Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Ianto, Rhiannon

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 2,614 words

Content notes: Contains m-preg.

Author notes: Written for Challenge 308 - Safe

Summary: Rhiannon just needs to know that her baby brother is safe.



A little groan escaped Ianto's lips as he pushed himself up off the sofa, waddling towards the door where the bell was ringing for the third time. Who the hell would be at their door at this hour of the night, he wondered. Okay, so maybe it wasn't midnight, but it was still late enough in the evening that all the girl scouts, solar panel installers and Jehovahs Witnesses should be in bed, or at least at home in front of their televisions, much like he had been.

He checked himself just before reaching for the doorknob, remembering that a stranger was unlikely to be nonplussed by a man answering the door who looked seven months pregnant. It was easy to forget that sort of thing when you worked somewhere where that was considered both reasonably normal and acceptable. He couldn't hide it because he wasn't wearing his loose hoodie which had been his saving grace as he went about the supermarket. It was almost getting to a point where even his hoodie wasn't going to be able to obscure his stomach anymore. He was surprised it was still working now, but one thing he had observed was that people didn't take much notice of anyone else. Small wonder Torchwood had stayed as secret as it had. Perhaps that was why. People in Cardiff were just so used to weird stuff that it no longer consciously registered. With aliens living in the sewers and running around the streets, unexplained viruses, explosions and other miscellaneous chaos, who was going to notice something as trivial as a pregnant man?

He didn't need to poke his eye towards the small peephole because the person on the other side of the frosted glass side panel had their own face and hand pressed up against it, trying to see inside. Even blurred and misshapen as it was, he could still tell it was his sister.

He pulled open the door, missing the furthest part of his belly by mere inches, still not quite accustomed to having to stand so far back as it swung inward. 'Rhi, what are you doing here?' A brief moment of panic fluttered through his stomach. 'It is the kids? Johnny? What's happened?'

Rhiannon brushed her way inside, navigating door and sibling simultaneously. 'It's fine. Everyone's fine. It was you I was worried about.'

Ianto gently pressed the door shut and turned to look at her. 'Me?'

'Why? Is that so hard to believe?'

He felt slightly chastised by the remark. 'Um... Well, no... I mean, it's just... Look, why didn't you just call me?'

She delivered a near perfect Ianto Jones style eye roll. 'Like you ever answer your bloody phone.'

'I always answer your calls. Except when the world's trying to end, in which case I'm sure you can understand precisely why I might be a little bit otherwise engaged.'

She folded her arms across her chest. 'World's always ending then, is it?'

'Look, you still haven't told me why you're suddenly on my doorstep.'

'Haven't you seen the telly? Half the town hall is on fire and there's reports of octopus monsters roaming the streets.'

'Oh. That.' He did recall something flashing up in the six thirty commercial break bulletin, before he'd switched it off for the night, settling on the sofa with a book he'd been meaning to finish for ages.

'I thought you might be out there with them.'

Ianto rolled his eyes. 'And that's why you came around. Because you thought I wasn't here.' He was on strict instructions not to interfere so that's what he meant to do.

'If I'd called you'd only lie and say you were. Octopus monsters roaming the streets, Ianto!'' 'And that's why you risked coming over here in person when you should have stayed shut up safe in your own home with Johnny and the kids?'

'Don't be melodramatic. It's only five blocks. And yeah, I hoped you'd be home. I hoped that Jack would have the good sense to make sure you were a million miles away from all that.'

Ianto rested a hand on his stomach. 'Well, you got that much right at least.' Jack wasn't letting him anywhere something like that. Jack would have been having conniptions about smoke inhalation and all sorts. Not to mention the aliens.

He wandered back into the living room and switched the TV back on, watching as the newsreader had taken over from Hollyoaks to bring them an update. Maybe it wasn't going quite as well as he'd hoped, but he knew that if he called Jack for an update and to see what assistance he could offer, he'd only be told that it was all under control and that he should go to bed and stopped fussing. Fussing, Jack said, was not good for the babies, along with a list of several hundred other things.

It was a wonder Jack even let him get out of bed some days. They'd managed to somehow reach a sensible compromise that allowed Ianto to still go to the hub and do what he could, but he was very strictly off any kind of fieldwork. Being stuck indoors sometimes grated on him but he knew it was for the best. He might be immortal but no one wanted to take the chance that it extended to his unborn children. There were already too many ordinary, everyday things that could jeopardise his pregnancy. He didn't need to add anything alien into the mix.

He hit the mute button on the feed and turned back to his sister. 'They'll be okay.'

'I don't understand how you can be so calm.'

He shrugged. 'It's a conditioned response. When you've seen everything we have, it all becomes relative.' This sort of thing was just another day at the office.

His sister's brown eyes bored into him. 'You're not worried about Jack? I mean, I know he can't die permanently, but...'

'Rhi, I am always worrying about Jack. How could I not? I don't want him getting hurt ever, but it happens. I don't want any of the team getting hurt, but I know that if Jack can prevent that at a cost to his own safety, he'll do it. Just the same as I would. They're professionals. This is what they do best.'

'But...' Rhiannon still couldn't seem to wrap her head around what was happening on TV and Ianto's blasé reaction to it.

'Come on,' he said reaching out an arm to her. 'I'll make us some tea.'

'Are you allowed tea?' She let her gaze drift down to his prominent belly.

'And coffee, within reason.' Jack was willing to give him almost any concession he wanted so long as it wouldn't cause undue harm, and he should probably be milking that more than he currently was, since it was bound to be a short-lived reprieve. 'Not as much as I used to have before, but two or three cups is okay. Everyone reasons the caffeine is being shared four ways so it's not so bad.'

'You never have coffee when you come round to ours.'

'That's because your coffee is awful and comes out of a jar.'

'Oh, har har, Mister fancy pants coffee.'

He smiled at that. 'I'll stick to tea. That's all I drink after seven. Coffee keeps me awake so I avoid it after dinner. Although, I've taken to drinking my tea black. Having milk in it just tastes funny nowadays. Must be one of those weird pregnant things.'

'At least that's something you won't have to worry about,' she observed. 'Breastfeeding, I mean.'

Ianto cringed. 'Thank God for small mercies. Not sure I really wanted the full experience. Jack assures me that most male pregnancies don't. You need to elect for extra hormone therapy to have that. Jack knows someone who could get us baby formula from the forty ninth century which is a replica of real breast milk but I think we'll stick to plain old twenty first century formula. Everyone else's kids seem to turn out fine without it.'

Rhiannon leaned her hip against the kitchen counter as the kettle began to boil. She went for the cupboard with the mugs, sparing him the effort of bending down to reach for them. 'You've got it all planned, haven't you?'

He snorted. 'Hardly. If we look like we've got it together, then we're putting on a really good act. We're just plain ordinary stressed out, freaking out, first time expectant parents. Well, I am. Jack's had kids before but I think this time's different for him too.' A proper go at being a real father and a real family, so Jack told him, agonising over all those failed attempts from years gone by. This time would be different because Ianto understood what Jack was - who Jack was - and he wasn't about to let that get in the way. Jack didn't have to walk away this time.

She rested a hand on his arm. 'Well, I'm glad you're just as scared as I was. Johnny was utterly hopeless. At least you've got Jack.'

'Yeah.' Apart from fainting at that first ultrasound when they'd been told they were having triplets, Jack had been his rock, keeping things as normal as possible - his knowledgeable, been pregnant before, rock. 'I still can't believe you came over here.'

'Octopus monsters roaming the streets,' she reminded him again. 'Assuming your weren't doing the completely mental thing and going out there thinking you're in a fit state to sort them out...'

'I-' he began, attempting to defend his alien fighting capabilities before his sister cut him off again.

'Then I was worried what might happen if you were home on your own and one of those things decided to come knocking.'

'Well, it's lucky I have my big sister to hide behind if one does come along now,' he teased.

She slapped his arm. 'I'm serious, Ianto! What would you do in your condition?'

Probably the same as he'd have done without "his condition", just with a lot less waddling. God but he was getting sick of that word being bandied about.

'Are you trying to get my blood pressure up? I've got a gun and I know how to use it. Being pregnant has not made me stupid, helpless or disabled.' If anything, he considered himself more dangerous than before. Where once he might have thrown caution to the wind, there was now no way anyone was messing with him and his unborn offspring. Only a madman would dare attempt to threaten him. 'People have been having babies for thousands of years and will continue to have them for thousands more after me. It might not seem like it to you right now, but one day this,' he said, circling a finger around his stomach, 'will be so normal it's positively boring. Tell me you didn't hate people making a fuss when it was you.'

He grabbed the two mugs of tea and walked them back to the living room, letting her trail after him. He sat down gratefully, making sure he didn't let out any little relieved sounds for the twinge in his back that had settled down once he had a proper cushion behind it.

Rhiannon sat down next to him, picking up his mug off the table and offering it to him, before collecting her own and settling back. 'I just want to know you're okay, that's all. I can worry, can't I?'

'And I appreciate the intimation that you'd step in front of a vicious alien for me, but I really think that wouldn't be wise. Aliens are best left to the experts.'

She preached over and put her hand on his belly. 'They're my family too.'

'And I know you'll spoil them rotten.' He sipped the scalding tea slowly. 'I just wish I'd done more for your kids. I hope I'm a better dad than I have been an uncle.'

Rhiannon brushed off the comment. 'They were young. They won't remember that much of it. You were young, too. Everything was messed up with Dad being sick and me having my hands full with David. I can't really blame you for leaving.'

Ianto frowned into his mug. 'Even when I came back Mum still treated me like a teenager, like I'd never grown up.'

'Oh, don't think you were the only one who copped that. She always had something to say about how I was raising David and Mica, or how useless Johnny was, or why didn't I bring the kids over more often. She was just lonely, I suppose, after Dad died.' A little smile broke out on her face. 'She'd have loved Jack. She'd have loved seeing how happy he made you.'

Ianto smirked as well. 'The only person who could have given her a run for her money in the talking department. Except during Emmerdale, at which time it was a crime to even cough.'

'God, I remember that! Ad breaks only.' Rhiannon sat up and reached for the remote, switching the television back on.

'Hey, whose house is this?'

'Don't you want to see what's happening?' She flicked channels until she found another newsflash.

'Not really.' He rubbed his stomach in slow circles. 'If they're making a hash of things it'll only make me want to call in and start micro-managing.'

'I'll promise to steal your phone off you if you do, then.'

He let her have her way, turning up the volume up so they could both watch how things were playing out. It seemed to be going better now that the fire at the town hall was under control. If he looked closely, he could make out the thin blue line of lights marking out the front of the SUV, parked across the street. If there were monsters around the news reporters didn't seem perturbed. He didn't see any of the team caught on camera in either the live reports or the footage from earlier. He took that as a good sign that they had things under control and that he hadn't spotted anyone running for their lives or otherwise in a state of headless chicken.

'Bet you wish you were out there in the thick of it, eh?'

Ianto sighed. 'I know my place.' He had more important lives to protect, hard as it sometimes was to both believe and accept. He'd never forgive himself if anything happened to them. 'You should get on home. You know. Before the alien invasion starts up in earnest.'

'Nonsense. And leave you here all on your own? I told Johnny to keep the kids inside and the door locked. Not that it's hard to keep David and Mica inside these days. Bloody teenagers. Can't hardly get them to come down from their rooms for tea let alone anything else.'

'You're staying?'

'All night if I have to. Not having you here pining for Jack all night whilst he's out being all heroic. Or getting the urge to go out there and handle things personally. That's my nieces and nephews you've got in their and their Aunty Rhiannon is here on babysitting duties.'

'He does love being heroic,' Ianto replied, ignoring the second half of his sister's inference.

'So do you, by all accounts,' she told him. 'If any alien thinks about breaking in here it's got to deal with us.'

Ianto smiled at his sister who was too good for him by half, snuggling in beside her as he flipped the channel over to a movie he'd never found time to watch. 'And we Joneses are not to be messed with.'