Torchwood: Fanfic: Rising star

[m_findlow]

Title: Rising star
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Lisa
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,279 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Any, any, rising through the ranks" at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto and Lisa puzzle over Ianto's upgraded status at Torchwood One.

'She called and asked for you?' Lisa said, not bothering to mask her surprise. 'Yvonne asked for you?' she said again, just in case the statement needed clarification.

'Yes, she called me,' Ianto replied, rolling his eyes at her as he set the two mugs of coffee down on the kitchen counter, along with a plate of toast.

Lisa quickly grabbed for the peanut butter covered slice and took a large bite, chewing it. 'Seriously, though?' she said, before swallowing.

Ianto slid onto the stool opposite and sipped his coffee before mentally debating over marmalade or marmite. 'I don't get why this is a big deal,' he said.

Lisa dropped her hand onto the counter top, bracing herself. 'Not a big deal? Ianto she only runs the entire place. Now she's asking for you specifically?'

'It was one little bit of research,' he said, opting for marmite.

'Uh huh. And that email request two weeks ago.'

He shrugged. 'I was just following up on something I'd already been across before. It didn't make sense to bring someone else in on it.'

'Why you, though? I mean, not that I don't think you're fabulous and super clever and totally capable and-'

'Please stop talking,' Ianto begged her, already feeling the flush creeping into his cheeks at being called fabulous by the girl that had spent her third night in a row sleeping over at his flat. He was wondering if three nights was some kind of milestone and whether he should be offering her a drawer and a section of his wardrobe for her to keep her things in. He didn't want to rush things, or be too presumptuous however. It was only three nights, even if they had been pretty amazing. Sleeping definitely hadn't been the primary feature on any of them.

'D'you know what I think?' Lisa said, selecting another slice of toast from the plate.

'Do I dare?' he teased.

'Ever since Christmas you've become like her go to person. Did you do something special?'

Ianto snorted. 'Hardly. She didn't even know who I was before we met.'

Lisa sat a little straighter on the stool. 'You think I had something to do with this?'

'Well, I only mean, you did a few jobs for her, and then I took that late night phone call, and suddenly she's introducing us one day and...' It all sounded a bit mad. Yvonne hadn't struck him as the matchmaker type, especially when she barely knew him, but she seemed to have no qualms at all about setting them up. Not that he minded it one bit. Lisa made him deliriously happy and he'd been far too shy to ask her out on a proper date until Yvonne had put in a good word for him. Ever since then he'd found himself getting the odd phone call or email requesting him to do something for Yvonne. It wasn't as if he'd been promoted as such. He was still doing his own job, only his security clearance had been upgraded and he now got given ad-hoc projects in between that had nothing at all to do with his own direct boss. To be fair, his own boss actually seemed a little put out by it all, as if he'd personally been passed over for some kind of promotion.

'You never came to Christmas drinks,' Lisa blurted out of the blue, reaching for her mug.

'What?'

'Drinks. At Christmas. You said you were coming and then you never showed. Said you had some things to finish up at work. Only then there was that whole lock down thing that kept Torchwood Tower off limits for days afterwards.'

'I wasn't even there when that happened,' he insisted. He'd stayed back, got some stuff done, and then had been planning on joining them. He'd been hoping to pluck up the courage to get close enough to Lisa to ask her out, and then... Well, things after that were a little hazy. He must have finished whatever he'd been doing at work but he'd been a no show at the pub. He'd probably just been tired and gone straight home. He didn't want to admit he'd only got as far as the tube station and then somehow fallen asleep on the whilst waiting for train, only waking up again the next morning, draped over the metal bench like some homeless wino. He most definitely hadn't been involved in whatever had gone on after he'd left. He'd only heard about it on his return to London two days later, turning up to find the whole building cordoned off and told to go home and enjoy a few extra days off work.

He hadn't even come onto Yvonne's radar until weeks afterward, when that first late night call had come through, and him the only one left in the office there to answer it. 'Complete coincidence,' he replied, feeling surer about it now that he'd said it out loud. 'She's just doing me a favour because she likes you. That or she's made a New Year's resolution to be nice to one low level clerk this year.'

Ianto heard the way people talked about her - how she was a cold-hearted bitch and the rest of them were just nobodies working in a sausage factory - but on the whole he actually found her quite nice. Single-minded and a little on the ruthless side, but he supposed you had to be to get where she was, being a woman and all. Not that he was against women in positions of power. More kudos to them if they made it there. He could only assume that the first little thing he'd done for her he'd done well, and that had lead to other little things. It could have been anyone who'd been there late and taken that phone call, and now they would probably be her new lackey. It just so happened to be him.

'You'll be a Level Four soon, way things are going,' Lisa observed, finishing off her coffee. 'You'll be higher up than me. Maybe I'll have to start working for you.'

Ianto scoffed. True he'd been a Level Seven before Christmas - as low as they went - and now he'd been upgraded to Level Five, but it was a big jump to move to a Level Four. He only had a Five clearance so he could help out with those little projects for Yvonne. He didn't need it for anything else. 'I don't think so,' he said. 'Besides, as if you'd want to work for me.'

Lisa shrugged. 'I don't know. The pay rise would be nice, and then we could afford to get a place of our own. No offense, but it's hard to keep it quiet knowing your pal Soren is on the opposite side of the wall. He's probably heard everything.'

This time Ianto did go bright red. They'd been quiet, hadn't they? God, had his flatmate really heard them going at it? His humiliation nearly overrode the suggestion that Lisa had made. A place of their own? Were they really that far along? Three nights and now moving out together? Bloody hell, he really was going to have to offer her up space in his wardrobe.

Still, a pay rise and a place of their own. That didn't sound so bad. And Yvonne seemed to be impressed with what he'd done for her so far. Maybe if it wasn't too forward he might ask her for a few more little projects. No sense wasting the opportunity whilst she seemed to have taken a shining to him. This could be the beginning of something big.