Ianto stood in his kitchen, in front of a grocery bag on his table. A grocery bag full of food that he had bought in preparation for making it with Sulu. For Sulu. ...what the hell had he been thinking, he wondered, as he stared at the bag in front of him before starting to pull the different ingredients out. He had absolutely no idea how to cook. He could call his sister and ask her about it, but. That would mean he'd have to call his sister and ask her about it, and although he'd come out to her a while ago, he still wasn't quite ready to talk to her about either Sulu or Jack.

He'd looked up a recipe, and really, how hard could it be?, he thought to himself, as he refrigerated the ingredients that needed to stay cold. They just had to follow the recipe, and everything should turn out fine, right? He certainly hoped so. He'd like to not make a fool of himself in front of the other man if he could help it. Sure, Sulu wouldn't mind, he figured, but. It'd be nice to get this right at least, he thought, as he went to get out the right sized pot from the back of his cabinet where it'd been sitting for probably the majority of the time he'd owned it.

[Ianto looks at the people milling around in Mickey Mouse ears, at the rides around him and at the people dressed up as characters, princesses and adventurers and just about everything in between as he roams the streets of what seems to be a pretty extravagant version of Disneyland. Ianto's heard about the parks, but he's never been to one himself, and yet still, he figures that this one must be some sort of uber!park. Like that one time that all the worlds combined together into one giant mash-up, that this was the same thing only with Disney parks.

Ianto stops in front of a rather large sort of man-made pond, watching a ferryboat go by on it, and tries to figure out what he's going to do now that he's walked around and investigated the place.]

((ooc note: This thread has been made explicitly for the threading purposes of Sulu and Ianto. An identical thread for other people threading with Ianto can be found here. We just thought that, what with our average of ~200 comments per interaction, it might be better if we start Ianto and Sulu's interactions in a separate post of their own right from the start XD))

The Plass was quiet that afternoon. Maybe it had something to do with the fact that up until recently, work crews had been hanging about. In the middle of it, there was a large construction area, complete with tape and tarp up, covering up the fact that there was a large, gaping crater in the center of it. The public had been told that there had been a terrorist attack, but Torchwood knew better. They'd been there for the explosion, and Jack...well. He'd been the center of it.

Speaking of Jack, Jack and Ianto were currently sitting in the tourist office (one of the only parts of the Hub that'd managed to survive mostly intact) amidst boxes of artifacts that they'd managed to scavenge from the wreckage of the Hub so far, each with their own respective cups of coffee. Both of them were having a bit of a late start to things, Sulu having only left a little while ago, and Jack having only really just gotten back from the Enterprise and his night there with Scotty. They were both quiet, sipping their coffee and thinking to themselves.

A lot had happened in the day before. Owen's birthday, their own respective romantic nights out... Ianto didn't really know how to breach the subject of his talk with Owen to Jack, and Jack obviously didn't want to talk about it, so. There they sat, talking about little things, but nothing that really mattered. Until there came an alert up on the computer screen, motion detected outside the tourist office. Someone was out there on the boardwalk. Ianto looked to Jack, raising an eyebrow. They weren't expecting anyone. ...were they?

Ianto took in a deep breath as he walked down the hallway to the door to Gwen's flat, shifting the pizza box he had with him nervously in his hands. He cold tell that something was wrong, with the way their conversation had gone the night before, and he honestly wasn't surprised if she was angry at him. They needed to talk to each other, needed to get back in touch. Things had been so out of sync since he'd died and come back, and he hadn't been able to see her, hadn't been able to talk to her as much as he would've liked.

It was sort of a norm for everyone to be a little angry at him at that moment. No one had really gotten over him keeping secrets from them yet, and so adding Gwen to the list wasn't a major leap. He really did value her friendship, was interested in how her life had gone in the last month, and wanted to at least try and see if they could mend whatever it was between them that had been broken. So, with Gwen's favorite pizza in hand, he reached her door, steeled himself for any sort of reaction that she might throw at him, and knocked.

Ianto lay in his bed upstairs, a book laying face down on his chest. He had been trying to read for the better part of an hour, but had found himself drifting more often than not, and on the third read-through of the same page he'd given up and just put it down. And he'd been drifting since then as well, not really awake enough to be doing anything other than just lying there, not really tired enough to really go to sleep. More and more each day, while no one else was around, he found himself in this sort of a state, a sort of standby mode that was disturbing in the fact that it didn't really bother him. That nothing really bothered him anymore, because he really couldn't dredge up enough energy to be bothered about it.

He brought a hand up to his face, running it across his eyes. He...he couldn't keep lying to himself like this. At first he thought it had simply been his imagination, that things were just progressing slowly, that was all. For all that he had worried that things wouldn't get better, he had hoped that they would, Sulu continuously helping him be optimistic in that fact, and so the fact that he was going backwards, now, getting worse, it... It was crushing. And he had no idea what he was going to do about it. No idea. The even worse fact of the matter was that he was slowly convincing himself that there was nothing to do about it. That he'd never get better. That it was too late, and he couldn't do anything about it now even if he tried. Which was the mindset he kept spiraling down and dragging himself out of as it approached that time when Sulu would be making his appearance for the night.

Ianto had been cleared by John and the attending nurse to be fit to go, and was currently in the process of getting himself presentable enough to be officially discharged. With Jack off on a call about someone having sighted Myfanwy out in the countryside, and Sulu waiting outside for the taxi they'd called to bring him home, that left him with the job of getting dressed by himself. Which was more easily said than done. He'd managed to get his shirt, pants, and trousers on before he'd had to sit down, which he supposed was a good start, but. It annoyed him that he still tired so easily. John had reassured him nearly half a dozen times that he really did look like he was fully on the mend, and he'd probably reassured Jack and Sulu at least half a dozen more, but Ianto was still left with the feeling that he really ought to be doing better by then. Especially after having spent the last however long it had been since he'd come back doing almost nothing but resting. He was tired of resting, and this hospital, and he just wanted to leave.

And so there he was, sat on the edge of the bed, contemplating exactly how he was going to get his shoes on without falling on his face, with the overwhelming sense of deja-vu washing over him in the process. Every time he tried, before he had even gotten half done with it, he'd had to sit up straight again and take deep breaths to keep his vision from swimming, and it was really starting to bother him. If he really was so ready to go back to his flat and function as a normal human being, the least he should be able to do was put on a bloody pair of trainers...

The past few days had been exciting ones, and definitely not in the way that Ianto would have predicted them to be when he'd first set foot on the boat. They should have known that there would be something wrong with this, but how were they to know that Sulu saying that nothing could go wrong after what they'd accomplished on the first night would come back to quite literally haunt them, as it were? Because there really was no denying it anymore. There'd been enough talk about what else had going on in other people's cabins enough to know that it wasn't just their suite. The whole ship was buzzing about it, and though everyone was reporting different things happening, there was really no doubt about it. Regardless of whatever was causing it, the place was haunted.

Ianto'd tried ignoring it. He'd tried rationalizing it, and any other number of things to keep from admitting that what they had were ghosts on their hands. There was really just no denying it anymore. What had started out as objects moving every once and a while, and strange sounds in the night had turned a lot more active over the next few nights, the hot water switching itself off as Ianto was showering, their suitcases emptied out all over the suite while they slept. Ianto'd made sure that the door had been locked each time, and had even taken to sleeping with the key in his shorts pocket, but it wasn't any use. The door hadn't been opening to let anyone in--whatever was happening in the suite, it wasn't coming from the outside.

What had started out as them trying to make the best of their vacation had ended up with, well, at least Ianto being very wary of his surroundings, and of what could possibly go wrong with them. As much as he'd like to initiate something more with Sulu, the idea that they would be watched while they did was...more than a little bit of a turn-off. He hoped that Sulu understood, as it was.

Sulu, for his part, seemed to be taking this whole ghost thing pretty hard. Because paranormal things were sort of right up Ianto's alley, considering that he worked for Torchwood and all, he was trying his hardest to be a good Torchwood officer, keep a level head for the other man, and not freak out at anything that might have otherwise given him pause. Sulu hadn't admitted to being frightened of these ghosts, but. Ianto could tell that he was definitely a lot less comfortable with the thought of them being around than even Ianto himself was. It was almost nice, to be able to be there for Sulu like he had to be because of these hauntings. Almost.

Ianto once again found himself waking in a pile of people, for the second day in a row. He didn't mind as much, this time, though that was mainly because he knew that it was coming. The three of them had set up a room down in the lower levels of the Hub for them to sleep in, considering that neither the sofa nor Jack's little hole in the ground would be comfortable to fit three people. He woke with his hand slayed across Jack's chest, the hand that was cuffed to Sulu's. Which was odd, because he was pretty sure when they were going to sleep, Sulu had been on the other side of him, and not, well, tucked in between Jack as he was now. Or well, she, Ianto contemplated, considering the fact that Sulu was still stuck as a woman. He opened an eye, blearily looking at the other two. Yep, Sulu was definitely still a woman.

Ianto was wondering how to extract himself from the other two without waking either of them up, seeing as how he had to continue touching Jack and was still cuffed to Sulu, when he noticed something very odd. Jack wasn't dressed in the Starfleet uniform that he had been in yesterday, the one he couldn't get off. Instead, well. He was dressed in nothing at all, like he said he'd gone to bed the night before all of this started. And his wriststrap was back, Ianto noted. Well, at least Jack'd be happy to have that back, though it would prove to be yet another awkward situation, due to the fact that Jack was, well, completely naked save for the wriststrap.

But, there was something metal glinting on Jack's other wrist. He sat up a bit further, trying to get a good look at it. A metal bracelet? Ianto thought. Funny it looked exactly like... "Oh, no," Ianto said, jerking awake and sitting up enough to see that they had gained another occupant in the bed. "Gwen?" And at that point, he stopped caring whether he was waking anyone up or not.

Ianto stood at his coffee machine, setting the beans to grind. It had been a pretty quiet week at the Hub, all things considered. Gwen was out at her parent's because of it--were he someone else, he would be jealous of the amount of free time off she got at this job, but she was his best friend, and there was no resentment there. She deserved to have a normal life, lord knows one of them had to. Ianto just had too much of his life riding on Jack and Torchwood, Jack was an immortal Time Agent, and Charle was, well, a tree.

He filled mug up with hot water, taking a tea bag from the special stash he had for her, and popped it in the mug as well. Might as well bring it up to her while he let the machine warm up. Taking the mug in hand, he climbed the spiral stairs behind the machine and up to the second level, heading straight for the hothouse where he knew he'd find the woman in question. "Good morning," he said, smiling (already having had his first cup or two of caffeine, of course).

Ianto sat at his computer down in his personal room in the archives--the bowels of the Hub, the closest thing to a domain that Ianto figured he would ever get. He sat back and pinched his nose, frowning against the headache that the fog was causing him. It seemed to be ever-present no matter what he did, and that annoyed him as he tried to work around it. They had to be on top of things--mistakes cost a person dearly in a job such as Torchwood. Ianto had full intentions of going through the archives with Akihiko looking for weapons that might prove useful in fighting against the Shadows regardless of whatever ridiculous headache he had. He stood from the computer to go down to the correct archive section and get ready to let Akihiko in before going through the archives they had with him. For a second, his headache got really intense, and he started to bring a hand to his forehead. And then he changed.

"That's better," Ianto said. And yet it wasn't Ianto. This Ianto had casual clothes, a silver chain around his neck with a Welsh dragon on it, and a five o'clock shadow--like a Ianto that had lived on the streets for a while. But he undeniably looked exactly like the other man.

It seemed that the room changed with him, and in fact the whole archives changed. No longer were they Ianto's archives at all, instead changed to look like a room in an abandoned warehouse, much like the one that they had tried to rescue the whale alien from what seemed like ages ago. It was a place that was very familiar to Ianto; he'd spent many a day as a misguided youth hiding from his life and his responsibilities in this building, in this large open room. He moved to sit on a crate by the wall, grabbing a dirty magazine from the floor and casually flipping through it.