Fic: "Toast Crumbs"

[cyus]

Title: Toast Crumbs
Characters: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Length: 2500 words
Summary: The morning after the date and the sex and the pizza; things are good.
Notes: Written for blue_fjords who commissioned it in the Lightning Round for the help_haiti auction. Time-stamp fic to Pizza Mouth, this is the morning after. Part of the Sharing Spaces cluster. Beta'd by 51stcenturyfox.


(follows Pizza Mouth: the morning after)


The rubbish truck outside woke him before the sun could, grinding of metal on metal and hard Welsh workingmen's voices. He'd love if they wore helmets; he'd have to suggest that to the fine city of Cardiff sometime. Jack stretched on the bed, the sheets buried underneath him, the blanket somewhere further down, legs entwined with it like a fabric dancer. He looked over his shoulder at the silhouettes past the blinds, then shoved the sheets down and tip-toed towards the window. One hand on the sill, he made a gap in the blinds and watched them.

"Perv." Ianto's croak came followed by a rustling of sheets, muffled on the last bit of the drawn-out sound.

"The one with the mustache is back," Jack replied. "With the arms." He motioned muscles to his arms, flexed them.

Ianto laughed.

"I should get his number."

A groan from the bed: Jack turned towards that. Ianto had pushed a pillow over his head, tugged the sheets from Jack's side of the bed around him, but a turn away from Jack had left his ass and back bare.

"What?" Jack pinched the blinds open again for another look-see, but they were done with the rubbish in front of Ianto's place and moving on to the next house. Jack fumbled with the blinds and the window at the same time, trying to wrench the first up and the second open as a pillow hit the back of his head. "What?" He turned back to Ianto who was sitting up on the bed.

"He doesn't want your number. And it's freezing."

"You don't know that." Jack craned his head around the blinds to look along the street, take in the silhouettes of rubbish bags and men. Mostly men.

"YMCA," Ianto intoned. When Jack turned around Ianto's arms were still in the A position above his head, his voice wobbling on the half-sung note.

"He was a builder. I always fancied the cop though."

"Same difference." Ianto scrubbed his hands over his face and stood, picked the blanket off the floor as he passed it to dump it on the bed, then made his way to the bathroom.

Jack caught another look at the disappearing rubbish truck through the half-opened blinds. "You're too young for that," he called out.

"What?" Ianto's voice came over the tinkling of piss.

"You," Jack started, paused for the flush of the toilet as he followed Ianto into the bathroom, "you are too young for that," he said over Ianto's shoulder, their eyes connecting in the mirror. "YMCA, AIDS, the eighties."

"I know to use a condom. My bathroom, you can have it in ten," Ianto replied, eyebrow arched, putting toothpaste on his brush and stuffing it into his mouth. Eyes rolling, he attacked his teeth.

Jack smiled. "Bite me." He stepped up to the toilet to piss, flashing a winning grin at Ianto through the yellow, unflattering light of bulbs on off-white tiles.

"Wanker." Garbled around toothbrush foam, Ianto didn't add anything else, but leaned down to avoid spilling on himself.

"You were born in eighty-five? Eighty-six?" Jack flushed the toilet and angled for his own toothbrush across the sink. They did only use condoms to please Jack at this point, mostly because the eighties were only a blink of time away.

Ianto pushed his arm away, then thrust the toothbrush into his hand, rolled his eyes as he rinsed his mouth. "I managed to miss the atrocious music."

"You like Nirvana."

"Nineties, and I don't."

"Queen?"

"Seventies. And the Beatles were before that."

Jack shrugged. "Sounds all the same to me."

Ianto stared at him via the mirror, then half-turned to him. "You're taking the piss, aren't you?"

Jack nodded. "YMCA." Toothpaste-gurgled singing, Jack lifted his arms above his hand, toothbrush sticking from his mouth, and moved his hips, arms wriggling.

Ianto stared at him, the lights flickered. "You can have the bathroom," he said with a smile that caught on the edge of exasperation and don't ever do that again. "I'll shower later."

"I was a club boy in the eighties," Jack called out after him through the open bathroom door after he spit out into the sink.

"It's not the eighties anymore."

That it wasn't. People didn't get sick and die and no-one knew what they had, now. Not like that. Ianto clanged pots and plates around, a curse, the rubbish bin opening and closing with metallic clacks. Then Jack got into the shower, made a quick affair of it: no morning wank, no singing, no attempts to get Ianto to join him. This domestic life. Hair still wet, but otherwise dry and naked he stepped into the kitchen five minutes later, drew Ianto to himself for a kiss pressed to pursed lips.

Jack leaned against the counter, waved at an older woman passing by outside the front room window.

"She can't see you." Ianto moved around Jack for the fridge. "Toast? Bacon? No, don't say bacon."

"Toast is good." Jack reached for the cupboard where Ianto kept the bread, pushed two slices into the toaster. "Finish the analysis on weevil activity in the docks?" The coffee gurgled in the machine, paper filters and all.

"Mostly, I'll take another look at it later. Jam? Butter?" When Jack nodded at the latter, he set it out, closed the fridge again. "There's two peaks in activity that might correlate to something I'm still missing. I'll run it by you in the afternoon?"

Jack drummed his fingers on the toaster, pulled them back when they touched hot metal and not plastic.

"That wasn't smart," Ianto said.

The toaster pinged. Jack pulled at the drawer with the assortment of uni cafeteria knives, forks and spoons. The drawer banged against Ianto's thighs and, admittedly, cock before Ianto had quite moved away. Jack mouthed a sorry that came out more amused than apologetic, whoops. Ianto grabbed a slice of toasted bread and walked off down the hallway.

"Did you throw away the pizza?" Jack glanced at the rubbish bin and the pizza box on the counter.

"You ate it all, remember?" Ianto called, then the shower turned on.

Jack opened the rubbish bin, and sure enough, a slice of pizza rested on a bed of coffee grounds and ... other things. "You're such a liar," he said to the kitchen and the hallway, then busied himself spreading butter on toast and willing the coffee machine to be done producing coffee. Eating as he leaned against the counter, a few crumbs of toast inevitably spilled down his front, falling past chest and genitals to the ground. He inched his toes out and pushed the more obvious crumbs closer to the kitchen counter and out of sight. Bread held between his teeth, he slid two more slices of bread to be toasted and stared at the blank wall opposite, not thinking about much of anything. Crumbs, maybe, and toast.

The shower stopped, clanging of doors and the toaster pinged the slices out again. The coffee gave the last splurts as Ianto moved around in the back of the house, drawers opening and closing, muffled words of self-instruction over the whir of a razor. Jack grinned as he poured the coffee into mugs. "Your clothes aren't sentient, you know."

Ianto padded back into the kitchen via a detour to the bathroom, a pair of black briefs and socks on, carrying his shirt and trousers that he deposited on a chair, making a beeline for the coffee. As he took a sip, Jack used the chance to step in close, pressing his hips to Ianto's, hand in the small of Ianto's back, his soft dick aligned with Ianto's cotton briefs. Jack kissed Ianto's jaw, angling around the coffee mug.

Ianto lowered the mug and kissed Jack on the lips, coffee-flavouring them before Jack had a chance to sip any coffee himself. He promptly yawned mid-kiss, then snorted laughter as he took another sip.

Jack smacked his hip. "Oh you are such a romantic." He leaned away from Ianto and settled back against the counter, watching as Ianto spread butter on his toast, bit into it and ate it neatly above the counter, avoiding any spillage of crumbs to the floor. "You didn't throw out all my clothes, did you?" While I was gone, while things happened.

Ianto turned to look at his coffee. "I didn't keep wanking into them hoping you'd be back," he retorted.

"You pissed on them and threw them in the trash? Is that why you and the rubbish-"

"I'm not you. What about that time-" Ianto started, gesturing with his coffee.

"That was different." The eighties and all that, for good reasons, not that it had changed anything, and he'd hated himself a little that he'd forgotten about HIV in Earth's history. It's all only a blip unless you're living it. "He'd deserved it. And I shit on them." Jack grinned.

Ianto rolled his eyes. "They're in the other closet. Unsoiled." Ianto angled his foot for the chair and drew it closer to him, one hand still holding the coffee mug and sipping from it, as he reached for his trousers and began to put them on one handed, wriggling and bending. Jack was happy watching that until Ianto raised an eyebrow to him. "Get to it or I'm leaving without you."

"You're not driving," Jack replied as he grabbed his mug and walked off to the bedroom to find his elusive change of clothes.

"Am too," Ianto shouted from the kitchen.

In the bedroom the sheets and blanket were still one rumpled ball on the bed and Jack had a hard time resisting that invitation in favour of the duty for Queen and Country. His clothes were in the other closet, in blue rubbish bags. He'd got off easy. As he turned with them in his hands, Ianto was leaning in the doorframe, trousers on but chest still bare. He was watching him.

Jack looked from him to the bags and back. "You want to talk about it?" He dropped the bags where he stood to reach for his cup that he'd deposited on the bed in precarious balance.

"You being gone?" Ianto shrugged. "We fucked last night."

Jack looked at him. "Okay."

"Do we need to talk?" Ianto took a sip from his coffee, swirled it in his mug. And he meant do you? and Jack understood that just fine.

Jack shrugged. "Rather not?" He managed to squeeze out the question as he opened the twirly ends of the rubbish bags and drew out a shirt and some underwear and a pair of trousers. He'd have to steal Ianto's socks, he always did. He pulled on the underwear, the trousers, then glanced up at Ianto. "If that's..."

"Okay. It's okay," Ianto replied eventually and shrugged. He pushed off the doorframe and stepped into the room, opening the doors of the wardrobe and grabbing a few superhero print t-shirts from a shelf and threw them up one higher. "Just dump it in there again," he said as he turned to Jack then turned to walk out again, before, on second thought, he turned back. "I said dump but I mean my dumping not your dumping."

Jack laughed. "Your dumping can cut steel."

"That is borderline disgusting." Ianto pulled a face but stayed to watch Jack reclaim his shelf.

"You're being literal."

"I'm being anal," Ianto replied with a smirk and barely ducked the underwear that accompanied Jack's groan. White y-fronts hit the wall behind Ianto.

"We late yet?" Jack pulled on his shirt, buttoned it and grabbed his braces from the floor, pushed his dirty clothes into a corner (well, under the bed, if we're being very literal) and took a pair of socks from Ianto's sock drawer. Ianto was already back in the kitchen, getting dressed himself.

The slice of toast still left in the toaster had grown cold and hard, but Jack stuffed it into his mouth anyway when he walked past it, shuffling through the pockets of his greatcoat he'd thrown over the sofa in the front room, locating keys and phone and Starbucks gift card for emergencies. Owen, Tosh and Gwen had presented him with it two days ago. 'In case you're not getting any,' to quote Owen. 'But we only sprung for 5 quid because you deserve it, you bastard,' Gwen had added with a smile.

When Jack turned back to the kitchen, brushing at the toast crumbs clinging to his lips, Ianto was gulping down the last coffee from his cup, refilled it and tried to drink the next cup down fast, too, visibly burning his lips in the process. "You're such an addict. Serves you right."

Ianto glared at him over the rim of the cup. "Oi! These are my blowjob lips," he said, pointing to them.

Jack lifted his hands, laughing. "I can make do with your ass."

Ianto rolled his eyes, gave him a two-finger salute and took another sip before he dumped the rest of the coffee down the sink, rinsed the cups, drew a wet cloth over the counter for the crumbs and put the bag with bread back into the cupboard. Jack had put on his boots and caught Ianto just as he was bending down to tie his shoe, foot propped on a kitchen chair.

"Blowjob lips?" Jack pressed a kiss to them.

"I know it made you hard."

Jack laughed. "I'm not that easy."

Pointed look from Ianto. "Bin men? Really? You're such a cliché sometimes."

"I'm from the fifty-first century," Jack said, smile on his lips.

Ianto caught his chin with two fingers and pulled him around, the expression a little too sombre. "I know," he replied. The pause grew between them, then Ianto smiled. "I wish they'd given you a cock and a pussy and some self-cleaning ass accessory. An assessory." He smirked. "That'd be hot."

"'fraid the human race doesn't come quite that far."

"They reach the stars though," and just then Ianto had that look about him of a little boy who'd always wanted to be an astronaut and see the vastness of the universe. Jack could have never explained to him how it was too big and too vast, and then, he could have never stolen that look from Ianto's face.

"They do," he said, instead. "They will." And Ianto's face lit up with that and Jack kissed that face and that smile and that hope for something grand to happen in the world. He opened his mouth but Ianto caught his words with his own lips before they could make it out.

"Don't say it."

"What?"

"That." Ianto levelled an accusing finger at Jack. "That thing you say when you look at me like that."

Ìanto was so twenty-first century sometimes Jack wanted to put him in a box and never let him out again. He leaned forward and instead said, "I hate when you throw away the pizza."

Ianto cracked up laughing. "Wanker." He grabbed his keys from the front room coffee table and held the door for Jack to step through as Jack took the greatcoat from the hook. It was too much to hope that Wales would greet the day with sun, but at least it wasn't raining.