My Hands Versus Your Hands
My Hands Versus Your Hands
Ianto’s an archivist, a man deeply involved in files, documents, old and new, and books. His job is to categorize, put in order, digitalize, and find dangers in seemingly innocent artefacts. He works with computers, pen and paper. His hands should have been soft and tender. They aren’t.
Ianto sometimes feels his hands are drenched with blood, calloused by his success in building the cyber-unit. His eyes ache and as he closes them he sees red, everywhere two bodies crushed under the wrath of the cyber-alien. And if he keeps them closed he sees more dead bodies, that of Gwen, Tosh and Owen. That of Jack. And he blames his mind and hands.
When he was fifteen, he was an artist in breaking and entering. His hands had helped him enormously; his skill of taking seemingly innocent things and creating keys, weapons was something he had kept to himself. It was a dangerous talent to possess. And even more dangerous if certain people knew.
It’s the same hands that put his books, magazines, cds, dvds -and audio cassettes as well, he still has his audio cassettes from the nineties before the digital revolution of 00s, there’s also vinyl and VHS somewhere packed and hidden- in order, that wash the dishes, and keep everything clean. His hands are an extension of his brain, sometimes doing good, most of the times really, and others breaking havoc.
*
Ianto slept peacefully by Jack’s side as the older man cherished the moment. It wasn’t a common situation. Jack took Ianto’s left hand in his own, admiring the slim, long fingers, the rough pads and let it rest of top of his own. Ianto had longer fingers than him. Ianto was longer than Jack in general, but Jack was thicker and years of experience had taught him to use it in his favour as to look bigger than life.
Jack slipped his own fingers between Ianto’s and marvelling at the difference of their colour. Ianto’s were pale whereas his own were tanned. By touching them, he though he could take some of the man’s inner innocence. No matter what Ianto thought about himself, Jack knew really well nothing would compare with Jack himself had done, and would do again.
Jack’s hands had killed people, grabbed necks and broke them, used knives and guns, any kind of weapon that could bring pain and destruction. Changing his ways before meeting Ianto, gave him hope that he didn’t need some kind of pureness by his side to difference right from wrong.
*
Ianto touched his face, cupping his cheeks, calling his name. “Come on, Jack, wake up!” Accent thicker from worry penetrated the fog in Jack’s head. He opened his eyes, to see Ianto looking down at him, fingers combing through his hair. Iant’s left hand left his face to support his neck, as the young man leaned closer to his face. “OK?”
Jack nodded. Getting used to die was a whole different matter to getting used to coming back to life. It ached. So bloody much. Ianto’s body had created a tender refuge for his aching body. Ianto’s hands were Jack’s anchor those first minutes of coming back to life. They kept him stable.
*
The tiredness crept suddenly on Ianto. One moment he was alert and ready to fight and as the danger was demolished, the fatigue of the last week came crushing onto him. Jack drove him home, and tender hands removed his clothes, put him underneath the warm spray of water and cleaned away all the filth, sweat and alien blood that had stuck to him.
It was the same hands that always knew what he needed; so this time, they redressed him, tacked him in bed, and then drew circles on his chest as Jack’s arms wrapped themselves around his torso.
If Ianto wasn’t as tired, he would compare the tenderness to the usual desperation and arousal they brought to his body.
“Sleep, Ianto,” Jack said to him, long fingers massaging the younger man’s temple.
A/N: OK, this would have been longer, BUT one of my cotton_candy bingo prompts is "hands" so all the fluffy feelings will be directed to that fic. Still, I hope you'll enjoy this.