Title: Theoretical Expectations
Author: scy
Feedback: scynneh@yahoo.com
Disclaimer: Not mine
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Gen, with pre-slash implications
Spoilers: Up through 1x06, 'Countrycide'
Rating:  PG
Summary: Post-ep tag
Author's Notes: Written for Lattara. 
December 2006

It was Tosh who suggested that the team spend some time together outside of work. The offer of sharing her usual booth was made timidly as she tried to clean the grime off her face and hands.

"A drink sounds like a good idea," Owen agreed, voice strong enough that almost nobody noticed the way his hands trembled for a moment. 

"I really should be getting home, Rhys will be wondering where I am," Gwen prevaricated, something that nobody found surprising. Given what had happened to her though, it was more understandable than ever that she was eager to get back to what she had that was normal.

"It's not mandatory," Jack spoke up and Gwen smiled gratefully, patting carefully at her side. 

"Another time, sure."

"Doesn't make any difference to me," Owen said unconvincing and Toshiko shot him a dark look that only Ianto was watching for, but he saw Jack pick up on it, as if he'd been expecting something.

"Well, I'd better be getting back to the Hub; none of the paperwork has even been gathered and I've got a stack of witness statements to transcribe and organize," Ianto said. They’d all been checked over, the authorities had taken everyone into custody and been given a version of events, so he saw no reason to laze about.

Owen grimaced; he had probably only just remembered the increasingly terse emails Ianto had been sending him requesting the overdue analysis of alien tech.

"Sounds like you've got loads of fun planned," Owen said, recovering from his momentary lapse.

"I'll manage," Ianto assured him. He patted his pockets for the keys and didn't find them.

"Anyone grab the keys?" he said, aware that it used to be his responsibility to know where such objects were at all times, but he'd been slower to grab them lately. As with many small details, Jack caught it, but he didn't comment on the lapse and instead handed Ianto the keys.

"I'll head back too, I've got scathing memos to draft."

Ianto detected an overtone of irony, but nobody else seemed to, so he just stood out of the way so Jack could gather his coat.

The others made what seemed to be rote digs at them for dodging the rest of the work and the camaraderie would have warmed Ianto if he hadn't been feeling as though he was a bystander. Jack didn't go out of his way to include Ianto in any of the more casual outings, but since they'd conducted themselves fairly badly as a group in the countryside, Ianto didn't feel left out. He'd contributed to the investigation and found himself tied up and beaten. Being held hostage by a bunch of psychopaths with unnatural appetites hadn't given him a broader outlook from which he could compare his situation and find comfort in it. During orientation there would have been a lecture on such a disaster, and he'd have been possible for an exhaustive review and alternate strategies to be presented by the end of the week. None of them were trainees, though, and there had never been the same intolerance for errors that Torchwood London had tried to stress. Then again, any mistake that brought positive results was nearly overlooked, therefore Ianto knew about double talk before he'd been assigned to Torchwood Cardiff. To have every project carried out in terms of acceptable losses that he was counted among. That had given him even further moral leeway in his justification for subterfuge. He'd known what Torchwood was interested in accomplishing and it had very little to do with the people they were supposedly working to protect.

Right from their introduction, Jack had been more friendly than he'd expected, and he charmed everyone who couldn't tell that he wasn't actually giving anything away with all of those smiles and flirtation. For a long time, there was never an incident that warranted forcing beyond what Jack apparently though was appropriate for the job, so Ianto had only considered what might be there. After seeing Jack as he was when he came to the team's rescue. All of the soft words had been discarded; exchanged for an arsenal that made all of his arguments without any room for appeals. It had been rather like one of those entrances Ianto thought that everyone believed would give them the upper hand but few ever had the chance to attempt. Jack hadn't reveled in it that he'd seen, it had been swift, brutal, and efficient, much like a military strike, which gave him cause to consider reviewing Jack's records again, never mind how vaguely informative the scant dossier actually was.

None of the others had been able to separate events enough for any of it stand out as unusual, but Ianto had made it his habit to stand removed so long as he had reason to keep his own agenda hidden. After everything had turned out much worse than he'd ever feared, there wasn't distance so much as undeterred wandering.

Jack had allowed him to keep his spot on the team and then moved even more unpredictably to put Ianto out in the field. Ianto suspected that part of his job had been to redirect everyone's focus and see to provisions, but Jack hadn't kept him at the base camp as a guard, so he had to think that Ianto was capable of carrying out a search in dangerous conditions.

The very absence of a reprimand from Jack would have felt like a free pass if everyone hadn't escaped it too. Gwen kept her thoughts to herself after she questioned the leader of the group and as she walked outside, her steps were more cautious than if she'd been walking on slick tile. None of the confession she'd taken down had been easy to hear and how she was going to make sense out of this was hard to say. None of them could think of something truthful and comforting fast enough to stop that fatalistic look from coming into her eyes.

By now it was accepted that Owen made fun of Gwen for her mistakes and persistent belief that if logic wasn't immediately apparent, it could be uncovered with a careful investigation. That he didn't give her a hard time in this case was almost worse than Ianto not knowing if he should try and step forward. Ianto didn't think Gwen would welcome being reminded that she'd dealt with human criminals in her previous occupation. None of that had ever been in his job description. From the front desk it was easy to feel removed from Torchwood's work. Nearly on the outside, he could consider himself a link to the rest of the world, or a gatekeeper with a key that wouldn't be handed out easily. That was poetic, but ultimately self-important thinking, and after recent events, Ianto knew that he was fortunate to still be trusted, let alone have his old position. It wasn't time to try and take on more, but if he found a private movement, he resolved to at least attempt to let Gwen know that he was aware of her difficulty.

Just like her, he'd seen too much for there to be any other work out there that he was suited for. Even if Jack had taken understandable measures to protect the organization and erased his memory, Ianto thought that on some level, he'd have known there was something missing. That hadn't encouraged him to speak to his boss; Jack wasn't swayed by impassioned pleas, as Ianto had experienced first hand. He often wondered whether the man allowed himself to be sentimental about anything. Certainly he took monstrosity in stride as though it was only ever disappointing and needed to be stamped out unrelentingly.

Jack came up alongside the car on the passenger side and chucked the keys over the top.

"You can drive back."

He'd taken to arguing with Jack about having coffee late at night, and even if neither of them was up to casual banter, Ianto still found his hands reaching for a tea bag instead of the coffeepot. Jack hadn't asked for a drink and Ianto would put money on it being refused, but there was comfort in ritual, and his cleaning up the Hub was only part of his job. Most of the time he thought that if he wasn't around, Jack and the rest of them wouldn't eat regularly.

Jack was silent on the drive back, his presence consciously muted to the sound of his breathing below the engine's hum, body heat the only warmth about him.

Ianto appreciated that Jack wasn't seeking conversation, but it was a little eerie to be so close to someone and to have no idea what they might be thinking.

As Jack went up into his office without speaking and Ianto found the stack of paperwork that he'd been avoiding. The attention necessary to complete each document with his usual precision and thoroughness required a focus he welcomed and it was hours later when he saved the last mission report in the completed folder.

He didn't actually need Jack's signature on much, but his boss liked to review and approve the reports before they were sent out. Sometimes he added to them, but this time he merely looked them over, not giving and insight into his thoughts. It was a lot like the way he'd been the whole mission, on the outside, giving orders and stepping in when he had to, but mostly independent.

Asking whether he was dealing with what had happened, or even if he knew that he should be having difficulty processing.

"I have a theory," Ianto said, not taking the time to check himself and therefore stop before he got his words out.

"Does it relate to the sort of human psychosis that leads to the devaluation of life and eventual cannibalism?" Jack asked without looking away from his computer screen.

"Not directly," Ianto said.

"Then I don't see how it connects to this detailed report you've just forwarded to me that I haven't gotten the chance to read."

"You already know it's excellent work, and you'll approve it." There was no doubt in Ianto's mind of that fact, he had betrayed Jack on a level he didn't even fully understand but there was never a mention of if he knew how to do the work set out for him.

"You're very confident," Jack observed.

"It's based on a statistical probability calculated from every other case that I've over to you since I was transferred here." Ianto said absently, placing the cup neatly between two stacks of file folders, right where Jack could reach out to grab it and not take his eyes off what he was working on.

"I read your evaluations, they didn't mention a secret desire to be a statistician." Jack's fingers extended and he picked up his coffee, nodding in approval as he took a sip.

"There's little else to do while I'm running errands," Ianto said, not seeking to have even more piled upon him, but somehow wanting the diversity of his interests to be known.

"I have to keep you occupied somehow," Jack mused.

"Personally, sir?"

"That would be a pleasant solution," Jack fantasized briefly.

"It's against regulation to assign staff to non-agency work while on the clock," Ianto reminded him.

"And I don't recall there being any stipulations of mathematical hobbies being encouraged."

"It won't happen again, sir," Ianto assured him.

"Just don't calculate anything on company time that doesn't have something to do with work. But, it's good to have hobbies." Jack waved a hand as if he couldn't be bothered with keeping track of every little thing that everyone did, even though both of them knew better.

"Do you?" Ianto asked.

"What?" Staring hard at the screen, Jack deleted a sentence and retyped it.

"Have hobbies?"

"Where is all this forthrightness coming from?"

"It seems like a night for it."

"You got beaten, almost killed, and you want to talk about what I do in my spare time."

"Right."

"Did you get hit over the head, Ianto?" Jack glanced up to give with an assessing look.

"No, sir, I'm not concussed." Ianto would have noticed, he hadn't been seeing double and his head didn't hurt any more than it usually did when he was working for hours at a time.

"You were examined at the scene?" Unwilling to let it go, Jack scrutinized Ianto, as if he was about to keel over and knock something important off his desk.

"By Owen and the medics." He knew that Owen wasn't the absolute medical authority when he was really upset, so Ianto had given himself time to have another examination, while Owen had time to collect himself, and then he gave Dr. Harper his chance.

"So it's that you don't have enough to do," Jack concluded.

"There's less paper work when a case is solved," Ianto offered.

"Then let's see if we can't find another one," was Jack's gentle suggestion.

"Did you want me to send out a request?" Ianto asked.

"I'd rather you ran a search." Jack said.

"Right away." As he went back to his desk, Ianto knew that even while he was trying to encourage forthrightness, it wasn't a good idea to ask Jack a truly personal question. If he did answer, it would likely turn into one of his stories that sounded good, but in actuality didn't count as disclosure. That wasn't Ianto's aim because although he didn't trust Jack the way one should a leader, he had another goal. Somewhere between seeing some of the worst things human beings could do and being rescued from it, he'd realized that not expecting Jack to reassure him didn't mean he didn't think his boss capable of it, and he rather wanted to have the experience.

-end