A Fic With a Terrifyingly Long Title
Title: Swallowed By The Guilt of This (We Will Not Let Time Erase Us)
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Jack/Gwen
Spoilers: For Day Four of Children of Earth
Warnings: Canon compliant character death, comfort sex (or at least foreplay) with a married person.
Disclaimer: I own nothing. The title comes from a song by The Hush Sound. “The end is where we start from” was said by Jack in “Exit Wounds” I make no claim to being original, and can only defend myself by saying that, in the fic, Gwen is deliberately using something Jack had once told her.
Notes: So...at one a.m. today I finished watching Day Four, and after I had stopped crying, and after I had explained the episode to my sisters...this happened. Because apparently I have no shame, and after that episode the only way I'm making Gwen and Jack have sex is for comfort. (Unless there's some sort of sex-pollen involved. Obviously. Or it's in the future. Oh fuck it.)
I broke up with the word “and.” Currently, I am having a passionate, poly-amorous relationship with periods, italics, and ridiculously long titles.
On the night that Ianto died, Jack doesn't sleep. He sits on a bed in the characterless room he had been offered, and buries his face in his hands.
“I love you.”
“Don't” Jack chokes out to an empty room. “Don't” (don't love me, don't say it, don't make my failure real). “Don't.” (don't love me, you can't love me, how can you love me? Don't.).
He stands, paces angrily, back and forth across the small room. Four white walls, one sink, one mirror. A single bed.
He leaves (the sound of the door slamming behind him barely registering). He walks the building, and no one stops him. Everyone hurries past with worried expressions and no thoughts for the man with tears streaming down his face.
“I love you.”
Jack stifles a sob against his wrist.
“Jack,” a soft voice says behind him, and he turns (heart pounding, breath obstructed) and finds Gwen. Of course.
“Jack,” she says again, a tear slipping out of her eye. “Come here.” She holds out a hand which he grabs absentmindedly, following as she turns and leads him back to her room.
There, he sits once more on the end of a bed, grabbing Gwen around the waist and pulling her down beside him, needing this, needing touch and smell and sight to hold him to the Earth, needing her to remind him that, no matter how much he wishes, he cannot let the world end tomorrow. He knows this.
“Shh,” she whispers against his shoulder. “Shh, Jack,” she says, voice rough with tears.
He watches, detached, as he slides the shirt off her shoulders, as he undoes her bra and she shifts to look at him, lips pursed in consideration before she leans forward to kiss him softly.
He runs his hands over her body, and lowers her to the bed.
“Shh, Jack,” she says again, and he trembles and leans over her as her legs wrap around his waist.
His lips drift down to brush at a nipple, and he watches as she jerks slightly before she pulls his chin up once more and kisses him.
“Shh,” she says when he pulls away, and her hands reach up to brush tears from his cheeks.
“Don't forget me.”
“Never could,” Jack whispers against skin.
“Shh,” Gwen whispers, hand stroking through his hair now.
“In a thousand years time...you won't remember me.”
“Yes I will,” John whispers. “Always. God, Ianto. Don't go. Please, please.”
“Oh Jack,” Gwen whispers. “Shh.”
He slumps against her, the hand that had not been stroking his hair lifting to wrap around his shoulders. “I couldn't tell him,” he whispers against an arm that is much too soft. “He said he loved me.” He presses a desperate kiss to a shoulder, needing to feel and be touched and be shown what is real. “I couldn't answer properly.”
“Shh,” Gwen croons. “He knew.”
Jack shakes his head against her chest. “No.” he manages. “Never showed him.”
“I love you,” Ianto had whispered, with a bittersweet smile Jack had never seen before.
“Don't” he had choked out. Don't leave me. Don't tell me you love me and then fucking leave me alone. Just “don't,” desperate and already lonely.
He presses against a body that doesn't smell of aftershave and coffee, presses kisses to a chest that pillows his head, whispers words he couldn't say against skin that is a shade too dark.
“Shh,” Gwen whispers into the darkness, as his tears trail over her skin. “Jack.”
“I can't!” he chokes. “I can't!”
“You can,” she says softly. “You have to.”
Then, bitterly, with a sob almost hidden behind her words, “The end is where we start from.”
Fin
We are surrounded by all of the quiet sleepers inside the quiet earth
A fear that I cannot shape - you dared to kiss the face of the night
Save me, I am swallowed by the guilt of this
You're gone, sleeping in the dust
We will not let time erase us
Our breath rose in the cold like a hundred souls
We, we are alone, I know you're gone
-The Hush Sound, 'A Dark Congregation'