Bats In His Belfry
Warnings: Crack that attempts to take itself seriously.
Word count: ~2300
Summary: The first time Ianto Jones meets Captain Jack Harkness, the Captain is... Well, "indisposed" is the polite way to put it. Part two of the Going Batty series.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: This is still entirely triquetralin's fault.
(Throwaway references to Vassalord in this one (because I couldn't resist), and yes, the term "cyborg vampire Jesus freak" is canon.Dear heavens, I love this manga.)
Bats In His Belfry
Cardiff, early 1900s
The first time Ianto Jones meets Captain Jack Harkness, the Captain is...
Well, "indisposed" is the polite way to put it.
In general, Ianto keeps the very lowest profile he knows how, avoiding the territorial disputes so common with his kind and limiting his involvement with the overarching politics of the race to what is strictly necessary. The Vampiric Powers That Be tend not to care about hunting, so long as no one is wiping out whole cities or turning entire towns (or letting their offspring become cyborg vampire Jesus freaks hunting their own kind for the Vatican like some people Ianto could name, but that's an entirely other story and not Ianto's to nitpick at), but Ianto does even that with care, taking only those who won't be missed.
Or those who are raging arseholes. It certainly doesn't change the taste, though it does give Ianto a certain warm glow of satisfaction to permanently remove them from the gene pool.
Regardless, he is as...prone to the very occasional mistake as the next several-hundred-year-old vampire, and in an entirely understandable turn of events that most certainly does not warrant the overreaction it receives, he happens to snack on (bleed dry,semantics) the owner of a majority of Cardiff 's textile mills.
Really. It's a mistake that anyone could have made. Ianto has never met another man so in need of having his blood parted from his body for the good of mankind.
Granted, Ianto had just woken from three months asleep, starved and in no mood to be too careful, regardless of his usually cautious nature. It had seemed, at the time, like a gift from whatever vampire heaven there was, to stagger out of his house and find a bastard just one door down, terrorizing his timid wife. Ianto had seen the opportunity and taken it with impunity, latching onto the man's throat as soon as his wife was safely inside.
That he had missed the man's business partner coming up the walk was careless, but excusable in the face of his hunger.
That the damned partner had to immediately go and find a priest was just rude.
The priest had gone to the Vatican, of course, and the Vatican had immediately contacted a hunter living in London for a rush job. He was human, pious, and professional.
Ianto hates professionals.
A crossbow bolt misses him by a hair and embeds itself in the wall of a house as Ianto throws himself out of the way. The bolt burns as it passes, and Ianto swears. Whitethorn wood inlayed with silver, of course. Only the best for this thrice-damned hunter, and whycouldn't Ianto have earned a hunter with shoddy equipment and too much nonsense superstition in his head?
There aren't even any taunts. It's like the man thinks he's hunting an animal, and Ianto spares a half-second to lament the indignity and downright callousness of it all, even as he changes forms with a rush and a whirl. A hundred bats take to the polluted Cardiff air, and Ianto allows himself for a brief moment to hope -
A silver-and-whitethorn bolt streaks straight through the heart of a bat in the swarm, and Ianto loses his hold on the change with a cry of pain. He tumbles from the air, normal shape coalescing out of shadows with a jarring snap, and crashes right through a bedroom window thankfully left ajar.
A woman screams as he slams into the floor, blood splattering from the arrow-wound in his shoulder, but Ianto spares the couple on the bed only the briefest glance before he's back on his feet. The man registers - because he's handsome, with broad shoulders and blue eyes and Ianto's always been very appreciative of that kind of thing - but it's not even tenth or twelfth on his list of concerns at the moment.
But there's another window on the other side of the room, and that's very good indeed.
Ianto lurches over to it, bleeding heavily and cursing the fact that he's going to have to feed again after this, and throws it open. There's no sign of the hunter - he's a London boy, unfamiliar with Cardiff's streets, and this area in particular is extremely inconvenient for someone on foot pursuing someone who can fly - and Ianto allows himself a brief moment of satisfaction.
Because he was raised - very long ago, granted - to be a polite young man, Ianto turns back from the window for a moment to offer the couple in the bed - naked, tangled together, obviously very much in the middle of something - a courtly bow that's more than three centuries out of style. Ianto likes to think he still makes it look good.
"So sorry to interrupt," he offers politely. The man catches his eye as he straightens, and with a whisper of the reckless showmanship that had gotten him turned in the first place, and a half-considered as well to hang for the sheep as the lamb, Ianto gives him an appreciative once-over and a quick wink. "So sorry," he echoes, and then a chill breeze hurtles through the room and Ianto takes it as the cue it is, allowing his form to shred into a cloud of bats once more.
He takes to the skies, bleeding but strangely satisfied, and the image of blue eyes wide in wonder and free of any fear at all stays with him long after the sun has risen and hurried him back into the darkness.
Three months later and another two asleep, and Ianto is old enough that the doesn't miss those stretches of lost time, has existed for enough years that months of darkness are nothing to him in the vast scheme of things. Some of his kind end up sleeping for decades, when they reach a certain age and the boredom is overwhelming.
Ianto has been...tempted to do the same, at times. He's bright, intelligent, but the ages drag when one does not have an imposed limit on one to say this is when I will die, this is when it will end. He stands upon the road to eternity, way unencumbered, and it's a very lonely road indeed. The others of his kind are not sociable - interactions are always kept to a minimum, like particularly large predators sharing a relatively small habitat.
Loneliness is a harsh, sharp thing, in the face of forever.
But he tries to temper his urge for oblivion, because he's never been suicidal before, even in the very worst of times, and doesn't like that this urge to sink into the darkness of sleep for eons uncounted seems very similar to the desire for the oblivion of death.
The nightly wind is cold and smells of rain. Ianto stands on the very edge of one of Cardiff's new high-rise buildings and wonders, a little grimly, why he bothers to fight the sleep at all.
It is always dark, and for so long Ianto has contented himself with that, even though he misses the light with a fierce, sharp ache.
Then the scuff of a boot shatters the quiet.
At the sound of it Ianto spins, immediately on guard - no baring of fangs, no inhuman hiss, because whatever the Vatican is teaching its hunters he's not an animal, but caution and a step back. Ianto has never fooled himself into thinking he's the biggest predator out there. There is a breeze whirling beneath his bare heels, pulling at the bottoms of his trousers as he perches on the edge of the building on his toes, and it would be so simple to just take a step and vanish, or rise into the air as a bat, but -
But the man from five months ago stands on the roof across from him, hands raised to show that they're empty. His eyes are still just as blue as Ianto remembers, even hough he had told himself they couldn't be, that he had been embelishing things in his own head. And now, with the waxing moon shining overhead, Ianto can see that his hair is sandy-brown and his jaw is firmly square. He's gorgeous and he clearly knows it, and while that should take something away from the overall picture, it doesn't.
"Ah," the man says, and it's a sound of quiet satisfaction. "I thought that was you I saw up here."
Ianto feels like he should curse his own carelessness, but that small, chiding voice is quiescent. Instead, he shifts a bit, positions himself a little more securely on the ledge, and offers politely, "Stalking, are we?"
That grin is wide and white and brilliant enough to make the breath that Ianto doesn't have catch in his throat. "More like taking advantage of opportunities as they present themselves. I'm Captain Jack Harkness. Jack."
"Charmed," Ianto drawls, and it should be a lie, sarcasm layered with dry wit, but it's not, and he doesn't quite know what to do with that. It's been ages since a human interested him the way this man does, with his bright, cheerful lack of fear and weary, young, ancient eyes. "And what can I do for you, Captain?"
"What are you?" the man - Jack - asks, and there's none of the judgement in it that Ianto has come to expect even in those who don't fear him immediately. "I've been around the block a time or two -" His quick flash of a grin assures Ianto that he means that in the biblical sense "- but I've never met an alien like you before."
Alien? The term is jarring, throwing Ianto for a moment. He's been accused of being many things before, but never an alien.
"Excuse me?" he snaps. "Alien? I assure you, Captain Harkness, I'm as much a native of this little world as any of the humans crawling across her surface. You've been imbibing in the green fairy one time too many if you think otherwise."
Harkness looks entirely thrown, taking a quick step back as his blue eyes widen sharply. "Then you're..."
"A vampire," Ianto finishes for him, when it seems he won't. Or can't. Ianto's gotten that reaction before, too. "Indeed. And now, Captain, I'll take my leave."
It...doesn't hurt, exactly, to think that the only reason Jack didn't fear him was because he didn't realize what Ianto was, but nevertheless, Ianto can feel a twinge deep down in his gut that is more acute than disappointment. He shifts back, lets the wind grab him as gravity attempts to assert its claim on him.
It's a long drop down to the street, and Ianto keeps his own form right up until the very last moment, because the fall is nothing compared to the churning sense of loss.
Which is ridiculous, because Ianto has long since lost everything that there was to lose, and learned not to regret it.
Of course, it doesn't end like that. The Captain's jaw is no lie, and he's got the stubborn, mule-headed personality that it promises. He has it in spades.
Ianto stares flatly at the man, entirely unimpressed. It's another rooftop, another night, a waning moon rather than a waxing one, but otherwise little has changed.
"I had thought I made myself clear - " he begins.
"You didn't," Jack says, shifting closer. That grin flickers again, inviting Ianto to share in the joke. "You ran. I can't help it if that makes me want to chase you."
But he's smiling, and his eyes are bright and clear, and Ianto can see an entirely new world written in the lines of his expression. There's something building in his chest, sharp and buoyant, as light and effervescent and heady as champagne bubbles. He takes a step back, another, and never before has walking on empty air felt so right. Cardiff is spread below him, but he only has eyes for Jack.
"Then catch me," Ianto challenges, and it's equal parts dare and plea. "Catch me, Captain, if you can."
Jack laughs at him, and it's been so long since Ianto has had any sort of meaningful conversation with anyone, been himself around anyone in any way that matters.
He realizes, with a sudden start, that for the first time in centuries the loneliness in him is gone.
"I'll catch you," Jack promises, and it is a promise. "No matter where you run, vampire, I'll find you."
"Not 'vampire'," Ianto says, and the words taste like freedom in his mouth. "Ianto. Ianto Jones." Then he turns and his human form explodes into a whirl of dark wings and red eyes, rising high up into the nighttime sky.
Eternity is still before him, immortality still his constant companion on that long road, but for the first time in longer than he can remember, Ianto doesn't fear it.
The urge to sleep is gone as though it never existed.
From behind him, there comes the thump of boots, running steps and a daring leap across rooftops as Captain Jack Harkness follows him, keeping pace as no other human has ever managed. Ianto dares a glance back, the man's image reflected a hundredfold in weak bat-eyes, and lets himself fly faster.
He's not against being caught, not by this man, but that doesn't mean he's going to make it easy on him.