Old Horizons, New Skies
TUESDAY
The Hub was gone.
No, that wasn't right, gone suggested that it had been ripped away leaving only hints that it had once been there. But there were no hints. No empty spaces suggesting its loss. It was as if it had never existed.
Ianto's Tourist Information Centre wasn't there. Or rather it was elsewhere. Probably, from a strictly tourist point of view, in a much better location, near the centre of the Plass.
The invisible lift was neither a lift nor invisible anymore.
Jack had fought and flirted his way into the basements of the nearby buildings and then found he could get no lower down. There was no where left to go. The Hub had brooded beneath Cardiff for over a hundred years and now there was nothing left.
Jai couldn't have managed that.
Hadn't.
The Hub had been there. If Jai had changed something massive enough to alter that, there'd have been ripples in time stretching back centuries. Plus, Jack would have been having that weird sea sickness feeling that he always got around major chronological anomalies.
Jack dropped down onto a bench. Lost. He wasn't sure what to do now. Other than head to London and throw himself on the mercies of Yvonne. Never a pleasant prospect.
And that was if Torchwood London was still there.
He'd spent so long searching that dawn had broken around him and the city was bursting into a different, mostly sober, form of life.
He watched as the street sweepers tidied away the debris of the night before and shops and cafes began to open and found his eye drawn to a booksellers on the other side of the street. That's what Ianto would do. Research. He got to his feet and headed quickly across the road.
They worked hard to keep Torchwood out of the public eye, but enough small, uncertain mentions crept through that he should be able to check that the London branch was still around. If nothing else a history of Cardiff might throw some light on things.
He smiled at the boy behind the counter with a small nod and started to explore the shop.
It took him ten minutes to find the conspiracy theory books. There weren't as many as them as he'd expected. Then again, some shops were dismissive about that sort of thing. Which normally, for him, was a good thing.
He flicked through a few, looking for anything that might have Torchwood hidden within it.
Nothing.
It was only after the third book that he realised that there wasn't simply no mention of Torchwood, there was nothing about aliens. No Roswell. No UFOs. No abductions. Not even a book about fucking crop circles, and they were a nightmare to cover up. If the normal police thought they had trouble with graffiti, they should try dealing with it when it was the size of a field.
He scanned the shelf again.
There wasn't a single book on aliens.
And now that he was thinking about it, when he'd been searching the shelves earlier, he hadn't spotted a science-fiction section either.
He headed straight to the desk. The boy wasn't paying attention, he was flicking idly through a gossip magazine.
"Hey," Jack said with a warm grin, "I was hoping you could point me in the direction of the science fiction books."
"The what?" The boy asked. He didn't look too bright, or too awake for that matter.
"You know - stories about aliens... space ships." The boy gave him a blank look. "Time travel," Jack tried again.
"Oh, you want fantasy - back of the shop, left hand side."
It only took a minute for Jack to scan the measly two shelves reserved for the fantasy section and realise that the aliens were missing here as well. There were a few sci-fi books squeezed in between the books of dragons and wizards - he spotted The Time Machine - but most of them, even the classics, were gone.
He had an unsettled feeling in the bottom of his stomach.
Either Torchwood here were frankly outstanding or something was very wrong.
Suzie had the odd sensation that it could see her, even through the one-way mirror. It's eyes, it's horrifyingly human eyes, were fixed upon where she stood. It was unnerving.
Everything was unnerving. And fascinating.
It was huddled in a corner of the interrogation room, one arm wrapped around its legs. Human arm, human legs, human eyes. Almost. From a distance you might have mistaken it for someone like you. Even up close you might have doubted your eyes or your sanity.
She moved across the small observation room to gain a different angle. Its eyes followed her.
It was all angles; every limb, thin and long, everything accentuated. Its shoulder blades, its cheekbones, its wrists - everything bony and sharp. And where those bones reached the surface, they jutted through the skin. Short, flat plates of different sizes, almost leaf shaped, like an open pine cone. Along its shoulders, the outlines visible against his t-shirt, the bones of its hand, its cheeks, its nose. Bones vivid in reds and blues.
They'd said, the medics and scientists, that the colours weren't real, that it was paint or dye. Something they didn't quite recognise. A makeup they didn't know. And it was almost believable, almost, that it was all just makeup, an elaborate disguise.
But Suzie had seen the scans and nothing on Earth was built like that.
DSI Hopkins stuck his head around the door, his eyes drawn to the mirror and the figure, his curiosity plain. He had wanted to talk to it like it was a human, which was probably why the commander had decided she should head the case, whilst he continued with the spate of recent murders they'd been investigating.
She'd give him that he'd managed to hide his annoyance well.
"Yes?" Suzie prompted him, breaking through his distraction.
"Just had a call from the hospital," he told her. "The man he was found with has disappeared."
She saw it smile from behind the glass.
After the fifth book shop with no mention of aliens Jack was starting to lose hope.
He needed coffee -- specifically he needed Ianto's coffee, but Starbucks would have to do. It was amazing, he thought, how things, even minor things like coffee, could come to underpin your life. You came to rely on them. To need them.
Like the existence of aliens... aliens and Torchwood. It was such a fundamental part of his life that he couldn't begin to comprehend what his life could be without them.
Wherever here was, he clearly hadn't just gone back in time.
There was a queue and some sort of argument as he entered the coffee shop. But it wasn't as if he had anywhere to go now.
He glanced at the Starbucks menu, nothing too different and the currency was listed in pounds and pennies. Prices which he sometimes still found ridiculous, it was one of those things that made him feel old and out of place.
The Time Agency only had one thing to say about parallel dimensions - avoid them. Make that two things. The other was, 'nice to have known you'. It had been one of the accepted dangers of taking the Wrist Strap, and people had got lost that way, or presumably that way. They'd never returned to talk about it. They'd all learnt to be careful.
It must have been the wrist straps. They'd both activated them together. Jack had been holding Jai, his hand half-wrapped around the boy, buried in the collar of his jacket and he'd been going to take them both to the cells. Jai must have been trying to escape. Two straps, two destinations - it had been enough. Enough to tear a crack in the walls. And who knew where Jai had ended up, he could still be there, wreaking havoc through Cardiff, his own Cardiff. He hoped that Gwen and Ianto could handle Jai. Even Jack, the old young Jack, had struggled with him sometimes.
Perhaps it was the thought of Ianto that finally allowed the voice to filter into his consciousness. He looked up quickly. It was him. Young and whole, untouched by aliens and dressed in a green apron. It was Ianto. Arguing with a flushed customer. A nervous supervisor was hovering nearby, clearly wondering whether she should step in.
"I don't care what you say you did," the other man was saying, "You definitely didn't go through all the proper steps - I know, I can taste it."
Ianto gave the man a look. It was a familiar look, sort of, though not quite right. Like the times that Jack had tracked down his favourite authors, the books he remembered from the future, and charmed his way inside their first drafts and mostly realised that they still had a lot of work to do. It was a look in progress.
"Yes, you're quite right, Sir," Ianto said stiffly. "Let me sort it out for you."
The man hesitated for a moment, obviously taken by surprise and then handed the cup over. Taking it, Ianto pulled the plastic lid from its top and then slowly and deliberately, never breaking the man's gaze, picked up a dirty wet rag from behind the counter and squeezed it, one handed, over the cup.
"That should suit you better," he said as the supervisor pushed past him, speaking at the same time.
"Oh my god, I'm so sorry," she turned to Ianto.
"You don't even have to say it," he told her, ripping the apron over his head and thrusting it into her hands. Then he was pushing past the queue, his face tight and angry and hurt. For a moment he was beside Jack, pushing past him, his hand resting for a moment on his shoulder but he didn't even look at him. Then he was gone.
Barely thinking, Jack turned to follow him.
He followed him through Cardiff. Ianto didn't notice, withdrawn inside himself. It was strange seeing this version of him. It was a stark reminder -- no, a stark question - what would Ianto have been like if Torchwood hadn't caught him?
It wasn't so much that Jack thought he would find the answer by following him. It was more a longing to cling to this one familiar thing.
He paused for a moment as they reached the hospital. This probably wasn't a good idea, but Ianto wasn't heading for A&E. Instead Jack followed him into one of the long term care units, stopping outside as he closed the door of a private room behind him.
The room had a large glass window, with a blind giving those inside the allusion of privacy. Jack could see through it easily. As the door closed, a dark haired girl twisted in surprise, her eyes startled. She was sat beside a bed where a man lay wreathed and imprisoned in wires and machines.
"I thought you weren't finishing until three?" Jack heard her say.
"Work let me go early," Ianto told her. Moving forward he touched the mans hand, a brief, soft touch as if to reassure himself that it was still warm. "Where's Mum?"
Rhiannon, Jack thought, Ianto's sister. That was who this was. And that meant the man must be their father. She stared at him for a second, hesitation in the gaze and then she looked down.
"I told her to go home, she's exhausted... she needs time away."
Ianto just nodded.
"What have the doctors said?"
"There's no difference, nothing's changed."
Ianto wasn't watching her. He was staring at his father, his back to Jack, and if he had been looking at her perhaps he would have seen the lie. Jack was and saw it. He had never met Ianto's family -- he was fascinated, and he saw the hurtful lie so clearly on her face that it felt for a second like he had been punched in the stomach.
"Ianto," she said softly and he looked up, his shoulders tensing. She wouldn't look at him or couldn't. "Mum thinks... I mean, we decided, we think we should let him go. They're going to turn the machines off on Thursday."
The silence was horrible. They were both frozen. The only noise the hiss and whine of the machines, the only movement the soft rise and fall of the man's chest.
"You can't," Ianto said at last.
"Please don't make this difficult."
"Is that what this is about? He's gotten too difficult?"
"Ianto..."
"You don't just give up on someone. How can she do this? She's his wife, she's supposed to love him."
"She does," Rhiannon said, "It's... it's... she's not been his wife for years, not really, you don't understand, you never listen to her - she's just his carer now."
"So it's easier just to get rid of him? What, so she can move on? Find someone else?"
"You think this is easy? We can't carry on like this, Ianto, we can't keep waiting."
"He will get better."
"He's not going to get better, we always knew this would kill him one day, it was only ever going to be downhill, you have to accept..."
"Excuse me, sir," a voice said behind him, and Jack turned to find a detective and two police officers standing behind him. For a moment he'd forgotten everything else that was happening. "We'd appreciate it if you would come with us to the station, to help with out enquiries."
Jack thought for a second about running or fighting but he glanced back at the room. Rhiannon had stood, she was in front of Ianto one hand reaching out to him. He pushed it away. If he did anything, they'd hear and Jack couldn't do that.
He nodded his acceptance.
Jack was hustled quickly through the police station. He thought that he caught sight of Gwen, dark haired and curious, behind a desk, but a moment later he had been hurried into an interview room and pushed into a chair.
One of the police officers was left with him, stood in front of the door.
"So what would I have to do," Jack asked, "to get a cup of coffee?"
The man ignored him and, sighing, Jack settled down to wait.
When his interrogator finally arrived, with the detective from the hospital, it was the last person he had expected. It was Suzie.
"My name's DI Smith," the man said as they both took the seats opposite his, "and this is DCI..."
"Costello," Jack said before he could finish.
Suzie's eyes narrowed slightly, a tiny gesture, but otherwise she didn't react. She was too good for that.
"You were found yesterday morning," she said, her voice calm, "unconscious besides Roath Dock. There were signs of massive water inhalation, from which thankfully and surprisingly you seem to have made a thorough recovery. Can you tell me what happened to lead up to that event?"
Suzie should have been in London. That had been the hardest thing when he'd been sneaking her out from under Torchwood One's noses, convincing her to move to Cardiff.
He shrugged.
"I don't remember."
"You remember nothing about the night before?" Smith asked.
"No, it must have been a good night. I was probably drunk. Maybe I fell into the dock."
"We tested your blood, there was no alcohol in your system," Suzie told him.
"Isn't that against my civil liberties?" Jack queried.
"We're perfectly within our rights to follow what procedures we deem necessary if we believe the safety of the nation may be under threat."
"Under threat from what? A drunk man who can't keep his footing?"
"Except you weren't drunk, which begs the question why you aren't telling us where you were the night before last."
"I don't remember. Maybe I hit my head, got amnesia."
"You were also found with another individual," Smith said and Jack could not hide the slight tensing of his shoulders. Jai had come with him. "What can you tell us about him?"
"Nothing, I don't know who you're talking about."
It was not a very convincing lie.
"Are you sure about this?" Hopkins asked and Suzie made a mental note to find out who had told him what she had been planning and make their life uncomfortable for the next few weeks.
"He's been lying to me," Suzie told him but refused to say anymore, she wasn't going to justify herself. This wasn't his case.
"What if he isn't? You questioned him for over an hour..." He was gazing at Harkness now, hands in his pockets, his face odd. It took Suzie a moment to place his expression - protective, possessive; the look he reserved for the special members of his team. It was the sort of look that Suzie only knew second-hand.
"It might not be safe for him in there," he added.
"Do you know him?" Suzie asked, suddenly suspicious.
"What? No. I just don't think we should let somebody in our custody get hurt."
Her hand clenched slightly, she wasn't going to show weakness on this.
"We'd learn something from that too. Whatever his reaction, we'll learn something."
"Just as long as we don't have a breach of protocol, that's the last thing we need now."
Well, Suzie thought angrily, you'd know all about that, Detective Superintendant Hopkins. He had no idea how much she knew about his out of office activities.
They shoved him into the room unceremoniously. He glanced around quickly -- it was just another interview room. He wasn't sure how many times he could take being asked the same questions again.
"For fuck's sake," he swore in the direction of the one-way mirror.
"Hello, Jack," Jai said.
Jack turned quickly. He hadn't noticed Jai before, huddled in a corner, his arms wrapped around himself. He was shivering slightly, his jacket gone, his hand shaking. He tilted his head slightly and smiled. A familiar, secret smile. A gesture that he'd used on Jack many times before. It still made Jack's breath catch in his throat.
The Time Agency had been always been liberal with its hiring policies -- as long as you were mostly humanoid, attractive, clever, dangerous and had a healthy disregard for morals, you were in. And Jai had all of those things. He was beautiful.
For a moment Jack wasn't sure what to do and then he pulled off his long coat and threw it to him without a word.
"I'm not that cold," Jai told him pulling the coat on anyway without getting to his feet, it was too long on him, pooling around him and loose on his slender frame. "Hungry, mostly."
"They haven't fed you?" Jack asked, turning away and sitting at the desk, his head in his hands.
"No, maybe they don't know the proper etiquette or they're worried I'm allergic or they're not sure what to serve a... Have you noticed, Jack, there aren't any aliens here. None. They don't even know the word, they didn't have a name for what I was. It's all different in these weird, little strange ways..."
"They don't seem to have much science fiction, I'll give you that," Jack admitted.
"Big ways too. Do you know what I found out? Pompeii didn't happen here. I didn't even know that aliens were involved-- you'd have thought we would have noticed, but then, we were busy. Do you remember? That's where you first fucked me. You'd left John behind, not told him, he was furious... How long had it been, a month? No, just three weeks, I think..."
Jack ignored him. The memory sort of hurt. Anyway, Jai was just talking for the sake of it. He always talked too much. It made him seem warm and bright and vibrant, drew people to him. It hid that he was cruel and vicious and driven by zealous self-belief.
"They tied me up Jack," Jai continued after a short pause. "On one of those big tables, just like Roswell, examined me... cut me. Wasn't much fun."
Jack looked at him then, swamped in the coat and childlike. There was something unfamiliar in him, his eyes reflective and broken and Jack felt a surge of... protectiveness. Fuck, it had been thousands of years and he still wanted to protect him.
And there was the yearning. He ached for him.
He pushed the feeling aside.
"Does your wrist strap work?" he asked instead. Jai shook his head.
"Fuck," Jack said again. "Why the hell are you here?"
"Call me Jai," he said.
"Don't play games with me."
"Don't you remember Jack? They gave me to you and told you to find me a name, but you kept putting it off. You ignored me for days. Then you swore and said there weren't enough J names so I might as well be Jai."
Jack turned away, took three short steps to the other wall and just resisted hitting it.
"John said you should have called me Jeremiah -- 'God will uplift,'" Jai continued, "but you said with what we were doing, the most we could hope was that God would ignore."
They'd given Jai to him and John when things had started getting difficult between them, a challenge to keep their best team together - a present, a child. Though, even at sixteen there had been little childlike about him. Of course, that plan had backfired.
"Please, call me Jai."
"Jai, why did you come here? Why couldn't you just leave me alone?"
"I want it back. The Agency, I need it. And I thought, when John told me where you were, I thought maybe if I could talk you into coming back, then we could save..."
Jack turned back to him.
"You think I would ever go back there after what they did?"
"We could change..." Jai started, but Jack wasn't finished.
"They stole two years of my life!"
"Stole? Jack you begged us to take it, to take away the memories - you said we'd ruined your life and that you couldn't stay if you remembered what had... turns out, you couldn't stay even when you didn't."
It might be a lie. Jai had always lied. They all had. It felt a little like truth. Painful. What did it really change, it was all a long time ago now, his decision had been made then, this future had been forged. The good and the bad.
But that was the question, wasn't it? If he could go back and take a different path - never run away, never meet the Doctor, just one life, one adventure - would he do it?
The idea of not meeting the Doctor, of not meeting Martha or Rose, Ianto and Gwen, Tosh, Owen... That alone would normally have decided his answer - he'd managed to build families on this strange little planet again and again, and no matter how fleeting they were, or how painful, they were something he'd always lacked before. For them he would endure anything.
But then he'd just seen what he did to those families, just seen what Suzie's life could have been like if Torchwood had never found her, never seduced her away. Powerful, successful, surrounded by friends, helping people - not broken and alone and a murderer.
He thought of Owen as he'd first seen him, and of Rose trapped on a parallel earth and of Martha walking the world in darkness - what would they have been like if aliens had never come into their lives? If he hadn't? If the Doctor hadn't?
"Why are you still here?" he asked, pushing the dizzying thoughts aside. "You should have already escaped by now."
Jai laughed softly, though the laugh was oddly halting. "Angry that I'm not following the training? That's not like you, Jack. Maybe I was waiting for you."
Jack waited for the real answer.
Slowly unfolding his arms from around his legs, Jai climbed slowly and unsteadily to his feet, using the wall to his feet. The long coat fell open and Jack saw the t-shirt properly for the first time. It was covered in blood, still wet, he was still bleeding.
"I told you they cut me."
Jack saw his hand, resting against the wall, clench against a painful spasm and moved forward just in time to catch him as he fell. Jai leant heavily against his chest for a moment, his head resting on Jack's shoulder. Jai was still the shorter and Jack let his arms settle around him.
"I wouldn't have been strong enough to get away," Jai told him pulling back just enough so they could look into each others eyes.
"I'm strong enough," Jack told him and Jai nodded.
Behind them, Jack heard the key in the lock, the door beginning to open. With his teeth clenched, Jai pulled his arms upwards and let his hands settle over Jack's ear.
"What are you doing?" Jack heard Suzie say, though it was muffled through the bones of Jai's fingers, and then Jai clasped him tighter and closed his eyes.
He could feel the sound as it began to steadily thrum through the building, Jai's hands protecting him.
The building around them shook. From the corner of his eyes Jack saw Suzie fall, her hands tearing at her ears. In a moment she was still, in another moment she would be dead, but in his own arms Jai was suddenly slack, unconscious, his hands falling away from Jack's ears and the noise gone.
Jack gathered him quickly up into his arms, he was lighter than Jack remembered. He did his best to cover up the blood with his long coat and tucked the boys head deeper into his shoulder, hoping that people would only notice a friend carrying another. It was probably the least conspicuous they could look now.
He carried him through the silent broken police station, stepping over the bodies, carefully not looking at them too closely, in case one of them was Gwen.
Gwen's head was pounding. She had vague memories of drinking with Rhys and Andy. That was never going to happen again.
No, that was last night. Hours ago. She'd already had the hangover.
She reached up her hand to rub her head. There was dust in her hair. She forced her eyes open and saw long cracks running along the ceiling. Small streams of dust falling from it.
Gwen levered herself onto her knees, nothing broken at least. Around her the office was in tatters, chairs upturned, files and paper scattered across the floor and the groans of everyone as they righted themselves.
"You alright, sir?" She asked DSI Hopkins, one hand on his shoulder, helping him sit up.
"What happened?" He asked, dazed.
There was the sudden sound of someone coming, from the closed off corridor and Hopkins tensed beneath her hand. He was scared.
"When it comes," he said, "just run."
"What?" Gwen asked, but he was already struggling to his feet, his hand reaching for a gun, hung at his side.
He'd almost drawn it when DCI Costello stumbled through, pushing the door open. Her hair was a mess and she was covered in dust, blood seeped from one ear and a bruise was already forming on the side of her face.
"Where are they?" She said.
"They've gone?" Hopkins asked, horror in his voice and, yes, excitement. "I warned you... This is your fault."
Jack slipped back into the hotel room, making sure that the 'Do Not Disturb' sign was still on the door and slipping the chain back into place. The lights were still out, only the soft glow from the street lights seeping through the half open curtains.
It was enough light to see that Jai was awake, though he was still led out on the bed, looking tired and hurt, his eyes half shut. Jack moved across to him quickly, dropping the clean towels he'd had to ask for onto the bed.
The old towels had been as grubby as the room looked. All faded pink wallpaper, bare carpet and cheap, bland pictures. It was the only place he could afford with the money in his pocket. He doubted his Torchwood credit card would do any good here.
"How are you feeling?"
"Alright. Tired. Like you're probably about to do something to me that will hurt," he said his eyes falling on the sewing kit in Jack's hand, one of the cheap ones that hotels gave away to forgetful guests.
Jack pulled two small bottles of vodka from his pocket. He'd had to steal them. He pushed one into Jai's hand.
"Hopefully that will help."
"I think it might take both," Jai said with a smile as Jack knelt on the floor beside the bed.
"Afraid I'm going to need this one. You can have whatever's left."
He waited until Jai had taken a deep swig of his vodka and as quickly as possible prised the t-shirt away from his bloody skin. Jai hissed slightly, his teeth clenched together.
Jai's stomach was a mess of blood, Jack couldn't even see where he should start. Carefully his fingers traced the cuts, settling at last on the place at the top of his hip where they had obviously dug away the flesh to reach the base of the protruding bone and sawed it through, leaving only sharp pale edges behind. There wasn't much he could do to help it.
Jai was watching him.
"I think they wanted a souvenir," he said. Jack felt a brief, sudden surge of rage, but bit down on it. He couldn't afford to loose his head over this or over Jai.
"You always take me to the nicest places, Jack."
Jack wasn't sure if he meant Earth or the hotel room. Opening the second vodka bottle, he poured some onto one of the towels and began to clean the blood away from the wounds. Jai winced, his body shifting beneath the cloth. He took another deep drink of his own vodka.
"Come on, Jack," he said through the pain. "I'm worth better than this. Take me out, get me drunk. Wine me, dine me. Show me a good time. I could do with a good time."
The wounds were as clean as they were going to get. Carefully he opened the sewing kit. Finding the needle.
"Do you want pink thread or blue?" he asked. Jai just laughed, brokenly.
"Blue," Jack decided, "It will go better with your paint."
"Do you like it?" Jai asked.
For a second he didn't move and then he let his eyes meet Jai's, they were wet and bright. Jack reached out and stroked the small bones along his cheekbone and Jai smiled, it was tight and pained, but still a smile.
"I like it," Jack told him and then bent himself back to the task at hand. It took an agonisingly long time to get the needle threaded.
At last it was done. Jack took a deep breath to settle himself. Jai took another drink. Carefully he pressed the needle through the skin, pulling the sides of the cut back together. Compulsively Jai reached out, his hand gripping Jack's collar at the back of his neck. Steadying them both.
For a while they stayed in silence. The only sounds the sharp intake of Jai's breath every time the needle entered his flesh. Jack worked quickly, eager for this to be over.
Suddenly Jai laughed breathlessly, though there was little humour in it, the sound coming out ragged and pained.
"Now this is familiar," he said.
"What?" Jack asked, not really listening, his mind still focused on the wound.
"No I guess you won't remember that. There were some bad things at the end, we got involved with things we shouldn't have. Fighting..." Jai's voice trailed away again.
Jack didn't want to think about it. The Time Agency had always got involved in things they shouldn't have.
Finally he finished. It had felt like it had taken years, though the flashing light on the cheap TV told him it had only really been minutes. They stayed, not moving, silent as Jai's shudders subsided. His hand still buried in Jack's collar, holding him there.
"So, where do you want me to take you out?" Jack asked him at last.
A longer pause.
"Keep me in, Jack. Keep me in."
Jai pulled him forward by the collar until their mouths met. A deep, soft kiss. Familiar and reassuring.
They pulled apart, their faces still close for a second and then Jack stood, pulling away. He saw a brief burst of pain in Jai's eyes, but it only lasted a moment as he moved to the other side of the bed and carefully climbed in beside him.
Jack kissed him then, gently sliding one arm beneath him. Jai's hands found his face and then one slipped down, undoing his shirt and slipping beneath to settle against the skin of his chest. Jack's own fingers stroked the bones on the back of Jai's neck.
It was a long tender kiss, made up of many smaller ones, and when they finally broke apart, Jai's head rested on the crook of Jack's shoulder and he fell asleep.
Suzie stood as tall and straight as she could manage. The side of her face was still throbbing. Beside her Hopkins had regained his composure, his anger hidden again, his careful mask back in place.
"I understand," the chief constable said, "that it was your decision, Detective Costello, to put the prisoners in an unsecure room together."
"It was," she replied.
"Despite the concerns of your superior officer?"
She didn't respond. Hopkins had obviously already told him everything.
"And without any analysis of the possible dangers of such an action."
"I was hoping we might gain vital evidence about the dangers. We had run out of other leads to follow and I thought..."
"Your thinking has allowed a serious potential threat to escape onto the streets of Cardiff."
He waited but she wasn't going to respond again. She shouldn't have said anything before, she'd long since learnt the danger of rising to his bait.
"I've always had my doubts about you, Costello. You're unreliable, unpredictable. You've been here nearly a year and don't seem to have settled in. I'm starting to think that the glowing report you received from London was because they were eager to get rid of you."
She fought down the angry flush that was threatening to emerge.
"All things considered, and following the recent disaster, I think control of the case should be handed to DSI Hopkins. I'll leave it up to him whether he'll keep you as part of his team."