Maps
Title: Maps
Series: Torchwood
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13 (ish? Maybe R) for M/M
Word Count: 1854
Spoilers: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Disclaimer: The BBC owns them, I'm just borrowing them for a bit.
Author's Notes: Inspired in part by the song "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Dates taken from the Not-Quite-Definitive Torchwood timeline(s) put together by lefaym. Much appreciation to my beta avidbeader. She did what she could, and all mistakes are mine.
It is four o'clock in the morning and you are standing half-naked in a hotel room in the middle of Cardiff wondering exactly when you so throughly lost control of the situation and waiting for the knock at the door. You've hung up your shirt and jacket and tie, placed your socks inside your shoes neatly by the door and now you're standing bare-chested in your slacks with your hands in your hair scrunching your toes into the carpet.
You saw that in a movie, once.
You'd had it all mapped out, Jack coming back. Planned down to the curve of the eyebrow you'd spent three sleepless nights practicing in the mirror when you asked Jack just what the hell he thought the two of you were playing at, anyway. You didn't have a lot of illusions, anymore, and you like your expectations clear. Destination plotted and course laid out.
You hadn't counted on Captain John Hart (and if you hadn't known Jack's name was fake before, that would have given it away, because everyone from the future having aliases with the initials JH was just a bit too cute, even by Torchwood standards) showing up and all but screwing Jack in the middle of the hub to stake his claim. And you definitely would have lost money betting against Jack all but ignoring him when he tried it. You'd even half-considered taking John up on the orgy idea and you'd never seen the man naked. The idea someone so obsessed with Jack would be bad in bed hadn't crossed your mind. Still didn't, truth be told. Some skills can be taught, and five years with Jack is a long time.
You hadn't counted on being asked out on a date, either, though Torchwood being Torchwood dinner and a movie was likely to be rift-related CCTV and takeaway in the hub one night. You are all right with that, you realize, moving from scrunching to pacing slow steps between the window and the door. It was the thought that counted - Jack wanted this, wanted something more than fifteen stolen minutes in the archives and an hour or two after the others finally left for the day.
And then there is the hotel room. Jack insisted, corralling all of you into the cars and driving to the most posh hotel in Cardiff. 'If you're stuck avoiding yourself, do it in style,' he grinned, booking five rooms on the second-highest floor and scheduling the girls for spa treatments before noon. He'd offered for you and Owen as well and told all of you to order anything needed delivered to the rooms. You dread the monthly expense reports, but at least this would be less difficult to explain than the trip to the Himalayas and with more purpose. Stupid Jack-in-the-box, and you mean that literally.
The hotel is posh enough that the glasses are crystal and slide a little in your fingers as you fill one with ice and water. No matter how much you want a drink, you want your wits about you more.
Five rooms. Maybe Jack is tired - worn out gallivanting all across the universe with Him.
Back to the window. The rooms were high enough that Cardiff's lights stretched out beneath you like a tapestry - real change from being underground so many hours of the day. You'd forgotten how orange the streetlights look, blurs of red and white from cars passing on the motorway in an early morning rush. The blur is hypnotic.
The knock, when it comes, is almost a relief.
“It's open.” In the window you see Jack push the door open enough to slip through, closing it behind him. He's taken off his coat and his braces hang by his sides. He looked worn, restless, ill-at-ease.
It was uncomfortably unfamiliar. “It'll be dawn soon.”
Jack's head snaps up at the sound of your voice. “But we can't leave for hours yet.”
You feel your lip twitch to something like a smile. “However shall we pass the time?” I know what I want, you think. Do you want it too? How do we get there from here?
The reflection of Jack reaches a hand toward your shoulder, stops, drops it back to his side. “He said I was wrong, Ianto.”
You turn, set your glass down on the bedside table. “About what? Him being able to fix you?”
Jack's eyes close, just for a moment, hand reaching toward you before falling back again. Back and forth, twice, three time before his eyes re-open, staring into yours. “No,” he says, slowly. “He said I was wrong. That I was an impossible thing.”
You'd have made a joke if he'd told you this somewhere else and you flush for a second with the shame of not taking him seriously enough even as your arms surround him, pulling him close.
“He ran away from me.” Jack's putting his weight against you now and you half-sit half-fall onto the bed, still holding him against you.
He's shaking.
Decades pass, though the alarm clock beside the glass on the bedside table reads mere minutes. You pull him slowly up the bed until you're leaning against the headboard with his head against your shoulder. He's almost sitting in your lap and any other time he'd be too heavy but for now he is warm and wonderful and here and you want to check him head to toe for scars until you remember they'll only be there on the inside.
He smells the same.
Pheromones and time and soap and the something-Jack that had just begun to mean safe and home before he left and you feel some hidden part of you unclench in relief. Really Jack. He's stopped shaking, just breathing against your chest. Your run your fingers through his hair, gently, like petting the rabbits at the zoo when you were five - gentle, mustn't scare them.
“How long were you gone, Jack?” You feel his breath catch and then release in something like a shaky laugh.
“I knew you were the smart one.” He shifts just enough to look up at you. “How long was it for you?”
“About four months.” Four long, bloody awful months you think but don't say. Something of it must have shown on your face because he looks away for a second before looking back, catching your eye.
“It was about thirteen, for me.” He closes his eyes, bracing and you start to say 'no, don't tell me, I don't want to know' but the words are already coming before you can stop them, stop him. “The Doctor is a Time Lord. For a long time he thought he was the last one, but he was wrong. There was one here, Harold Saxon.”
“I voted for him.” The words escape without thought and Jack winces.
“I missed election day. But I would have too, before.” He takes a breath and something occurs to you.
“He's dead. Caught the recap when we got back to Cardiff - he's been dead for a week.” None of this makes sense.
Jack nods. “I know. Paradox. For you he was only prime minister for a handful of days, but for me,” Jack shudders, hard enough to shake the bed and possibly the floor beneath. “He was the Master. He wanted to torture the Doctor. He didn't care what happened to the planet while he did it.” His eyes are closed. You wish you could see them until they open and he looks at you, billions of horrors reflected in his eyes. He's there in your arms and you fight the urge to kiss him, to distract him from telling you this because you know this is your only chance. If he doesn't say it now, he'll never say it.
“What about you?” He looks away, almost as if he's embarrassed, but Jack is never embarrassed.
“I died.” He looks back at you, sees the confusion you feel wrinkling your face and says it again. “I died.” He mouth quirks up in something not unrelated to a smirk. “I was his pet freak. The one he could kill a new way every day. It kept him entertained, and that tended to reduce the death toll on the planet.” He sighs. “Didn't do much for Japan, but some things take longer to come back from. I did what I could, anyway. Saved who I could.”
And then you're kissing him, holding his head still to press your lips against his, breathing him in and battling with his tongue. Kissing him and kissing him until you're both panting, gasping for air as you pull him against you to feel his heart pound against your chest.
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” The words pour out of you over and over as you kiss him, breathing them against his lips, his ears, his cheeks, his throat, breathing the words into him as if they could push out the scars left by a year of constant dying. “Thank you.” You breathe them a final time against his forehead as he pulls your hands down from where they've tangled in his hair, clutching them against his chest as you tip your head to look at him, breathless with gratitude.
This is new. Unexpected. Unprecedented.
Jack Harkness blushing.
He's touching you now, fingers brushing your face like you remember brushing butterflies in school and you feel like one now - butterfly caught in the tsunami of Jack. Fingers oh so light against your face they're almost non-existent and he's looking at you as if there's nothing else in the universe. Staring and you're caught, pinned in his gaze as firmly as any butterfly. Butterflies die when you pin them but you feel so alive. “Ianto,” he breathes, vowels shivering and you think maybe you're not the only one with a poor sense of direction.
Heart pounding in your chest, staring back at him and then you're both pulling clothes off - something rips but you don't care if both of you wind up streaking across Cardiff because he's HERE.
Skin on skin and you're both panting, groaning, sliding against each other and the feeling of him against you is enough, after four long months of nothing but your hand. Lightning races down your spine and you think how embarrassingly fast this will be as he shudders with you.
When sense returns, he smirks down at you and you crook an eyebrow in reply. He laughs, just a little, and you see a hint of the man you'd met all those months before, flirting while a weevil mauled him. “A year's a long time,” he says. “I missed you.”
You kiss him again, just once, lips moving slow and easy against his until your neck starts to complain and you ease your head back down against the pillows. The words come easily now, journey's end in sight and it isn't how you thought you'd get here. But that's the thing with maps - they never show the detours. “Welcome home, Jack.”
Series: Torchwood
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13 (ish? Maybe R) for M/M
Word Count: 1854
Spoilers: Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Disclaimer: The BBC owns them, I'm just borrowing them for a bit.
Author's Notes: Inspired in part by the song "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Dates taken from the Not-Quite-Definitive Torchwood timeline(s) put together by lefaym. Much appreciation to my beta avidbeader. She did what she could, and all mistakes are mine.
It is four o'clock in the morning and you are standing half-naked in a hotel room in the middle of Cardiff wondering exactly when you so throughly lost control of the situation and waiting for the knock at the door. You've hung up your shirt and jacket and tie, placed your socks inside your shoes neatly by the door and now you're standing bare-chested in your slacks with your hands in your hair scrunching your toes into the carpet.
You saw that in a movie, once.
You'd had it all mapped out, Jack coming back. Planned down to the curve of the eyebrow you'd spent three sleepless nights practicing in the mirror when you asked Jack just what the hell he thought the two of you were playing at, anyway. You didn't have a lot of illusions, anymore, and you like your expectations clear. Destination plotted and course laid out.
You hadn't counted on Captain John Hart (and if you hadn't known Jack's name was fake before, that would have given it away, because everyone from the future having aliases with the initials JH was just a bit too cute, even by Torchwood standards) showing up and all but screwing Jack in the middle of the hub to stake his claim. And you definitely would have lost money betting against Jack all but ignoring him when he tried it. You'd even half-considered taking John up on the orgy idea and you'd never seen the man naked. The idea someone so obsessed with Jack would be bad in bed hadn't crossed your mind. Still didn't, truth be told. Some skills can be taught, and five years with Jack is a long time.
You hadn't counted on being asked out on a date, either, though Torchwood being Torchwood dinner and a movie was likely to be rift-related CCTV and takeaway in the hub one night. You are all right with that, you realize, moving from scrunching to pacing slow steps between the window and the door. It was the thought that counted - Jack wanted this, wanted something more than fifteen stolen minutes in the archives and an hour or two after the others finally left for the day.
And then there is the hotel room. Jack insisted, corralling all of you into the cars and driving to the most posh hotel in Cardiff. 'If you're stuck avoiding yourself, do it in style,' he grinned, booking five rooms on the second-highest floor and scheduling the girls for spa treatments before noon. He'd offered for you and Owen as well and told all of you to order anything needed delivered to the rooms. You dread the monthly expense reports, but at least this would be less difficult to explain than the trip to the Himalayas and with more purpose. Stupid Jack-in-the-box, and you mean that literally.
The hotel is posh enough that the glasses are crystal and slide a little in your fingers as you fill one with ice and water. No matter how much you want a drink, you want your wits about you more.
Five rooms. Maybe Jack is tired - worn out gallivanting all across the universe with Him.
Back to the window. The rooms were high enough that Cardiff's lights stretched out beneath you like a tapestry - real change from being underground so many hours of the day. You'd forgotten how orange the streetlights look, blurs of red and white from cars passing on the motorway in an early morning rush. The blur is hypnotic.
The knock, when it comes, is almost a relief.
“It's open.” In the window you see Jack push the door open enough to slip through, closing it behind him. He's taken off his coat and his braces hang by his sides. He looked worn, restless, ill-at-ease.
It was uncomfortably unfamiliar. “It'll be dawn soon.”
Jack's head snaps up at the sound of your voice. “But we can't leave for hours yet.”
You feel your lip twitch to something like a smile. “However shall we pass the time?” I know what I want, you think. Do you want it too? How do we get there from here?
The reflection of Jack reaches a hand toward your shoulder, stops, drops it back to his side. “He said I was wrong, Ianto.”
You turn, set your glass down on the bedside table. “About what? Him being able to fix you?”
Jack's eyes close, just for a moment, hand reaching toward you before falling back again. Back and forth, twice, three time before his eyes re-open, staring into yours. “No,” he says, slowly. “He said I was wrong. That I was an impossible thing.”
You'd have made a joke if he'd told you this somewhere else and you flush for a second with the shame of not taking him seriously enough even as your arms surround him, pulling him close.
“He ran away from me.” Jack's putting his weight against you now and you half-sit half-fall onto the bed, still holding him against you.
He's shaking.
Decades pass, though the alarm clock beside the glass on the bedside table reads mere minutes. You pull him slowly up the bed until you're leaning against the headboard with his head against your shoulder. He's almost sitting in your lap and any other time he'd be too heavy but for now he is warm and wonderful and here and you want to check him head to toe for scars until you remember they'll only be there on the inside.
He smells the same.
Pheromones and time and soap and the something-Jack that had just begun to mean safe and home before he left and you feel some hidden part of you unclench in relief. Really Jack. He's stopped shaking, just breathing against your chest. Your run your fingers through his hair, gently, like petting the rabbits at the zoo when you were five - gentle, mustn't scare them.
“How long were you gone, Jack?” You feel his breath catch and then release in something like a shaky laugh.
“I knew you were the smart one.” He shifts just enough to look up at you. “How long was it for you?”
“About four months.” Four long, bloody awful months you think but don't say. Something of it must have shown on your face because he looks away for a second before looking back, catching your eye.
“It was about thirteen, for me.” He closes his eyes, bracing and you start to say 'no, don't tell me, I don't want to know' but the words are already coming before you can stop them, stop him. “The Doctor is a Time Lord. For a long time he thought he was the last one, but he was wrong. There was one here, Harold Saxon.”
“I voted for him.” The words escape without thought and Jack winces.
“I missed election day. But I would have too, before.” He takes a breath and something occurs to you.
“He's dead. Caught the recap when we got back to Cardiff - he's been dead for a week.” None of this makes sense.
Jack nods. “I know. Paradox. For you he was only prime minister for a handful of days, but for me,” Jack shudders, hard enough to shake the bed and possibly the floor beneath. “He was the Master. He wanted to torture the Doctor. He didn't care what happened to the planet while he did it.” His eyes are closed. You wish you could see them until they open and he looks at you, billions of horrors reflected in his eyes. He's there in your arms and you fight the urge to kiss him, to distract him from telling you this because you know this is your only chance. If he doesn't say it now, he'll never say it.
“What about you?” He looks away, almost as if he's embarrassed, but Jack is never embarrassed.
“I died.” He looks back at you, sees the confusion you feel wrinkling your face and says it again. “I died.” He mouth quirks up in something not unrelated to a smirk. “I was his pet freak. The one he could kill a new way every day. It kept him entertained, and that tended to reduce the death toll on the planet.” He sighs. “Didn't do much for Japan, but some things take longer to come back from. I did what I could, anyway. Saved who I could.”
And then you're kissing him, holding his head still to press your lips against his, breathing him in and battling with his tongue. Kissing him and kissing him until you're both panting, gasping for air as you pull him against you to feel his heart pound against your chest.
“Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.” The words pour out of you over and over as you kiss him, breathing them against his lips, his ears, his cheeks, his throat, breathing the words into him as if they could push out the scars left by a year of constant dying. “Thank you.” You breathe them a final time against his forehead as he pulls your hands down from where they've tangled in his hair, clutching them against his chest as you tip your head to look at him, breathless with gratitude.
This is new. Unexpected. Unprecedented.
Jack Harkness blushing.
He's touching you now, fingers brushing your face like you remember brushing butterflies in school and you feel like one now - butterfly caught in the tsunami of Jack. Fingers oh so light against your face they're almost non-existent and he's looking at you as if there's nothing else in the universe. Staring and you're caught, pinned in his gaze as firmly as any butterfly. Butterflies die when you pin them but you feel so alive. “Ianto,” he breathes, vowels shivering and you think maybe you're not the only one with a poor sense of direction.
Heart pounding in your chest, staring back at him and then you're both pulling clothes off - something rips but you don't care if both of you wind up streaking across Cardiff because he's HERE.
Skin on skin and you're both panting, groaning, sliding against each other and the feeling of him against you is enough, after four long months of nothing but your hand. Lightning races down your spine and you think how embarrassingly fast this will be as he shudders with you.
When sense returns, he smirks down at you and you crook an eyebrow in reply. He laughs, just a little, and you see a hint of the man you'd met all those months before, flirting while a weevil mauled him. “A year's a long time,” he says. “I missed you.”
You kiss him again, just once, lips moving slow and easy against his until your neck starts to complain and you ease your head back down against the pillows. The words come easily now, journey's end in sight and it isn't how you thought you'd get here. But that's the thing with maps - they never show the detours. “Welcome home, Jack.”