The very sordid love life of Ianto Jones
Title: The very sordid love life of Ianto Jones
Rating: M, though nothing worse than would be seen on the show, I think.
Disclaimer: If it was mine... well, lets not go there hey?
tw_exchange Prompt: #24 for gem_pinkeh. I may not have done justice to it though.
Authors Notes: Anything aired so far is fair game to be spoiled. Though I think it's only 1x04 really. Very much Ianto/everyone.
At twelve, Ianto Jones learns about love.
He finds the best way to pretend you aren’t crying is to hide. So he hides under the table, in his tux, in the mud, eating cake.
‘Ianto!’ His mother looks exasperated, as per usual. She’s been up since 4 a.m. today, and every minute of it shows on her face.
‘Gwên’ It comes out roughly, strained, since she isn’t smiling herself, or anything close to it. He knows his cheeks are tearstained, and he pouts and pokes out his tongue.
‘No’
‘Ianto, Cymraeg!’
‘No’
His mother is funny about such things and pulls her trump card.
‘Rwy'n dy garu di’
Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Ianto crawls out from under the table and poses for the wedding pictures. His sister smiles broadly and hides him behind a bridesmaid. No getting mud on her white gown thank you very much.
//\\//\\//\\
At fourteen, Ianto Jones gets snogged.
Bronwyn from Science class has her tongue in his mouth and even though his mates are all cheering he really wishes they wouldn’t. His back is bent at an odd angle and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and he’s hoping that he won’t get Meningitis or something from this thoroughly unhygienic experience.
A week later he kisses her back, and for the next three weeks they do a lot of kissing behind the bike sheds at lunch. He quite enjoys it too, and he’s started to notice how pretty Bronwyn is when she smiles, and how she giggles at all his mates jokes, even the really lame ones.
Five weeks after their first kiss, he catches her kissing his best mate Terry behind the bike shed after school, and suddenly she isn’t so pretty anymore. She cries a lot and Terry blushes and mumbles something about ‘just happened mate’.
The next week, Ianto starts at his new school. He sees Terry down the shop with his arm in plaster, and feels a surge of pride.
His mother signs him up for anger management courses.
//\\//\\//\\
At seventeen, Ianto Jones gets shagged.
He’s not entirely certain how it came to this, but Kate writhes underneath him, moaning and bucking and screaming his name to kingdom come, her nails digging into his back and her legs wrapped firmly around his waist.
He’s starting to wonder the point of all this when he surges forward and comes crashing down upon her chest in a wave of ecstasy. She giggles and kisses his earlobe.
Later, they agree this probably makes them a couple and she blushes and mumbles something into her cup of coffee.
‘Sorry?’ He doesn’t want to seem rude, but if she wants to be heard, she needs to speak up. She blushes deeper red and her words are barely a whisper.
‘ILoveYouIantoJones’
A week passes, and they break up.
Ianto can’t bear to drink coffee for six months.
//\\//\\//\\
At twenty, Ianto Jones falls in love.
Lisa hardly even notices him really. She’s in a higher position than him, but she walks past his desk numerous times every day and smiles when he brings her coffee for no reason.
Her boyfriend however, scares him shitless.
As such, he is rather surprised when she turns up on his doorstep and kisses him like her life depends on it.
‘He’s an idiot then’
‘You really think so?’
‘I know so’
‘And how would you know that?’
‘Because if you were my girlfriend, I’d give you the whole world, just to see you smile’
A month later Lisa moves into his tiny flat. She gets lots of brochures from travel agency and they go camping every weekend.
This, Ianto decides, is what love should really be like.
//\\//\\//\\
At twenty four Ianto Jones gets his heart broken.
Jack pours him a whiskey and watches him silently.
‘I’m sorry’ He says, like it makes one scrap of difference. Ianto swears loudly into his glass, and Jack just watches. Blood seeps slowly through his shirt.
After an hour or so, and 3 glasses of whiskey, the world has taken on a pleasant muted feeling, and Jack has long since passed out, his shirt now a dark crimson.
‘Ello Yan’ He mumbles quietly, shaking his head a little as he wakes. He pours himself a measure of whiskey and sips it quietly, his eyes still slightly unfocused from this latest death.
‘You wanted to watch me suffer and die. Happy?’
Ianto watches as his glass of whiskey trickles gently across Jack’s desk.
‘Fuck you Jack Harkness’
//\\//\\//\\
At twenty five, Ianto Jones pretends it doesn’t hurt.
Jack thrusts hard, and his hips slam into the wooden desk. It’s pleasure and pain all rolled into one, and he doesn’t even give a shit anymore. Nothing more than a hollow shell, useful for coffee and a shag and not much else.
When they’re done, Jack kisses him tenderly, and his blue eyes are soft to match his hands on Ianto’s cheeks.
That night Ianto dreams of soft kisses and gentle caresses, of love and lust and wild desire.
When he wakes up, he can think only of those tender blue eyes, and pushes away the hurt.
//\\//\\//\\
On the last day of twenty five, Ianto Jones realises.
Gwen Cooper is stronger than people give her credit for. She’s also quite a good kisser. Her tongue is like magic as it grazes against his teeth and he tries not to moan out loud.
Her hands rip at his shirt and he hopes there will be no confused tourists today. No tourists, no aliens, no killer gas, no strange objects, no rift activity...
The floor is cold and hard, but Gwen's mouth is soft and warm, and her eyes are like fire as she attacks his body with such ferocity he bears the bruises for weeks to come.
Later, when they’re cleaned up and Gwen is rid of the not-so-wonderful pheromone spray, Ianto makes coffee and tries to figure out how he really feels about her.
Except he knows that it’s not Gwen he’s found himself inexplicably attracted to for weeks now. Not Gwen’s touch he craves, or Gwen's kiss he still feels on his lips.
It’s not Gwen at all, in the end.
//\\//\\//\\
At twenty eight, Ianto Jones says good-bye.
The fountain gleams in the sunlight and he knows he won’t ever look at it the same way again.
Tosh holds his hand and gently presses a kiss to his lips.
‘Thanks for everything’ Then she’s gone. Swallowed in the crowd of people swarming through Roald Dahl Plas. Owen shakes his hand and disappears too.
Last is Gwen. She kisses him too, longer, with passion and unkempt desire. People snigger as they pass, but he decides he doesn’t care anymore.
Let them think what they like.
‘Good-bye Ianto’ she whispers, and though the tears shine on her cheeks, her eyes are bright as anything as she walks away from him.
There is no Jack to say good-bye. Jack has left for bigger adventures. Torchwood is no more.
Something squawks above him and Ianto feels his stomach flip, because this morning they buried Myfanwy and that tears him up in ways he never expected.
He loved this place, this city.
He wonders if there's anything else in the world left to love.
//\\//\\//\\
At thirty, Ianto Jones has a dysfunctional relationship.
He finds Gwen in a pub one night, a thankful escape from a job he hates and a tiny flat that seems almost inhuman to be living in.
Age is beginning to wear her down, he can see. He knows she must be in her late thirties by now and by the looks of it, life has not treated her kindly since Torchwood.
She smiles wearily as she drains her glass. He invites her back to his place and they drink coffee, which both agree is far better than a pint.
He invites her to stay the night, seeing as it’s getting late and all.
After two weeks, and eleven consecutive nights of shagging, he’s pretty sure this is not what he would call a normal relationship. Gwen just laughs and makes pancakes for breakfast.
After four months, Gwen suddenly leaves, and he doesn’t hear from her for some time. She eventually writes from London, saying she’s sorry but she can’t do this anymore.
Ianto settles back into routine and normality. He wonders if he’s fallen for Gwen, and even more so what Jack would think of him now.
In the end, it still isn’t Gwen at all.
//\\//\\//\\
At thirty three, Ianto Jones shags an alien.
To be fair, he doesn’t know he’s an alien until afterwards, when the double heartbeat tips him off.
The alien, who still looks very human, smiles and pulls his pinstripe trousers back on with a shrug.
‘I’m supposed to tell you Jack sent me, but the look on your face tells me you already know’ He grins widely and disappears out the door without another word.
Ianto follows all the way to Roald Dahl Plas where a familiar figure stands in his greatcoat next to a blue police box. He waves and climbs inside with the pinstriped alien.
Then the box disappears. Just fades out of sight, like it was never there in the first place.
Ianto decides he’s hallucinating from lack of caffeine.
//\\//\\//\\
At thirty five, Ianto Jones still can’t forget.
He’s sick of seeing Jack Harkness everywhere. Seeing him, but then it never really is him. He thinks he might be going mad, and he gladly welcomes it. Insanity sounds promising these days.
But then a voice brings him back, a hand pulls him up and he opens his eyes to the blinding sunlight and a pretty face.
‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ She’s annoyed, this stranger, but god she’s gorgeous too. Her long hair is auburn, and he would guess her eyes are green but it’s hard to tell. She wears jeans and a grimace.
‘Come-on, you need coffee’
She makes a smashing cup of coffee too. When he finally explains that he hadn’t actually meant to jump in the fountain, and she’s stopped laughing at him, he finally thinks to ask her name.
‘Gwen’
For a moment he thinks he must be going mad, thinks this is all a nightmare, but when he opens his eyes, she’s still there, gorgeous as anything, asking if he’s okay.
So he tells her. Tells her of Torchwood and Lisa and Jack and Gwen, and she listens, and nods, and laughs in all the right places.
He asks her out, and she says yes.
She says yes to a lot of questions.
//\\//\\//\\
At thirty seven and eight months, Ianto Jones finds happiness.
Baby Jack (actually Jacob, but Ianto will always, always call him Jack) is a mewling, squirming pink lump with legs. Mostly he cries and makes a mess in his nappy.
Ianto thinks he’s perfect.
Gwen mumbles sleepily into his shoulder, her eyes half-lidded after the exhaustion of the day. Her hair is shorter than it was, but still a pool of red splays out over her shoulders and cascades down her front.
Baby Jack has brown hair, with the slightest hint of red. He has a snub nose and long fingers like his father, and smells like baby powder and honey. Sweet and warm and comforting.
Which is exactly what babies are made for, in the end.
//\\//\\//\\
At forty three, Ianto Jones attends a funeral.
He’s been to plenty in his lifetime, his grandparents when he was young, his father more recently, but this one is worst of all.
His older sister is the one being lowered into that cold, hard, unforgiving ground. Fifty-four and three months old. Cancer, and she never told anyone.
He wonders what made her keep it a secret. Why she would avoid telling her family and friends, even in the last weeks of her life. Why she would struggle through pain and anguish and the knowledge death was coming to her in utter silence.
Secretly he knows. She did it because she loved.
//\\//\\//\\
At fifty, Ianto Jones knows his children are growing up.
Jacob (Who now refuses to be called Jack) is nearly thirteen. His younger sister Bella is eleven.
Jacob no longer plays with matchbox cars. He wants to play with real ones. Bella no longer plays with dolls. She worships real ones.
He’s not sure he’s quite ready to let go, but Gwen seems sure enough that it’s time. She pats his hand and smiles softly and he decides she’s right.
She was always better at these things than he was.
//\\//\\//\\
At sixty seven, Ianto Jones never sees it coming.
One minute, he’s walking down a quiet street, the next, claws are tearing into his flesh and there’s screaming all around.
‘Ianto, Ianto!’ Someone yells his name as he crumples. His fingers are cold. He can see the blood seeping through his shirt and he knows this is it.
Warm hands seem to dance over his cold skin. A figure crouches over him, pulls him upright.
‘Ianto, it’s me’ His vision is losing focus, and he can’t be certain he isn’t hallucinating from blood loss, but he’s quite certain it’s one Captain Jack Harkness holding him.
‘Jack’ His voice sounds so old, so weary. Jack hasn’t aged one day. Jack doesn’t know that he’s married, that he has children. He won’t have enough time to tell him.
‘Stay here, it’ll be okay’ Jack’s lips are soft, and Ianto knows he’s doing his glowy thing.
The world blurs and goes dark. Jack is still speaking but Ianto doesn’t hear. The greatcoat is soft against his cheek, and as his mind begins to cloud he thinks how glad he is to have lived such a wonderful life.
Such a wonderful, exciting, bloody dangerous life.
Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
//\\//\\//\\
At approximately two hundred, give or take, and after 624 deaths, Jack Harkness learns you can’t save everyone.
Rating: M, though nothing worse than would be seen on the show, I think.
Disclaimer: If it was mine... well, lets not go there hey?
tw_exchange Prompt: #24 for gem_pinkeh. I may not have done justice to it though.
Authors Notes: Anything aired so far is fair game to be spoiled. Though I think it's only 1x04 really. Very much Ianto/everyone.
At twelve, Ianto Jones learns about love.
He finds the best way to pretend you aren’t crying is to hide. So he hides under the table, in his tux, in the mud, eating cake.
‘Ianto!’ His mother looks exasperated, as per usual. She’s been up since 4 a.m. today, and every minute of it shows on her face.
‘Gwên’ It comes out roughly, strained, since she isn’t smiling herself, or anything close to it. He knows his cheeks are tearstained, and he pouts and pokes out his tongue.
‘No’
‘Ianto, Cymraeg!’
‘No’
His mother is funny about such things and pulls her trump card.
‘Rwy'n dy garu di’
Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.
Ianto crawls out from under the table and poses for the wedding pictures. His sister smiles broadly and hides him behind a bridesmaid. No getting mud on her white gown thank you very much.
//\\//\\//\\
At fourteen, Ianto Jones gets snogged.
Bronwyn from Science class has her tongue in his mouth and even though his mates are all cheering he really wishes they wouldn’t. His back is bent at an odd angle and he doesn’t know what to do with his hands, and he’s hoping that he won’t get Meningitis or something from this thoroughly unhygienic experience.
A week later he kisses her back, and for the next three weeks they do a lot of kissing behind the bike sheds at lunch. He quite enjoys it too, and he’s started to notice how pretty Bronwyn is when she smiles, and how she giggles at all his mates jokes, even the really lame ones.
Five weeks after their first kiss, he catches her kissing his best mate Terry behind the bike shed after school, and suddenly she isn’t so pretty anymore. She cries a lot and Terry blushes and mumbles something about ‘just happened mate’.
The next week, Ianto starts at his new school. He sees Terry down the shop with his arm in plaster, and feels a surge of pride.
His mother signs him up for anger management courses.
//\\//\\//\\
At seventeen, Ianto Jones gets shagged.
He’s not entirely certain how it came to this, but Kate writhes underneath him, moaning and bucking and screaming his name to kingdom come, her nails digging into his back and her legs wrapped firmly around his waist.
He’s starting to wonder the point of all this when he surges forward and comes crashing down upon her chest in a wave of ecstasy. She giggles and kisses his earlobe.
Later, they agree this probably makes them a couple and she blushes and mumbles something into her cup of coffee.
‘Sorry?’ He doesn’t want to seem rude, but if she wants to be heard, she needs to speak up. She blushes deeper red and her words are barely a whisper.
‘ILoveYouIantoJones’
A week passes, and they break up.
Ianto can’t bear to drink coffee for six months.
//\\//\\//\\
At twenty, Ianto Jones falls in love.
Lisa hardly even notices him really. She’s in a higher position than him, but she walks past his desk numerous times every day and smiles when he brings her coffee for no reason.
Her boyfriend however, scares him shitless.
As such, he is rather surprised when she turns up on his doorstep and kisses him like her life depends on it.
‘He’s an idiot then’
‘You really think so?’
‘I know so’
‘And how would you know that?’
‘Because if you were my girlfriend, I’d give you the whole world, just to see you smile’
A month later Lisa moves into his tiny flat. She gets lots of brochures from travel agency and they go camping every weekend.
This, Ianto decides, is what love should really be like.
//\\//\\//\\
At twenty four Ianto Jones gets his heart broken.
Jack pours him a whiskey and watches him silently.
‘I’m sorry’ He says, like it makes one scrap of difference. Ianto swears loudly into his glass, and Jack just watches. Blood seeps slowly through his shirt.
After an hour or so, and 3 glasses of whiskey, the world has taken on a pleasant muted feeling, and Jack has long since passed out, his shirt now a dark crimson.
‘Ello Yan’ He mumbles quietly, shaking his head a little as he wakes. He pours himself a measure of whiskey and sips it quietly, his eyes still slightly unfocused from this latest death.
‘You wanted to watch me suffer and die. Happy?’
Ianto watches as his glass of whiskey trickles gently across Jack’s desk.
‘Fuck you Jack Harkness’
//\\//\\//\\
At twenty five, Ianto Jones pretends it doesn’t hurt.
Jack thrusts hard, and his hips slam into the wooden desk. It’s pleasure and pain all rolled into one, and he doesn’t even give a shit anymore. Nothing more than a hollow shell, useful for coffee and a shag and not much else.
When they’re done, Jack kisses him tenderly, and his blue eyes are soft to match his hands on Ianto’s cheeks.
That night Ianto dreams of soft kisses and gentle caresses, of love and lust and wild desire.
When he wakes up, he can think only of those tender blue eyes, and pushes away the hurt.
//\\//\\//\\
On the last day of twenty five, Ianto Jones realises.
Gwen Cooper is stronger than people give her credit for. She’s also quite a good kisser. Her tongue is like magic as it grazes against his teeth and he tries not to moan out loud.
Her hands rip at his shirt and he hopes there will be no confused tourists today. No tourists, no aliens, no killer gas, no strange objects, no rift activity...
The floor is cold and hard, but Gwen's mouth is soft and warm, and her eyes are like fire as she attacks his body with such ferocity he bears the bruises for weeks to come.
Later, when they’re cleaned up and Gwen is rid of the not-so-wonderful pheromone spray, Ianto makes coffee and tries to figure out how he really feels about her.
Except he knows that it’s not Gwen he’s found himself inexplicably attracted to for weeks now. Not Gwen’s touch he craves, or Gwen's kiss he still feels on his lips.
It’s not Gwen at all, in the end.
//\\//\\//\\
At twenty eight, Ianto Jones says good-bye.
The fountain gleams in the sunlight and he knows he won’t ever look at it the same way again.
Tosh holds his hand and gently presses a kiss to his lips.
‘Thanks for everything’ Then she’s gone. Swallowed in the crowd of people swarming through Roald Dahl Plas. Owen shakes his hand and disappears too.
Last is Gwen. She kisses him too, longer, with passion and unkempt desire. People snigger as they pass, but he decides he doesn’t care anymore.
Let them think what they like.
‘Good-bye Ianto’ she whispers, and though the tears shine on her cheeks, her eyes are bright as anything as she walks away from him.
There is no Jack to say good-bye. Jack has left for bigger adventures. Torchwood is no more.
Something squawks above him and Ianto feels his stomach flip, because this morning they buried Myfanwy and that tears him up in ways he never expected.
He loved this place, this city.
He wonders if there's anything else in the world left to love.
//\\//\\//\\
At thirty, Ianto Jones has a dysfunctional relationship.
He finds Gwen in a pub one night, a thankful escape from a job he hates and a tiny flat that seems almost inhuman to be living in.
Age is beginning to wear her down, he can see. He knows she must be in her late thirties by now and by the looks of it, life has not treated her kindly since Torchwood.
She smiles wearily as she drains her glass. He invites her back to his place and they drink coffee, which both agree is far better than a pint.
He invites her to stay the night, seeing as it’s getting late and all.
After two weeks, and eleven consecutive nights of shagging, he’s pretty sure this is not what he would call a normal relationship. Gwen just laughs and makes pancakes for breakfast.
After four months, Gwen suddenly leaves, and he doesn’t hear from her for some time. She eventually writes from London, saying she’s sorry but she can’t do this anymore.
Ianto settles back into routine and normality. He wonders if he’s fallen for Gwen, and even more so what Jack would think of him now.
In the end, it still isn’t Gwen at all.
//\\//\\//\\
At thirty three, Ianto Jones shags an alien.
To be fair, he doesn’t know he’s an alien until afterwards, when the double heartbeat tips him off.
The alien, who still looks very human, smiles and pulls his pinstripe trousers back on with a shrug.
‘I’m supposed to tell you Jack sent me, but the look on your face tells me you already know’ He grins widely and disappears out the door without another word.
Ianto follows all the way to Roald Dahl Plas where a familiar figure stands in his greatcoat next to a blue police box. He waves and climbs inside with the pinstriped alien.
Then the box disappears. Just fades out of sight, like it was never there in the first place.
Ianto decides he’s hallucinating from lack of caffeine.
//\\//\\//\\
At thirty five, Ianto Jones still can’t forget.
He’s sick of seeing Jack Harkness everywhere. Seeing him, but then it never really is him. He thinks he might be going mad, and he gladly welcomes it. Insanity sounds promising these days.
But then a voice brings him back, a hand pulls him up and he opens his eyes to the blinding sunlight and a pretty face.
‘What the hell did you think you were doing?’ She’s annoyed, this stranger, but god she’s gorgeous too. Her long hair is auburn, and he would guess her eyes are green but it’s hard to tell. She wears jeans and a grimace.
‘Come-on, you need coffee’
She makes a smashing cup of coffee too. When he finally explains that he hadn’t actually meant to jump in the fountain, and she’s stopped laughing at him, he finally thinks to ask her name.
‘Gwen’
For a moment he thinks he must be going mad, thinks this is all a nightmare, but when he opens his eyes, she’s still there, gorgeous as anything, asking if he’s okay.
So he tells her. Tells her of Torchwood and Lisa and Jack and Gwen, and she listens, and nods, and laughs in all the right places.
He asks her out, and she says yes.
She says yes to a lot of questions.
//\\//\\//\\
At thirty seven and eight months, Ianto Jones finds happiness.
Baby Jack (actually Jacob, but Ianto will always, always call him Jack) is a mewling, squirming pink lump with legs. Mostly he cries and makes a mess in his nappy.
Ianto thinks he’s perfect.
Gwen mumbles sleepily into his shoulder, her eyes half-lidded after the exhaustion of the day. Her hair is shorter than it was, but still a pool of red splays out over her shoulders and cascades down her front.
Baby Jack has brown hair, with the slightest hint of red. He has a snub nose and long fingers like his father, and smells like baby powder and honey. Sweet and warm and comforting.
Which is exactly what babies are made for, in the end.
//\\//\\//\\
At forty three, Ianto Jones attends a funeral.
He’s been to plenty in his lifetime, his grandparents when he was young, his father more recently, but this one is worst of all.
His older sister is the one being lowered into that cold, hard, unforgiving ground. Fifty-four and three months old. Cancer, and she never told anyone.
He wonders what made her keep it a secret. Why she would avoid telling her family and friends, even in the last weeks of her life. Why she would struggle through pain and anguish and the knowledge death was coming to her in utter silence.
Secretly he knows. She did it because she loved.
//\\//\\//\\
At fifty, Ianto Jones knows his children are growing up.
Jacob (Who now refuses to be called Jack) is nearly thirteen. His younger sister Bella is eleven.
Jacob no longer plays with matchbox cars. He wants to play with real ones. Bella no longer plays with dolls. She worships real ones.
He’s not sure he’s quite ready to let go, but Gwen seems sure enough that it’s time. She pats his hand and smiles softly and he decides she’s right.
She was always better at these things than he was.
//\\//\\//\\
At sixty seven, Ianto Jones never sees it coming.
One minute, he’s walking down a quiet street, the next, claws are tearing into his flesh and there’s screaming all around.
‘Ianto, Ianto!’ Someone yells his name as he crumples. His fingers are cold. He can see the blood seeping through his shirt and he knows this is it.
Warm hands seem to dance over his cold skin. A figure crouches over him, pulls him upright.
‘Ianto, it’s me’ His vision is losing focus, and he can’t be certain he isn’t hallucinating from blood loss, but he’s quite certain it’s one Captain Jack Harkness holding him.
‘Jack’ His voice sounds so old, so weary. Jack hasn’t aged one day. Jack doesn’t know that he’s married, that he has children. He won’t have enough time to tell him.
‘Stay here, it’ll be okay’ Jack’s lips are soft, and Ianto knows he’s doing his glowy thing.
The world blurs and goes dark. Jack is still speaking but Ianto doesn’t hear. The greatcoat is soft against his cheek, and as his mind begins to cloud he thinks how glad he is to have lived such a wonderful life.
Such a wonderful, exciting, bloody dangerous life.
Wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
//\\//\\//\\
At approximately two hundred, give or take, and after 624 deaths, Jack Harkness learns you can’t save everyone.