Fandom: Torchwood

Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto

Author: m_findlow

Rating: PG

Length: 2,064 words

Content notes: none

Author notes: Written for Challenge 352 - Shake

Summary: Gwen and Ianto have a problem that Jack doesn't seem to share.

Jack noticed Gwen's involuntary shudder from the corner of his eye as they walked to the SUV. By Cardiff standards it was actually pretty mild, so he thought. They'd definitely had worse days out when the bracing winds whipped around them, sneaking into every last gap in their clothing - sleeves, collars and all.

'Pack it up and let's go home,' Jack said, sliding into the driver's side of the SUV and flipping the heater on low for the ride home. Their morning's work was done, verifying what had come through the rift was nothing but junk.

Traffic was slow for a mid-morning. Traffic always seemed to be inversely proportionate to how much Jack wanted to get somewhere, even if that somewhere else was only the hub.

'Cold?' Jack asked, unable to ignore Gwen sitting there next to him with her hands tucked under the armpits of her leather jacket as they waited behind a huge lorry, unable to see beyond it as to what the hold up actually was. Personally, he wanted to flip the heater back off. With his own coat on he was getting stuffy with the extra heat in the enclosed space.

'Yeah, a bit,' she confessed, giving another little shiver.

'Maybe you're coming down with something,' Jack offered.

'Maybe,' she replied, rather non-committal about it. Jack shrugged it off. It'd take more than a little cold to take out Gwen. More like a surface to air missile.



When they got back to the hub Jack immediately stripped off his coat, feeling a secondary heat wave as they came through the cogwheel door, and yelled out. 'Ianto!'

Ianto appeared from nowhere, a skill which had always disturbed Jack just a tiny bit. If he'd noticed it was on the warm side in the hub he wasn't showing it, still dressed immaculately in all his layers of shirt, waistcoat and suit jacket. Not that Ianto ever broke into a sweat. 'Sir? How did you get on this morning?'

Jack ignored the question. 'I like a little bit of getting hot under the collar, but this is ridiculous,' Jack said, tempted to strip off his shirt as well. 'Did we break a thermostat or something? It's like a sauna in here.'

'I thought it was a bit nippy so I turned it up a tad,' Ianto replied.

'A tad? I grew up in the desert heat of the Boeshane Peninsula but this is crazy.' He could feel the first traces of sweat beading at his hairline.

'I think it's nice and toasty,' Gwen replied. 'This place is always on the cold side.'

Jack looked from one teammate to the other and frowned. 'Okay, are you two messing with me now? I don't mind practical jokes but I prefer not being on the receiving end.' When he searched their faces for the twitching curl of lips or eyes he found none. Okay. So no joke. 'Ianto, think you might turn that thermostat back down a tad?'

Ianto rolled his eyes. 'Whatever you say, sir.'



The rest of the afternoon was quiet. Jack put a bullet in several overdue reports and a handful of phone calls he'd been avoiding. And the heat inside the hub had dropped considerably, back down to normal levels after Ianto had readjusted their climate control back to what Jack considered normal.

Gwen knocked on his door, looking uncharacteristically concerned. 'I think I might take you up on that offer of going home early,' she said.

Jack raised his eyes to look at her. 'Going downhill?'

She wrapped her arms back around her body. 'Yeah. Can't get rid of these chills. I haven't stopped shivering since we got back.'

Ianto slid past her through the door carrying a tray of coffee and biscuits. The mugs rattled slightly as he carried them, which was unlike him. He usually had such steady hands. 'It's just cold in here,' he said. 'I've been the same. I called the power company and confirmed we're paid and up to date, so it's not our thermostat that's broken, or missing direct debits.'

Jack looked at him strangely. 'What, you've got chills as well? Did either of you think maybe you've both come down with the same thing?' Whatever that might be.

Ianto frowned at him. 'What about you? You're the one that thinks it isn't cold when it is. Maybe you're the one coming down with something.'

Jack bristled. 'I'm fine. I don't get sick.' And he certainly didn't get hot flushes.

Gwen rolled her eyes at him. 'That's rubbish and you know it.'

'Okay, so I sometimes get sick, but don't you think maybe two against one in this case makes it more likely it's you two?'

Gwen folded her arms across her chest, which might have been defensive, or just another sign she couldn't get warm. 'So, let's run a few simple tests and prove it.'



Jack took pleasure in poking his teammates, even though he could have just run a few simple scans. Ianto called it his "playing doctor" act. When no one was dying or in immediate danger, Jack liked to tease them as he made jokes about whether he had the right end of the needle to stick in, and saying things like "now, how many times per minute should your heart normally beat?"

They'd both migrated to having blankets wrapped around them and finally admitting that, cold as the hub sometimes was, even this was a little extreme, putting up with Jack's medical tests for a lack of any other valid explanation.

'Well,' Jack said, as they huddled on the sofa with piping hot mugs awaiting his results, 'I can't find anything specifically wrong with either of you. Not so much as the first inklings of a cold, or anything else. You're both in perfect health.'

'So why is it that my teeth won't stop chattering long enough to even drink my coffee?' Ianto complained. His hands shook as they clasped the mug, threatening to spill it over the lip. 'I don't think I've ever felt so cold in my life, and I've shared a flat in London in winter with a broken radiator.'

'It's not so much the cold anymore,' Gwen added, 'as it's just the shaking all over. It's like I can't stop it even if I wanted to.'

'I don't know what to say,' Jack replied, shrugging helplessly. 'According to everything I've checked, you're physically fine.'

'And yet you feel perfectly fine,' Ianto said with no small amount of barely concealed unhappiness.

'Which either means my fifty-first century physiology isn't susceptible to whatever it is, or you've been somewhere or touched something that I haven't. What about that device from yesterday? You two logged it into the archives.'

Gwen frowned at Jack. 'What, the influencer thingy?'

'It's a mind control device,' Jack clarified, wishing he didn't use such colloquialisms to describe highly complex alien technology.

'Someone wants to convince us it's cold?' Ianto replied blithely. 'Not much of a challenge in Cardiff. Just step outdoors and experience it first hand. A convenient attempt to explain away what's wrong with us but a bit of a stretch. Not everything has to be blamed on alien tech. And it wasn't active.'

'That we know of,' Jack countered.

Ianto huffed and tucked his neck deeper into the folds of the blanket. 'Well, if it was, don't you think we'd have started by convincing the city to stop drinking instant coffee? I mean, if I wanted to use mind control, that would be a good first step.'

Jack smirked. 'All hail King Ianto?'

Ianto blushed between uncontrollable shaking. 'That was in my private diary and not for public dissemination.'

'Nothing in your diary is private. And besides, we're talking much more subtle technology, not your out and out "pied piper" stuff. It can change your perceptions so subtly that you don't even know it's being used on you. Kinda why they're banned so many places.'

Gwen nudged the lump of blankets next to her. 'Oh, Ianto, we're being dummies.'

He didn't bite, simply stating 'It wouldn't be the first time.' and then following it up with 'What have we done this time?'

'What if it was working? Don't you remember what we were talking about while we were down there packing it away?'

Jack watched as Ianto paused to consider it. His memory would recall most things in an instant, but he liked to add a considered pause here and there to make it less disconcerting for the rest of them. 'Complaining about our respective life partners?'

Jack bristled. 'You were complaining about me?'

Ianto rolled his eyes. 'We're always c-c-complaining about you,' he said through now chattering teeth. The shaking and shivering had ratcheted up a notch.

Gwen cut through their banter. 'I said R-R-Rhys and I never g-g-get enough time to cuddle up t-t-together anymore, and you said-'

'Let's n-n-not worry about w-w-what I s-s-said,' he replied, cutting her off. Jack would ask about that later. 'Are you s-s-saying the device created a w-way for that to ha-h-happen? Isn't mental inf-f-fluence meant to affect them and n-n-not us?'

Jack tried not to look smug. 'I told you it was subtle. And it does kinda make sense. If you want someone to wrap you up in a nice big cuddle, what better way than to be cold and shivering?' Jack wrapped his arms around Ianto, squeezing in next to him on the sofa. 'How's that?'

Ianto looked suitably uncomfortable with the public display of affection. 'Not immediately ef-f-fective.'

'Oi, what about m-m-me?' Gwen complained.

'Get your own b-b-boyfriend.'

'Oh, that's the t-t-thanks I get for p-possibly solving the p-p-problem?'

Jack stood up, grabbed Gwen's phone from her desk and hit the first speed dial. 'Rhys, it's Jack. No, everything's fine. Basically.' He winked at Gwen as he said it. 'Fancy the afternoon off work?'



Rhys arrived within the half hour and was given his strict instructions on taking Gwen home and making her feel loved and needed - like he really needed an invitation. Usually it was Gwen who was to blame for them not spending enough time together.

As soon as the pair of them were out the door, Jack spun on his heel and grinned. 'So, Mister Jones… I believe we have the hub to ourselves and someone is in need of some warmth and affection.'

'I prefer h-h-hot and h-h-heavy,' Ianto replied, 'but s-since that usually entails t-t-taking off clothes, I think I'll h-have to p-put up with your offer.' He was still huddled in his blanket, wrapped as tight around his body as he could get it.

Jack snuggled up next to him and resumed his cuddling. Ianto's body shook hard from his perceived cold for a long while afterwards, and Jack wondered if it wasn't contagious as he was vibrating just as much from holding Ianto so close. At least it did seem to be working. 'I once slept all night next to an artillery gun that rattled me less than this,' Jack teased.

'Lucky all we r-really w-wanted was a bit of s-sn-snuggling,' Ianto said.

Jack couldn't suppress his smile. 'Oh, yeah. Imagine if you'd been complaining we don't get enough sexy time together. You'd have me and Rhys breaking down doors to come and rip your clothes off. I'd kiss you right now but I'm afraid you might accidentally bite my tongue off with all your chattering teeth.'

'I wouldn't w-worry about th-that. And you always f-find time for s-s-sexy time,' Ianto quipped, finally starting to shiver a little less now and unfurling the blanket so that he could wrap it around the pair of them and they could both be tucked up under it.

'Still, I can't say I mind this as a general outcome of alien technology. It's nice to know my team doesn't secretly yearn for world domination. Kinda why I didn't want that kind of technology being anywhere near someone who might try to influence the world in a bad way.'

Ianto hummed. 'Still disappointed about the c-coffee thing. Must be losing my t-touch.'

Jack squeezed him closer. 'Nah. You're just a big softie who only pretends that the rest of us are inferior coffee drinkers.'

'Careful,' Ianto warned him. 'One day King Ianto m-might make you rue th-that. There are w-ways other than m-mind control I can make you c-comply.'