BTBD Challenge 79 - Dispute resolution

[m_findlow]

Title: Dispute resolution
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto, OCs
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,290 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 79 - Clash at beattheblackdog
Summary: Jack and Ianto have some disagreement over management styles.

Jack frowned when he came in, seeing Johnson and Jez at their desks, working away.

'I thought you two were meant to be out running down leads on Reginus Swann.' A man who was part time bounty hunter, part time criminal, and whose path had crossed Jack's more than a few times since his Time Agency days.

'Director Jones told us the investigation was being suspended. Thought you knew,' Johnson replied, curt but to the point.

'Didn't you get the memo, boss?' Jez grinned, leaning back casually in his chair.

'Clearly not,' Jack said, trying to hide the annoyed look on his face.

'Well, me, I'm just grateful not to be out pounding the paves in this weather. Must be low single digits. Give me an alien corpse any day. No offense, boss.'

Jack seemed to ignore the comment, brushing past towards his office, eyes fixed on his destination,

Johnson watched the determined gait as he walked across the hub towards his office, and the one beyond it. 'Trouble in paradise, do you think?' she asked, raising an eyebrow at their resident medic.

'Mos def,' Jez agreed.

Jack ignored the pile of files on his desk and the blinking light on his phone, indicating all the phone calls he hadn't returned, instead passing straight through and to the door at the other end which lead into Ianto's own office next door. The refit had been done at Jack's insistence when he'd given Ianto the role. "I can't have the Director of Torchwood working away in some dark corner of the archives. Plus, I like having you close by. I don't have to yell halfway across the hub for coffee, only through the doorway."

He pushed it open, not bothering to knock. He'd never knocked, knowing there was nothing he could be interrupting that he shouldn't or didn't already know about. Most of the time, the door wasn't even shut.

'Hey,' he said, 'what's the deal with benching my team?'

Ianto looked up from his computer, accustomed to Jack's propensity for starting a conversation somewhere in the middle, rather than its logical starting point.

'They haven't been benched, they've been re-purposed.'

'What do you mean? This is an active investigation and you just decided to shelve it?'

'More or less. We've got a list of investigations as long as my arm and we have to prioritise. Reginus Swann is not a priority right now.'

'You could've told me.'

'I did,' Ianto said, pushing away his keyboard and easing back in the chair slightly. 'This morning at breakfast.' Didn't Jack ever listen to anything he said?

Jack sat down on the edge of his desk, oblivious to the two chairs sat neatly opposite for just such a purpose. Ianto quickly pulled away a file before Jack planted himself on top of it.

'You said we had to reshuffle a few things. I didn't think you meant this. My team were making progress.'

Ianto raised an eyebrow. 'That's debatable.'

'These things take time.'

Ianto leaned forward, resting his arms on the desk. 'Jack, I'm not having you door knocking every house in the neighborhood, asking them if they're harboring a fugitive, and then raiding the place and rectonning all their family just to be sure.'

'He's a pro with mind altering drugs. We have to be sure.' He was a lying, swindling thorn in Jack's side, and someone he wanted out of his city, but this was professional duty, not a personal one.

'Look, I understand you have history with this guy.'

Jack scoffed. 'That's not the issue.'

'Yes, it is.'

'No. My issue is you canceling my orders.'

'He's not a risk.'

'Not a risk?' Jack sat up straighter. 'How many people does he have to rip off first?'

'What I mean,' Ianto said, clarifying, 'is that he isn't a danger. He's holed up here to hide from someone he's pissed off in some other part of the galaxy. He's not exactly going to advertise that he's here.'

'But the Shadow Proclamation,' Jack began.

'Yes, Jack,  I'm well aware of the Shadow Proclamation regulations.' He probably knew them better than Jack. 'He hasn't claimed official asylum, which means whoever he's hiding from isn't from official law enforcement, and until he commits a crime listed under Article 2C, my hands are tied.'

'Except he probably already has. We just haven't caught him yet. And the way things are going, we never will.'

Ianto sighed. 'It's an inefficient use of resources.'

'They're called people, Ianto.'

'Yes,' Ianto said, trying not to sound vexed at Jack's insinuation about how he thought of his team, 'and there's few enough of them as it is.'

Jack shrugged. 'We've made do with less in the past.'

'Yes, and look how that worked out. People who are overstretched and overworked get tired, and tired people make mistakes. Mistakes that can cost lives. You of all people know that.'

Jack scowled. 'Don't preach to me.'

'I'm not. I'm telling you the reality of the situation, which you seemed to have forgotten now that you aren't the one ultimately responsible for them.'

Jack pointed angrily out the window. 'Out there, in the field, those are my people, and they are my responsibility. Not just when I'm sitting behind a desk pushing papers.'

'Well, you'd be an expert on pushing papers, wouldn't you Jack? Isn't that why you stepped down? You only wanted to be in charge of the fun stuff? Not that it matters since I was doing all the paperwork beforehand, anyway. Now it's just official. Official Director of Paper Pushing, isn't that right?'

Jack didn't respond, having nothing to say to counter the accusation, hurtful as it was.

'No? Nothing?' Ianto asked. 'I didn't think so. All active investigations into the whereabouts of Swann are suspended until further notice.'

'You can't do that.'

Ianto fixed him with a firm stare. 'Actually, I can.'

Jack stood up from the edge of the desk and folded his arms, looking livid. Ianto responded by keeping his expression calm and neutral.

'Do you have a problem with my orders, Captain?' He felt awful saying it, but what choice had Jack given him? He needed to stamp his authority on the position if he was ever going to get anywhere. The Director of Torchwood couldn't have his Head of Operations undermining him and still appearing to be running the show. This wasn't what they'd agreed to. There were so many things he wanted to fix, but none of it would happen if he couldn't drum up influence with the people that mattered to try and bring about that change. Why couldn't Jack understand that? Why did he insist on working against Ianto at every turn?

'You're making a mistake,' Jack seethed.

'One of many more, I've no doubt,' Ianto replied. 'No one's perfect.'

'Can I go now, Sir?' Jack said, spitting the word out, cold blue eyes boring into him. It infuriated Ianto. He'd had a gut full of Jack's petulance and obstinacy over such a trivial thing.

'If you don't like the way I run things around here then maybe you shouldn't have put me in charge in the first place!'

'Maybe I shouldn't have!' Jack yelled back, turning and storming out of Ianto's office. It wasn't nearly as dramatic an exit as he could have hoped for, knowing that the side door he'd chosen would meant having to continue storming back through his own office before finally exiting.

Jack spent the rest of the afternoon pounding the pavements, door knocking the neighbourhood that his team would otherwise have been doing. On his own, there was every chance that their fugitive could slip out the back whilst he wasn't looking. That was why they always did these things in pairs, one to search the house whilst the other plied the tea and coffee with retcon. It also didn't help that Swann would be able to spot Jack from a mile away, whereas the rest of his team could go about relatively unnoticed.

Pulling out his false police detective identification card and flashing it at the person in the doorway, he felt about as ineffectual as a real police officer. A whole afternoon and he had nothing to show for it. Somewhere, Reginus Swann was laughing at him.

He slammed the car door shut behind him and slumped in the seat, idly chewing a thumbnail in his frustration, staring out at the quiet suburban street. He wanted to be angry at Ianto, but instead he was angry at himself. There was no denying that he had a personal axe to grind on this particular case. How many times had he watched his own people get personally caught up in one case or another, letting it drive them on, and ignoring his very specific orders to let it go? If Owen had been here, he probably would have told Jack to get the fuck over himself. Then he would have laughed at him and told him it was his own stupid fault for putting Ianto in charge. "Got you by the balls this time, Harkness, and only yourself to blame."

He twisted the key in the ignition, pulling out from the kerb. He needed a drink. Maybe if he was lucky, Swann might be thinking the same thing.

It was late by the time he finally rolled the car into the driveway of their terraced house. He wasn't drunk; far from it. The first two glasses of whisky had quickly disappeared. When he went to order a third, determined to wipe the thoughts of Ianto sitting there behind his desk, looking officious, his brain ordered water out of habit. He was well and truly sober by the time he'd finally pushed himself away from the bar, five hours and four glasses of water later.

He'd half expected the house to be empty. Ianto liked to work through when he was annoyed, though he loudly discouraged his other staff from doing the same. Perhaps he'd thought Jack might instead brood away the night on some rooftop, returning to crash on the sofa at the hub when he finally got bored, cold or tired. Why then was the small lamp left on in the hallway, if not for when one of them was working late and expected home in a less than coherent state. It had saved a lot of tired heads walking into walls and knocking over furniture over the years.

Jack walked past the sofa in their living room, determined to spend the night in his own bed, cold reception be damned. He proceeded up the stairs, tugging off clothes as he went. Ianto was in bed, curled on his side. Jack crawled in behind him, wrapping an arm around him, spooning his body. Ianto went rigid against him. Not asleep then.

'I don't wanna fight,' Jack said.

'Just wanna tell me how to do my job,' Ianto mumbled back.

'I don't want to do that, either. I was wrong.'

Ianto turned around in his arms and rested his head on the edge of Jack's pillow.

'I wouldn't have agreed to this if we were going to butt heads every time we disagree. We never used to fight. Not about work.'

'Sure we did. But back then the ultimate responsibility fell on me. You're always going to fight harder when you have to live with the decision.'

Ianto knew Jack was right. The weight of all that responsibility had never made itself more apparent than the day he'd been handed the reins of Torchwood. He had to look after them, all of them, all across the globe now. Every decision he made, and everything they did was on him now.

'I want us to be a team. I don't want to make all the decisions on my own. We're in this together.'

'And we are,' Jack agreed, reaching out to touch Ianto's face. 'I'm here whenever you need me.'

'Sometimes I'm not sure what to do... how to navigate through when I don't have you there on my side.'

Jack smiled in the darkness. He would always be there on Ianto's side, even when they were at loggerheads. 'Just keep doing what you always do. Be patient with me. Letting someone else make the calls is going to take time to get used to. I'm learning too.'

'And I need you to tell me when I genuinely am making a mistake. Don't let me walk this whole place over the edge of a cliff.'

Jack chuckled. 'Never,' he promised.

Ianto lay there in silence for a minute. 'Jack?'

'Yeah.'

'You can have it back, if you want it.'

'The job?'

'Yeah.'

'Ianto, I know when I'm outside my comfort zone. You're way better at this than I ever was. If you don't want it, I'll take it back, but for as long as you want it, it's yours. I believe in you.'

'You just don't always agree with me.'

'So, we have a clash of management styles. It'd be boring if I always agreed with you.'

'It'd make for a refreshing change, though,' Ianto joked, knowing that their differences were one of the things that made them so good together.

Jack snuggled closer. 'Like you said, nobody's perfect.'

'Tomorrow's Saturday,' Ianto mumbled as he wrapped his own arms around Jack.

'So?' Jack replied, nestled his nose into Ianto's hair.

'Well, maybe after a long sleep in and an even longer breakfast, we could probably find some time to go for a long walk, maybe check out a few houses on the way. Just the two of us?'

Jack realised what Ianto was suggesting. A peace offering.

'I do love spending our Saturdays off together,' Jack agreed.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Awww! They're feeling their way through their new responsibilities, but they'll do fine as long as they can still make up like this.

[jo02]

I loved this so very much. Did I miss a memo? Are there more stories set in this situation?

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. :)
They're all out of order because a lot aren't written yet, and some are written but not posted, and I'd get bored if I have to write everything in order. But yes, there's a whole swathe of new characters for a new slightly future-verse I've been working on. There were also a couple of unemployed characters at the end of CoE, so they've got new jobs too.
Didn't I promise you there'd be more Jez Holton? ;)

[jo02]

Would you be able to give these stories their own tag ?