stint as a barista, back in the days when he was a rebellious youth and his father had forced him into employment. “I’ve not raised a thief,” he’d said. “You earn your money like a man or else you starve.”
At the time, he’d thought it the worst job imaginable. Kowtowing to society with a smile while they patronized or berated, burning his hands on the steam wand, smelling of dried milk and sickly sweet syrup, his feet and legs aching at the end of his shift. He’d taken up smoking then, just to have an excuse to get out of the building every once in a while.
Looking back, of course, the time is smoothed over with the golden glow of nostalgia. He was relatively carefree then, and there’d always been a handful of customers who would stay and chat, ask him about his life and talk about their own. He’d learned a lot about people that year, like the man who came in every morning before work to buy a coffee and paw through the South Wales Echo, doling out pieces of wisdom to any willing ear. “You’re not in the right job if you’re calling it a job,” he’d once told Ianto. “But you’re young yet.”
As he approaches Toshiko’s station, he nearly gets his foot tangled in an errant cable, but he catches himself in time and detours around it lightly, like he’d always known it was there.
“Coffee, Tosh?” he asks from just behind her.
“Hmm. I’ll be there in a minute.”
She’s completely distracted, squinting at the seemingly endless stream of numbers on the screen, as though narrowing her eyes at the problem might expedite the solution. Ianto clears his throat.
“What? Oh! Sorry, Ianto. Yes, please. Thank you.” She blushes prettily and gives a small, self-deprecating smile. She gently lifts her mug from the tray, all delicate grace, and picks up a biscuit with her thumb and forefinger. “I meant to tell you that I got the archival system back up and running last night. It should be foolproof now, what with all the command windows. I’ve also created a backdoor so that you can override them. I’ve sent you the instructions. Let me know if there’s a problem?”
“Sure,” he says, smiling. “Thanks.”
There was this one woman who used to come into the coffee shop every morning with her toddler. She was nice enough, though always distracted by her son’s innate ability to get into everything at once. Ianto had almost tripped over him a few times as he crawled from beneath the tables, all blonde curly hair and cherubic cheeks. The boy called his mother’s daily latte ‘mummy juice’ and would always point at the pain au chocolat and ask for a cup of milk. Soon enough, Ianto learned to have their order ready just before they arrived. He knew their names once, but they’d long since been forgotten.
Even before entering the autopsy bay, Ianto can hear Owen humming to himself while prodding a scalpel at some mossy green blob. It’s a tune Ianto doesn’t recognize, but maybe Owen’s just making it up as he goes along. That wouldn’t be much of a shock, really.
“Animal, mineral or vegetable?” he asks, standing on the top step and glancing down.
Owen looks up and shrugs, splattering viscous matter onto the floor with a sickly plop. “Alien. It’s only just stopped glowing.”
He steps away from the blob and peels off his gloves as Ianto carefully descends the stairs. As soon as he gets to the bottom, Owen grabs his mug and a handful of biscuits with such force that it nearly upends the tray. He dumps the biscuits on top of a folded polypropylene scrub top and gulps down almost half of the coffee before Ianto gets to the top of the stairs.
“Cheers, mate,” Owen calls out and begins humming again.
Once a week at the little shop, on Thursdays, an elderly couple would stop in for two cups of coffee and a four-cheese Panini that they would split between themselves. They were always quiet and succinct, giving their order without even so much as a hello. They barely even spoke to each other the whole time they were there, existing in a silence that appeared strained. Ianto didn’t hate them, per se, but their curtness was an annoyance.
Then, on Christmas Eve when he was working alone, he watched as their car pulled up to the front. It was a slow day, and by the time they made it to the counter, Ianto had their food and drink ready for them. They smiled brightly, wished him the merriest Christmas, and handed him fifty pounds as tip. After they’d eaten, they left holding hands.
Ianto rests the tray against the railing to the autopsy bay and shifts the last two mugs and the plate of biscuits to the center. He has one last stop, and then maybe he can settle down and test Toshiko’s updates to the archival program. It’s been a good day to play catch-up, Tosh’s assurances that the Rift would be relatively calm until the end of the week proving correct so far.
He pauses just outside of Jack’s office and listens. He twists his wrist to check his watch, careful not to disturb the drinks; Jack should be finishing with his conference call soon.
“-both know it’s the only option,” Jack says wearily into the phone, though he doesn’t sound infuriated, which Ianto takes as a really positive sign. “Alright, thank you, General.”
Ianto listens to the phone slam down and the subsequent exasperated sigh that has become so familiar, he could time it. Still, he’s seen and heard worse, so he figures Jack probably got whatever it was that he wanted in the end. He takes a deep breath and knocks lightly on the doorframe.
Jack looks up, still pensively tapping the corner of his mouth with a pencil, and breaks out into a sudden smile that eases the lines of worry on his forehead. The pencil is dropped onto the blotter and Jack leans back in his chair. It creaks noisily and Ianto makes a mental note to oil the swivel.
“Perfect timing,” Jack says.
Ianto hums in agreement and shifts to free his right hand. He settles Jack’s mug and the plate in front of him, then picks up his own mug and tucks the tray underneath his arm.
A couple of months before he left the coffee shop, a businesswoman (new in town, Ianto later found out) began to visit regularly on her lunch break. Every day, seven minutes passed noon, she’d walk in and order a cappuccino and a chocolate-hazelnut biscotti. About ten minutes after she arrived, a man in full mechanics’ uniform would come in, get a coffee, and sit with her. The staff made wild speculations about them, creating scenarios of illicit affairs or clandestine meetings between spies. Ianto always shook his head at the romantic imaginations of his coworkers and would go wash dishes or stock the shelves to get away from it all.
One day, she came in alone, her eyes red-rimmed and wet. They’d just gotten a sample shipment of a local bakery’s chocolate fairy cakes. They were meant to be tried by the employees, but there were almost two dozen of them, and so Ianto took one out, placed it on a plate, and carried it over to her with her cappuccino and biscotti. She didn’t say a word, just looked up at him in surprise and squeezed his hand, once, when he winked at her.
Jack is watching him, his momentary ponderousness replaced with contentment. He glances down at the biscuits and smiles again, brightly. Ianto chuckles.
“Those fell into the carriage by mistake, it seems,” he teases and Jack laughs.
“I’m surprised you didn’t put them back.”
Ianto shrugs and takes a sip of his coffee. “If they’re awful, I’ve told the others to blame you. They look decent enough, though. Did you need anything else?”
Jack shakes his head as he picks up one of the remaining biscuits and then freezes, the treat halfway to his mouth. “Yes, actually. I do. Stay awhile?”
Ianto considers the piles of new pamphlets in the tourist office that need sorting, and the supplies that Owen ordered that need to be put away, and the updates to the archival program that need to be checked, and the list of files Gwen had given him earlier that need pulling. He leans over Jack’s desk to pick up a biscuit, but Jack grabs his hand loosely and looks at him.
“Please?” He lifts Ianto’s hand, turns it around, and presses a kiss to the inside of his wrist, never breaking eye contact.
Ianto smiles softly. “All right.”
The End
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