m_findlow

Title: Life's tough at the top
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto, OCs
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,691 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, "What's got you looking so down?" "The boss just fired me." "But you're the boss!" "I know." " at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto's new job is proving a bit of a challenge.

Jack stuck his head through the door, looking for Ianto in the adjoining office, but his desk was empty, and his computer screen black. Huh. He listened out for the familiar hiss of the coffee machine and the rich scent of everyone's favourite drink being brewed, but that was also noticeably absent. He frowned. Ianto hadn't said he was going out anywhere, so where was he?

He looked around at the rest of the team, each busily working on their own projects on what was looking to be a relatively quiet day.

'Anyone seen Ianto?'

Jez popped his head up from a stack of medical charts resting on the table in front of him, slowly working through them, transferring them from an "in" pile to an "out" pile. Not like Owen, Jack thought. He'd have had them everywhere.

'Think I saw him go past about two hours ago, but nothing since.'

Johnson brushed past Jack, a heavy box of weapons in her arms on her way down to the firing range for practice.

'Try the archives,' she replied brusquely. 'Mind you, he had that look on his face.'

For all her gung-ho, action-woman countenance, she was actually quite adept at reading people and getting them to open up. It was a handy skill to have now that Gwen was only part time, and most of that time spent building up their personnel, both in Cardiff and abroad.

Jack spun to follow her movements. 'What look?'

'That one he gets when he wants to be left alone.'

Oh, that one. Jack didn't much care for that look. It might work on the rest of the team, giving him a wide berth, but Jack wouldn't let it stop him. He knew Ianto better than anyone, and he knew how to pull him out of those moods as well.

Taking the shortest route down to the lower levels, he made a beeline for the most obvious archive vault, where they kept things that were regularly accessed, passing by the small computer near the door and checking it for recent searches, to better pinpoint his wayward husband. Nothing came up in the search. Odd. He called out Ianto's name but still didn't get a response. Sighing, he flipped open his vortex manipulator and shortcutted the process, locking onto Ianto's comms signal, finding it several vaults further down, in one of the oldest areas. He finally found Ianto crashing about, heaving dusty old crates off the shelves and dumping them on an old benchtop, his laptop sitting next to it.

'Watcha doing?'

'Working,' Ianto replied. 'What does it look like?'

Jack frowned again and folded his arms. 'Really? Because it looks more like you're sorting out a backlog of old archives stuff.'

'Well spotted,' Ianto sniped.

'Isn't that Penny's job now?'

'Penny's off sick.'

'So you thought you'd do her job while she's not here?'

'Our job,' Ianto clarified.

Jack was thoroughly confused by Ianto's short answers and his general mood. 'What's got you looking so down all of a sudden?'

He pulled another crate from the shelves and began walking it back towards the desk. 'The boss just fired me.'

The answer threw Jack for a loop. 'But... you're the boss!'

'I know. Well, I mean, I was, until I fired myself. Congratulations, you've just been promoted Director of The Torchwood Institute Global as well as your current role as Cardiff Head of Operations.'

Jack suppressed a laugh. 'Ianto, be serious.'

'I am.'

'You can't just demote yourself back to your old job.'

'Why not?'

'Because you've only been at it four months! We agreed on this, all of us, remember?'

'I seem to recall you making the decision, and the rest of us not objecting openly to it.'

Jack sighed again. 'Ianto, sit down and let's talk about this. I thought you were excited about this?'

Ianto dropped the crate on the floor next to the desk, having lost any more room for another one, and flopped into the clanking old chair. 'I was. For a while.'

Jack leaned on the edge of the desk. 'What changed?'

'I thought I could do it. I mean, I was half doing your job as it was, no offense.'

'None taken. Why do you think I suggested it? Let's face it, it was two jobs and I wasn't doing either one particularly well. You picked up the slack for years, and that was before the team started getting bigger. It was only right that we needed someone to oversee the entirety of Torchwood. I never wanted to be that person.'

'No, get some other dumb schmuck to do it,' he replied.

'I'm a soldier Ianto. I've always been a soldier. I can run and shoot and give orders, but I can't do all of this administrative stuff.'

'But it's not just admin, is it?' Ianto asked, staring hard at him. 'I'm trying to keep on top of everyone and every department, every project and every incident, opening new branch offices, finding people to resource them, transferring assets, and liaising with ten different levels of government, but I can't. We've had five weevil captures already this week and I haven't even had time to try and figure out why they're on the increase.'

'Seven,' Jack replied.

'What? When did that happen?'

'Johnson and I rounded up two more late last night,' he replied, folding his arms over, 'which you would have known about if you'd bothered to come to bed at all,' chastising his lover.

Ianto slumped forward in the chair, head in his hands. 'See, this is what I'm talking about. I can't do this, Jack. I can't be you.'

Jack knelt down in front of his lover, clutching his hands in Jack's own. 'You don't have to be me. In fact, I don't want you to. I want you to be you. I want you to do the job you were born to do.' He gripped Ianto's hands harder, forcing him to look straight at Jack.

'How many years have we spent talking over all the "what if's" and "if only's"? Make Torchwood bigger, staff it with the right people, refocus our efforts, give this place a legacy worth remembering. I spun my wheels for ten years trying to fix this place, but it took your brilliant mind to bring in fresh ideas and approaches, procedures and structure. We're not just chasing our tails day in and day out anymore. This place has a purpose, and it needs you to keep pointing it in the right direction.'

'I need you,' Ianto said, barely above a whisper.

'You've got me, Ianto. I'm not going anywhere. It's like I told the team, this is a joint leadership. You're not doing this alone, but I can't do this without you either.'

'I'm so tired. The work just never stops.'

Jack reached up and gave Ianto a kiss on his forehead. 'The whole idea of this was that you and I get back to a more normal routine. No more late night callouts for minor rift alerts, no more drowning in paperwork and projects. The problem is that now you want to be able to fix everything overnight.'

He reached out and touched Ianto's cheek. 'We can't have a brand new shiny Torchwood tomorrow. It's gonna take time to do all the things we want to do. Until then, you're just going to have to accept that. One foot in front of the other, just like always. We've got all the time in the world now. You'll get the hang of it, I know you will. This is just a transition phase.'

Ianto let out a heavy breath. 'So you're not going to let my fire myself?'

'Not on your Nelly. There's no way that Liz is going to let me, either. She said putting you in charge was the best decision I've ever made. And if I have to deal with that arse from the Home Office, I think I'll throw myself off a building every day.'

Ianto chuckled in spite of himself. 'Giles Stanley,' he said, 'and he is a bit of an arse.'

'A bit?' Jack said, sounding incredulous.

'Okay, a lot,' Ianto agreed.

Jack laughed with him. 'That's one person I'm glad to have been demoted out of having to deal with. The Institute Director can have him.'

'Gee, thanks.'

'Come on, boss,' Jack said, pulling him up out of the chair. 'You wanna do something low level, then you can make me a coffee.'

'I must be the only boss on the planet that still makes coffee for his employees.'

'Only because we're all too scared of what you might do to us if we break it. No one wants to lose their job over that.'

'True.'

'And, if firing someone is what you want,' Jack said, wrapping an arm around his waist as he walked them out of the archives, 'we can talk about Andy. If that man drives any slower, aliens will have taken over the world before we get there, and all the brilliant corporate policies in the world won't save us.'

'I thought we put Gwen in charge of human resources?'

'Maybe we should fire her too,' Jack said, nudging Ianto playfully.

'Or maybe I should reassign you, Jack.'

Jack stopped. 'Where to?'

'Personal undersecretary to the Institute Director.'

'Oh,' Jack purred. 'Would that require me to rub the Director's feet and make sure he wasn't disturbed?'

'Something like that,' Ianto said, nudging him back.

'See, and here I was thinking that was what marriage was for.'

'I wouldn't want our personal relationship to get in the way of our working one. Someone could lose their job.'

Jack grabbed him and pressed him up against the wall. 'There's a supplies closet five yards back that way and I believe under our current workplace agreement that I'm owed an hour tea break.'

Ianto grinned. 'Well, so long as we're on our tea break, it can't be classified as inappropriate behaviour, can it?'

Jack walked him backwards, pulling open the door and shoving him inside. 'And since when is anything we do inappropriate?'