Brain-eating Aliens

by Wynkat

Summary:

“How the hell do women do this every month?” Jack complained.

Notes:

This was inspired by a conversation in curriejean 's LJ and, as it is her birthday today, I present it to her, in her honor! Many Happy's hun, and thanks for all the assorted inspirations over the time I have known you! :)

Beta: the brilliant and adorable temporal_witch 

Chapter 1

“Ow!” Jack groaned and clutched at his belly.

“Are you okay?” Ianto asked, concern warring with amusement in his eyes.

“No, I’m not bloody okay!” Jack shifted on the bed. “I have a miniature army trying to take me apart from the inside out. Damn it, ow!”

Jack twisted again, looking like he was trying to stretch to his full length along the bed while simultaneously trying to curl in around his belly. Ianto was impressed. That was a hard position to manage.

“How the hell do women do this every month?” Jack complained.

“Chocolate,” Ianto said, pretending to not look up from his book.

“What?”

“Chocolate. Dark chocolate with orange for Tosh, milk with raisins and almonds for Gwen, and one of those darker-than-sin bars for Suzie,” Ianto replied. “Lisa liked both milk and dark, but her favorite was Toblerone.”

“Chocolate,” Jack said softly. “That really works?”

Ianto nodded. “Usually. Though Lisa did have a period once that refused to go down to chocolate. That was a bad week.” Ianto shivered and hid a smile.

“Bad, how?” Jack said, his eyes wide with wonder.

“She swore that her spine was trying to eat her brain.”

Jack turned again, wincing as the movement triggered pain somewhere in his body. He tugged the pillows up and under his head so that he was looking at Ianto but still reclining. Ianto smiled softly and stroked his hand through Jack’s hair.

“Brain-eating spines? Don’t we have an alien on file that does that?”

“Focus, Jack; not everything is an alien. Well, a nonterrestrial alien,” Ianto smirked.

“Ooookay…a nonterrestrial alien was eating Lisa’s brain. This was before the Cybermen?”

“Honestly, Jack!”

“What?”

“Have you never heard the word metaphor? Ever?”

“Sure….Oh!” A look of comprehension spread across Jack’s face followed by a lovely shade of pink. “Sorry. “

Ianto chuckled. “It’s okay. I think it’s fair to say that the brain-eating aliens have invaded your body as well.”

Ianto leaned down to kiss Jack while running his free hand gently over Jack’s recently-manifested breasts (and what lovely breasts they were), then down to his temporarily uterus-filled belly. Jack arched up into the kiss, moaning under Ianto’s fingers and tongue with all the urgency and need Ianto could have desired. Ianto was just starting to draw up a lovely love-bite on Jack’s neck when the other man groaned in pain.

“Oh, that is just not fair!”

“What?” Ianto stilled his hand, pulling back to watch Jack’s face.

“I can crave you all I want, but then the blasted army in my gut… uterus… kicks me twice as hard!”

“Aliens,” Ianto said with a compassionate frown. He’d forgotten this particular downside to a woman’s menstrual cycle.

“Definitely!” Jack flopped back on the stack of pillows, eyes closed, face contorted in a mask of discomfort.

Ianto lay down beside Jack, shifting him with a deft tug, so that he could hold Jack against his chest and press the heel of his palm into Jack’s lower back like he used to do with Lisa.

“Lisa explained the brain-eating alien attack to me once,” Ianto said softly.

Jack pressed his face to Ianto’s chest and moaned; it sounded like a blend of misery and pleasure.

“It starts with one’s uterus sending out advance scouts to napalm the opposing forces' territory, followed up by the corps of engineers attaching pulleys and assorted barbed rigging to the vertebrae and then getting the ground troops to winch the lines up, heaving the entire time - all sweaty and butch-like - until the spinal column is able to sneak up on to the gray matter from a defensive position and insert knife and fork.”

Ianto felt Jack chuckle.

“After that, she figured it was really just about clean up and dessert.”

Jack tilted his head up. “Did she ever figure out their weakness?”

“She thought she had. Well, we thought we had. Lovely thing, vicodin… knocked the alien spine right out for a while, but then the bastards rallied at the last minute and tried the ice-pick-through-the-lower-hind-brain maneuver. Lisa claimed that was very unsportsmanlike behavior.”

Jack nodded. “Very!”

“Oh, it was, trust me.” Ianto shook his head sadly. He remembered staying up all night with Lisa, refreshing the heating pack on her neck while they waited for the muscle relaxants to kick in. She had been in so much pain. He sighed and pushed the memory away.

“But in the morning, all was quiet on the field of battle.”

“She’d won?” Jack asked, sounding suspiciously like a 12-year-old boy listening to a bedtime story.

“She had,” Ianto intoned with a grin, figuring that there was nothing wrong with a good bedtime story for a change. “The brave princess had indeed defeated the evil brain-eating spine aliens and won the day!”

Jack laughed and Ianto joined him.

“So… which flavor would you like?” Ianto asked, brushing a strand of hair back from Jack’s forehead.

“Do I have to choose?” Jack asked with a wicked grin.

Ianto laughed and shook his head. He pulled a bag out from under the bed and upended the assortment of chocolate between them. “Just don’t eat them all in one day, okay?”