torchwoodteaboy | [LOG WITH SULU][forward-dated to valentine's day]

Ianto didn't realize that he was being smiled at, or what have you. He had had enough to drink that the world was a lot simper and easier to manage, for that moment, and so admiring the flowers took all of his concentration, so that he couldn't worry or fret about anything at the same time as take care of them.

He went to the cabinet and got a pitcher out, filling it with water, removing the flowers from their wrapping and putting them in the pitcher. At Sulu's question, he shrugged. "Yeah, I guess you are," he said, honestly. He...had been drinking off and on that whole night. He knew that he wasn't too far gone that one or two more would hurt, but. More than one or two, and he'd probably regret it.

"Only a little bit, though," he said. He arranged the roses until he was satisfied, and turned to Sulu with a smile that was probably more proud of that fact than it would be if he were sober. "You've said that you're a bit of a lightweight, though, so. Not too much catching up to do. Plus, you're going to have to keep me from getting absolutely sloshed. ...it's been a long day," he admitted, before turning to get wine glasses from the cupboard.

Sulu managed to pry the cork out as Ianto talked, rolling his eyes goodnaturedly as Ianto pointed out his lightweight title. "Yeah, I know, take it slow." He wasn't about to let himself get too drunk, here. He was planning on doing a bit more than sitting around and drinking with Ianto, that was for sure.

He paused as Ianto mentioned his day, wondering if he should ask or just leave it alone. Finally, though, he turned to the other man, reaching out to take the glasses from him when he was close enough. "Do you want to talk about it?" he asked, honestly unsure as to whether or not he did. It wouldn't exactly be romantic, that was for sure - but if it was bothering Ianto, Sulu would listen.

Ianto let Sulu take the wine glasses from him, and he sighed. He...didn't want to ruin their evening, by talking about Owen, and yet. "He just. He wanted to talk to me about dying. He doesn't even know what happened to me, and. He wanted to talk to me about it. Invited me to tell him what I couldn't before he died, since I have the chance to now. And..."

Ianto lowered his eyes, bringing a hand forward to brush an invisible fleck of dust off of the edge of the table. "It's. It's too soon after everything that happened with me, to really. To really let myself think about any of that, so. ...yeah. That's. That's really all there is to say, on that matter," he said, although that was technically untrue, considering it was eating at him, even now, more than an hour afterward.

Sulu knew that Ianto was upset by the meeting; the way he'd talked about the party before had been enough for him to know that it wasn't something he necessarily wanted to do. That it was uncomfortable, and he couldn't imagine how hard it was for Ianto to deal with Owen in person.

"I don't know him," Sulu said slowly, "So I can't say anything about him. But..." He hesitated, then put the glasses down and brought a hand up to Ianto's cheek. "I know you, and. I want you to know you can talk to me about this. I don't care what day it is, you know." He just knew that Ianto was oversimplifying it, trying to play it off, and if that's what he wanted to do, he'd let the other do it - but that didn't mean he wasn't going to try to get him to open up about it more, first.

Ianto brought a hand up to cover Sulu's on his cheek, shutting his eyes for a moment and just standing there, breathing, taking in this moment. He had felt so helpless, so useless in talking to Owen, that to have this kind of support to come back to, to be able to rely on...it was almost too much. He opened his eyes and looked at Sulu, just looked at him for a moment, before he spoke up. "...sometimes," he said quietly, softly, "I think that you're too good to me..."

Like this moment, for example. Ianto hadn't given much thought to Valentine's Day. He hadn't even thought to ask Sulu over in the first place. But he'd come, and he'd had roses and a bottle of wine from his home, even, and...what did Ianto have in return? A pretty low mood on this holiday of all days. He was definitely killing the mood, that was for sure.

Sulu shook his head, leaning in to press a kiss to Ianto's lips; a brief and gentle kiss, but a kiss nonetheless. "Don't worry," he replied, smiling a little, "I'm really not." He really didn't think anyone could be too good for Ianto. "I just like helping you feel better, whenever I can."

That's why he pulled away then, moving to pour a glass of wine for each of them before holding one of the glasses out to Ianto. If anything, Risan wine was sweet and tasted better than any bad taste Ianto's meeting with Owen could have left him with. "Here. We can go sit down and talk, if you want." It wouldn't be any fun for either of them if Ianto stayed upset, anyway. There was all night to get to the romantic part of Valentine's day, after all.

Ianto took the wine glass from Sulu, nodding. This wasn't exactly the way that he'd planned for the evening to go, but. Sulu was good to him, and he would hear him out, and after he'd talked a little, he'd feel better, and then they could go about their holiday more easily. Once again, Ianto was glad that Sulu had brought a bottle of wine. It was suitably more romantic than the beer he'd been drinking earlier.

"C'mon," he said, grabbing the bottle and nodding toward the living room. "We'll bring this in too, so we don't have to get up for refills." And with that, he started toward the living room, putting the wine bottle down on the table on a coaster and doing his best not to flop down on the one side and spill wine all over himself, which he just barely succeeded in.

Sulu followed Ianto with his glass in hand, grinning a bit as Ianto tried to keep from completely slumping into the couch. He paused for a moment to toe off his shoes, pushing them to the side of the couch. "Sorry," he said, settling in on the other side of the couch, though he leaned more towards Ianto than the arm of the couch, "I've been in shoes all day. I figured you wouldn't mind." After all, later on... it'd probably be better if he wasn't wearing his shoes at all.

"Alright, so." Sulu held out his glass in a brief toast to Ianto, before taking a sip and smiling at him. "How are you doing, now that... you're back here, and not at the party?"

"It's fine," he said to Sulu. After all, no shoes would make it easier to curl up on the couch with him. And elsewhere. Ianto raised the glass back in a half-hearted toast as well, looking down into the liquid and taking a sip before speaking up. "This is good," he said, unintentionally stalling for a moment as he tried to collect his thoughts. He shifted on the sofa, and unconsciously moved to sit a little closer to the other man.

"I'm..." he said, trailing off and shrugging. "I'm alright. I dunno..." He took another sip of his wine, a bigger one, that clearly showed that he was still a little not alright, at least. "I'm not sure how else I'm supposed to be doing, really. Considering that there's nothing really that can be done to help Owen at all..."

Sulu wasn't sure how to proceed, here. He didn't know the cause of Owen's death - all he knew was that whenever Ianto had spoken about him, it had been in the past tense, and he'd always been... sad. Not upset, just....

He took another sip and shook his head. "I don't think there's exactly a standard emotion for this situation, so. His... What happens to him isn't really like what happened to you?" He doesn't want to bring up Ianto's death, but there's no getting around it. "It's not something we can bring him back from?"

Ianto took another sip of his wine. Maybe he was drinking it a little faster than he should be, but. He couldn't help that, especially because he was about to tell Sulu exactly what it was that happened to Owen.

He fiddled with his wine glass. "I... Owen was shot. We were on the case of someone messing with alien biology to produce pharmaceuticals to cure all sorts of things, but. They were wrong. Torturing and imprisoning their experiments. We... We had to kill them all. And then... The man. The owner. He shot him, right in front of us. And Jack killed that man straight after, but. It was too late. Owen bled out right there, on the ground."

He sighed. "The problem with Owen is that...that's not where it ended. I..." He paused, trying to collect his thoughts. Explanations were hard, when you were tipsy. "Do you remember me telling you about the Resurrection Gauntlet, when I gave you the tour of the archives, that time?"

Sulu wasn't about to judge Ianto for drinking; he knew that things weren't as good as maybe he'd hoped they would be, and he knew that the party - well. It was a chance to see someone who'd died, and that was good and bad.

He paused at the question, though, honestly trying to remember. It had been a long time since they'd gone through the archives - he mentally reeled a little at just how long ago it seemed - and he had to think about it before he remembered. "Yeah, I remember you showing me that. It... brought people back after they'd died, but just for a few minutes, right?"

Ianto nodded. "Well. There were two of them. And the other one, it... It brought people back for good. But not the way the first glove did. The first one brought them back alive. This one..." Ianto shifted, moving a little closer still to Sulu. "This one brought him back dead. He. He was literally undead. He couldn't drink, he couldn't eat, couldn't sleep or heal or anything, and. We all remember that happening. We can't keep that from happening to him, when it's already done. The only thing..."

He trailed off and sighed, heavily, before continuing. "The only thing that I can think of to possibly save him would be. The second time. The time he died for good. He was shut into a nuclear power plant's lockdown. We never found a body, because, well. There was nothing to find. Everything inside the place dissolved. If we could somehow..."

But Ianto shook his head, stopping that train of thought. "Nevermind," he said. "It's. I should speak to Jack about it. See what he thinks about all of this. That'd be a whole lot more useful than sitting here, whining to you about it." He took another large sip of his wine.

Sulu couldn't help but feel a little bad for Owen, there, but more than that, he felt terrible for Ianto and Jack. They had to watch him die again - twice. He had no doubt the community would show them, either. It liked doing that sort of thing, he knew.

But still. If there was no body - who knew. Time was a strange thing when the community was involved - like a black hole, it could mess up any timeline and make things happen differently. He imagined that Ianto's fate would've been different, if he hadn't been on the community... and that made him chew his lip a little, fretting it as he thought about the implications of that. Shaking his head clear, he finally nodded at what Ianto was saying. "You're not whining, Ianto. Never think that, okay?" He reached out with his free hand and put it on Ianto's knee. "Don't worry about it. But... I think you might. I mean... You might have an idea there. it's something to consider, at least. For all you know, that's what ends up happening to him...'

Ianto raised his eyes to Sulu, looking at him questioningly, but. He nodded. The other man did have a point. He... He should go to Jack. Talk to him, see what Jack thought about the matter. See what he was thinking about it already, what he might already have brewing or in the works, or whether he might not have anything at all on the matter.

Ianto took his free hand and laid it over on top of Sulu's on his knee, moving to lace his fingers between the other man's. He sat leaning against his side, no even pretending that they weren't just sitting there, enjoying each other's presence and support.

He raised his glass in a bit of a toast. "I... I'll talk to Jack, then. In the meantime..." He smiled slightly. "Happy Valentine's Day, yeah?"

Sulu smiled and met Ianto's sort-of toast with one of his own. "Yeah, happy Valentine's day." He laughed a little, ducking his head as he let the previous conversation drop for the meantime, "I hope that I'm not embarrassing you too much with the roses and the wine or anything."

He took a sip of his wine, mostly because he could use the extra courage alcohol gave, but also because he really did enjoy Risan wine. It was just one of those things. He added after a moment, smile turning a bit sly, "Not that I don't mind embarrassing you so much, so long as we're not around anyone."

Ianto smiled at the other man, blushing on top of his alcohol-induced flush. "No, not embarrassing me too much," Ianto reassured him, sitting back on the sofa. "Embarrassing me too much would be... I don't know. I can't think of anything that you might do to embarrass me too much. Jack, I can see doing it. But not you. You're definitely much more considerate than that. Even if...I'm still not sure what to think of getting roses, exactly..."

He chuckled slightly, ducking his head, slightly flustered. "You just like to make me blush," he said. "It's not hard to do so, I'll have you know, when I'm already as sloshed as I am. Not that I'm condoning you getting me sloshed just for that. Although..." he took another sip. "The wine is nice. What did you say it was again? I mean, I know it was a gift, but. Whatever it was, it didn't sound like anything I've ever had. Doesn't taste like anything I've had before either." Then again, Ianto wasn't a connoisseur of wines, or anything, but. There was definitely something different about it.

Sulu grinned. "Seriously? You should've expected those at least! I'm always giving you plants, somehow." Which was the truth, and he'd hesitated on bringing Ianto flowers to begin with, but Claire had insisted they were proper, so... He laughed and shook his head. "And don't worry, I'm not going to try and get you drunk just to make you blush. You do it plenty sober."

He looked at the bottle of wine briefly, before looking back to Ianto. "As for the wine, it's from Risa - it's sort of like a vacation planet. It's got all of the usual tourist trappings, and they make really good wine. I... really don't know too much about it; I've never been. But I hear it's nice." Maybe sometime he could go, and take Ianto with him. Of course, that was a long way down the line... but hey. Ianto was going to be around then, right?

Ianto snorted into his wine glass at Sulu's comment about him blushing sober as well as drunk. "Yes, well. Sorry. Habit. Apparently you enjoy it though, so. I guess it's not too bad. Still don't know about the roses, though. I mean. Yeah," he said, gesturing widely because yes, alright, he was a bit tipsy, "you gave me those plants that sing to begin with. And then you gave me the ones that glow. But those...those are still plants. They. They're in a pot and you water them and they grow. But the roses..." He blushed harder. "Those are. I dunno, a statement, I guess. I've. I've never gotten flowers before... Not like that." Alright no, that was a lie. Jack'd bought him flowers the few times he'd been hospitalized. But they'd never been roses.

He tried to remember where Sulu had gone after his flower rant there. Oh yes. "...there are vacation planets?" he asked, cocking his head to the side, genuinely curious.

Edited 2011-02-15 16:45 (UTC)

Sulu wasn't sure whether or not Ianto really liked the fact that he'd decided to give him roses - after all, like Ianto said, they... well, they were a statement. Admittedly, it was the kind of statement Sulu wanted to make, even if he couldn't physically say it aloud, but he didn't know how Ianto felt about it. So, he just ducked his head, drank down some of his wine quicker than before, and laughed a little. "Well, if you want, I'll make sure to only get you potted plants from now on."

He shrugged at the question, though, looking back up to Ianto, "Yeah... well, sort of. Risa is pretty much the only real planet meant to be a resort, but people sometimes go to other Federation planets for vacations. Or the moon. But it's not like taking a week off to go to Florida, or something, you have to plan for it and you're usually gone for more than a week. Risa's really just a giant resort, with beaches and that sort of thing."

Ianto shook his head quickly. "Oh, no," he said. "No, it's... It's fine, really. They're. They're lovely. I like them. I've just..." He blushed harder. "I. I've never gotten roses before. I'm not even sure if I've given roses before, really. It's... Well, it's all sort of new, for me. This whole Valentine's business."

At the topic of the resort planet, though, he quickly perked his ears up, intrigued by the idea of it. "Has it always been that way?" Ianto asked, intrigued. "I mean. Were there natives to it?" That sounded like an all-too familiar situation, after all. Kicking out the natives and building a resort planet on their home soil.

"It's new for me too. I'm working off of movies, here," Sulu said, a little flushed from his embarrassment and from the wine, even though he'd need another glass before he'd be anywhere near tipsy.

"As for Risa, though - the Risians actually run the planet, so it's not as though we took over or anything. They're part of the Federation, and all. We don't do hostile takeovers - the closest you'll ever see to us commandeering a planet is when there's no life on it and we can use it for resources. Otherwise, the Federation tries not to interfere with non-Federation planets." He knew what Ianto was getting at - it was a human legacy, taking over places at the expense of the people who already lived there. But the Federation didn't do things like that, and even though Sulu sometimes had to wonder if it was because of the other races and not because the human race had evolved past that need for warfare, he knew that they were just better than that.

Ianto smiled at Sulu's comment about the movies, tipping back his wine as he noted Sulu's flushing as well. God, but. Sometimes it was nice to see that the other man could get flustered as well, so Ianto didn't feel like such a complete ninny when he did himself. "Working off of movies, huh?" he said. "Well. You're doing a pretty good job of it, then, I have to say."

He had to wonder at the description of Risa, though. The fact that it was a vacation planet and yet it had a species that ran it, that had a culture and wines and foods and the likes was definitely boggling to the mind, at least for Ianto. He couldn't figure out whether they were always a vacation planet for other people, or whether someone had come by and commercialized them. He wasn't sure that he wanted to know, though, didn't want to get carried away on that topic, so he settled for, "well. It's good, this."

"It is pretty good, I think," Sulu agreed, not even considering that maybe Ianto had more questions. It wasn't that Sulu knew all about Risa and its inhabitants - he just knew enough that if Ianto ever asked, he'd be able to explain away any of his anxieties. Still, he was fine with the change in conversation, finishing off his wine and smiling at Ianto. "At any rate, it was the only thing I had. I have a bottle of vodka in my botany lab, but I'm pretty sure a half-drunk bottle of liquor isn't really romantic."

Ianto shook his head, smiling. "Not really, no," he said. "Wine is definitely more of a romantic statement than hard liquor. More refined. You're lucky you had the bottle around, then..." He took another sip of it, swirling the liquid in his glass before he spoke up again.

"...you didn't have to, though, you know. I mean. I... I wasn't sure whether I should get anything for you, or not. You've sort of one-upped me, not only with roses but also the wine. I. I would've been happy with just you coming by for a visit, yeah?" Ianto said, with a smile that indicated that he liked the gifts too, even though he was telling Sulu that they were unnecessary.

Edited 2011-02-18 04:16 (UTC)

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