Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Ianto, Owen

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 1,265 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 287 - Cup

Summary: Ianto isn't ready to give up on Jack just yet.


Ianto was rendered almost speechless as he came in, hanging his coat on the hook by the door and casting a gaze across at Owen. He was half asleep with his feet propped up in the desk, but that wasn't what bothered Ianto.

'Ahem,' he coughed loudly as he came stand next to him, waking Owen from his stupor.

Owen stretched out his arms, yawning widely. 'About time,' he muttered. 'I could do with another coffee before knicking off home to bed.'

Ianto wanted to tell him it was only five am and that he was rostered on for another three hours yet. Technically, no one should be there before eight o'clock, but he knew Tosh would be in at seven thirty on the dot as always, and he was here because there was always more to do than he could fit in a day. Plus he couldn't sleep. He might as well volunteer for night shift every night and be done with it. It wasn't like he had anything better to do, apart from laundry and folding his socks.

'What is that?' Ianto finally managed to say, pointing at the cup on Owen's desk.

'Oh, now I'm not even allowed to have coffee when you're not here?' Owen complained. 'Sorry, but if I have to do night shift, I'm going to drink instant coffee. In fact, I'm not even going apologise for it. You'll just have to get over it.'

Ianto bit the inside of his lip as he reached over to grab the mug. 'I'll get you a fresh one, then,' he said, just barely forcing the words out whilst trying hard not to let his temper get the better of him. Even these days he tried to keep his emotional range as close to neutral as possible, never giving away too much. It felt easier that having to justify his current mood to anyone who might ask, and his moods were constantly fluctuating, even if no one else seemed to notice.

He carried the mug to the sink and carefully set it down, turning on the hot water to fill it up and adding a drop of detergent into it, watching it slowly bubble and froth up. The soap bubbles spilled over the lip of the cup and Ianto felt like his own emotions were doing the same. He wasn't angry at Owen for drinking instant coffee. It was totally impractical to expect any of them to simply go without coffee when he wasn't here. Drinking it right in front of him was another matter entirely, but that wasn't what had him so flustered. As soon as he'd seen that blue and white striped mug, sitting there on Owen's desk like it belonged there, his mind went into a series of emotional somersaults. That was Jack's mug. It had always been Jack's mug, and here was Owen, drinking out of it and treating it like his own property.

Ianto took out the scrubbing brush and gently dipped it inside, beginning a series of slow turns to scrub out the dried in ring of coffee stains, trying hard to quell his annoyance. It was Jack's mug, he repeated in his head. Everyone knew that, so why did Owen use it? He had his own mug that he used, a green one with several chips in the base of it, where he'd slammed it down too hard on the medical bay steps any number of times over the years. He was always doing that because he was always frustrated about something. The cup was an innocent casualty in Owen's war against everything. Subconsciously, Ianto turned the mug over in his hand, checking that Owen hadn't added chips to the base of this one as well. It he had, Ianto might break him instead.

He tipped out the soapy water and began running the taps with more hot water to rinse it. He knew he shouldn't get mad over it, but he was. It was just a cup. Nothing more than a ceramic vessel for containing hot drinks. It didn't have a life of its own, or a personality, or a way of talking to him. It wasn't capable of bringing Jack back, and yet seeing it in someone else's possession upset him in a way he couldn't rationalise.

Jack had been gone for more than two months now. There hadn't been any communication from him, not a single message to tell them where he'd gone or when he was coming back. There'd been no signal from his wrist strap that Tosh could detect anywhere this side of the known universe and, as Jack had always loudly advertised, it was capable of transmitting all the way to the edge of the solar system. Even Jack's more well traveled contacts in the city, those aliens he used to obtain intelligence on the sly, knew nothing about his wherebaouts. He'd just gone. Disappeared on them without a word of explanation and leaving them hanging here in a kind of limbo, wondering if he was ever going to come back at all.

It hurt more to think he'd left without saying goodbye than Ianto could cope with. Did they really mean that little to him? He had to assume it meant Jack was coming back. However hard it was, and however much it might hurt, he'd at least say goodbye if he wasn't coming back. He'd taken his coat and his faithful wrist strap, and even that disturbing hand in the jar thing, but he'd left his mug behind. It was as close to a personal possession as Ianto could imagine leaving behind. But you wouldn't take a mug with you any more than Jack was likely to take a spare pair of socks, or his collection of tattered books, or that nice engraved pen Tosh had bought him two Christmases ago. It was just stuff that you could live without, but which didn't stop being yours just because you left it behind.

Ianto didn't want anyone touching any of it, as mad and irrational as that might seem. He didn't want Gwen sitting at Jack's desk to take phone calls or sign off on reports any more than he wanted Owen drinking out of his mug, or Tosh twiddling with bits of tech that had been abandoned in a box in the corner of his office. Or, for that matter, someone sleeping down in Jack's bunker, even if the pillow smelled just like him and it was all Ianto wanted just to feel that close to him again for just a few minutes. The whole place felt like a bit of a shrine, but slowly, little by little, it was becoming less about Jack and more about Torchwood and what was left of it that was now becoming theirs.

He toweled the mug dry, wondering if it too was now no longer a little piece of Jack because someone else had used it. He went to put it right in the back of the cupboard before thinking that Owen might decide to use it again, or one of the others who thought a mug was just a mug and nothing more. He didn't care if it never got used again. It was Jack's mug. From the very first cup of coffee he'd ever served him here, it had always been Jack's mug. He took it instead and set it in the bottom drawer of his desk, where no one would ever find it. It would be right there, like Ianto, just waiting for Jack to come back.