Torchwood: Fanfic: Rough ride

[m_findlow]

Title: Rough ride
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto, Gwen, OC
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 2,073 words
Content notes: Warning - contains Mpreg
Author notes: Written for samuraiter's prompt "Any, any, trying to manage motion sickness" at fic_promptly
Summary: Ianto is struggling to cope with the rough terrain.

Throwing up had never felt so good, and Ianto become an expert lately.

There was a hand on his back as he was still hunched over the spot next to the car where he'd left his mark. 'You okay?'

He spat out a mouthful of saliva. Trying to clear the taste from his mouth, past caring whether it was elegant or even good mannered to spit. 'Fine,' he replied.

'You sure?' Jack asked.

'Yeah, just the windy road. Felt like my stomach was doing somersaults. Or that could have just been your driving.'

'Har har,' Jack said.

Ianto stood back up and sucked in a deep lung full of fresh mountain air. It was crisp and cool and just what he needed after the stuffiness inside the car. 'Let's go,' he said, slowly making his way back to the car.

Twenty minutes later the nausea was back with a vengeance. This must have been the worst road in all of Wales. It wasn't sealed and it snaked up and down the valleys like a spiro graph drawing on LSD. Even the brilliant suspension of the SUV was hardly making a difference to the shuddering, and the tyres were doing their job, faithfully gripping the road and making every turn of the wheel felt to all and sundry inside the car. He had the window drawn down, letting the air hit him in the face but it wasn't helping.

'Jack pull over,' he said knowing he was going to be sick again. Jack did so, though it wasn't quick enough for Ianto, waiting for him to find a safe spot on the curved mountainside to park so that a car coming the other way didn't clip them. Ianto didn't wait, gripping the edge of the window and sticking his head out, letting his stomach have its way.

Jack frowned as he slowed to a stop hearing his lover's pained heaving. Once the SUV was stopped, he crawled the car forward a few feet - so that the first thing Ianto saw wouldn't be the contents of his stomach - and got out, walking around to the other side and opening the door. Ianto already had the seat belt unclipped and was leaning sideways in case he felt sick again. Jez had followed Jack's lead and went around to meet him by the door.

'You feeling any better, boss?' Jez asked, automatically reaching for his wrist to check his pulse and mentally making note of the look and feel of his skin.

'It's just motion sickness,' he said, trying to wave away the two men from making a fuss.

'Ianto, you don't get motion sickness,' Jack said.

'Sure I do. Only usually it's at sea and I take tablets for it.'

'Could be the morning sickness coming back,' Jez said, 'or he could be right. This road is in pretty bad shape. Make anyone with a delicate stomach feel rubbish.'

Ianto cringed at the word delicate. He did not have a delicate stomach. He'd spent years cleaning up after Owen's autopsies and mucking out weevil cells. He'd been covered in and confronted by every kind of alien goo and bodily fluid imaginable. If that didn't turn your stomach, nothing would. Then again, he didn't want to think it was morning sickness either.

The last two months had been a nightmare, and he'd just begun to think he was past the worst of it. That's what Gwen had told him, anyway. After three months it just goes way, she promised. And she'd been right. The last three weeks he'd finally felt human again, able to just get on with things without feeling like hurling at random intervals, unable to focus on anything. He'd become well acquainted with the bathroom floor, since that was where he'd spent a lot of time lately, enjoying the cool feel of the tiles against his face in between bouts of stomach twisting nausea. Pregnancy so far had not been to his liking.

'I knew you should have stayed at the hub,' Jack said, mothering him.

Ianto wanted to growl. He'd insisted on coming along, if only to get out of the hub. After the endless weeks of struggling through the nausea, or being so sick he was forced to stay home and curl up on the sofa, he was desperate to get out. And Jack wasn't helping. It was as if he'd forgotten that Ianto was still a person and not a glass bauble, prone to break at any given strain. He was pregnant but that didn't mean he couldn't carry on as normal. Women worked all the way up to their due date with no ill effects, and Ianto intended on doing the same. He didn't feel any different despite all of Jack's fussing. There was no way he was going to put up with another six months of Jack trying to wrap him up in cotton wool. No way.

'I'm fine,' he insisted.

Jack reached in and pressed a warm hand to his stomach. It still looked just the same, maybe a tiny little bulge, but he didn't want to admit how nice Jack's hand felt resting there. 'You need to look after yourself, and the baby'

'I am.' You great idiot, he wanted to add. 'Just get on with getting us home.'

'It's still another two hours,' Jack said, and at least one of those would be more of this atrocious road. 'Is there anything you can give him?' Jack asked looking at Jez.

'Nothing we'd have in the car,' he replied. 'I don't carry travel sickness tablets.'

Jack placed two hands on Ianto's shoulders as he slumped forward in the seat, resting his head on Jack's chest. 'This sucks,' he muttered.

'I know,' Jack said, his voice full of empathy. If he could have suffered in Ianto's place, he would have.

'Can I suggest something?' Gwen said piping up from the back seat.

'Anything,' Ianto replied before Jack could get a word in edgeways.

'When I was feeling queasy with Anwen, I drank ginger beer. My Mam always made me drink it when we were on long car trips as a kid as well. It always worked a charm.'

'I'm not sure something fizzy is going to settle his stomach,' Jack said.

'Oh, and when were you ever pregnant, Jack Harkness?' Gwen said, folding her arms and looking annoyed.

'Long time ago. Don't ask.'

'She could be right, though,' Jez said. 'Ginger has a lot of proven history at being good for nausea. The question is, where do we find ginger beer out here in the middle of nowhere?' Jez asked.

'I saw one of those burger vans a few miles back parked near that scenic lookout,' Gwen said. 'They might sell it.'

'I'm not keen on us having to drive backwards anywhere,' Jack replied, seeing how miserable Ianto looked.

'I'll try anything,' he said, sucking up a determined look.

Jack took it slow on the few winding miles back to the burger van, pulling over in the narrow lay by and getting out of the car.

'You stay here,' he ordered Ianto. 'Chances are the smell alone from this place would send your stomach inside out.'

Ianto huffed at being babied but had to agree that the sudden whiff of burning meat and chip oil was probably not going to do him any favours.

Jack ambled up to the portly man working in the cramped little van. He'd spotted the four of them and done the math in his head, fancying a decent sale. 'What can I get you folks?'

Jack leant on the small ledge. 'Got any ginger beer?'

The man frowned at the question. 'Oh, not my usual, but I'm sure there's some here somewhere.' He rolled around for a bit before coming back with two bottles. 'It's not particularly cold, but should be alright.'

'I'll take it, thanks,' Jack replied, handing over the money.

'Anything else?'

'That's all.' As good as the burgers smelled, he didn't want to be the one responsible for causing any more bad smells in the car. He snapped open the lid and slotted a straw in it before carrying it back and handing it to Ianto. He was already looking a little better just from the break in driving and the fresh air. Perhaps they should say here a while longer and have lunch after all. It might put a bit of distance between his current nausea and a second wave.

Ianto took the bottle and sipped slowly. Jack announced a lunch break and Jez and Gwen went back to the van to grab food, which they took down to a picnic table a little further away from the car, while Jack stayed with Ianto.

'Feeling any better?' he asked

'Well, it's not making it any worse,' Ianto replied. 'You should go have lunch,' he said, seeing the others already settled at the table, unwrapping burgers.

'Think you're okay to join us?'

'Fresh air and something that doesn't move under me sounds divine,' Ianto said, forcing open the car door. 'I hate feeling this useless.'

'You're not useless,' Jack assured him. 'Your body is just trying to get used to something it wasn't naturally designed for. Bound to be a few hiccups along the way.' It hardly felt like a compromise but he supposed there was little he could do about it.

By the time they'd finished lunch, everyone felt a bit better. Ianto even nibbled at some of Jack's burger, though mainly the bread, managing to keep it down which pleased his husband, his medic, and his best friend. Jack handed him the second bottle of ginger beer which he nursed through lunch.

'You look a lot better,' Gwen observed watching Ianto with a motherly eye.

'I do feel a bit better.'

'See?' Gwen said, nudging Jack. 'I told you it would do the trick.'

Jack sighed dramatically. 'Okay, on this one occasion I bow to your motherly wisdom. Just this once, mind. I don't wanna put Jez out of a job.'

Jez laughed. 'No chance of that with the way you guys like to roll. Unless Gwen's planning on doing all the stitching up as well.'

'No thanks,' she quickly replied. 'I used to get so car sick as a little girl, and we did a ton of driving holidays,' she continued. 'D'you know the other thing that works really well? Peppermint lollies. You should have some in the glove box. You know, for when there isn't a crazy burger van to bail you out.'

'Duly noted, Mrs Williams,' Jack teased. He cast a look around the table, watching as Ianto finally finished the second bottle. 'Suppose we should get going. Otherwise we'll be coming home in the dark.'

Back in the car, Gwen and Jez prepared themselves for another rough ride. Gwen only hoped that the drink had done its trick, helping ease any nausea. She needn't have worried though because within fifteen minutes of being back out on the road, Ianto was miraculously fast asleep in the passenger seat. How he managed that when they were being shaken around like a maraca was anyone's guess.

'That's some good stuff,' Jez remarked. 'Think I'm gonna stock up on some for my fridge at home.'

'I may have helped it along a little bit,' Jack confessed. 'I slipped a light sedative in the second one. I couldn't bear watching him go through another two hours of that.'

Well, at least that explained what he'd been doing rifling around in the back of the car earlier on. Gwen had assumed he was just checking on the item they'd picked up from their rift retrieval, making sure the case was securely fastened. Instead he'd been raiding their medical supplies.

'What about the baby? Are you sure drugs are okay in his condition?'

'It's fine,' Jack said. 'It's a low dose. Perfectly safe. Plus don't let him hear you talk about his "condition". He'll have us all on decaf if we're not careful.'

'Sometimes I wonder about you, Jack,' Gwen said. 'There is such a thing as killing people with kindness.'

'And if you want to be the one cleaning up vomit out of the SUV later on, be my guest. I'm all for entertaining old wives tales and home remedies, but at the end of the day I prefer to hedge my bets.'

'True that, boss,' Jez agreed.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Poor Ianto. Of course nobody knows yet that he's expecting triplets, so that may be contributing.

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

He's having a rough time of it for sure and that is no doubt a contributing factor. Just when he thought a bit of fresh air out on the road would do him some good!