m_findlow

Title: Going under
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 500 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 544 - Quicksand at slashthedrabble
Summary: Jack has been drawn in by Ianto and now there's no escaping.

'Good morning, sir,' Ianto said with a tiny little smile on his face as he handed over the mug of coffee.

'Good morning to you, too,' Jack said, unable to wait a moment longer to bring the mug to his lips and sample that delectable brew. It was everything it promised to be and more, simultaneously bitter and sweet, and warming him up from the inside out.

He set the mug down as Ianto settled into the seat opposite him, enjoying the first taste of his own coffee. It was something they did now, sharing their morning coffee before anyone else arrived at the hub. It was easy enough to do since they were the only ones here at seven am, or five am, or any other hour before that.

Jack tried to suppress the smile that threatened to break free. He knew it was wrong to get involved romantically with team members. He'd made that mistake before, but now it was so much worse that he was also their leader. He was meant to be above reproach, but here he'd gone and made that same error again. Error? No. Ianto was not an error. A problem perhaps, but not an error.

Jack imagined this was what it must be like to get stuck in quicksand. On the face of things, everything appeared totally safe and normal. The danger was concealed in the apparently normality of thre scene in front of him, at least until he took that first fateful step. Which one had that been, he wondered? Was it the moment he recruited the young man when he didn't even have a job for him, or when his brain was telling him it was dangerous to recruit anyone from Torchwood One. Maybe it had been the moment he started flirting, though that could be one and the same moment, he supposed. Truthfully, it was probably when he gave into that first kiss. There was a tipping point and he hadn't even known he'd blundered blindly into it, but now he was being slowly sucked down into a romantic obsession with a man who had betrayed him just like so many had done.

There was no escaping it, he knew. He'd wandered into the orbit of someone whose pull was far stronger than Jack ever anticipated. He was drowning in the attention, and having someone that physically close after so long was a nice feeling to rekindle, no matter how much Jack knew it would end in disaster and heartbreak. That was the problem with quicksand. It was slow and subtle, but the end was always just as inevitable.

Jack was left with only two choices now: let it drag him under alone, or drag Ianto down with him. The trouble was he didn't think he could go it alone anymore. He let his eyes lock with Ianto's across the desk and exchanged a million soundless words. Whether he could stop it wasn't in question. They were both going down.