Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG-13 (language)
Author: jupiter2932
Characters: Ianto Jones, Toshiko Sato, Owen Harper
Relationships: Ianto Jones/Jack Harkness, Toshiko Sato/Owen Harper
Word Count: 2017
Challenge: Challenge 435: Amnesty 72, Challenge 418: Hair
Warnings: Brief mentions of suicide, though none on page, mentions of death
Notes: Title from the Mary Oliver poem Every Morning
Summary: In which Tosh is too observant, Owen gives good hugs, and Ianto has a teeny tiny emotional crisis involving mirrors.


It's Tosh who notices it first, when he bends over to hand her a fresh cup of tea. She's only six months along, but like many mums of multiples she looks nearly full-term. Ianto and Gwen have a bet going on when she gives in and goes on maternity leave. It can't be long now; she lost the will—or the ability; he's not going to be the one to ask—to fetch and carry lab equipment for herself a week earlier, so they've all been pitching in.

So of course she's the one who first catches sight of it when he leans over her.

"Oh," she says, a sort of surprised delight in the tone that breaks through the workday quiet of the Hub. "Ianto. Is that a grey hair?"

He jerks up straight, but it's too late.

Gwen goes with, "Oh, don't be shy, we all have them!" when she confirms he's got it at lunch; Owen cackles out a, "Tea Boy's finally becoming Tea Man, ey?"; and Jack, who has become perhaps a little bit sensitive about their perceived age difference in public since he started aging again, practically beams, his shit-eating grin is so big.

Ianto sighs when he finds Jack and Owen scrutinizing his face at their afternoon tea break like they're going to find he's gone entirely white in the intervening hour.

"Better grey than receding," he snaps in their direction, and Tosh laughs and tells them to play nice and mouths, 'Sorry,' at Ianto when he walks past her again, and that's that.

It's nothing.

To the others it's nothing, anyway. They're back to speculating about the sex of the babies again the next morning—because Tosh and Owen want to keep it a surprise until the birth—and poring over applications by lunchtime—because Jack thinks Tosh and Owen's upcoming leave is a great opportunity to start expanding Three's staff—and, aside from a little kiss on the head from Jack that weekend when they're lazing about in bed, nobody brings it up again.

It sticks in his mind, though. Nags at him. He catches himself taking a peek every time he passes a reflective surface, and it sits at the back of his thoughts all day, percolating, stirring other old, forgotten things up with it.

He shoves it away, like he does with idle thoughts of the same sort, but it doesn't stay gone.

The rest of the team has probably completely forgotten about it by the following Tuesday, when Tosh walks in on Ianto scrutinizing his hair in the main bathroom mirror like he's a thirteen-year-old going to his first dance.

"Myfanwy again?" she asks, giving him a quick glance and a 'bad luck' smile as she waddles up to the sink beside him. "I thought she'd grown out of spitting on--oh, your hair's fine. Is something wrong?"

He shakes his head but is just opening his mouth for, "No," when she clocks on and barrels ahead.

"Oh, Ianto, was Owen teasing you about your grey hair again? You know he was only joking—I'll tell him to knock it off, but you know he doesn't mean anything by it. It's just one grey hair! That's perfectly normal when you're, what, thirty? Twenty-nine?"

"Twenty-eight." Ianto clears his throat. He looks away from the mirror but catches sight of his face as he turns and can't help but glance back.

God. Are those crow's feet?

"Twenty-eight?" Her voice has changed; she reaches up and puts a hand on his cheek, nudges him back so he's looking at you. "Ianto, god, you're so young. You have your whole life ahead of you, still, and now with the Rift closed, you've got a fairly good chance of living to your eighties. I—you know, I found my first grey hair when I was nineteen, and here I'm nearly forty and I've never had to dye it yet. It's nothing to worry about."

He wipes his palms on his waistcoat and smiles, but he finds himself taking another nervous peek at the mirror without meaning to.

"I know," he says, and even to himself he sounds entirely unconvincing. "I'm just. Being silly."

Tosh frowns. She crosses her arms—no mean feat, at this stage of her pregnancy—and shifts to lean against the sink counter. "Right. So, what's actually going on?"

He shrugs. He looks down at his hands. The fingers on his right are splotched with dark blue ink from last night, when he started trying to fix up an old fountain pen of Jack's that he found in Jack's quarters. It's from the 1930s, a gift from an old friend who worked at One at the time, and Jack had just shrugged and said, "Oh, it broke during the thing with the Tallascotians in '34," when he asked. It's supposed to be Jack's Christmas present, but Ianto's not sure he's going to get it fixed in time, not being an expert on fountain pens, so he thought, this morning, that maybe he'd save it for Jack's next birthday, and he'd ended up, some time after that, here in the bathroom, going through his hair strand by strand.

"Ianto."

He sighs. "Your kids aren't going to get away with anything, are they?"

She laughs. "I'm sure Owen will find enough ways to spoil them." She waits until he's looking her in the face again before she continues. "Come on. What's going on? You know you can tell me."

He does, at that. They've been friends a long time now, and they've shared enough tipsy meals at the pub that he knows she won't be a dick about it.

Hell.

"I'm twenty-eight," he says. "And I've got a grey hair."

She raises her eyebrow.

He shrugs. "I just never thought I'd live to be this old."

She freezes, for a second, doesn't move at all, and he blunders on.

"And like you said, the Rift is closed now, and we're taking on new staff, and I might—I could live to be old. Properly old. I--Jack and I could be together for decades. I could see David and Mica grow up, and yours, and Anwen, and maybe even--we could start a family, maybe, someday? It's safe enough now, and I'd never brought it up because he was immortal and I always thought I'd be dead by the time I got old enough to settle down, but now he's not, and I'm still alive, and I don't—I don't know what—"

What I want. What to do. How to live a life I never bothered planning for.

"Oh, Ianto," Tosh says, and she reaches up and tugs him down into a hug.

It lasts two seconds before she says, "Oh, no, I think I'm done with hugging for a while, sorry. Come on."

She's sniffling, but she grabs his hand and leads him out of the bathroom, walking towards the center of the Hub at a surprisingly quick pace.

"Tosh," he says, following so as not to trip her. "Tosh, it's fine, I'm fine, really. I was just being silly, I shouldn't have said anything, don't—"

She stops mid-stride and swings around near the top of the morgue stairs. "Ianto, don't you dare."

She tightens her grip on his wrist, scans the morgue below, turns, and finally spots her husband on the main Hub floor.

"Owen!" she calls.

He's by her desk—dropping off a pastry from the bakery down the street, the ones she's been craving this entire trimester—but he whips up to see her, smile melting off his face in a second when he does.

"I'm fine," she calls out before he can ask, heading down to the main floor and pulling Ianto firmly behind her. "But I need your help with something."

He intercepts them by Gwen's desk, easing Tosh down into Gwen's chair with a deft, practiced hand. "What can I do?"

Tosh, finally, lets go her hold on Ianto's wrist and pats him on the arm before she turns back to Owen.

"Ianto," she says, patting him again. "Needs a hug."

"What?" Owen blurts out.

"What." Ianto backs up half a step. "No. What."

"He needs a hug, but I'm too pregnant, and Gwen's on the weevil run with Jack, so. Please?"

"Tosh," Ianto says. He backs up another step, only his sleeve catches on something and when he looks down Tosh has got her hand on his arm again. "Listen, I'm really sorry if what I said worried you, but I swear, I'm absolutely fine, I was just being—"

"Owen," Tosh says, plaintively, and then there's a sigh, and the next thing Ianto knows he's being enveloped by a wiry Mancunian in a lab coat.

"Owen," he starts, but he's cut off by the arms around him settling into a comfortable hold.

"Pro tip, mate," Owen mutters. "In case it ever comes up. If your spouse is six months pregnant with triplets and they ask you to do something it's in your power to do, you do it."

Tosh folds her hand around his, where it's hanging awkwardly by his thigh, and squeezes it. "Ianto, you know we love you, right?"

Oh. Fuck.

"Tosh," he starts. He's not sure where he's going to go with it, but this isn't--he's not going to off himself; he doesn't need to be reassured like he's on the edge of a breakdown just because he's--well, whatever the hell he's doing. "Tosh, I'm fine."

"No, Owen, don't let go yet. Ianto, you're not fine. None of us are fine. The kinds of things we've seen, and done, they don't leave you fine. But we're here, and we're getting better every day, and every one of us loves you, and we're all so happy you've made it to be twenty-eight, all right?"

Bollocks.

"Owen's not letting go until you say it."

Absolute, sweaty stinking bollocks.

"You know we love you, right?"

Christ, his eyes hurt. There's no need for that; this is ridiculous. Completely ridiculous. Shit.

"Yeah, I know," he says, and at some point he's slumped down into Owen's shoulder and brought his arms up around Owen's back.

Fuck.

"And we want you to live a long, long time and see our kids grow up, like Gwen and Rhys want you to be Uncle Ianto to Anwen and Carys until they're old enough to have girls of their own, and Jack wants the two of you to be together until you're both old enough for the care home. And so we're all going to live a long, long time so that can happen, and it's going to be okay. All right?"

He nods.

Tosh squeezes his hand again and lets go. "Good. Just as long as you know, then."

It's another moment or two before Owen lets go. He huffs when he does, cheeks tinged pink, and softly slaps Ianto on the shoulder.

"Idiot," he says, but he doesn't look pissed. He steps back and rests his hand on the back of Tosh's chair.

Ianto lets out a long breath. Some of the anxiety in his chest, sometime during this thing, has loosened up; he rubs his sternum with his knuckles unconsciously and takes in another breath.

"Sorry," he says, when he notices what he's doing. "I'll be—"

Fine, he stops himself from saying, though he's sure Tosh and Owen pick up on it all the same.

"You'll figure it out," Tosh says with an encouraging nod. "And we'll help you, if you'll let us."

He swallows, throat suddenly, stupidly thick. "Okay."

He ducks his head at her and turns and walks off before he can put his foot in his mouth again and make it all worse. He's sure Jack will hear about this when he gets back, and Gwen, because there aren't many secrets at Torchwood any more, and they're all going to be unbearable for a bit, but—

Well.

He supposes he'll just have to learn how to live with that.

He's sure he'll work it out eventually.