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amand_rTitle: Leviathan 3/3
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
amand_r
Prompt: Jaws
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto, random OCs
Rating: R for violence
Wordcount: 24,700
Spoilers: You don't have to have seen Jaws. But you should. You really should. All canon through season two of Torchwood is assumed.
Disclaimer: I do not have any rights over Jaws and/or Torchwood, nor can or do I make any money off any fictive enterprises that I might undertake with them. All I have are a handful of Skittles that are all warm in my pocket. Sue me and taste the linty rainbow, people.
Author's Notes: Read it before you go swimming. In Wales. Where it's cold.
Real Author's Notes: Thanks tomisswinterhill and joanwilder for the beta goodness. And to the mods, for patience. alba17, you're beyond deification. Also, I might've played merry cob with maritime authorisation rules, though for the most part, jurisdictions et al are correctly observed. I'm not Tom Clancy. Also, I wrote this to so much techno, I might have given myself an arrhythmia.
Summary: South Wales had everything. Clear skies. Gentle surf. Warm water. People flocked there every summer. No wait, they didn't. That doesn't really matter. It was the perfect feeding ground anyway.
PREVIOUSLY, ON TORCHWOOD: Part One, Part Two
STILL TUESDAY, BUT A BIGGER BOAT HAS YET TO BE PROCURED:
Ianto knew from an intellectual standpoint that the last three hours had happened, because he had been there and he'd seen it all, and he'd been doing things with his hands and feet and recording things with his eyes and brain, but as he sat on the captain's chair and held the connector cables to the explosive packs, he wasn't sure that it had actually occurred.
The sun silhouetted Jack's frame as he leant against the rails of the extended prow, the big gun strapped around his chest but dangling uselessly. His arms rested on the piping, dangling at the wrists, and Ianto could hear him whistling from time to time.
Hours ago, Jack had been gunning the throttle and merrily singing something about bow-legged women, and Ianto had been shoveling buckets of chum out into the water, attracting everything but the creature they were looking for. At one point, Ianto thought that maybe he'd see sharks, and wouldn't that be a little Discovery Channel? And he hadn't noticed when the gulls had left, but they must have, and he had been thanking his memory for the handkerchief tied about his mouth like he was about to rob a bank when Jack had shouted and he'd looked up to see the thing come up put of the water.
Jesus, it had been tentacles, long ropes of them, some of them as thick as tree trunks, and on every one of them, mouths and teeth and possibly little tongues. He had staggered back into the relative safety of the cabin and stared out the window, and Jack had cut the engine, jumping down the stairs and rummaging through the open crates for tools.
One of the long arms of the creature had swung about and taken down the rigging, not for sails, but possibly for towing or hauling nets; the big mechanical arm on the side of the ship had buckled and fallen deckward. It was as if the creature had been sure they were there, but not sure, and the arms, while reaching for them, hadn't figured out what they were, which had been rather odd.
Jack had got one good shot off with the Big Gun, mostly because their biggest concern was that the creature would take the boat apart before they had a chance to use the explosives, and while the gun seemed to have an effect, it had merely severed one of the tentacles, which had fallen into the water like a downed tree and presumably sunk to the ocean floor. Ianto had thought that maybe severed tentacles grew more monsters, like earthworms, but he had pushed that thought to the back of his mind to savour later. In the dark.
Ianto had got over his shock long enough to ready a few of the smaller guns and the trackers, but ultimately that had been the extent of the action they'd seen.
Now, he looked at the charges in his hands. Before they'd even gone out on the water, they'd debated putting barrels in it with harpoons, but they'd both seen Jaws, and they figured that if Jaws was immune to a bunch of floating barrels harpooned into it, then this thing wasn't going to give a shit about that either. Besides, they'd had a moment the night before in which Ianto had looked at Jack and said, "Do we even have barrels?" and Jack had been forced to shrug and admit that, no, they had never got the Torchwood branded barrels, not after the disaster of the HMS LOVEBOAT.
Then they decided on a tracking device, and Jack had prepared about fifteen of them to various air powered rifles and guns, and Ianto had painstakingly rigged flechettes loaded with tracker darts so that they could unleash them in a volley of alien tech off the port bow. He had imagined that the thing would come up like some horrible creature in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He'd even imagined the whole Jonah-esque being swallowed whole thing, but what he hadn't anticipated was that after the monster had surfaced and its long tentacles had waved about, it had left them alone.
Ianto might have been offended if it had been his boat. As it was, after a few minutes of being completely perplexed, he was relieved when Jack had confided to him that the entire hull of the boat had been treated with some sort of compound that rendered them all but invisible to the creature's infrared field of vision, which had been why they'd taken it in the first place. Huh. So, okay.
They'd been this way for hours now, floating in the water, waiting for the thing to come up for another go round. Ianto figured that it was nursing its wound, but it still had to be near by, because he couldn't even see any birds circling in the air. He wouldn't have put it past the creature to have snatched the things from the sky.
He was thinking of getting up. He really had to piss. But there was that nagging feeling, that feeling that if he took a break, if he got up, that would be the moment that the creature would resurface, and he'd be running to help Jack with his prick hanging out, and that wouldn't be useful.
Instead, Ianto glanced at his watch and thought about radioing Gwen. They hadn't eaten all day. Jack looked exhausted, standing for hours on the prow. Once his head lowered and snapped back up as if he had caught himself dozing, and Ianto made an executive decision.
"Jack," he said, standing, "It's not going anywhere." He set the charges and the detonators on the recessed bucket meant to hold fish or something and stretched. His arse was actually numb.
Jack joined him on the deck, looking for all the world like a kid with his oversized gun and expression of disappointment. Ianto didn't blame him—he would rather have got this over sooner than later. Ianto patted his back.
"Come on, then," he said, "we'll have some supper, and then you can wait a half-hour and go back in the water, sport."
Jack raised an eyebrow but followed him into the cabin anyway.
They both ate two of Rhys's sandwiches, stuffed with so much meat that Jack called them 'manwiches' in a clunky attempt at humor. Ianto sat rigidly; every sway of the boat felt like the creature coming back, and the night waters did nothing for his nerves. After clearing the dishes and securing them in the sink with the netting that would keep the unwashed cutlery from flying about and taking their eyes out if there was a problem (what was that called? Rough seas? Turbulence? The Last Thing You'll Ever Feel?), Ianto figured that a man like Llewellyn was probably a complete drunkard, and that there had to be alcohol on the boat somewhere.
Ianto opened the magnetised cupboard door and pulled out two plastic cups, setting them on the table and reaching for the bottle. This was so not a good idea, but he wanted a bolt of something, and Jack looked as if he needed something as well. The bottle was unlabelled, so Ianto opened the cap and sniffed experimentally. Jack would survive drinking lighter fluid, but one of these kids was doing his own thing.
It was apricot brandy. Ianto smiled at the bottle. Oh Llewellyn, you sentimental bastard.
Jack held up the cup by the handle and turned it around, frowning at the yellow boxy creature adorning its side, along with a scribble that said, Best Grandpa Ever! Yay!
"What is that?"
Ianto blinked. "That's SpongeBob Squarepants. Please don't ask," he hastily finished when Jack raised a critical eyebrow. Ianto poured them a measure of the liquor and then thunked down onto the bench next to Jack before taking a sip and grimacing. He wasn't fond of fruited alcohol, but this was pretty strong, as if Llewellyn had said, 'I like this, but it needs more rubbing alcohol and grenadine.'
"I suppose we can get a little sleep," Ianto sighed into his cup as he settled in the eating nook with its bolted table and padded booth seats. Jack leant on the table like he had leant on the rails of the prow—tired, wary, maybe a little defeated, if Ianto have to give a name to it.
"You get some sleep," he told Ianto. "I'll fix the guns, reload the triggers or something."
Ianto snorted. "Don't bother. Everything is as ready as it can be." He sighed. "As much as I didn't relish the thought of him being here, maybe Colonel Llewellyn would have been useful. He did kill one of these before."
Jack watched as Ianto sipped from his cup, his own untouched on the tabletop. "Perhaps."
"That's heartening."
Jack finally raised his cup to his lips and sipped the brandy. "This is horrible." He smiled. "Could you really put your life in the hands of a man who stocks a case of apricot brandy in his larder?"
Ianto shrugged. "This is where I make the appropriate seafaring joke about any port in a storm, right?"
The boat rocked and they drank in companionable silence. If Ianto didn't know better, he would have said that they were on a fishing trip. And they were, after a fashion. A terrifying, surreal, sure to end badly fishing trip that made Jaws look like Flipper the dolphin.
Ianto refilled his cup. A finger was a generous portion when one was trying to stay sober, but still.
"I wasn't exactly honest with you," Jack said suddenly, swirling the contents of his cup. "When I said that I'd only seen them a few times. I neglected to mention the rest of it."
Ianto finished his cup and poured more against his better judgement. "An omission," he supplied.
Jack smiled at the tabletop, his fingers picking at the peeling varnish. "An omission."
"Please don't tell me that you've had sex with one, because that might be too much for my brain to—"
"I had a sister, you know," Jack said. "She was about ten years older than me, a half sister, well, yeah," Jack shrugged. "Used to call me 'the perpetual nuisance machine'."
Ianto smiled and stilled Jack's peeling hand. "I can't imagine why."
Jack ignored the jest. "It was right about the time Gray was five, maybe, six?" He glanced at Ianto. "The details are difficult."
"Well, I gather it's hard, to think about—"
"I mean it was thousands of years ago," Jack amended, probably so they wouldn't have to have a heart to heart about his murderous family. Ianto didn't blame him; there was a reason he'd never brought it up before, and she was in a cryovault in the lower levels of the Hub with her skull stitched together. "In the future, still, but in the past. It was pretty much buried before, but now it's become…" He struggled for words.
"Un-dusty," Ianto supplied for him.
Jack smiled and pulled his hand from under Ianto's. Drumming the tabletop. "Yes, un-dusty." The boat creaked and he rocked with it; Ianto could see the casual move of his shoulders as he fell into the rhythm of it. Ianto's back was a mess of knots from resisting the pull. Not unlike the concept of being the passenger in a car. The driver's body went with the starts and stops because they were controlling them, they could sense them, but the passengers were jostled about at every pause. It wasn't a good metaphor on the top, but once the crust was pulled back, something deeper stirred beneath, when Jack lifted his cup to his lips and sipped even as the boat hit a cresting wave a bit and tipped up in the front, Jack rolled with it.
"The place where I come from, it's well, it's a peninsula, surrounded by water." Jack smiled. "Most folks lived in the more central area, we were at war, there were things, things that took advantage of the shelter of the sea."
"Like the thing out there."
Jack leant back and rested his head against the tatty vinyl pillow bolted to the wall of the booth behind him. "No, those things were brought, they don’t, oh hell I don't know what they are." He opened his eyes. "I was eight. I don't know enough about them, except what I remember from a child's brain, and those memories are over…they're old."
His cup dragged over the wood.
"My sister, Shirinn, she was headstrong, compassionate, one of those people who brings home everything she finds, you know? Wounded birds, interesting insects, stray dogs and cats, if we had had them she would have loved them."
Ianto could sense where he was going.
"It was small when she brought it home, really, and we'd never seen one, not like this, little sucker mouths that seemed harmless." He shrugged. "Our parents told her that she couldn't keep it, Dad made her throw it back into the sea, though I think he might have tried to kill it, but he never managed to get it alone, didn't want to kill it in front of her.
"She fed it every day, though, and I knew. I thought it was a secret that I was in on. I just didn't know." Jack shrugged. "I didn't understand what it was going to become. And maybe she didn't either."
Ianto reached over and laid a hand on Jack's arm, because he didn't know what else to do. Was he supposed to offer comfort? Good old-fashioned man-support of grumbling and taking the piss? Gwen would have known what to do.
Jack leaned into the touch , a little, closed the gap on the bench until they were arm to arm, shoulder to shoulder. It made the experience of rocking more intimate as the sea tossed them a little. "It went on for months. The thing, it—it was huge. I don't know how she managed to feed it, what she managed to feed it. The cattle were inland, and they were—they were too heavy for an eighteen year old girl to get anywhere unnoticed, and what did she think she could—" Jack stopped and blinked at the grain of the table, before his mouth quirked. "I guess she loved it. I guess we know about loving monsters."
Ianto blew out a breath. Boy, did he.
"I was watching Gray on the beach when she took the skiff out," Jack whispered, his eyes far away. "Dad said something about the water being too rough, but I think she had a bucket of something and she was going to feed it, maybe, go visit it. She never was all there in that way that some people have, like, remember Suzie, before she, well, before."
Ah Suzie. "I always thought Suzie was eerily competent," Ianto confessed. "If I were going to say who was the most well-grounded." When Jack glanced at him, he saluted him with his cup. "You know sometimes you're a space cadet."
"And how," Jack returned, but didn't elaborate.
The boat groaned and something in one of the cupboards rattled a bit with the tilt. "So, I gather she…I gather it killed her."
Jack sucked in his breath, as if preparing to blow out candles on a cake, or maybe metaphorical candles on the story. "Yeah, I saw her out there, so far out, and Dad was on the dock. Gray was eating sand, and I…I looked away for a second, and when I looked back it was just a mass of tentacles and the bottom part of the boat flipping in the air and my dad was screaming and screaming."
Ianto wanted to say something, anything, but he didn't have words, so he just waited. More would come, really. Not even Jack, the master of untelling, could leave the rest of this untold, when they were out here on the ocean, together, just them, trying to slay the beastie that had already cost him so much. Maybe not that exact beastie, obviously, but close enough. Once, when he was four, Ianto had been bit by a Rottweiler, and to this day, he gave all of them a wide berth, regardless of how their owners said, 'Oh, he's harmless! He's a big soft-hearted creature, oh yes he is.' It wasn't the specific dog. It didn't have to be.
"They took a few boats out to try and find her, but that was pointless. They must have known that she was gone. Maybe they thought they could kill the thing, I don't know, I didn't ask, and they never told me. Dad went with them, but by the time he got back it was dark and half of the boats didn't return."
"They…" Ianto drifted off, because it was obvious what had happened.
Jack shrugged. "Thirty men all killed because of her, if you want to look at it that way. Or maybe she was just victim one, and they were all inevitable." He sipped from his brandy and made a face. "It's impossible to say these things, I mean, to blame a girl for what she did and them for what they did. All we can do is blame the creature for what it did." Another shrug, not unlike one a teenager gives when it doesn't want to elaborate. "Or not. It does what it does. It's not malicious. But this is all it does, and we can't coexist with it.
"The thing I remember, though, more than anything else, is the parts that washed on shore for days afterward. You'd find a hand or a toe, or a big wad of hair, and you would just know." He shrugged. "I wasn't ever allowed back in the water after that."
Ianto wondered if he would have ever wanted to go back into the water after seeing that. He tried to imagine swimming in the water, knowing that thing was out there. Not even that seemed as bad as the possibility of floating out there and bumping into part of someone you used to know, bobbing out there in the waves. It was bad enough when it was someone you didn't know. He knew this from experience, tossing parts of people (okay, aliens, whom some might say are people on other planets) out in the bog himself.
For a split second he wondered what the difference between him and the monster was, but that was amazingly ridiculous. He didn't eat those people, and he didn't kill them, he just…disposed of them.
It was getting a little too philosophical.
"They blamed her," Jack said lightly, eyes darting to Ianto, then away. "They all blamed her for bringing the thing to the water. My dad never said her name again."
"I'm sorry," Ianto breathed, because he didn't know what he was supposed to say. He stared at Patrick the Starfish on his cup and wondered what the hell people were thinking, that this was a successful children's show. He should make something like this up and make a billionty dollars, then he could quit this job and go somewhere no one was eaten by giant sea creatures. Like…Kiel. No one was eaten in Kiel. As far as he knew.
Jack shrugged. "It wasn't until years later, once I left and had access to records, that I knew they'd been seeded there. My sister had just stumbled on one of them in the beginning stages. Even if she'd never found it, they would have come to the water. They would have grown and become…that. Them." A long pause, and the sonar above them trilled its quarterly message of, 'I got nothing.'
"I suppose," Jack said, "that they needed someone to blame, and she was the easiest target when you didn't have the facts. Doesn't change the fact that they were all dead, that she was dead, and we could never be safe on the sea ever again. It didn't matter anyway, because months later we were under siege, for the rest of my childhood."
Ianto wanted to ask about that. Desperately. "I have an older sister," he blurted out instead. Stupid really, a sudden thought, pushed up by the warmth of the brandy, offered as if it would make Jack feel better about opening up. As if he was offering Jack something he didn't already know. Jack knew everything. He was his employer, for god's sake.
Jack smiled into the air. "I know." And then, a capitulation, an out for Ianto's embarrassment, "Pains in the arse, really."
"Amen to that," Ianto mumbled into his cup. He was suddenly tired. He could sleep here. Instead, they would finish this and get back to work. Once he was on his feet he'd feel better. He'd make some of Llewellyn's shite instant coffee later. Maybe Jack would tell him to take a kip for a few hours, but that just felt like cheating. Though how he was ever going to feel anything but inadequate next to a man who didn't really have to sleep was beyond him.
The boat was a huge sedative, really, with the noises and the rocking, a whale speeding along the whale-path, as Beowulf said, and he wondered what it would be like, not for the first or last time, to be in the air instead of on the sea.
"Is this like being in space?" he asked Jack suddenly. He wanted to listen for the sound of gulls. Did they ever sleep? But he couldn't hear them over the clanging of the warning bell banging against the semi-cracked doorframe, and the water hitting the deck as it splashed over the railing, or even the crushed winch rigging slapping the ceiling above them. They should secure that. But not really. There was nowhere to put it and nothing to secure it with.
Jack tilted his head. "From a certain point of view. Everything is like being in space. How is Cardiff like Paris?"
Ianto smiled. "I get you."
Somewhere in the distance a buoy answered their loose claxon and they listened to the clash of the brass until it all died away, the wind changed. Ianto tilted his cup and stared at the contents. "I hate the water," he said softly. "You can't live in it, not naturally. Like space." He turned his head to Jack and it occurred to him that his fortifying belt had been more like a fortifying nightcap. "You can't breathe in space."
Jack patted Ianto's back, letting his hand rest there, fingers pressing in that way that meant he was making a conscious effort to keep them there. "I think you'll find that danger is everywhere. Planetside only gives you the illusion of control."
"I have control," Ianto mumbled into his cup. He tipped it up to finish it and the boat canted and he spilled brandy down his front. "That was an accident," he said, pointing a finger at Jack, whose mouth was perilously quirked, in danger of actually becoming a grin. Ianto cut it off at the pass. "It was not some cosmic symbolism or something."
"Right."
Ianto drained his cup and rested his forehead on his arms. He closed his eyes, feeling the rocking of the boat, Jack's hand on the small of his back, rubbing circles. The wood creaked and the wind made the metal stays of the winch clink against the pole. The sonar beeped harmlessly. Jack's own cup set down, a deeper note that indicated that it was still half-full.
Ianto wondered what they would do when they saw it again. He wondered if he and Jack would be enough, or if Jack would fall to it, as much as he could fall to anything, a victim of a monster from across the galaxy. A monster that he had survived, only to see it again in the most impossible of places.
He shrugged and let the boat rock him, a giant murderous cradle, and under his breath, Jack sang, softly and without irony, just a touch of sadness. Another mystery to add to the man's layers.
"Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston. And so nevermore shall we see you again."
WEDNESDAY, ZERO DARK THIRTY:
The knocking on the side of the boat had been going on for about thirty seconds before Ianto opened his eyes and realised that it was happening outside his head, in reality, and not in his dreams, in which a giant clown had been headbanging to a German drinking song. Jack was nowhere to be seen, but the boat engine was running, and they were moving at a pretty fast clip, so he knew that someone was at the wheel.
"IANTO," Jack hollered, and there was a stomping on the ceiling above him. "IANTO, GAME TIME."
Ianto fell out of the seat and scrambled to his feet, wiping sleep from his eyes and wide awake, running for the door. He stopped at the frame, leaning on it so that he could watch the long tentacle roil in the sky, at least a dozen mouths on it alone. For a second, the house party song ran through his head: put your hands in the air, wave them like you don't care, and then he was off, darting to the array of guns and finding that he had no idea what to do.
Jack was there, though, big gun strapped across his front, air rifle in his hand and loaded with a transmitter flechette. They weren't going to let it go without tracking it, even if they didn't manage to blow it up this time either. Another tentacle as big around as a redwood (Ianto had seen redwoods in pictures) shot out of the water and the wake of its movement made the boat tip and roll. The sky was dark, and the sodium lights lit up the deck and the water around them in a way that made it both harder and easier to see.
Ianto scooped up a rifle in one hand and a handgun in another, then stuffed the gun, some leftover C-4 packs and detonators into a net bag and ran for the starboard quarter, feet slipping on the deck. He slung the netting over his shoulder and glanced at Jack, who waved him up the stairs.
"Get ready to bring her around!" he shouted to Ianto and he ran to the prow and aimed for the monster, which wasn't hard. The thing was bigger across then the SUV, what he could see that was out of the water, an amorphous blob studded with teeth-rimmed mouths and long tentacles that whipped in and out of the water, however it propelled itself through the waves.
Ianto staggered left and right on the deck as he tried to keep an eye on the creature in front of the ship and walk backwards to the stairs and up to the pilothouse. He managed to make it halfway up the stairs when the monster seemed to leap onto the port bow and the whole boat tilted precariously. Ianto fell down the stairs, banging his head on the railing and seeing stars for a second. Now would not be a good time to black out, the sane, calm and orderly part of his mind told him. It was a very small voice, because the rest of his brain was saying something to the effect of, "Ohshitohshitgetupgetupgetupohshitshootshootshoot."
Nevertheless, in the process of falling, he lost the items in his hands. The rifle skittered across the camber of the curved deck and bounced off the gunwale, sliding behind one of the unlashed crates. That was okay. Ianto had another one. He made for the stairs again and was rewarded by reaching the finish line.
Jack fired the big gun down into the water as he stood on the extended prow, and the water boiled and steamed before the whole bow was batted up in the air as the creature retreated into the waves. Jack flew backwards onto the deck and had to roll to avoid a tentacle with several mouths big enough to take several chunks out of him. He fired the big gun again and then it whined; Ianto could hear it over the groaning and creaking and water and cracking; it was out of gas. Jack cut the strap and lobbed the gun at the creature when one of the mouths got too close, taking a few teeth with it before he lost his grip on it, and it went flying off into the water.
"Ianto! Back it up!" Jack screamed, and turned, probably to make sure that Ianto was in place. Ianto was fumbling to turn the key when the winch arm, which had been pretty much crippled the day before (earlier in the night? It seemed so long ago) unbalanced and crashed to the deck, pinning Jack. Ianto threw the boat into reverse and hoped that he could somehow pull it away, like wrenching one's hand out of someone else's grip.
The bow of the boat finally crumpled, twisted and pulled away, and the rest of the deck tilted perilously. Ianto grabbed on to the steering wheel and watched Jack wrestle himself out from under the wreckage of the downed winch. One of his legs was bleeding pretty badly and it looked as if the femoral artery had been severed. Ianto clung to the wheel as the deck tilted and a yawning maw below it caught all the loose crates in its mouth. Jack scrabbled on the wooden beams, but his fingers couldn’t find purchase; he slid a few more feet towards the open mouth and rows of teeth, silver almost blinding in the lights.
The crates banged into its mouth, spilling open, and it ate them down, not paying attention to the things it was consuming. Jack's head lolled and his arms slackened and Ianto knew that he'd lost consciousness. It was all he could do to watch as Jack's body went limp and he spilled into the creature's mouth, just another item in the junk that it was collecting.
He wasn't aware that he was screaming, but he must have been, because when he stopped, all he heard was the grinding of the boat as it was pulled further apart. Another tentacle reached the stern behind him and squeezed, and he was caught at the top level above the water when the engine died. The pillars that held up the pilothouse fell away like a yanked wishbone, and Ianto tucked himself into ball to avoid being hit in a critical place with wood or glass. The boat had been effectively thirded, and he grabbed for anything that he could think would stay afloat, then remembered the netting bag as the pilothouse toppled into the water, and a tentacle was finally able to find him, now that the infrared masking abilities of the hull had been negated. He rolled away from it and crashed into the open sea.
Ianto's body ached, there was an indescribable sharp pain in his leg, and a glance at it told him that he was bleeding. He fell into the waves and cast about, spluttering and scrabbling onto the last part of the stern, which seemed to still have some buoyancy. His fingers tangled in the netting slung about his shoulders. He tried to replay the moment when the crates had fallen from the deck, but all he could see was Jack tumbling into the creature's mouth.
He was dead (sort of), but Ianto was going to be dead (for sure). His fingers tied themselves up, and he wasn't paying attention when the tentacle, a thin one, wrapped around his ankle and yanked, pulling so hard he worried that his leg would come from the socket. If his jacket hadn't been caught on the wooden shards of the splintered deck, Ianto would have gone flying, sucked right under the water and into some waiting mouth.
Mouths.
Ianto finally found what he wanted, flipped the remote open to reveal the red button that all but promised salvation, and glanced one more time at the creature about twenty feet away in the water, its limbs searching the area around it for anything it could dismantle or consume. He tried to remember which crates had held what, but anyway, it had eaten most if not all of them. Its main mouth curved up in a fake grin, just the anatomy of all the mouths, actually; how cruel that something this horrible would seem so happy. Ianto wondered where Jack was and if Gwen would ever forgive him. Then the thing really tugged on his foot and he almost lost his grip.
"Smile, you sonofabitch," Ianto whispered, pressing the button as soon as it fell into his grasp, the tentacle around his ankle yanking him further off the wreckage.
The explosion was deafening; even though most of it was underwater, it didn't stay there, and Ianto covered his ears as he looped one elbow through a rail on the gunwale to keep himself from being pulled under. It seemed as if all the water in a quarter-mile radius had shot into the air, reverse waterfalls, but filled with chunks of meat and teeth like shrapnel and three-foot lengths of tentacles and arms bursting in all directions. Something sharp caught Ianto in the shoulder, and he knew he'd been hit by something, but that it wasn't attached to anything living, so he could deal with it as soon as his heart stopped pounding and he was sure the thing was dead or dying.
The water in the air had to come back down, and it did in a cascade. The boat section that Ianto was perched on began to sink in earnest, and he had to scramble for something floatational to grab on to, finally managing to grab the lid of a fish cooler and some nylon rope, then laid on it, pulling the tooth from his shoulder and screaming, finally, finally, and the water around him bloomed black and oily. He sprawled on the white floating lid and sobbed into the plastic, fingers clutching the detonator switch as if it could ever save him again.
THURSDAY MORNING, CONSIDERABLY BRIGHTER, BUT EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE FISH:
He didn't know how long he'd been floating, but Ianto watched the streaks of red fade as the sun rose, and knew that he'd been clutching the three life preservers he'd lashed to the cooler lid for hours. The boat was pretty much gone, and all around him floated pieces of fat and flesh and other things he didn't want to think about. It occurred to him that it wasn't probably a good idea to be out there in a veritable chum pit because there were other things that were just as dangerous to him that might fancy the idea of a mile-long floating smorgasbord.
But. Jack was nowhere to be seen. Ianto wasn't sure if Jack was dead, or simply elsewhere. What if he was dead inside the body of the creature, a part of it that hadn't exploded and had simply sunk to the bottom of the ocean? What if he was some of the pieces bumping into Ianto right now in the water?
How did Jack reform? Did Jack reform? He had to, right? He couldn't die.
Ianto wondered if it would be painful to cobble oneself together from pieces, raw and bloody in essentially a saltwater bath. His shoulder was killing him, and that was just a stab wound.
Something hit his ankle and he jerked, curling his legs towards his stomach. He wondered what part of him would hurt the worst to have bitten, and decided that the belly would be a bad place. He could keep that protected, hanging from the flotsam and curled like a ball. Once he'd read that anti shark bags on boats were shaped like blobs because sharks weren't interested in things that didn't wave about or have limbs that were easy to bite. He could be a ball. He was tired, but fear of being devoured from below overcame the exhaustion.
He didn't know how long he drifted, but it had to have been another hour, shivering and wondering why his lips were so fucking dry in the middle of an ocean. The sun wasn't all the way up in the centre if the sky, but it was getting there, when there was a shudder in the water and he jerked away from it.
Jack's head and shoulders broke the surface and he let out a huge shuddering gasp, arms flailing. Ianto shielded his face from the splashing even as he steered himself closer. Jack was covered in oily ichor, black and greasy like motor oil, just like everything else, but when he opened his eyes and blinked, scrubbing with one fist, it didn't take long for him to spot Ianto and wave a hand.
Ianto paddled his jerry-rigged raft and they closed the distance. Jack grabbed on and closed his eyes for a second, as if he were concentrating on breathing. Ianto simply treaded water and waited for his system to reboot.
"I think I'm perfectly within my rights to say this but, holy shit that was trippy," Jack gasped. His face was black, and he scrubbed at it with his free hand. Ianto blinked rapidly and wondered if he were imagining things.
Jack finally washed enough of the dead creature's blood from his skin that he felt satisfied and he looked at Ianto, eyes running over the parts of him above water. His eyes found the ragged bloody edges of Ianto's shirt where the tooth had cut him and his fingers touched it experimentally. "Are you all right?"
Ianto surged forward and threw one arm around Jack, pulling him in and pressing the side of his head against Jack's, feeling the movement of Jack's muscles against his body, feeling the other man's arms come around him, and dear Jesus, Ianto didn't like to think that he was overly sentimental, but if he could have cried at that moment, he might have. At this point, though, he was rattled and most likely in shock, and he figured that later, after they were in a better position, he'd have a good cathartic bawl at the near miss they'd had.
Jack's arms tightened around his chest and Ianto felt the press of Jack's lips on his neck before he spoke. "Hey there, it take more than being eaten to kill me, you know that, right?" His fingers moved along the back of Ianto's head and Ianto knew they were feeling for injuries. Jack at his most affectionate was still a soldier. Ianto almost let go of the preservers in favor of clinging to him. Foolish to think that Jack could bring them in. Nonetheless, he rubbed his cheek against Jack's, feeling oil and scum and stubble under his face, a reminder that he was alive, they were both alive, and they could go home how.
"I see you have a floatational device here," Jack murmured. "I bet if we started now we could be out of this oil slick and halfway to shore in an hour." He pulled back and glanced around, as if trying to get their bearings. "That way," he pointed. "If we're lucky, Gwen'll be out with helicopters to investigate the explosion and they'll pick us up."
Ianto let go of Jack and reoriented himself, draping his arms on one end of the cobbled together raft. "Right. I'm starving. Are you starving?"
Jack pounded his chest and let out a belch. "I swallowed about fifteen gallons of salt water." He tilted his head and settled his arms on the other end of the raft and they started kicking. "I bet I could eat. Eggs sound good. Maybe pineapple." He smiled. "It was on my cup last night and I've been thinking about it ever since then."
Ianto snorted. "He lives in a pineapple under the sea."
Jack glanced at him and they started to propel the raft forward in the water. All around them, the gulls swooped and screeched. An albatross landed a few feet away and dove down, probably looking for some prize meat. In for a treat; he was sitting in it. Ianto nervously watched for the telltale fins of sharks. He didn't know if there were any around here, or if they would be interested in him and Jack, but he would rather not find out.
"Who would live in a pineapple?" Jack argued. "I would think a shell or something would be better suited."
Ianto shook his head. "You're thinking about this too much," he said. "But now I want pineapple."
Jack's fingers must have still been a little oily, because he slipped on the preserver and his face fell under the water before he scrabbled back onto the foam and clutched at it. In the meantime, their little craft had become lopsided and was taking them towards the left, along the shore instead of towards.
"Hey, what day is this?" he asked after spitting out a bunch of water.
Ianto squinted at the sun. "It's Friday," he answered. "Eh, it's Thursday, I think."
"The tide is with us," Jack offered feebly. One of his feet hit Ianto's leg.
Ianto pumped his legs faster, then realised that overworking himself couldn't possibly get him there any faster. He'd take his time, and maybe Gwen would fly in on a helicopter and pick them up. "Keep kickin'," he said to Jack, and then, "You know, I used to hate the water."
Jack laughed a bit and the float bobbed. "And now?"
"Oh, now I fucking hate the water."
"I can't imagine why."
END
Author:
amand_rPrompt: Jaws
Characters: Jack, Gwen, Ianto, random OCs
Rating: R for violence
Wordcount: 24,700
Spoilers: You don't have to have seen Jaws. But you should. You really should. All canon through season two of Torchwood is assumed.
Disclaimer: I do not have any rights over Jaws and/or Torchwood, nor can or do I make any money off any fictive enterprises that I might undertake with them. All I have are a handful of Skittles that are all warm in my pocket. Sue me and taste the linty rainbow, people.
Author's Notes: Read it before you go swimming. In Wales. Where it's cold.
Real Author's Notes: Thanks to
misswinterhill and joanwilder for the beta goodness. And to the mods, for patience. alba17, you're beyond deification. Also, I might've played merry cob with maritime authorisation rules, though for the most part, jurisdictions et al are correctly observed. I'm not Tom Clancy. Also, I wrote this to so much techno, I might have given myself an arrhythmia.Summary: South Wales had everything. Clear skies. Gentle surf. Warm water. People flocked there every summer. No wait, they didn't. That doesn't really matter. It was the perfect feeding ground anyway.
PREVIOUSLY, ON TORCHWOOD: Part One, Part Two
STILL TUESDAY, BUT A BIGGER BOAT HAS YET TO BE PROCURED:
Ianto knew from an intellectual standpoint that the last three hours had happened, because he had been there and he'd seen it all, and he'd been doing things with his hands and feet and recording things with his eyes and brain, but as he sat on the captain's chair and held the connector cables to the explosive packs, he wasn't sure that it had actually occurred.
The sun silhouetted Jack's frame as he leant against the rails of the extended prow, the big gun strapped around his chest but dangling uselessly. His arms rested on the piping, dangling at the wrists, and Ianto could hear him whistling from time to time.
Hours ago, Jack had been gunning the throttle and merrily singing something about bow-legged women, and Ianto had been shoveling buckets of chum out into the water, attracting everything but the creature they were looking for. At one point, Ianto thought that maybe he'd see sharks, and wouldn't that be a little Discovery Channel? And he hadn't noticed when the gulls had left, but they must have, and he had been thanking his memory for the handkerchief tied about his mouth like he was about to rob a bank when Jack had shouted and he'd looked up to see the thing come up put of the water.
Jesus, it had been tentacles, long ropes of them, some of them as thick as tree trunks, and on every one of them, mouths and teeth and possibly little tongues. He had staggered back into the relative safety of the cabin and stared out the window, and Jack had cut the engine, jumping down the stairs and rummaging through the open crates for tools.
One of the long arms of the creature had swung about and taken down the rigging, not for sails, but possibly for towing or hauling nets; the big mechanical arm on the side of the ship had buckled and fallen deckward. It was as if the creature had been sure they were there, but not sure, and the arms, while reaching for them, hadn't figured out what they were, which had been rather odd.
Jack had got one good shot off with the Big Gun, mostly because their biggest concern was that the creature would take the boat apart before they had a chance to use the explosives, and while the gun seemed to have an effect, it had merely severed one of the tentacles, which had fallen into the water like a downed tree and presumably sunk to the ocean floor. Ianto had thought that maybe severed tentacles grew more monsters, like earthworms, but he had pushed that thought to the back of his mind to savour later. In the dark.
Ianto had got over his shock long enough to ready a few of the smaller guns and the trackers, but ultimately that had been the extent of the action they'd seen.
Now, he looked at the charges in his hands. Before they'd even gone out on the water, they'd debated putting barrels in it with harpoons, but they'd both seen Jaws, and they figured that if Jaws was immune to a bunch of floating barrels harpooned into it, then this thing wasn't going to give a shit about that either. Besides, they'd had a moment the night before in which Ianto had looked at Jack and said, "Do we even have barrels?" and Jack had been forced to shrug and admit that, no, they had never got the Torchwood branded barrels, not after the disaster of the HMS LOVEBOAT.
Then they decided on a tracking device, and Jack had prepared about fifteen of them to various air powered rifles and guns, and Ianto had painstakingly rigged flechettes loaded with tracker darts so that they could unleash them in a volley of alien tech off the port bow. He had imagined that the thing would come up like some horrible creature in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. He'd even imagined the whole Jonah-esque being swallowed whole thing, but what he hadn't anticipated was that after the monster had surfaced and its long tentacles had waved about, it had left them alone.
Ianto might have been offended if it had been his boat. As it was, after a few minutes of being completely perplexed, he was relieved when Jack had confided to him that the entire hull of the boat had been treated with some sort of compound that rendered them all but invisible to the creature's infrared field of vision, which had been why they'd taken it in the first place. Huh. So, okay.
They'd been this way for hours now, floating in the water, waiting for the thing to come up for another go round. Ianto figured that it was nursing its wound, but it still had to be near by, because he couldn't even see any birds circling in the air. He wouldn't have put it past the creature to have snatched the things from the sky.
He was thinking of getting up. He really had to piss. But there was that nagging feeling, that feeling that if he took a break, if he got up, that would be the moment that the creature would resurface, and he'd be running to help Jack with his prick hanging out, and that wouldn't be useful.
Instead, Ianto glanced at his watch and thought about radioing Gwen. They hadn't eaten all day. Jack looked exhausted, standing for hours on the prow. Once his head lowered and snapped back up as if he had caught himself dozing, and Ianto made an executive decision.
"Jack," he said, standing, "It's not going anywhere." He set the charges and the detonators on the recessed bucket meant to hold fish or something and stretched. His arse was actually numb.
Jack joined him on the deck, looking for all the world like a kid with his oversized gun and expression of disappointment. Ianto didn't blame him—he would rather have got this over sooner than later. Ianto patted his back.
"Come on, then," he said, "we'll have some supper, and then you can wait a half-hour and go back in the water, sport."
Jack raised an eyebrow but followed him into the cabin anyway.
They both ate two of Rhys's sandwiches, stuffed with so much meat that Jack called them 'manwiches' in a clunky attempt at humor. Ianto sat rigidly; every sway of the boat felt like the creature coming back, and the night waters did nothing for his nerves. After clearing the dishes and securing them in the sink with the netting that would keep the unwashed cutlery from flying about and taking their eyes out if there was a problem (what was that called? Rough seas? Turbulence? The Last Thing You'll Ever Feel?), Ianto figured that a man like Llewellyn was probably a complete drunkard, and that there had to be alcohol on the boat somewhere.
Ianto opened the magnetised cupboard door and pulled out two plastic cups, setting them on the table and reaching for the bottle. This was so not a good idea, but he wanted a bolt of something, and Jack looked as if he needed something as well. The bottle was unlabelled, so Ianto opened the cap and sniffed experimentally. Jack would survive drinking lighter fluid, but one of these kids was doing his own thing.
It was apricot brandy. Ianto smiled at the bottle. Oh Llewellyn, you sentimental bastard.
Jack held up the cup by the handle and turned it around, frowning at the yellow boxy creature adorning its side, along with a scribble that said, Best Grandpa Ever! Yay!
"What is that?"
Ianto blinked. "That's SpongeBob Squarepants. Please don't ask," he hastily finished when Jack raised a critical eyebrow. Ianto poured them a measure of the liquor and then thunked down onto the bench next to Jack before taking a sip and grimacing. He wasn't fond of fruited alcohol, but this was pretty strong, as if Llewellyn had said, 'I like this, but it needs more rubbing alcohol and grenadine.'
"I suppose we can get a little sleep," Ianto sighed into his cup as he settled in the eating nook with its bolted table and padded booth seats. Jack leant on the table like he had leant on the rails of the prow—tired, wary, maybe a little defeated, if Ianto have to give a name to it.
"You get some sleep," he told Ianto. "I'll fix the guns, reload the triggers or something."
Ianto snorted. "Don't bother. Everything is as ready as it can be." He sighed. "As much as I didn't relish the thought of him being here, maybe Colonel Llewellyn would have been useful. He did kill one of these before."
Jack watched as Ianto sipped from his cup, his own untouched on the tabletop. "Perhaps."
"That's heartening."
Jack finally raised his cup to his lips and sipped the brandy. "This is horrible." He smiled. "Could you really put your life in the hands of a man who stocks a case of apricot brandy in his larder?"
Ianto shrugged. "This is where I make the appropriate seafaring joke about any port in a storm, right?"
The boat rocked and they drank in companionable silence. If Ianto didn't know better, he would have said that they were on a fishing trip. And they were, after a fashion. A terrifying, surreal, sure to end badly fishing trip that made Jaws look like Flipper the dolphin.
Ianto refilled his cup. A finger was a generous portion when one was trying to stay sober, but still.
"I wasn't exactly honest with you," Jack said suddenly, swirling the contents of his cup. "When I said that I'd only seen them a few times. I neglected to mention the rest of it."
Ianto finished his cup and poured more against his better judgement. "An omission," he supplied.
Jack smiled at the tabletop, his fingers picking at the peeling varnish. "An omission."
"Please don't tell me that you've had sex with one, because that might be too much for my brain to—"
"I had a sister, you know," Jack said. "She was about ten years older than me, a half sister, well, yeah," Jack shrugged. "Used to call me 'the perpetual nuisance machine'."
Ianto smiled and stilled Jack's peeling hand. "I can't imagine why."
Jack ignored the jest. "It was right about the time Gray was five, maybe, six?" He glanced at Ianto. "The details are difficult."
"Well, I gather it's hard, to think about—"
"I mean it was thousands of years ago," Jack amended, probably so they wouldn't have to have a heart to heart about his murderous family. Ianto didn't blame him; there was a reason he'd never brought it up before, and she was in a cryovault in the lower levels of the Hub with her skull stitched together. "In the future, still, but in the past. It was pretty much buried before, but now it's become…" He struggled for words.
"Un-dusty," Ianto supplied for him.
Jack smiled and pulled his hand from under Ianto's. Drumming the tabletop. "Yes, un-dusty." The boat creaked and he rocked with it; Ianto could see the casual move of his shoulders as he fell into the rhythm of it. Ianto's back was a mess of knots from resisting the pull. Not unlike the concept of being the passenger in a car. The driver's body went with the starts and stops because they were controlling them, they could sense them, but the passengers were jostled about at every pause. It wasn't a good metaphor on the top, but once the crust was pulled back, something deeper stirred beneath, when Jack lifted his cup to his lips and sipped even as the boat hit a cresting wave a bit and tipped up in the front, Jack rolled with it.
"The place where I come from, it's well, it's a peninsula, surrounded by water." Jack smiled. "Most folks lived in the more central area, we were at war, there were things, things that took advantage of the shelter of the sea."
"Like the thing out there."
Jack leant back and rested his head against the tatty vinyl pillow bolted to the wall of the booth behind him. "No, those things were brought, they don’t, oh hell I don't know what they are." He opened his eyes. "I was eight. I don't know enough about them, except what I remember from a child's brain, and those memories are over…they're old."
His cup dragged over the wood.
"My sister, Shirinn, she was headstrong, compassionate, one of those people who brings home everything she finds, you know? Wounded birds, interesting insects, stray dogs and cats, if we had had them she would have loved them."
Ianto could sense where he was going.
"It was small when she brought it home, really, and we'd never seen one, not like this, little sucker mouths that seemed harmless." He shrugged. "Our parents told her that she couldn't keep it, Dad made her throw it back into the sea, though I think he might have tried to kill it, but he never managed to get it alone, didn't want to kill it in front of her.
"She fed it every day, though, and I knew. I thought it was a secret that I was in on. I just didn't know." Jack shrugged. "I didn't understand what it was going to become. And maybe she didn't either."
Ianto reached over and laid a hand on Jack's arm, because he didn't know what else to do. Was he supposed to offer comfort? Good old-fashioned man-support of grumbling and taking the piss? Gwen would have known what to do.
Jack leaned into the touch , a little, closed the gap on the bench until they were arm to arm, shoulder to shoulder. It made the experience of rocking more intimate as the sea tossed them a little. "It went on for months. The thing, it—it was huge. I don't know how she managed to feed it, what she managed to feed it. The cattle were inland, and they were—they were too heavy for an eighteen year old girl to get anywhere unnoticed, and what did she think she could—" Jack stopped and blinked at the grain of the table, before his mouth quirked. "I guess she loved it. I guess we know about loving monsters."
Ianto blew out a breath. Boy, did he.
"I was watching Gray on the beach when she took the skiff out," Jack whispered, his eyes far away. "Dad said something about the water being too rough, but I think she had a bucket of something and she was going to feed it, maybe, go visit it. She never was all there in that way that some people have, like, remember Suzie, before she, well, before."
Ah Suzie. "I always thought Suzie was eerily competent," Ianto confessed. "If I were going to say who was the most well-grounded." When Jack glanced at him, he saluted him with his cup. "You know sometimes you're a space cadet."
"And how," Jack returned, but didn't elaborate.
The boat groaned and something in one of the cupboards rattled a bit with the tilt. "So, I gather she…I gather it killed her."
Jack sucked in his breath, as if preparing to blow out candles on a cake, or maybe metaphorical candles on the story. "Yeah, I saw her out there, so far out, and Dad was on the dock. Gray was eating sand, and I…I looked away for a second, and when I looked back it was just a mass of tentacles and the bottom part of the boat flipping in the air and my dad was screaming and screaming."
Ianto wanted to say something, anything, but he didn't have words, so he just waited. More would come, really. Not even Jack, the master of untelling, could leave the rest of this untold, when they were out here on the ocean, together, just them, trying to slay the beastie that had already cost him so much. Maybe not that exact beastie, obviously, but close enough. Once, when he was four, Ianto had been bit by a Rottweiler, and to this day, he gave all of them a wide berth, regardless of how their owners said, 'Oh, he's harmless! He's a big soft-hearted creature, oh yes he is.' It wasn't the specific dog. It didn't have to be.
"They took a few boats out to try and find her, but that was pointless. They must have known that she was gone. Maybe they thought they could kill the thing, I don't know, I didn't ask, and they never told me. Dad went with them, but by the time he got back it was dark and half of the boats didn't return."
"They…" Ianto drifted off, because it was obvious what had happened.
Jack shrugged. "Thirty men all killed because of her, if you want to look at it that way. Or maybe she was just victim one, and they were all inevitable." He sipped from his brandy and made a face. "It's impossible to say these things, I mean, to blame a girl for what she did and them for what they did. All we can do is blame the creature for what it did." Another shrug, not unlike one a teenager gives when it doesn't want to elaborate. "Or not. It does what it does. It's not malicious. But this is all it does, and we can't coexist with it.
"The thing I remember, though, more than anything else, is the parts that washed on shore for days afterward. You'd find a hand or a toe, or a big wad of hair, and you would just know." He shrugged. "I wasn't ever allowed back in the water after that."
Ianto wondered if he would have ever wanted to go back into the water after seeing that. He tried to imagine swimming in the water, knowing that thing was out there. Not even that seemed as bad as the possibility of floating out there and bumping into part of someone you used to know, bobbing out there in the waves. It was bad enough when it was someone you didn't know. He knew this from experience, tossing parts of people (okay, aliens, whom some might say are people on other planets) out in the bog himself.
For a split second he wondered what the difference between him and the monster was, but that was amazingly ridiculous. He didn't eat those people, and he didn't kill them, he just…disposed of them.
It was getting a little too philosophical.
"They blamed her," Jack said lightly, eyes darting to Ianto, then away. "They all blamed her for bringing the thing to the water. My dad never said her name again."
"I'm sorry," Ianto breathed, because he didn't know what he was supposed to say. He stared at Patrick the Starfish on his cup and wondered what the hell people were thinking, that this was a successful children's show. He should make something like this up and make a billionty dollars, then he could quit this job and go somewhere no one was eaten by giant sea creatures. Like…Kiel. No one was eaten in Kiel. As far as he knew.
Jack shrugged. "It wasn't until years later, once I left and had access to records, that I knew they'd been seeded there. My sister had just stumbled on one of them in the beginning stages. Even if she'd never found it, they would have come to the water. They would have grown and become…that. Them." A long pause, and the sonar above them trilled its quarterly message of, 'I got nothing.'
"I suppose," Jack said, "that they needed someone to blame, and she was the easiest target when you didn't have the facts. Doesn't change the fact that they were all dead, that she was dead, and we could never be safe on the sea ever again. It didn't matter anyway, because months later we were under siege, for the rest of my childhood."
Ianto wanted to ask about that. Desperately. "I have an older sister," he blurted out instead. Stupid really, a sudden thought, pushed up by the warmth of the brandy, offered as if it would make Jack feel better about opening up. As if he was offering Jack something he didn't already know. Jack knew everything. He was his employer, for god's sake.
Jack smiled into the air. "I know." And then, a capitulation, an out for Ianto's embarrassment, "Pains in the arse, really."
"Amen to that," Ianto mumbled into his cup. He was suddenly tired. He could sleep here. Instead, they would finish this and get back to work. Once he was on his feet he'd feel better. He'd make some of Llewellyn's shite instant coffee later. Maybe Jack would tell him to take a kip for a few hours, but that just felt like cheating. Though how he was ever going to feel anything but inadequate next to a man who didn't really have to sleep was beyond him.
The boat was a huge sedative, really, with the noises and the rocking, a whale speeding along the whale-path, as Beowulf said, and he wondered what it would be like, not for the first or last time, to be in the air instead of on the sea.
"Is this like being in space?" he asked Jack suddenly. He wanted to listen for the sound of gulls. Did they ever sleep? But he couldn't hear them over the clanging of the warning bell banging against the semi-cracked doorframe, and the water hitting the deck as it splashed over the railing, or even the crushed winch rigging slapping the ceiling above them. They should secure that. But not really. There was nowhere to put it and nothing to secure it with.
Jack tilted his head. "From a certain point of view. Everything is like being in space. How is Cardiff like Paris?"
Ianto smiled. "I get you."
Somewhere in the distance a buoy answered their loose claxon and they listened to the clash of the brass until it all died away, the wind changed. Ianto tilted his cup and stared at the contents. "I hate the water," he said softly. "You can't live in it, not naturally. Like space." He turned his head to Jack and it occurred to him that his fortifying belt had been more like a fortifying nightcap. "You can't breathe in space."
Jack patted Ianto's back, letting his hand rest there, fingers pressing in that way that meant he was making a conscious effort to keep them there. "I think you'll find that danger is everywhere. Planetside only gives you the illusion of control."
"I have control," Ianto mumbled into his cup. He tipped it up to finish it and the boat canted and he spilled brandy down his front. "That was an accident," he said, pointing a finger at Jack, whose mouth was perilously quirked, in danger of actually becoming a grin. Ianto cut it off at the pass. "It was not some cosmic symbolism or something."
"Right."
Ianto drained his cup and rested his forehead on his arms. He closed his eyes, feeling the rocking of the boat, Jack's hand on the small of his back, rubbing circles. The wood creaked and the wind made the metal stays of the winch clink against the pole. The sonar beeped harmlessly. Jack's own cup set down, a deeper note that indicated that it was still half-full.
Ianto wondered what they would do when they saw it again. He wondered if he and Jack would be enough, or if Jack would fall to it, as much as he could fall to anything, a victim of a monster from across the galaxy. A monster that he had survived, only to see it again in the most impossible of places.
He shrugged and let the boat rock him, a giant murderous cradle, and under his breath, Jack sang, softly and without irony, just a touch of sadness. Another mystery to add to the man's layers.
"Farewell and adieu to you, fair Spanish ladies. Farewell and adieu, you ladies of Spain. For we've received orders for to sail back to Boston. And so nevermore shall we see you again."
WEDNESDAY, ZERO DARK THIRTY:
The knocking on the side of the boat had been going on for about thirty seconds before Ianto opened his eyes and realised that it was happening outside his head, in reality, and not in his dreams, in which a giant clown had been headbanging to a German drinking song. Jack was nowhere to be seen, but the boat engine was running, and they were moving at a pretty fast clip, so he knew that someone was at the wheel.
"IANTO," Jack hollered, and there was a stomping on the ceiling above him. "IANTO, GAME TIME."
Ianto fell out of the seat and scrambled to his feet, wiping sleep from his eyes and wide awake, running for the door. He stopped at the frame, leaning on it so that he could watch the long tentacle roil in the sky, at least a dozen mouths on it alone. For a second, the house party song ran through his head: put your hands in the air, wave them like you don't care, and then he was off, darting to the array of guns and finding that he had no idea what to do.
Jack was there, though, big gun strapped across his front, air rifle in his hand and loaded with a transmitter flechette. They weren't going to let it go without tracking it, even if they didn't manage to blow it up this time either. Another tentacle as big around as a redwood (Ianto had seen redwoods in pictures) shot out of the water and the wake of its movement made the boat tip and roll. The sky was dark, and the sodium lights lit up the deck and the water around them in a way that made it both harder and easier to see.
Ianto scooped up a rifle in one hand and a handgun in another, then stuffed the gun, some leftover C-4 packs and detonators into a net bag and ran for the starboard quarter, feet slipping on the deck. He slung the netting over his shoulder and glanced at Jack, who waved him up the stairs.
"Get ready to bring her around!" he shouted to Ianto and he ran to the prow and aimed for the monster, which wasn't hard. The thing was bigger across then the SUV, what he could see that was out of the water, an amorphous blob studded with teeth-rimmed mouths and long tentacles that whipped in and out of the water, however it propelled itself through the waves.
Ianto staggered left and right on the deck as he tried to keep an eye on the creature in front of the ship and walk backwards to the stairs and up to the pilothouse. He managed to make it halfway up the stairs when the monster seemed to leap onto the port bow and the whole boat tilted precariously. Ianto fell down the stairs, banging his head on the railing and seeing stars for a second. Now would not be a good time to black out, the sane, calm and orderly part of his mind told him. It was a very small voice, because the rest of his brain was saying something to the effect of, "Ohshitohshitgetupgetupgetupohshitshootshootshoot."
Nevertheless, in the process of falling, he lost the items in his hands. The rifle skittered across the camber of the curved deck and bounced off the gunwale, sliding behind one of the unlashed crates. That was okay. Ianto had another one. He made for the stairs again and was rewarded by reaching the finish line.
Jack fired the big gun down into the water as he stood on the extended prow, and the water boiled and steamed before the whole bow was batted up in the air as the creature retreated into the waves. Jack flew backwards onto the deck and had to roll to avoid a tentacle with several mouths big enough to take several chunks out of him. He fired the big gun again and then it whined; Ianto could hear it over the groaning and creaking and water and cracking; it was out of gas. Jack cut the strap and lobbed the gun at the creature when one of the mouths got too close, taking a few teeth with it before he lost his grip on it, and it went flying off into the water.
"Ianto! Back it up!" Jack screamed, and turned, probably to make sure that Ianto was in place. Ianto was fumbling to turn the key when the winch arm, which had been pretty much crippled the day before (earlier in the night? It seemed so long ago) unbalanced and crashed to the deck, pinning Jack. Ianto threw the boat into reverse and hoped that he could somehow pull it away, like wrenching one's hand out of someone else's grip.
The bow of the boat finally crumpled, twisted and pulled away, and the rest of the deck tilted perilously. Ianto grabbed on to the steering wheel and watched Jack wrestle himself out from under the wreckage of the downed winch. One of his legs was bleeding pretty badly and it looked as if the femoral artery had been severed. Ianto clung to the wheel as the deck tilted and a yawning maw below it caught all the loose crates in its mouth. Jack scrabbled on the wooden beams, but his fingers couldn’t find purchase; he slid a few more feet towards the open mouth and rows of teeth, silver almost blinding in the lights.
The crates banged into its mouth, spilling open, and it ate them down, not paying attention to the things it was consuming. Jack's head lolled and his arms slackened and Ianto knew that he'd lost consciousness. It was all he could do to watch as Jack's body went limp and he spilled into the creature's mouth, just another item in the junk that it was collecting.
He wasn't aware that he was screaming, but he must have been, because when he stopped, all he heard was the grinding of the boat as it was pulled further apart. Another tentacle reached the stern behind him and squeezed, and he was caught at the top level above the water when the engine died. The pillars that held up the pilothouse fell away like a yanked wishbone, and Ianto tucked himself into ball to avoid being hit in a critical place with wood or glass. The boat had been effectively thirded, and he grabbed for anything that he could think would stay afloat, then remembered the netting bag as the pilothouse toppled into the water, and a tentacle was finally able to find him, now that the infrared masking abilities of the hull had been negated. He rolled away from it and crashed into the open sea.
Ianto's body ached, there was an indescribable sharp pain in his leg, and a glance at it told him that he was bleeding. He fell into the waves and cast about, spluttering and scrabbling onto the last part of the stern, which seemed to still have some buoyancy. His fingers tangled in the netting slung about his shoulders. He tried to replay the moment when the crates had fallen from the deck, but all he could see was Jack tumbling into the creature's mouth.
He was dead (sort of), but Ianto was going to be dead (for sure). His fingers tied themselves up, and he wasn't paying attention when the tentacle, a thin one, wrapped around his ankle and yanked, pulling so hard he worried that his leg would come from the socket. If his jacket hadn't been caught on the wooden shards of the splintered deck, Ianto would have gone flying, sucked right under the water and into some waiting mouth.
Mouths.
Ianto finally found what he wanted, flipped the remote open to reveal the red button that all but promised salvation, and glanced one more time at the creature about twenty feet away in the water, its limbs searching the area around it for anything it could dismantle or consume. He tried to remember which crates had held what, but anyway, it had eaten most if not all of them. Its main mouth curved up in a fake grin, just the anatomy of all the mouths, actually; how cruel that something this horrible would seem so happy. Ianto wondered where Jack was and if Gwen would ever forgive him. Then the thing really tugged on his foot and he almost lost his grip.
"Smile, you sonofabitch," Ianto whispered, pressing the button as soon as it fell into his grasp, the tentacle around his ankle yanking him further off the wreckage.
The explosion was deafening; even though most of it was underwater, it didn't stay there, and Ianto covered his ears as he looped one elbow through a rail on the gunwale to keep himself from being pulled under. It seemed as if all the water in a quarter-mile radius had shot into the air, reverse waterfalls, but filled with chunks of meat and teeth like shrapnel and three-foot lengths of tentacles and arms bursting in all directions. Something sharp caught Ianto in the shoulder, and he knew he'd been hit by something, but that it wasn't attached to anything living, so he could deal with it as soon as his heart stopped pounding and he was sure the thing was dead or dying.
The water in the air had to come back down, and it did in a cascade. The boat section that Ianto was perched on began to sink in earnest, and he had to scramble for something floatational to grab on to, finally managing to grab the lid of a fish cooler and some nylon rope, then laid on it, pulling the tooth from his shoulder and screaming, finally, finally, and the water around him bloomed black and oily. He sprawled on the white floating lid and sobbed into the plastic, fingers clutching the detonator switch as if it could ever save him again.
THURSDAY MORNING, CONSIDERABLY BRIGHTER, BUT EVERYTHING SMELLS LIKE FISH:
He didn't know how long he'd been floating, but Ianto watched the streaks of red fade as the sun rose, and knew that he'd been clutching the three life preservers he'd lashed to the cooler lid for hours. The boat was pretty much gone, and all around him floated pieces of fat and flesh and other things he didn't want to think about. It occurred to him that it wasn't probably a good idea to be out there in a veritable chum pit because there were other things that were just as dangerous to him that might fancy the idea of a mile-long floating smorgasbord.
But. Jack was nowhere to be seen. Ianto wasn't sure if Jack was dead, or simply elsewhere. What if he was dead inside the body of the creature, a part of it that hadn't exploded and had simply sunk to the bottom of the ocean? What if he was some of the pieces bumping into Ianto right now in the water?
How did Jack reform? Did Jack reform? He had to, right? He couldn't die.
Ianto wondered if it would be painful to cobble oneself together from pieces, raw and bloody in essentially a saltwater bath. His shoulder was killing him, and that was just a stab wound.
Something hit his ankle and he jerked, curling his legs towards his stomach. He wondered what part of him would hurt the worst to have bitten, and decided that the belly would be a bad place. He could keep that protected, hanging from the flotsam and curled like a ball. Once he'd read that anti shark bags on boats were shaped like blobs because sharks weren't interested in things that didn't wave about or have limbs that were easy to bite. He could be a ball. He was tired, but fear of being devoured from below overcame the exhaustion.
He didn't know how long he drifted, but it had to have been another hour, shivering and wondering why his lips were so fucking dry in the middle of an ocean. The sun wasn't all the way up in the centre if the sky, but it was getting there, when there was a shudder in the water and he jerked away from it.
Jack's head and shoulders broke the surface and he let out a huge shuddering gasp, arms flailing. Ianto shielded his face from the splashing even as he steered himself closer. Jack was covered in oily ichor, black and greasy like motor oil, just like everything else, but when he opened his eyes and blinked, scrubbing with one fist, it didn't take long for him to spot Ianto and wave a hand.
Ianto paddled his jerry-rigged raft and they closed the distance. Jack grabbed on and closed his eyes for a second, as if he were concentrating on breathing. Ianto simply treaded water and waited for his system to reboot.
"I think I'm perfectly within my rights to say this but, holy shit that was trippy," Jack gasped. His face was black, and he scrubbed at it with his free hand. Ianto blinked rapidly and wondered if he were imagining things.
Jack finally washed enough of the dead creature's blood from his skin that he felt satisfied and he looked at Ianto, eyes running over the parts of him above water. His eyes found the ragged bloody edges of Ianto's shirt where the tooth had cut him and his fingers touched it experimentally. "Are you all right?"
Ianto surged forward and threw one arm around Jack, pulling him in and pressing the side of his head against Jack's, feeling the movement of Jack's muscles against his body, feeling the other man's arms come around him, and dear Jesus, Ianto didn't like to think that he was overly sentimental, but if he could have cried at that moment, he might have. At this point, though, he was rattled and most likely in shock, and he figured that later, after they were in a better position, he'd have a good cathartic bawl at the near miss they'd had.
Jack's arms tightened around his chest and Ianto felt the press of Jack's lips on his neck before he spoke. "Hey there, it take more than being eaten to kill me, you know that, right?" His fingers moved along the back of Ianto's head and Ianto knew they were feeling for injuries. Jack at his most affectionate was still a soldier. Ianto almost let go of the preservers in favor of clinging to him. Foolish to think that Jack could bring them in. Nonetheless, he rubbed his cheek against Jack's, feeling oil and scum and stubble under his face, a reminder that he was alive, they were both alive, and they could go home how.
"I see you have a floatational device here," Jack murmured. "I bet if we started now we could be out of this oil slick and halfway to shore in an hour." He pulled back and glanced around, as if trying to get their bearings. "That way," he pointed. "If we're lucky, Gwen'll be out with helicopters to investigate the explosion and they'll pick us up."
Ianto let go of Jack and reoriented himself, draping his arms on one end of the cobbled together raft. "Right. I'm starving. Are you starving?"
Jack pounded his chest and let out a belch. "I swallowed about fifteen gallons of salt water." He tilted his head and settled his arms on the other end of the raft and they started kicking. "I bet I could eat. Eggs sound good. Maybe pineapple." He smiled. "It was on my cup last night and I've been thinking about it ever since then."
Ianto snorted. "He lives in a pineapple under the sea."
Jack glanced at him and they started to propel the raft forward in the water. All around them, the gulls swooped and screeched. An albatross landed a few feet away and dove down, probably looking for some prize meat. In for a treat; he was sitting in it. Ianto nervously watched for the telltale fins of sharks. He didn't know if there were any around here, or if they would be interested in him and Jack, but he would rather not find out.
"Who would live in a pineapple?" Jack argued. "I would think a shell or something would be better suited."
Ianto shook his head. "You're thinking about this too much," he said. "But now I want pineapple."
Jack's fingers must have still been a little oily, because he slipped on the preserver and his face fell under the water before he scrabbled back onto the foam and clutched at it. In the meantime, their little craft had become lopsided and was taking them towards the left, along the shore instead of towards.
"Hey, what day is this?" he asked after spitting out a bunch of water.
Ianto squinted at the sun. "It's Friday," he answered. "Eh, it's Thursday, I think."
"The tide is with us," Jack offered feebly. One of his feet hit Ianto's leg.
Ianto pumped his legs faster, then realised that overworking himself couldn't possibly get him there any faster. He'd take his time, and maybe Gwen would fly in on a helicopter and pick them up. "Keep kickin'," he said to Jack, and then, "You know, I used to hate the water."
Jack laughed a bit and the float bobbed. "And now?"
"Oh, now I fucking hate the water."
"I can't imagine why."
END
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Date: 2010-01-14 07:58 am (UTC)This was well worth the 'teasing' bits you posted before. Brilliant story. Just so clever.
Renee
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Date: 2010-01-14 04:09 pm (UTC)I'm glad that you liked it!
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Date: 2010-01-14 08:07 am (UTC)It was super easy to go back and find my favorite line(s) from the whole thing:
Ianto turned and headed for the stairs to the main deck. "Oh yes, Torchwood style," he muttered. "With the screaming and understaffing and the buckets of blood."
"What was that, Ianto?"
"Nothing, sir! It's a smashing plan, we'll be sure to triumph."
Oh, Ianto. ♥
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Date: 2010-01-14 04:10 pm (UTC)I am glad that you liked it BB. Hee! Now go write something!
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Date: 2010-01-14 09:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-14 04:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-14 12:12 pm (UTC)This is wonderful. I see what you mean about it being a fusion with Jaws rather than a TW version off. It was wonderful. Very TW, loved snarky Ianto and Captainy Jack. Fantastic monster too. And a little Jack backstory.
Well done
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Date: 2010-01-14 04:13 pm (UTC)Haahahah Jack is Captaining! No wai!. And well, poor Ianto. tossed about a bit like a rag doll.
I'm the only reel tw? Wow! I do recommend some of the others, foxy and paragraphs and blue have some really nice pieces of work.
Thank you so much for reading!
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Date: 2010-01-14 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-14 04:17 pm (UTC)2. Here was my brain when I was casting about for a random city: "Uhm, someplace inconsequential. The bahamas. No you always say someplace warm. Uh, Kiel. No not Kiel. Nick will give you shit for Kiel. Oh fuck, you thought of it first and it's whatever, okay we'll see how long it take for him to notice."
I feel vindicated.
3. Poor Ianto got a lot of shit this time around. Jack was eaten! Accidental vore!
Thanks for reading, bb.
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Date: 2010-01-14 03:11 pm (UTC)Too many lovely touches to name, but I really lost it at Spongebob and then again at Kiel.
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Date: 2010-01-14 04:20 pm (UTC)I think you're right. I think what I really decided to do was mirror the film, and if you saw it, then it meant more, but if you didn't, there was still a coherent and thoughtful story. The scene with Janet in the cells, in particular, is a movie easter egg.
But what I think this really reminds me of are any number of the books, even down to the sexual contact and activity. This reminded me of the surface scratching that those novels do, even when they give away a huge memory or motivation, it always feels like...there's not a lot of delving. Or maybe that's just the style of the fast moving action genre.
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Date: 2010-01-14 04:28 pm (UTC)"I think I'm perfectly within my rights to say this but, holy shit that was trippy,"
And so was the story. I particularly love Ianto and his characterisation.
Ianto glanced about for life vests, then realised that if this thing was going to take their boat like it had the first WaterBus, there was nothing he could do to stop it. Sobering. His hands twitched for the comforting ineffectiveness of the stun gun.
Rancid stomach acids FTW!
SWEATY MEN ON A BOAT.
They ate Rhys's manwiches. Heh.
This is 100% badass. LOVE.
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Date: 2010-01-14 04:32 pm (UTC)Ianto is so drunk in this. Maybe in my head I think he's drunk for most of it, though it's obvs that he isn't .
I AM GLAD YOU LIKED THE MANWICHES! I PUT THAT IN JUST FOR THE LIST. That pun is for Anya.
JACK LOVES SWEATY MEN ON A BOAT.
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Date: 2010-01-14 04:53 pm (UTC)Great story!
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Date: 2010-01-14 04:57 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for reading! I am glad that you liked it! :D
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Date: 2010-01-14 05:34 pm (UTC)Plus you win the Special Award for Not One Mention of Shark Attack 3: MEGALODON!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w1XOfHax6Q8
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Date: 2010-01-14 05:48 pm (UTC)Thanks so much for reading! I am so glad this worked for yiou (and thanks for the typos!)
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Date: 2010-01-14 05:45 pm (UTC)I still love this story! It was brilliant, I couldn't stop smiling throughout, except when they were out hunting and I remembered Jaws and had to pull my feet up from the floor. I hate the water!
I love Ianto, and Jack is awesome, like Don Quixote but effective! *hugs the fic*
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Date: 2010-01-14 05:49 pm (UTC)ICE MEANS NOTHING TO THE HUNGRY SEAMONSTER.
LOL.
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Date: 2010-01-14 08:18 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-14 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-14 09:10 pm (UTC)I loved this immensely and profoundly. The witty (and drunken) dialogue. The offhand references to the movie while paralleling it. The monster was scary as hell. (Multiple mouths! With metal teeth! OMG!) Jack's combination of pragmatism and reckless adventuring. Just delightful in every way.
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Date: 2010-01-14 09:16 pm (UTC)Thanks so much! I'm glad you liked it! I like referencing the movie they're in, sort of. There;s something humorous about that. Because really? A GIANT SHARK. LOL LLEWELLYN IS INSANE. THE BOAT IS CALLED THE SHAMU. LOL.
I amuse myself too much.
Hee!
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Date: 2010-01-14 11:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-15 01:30 am (UTC)Thank you for reading! This is a great comment and totes made my day!
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Date: 2010-01-14 11:56 pm (UTC)A glorious blend of the two worlds!
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Date: 2010-01-15 01:32 am (UTC)Thanks for reading! Eeeeee! :D
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Date: 2010-01-15 12:42 am (UTC)This is going directly into my memories! Wonderful, wonderful job!
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Date: 2010-01-15 01:26 am (UTC)Thanks for reading! I am glad you liked it! :D
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Date: 2010-01-15 12:44 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-15 01:25 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-15 04:20 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-15 04:25 am (UTC)Glad you liked!
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Date: 2010-01-15 08:31 am (UTC)One of my favorite scene in Jaws is the one around the dining table with the vine. I love what you did with it.
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Date: 2010-01-15 04:17 pm (UTC)Thanks you so much for reading! I was very focused on make ing it Jaws but NOT Jaws, and I think I managed that.
:D
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Date: 2010-01-15 12:26 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-15 04:15 pm (UTC)Jaws is indeed awesome enough on its own! I couldn't resist!
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Date: 2010-01-15 08:15 pm (UTC)Simply lovely.
Very much updated and non-fake tale of how much we do not live in the sea.
I really like your detached style, it makes everything feel more pertinent. My heart was racing at times.
Ha, they left Captain Ahab ashore :D
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Date: 2010-01-15 08:18 pm (UTC)Detached is a good word for it. I didn't want to get into anyone's feelings too much.
I am glad you liked it! Thanks for reading! Man, the shore is a nice place to visit, but I couldn't live there. Jaws is waiting for me.
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Date: 2010-01-16 04:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-16 04:14 am (UTC)NO REALLY.
WATCH FOR THE DINNER TABLE SCENE. BEST SCENE IN THE FILM.
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Date: 2010-01-16 04:10 pm (UTC)LOL.
I love this Ianto of yours, his quippy views. Already told you that I think. I know this was a tough one for you, but you made it all work, it is not apparent at all in its wonderfulness that it became your Monster and fought you as valiantly as the silver-teethed creature you created fought Jack.
Yay you!
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Date: 2010-01-16 05:24 pm (UTC)IF YOU WERE EATEN, THEN BLOWN OUT OF THE THING THAT ATE YOU, YOU MIGHT SAY THAT TOO. I keep thinking that it was all "I am the walrus" trippy for Jack. Maybe it was.
OMG THE MONSTER ATE JACK.
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Date: 2010-01-16 05:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-16 05:21 pm (UTC)Thank you for reading!
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Date: 2010-01-16 09:16 pm (UTC)I loved this so hard! I both read and saw "Jaws" years ago, and boy, this has the best bits! But your monster is waaaay scarier than a silly old shark.
Awesome! Thank you for this! ♥
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Date: 2010-01-16 09:18 pm (UTC)I love that movie, though I liked parts of the book, I'm glad they cut what they did.
Heh! I'm glad you liked it! Wheeee!
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Date: 2010-01-17 10:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-01-17 10:55 pm (UTC)I made you stay up! haahahahaha go to sleep.
Thanks, bb!
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