Title: Wishing and Hoping
By: karaokegal
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Jack/Ianto, Jack/Gwen
Rating: PG13
Wordcount: 565
Warnings/Spoilers: Takes place during that scene in Something Borrowed, contains foreshadowing of Adrift and Exit Wounds. J/I fans and Gwen-haters, this is not the fic for you. Contains jealous and possibly psychic (if not, psychotic) Ianto. Thanks to hllangel for the quick look-over. Concrit (as in "this is rubbish!") is welcome. Seriously, I'm just not sure about this one.

Ianto watched the dancing from his position as temporary DJ, wondering how he could ensure that Gwen Cooper never returned from her honeymoon. Perhaps there was a European division of Torchwood that would like to have her. It would be easy to falsify a reference from Captain Harkness. He tried to imagine Gwen and Rhys as happy ex-pats enjoying baguettes and goat-cheese in an outdoor café on the Seine. Somehow Rhys with a baguette didn’t quite work.

He told himself he would never wish actual harm on a co-worker, until Tosh decided to flit over and tell him Jack looked exactly as he had when he was dancing with the “real” Captain Jack. At that point, Ianto knew he could happily arrange a nasty accident and anyone who got caught in the crossfire would be collateral damage.

This was what Jack Harkness did to you, he thought, sorting through the CDs. Planning the murder of colleagues.

Gwen would come back and Jack would beam at her the way he was now. Ianto would be Jack’s loyal right arm and available arse, but Jack’s mind would always be with others; be they his Doctor or his Gwen.

Ianto’s only hope lay in the same things Jack seemed to think were so admirable. Gwen could be counted on to poke her nose into something that didn’t concern her; try too hard to do the right thing, when the right thing was to do nothing. That might disillusion him, but Jack had shown an alarming tendency to forgive what should have been unforgivable. It meant Ianto was still alive with his memories, but it also meant that Gwen Cooper was there as well.

He couldn’t stand it anymore. The dancing. The talking. Whatever it was that Jack was willing to share with Gwen emotionally that he wouldn’t or couldn’t give Ianto. Even after he’d made his awkward interruption, he could sense Gwen in Jack’s mind, as they arranged themselves. He tried to lose himself in the music, Jack’s shirt against his fingers, the essential Jack-ness that had driven him to this in the first place.

“She’ll be fine, Jack,” he said, hoping to brush the topic away from their moment.

“We can’t lose her.”

I can’t lose you.

There was one answer. It assumed that Gwen was as free with her morals as Jack, but the new bride’s past indiscretion with Owen was a recent memory to Ianto. He’d caught them at it in the morgue and wished he could selectively ret-con the image out of his own head.

Jack had more than once suggested that they bring a third party into the equation. Ianto had fended off the possibility by treating the idea as a fantasy and letting Jack talk it out of his system.

He brushed his cheek against Jack’s shoulder and tried to imagine sharing Jack with Gwen. It might mean more sex for him, with additional orifices, but his relationship with Jack had never been about that. Not for him, anyway. Even when he’d been shamming to protect Lisa, there’d been an emotional bond between them. He had to believe that to do what he’d done in the first place. As much as he loved Lisa, he couldn’t live with himself if he didn’t believe he loved Jack too.

The idea of a threesome was betrayal, plain and simple.

He’d see Cardiff burn first.