TW: Labels [K]
Fandom:
Torchwood
Title:
Labels
In which Ianto muses about Jack's issue with labels.
Author:
lt_indigo
Pairing(s):
Jack/Ianto
Warning(s):
none
Disclamer:
Never mine.
Word count:
250
Sometimes Jack frustrated the hell out of him. His insistence on not labelling a relationship, for instance. Or a sexual orientation.
Ianto was an archivist. He needed labels, otherwise how did he know what to call something? How would he know what it was, how to describe it to someone else?
Ianto understood, intellectually, that Jack was from a different time, where such labels had long since been discarded, but right here, right now, Ianto needed to get it straight in his head. He still needed a name for it, to know if it was just a drop in the ocean to Jack, or something more.
That in itself was ridiculous. Of course he was a drop in the ocean. Jack was going to live for hundreds of thousands of years. Possibly forever, if he understood correctly. Jack would have countless lovers after him. He would be lost under the sheer mass of memories. That was why he always tried to make Jack see the here and now, live and love for today.
Ianto needed to know. He needed to know if Jack saw him as a partner, as an equal, or if it was something else. Because he sometimes got the impression that Jack didn’t see himself as equal; because he couldn’t die, he was somehow less than human, that he wasn’t worthy of Ianto’s love. That was probably the biggest reason Ianto wanted to put a label on their relationship; to help Jack understand how important he was.