Torchwood Fic: Many Of My Favorite Things Are Broken [Part 2]
Title: Many of My Favorite Things Are Broken
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen
Authors: rm & kalichan
Rating/Warning: NC-17, mostly plot, some porn.
Summary: The effect of being buried alive on a relationship: two steps forward, one step back. Takes place after 2x13: Exit Wounds.
Wordcount: ~20,250 [posted in 2 parts]
Authors' Notes: This is the sixth installment of our series, I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling. Next up, post-Journey's End.
Previous installments:
A Strange Fashion of Forsaking
Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny
To Learn This Holding and the Holding Back
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
I Imagine You Now in That Other City
Many of My Favorite Things Are Broken, Part 1
"How was dinner?" Gwen asked when Ianto brought her coffee the next morning.
"Complicated."
"Awful?" she asked.
Ianto smiled at her. There was something about her fits of sharp bleakness that was extremely comforting to him. "Not quite. Close."
"Should I ask?"
"Best not," he said, nodding his head towards Jack's office. Bad to gossip about the boss when the boss was home.
"How long are you --"
"Look, he waited how long to save us? It's probably not the same to you, and I know it's not the same to him, but it's the same to me."
"Is that the logic you used with Lisa?" Ianto heard Jack call down to him.
He stiffened and turned to look up at where Jack now leaned against a railing. "No, sir. It wasn't," Ianto said, annoyed but unwilling to be baited into it.
"You really might want to check that," Jack advised, his voice pointed.
Ianto turned back to Gwen and rolled his eyes. Jack didn't shout anything else down to him, so he began to make his way to the archives. He heard the office door shut with a bang, and so assumed Jack too had retreated from Gwen's steady, too-observant gaze.
At his workstation downstairs, he opened up his inbox to handle the latest series of correspondence from the city council's office, and found a note from Gwen that she'd obviously just sent off. No salutation or signature, just the one line:
It's the same; I'd wait forever too, if I were you.
He bit his lip, and then wrote back simply:
Message acknowledged. Thanks.
He went back to dealing with the business email. He didn't have long until he had to go collect Jack's dry-cleaning. Sometimes, the numerous facets of his job, when taken together, sort of still made his head want to explode.
When Ianto next saw Jack that day, he was in the room where they all stored their spare clothes. One wall was entirely taken up with Jack's RAF coats -- most of them identical. Some of these Jack refused to let him take to the cleaners at all; Ianto could only assume he had some sort of sentimental attachment to the bloodstains or the ragged holes, even though he never wore them.
He strolled in while Ianto was hanging up his shirts.
"Did you take care of talking to the mayor's office?" Jack asked.
"Yes," Ianto replied curtly. "Did you take care of talking to Whitehall?"
"I hate talking to Whitehall."
"We all have to do things we don't like from time to time," Ianto pointed out, knowing he sounded pompous or like a chiding mother, but unable to help himself.
"I'll get to it today."
"Try not to swear at them this time," Ianto said. "Be conciliating."
"I make no promises," Jack said.
"Well, that's nothing new," Ianto said, the words escaping him before he realized how they would sound.
Jack looked at him levelly, and Ianto blushed. "Sorry," he added. "That might've come out wrong."
"You think?" Jack asked, but there wasn't as much rancor in his voice as Ianto expected.
He went back to hanging up Jack's trousers. Jack, oddly, didn't leave, but also didn't say anything. Finally the silence began to get on Ianto's nerves.
"I've always wanted to ask, sir, why you have so many of the same coat?" he asked, as he hung one up.
"I thought you liked the coat," Jack said.
"Yeah, of course I do," Ianto said, realizing that Jack must've remembered that too, and not sure if he should comment on it or not. He decided against it; he'd been annoyed by the constant diagnosis before. "Most normal people don't buy identical items of outerwear by the gross, though."
"Does anything about me seem normal to you?"
"Not really, I suppose. So no reason then? Just a quirk?"
"I really like that coat. My clothes don't always survive as well as I do. When they got around to making them again," he said, gesturing to the line of coats, "on my second time through, I had the design sent to a tailor, got it copied. Knew I'd be here a while. Didn't want to run out."
Ianto shook his head, amazed at how oddly careful Jack was about certain parts of his life.
"You hang on to what you can," Jack added, as if reading his mind. "Coats can be copied. People not so much."
"It's a losing battle, hanging on, isn't it?" Ianto asked, looking at Jack again and feeling a rush of sadness.
"Sure," Jack said. "Doomed to failure. Doesn't stop us though, does it?"
"No," Ianto said.
"I should get back to work," Jack said. "Make that phone call."
"Will I see you tonight, sir?" Ianto asked.
"Do you want to?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't," Ianto said. "God, Jack, why are you so angry with me? Is it... you rang me up last night, didn't you? It wasn't some nightmare."
"It was me," Jack said.
"I -- I didn't know what to say about it the first time. I still don't."
Jack shrugged. "I remembered how I felt. Maybe I remembered it part of the time I was trying to get back here too. I don't know."
Ianto bit his lip and nodded.
"Look, it's not why I'm angry with you."
"Then why are you?"
"I'm not sure yet. I just know it's not that. Definitely not that," Jack said with a grin that was almost shy. "When I figure it out, I'll let you know."
Ianto was puzzled. If it wasn't Lisa and it wasn't that killing Jack business, he couldn't imagine what it could be.
***
Ianto ordered in takeaway without even consulting Jack. Mainly because he couldn't find the man, but also because someone had to make an executive decision, and Ianto's was that Jack was definitely not ready for restaurants, at least not with him.
After waiting for hours for Jack to appear, and trying and failing to rouse Jack on the comms, Ianto stood in the middle of the empty Hub, put his hands on his hips and, slightly bitter, asked the air, "If I were my undead, unwell boss captain 'boyfriend,' where would I be?"
Myfanwy squawked, and Ianto looked up to her nest as it hit him.
"Roof!"
The roof of the Millennium Centre was, as far as Ianto was concerned, Jack's domain. While the others might join him on it from time to time -- well, just Gwen now, but Owen and Tosh had been known to visit it with him too -- it was a thing Ianto avoided like the plague. It wasn't just that he was afraid of heights, not exactly, but he was ridiculously afraid of how big and strange the world was up high and full of wind with someone like Jack at his side. Like the stars might just wink strangely and spirit them away. It wasn't a chance he had ever wanted to take. Besides, he worked with Jack and slept with Jack and in so much as the Hub could be a home, sort of almost lived with Jack, so Jack, Ianto had always thought, needed to have some place that was just his. And if Ianto's fear cemented it, well, that was probably about right, he thought.
"Fuck," he added succinctly. Myfanwy didn't answer, having already said whatever she needed to say. He didn't know what he ought to do.
On the roof, Jack had lost track of time. Again. He knew he was supposed to see Ianto and knew he should, at least peripherally, be concerned about keeping the man waiting. But it was hard to feel bad about that when what Ianto did was waiting. And it was the waiting, Jack realized, that was making him so very angry.
Not for any of the obvious reasons that were, without a doubt, churning a series of anxieties about the two of them through Ianto's head, but simply because the idea of someone, whose life was finite, waiting and being willing to wait forever for someone who actually was forever was just mind-bending in its disturbingness. It was the way Ianto paused, constantly: with coffee, with a hand to help Jack on with his coat, to preface a witty remark. The universe lived in those moments and in some strange way, they made Ianto seem powerful and frightening to Jack now. He wondered that he hadn't been able to see it before. But back then the world was quieter and his mind smaller before he'd been put in the ground.
Jack wondered if he'd loved Cardiff so much, because he was already here, making its soil familiar from the first moment he set foot on its shores. It was the sort of thing he wanted to ask Ianto about because it seemed like the sort of melancholy a man like him would know.
He stared down at the Plass beneath him and wondered if the city now felt strange because he was no longer underneath it, no longer a part of it, no longer fueling it on some strange and secret level with the monotony of his agony and death throes. He still loved it though, he thought, despite everything. Whatever that meant.
Lost in his thoughts, it took him a moment to feel that prickle on his back which meant someone was watching him. He turned and narrowed his eyes, seeing all the way on the other end of the roof, a small indomitable figure, dwarfed by the expanse.
It seemed he'd been found.
Ianto looked out over the distance, and saw Jack -- his outline dark against the moonlight -- standing balanced at the very edge of the roof where it was tilted, looking out over the Plass. He felt a vertiginous shudder in the pit of his stomach.
But Jack turned, caught sight of him, and then started making his way back to where Ianto was standing. Ianto decided to meet him half way, meeting somewhere in the centre of the huge curve.
"You looking for me?" he asked, once they were in speaking distance.
"You weren't answering your mobile, sir," Ianto said. "Or responding on the comms."
"Did something happen?"
"No," Ianto said.
They stood side by side now, staring off into the sky. The wind picked up, and Ianto shivered.
"I don't remember you ever coming up here before," Jack remarked. "Is that right?"
"Yeah," Ianto replied.
"Why not?" Jack asked.
Ianto shrugged. "Maybe I'm nervous of heights," he offered.
"Really?" Jack said, raising an eyebrow. "Interesting."
"Have you been spending lots of time up here?"
"Here, there. Lots of roofs about. You're lucky I didn't pick the Altolusso today. Narrow ledge, significantly higher up. This is nothing. An acrophobic and a claustrophic -- not exactly a match made in heaven, are we?"
When Ianto didn't make any response to his jibe, he added coldly, "What made you so brave all of a sudden? Did you come up here just because I'm late for dinner? Sweet of you."
"None of this is my fault, Jack," Ianto said, the frustration evident in his manner. "I don't know why you're blaming me for it all."
"I'm not," Jack said. "Why would you think that?"
"What else am I supposed to think?"
"You don't understand," Jack said, after a long pause. "I'm not even sure you can understand."
"Try me," Ianto said.
"It was different before," Jack said. "Before, I thought I understood what was ahead of me, but I didn't. Not really. I'm not sure how much longer I can do this."
"Do what?" Ianto asked, clearly forcing his voice to sound calm.
"Be this," he said, indicating himself. "Be Jack. Be your Jack."
Ianto stood staring at him, stunned. His heart gave a great throb, and he felt an odd roaring in his ears.
"I remembered this time," Jack said, staring up into the sky. "But now I understand that one day, I just won't. No matter what I do. Two thousand years? It felt like an eternity, but it was just a day for you, and one day, even that'll be an eyeblink for me. I promised you once I'd never forget your story, remember?"
Ianto nodded, feeling his eyes sting and prickle with tears.
"But I will. I won't be able to help it. Someday I won't even remember your name. You'll be dead all over again, and I won't even know it, but I'll have killed you. For good."
"You'll try, Jack, you've more than proven that you'll try. And that's enough."
"No, it's not. And I wish you'd stop saying that."
"Saying what?"
"That it's enough. That it's all right. That everything will be just fine, because it is not fine. I don't want this, Ianto! And neither should you."
"Jack --"
"Do you know why I got stuck looking for the Doctor for so long?"
"Because you loved him and you thought he could fix you," Ianto said simply, reciting a lesson learned almost as if by rote.
"Yeah, well, he couldn't even stand to look at me."
"Jack --"
"No, it's true. God knows, this last time he tried. He really tried. And he seemed to regret it all. But I was... I am pain to him, Ianto."
"I'm sorry. And I can't fix you. But you're not pain to me."
"Because you're not willing to admit it!"
"Don't tell me what I feel, Jack."
"Why not? It's there for anyone to see," he said. And I can hear you, Jack thought with a sick realization. It wasn't specific, it wasn't words, it wasn't even all the time, but right now he wasn't, he suddenly realized, cuing off Ianto's body language or his voice or a familiarity he just hadn't entirely remembered yet. Jack could hear him. No wonder his head hurt.
"Fine," Ianto said. "But it doesn't go away by removing myself from this situation."
"What if I don't want you here?" Jack asked.
"At this point? I'd say you were lying. Because this is exactly, exactly what you were doing with me a week ago, a month ago, from the moment this thing turned --" Ianto paused and fumbled for the word.
"Serious?" Jack offered, suddenly amused.
Ianto stared at him. "Yeah. Except now it's about your big, bad trauma, and you think all of this is somehow justified."
"I WAS BURIED ALIVE FOR 2,000 YEARS," Jack shouted at him.
"I know," Ianto said calmly. "And now you're not."
"It's not like I can just snap my fingers..." Jack said, trailing off, sounding awkward.
"No. But my guess is this won't be the worst of the things out there waiting for you. So maybe you should try."
"What if you're my last?" Jack said, turning away from him and running a hand through his hair as he took a few steps to work off the energy of the argument.
"Last what?" Ianto asked, confused.
"Chance to be human."
"Oh, Jack," Ianto said, too dismayed for the other man to really believe in or react to his words on his own behalf. "I'd never want that."
"Wouldn't you?" Jack asked, voice a bit sharp.
Ianto shook his head. "Truly no. Not now. Plus," he said, striving for some sort of false cheer, "if that happened, you'd eventually run out of stories. And we can't have that."
"You hate my stories," Jack said.
"No. I just hate when I feel like you'll never tell any about me, except as the kid -- cute, good suits, pretty mouth -- who kept a Cyberman in your basement."
"Why did we steal Gwen's lip gloss?" Jack asked abruptly. "I found it down in my room, thought maybe she and I... but somehow, I remember you were there. We haven't, have we?"
"You and Gwen? Not to my knowledge, sir, but it's certainly possible."
Jack made a considering noise.
Ianto cleared his throat, frantic to get the conversation back on track, but having no idea what the hell that even meant in a discussion, in a life, in a world like this.
"You dressed me up like a girl," he said, finally. "Well, sort of, anyway, with stuff out of Gwen's desk. Lip gloss. Her knickers. And then you fucked me. After her wedding."
Jack turned back to look at him. "You let me do that?"
"Yeah," Ianto said, not sure any more what the rules were, or how to cope with any of this. "Haven't you guessed that, Jack? Isn't it obvious? I'd do anything for you."
"I know," Jack said. "It frightens me."
They stared off into the distance for a while.
"Watermelon," Jack said.
"What?"
"I remember now. It tasted like watermelon. On you. And you told me you loved me."
Ianto didn't say anything.
"Was I supposed to pretend I didn't remember that?"
"Probably," Ianto said. "It might be easier."
"Well, fuck that. It's not easy for me, why should it be for you?"
"Charming," Ianto said. "I wish things could be easier for you, Jack. You could try to do the same for me."
"You want to know why I'm angry at you, Ianto? Why I'm so furious? Maybe I should never have made you any promises, but neither should you."
"What are you talking about?" Ianto said, aghast. "I've never promised you anything."
"Of course you have," Jack shouted.
Ianto took a step back from his rage.
"I'll always be here, Jack," Jack mimicked savagely. "I'll always be waiting, Jack. It'll be okay, Jack. I'd never want that, Jack. Every time you put on my coat, or fucking call me sir. You think I can save you. You promise me that I can save you. All of you. And I hate you for it. You. Gwen. Gray. Tosh. Owen. Everyone."
Ianto tried to put out a hand to touch Jack's shoulder, and he flinched away. "Don't touch me," he said, his voice ragged.
"Why?" Ianto cried. "Why won't you let me help you?"
"I love you," Jack said, throwing the words at Ianto like bullets, designed to wound. His voice had been kinder when he'd said 'I hate you.'
This, Ianto thought, this is what heartbreak feels like. When someone tells you something you've always wanted to hear, and you can't imagine anything more awful.
"I have to get used to it," Jack added, his voice softer now, but Ianto could feel the anguish radiating off him in waves. "I have to. Someday there will be no one else left. I'll be alone. And it will never end."
Ianto couldn't bear the pain in his voice, couldn't bear the thought of Jack, who adored physical contact, who fed off of his senses more than anyone he had ever met, trying to preemptively detach himself from them before they deserted him.
Ianto found he was praying, desperately, that he could remember and use now everything Jack had taught him, because if anyone needed the fruit of all those lessons, it was Jack. Please, he thought. Please.
"Jack," Ianto ordered, as firmly as he could. "Sit down, and shut up."
Jack was clearly so taken aback at the whip-crack of command in Ianto's voice that he did as he was told, obeying out of instinct.
"You told me once that all times are now," Ianto said. "Do you remember telling me that?"
Jack shook his head.
"You did. You told me that it was the first lesson you learned at the Time Agency."
"It is," Jack said softly, his eyes far away.
"It's all happened already," Ianto said. "It's all happening right now."
"I wish it wouldn't," Jack said.
"Well, whatever horrors await us all, I'm still sure it's better than the world frozen in amber," Ianto said, staring down at him.
"Why? Why are you sure of that?"
Ianto shrugged. "Because I have to be. And you have to be too." He sat down next to him. "Now, can you not stand to have me touch you because of the claustrophobia or because you've decided hating me is the easy way out?"
"This isn't easy," Jack snapped.
"Glad you noticed," Ianto said breezily, not letting Jack's sullenness derail him.
"Look, I wouldn't be up here if the claustrophobia wasn't bad."
"Sure you would. You used to hang out on roofs all the time. Have you slept at all since you've been back?"
"I don't need to. You know that."
"Yeah, and you know what I mean."
"No. I can't be down there for more than a few minutes," Jack said, meaning the cubby under his office.
"And you only eat when I mention you should. Have you let anyone touch you?" Ianto asked.
"This is hardly the time to discuss my fidelity," Jack said acidly.
"You know, Jack, I'm trying very hard to be gentle with you here. Courteous. Respectful of a situation that, as you keep noting, I can barely understand. But you aren't helping. My point, because you would never be defensive about sex if you were actually having any, is that for someone who is so goddamn miserable about living forever, you barely even seem like you're alive at all."
"Now if only I felt that way," Jack said, "we'd be all set."
"What were you like before all this happened?" Ianto asked.
"You were here."
"No. I mean, before the death not sticking thing. Were you as mad for flesh and food and dance and drink?"
Jack snorted. "And danger and violence and speed. Can't forget those."
"Right. So maybe you got extra life because you already had extra life."
"Don't. Do not try to create reasons for this. Especially not out of some pap you learned at church as a child."
"My point, Jack, is that a different man might not have survived this. A different man would have given up and locked himself in a block of ice or the cryo units downstairs and just slept 'til the end. You still could. Right now if you wanted. I'd probably even help you. But you haven't. So why's that the case? And more importantly, why aren't you acknowledging that this whole awful struggle you've been dragging us through with you is a choice? And not mine or Gwen's or John fucking Hart's. But yours."
"Because promises aren't fair, Ianto. Because maybe I'll change my mind tomorrow. Maybe you will."
"Then don't promise me things," Ianto said, laying back on the roof to look at the stars. "And when I say 'sir' know I mean that you already saved me and that I won't blame you when you don't. Because I haven't. I won't."
"You can't know that, Ianto."
"And you can't be the undead guy who keeps getting stuck in WWII. But you are. So I know that. That's just how it is. I know things."
"Oh, please, this is enough of a mess without you deciding --"
"It's a choice, Jack, that's all," Ianto said cutting him off.
"What a novelty."
"Stop," Ianto said sharply again, amazed at how much his voice contrasted with the odd state of relaxation he'd somehow managed to find, lying on a roof arguing with Jack of all things.
Listening to Jack's breathing, Ianto smiled. "You're waiting for another command, Jack," Ianto observed, not as kindly as he perhaps should have, but Jack was, and probably always had been, messed up in the head enough to appreciate a little brutality. "So what was that about choice?" he continued.
"I don't know anymore," Jack said, rubbing his temples.
"Jack." Ianto made his voice as definite as possible, knowing somewhere underneath that he was just making this up as he was going along, and that probably nothing he was saying was even true, but on the surface, this was the easiest it had been to talk to Jack since his return, such as it was. The words were just rolling off his tongue, like he was reading them off a page. "You might not know right now, but I do."
Jack's breathing quickened a little more, but he didn't say anything. That's it, Ianto thought, lay it down. No man can carry this all alone. Let me hold you up. Please.
"You're here. You can move. You can feel things. It's not gone yet," Ianto said. "Think about it," he added cruelly, because Jack didn't seem to respond well to his kindness. "Can you really afford to miss even a second of this?"
Jack closed his eyes, and Ianto went on, "Are you really that much of a fool?"
Ianto spared a glance for the world around them, and realised how exposed he felt, out here in the open. He knew no one was looking, but he felt like he was under a million eyes, and he hated it, hated the idea of being out here where it seemed like anyone could see them, even if that was impossible. But this was what Jack needed apparently, and so Ianto was all out of choices, regardless of what he'd been babbling about a second ago.
"I know you're not," Ianto said, not letting his uncertainty show at all.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jack's hands were clenched into fists, and his body was rigid. Somehow Ianto had to break him out of this.
"You don't come out here to feel nothing," he continued. "It's not the absence of earth. It's the wind. Gwen said once. Said you took her up here and babbled to her about how when the job didn't feel heroic, roofs did. At least for you."
"I don't remember," Jack said.
"Well, it's not important," Ianto replied. After all, at this juncture, he was just lying outright, not to mention throwing random shit at the wall to see what would stick. "The point is, no matter what you may think, Jack, you've been coming up here to feel things. But the wind can't hold you. Or listen to you. Or fight beside you. So you're going to have to let us back in."
"But I can't --"
"Yes, you can, Jack. I'm telling you how. I'm telling you, you're already doing it. God, have you even touched yourself since you've been back?"
"Bad idea," Jack murmured.
"Too many memories? Too muddy? Couldn't keep Jamie and I straight?"
"The back catalog's a hell of a lot longer than that, Ianto."
"Yeah, well, right now it doesn't matter. My voice. That's it, Jack. Not the traffic down there, not the wind, not your memories, just my voice. Yeah?"
"Yeah," Jack said.
"Good. Now I want you to touch yourself."
"Iant --"
"Shut up, Jack. Not your voice either. Just mine. Run your fingers over your face, light as you can. Like I'm sure you've done more times than I can count. In the dark. Convincing yourself you're not alone, trying to come up with a story to go with your wank."
Jack gasped.
"Probably during wars I've never even heard of, yeah?"
"Yeah," Jack admitted.
"Good," Ianto said, finally feeling confident enough in this mess to actually turn his head and look straight at Jack whose body still seemed fiercely rigid and utterly miserable. Jack was fighting him, and Ianto somehow had to find the way through that made more sense than just grabbing him and not letting go. Because while it was an option, it was an ethically murky enough one in Ianto's mind that he didn't want to take it unless he had to. On the other hand, Ianto was fairly sure he could morally justify anything that left Jack somehow better, somehow more human, than he was now.
"Now your throat," he suggested.
"I remember," Jack said as he slid his hand down under his jaw and just rested it there on his adam's apple.
"I'm glad," Ianto said softly, marveling a little that he actually was.
"But I don't want to."
"Why?"
Jack said nothing.
"Answer the question, Jack."
"Because then I'd have to believe you can fix this, and you can't," Jack yelled, startling Ianto enough that he flinched.
Ianto had had enough. He sat up and lunged at Jack, grabbing his arms and pinning the other man under him. "You are not making the rules tonight, Jack Harkness."
"Get off me."
"No," Ianto growled, clinging desperately to the resolve he didn't even want.
"Please," Jack said, sounding panicked.
"No. I don't smell like dirt. You can feel the bloody air. I'm talking to you. You know damn well where we are. So no, Jack, absolutely goddamn not."
Jack squeezed his eyes shut, and Ianto thought, oh no you don't.
"Look at me," he said, through his teeth. "Damn you, look at me."
He could see Jack about to go into some sort of full fledged panic attack, and remembering his best friend from uni, drunk and hysterical, he took a deep breath and slapped Jack hard across the face.
Jack's eyes flew open and he broke Ianto's hold instantly and easily, his fist shooting out to connect with Ianto's jaw. Ianto's ears rang as his head snapped back, but as soon as he could manage it, he dove back over Jack to tackle him down again.
Somewhere, distantly, he remembered they were on a roof, and if they rolled off it -- well, it was only one of them that was immortal, but he ignored it.
"See," he panted. "I'm here. You're here. You're the one who said excuses were bullshit. It's not claustrophobia. You're just afraid."
Jack was breathing even faster now, and Ianto made himself laugh.
"How pathetic is that?" he said. "Not letting yourself touch anything when it's the one thing in all the world you can't live without. What is this? Penance? A hair shirt? The great Captain Jack Harkness reduced to this whinging and whining about how he can't feel? Show me you're not a coward, Jack, damn you. You want to fight something? How about something you can see?"
He leaned forward and kissed Jack, a deep, hard punishing kiss, driving his tongue into his mouth. Jack's lips opened underneath him, and for a few seconds the world went away.
Until Jack shoved him off, and then they were scuffling again; no science to it at all, just wild and reckless, hitting out blindly as they rolled.
Ianto could taste blood in his mouth from where Jack had knocked the inside of his cheek against his teeth; somehow when he'd managed to pin him down again finally (Jack's heart couldn't have been in it), he felt himself overflow with tenderness, as Jack opened his eyes, and looked at him, and then lifted up his head as much as he could to press his mouth up to Ianto's.
Jack kissed him like a drowning man sucking in air; Ianto gave himself over to it. He felt wetness against his skin, and he realized tears were pouring down Jack's face.
Ianto wanted to praise him or thank him or reassure him or something, but to do any of those things he'd have to break the kiss, and he just couldn't. He was too grateful to even stop to say so, and the kiss was too strange, too wonderous for Ianto not to let it draw itself out so that he could catalogue its facets -- Jack's desperation and relief, combined with a strange sense of awe, as if kissing were, until this moment, something he had merely read about.
For Jack it was like that first breath after death -- too much at once and so much it hurt. It was like being slammed back into his flesh, remembering how to use his mouth this way, remembering what Ianto felt like happy, remembering his own first kisses: a girl in a field and then her and her brother in their bed, late afternoon and wishing a storm would come in so he wouldn't have to leave, slinking back through the scarce shade for an evening meal.
Jack had been thirteen and he'd felt so giddy and proud, so strong, even though his flesh had still been delicate then, and the girl had regularly outraced him back to the houses that huddled together in a great gleaming mass on the beach. Jack bit Ianto's lip the way the boy had bit his, and he hoped he would remember to tell Ianto about it before what hadn't been a firm memory in a long, long time, longer than he'd been on earth, certainly, slipped away again.
"Don't stop," Jack mumbled through the kisses, clumsy and biting. "Please don't ever stop."
And stopping was really the least of Ianto's concerns. For him it was all a matter of the reasonableness of more, because he felt like he had to have everything before Jack froze or the past or the future caught up to them and tore it all away again. He was so rarely openly selfish, but how could he not be with so little to hold, he had to hold everything? What he'd never expected was that being such a small fraction of desire would feel so damn glorious. Ianto Jones: perfect footnote. If this was living, and it sure as hell seemed like it was, then he could live with this just fine.
Jack was solid beneath him, solid and warm, and Ianto was so captivated by the feel of him that he'd been missing for so long, he wanted to stay there forever, anchoring Jack, not letting him slide away. He still smelled exactly the same.
Ianto was pressing kisses all over Jack's face now, licking the salt water off, and Jack was giving little sobbing breaths of misery and arousal.
But then he could feel Jack straining up against him, and Ianto couldn't tell if he were fighting for air, fighting against the weight of Ianto's body crushing his chest, or if he were just trying to get them closer together, but he was afraid to take the chance.
He pulled back a bit, weight resting on his forearms now, so he could give Jack a little room to breathe. He watched Jack bite his own lip, and then press a hand to his own throat, as Ianto had ordered him to do just a little earlier.
"Please," Jack said, before saying some more words that weren't in any language Ianto knew. "I don't... I can't...."
"Okay, Jack. It's okay. I'll take care of you," Ianto said roughly, before rolling off of him.
Ianto was grateful it was night; he didn't think he'd have been able to do this in the bright light of day. Even the moon was almost too much. But Jack needed him calm and able to do this, and so he would.
Jack felt as if he had sloughed off all of his skin; there was nothing protecting him anymore from the outside world, and the sky seemed so huge above him, with all the stars that he couldn't see. His eyes hurt from crying, and he thought babies must experience this as they were being expelled from the womb into a strange and hostile universe, too bright, too sharp, too overwhelming.
It was dangerous, and he was afraid and so very tired.
He wanted to beg Ianto not to stop again; he needed his voice, needed something, but he couldn't find the words, except ones he'd used long ago when he'd had another life, another name.
Stop the ride, he thought, I want off. He felt his hand scrabbling at his throat, almost as if it belonged to someone else.
"Jack," he heard Ianto's voice say, low-pitched and gravelly. "Stop."
He didn't know why, but did as he was told, grateful for the lifeline of Ianto's voice in the dark. He'd gone so long without hearing anything besides what he thought of as the muffled, dead sounds of the living earth.
"Unbutton your shirt," Ianto said. "I want to see you."
Ianto watched as Jack managed it with shaking hands and then cursed at Jack's ever present white t-shirt. He pushed at Jack's greatcoat and at the shirt just unbuttoned, pulling his braces down, helping the man struggle out of the constricting layers and glad, glad the cloth wound up trapped under them both, because as Ianto pushed Jack's t-shirt up and got him to sit up enough to tug the thing off over his head and toss it away, he felt sure he didn't want to be responsible for Jack feeling the ground under his back ever again.
Ianto gasped as he placed a palm to Jack's chest. It was getting harder for him to focus now with so much of Jack available to him, willing suddenly to endure touch. Ianto felt as he rubbed his face against Jack's chest like he could breathe again, like he'd been buried under the earth too. Maybe he had.
He ran his hands up and down Jack's arms, over his chest, his face, and down along his throat. Jack grabbed him then, sharply by the wrist, and looked at him with a terrible desperation. "Please," he rasped. And Ianto, with a sick feeling, understood the nature of the request.
"No," he said. It wasn't a protest, but a fact.
"But I want to come back," Jack said.
"And you did. You're here. I need time to get used to you being alive again," Ianto said apologetically. "And so do you. I can't do it, Jack."
Jack's grip on him slackened, and he nodded, and Ianto made sure to keep his hand to Jack's throat as they kissed again and again. It was what he could offer, and he hoped that and his fear and desperation and an authority he absolutely, positively didn't feel, would somehow be enough.
He circled his hips down against Jack and was so grateful to feel that the other man was hard.
"Oh my good Jack," Ianto gasped, and Jack remembered a woman who used to praise him the same way in the months before he had met John Hart for the first time. He wondered what she was doing this strange night. Like Ianto had told him, all times were now.
He wanted to lose himself or forget or remember or maybe it was everything all at once, the grasping and the letting go. He didn't know how any more, it'd been so long since it was all new, since he was clumsy and unpracticed, and he didn't know why experience had deserted him, why everything felt so bewildering and strange, but all he seemed to know how to do was rigidly endure.
Yet that wasn't right either, that wasn't what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to give up, give in, let everything carry him away. No. Yes. And lights kept flaring in his mind -- dazzling, sharp pinpricks -- and his cock was throbbing and rock hard now, and Jack didn't know what to touch or do, what choices to make, but it hurt, and that was good because it was something.
When he closed his eyes he almost didn't even know where he was; it was like everything was rushing past them, not like dying, but like falling along an endless, spiraling tunnel.
There was something he had to do, much as he wished he didn't, as he felt the ecstatic, agonizing waves of feeling returning to senses that he had thought were so numb and atrophied.
His lips moved. Ianto. Gwen. Tosh. Owen. Torchwood. Sounds repeated so many times, 'til they'd almost lost all meaning, just a refrain muttered against the dark.
The pressure on him eased slightly, and somewhere, far away, he heard Ianto gasp.
His hand was in Ianto's now, and Ianto was forcing it between them, pressing down on Jack's cock, so he could feel himself.
"Feel that," Ianto whispered. "That's you."
Ianto was using Jack's own hand to rub against his cock, guiding his hand so he could stroke himself impossibly harder, the friction of the cloth against him painful and delicious.
Ianto had been trying to hold back, trying to keep from just letting this turn into some sort of crazy, thrashing fuck, but he'd wanted it so badly, that the idea of restraint nearly seemed like an insult.
And then Jack's lips moved in the shapes of their names, in a pattern of long habit, and Ianto felt each one stab into him.
Because he didn't know how he'd forgotten that this, right now, wasn't about him; this was for Jack. And he might have thought once that Jack needed him, but he'd been wrong - because this, a Jack broken and miserable, a shell of himself, was someone who didn't just love them, but apparently couldn't survive without them. And that wasn't anyone Jack had ever wanted to be, or anything that Ianto had wanted for him.
So Ianto wasn't going to let that happen. Jack had saved him, them, too many times for that.
"You don't even need me," he said hoarsely. "Not to feel. You can do it yourself."
In his long life, fractured though it was, there were many things Jack was sick of. And one of them was lessons about the difference between need and want. In truth, Jack needed nothing now, his survival being guaranteed, his flesh being fact. But it hadn't stopped him from wanting, not before and not now. Besides, despite what Ianto was saying, only one of them could really disappear at a time.
"Don't go," he said, catching Ianto's hand.
"What?" Ianto was startled. He'd become so caught up in his own narrative of whatever he was doing to or for or with Jack just to get them through it, that Jack saying something that wasn't in the script in his head just made him pause.
"There'll be plenty of time for just my own hand, won't there?"
Ianto nodded somewhat rattled. "Yeah, Jack, probably."
Jack closed his eyes for a moment, seeming pained. "Better give me something to remember it all by then," Jack said with a weak laugh, and Ianto recognized it, oddly, as an attempt at a joke.
It was all Ianto needed really, some sense that Jack was here with him and some sort of permission, and he was fumbling with Jack's zipper and working his fingers into Jack's clothes and unavoidably sighing as he wrapped his fingers around him. He laughed as he had a sudden random thought: first of Owen chiding him that Jack's cock was not a security blanket and then of Owen being appalled that Ianto was thinking of him. During sex. With Jack.
He refocused on Jack's face as he pumped and twisted his hand along Jack's shaft as the man had always liked it, although they had so rarely let anything go at just a hand job. Jack had his teeth grit, and Ianto couldn't figure out if he was struggling to let go or struggling not to.
"Come on, Jack," he urged in his ear.
Jack made a desperate, choking sound, and Ianto realized that not only could he not divine the nature of the battle, he couldn't even really tell which way it was going.
"Give in, Jack. Give in," Ianto chanted, and when that didn't seem to be enough, he started to shift them so he'd be able to take Jack in his mouth instead, but Jack stopped him, grabbing the back of his head and kissed him hard.
Ianto smiled into it, and Jack gasped sharply before biting down painfully on Ianto's lower lip and spilling, finally, into his hand.
Jack was shaking, but had the presence of mind to gentle their kiss anyway, as if that were somehow easier than pulling back and looking at the wide world around them.
Ianto pulled his hand away from Jack, meaning to keep their clothes from reaching a worse state than they already had, but he touched Jack's face with it instead, and soon he was smearing Jack's come across his lips and cheek before kissing and licking and sucking it away. Jack sucked one of Ianto's fingers into his mouth, and Ianto moaned at the feel of so much utterly filthy excellence between them. This, more than any of it, felt like Jack to Ianto: taking greedy pleasure in all the body's poor designs.
Somewhere after the burst of orgasm, after he'd stopped quivering; after Ianto had rolled to lie sort of half next to him and half on top of him; after he could still taste the come and salt and saliva mixing in his mouth -- all things that meant life to him and tasted of homes lost -- Jack realized that he'd been expecting -- without rhyme or reason really, but expecting nevertheless -- that after something like this, he'd be cured.
Jack didn't really want to think about what it probably said about him that he'd been so avoidant of something that he'd thought would fix him, but yeah, he'd been nearly certain that he'd open his eyes, and discover all was right with the world again; that he'd found a way back to himself, everything shuffled back to its proper place, exactly like the way his deaths seemed to hit some sort of mystical reset button, returning him to his factory settings, or at least to whatever he'd been right before his visit to Rose's one stop fix-it shop.
But no. It was still a weird expanding maze inside his head, a strange melange of memories and gaps, still healing along the same trajectory as before. No short cuts apparently, he thought ruefully.
"Still the slow path," he muttered against Ianto's mouth. "Always the fucking slow path."
"Huh?" Ianto asked.
"Nothing," Jack said. "Nothing important." He could feel Ianto's erection jutting insistently into his thigh, and he smiled to himself and reached out for it.
"It's okay," Ianto mumbled. "You don't have to--"
But he stopped talking when Jack got his trousers undone and finally was clasping his naked cock in his hand.
It felt good, Jack thought, and even better when he increased the pressure and began playing his fingers up and down it, in a way that, if memory served (and for once it seemed to), had always produced excellent results.
Ianto was moaning now, and Jack laughed to himself at the ordinariness of it. He buried his face in Ianto's neck, above the collar of his shirt and took a deep, sucking bite, wanting to leave a mark just because he could.
He increased the speed of his stroke, and Ianto began to breathe faster, panting with excitement, and Jack felt propelled along by his hungry desire, almost as if he were traveling the climb up to the peak again with him.
Ianto was saying his name now, and god, and shit, and Jack kept forcing him up higher and higher, capturing Ianto's mouth, and sliding his tongue inside.
And then suddenly, Ianto was coming with a howl, spurting up through Jack's fingers, and his come was all over the pair of them it seemed, Jack's bare chest, and on Ianto's shirt and jacket - which he still seemed to be wearing. He hadn't even loosened his tie, and that was so funny, Jack couldn't keep himself from bursting out with laughter.
"What?" Ianto asked, still gasping, unable to stop himself from laughing along with Jack and not even knowing why. It felt good. Like relief, and even though Ianto knew he shouldn't let himself feel that, shouldn't give himself yet another opportunity to be tortured with false hope, he couldn't help it at the feel of Jack's smile against his throat. "What?" he asked again, hoping to get an answer this time.
"You're still wearing your tie!" Jack managed.
"Prepared for all circumstances, sir," Ianto said, the sir slipping in, despite all his intentions. The sir that Jack apparently hated now, but the other man didn't flinch or grimace at it.
"When I say it, I don't mean it the way you think I do," Ianto said, after a pause.
"I know," Jack said quietly.
"Can I ask if you're going to keep running then?"
"From you or from everything?" Jack asked.
"Both. Either."
"Don't know really. This seems like a good place to be right now, though. How's that?"
"I'll take what I can get," Ianto said dryly.
"You should be off demanding the world of someone, you know."
"I am. I do. That's why you hate me. Important detail that. Don't forget."
Jack smiled sadly. "I'll try."
Ianto echoed it and kissed his temple. "We're on a roof," he noted.
"We are."
"Did you always do this or do you just miss it up there?"
"Always. But it's the same thing," Jack said quietly.
"Sometimes, I think I miss it too," Ianto said.
"Don't," Jack said. "It's just like here really."
They lay there quietly for a long time, the silence easy at first but eventually oppressive, a reminder that they were, despite everything, strangers learning each other again.
"Earlier. Can I ask -- ?" Ianto trailed off, not even knowing how to phrase what he wanted to ask.
Jack shook his head. "Don't. Please. Sometimes it's like I come apart. Inches of air between all my joints, but it's inside my head. I don't like to think about it. Wish you hadn't seen it either."
"It's okay."
"No. Not really. You took advantage of it nicely enough though. So I guess I'm glad you knew to."
"Learned it from you," Ianto said quietly.
"Which should remind you, I've been a very bad man."
"We're all killers," Ianto said.
Jack sighed and, apparently without thinking, ran his hand through his hair before realizing the state of it. "Wow," he said, marveling. "We're utterly filthy."
"That we are," Ianto agreed. "In so many ways."
Jack chuckled.
"It's so late, it's early," Ianto observed, shivering a little as the wind picked up a bit and reminded him of all the places he was damp with sweat and other things.
"Yeah," Jack said, looking up at the sky and saw that it was beginning to lighten just slightly, heralding false dawn. "You cold?"
"I am a bit," Ianto said. "Freezing, in fact."
"Thanks for coming after me," Jack said abruptly. "I know you don't like it up here."
"Actually," Ianto said, "you were right before. I really did just do it because you were late for dinner, and I wanted to collect you. In point of fact, the food's still waiting downstairs. What do you say we--"
"Yeah, about that," Jack said, cutting him off. "You, uh, didn't happen to wedge the trapdoor with something on your way up, did you?"
"What?" Ianto said, in abject disbelief.
"Yeah. It locks from the other side. I was going to tell you, but somehow it didn't seem like the time."
"You're joking," Ianto said. "Please, please, tell me you're joking."
Jack shook his head.
"You must be joking! You come up here all the time!" Ianto said, his voice becoming shriller with each word. "Gwen, Tosh, Owen. They all did, with you."
"Well, yeah. When I bring a guest, we wedge the door. When I'm on my own," Jack said, nodding to the edge, "it's mostly easier just to dive. Especially in the middle of the night. No one around to see."
Ianto stared at him, his jaw hanging open.
"I can, uh, climb back up the stairs and let you out," Jack offered.
"Are you crazy?" Ianto exclaimed.
"Well, for a given value of crazy...."
"No. Just no."
"Bothered?" Jack teased.
"Right now? After everything? About everything? Oh so much."
"Well, what's your plan?" Jack asked, weary enough to be amused.
"We could shoot the lock," Ianto suggested.
Jack laughed.
"What?"
"We are not going to shoot the lock."
"Why not?"
"Because it's your version of diving off the roof."
"No. Because, see? No one dies."
"Still melodramatic," Jack said.
Ianto fished in his pocket for his mobile.
"What are you doing?" Jack asked.
"Calling Gwen. She can come fetch us."
"She's going to love that," Jack said, rolling his eyes.
"She might," Ianto said softly.
Jack gave him a quizzical look but let it go.
"We should get cleaned up," Ianto said to Jack as he waited for the call to connect.
Jack looked them both over. "How?" he asked incredulously.
Ianto nodded to Jack's discarded t-shirt. "Start scrubbing, I guess."
"It might be more dignified if I jump," Jack offered again, and Ianto turned his back on him as he waited for Gwen to pick up.
"Gwen? Yeah. Sorry to wake you. No... no, there's nothing wrong. Uh, except the part where we're trapped on the roof, and --"
Jack snatched the phone from Ianto. "He won't let me jump," Jack said into it.
Ianto smiled when he heard Gwen laugh and tell Jack that she should hope not. It was so good to finally, finally have someone on his side.
"Yeah," Jack added, "and Ianto's cold. So, you know. Whenever you can get here."
Ianto elbowed him in the ribs, while he heard Gwen tell Jack that he should just be a gentleman and give Ianto his coat before disconnecting the call.
"What?" Jack said.
"Just on general principle. And also because you're a bastard," Ianto said.
"Do you want my coat?" Jack said.
"I'm not actually a girl, you know," Ianto said.
Jack laughed. "Stubborn," he said, fondly.
"Yeah," Ianto said.
When Gwen finally arrived, they were sitting side by side cross-legged looking at the sunrise and listening to the sounds of the city just barely beginning to wake. They heard the clatter and metallic creak of the door opening and hurriedly got to their feet, whirling to face her.
As she entered the roof, she caught sight of them and seemed about to let the door slip through her fingers as Ianto shouted, "Don't let the door shut!"
"Don't be daft," Gwen called back, as she wedged it open. "I've done this before, you know."
She made her way out to join them in the middle of the roof.
"Never done it at sunrise though, and thanks very much for that, boys," she added sarcastically. "Can I just say how much I adore being woken out of a sound sleep to come rescue you two idiots?"
"We aim to please," Jack said loftily, and snaked an arm around her shoulders.
Gwen eyed them both up and down, obviously noting their state of utter dishevelment, and Ianto hoped he wasn't blushing.
Then she started and reached out a hand to touch Ianto's swollen cheek. "Is that a bruise?" she asked.
"Er," Ianto said. "Probably?"
Gwen narrowed her eyes at Jack. "What have you been doing?" she asked suspiciously.
"The usual," Jack said.
"It's fine, Gwen. Don't worry," Ianto said, making his voice as reassuring as possible, but knowing he still sounded shy.
She didn't look convinced, so he added, with a wink, "Innovative, remember?"
Gwen laughed, and Jack smiled at him admiringly.
"Are you better now?" Gwen asked, sounding like she was expecting a positive answer so she could go back to sleep. "Both of you?"
Ianto smiled, but shook his head a little. "A little. And most of that specific, I think," he said, glancing at Jack. "Not global. Not yet."
Jack smiled and looked at his feet. "Yeah," he agreed and then looked at Gwen before taking her hands even though his were still rather dubiously clean. "Things are still pretty scary in here," Jack admitted, tapping his head, by way of apology.
Gwen smiled and pulled away from him. "I don't mind," she said. "Just because I'm not as broken as our Ianto, doesn't mean I'm not as stubborn, Jack."
"Hey!" Ianto said, though Jack didn't think he really believed he had any grounds to actually object on.
Gwen went up on her toes to kiss his cheek and Jack couldn't help but smile at them and the friendship he had somehow forgotten or missed them forming in the first place.
Ianto put a hand around Gwen's waist. "Sit with us for a while?" Ianto asked.
Gwen nodded as he tugged her down to the surface of the roof. Though not entirely sure what had passed in the night, she understood that Ianto was asking her to witness and share in the fact that they'd somehow gotten at least a little piece of what they had once been back.
"Hey," Jack said, pressing between them so he could sit in the middle. He smiled like he was a boy still somewhere far away. "Cardiff," Jack sighed. "Of all the places in all the worlds to call home."
Gwen laughed sleepily and rested her head on his shoulder, knowing that on the other side of him, Ianto was probably doing the same thing.
"By the way, Gwen," Jack said casually, "before I forget. If you've been missing a pair of panties and a tube of lipgloss...."
Her head snapped up. "What?!" she exclaimed, while Jack emitted a soft oof as if someone had punched him in the ribs.
"Why did you have panties in your file drawer anyway?" Jack went on as soon as he got his breath back.
"Well, actually I don't have them in my file drawer, Jack, since they've been missing for a while now," she said, carefully carrying the fight back into the enemy camp. "I think the more important question is how, or even more, why you know that."
"Don't you remember?" Jack said, smugly. "I know everything."
"I thought that was Ianto," Gwen said, laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
Blushing furiously, Ianto stared out at the rapidly lightening sky and thought if this were the normal they'd all been fighting to get back to, perhaps he could've done without it.
But then he looked out of the corner of his eye at Jack and Gwen, who were elbowing each other back and forth like small children and giggling like school girls at a slumber party.
No, Ianto decided, definitely not. Jack had been right. He wouldn't miss this for the world.
end
Continue to Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Truth, Beauty: or, A Child's Guide to Modern Physics
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen
Authors: rm & kalichan
Rating/Warning: NC-17, mostly plot, some porn.
Summary: The effect of being buried alive on a relationship: two steps forward, one step back. Takes place after 2x13: Exit Wounds.
Wordcount: ~20,250 [posted in 2 parts]
Authors' Notes: This is the sixth installment of our series, I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling. Next up, post-Journey's End.
Previous installments:
A Strange Fashion of Forsaking
Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny
To Learn This Holding and the Holding Back
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
I Imagine You Now in That Other City
Many of My Favorite Things Are Broken, Part 1
"How was dinner?" Gwen asked when Ianto brought her coffee the next morning.
"Complicated."
"Awful?" she asked.
Ianto smiled at her. There was something about her fits of sharp bleakness that was extremely comforting to him. "Not quite. Close."
"Should I ask?"
"Best not," he said, nodding his head towards Jack's office. Bad to gossip about the boss when the boss was home.
"How long are you --"
"Look, he waited how long to save us? It's probably not the same to you, and I know it's not the same to him, but it's the same to me."
"Is that the logic you used with Lisa?" Ianto heard Jack call down to him.
He stiffened and turned to look up at where Jack now leaned against a railing. "No, sir. It wasn't," Ianto said, annoyed but unwilling to be baited into it.
"You really might want to check that," Jack advised, his voice pointed.
Ianto turned back to Gwen and rolled his eyes. Jack didn't shout anything else down to him, so he began to make his way to the archives. He heard the office door shut with a bang, and so assumed Jack too had retreated from Gwen's steady, too-observant gaze.
At his workstation downstairs, he opened up his inbox to handle the latest series of correspondence from the city council's office, and found a note from Gwen that she'd obviously just sent off. No salutation or signature, just the one line:
It's the same; I'd wait forever too, if I were you.
He bit his lip, and then wrote back simply:
Message acknowledged. Thanks.
He went back to dealing with the business email. He didn't have long until he had to go collect Jack's dry-cleaning. Sometimes, the numerous facets of his job, when taken together, sort of still made his head want to explode.
When Ianto next saw Jack that day, he was in the room where they all stored their spare clothes. One wall was entirely taken up with Jack's RAF coats -- most of them identical. Some of these Jack refused to let him take to the cleaners at all; Ianto could only assume he had some sort of sentimental attachment to the bloodstains or the ragged holes, even though he never wore them.
He strolled in while Ianto was hanging up his shirts.
"Did you take care of talking to the mayor's office?" Jack asked.
"Yes," Ianto replied curtly. "Did you take care of talking to Whitehall?"
"I hate talking to Whitehall."
"We all have to do things we don't like from time to time," Ianto pointed out, knowing he sounded pompous or like a chiding mother, but unable to help himself.
"I'll get to it today."
"Try not to swear at them this time," Ianto said. "Be conciliating."
"I make no promises," Jack said.
"Well, that's nothing new," Ianto said, the words escaping him before he realized how they would sound.
Jack looked at him levelly, and Ianto blushed. "Sorry," he added. "That might've come out wrong."
"You think?" Jack asked, but there wasn't as much rancor in his voice as Ianto expected.
He went back to hanging up Jack's trousers. Jack, oddly, didn't leave, but also didn't say anything. Finally the silence began to get on Ianto's nerves.
"I've always wanted to ask, sir, why you have so many of the same coat?" he asked, as he hung one up.
"I thought you liked the coat," Jack said.
"Yeah, of course I do," Ianto said, realizing that Jack must've remembered that too, and not sure if he should comment on it or not. He decided against it; he'd been annoyed by the constant diagnosis before. "Most normal people don't buy identical items of outerwear by the gross, though."
"Does anything about me seem normal to you?"
"Not really, I suppose. So no reason then? Just a quirk?"
"I really like that coat. My clothes don't always survive as well as I do. When they got around to making them again," he said, gesturing to the line of coats, "on my second time through, I had the design sent to a tailor, got it copied. Knew I'd be here a while. Didn't want to run out."
Ianto shook his head, amazed at how oddly careful Jack was about certain parts of his life.
"You hang on to what you can," Jack added, as if reading his mind. "Coats can be copied. People not so much."
"It's a losing battle, hanging on, isn't it?" Ianto asked, looking at Jack again and feeling a rush of sadness.
"Sure," Jack said. "Doomed to failure. Doesn't stop us though, does it?"
"No," Ianto said.
"I should get back to work," Jack said. "Make that phone call."
"Will I see you tonight, sir?" Ianto asked.
"Do you want to?"
"I wouldn't have asked if I didn't," Ianto said. "God, Jack, why are you so angry with me? Is it... you rang me up last night, didn't you? It wasn't some nightmare."
"It was me," Jack said.
"I -- I didn't know what to say about it the first time. I still don't."
Jack shrugged. "I remembered how I felt. Maybe I remembered it part of the time I was trying to get back here too. I don't know."
Ianto bit his lip and nodded.
"Look, it's not why I'm angry with you."
"Then why are you?"
"I'm not sure yet. I just know it's not that. Definitely not that," Jack said with a grin that was almost shy. "When I figure it out, I'll let you know."
Ianto was puzzled. If it wasn't Lisa and it wasn't that killing Jack business, he couldn't imagine what it could be.
***
Ianto ordered in takeaway without even consulting Jack. Mainly because he couldn't find the man, but also because someone had to make an executive decision, and Ianto's was that Jack was definitely not ready for restaurants, at least not with him.
After waiting for hours for Jack to appear, and trying and failing to rouse Jack on the comms, Ianto stood in the middle of the empty Hub, put his hands on his hips and, slightly bitter, asked the air, "If I were my undead, unwell boss captain 'boyfriend,' where would I be?"
Myfanwy squawked, and Ianto looked up to her nest as it hit him.
"Roof!"
The roof of the Millennium Centre was, as far as Ianto was concerned, Jack's domain. While the others might join him on it from time to time -- well, just Gwen now, but Owen and Tosh had been known to visit it with him too -- it was a thing Ianto avoided like the plague. It wasn't just that he was afraid of heights, not exactly, but he was ridiculously afraid of how big and strange the world was up high and full of wind with someone like Jack at his side. Like the stars might just wink strangely and spirit them away. It wasn't a chance he had ever wanted to take. Besides, he worked with Jack and slept with Jack and in so much as the Hub could be a home, sort of almost lived with Jack, so Jack, Ianto had always thought, needed to have some place that was just his. And if Ianto's fear cemented it, well, that was probably about right, he thought.
"Fuck," he added succinctly. Myfanwy didn't answer, having already said whatever she needed to say. He didn't know what he ought to do.
On the roof, Jack had lost track of time. Again. He knew he was supposed to see Ianto and knew he should, at least peripherally, be concerned about keeping the man waiting. But it was hard to feel bad about that when what Ianto did was waiting. And it was the waiting, Jack realized, that was making him so very angry.
Not for any of the obvious reasons that were, without a doubt, churning a series of anxieties about the two of them through Ianto's head, but simply because the idea of someone, whose life was finite, waiting and being willing to wait forever for someone who actually was forever was just mind-bending in its disturbingness. It was the way Ianto paused, constantly: with coffee, with a hand to help Jack on with his coat, to preface a witty remark. The universe lived in those moments and in some strange way, they made Ianto seem powerful and frightening to Jack now. He wondered that he hadn't been able to see it before. But back then the world was quieter and his mind smaller before he'd been put in the ground.
Jack wondered if he'd loved Cardiff so much, because he was already here, making its soil familiar from the first moment he set foot on its shores. It was the sort of thing he wanted to ask Ianto about because it seemed like the sort of melancholy a man like him would know.
He stared down at the Plass beneath him and wondered if the city now felt strange because he was no longer underneath it, no longer a part of it, no longer fueling it on some strange and secret level with the monotony of his agony and death throes. He still loved it though, he thought, despite everything. Whatever that meant.
Lost in his thoughts, it took him a moment to feel that prickle on his back which meant someone was watching him. He turned and narrowed his eyes, seeing all the way on the other end of the roof, a small indomitable figure, dwarfed by the expanse.
It seemed he'd been found.
Ianto looked out over the distance, and saw Jack -- his outline dark against the moonlight -- standing balanced at the very edge of the roof where it was tilted, looking out over the Plass. He felt a vertiginous shudder in the pit of his stomach.
But Jack turned, caught sight of him, and then started making his way back to where Ianto was standing. Ianto decided to meet him half way, meeting somewhere in the centre of the huge curve.
"You looking for me?" he asked, once they were in speaking distance.
"You weren't answering your mobile, sir," Ianto said. "Or responding on the comms."
"Did something happen?"
"No," Ianto said.
They stood side by side now, staring off into the sky. The wind picked up, and Ianto shivered.
"I don't remember you ever coming up here before," Jack remarked. "Is that right?"
"Yeah," Ianto replied.
"Why not?" Jack asked.
Ianto shrugged. "Maybe I'm nervous of heights," he offered.
"Really?" Jack said, raising an eyebrow. "Interesting."
"Have you been spending lots of time up here?"
"Here, there. Lots of roofs about. You're lucky I didn't pick the Altolusso today. Narrow ledge, significantly higher up. This is nothing. An acrophobic and a claustrophic -- not exactly a match made in heaven, are we?"
When Ianto didn't make any response to his jibe, he added coldly, "What made you so brave all of a sudden? Did you come up here just because I'm late for dinner? Sweet of you."
"None of this is my fault, Jack," Ianto said, the frustration evident in his manner. "I don't know why you're blaming me for it all."
"I'm not," Jack said. "Why would you think that?"
"What else am I supposed to think?"
"You don't understand," Jack said, after a long pause. "I'm not even sure you can understand."
"Try me," Ianto said.
"It was different before," Jack said. "Before, I thought I understood what was ahead of me, but I didn't. Not really. I'm not sure how much longer I can do this."
"Do what?" Ianto asked, clearly forcing his voice to sound calm.
"Be this," he said, indicating himself. "Be Jack. Be your Jack."
Ianto stood staring at him, stunned. His heart gave a great throb, and he felt an odd roaring in his ears.
"I remembered this time," Jack said, staring up into the sky. "But now I understand that one day, I just won't. No matter what I do. Two thousand years? It felt like an eternity, but it was just a day for you, and one day, even that'll be an eyeblink for me. I promised you once I'd never forget your story, remember?"
Ianto nodded, feeling his eyes sting and prickle with tears.
"But I will. I won't be able to help it. Someday I won't even remember your name. You'll be dead all over again, and I won't even know it, but I'll have killed you. For good."
"You'll try, Jack, you've more than proven that you'll try. And that's enough."
"No, it's not. And I wish you'd stop saying that."
"Saying what?"
"That it's enough. That it's all right. That everything will be just fine, because it is not fine. I don't want this, Ianto! And neither should you."
"Jack --"
"Do you know why I got stuck looking for the Doctor for so long?"
"Because you loved him and you thought he could fix you," Ianto said simply, reciting a lesson learned almost as if by rote.
"Yeah, well, he couldn't even stand to look at me."
"Jack --"
"No, it's true. God knows, this last time he tried. He really tried. And he seemed to regret it all. But I was... I am pain to him, Ianto."
"I'm sorry. And I can't fix you. But you're not pain to me."
"Because you're not willing to admit it!"
"Don't tell me what I feel, Jack."
"Why not? It's there for anyone to see," he said. And I can hear you, Jack thought with a sick realization. It wasn't specific, it wasn't words, it wasn't even all the time, but right now he wasn't, he suddenly realized, cuing off Ianto's body language or his voice or a familiarity he just hadn't entirely remembered yet. Jack could hear him. No wonder his head hurt.
"Fine," Ianto said. "But it doesn't go away by removing myself from this situation."
"What if I don't want you here?" Jack asked.
"At this point? I'd say you were lying. Because this is exactly, exactly what you were doing with me a week ago, a month ago, from the moment this thing turned --" Ianto paused and fumbled for the word.
"Serious?" Jack offered, suddenly amused.
Ianto stared at him. "Yeah. Except now it's about your big, bad trauma, and you think all of this is somehow justified."
"I WAS BURIED ALIVE FOR 2,000 YEARS," Jack shouted at him.
"I know," Ianto said calmly. "And now you're not."
"It's not like I can just snap my fingers..." Jack said, trailing off, sounding awkward.
"No. But my guess is this won't be the worst of the things out there waiting for you. So maybe you should try."
"What if you're my last?" Jack said, turning away from him and running a hand through his hair as he took a few steps to work off the energy of the argument.
"Last what?" Ianto asked, confused.
"Chance to be human."
"Oh, Jack," Ianto said, too dismayed for the other man to really believe in or react to his words on his own behalf. "I'd never want that."
"Wouldn't you?" Jack asked, voice a bit sharp.
Ianto shook his head. "Truly no. Not now. Plus," he said, striving for some sort of false cheer, "if that happened, you'd eventually run out of stories. And we can't have that."
"You hate my stories," Jack said.
"No. I just hate when I feel like you'll never tell any about me, except as the kid -- cute, good suits, pretty mouth -- who kept a Cyberman in your basement."
"Why did we steal Gwen's lip gloss?" Jack asked abruptly. "I found it down in my room, thought maybe she and I... but somehow, I remember you were there. We haven't, have we?"
"You and Gwen? Not to my knowledge, sir, but it's certainly possible."
Jack made a considering noise.
Ianto cleared his throat, frantic to get the conversation back on track, but having no idea what the hell that even meant in a discussion, in a life, in a world like this.
"You dressed me up like a girl," he said, finally. "Well, sort of, anyway, with stuff out of Gwen's desk. Lip gloss. Her knickers. And then you fucked me. After her wedding."
Jack turned back to look at him. "You let me do that?"
"Yeah," Ianto said, not sure any more what the rules were, or how to cope with any of this. "Haven't you guessed that, Jack? Isn't it obvious? I'd do anything for you."
"I know," Jack said. "It frightens me."
They stared off into the distance for a while.
"Watermelon," Jack said.
"What?"
"I remember now. It tasted like watermelon. On you. And you told me you loved me."
Ianto didn't say anything.
"Was I supposed to pretend I didn't remember that?"
"Probably," Ianto said. "It might be easier."
"Well, fuck that. It's not easy for me, why should it be for you?"
"Charming," Ianto said. "I wish things could be easier for you, Jack. You could try to do the same for me."
"You want to know why I'm angry at you, Ianto? Why I'm so furious? Maybe I should never have made you any promises, but neither should you."
"What are you talking about?" Ianto said, aghast. "I've never promised you anything."
"Of course you have," Jack shouted.
Ianto took a step back from his rage.
"I'll always be here, Jack," Jack mimicked savagely. "I'll always be waiting, Jack. It'll be okay, Jack. I'd never want that, Jack. Every time you put on my coat, or fucking call me sir. You think I can save you. You promise me that I can save you. All of you. And I hate you for it. You. Gwen. Gray. Tosh. Owen. Everyone."
Ianto tried to put out a hand to touch Jack's shoulder, and he flinched away. "Don't touch me," he said, his voice ragged.
"Why?" Ianto cried. "Why won't you let me help you?"
"I love you," Jack said, throwing the words at Ianto like bullets, designed to wound. His voice had been kinder when he'd said 'I hate you.'
This, Ianto thought, this is what heartbreak feels like. When someone tells you something you've always wanted to hear, and you can't imagine anything more awful.
"I have to get used to it," Jack added, his voice softer now, but Ianto could feel the anguish radiating off him in waves. "I have to. Someday there will be no one else left. I'll be alone. And it will never end."
Ianto couldn't bear the pain in his voice, couldn't bear the thought of Jack, who adored physical contact, who fed off of his senses more than anyone he had ever met, trying to preemptively detach himself from them before they deserted him.
Ianto found he was praying, desperately, that he could remember and use now everything Jack had taught him, because if anyone needed the fruit of all those lessons, it was Jack. Please, he thought. Please.
"Jack," Ianto ordered, as firmly as he could. "Sit down, and shut up."
Jack was clearly so taken aback at the whip-crack of command in Ianto's voice that he did as he was told, obeying out of instinct.
"You told me once that all times are now," Ianto said. "Do you remember telling me that?"
Jack shook his head.
"You did. You told me that it was the first lesson you learned at the Time Agency."
"It is," Jack said softly, his eyes far away.
"It's all happened already," Ianto said. "It's all happening right now."
"I wish it wouldn't," Jack said.
"Well, whatever horrors await us all, I'm still sure it's better than the world frozen in amber," Ianto said, staring down at him.
"Why? Why are you sure of that?"
Ianto shrugged. "Because I have to be. And you have to be too." He sat down next to him. "Now, can you not stand to have me touch you because of the claustrophobia or because you've decided hating me is the easy way out?"
"This isn't easy," Jack snapped.
"Glad you noticed," Ianto said breezily, not letting Jack's sullenness derail him.
"Look, I wouldn't be up here if the claustrophobia wasn't bad."
"Sure you would. You used to hang out on roofs all the time. Have you slept at all since you've been back?"
"I don't need to. You know that."
"Yeah, and you know what I mean."
"No. I can't be down there for more than a few minutes," Jack said, meaning the cubby under his office.
"And you only eat when I mention you should. Have you let anyone touch you?" Ianto asked.
"This is hardly the time to discuss my fidelity," Jack said acidly.
"You know, Jack, I'm trying very hard to be gentle with you here. Courteous. Respectful of a situation that, as you keep noting, I can barely understand. But you aren't helping. My point, because you would never be defensive about sex if you were actually having any, is that for someone who is so goddamn miserable about living forever, you barely even seem like you're alive at all."
"Now if only I felt that way," Jack said, "we'd be all set."
"What were you like before all this happened?" Ianto asked.
"You were here."
"No. I mean, before the death not sticking thing. Were you as mad for flesh and food and dance and drink?"
Jack snorted. "And danger and violence and speed. Can't forget those."
"Right. So maybe you got extra life because you already had extra life."
"Don't. Do not try to create reasons for this. Especially not out of some pap you learned at church as a child."
"My point, Jack, is that a different man might not have survived this. A different man would have given up and locked himself in a block of ice or the cryo units downstairs and just slept 'til the end. You still could. Right now if you wanted. I'd probably even help you. But you haven't. So why's that the case? And more importantly, why aren't you acknowledging that this whole awful struggle you've been dragging us through with you is a choice? And not mine or Gwen's or John fucking Hart's. But yours."
"Because promises aren't fair, Ianto. Because maybe I'll change my mind tomorrow. Maybe you will."
"Then don't promise me things," Ianto said, laying back on the roof to look at the stars. "And when I say 'sir' know I mean that you already saved me and that I won't blame you when you don't. Because I haven't. I won't."
"You can't know that, Ianto."
"And you can't be the undead guy who keeps getting stuck in WWII. But you are. So I know that. That's just how it is. I know things."
"Oh, please, this is enough of a mess without you deciding --"
"It's a choice, Jack, that's all," Ianto said cutting him off.
"What a novelty."
"Stop," Ianto said sharply again, amazed at how much his voice contrasted with the odd state of relaxation he'd somehow managed to find, lying on a roof arguing with Jack of all things.
Listening to Jack's breathing, Ianto smiled. "You're waiting for another command, Jack," Ianto observed, not as kindly as he perhaps should have, but Jack was, and probably always had been, messed up in the head enough to appreciate a little brutality. "So what was that about choice?" he continued.
"I don't know anymore," Jack said, rubbing his temples.
"Jack." Ianto made his voice as definite as possible, knowing somewhere underneath that he was just making this up as he was going along, and that probably nothing he was saying was even true, but on the surface, this was the easiest it had been to talk to Jack since his return, such as it was. The words were just rolling off his tongue, like he was reading them off a page. "You might not know right now, but I do."
Jack's breathing quickened a little more, but he didn't say anything. That's it, Ianto thought, lay it down. No man can carry this all alone. Let me hold you up. Please.
"You're here. You can move. You can feel things. It's not gone yet," Ianto said. "Think about it," he added cruelly, because Jack didn't seem to respond well to his kindness. "Can you really afford to miss even a second of this?"
Jack closed his eyes, and Ianto went on, "Are you really that much of a fool?"
Ianto spared a glance for the world around them, and realised how exposed he felt, out here in the open. He knew no one was looking, but he felt like he was under a million eyes, and he hated it, hated the idea of being out here where it seemed like anyone could see them, even if that was impossible. But this was what Jack needed apparently, and so Ianto was all out of choices, regardless of what he'd been babbling about a second ago.
"I know you're not," Ianto said, not letting his uncertainty show at all.
Out of the corner of his eye, he could see Jack's hands were clenched into fists, and his body was rigid. Somehow Ianto had to break him out of this.
"You don't come out here to feel nothing," he continued. "It's not the absence of earth. It's the wind. Gwen said once. Said you took her up here and babbled to her about how when the job didn't feel heroic, roofs did. At least for you."
"I don't remember," Jack said.
"Well, it's not important," Ianto replied. After all, at this juncture, he was just lying outright, not to mention throwing random shit at the wall to see what would stick. "The point is, no matter what you may think, Jack, you've been coming up here to feel things. But the wind can't hold you. Or listen to you. Or fight beside you. So you're going to have to let us back in."
"But I can't --"
"Yes, you can, Jack. I'm telling you how. I'm telling you, you're already doing it. God, have you even touched yourself since you've been back?"
"Bad idea," Jack murmured.
"Too many memories? Too muddy? Couldn't keep Jamie and I straight?"
"The back catalog's a hell of a lot longer than that, Ianto."
"Yeah, well, right now it doesn't matter. My voice. That's it, Jack. Not the traffic down there, not the wind, not your memories, just my voice. Yeah?"
"Yeah," Jack said.
"Good. Now I want you to touch yourself."
"Iant --"
"Shut up, Jack. Not your voice either. Just mine. Run your fingers over your face, light as you can. Like I'm sure you've done more times than I can count. In the dark. Convincing yourself you're not alone, trying to come up with a story to go with your wank."
Jack gasped.
"Probably during wars I've never even heard of, yeah?"
"Yeah," Jack admitted.
"Good," Ianto said, finally feeling confident enough in this mess to actually turn his head and look straight at Jack whose body still seemed fiercely rigid and utterly miserable. Jack was fighting him, and Ianto somehow had to find the way through that made more sense than just grabbing him and not letting go. Because while it was an option, it was an ethically murky enough one in Ianto's mind that he didn't want to take it unless he had to. On the other hand, Ianto was fairly sure he could morally justify anything that left Jack somehow better, somehow more human, than he was now.
"Now your throat," he suggested.
"I remember," Jack said as he slid his hand down under his jaw and just rested it there on his adam's apple.
"I'm glad," Ianto said softly, marveling a little that he actually was.
"But I don't want to."
"Why?"
Jack said nothing.
"Answer the question, Jack."
"Because then I'd have to believe you can fix this, and you can't," Jack yelled, startling Ianto enough that he flinched.
Ianto had had enough. He sat up and lunged at Jack, grabbing his arms and pinning the other man under him. "You are not making the rules tonight, Jack Harkness."
"Get off me."
"No," Ianto growled, clinging desperately to the resolve he didn't even want.
"Please," Jack said, sounding panicked.
"No. I don't smell like dirt. You can feel the bloody air. I'm talking to you. You know damn well where we are. So no, Jack, absolutely goddamn not."
Jack squeezed his eyes shut, and Ianto thought, oh no you don't.
"Look at me," he said, through his teeth. "Damn you, look at me."
He could see Jack about to go into some sort of full fledged panic attack, and remembering his best friend from uni, drunk and hysterical, he took a deep breath and slapped Jack hard across the face.
Jack's eyes flew open and he broke Ianto's hold instantly and easily, his fist shooting out to connect with Ianto's jaw. Ianto's ears rang as his head snapped back, but as soon as he could manage it, he dove back over Jack to tackle him down again.
Somewhere, distantly, he remembered they were on a roof, and if they rolled off it -- well, it was only one of them that was immortal, but he ignored it.
"See," he panted. "I'm here. You're here. You're the one who said excuses were bullshit. It's not claustrophobia. You're just afraid."
Jack was breathing even faster now, and Ianto made himself laugh.
"How pathetic is that?" he said. "Not letting yourself touch anything when it's the one thing in all the world you can't live without. What is this? Penance? A hair shirt? The great Captain Jack Harkness reduced to this whinging and whining about how he can't feel? Show me you're not a coward, Jack, damn you. You want to fight something? How about something you can see?"
He leaned forward and kissed Jack, a deep, hard punishing kiss, driving his tongue into his mouth. Jack's lips opened underneath him, and for a few seconds the world went away.
Until Jack shoved him off, and then they were scuffling again; no science to it at all, just wild and reckless, hitting out blindly as they rolled.
Ianto could taste blood in his mouth from where Jack had knocked the inside of his cheek against his teeth; somehow when he'd managed to pin him down again finally (Jack's heart couldn't have been in it), he felt himself overflow with tenderness, as Jack opened his eyes, and looked at him, and then lifted up his head as much as he could to press his mouth up to Ianto's.
Jack kissed him like a drowning man sucking in air; Ianto gave himself over to it. He felt wetness against his skin, and he realized tears were pouring down Jack's face.
Ianto wanted to praise him or thank him or reassure him or something, but to do any of those things he'd have to break the kiss, and he just couldn't. He was too grateful to even stop to say so, and the kiss was too strange, too wonderous for Ianto not to let it draw itself out so that he could catalogue its facets -- Jack's desperation and relief, combined with a strange sense of awe, as if kissing were, until this moment, something he had merely read about.
For Jack it was like that first breath after death -- too much at once and so much it hurt. It was like being slammed back into his flesh, remembering how to use his mouth this way, remembering what Ianto felt like happy, remembering his own first kisses: a girl in a field and then her and her brother in their bed, late afternoon and wishing a storm would come in so he wouldn't have to leave, slinking back through the scarce shade for an evening meal.
Jack had been thirteen and he'd felt so giddy and proud, so strong, even though his flesh had still been delicate then, and the girl had regularly outraced him back to the houses that huddled together in a great gleaming mass on the beach. Jack bit Ianto's lip the way the boy had bit his, and he hoped he would remember to tell Ianto about it before what hadn't been a firm memory in a long, long time, longer than he'd been on earth, certainly, slipped away again.
"Don't stop," Jack mumbled through the kisses, clumsy and biting. "Please don't ever stop."
And stopping was really the least of Ianto's concerns. For him it was all a matter of the reasonableness of more, because he felt like he had to have everything before Jack froze or the past or the future caught up to them and tore it all away again. He was so rarely openly selfish, but how could he not be with so little to hold, he had to hold everything? What he'd never expected was that being such a small fraction of desire would feel so damn glorious. Ianto Jones: perfect footnote. If this was living, and it sure as hell seemed like it was, then he could live with this just fine.
Jack was solid beneath him, solid and warm, and Ianto was so captivated by the feel of him that he'd been missing for so long, he wanted to stay there forever, anchoring Jack, not letting him slide away. He still smelled exactly the same.
Ianto was pressing kisses all over Jack's face now, licking the salt water off, and Jack was giving little sobbing breaths of misery and arousal.
But then he could feel Jack straining up against him, and Ianto couldn't tell if he were fighting for air, fighting against the weight of Ianto's body crushing his chest, or if he were just trying to get them closer together, but he was afraid to take the chance.
He pulled back a bit, weight resting on his forearms now, so he could give Jack a little room to breathe. He watched Jack bite his own lip, and then press a hand to his own throat, as Ianto had ordered him to do just a little earlier.
"Please," Jack said, before saying some more words that weren't in any language Ianto knew. "I don't... I can't...."
"Okay, Jack. It's okay. I'll take care of you," Ianto said roughly, before rolling off of him.
Ianto was grateful it was night; he didn't think he'd have been able to do this in the bright light of day. Even the moon was almost too much. But Jack needed him calm and able to do this, and so he would.
Jack felt as if he had sloughed off all of his skin; there was nothing protecting him anymore from the outside world, and the sky seemed so huge above him, with all the stars that he couldn't see. His eyes hurt from crying, and he thought babies must experience this as they were being expelled from the womb into a strange and hostile universe, too bright, too sharp, too overwhelming.
It was dangerous, and he was afraid and so very tired.
He wanted to beg Ianto not to stop again; he needed his voice, needed something, but he couldn't find the words, except ones he'd used long ago when he'd had another life, another name.
Stop the ride, he thought, I want off. He felt his hand scrabbling at his throat, almost as if it belonged to someone else.
"Jack," he heard Ianto's voice say, low-pitched and gravelly. "Stop."
He didn't know why, but did as he was told, grateful for the lifeline of Ianto's voice in the dark. He'd gone so long without hearing anything besides what he thought of as the muffled, dead sounds of the living earth.
"Unbutton your shirt," Ianto said. "I want to see you."
Ianto watched as Jack managed it with shaking hands and then cursed at Jack's ever present white t-shirt. He pushed at Jack's greatcoat and at the shirt just unbuttoned, pulling his braces down, helping the man struggle out of the constricting layers and glad, glad the cloth wound up trapped under them both, because as Ianto pushed Jack's t-shirt up and got him to sit up enough to tug the thing off over his head and toss it away, he felt sure he didn't want to be responsible for Jack feeling the ground under his back ever again.
Ianto gasped as he placed a palm to Jack's chest. It was getting harder for him to focus now with so much of Jack available to him, willing suddenly to endure touch. Ianto felt as he rubbed his face against Jack's chest like he could breathe again, like he'd been buried under the earth too. Maybe he had.
He ran his hands up and down Jack's arms, over his chest, his face, and down along his throat. Jack grabbed him then, sharply by the wrist, and looked at him with a terrible desperation. "Please," he rasped. And Ianto, with a sick feeling, understood the nature of the request.
"No," he said. It wasn't a protest, but a fact.
"But I want to come back," Jack said.
"And you did. You're here. I need time to get used to you being alive again," Ianto said apologetically. "And so do you. I can't do it, Jack."
Jack's grip on him slackened, and he nodded, and Ianto made sure to keep his hand to Jack's throat as they kissed again and again. It was what he could offer, and he hoped that and his fear and desperation and an authority he absolutely, positively didn't feel, would somehow be enough.
He circled his hips down against Jack and was so grateful to feel that the other man was hard.
"Oh my good Jack," Ianto gasped, and Jack remembered a woman who used to praise him the same way in the months before he had met John Hart for the first time. He wondered what she was doing this strange night. Like Ianto had told him, all times were now.
He wanted to lose himself or forget or remember or maybe it was everything all at once, the grasping and the letting go. He didn't know how any more, it'd been so long since it was all new, since he was clumsy and unpracticed, and he didn't know why experience had deserted him, why everything felt so bewildering and strange, but all he seemed to know how to do was rigidly endure.
Yet that wasn't right either, that wasn't what he was supposed to do. He was supposed to give up, give in, let everything carry him away. No. Yes. And lights kept flaring in his mind -- dazzling, sharp pinpricks -- and his cock was throbbing and rock hard now, and Jack didn't know what to touch or do, what choices to make, but it hurt, and that was good because it was something.
When he closed his eyes he almost didn't even know where he was; it was like everything was rushing past them, not like dying, but like falling along an endless, spiraling tunnel.
There was something he had to do, much as he wished he didn't, as he felt the ecstatic, agonizing waves of feeling returning to senses that he had thought were so numb and atrophied.
His lips moved. Ianto. Gwen. Tosh. Owen. Torchwood. Sounds repeated so many times, 'til they'd almost lost all meaning, just a refrain muttered against the dark.
The pressure on him eased slightly, and somewhere, far away, he heard Ianto gasp.
His hand was in Ianto's now, and Ianto was forcing it between them, pressing down on Jack's cock, so he could feel himself.
"Feel that," Ianto whispered. "That's you."
Ianto was using Jack's own hand to rub against his cock, guiding his hand so he could stroke himself impossibly harder, the friction of the cloth against him painful and delicious.
Ianto had been trying to hold back, trying to keep from just letting this turn into some sort of crazy, thrashing fuck, but he'd wanted it so badly, that the idea of restraint nearly seemed like an insult.
And then Jack's lips moved in the shapes of their names, in a pattern of long habit, and Ianto felt each one stab into him.
Because he didn't know how he'd forgotten that this, right now, wasn't about him; this was for Jack. And he might have thought once that Jack needed him, but he'd been wrong - because this, a Jack broken and miserable, a shell of himself, was someone who didn't just love them, but apparently couldn't survive without them. And that wasn't anyone Jack had ever wanted to be, or anything that Ianto had wanted for him.
So Ianto wasn't going to let that happen. Jack had saved him, them, too many times for that.
"You don't even need me," he said hoarsely. "Not to feel. You can do it yourself."
In his long life, fractured though it was, there were many things Jack was sick of. And one of them was lessons about the difference between need and want. In truth, Jack needed nothing now, his survival being guaranteed, his flesh being fact. But it hadn't stopped him from wanting, not before and not now. Besides, despite what Ianto was saying, only one of them could really disappear at a time.
"Don't go," he said, catching Ianto's hand.
"What?" Ianto was startled. He'd become so caught up in his own narrative of whatever he was doing to or for or with Jack just to get them through it, that Jack saying something that wasn't in the script in his head just made him pause.
"There'll be plenty of time for just my own hand, won't there?"
Ianto nodded somewhat rattled. "Yeah, Jack, probably."
Jack closed his eyes for a moment, seeming pained. "Better give me something to remember it all by then," Jack said with a weak laugh, and Ianto recognized it, oddly, as an attempt at a joke.
It was all Ianto needed really, some sense that Jack was here with him and some sort of permission, and he was fumbling with Jack's zipper and working his fingers into Jack's clothes and unavoidably sighing as he wrapped his fingers around him. He laughed as he had a sudden random thought: first of Owen chiding him that Jack's cock was not a security blanket and then of Owen being appalled that Ianto was thinking of him. During sex. With Jack.
He refocused on Jack's face as he pumped and twisted his hand along Jack's shaft as the man had always liked it, although they had so rarely let anything go at just a hand job. Jack had his teeth grit, and Ianto couldn't figure out if he was struggling to let go or struggling not to.
"Come on, Jack," he urged in his ear.
Jack made a desperate, choking sound, and Ianto realized that not only could he not divine the nature of the battle, he couldn't even really tell which way it was going.
"Give in, Jack. Give in," Ianto chanted, and when that didn't seem to be enough, he started to shift them so he'd be able to take Jack in his mouth instead, but Jack stopped him, grabbing the back of his head and kissed him hard.
Ianto smiled into it, and Jack gasped sharply before biting down painfully on Ianto's lower lip and spilling, finally, into his hand.
Jack was shaking, but had the presence of mind to gentle their kiss anyway, as if that were somehow easier than pulling back and looking at the wide world around them.
Ianto pulled his hand away from Jack, meaning to keep their clothes from reaching a worse state than they already had, but he touched Jack's face with it instead, and soon he was smearing Jack's come across his lips and cheek before kissing and licking and sucking it away. Jack sucked one of Ianto's fingers into his mouth, and Ianto moaned at the feel of so much utterly filthy excellence between them. This, more than any of it, felt like Jack to Ianto: taking greedy pleasure in all the body's poor designs.
Somewhere after the burst of orgasm, after he'd stopped quivering; after Ianto had rolled to lie sort of half next to him and half on top of him; after he could still taste the come and salt and saliva mixing in his mouth -- all things that meant life to him and tasted of homes lost -- Jack realized that he'd been expecting -- without rhyme or reason really, but expecting nevertheless -- that after something like this, he'd be cured.
Jack didn't really want to think about what it probably said about him that he'd been so avoidant of something that he'd thought would fix him, but yeah, he'd been nearly certain that he'd open his eyes, and discover all was right with the world again; that he'd found a way back to himself, everything shuffled back to its proper place, exactly like the way his deaths seemed to hit some sort of mystical reset button, returning him to his factory settings, or at least to whatever he'd been right before his visit to Rose's one stop fix-it shop.
But no. It was still a weird expanding maze inside his head, a strange melange of memories and gaps, still healing along the same trajectory as before. No short cuts apparently, he thought ruefully.
"Still the slow path," he muttered against Ianto's mouth. "Always the fucking slow path."
"Huh?" Ianto asked.
"Nothing," Jack said. "Nothing important." He could feel Ianto's erection jutting insistently into his thigh, and he smiled to himself and reached out for it.
"It's okay," Ianto mumbled. "You don't have to--"
But he stopped talking when Jack got his trousers undone and finally was clasping his naked cock in his hand.
It felt good, Jack thought, and even better when he increased the pressure and began playing his fingers up and down it, in a way that, if memory served (and for once it seemed to), had always produced excellent results.
Ianto was moaning now, and Jack laughed to himself at the ordinariness of it. He buried his face in Ianto's neck, above the collar of his shirt and took a deep, sucking bite, wanting to leave a mark just because he could.
He increased the speed of his stroke, and Ianto began to breathe faster, panting with excitement, and Jack felt propelled along by his hungry desire, almost as if he were traveling the climb up to the peak again with him.
Ianto was saying his name now, and god, and shit, and Jack kept forcing him up higher and higher, capturing Ianto's mouth, and sliding his tongue inside.
And then suddenly, Ianto was coming with a howl, spurting up through Jack's fingers, and his come was all over the pair of them it seemed, Jack's bare chest, and on Ianto's shirt and jacket - which he still seemed to be wearing. He hadn't even loosened his tie, and that was so funny, Jack couldn't keep himself from bursting out with laughter.
"What?" Ianto asked, still gasping, unable to stop himself from laughing along with Jack and not even knowing why. It felt good. Like relief, and even though Ianto knew he shouldn't let himself feel that, shouldn't give himself yet another opportunity to be tortured with false hope, he couldn't help it at the feel of Jack's smile against his throat. "What?" he asked again, hoping to get an answer this time.
"You're still wearing your tie!" Jack managed.
"Prepared for all circumstances, sir," Ianto said, the sir slipping in, despite all his intentions. The sir that Jack apparently hated now, but the other man didn't flinch or grimace at it.
"When I say it, I don't mean it the way you think I do," Ianto said, after a pause.
"I know," Jack said quietly.
"Can I ask if you're going to keep running then?"
"From you or from everything?" Jack asked.
"Both. Either."
"Don't know really. This seems like a good place to be right now, though. How's that?"
"I'll take what I can get," Ianto said dryly.
"You should be off demanding the world of someone, you know."
"I am. I do. That's why you hate me. Important detail that. Don't forget."
Jack smiled sadly. "I'll try."
Ianto echoed it and kissed his temple. "We're on a roof," he noted.
"We are."
"Did you always do this or do you just miss it up there?"
"Always. But it's the same thing," Jack said quietly.
"Sometimes, I think I miss it too," Ianto said.
"Don't," Jack said. "It's just like here really."
They lay there quietly for a long time, the silence easy at first but eventually oppressive, a reminder that they were, despite everything, strangers learning each other again.
"Earlier. Can I ask -- ?" Ianto trailed off, not even knowing how to phrase what he wanted to ask.
Jack shook his head. "Don't. Please. Sometimes it's like I come apart. Inches of air between all my joints, but it's inside my head. I don't like to think about it. Wish you hadn't seen it either."
"It's okay."
"No. Not really. You took advantage of it nicely enough though. So I guess I'm glad you knew to."
"Learned it from you," Ianto said quietly.
"Which should remind you, I've been a very bad man."
"We're all killers," Ianto said.
Jack sighed and, apparently without thinking, ran his hand through his hair before realizing the state of it. "Wow," he said, marveling. "We're utterly filthy."
"That we are," Ianto agreed. "In so many ways."
Jack chuckled.
"It's so late, it's early," Ianto observed, shivering a little as the wind picked up a bit and reminded him of all the places he was damp with sweat and other things.
"Yeah," Jack said, looking up at the sky and saw that it was beginning to lighten just slightly, heralding false dawn. "You cold?"
"I am a bit," Ianto said. "Freezing, in fact."
"Thanks for coming after me," Jack said abruptly. "I know you don't like it up here."
"Actually," Ianto said, "you were right before. I really did just do it because you were late for dinner, and I wanted to collect you. In point of fact, the food's still waiting downstairs. What do you say we--"
"Yeah, about that," Jack said, cutting him off. "You, uh, didn't happen to wedge the trapdoor with something on your way up, did you?"
"What?" Ianto said, in abject disbelief.
"Yeah. It locks from the other side. I was going to tell you, but somehow it didn't seem like the time."
"You're joking," Ianto said. "Please, please, tell me you're joking."
Jack shook his head.
"You must be joking! You come up here all the time!" Ianto said, his voice becoming shriller with each word. "Gwen, Tosh, Owen. They all did, with you."
"Well, yeah. When I bring a guest, we wedge the door. When I'm on my own," Jack said, nodding to the edge, "it's mostly easier just to dive. Especially in the middle of the night. No one around to see."
Ianto stared at him, his jaw hanging open.
"I can, uh, climb back up the stairs and let you out," Jack offered.
"Are you crazy?" Ianto exclaimed.
"Well, for a given value of crazy...."
"No. Just no."
"Bothered?" Jack teased.
"Right now? After everything? About everything? Oh so much."
"Well, what's your plan?" Jack asked, weary enough to be amused.
"We could shoot the lock," Ianto suggested.
Jack laughed.
"What?"
"We are not going to shoot the lock."
"Why not?"
"Because it's your version of diving off the roof."
"No. Because, see? No one dies."
"Still melodramatic," Jack said.
Ianto fished in his pocket for his mobile.
"What are you doing?" Jack asked.
"Calling Gwen. She can come fetch us."
"She's going to love that," Jack said, rolling his eyes.
"She might," Ianto said softly.
Jack gave him a quizzical look but let it go.
"We should get cleaned up," Ianto said to Jack as he waited for the call to connect.
Jack looked them both over. "How?" he asked incredulously.
Ianto nodded to Jack's discarded t-shirt. "Start scrubbing, I guess."
"It might be more dignified if I jump," Jack offered again, and Ianto turned his back on him as he waited for Gwen to pick up.
"Gwen? Yeah. Sorry to wake you. No... no, there's nothing wrong. Uh, except the part where we're trapped on the roof, and --"
Jack snatched the phone from Ianto. "He won't let me jump," Jack said into it.
Ianto smiled when he heard Gwen laugh and tell Jack that she should hope not. It was so good to finally, finally have someone on his side.
"Yeah," Jack added, "and Ianto's cold. So, you know. Whenever you can get here."
Ianto elbowed him in the ribs, while he heard Gwen tell Jack that he should just be a gentleman and give Ianto his coat before disconnecting the call.
"What?" Jack said.
"Just on general principle. And also because you're a bastard," Ianto said.
"Do you want my coat?" Jack said.
"I'm not actually a girl, you know," Ianto said.
Jack laughed. "Stubborn," he said, fondly.
"Yeah," Ianto said.
When Gwen finally arrived, they were sitting side by side cross-legged looking at the sunrise and listening to the sounds of the city just barely beginning to wake. They heard the clatter and metallic creak of the door opening and hurriedly got to their feet, whirling to face her.
As she entered the roof, she caught sight of them and seemed about to let the door slip through her fingers as Ianto shouted, "Don't let the door shut!"
"Don't be daft," Gwen called back, as she wedged it open. "I've done this before, you know."
She made her way out to join them in the middle of the roof.
"Never done it at sunrise though, and thanks very much for that, boys," she added sarcastically. "Can I just say how much I adore being woken out of a sound sleep to come rescue you two idiots?"
"We aim to please," Jack said loftily, and snaked an arm around her shoulders.
Gwen eyed them both up and down, obviously noting their state of utter dishevelment, and Ianto hoped he wasn't blushing.
Then she started and reached out a hand to touch Ianto's swollen cheek. "Is that a bruise?" she asked.
"Er," Ianto said. "Probably?"
Gwen narrowed her eyes at Jack. "What have you been doing?" she asked suspiciously.
"The usual," Jack said.
"It's fine, Gwen. Don't worry," Ianto said, making his voice as reassuring as possible, but knowing he still sounded shy.
She didn't look convinced, so he added, with a wink, "Innovative, remember?"
Gwen laughed, and Jack smiled at him admiringly.
"Are you better now?" Gwen asked, sounding like she was expecting a positive answer so she could go back to sleep. "Both of you?"
Ianto smiled, but shook his head a little. "A little. And most of that specific, I think," he said, glancing at Jack. "Not global. Not yet."
Jack smiled and looked at his feet. "Yeah," he agreed and then looked at Gwen before taking her hands even though his were still rather dubiously clean. "Things are still pretty scary in here," Jack admitted, tapping his head, by way of apology.
Gwen smiled and pulled away from him. "I don't mind," she said. "Just because I'm not as broken as our Ianto, doesn't mean I'm not as stubborn, Jack."
"Hey!" Ianto said, though Jack didn't think he really believed he had any grounds to actually object on.
Gwen went up on her toes to kiss his cheek and Jack couldn't help but smile at them and the friendship he had somehow forgotten or missed them forming in the first place.
Ianto put a hand around Gwen's waist. "Sit with us for a while?" Ianto asked.
Gwen nodded as he tugged her down to the surface of the roof. Though not entirely sure what had passed in the night, she understood that Ianto was asking her to witness and share in the fact that they'd somehow gotten at least a little piece of what they had once been back.
"Hey," Jack said, pressing between them so he could sit in the middle. He smiled like he was a boy still somewhere far away. "Cardiff," Jack sighed. "Of all the places in all the worlds to call home."
Gwen laughed sleepily and rested her head on his shoulder, knowing that on the other side of him, Ianto was probably doing the same thing.
"By the way, Gwen," Jack said casually, "before I forget. If you've been missing a pair of panties and a tube of lipgloss...."
Her head snapped up. "What?!" she exclaimed, while Jack emitted a soft oof as if someone had punched him in the ribs.
"Why did you have panties in your file drawer anyway?" Jack went on as soon as he got his breath back.
"Well, actually I don't have them in my file drawer, Jack, since they've been missing for a while now," she said, carefully carrying the fight back into the enemy camp. "I think the more important question is how, or even more, why you know that."
"Don't you remember?" Jack said, smugly. "I know everything."
"I thought that was Ianto," Gwen said, laughing at the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
Blushing furiously, Ianto stared out at the rapidly lightening sky and thought if this were the normal they'd all been fighting to get back to, perhaps he could've done without it.
But then he looked out of the corner of his eye at Jack and Gwen, who were elbowing each other back and forth like small children and giggling like school girls at a slumber party.
No, Ianto decided, definitely not. Jack had been right. He wouldn't miss this for the world.
end
Continue to Up, Down, Strange, Charm, Truth, Beauty: or, A Child's Guide to Modern Physics