I was attempting a Valentine's day ficlet for Mav (♥) and ended up adding to something, fittingly enough, started in an AIM conversation with her. I'm reposting the first part for the enjoyment of everyone that actually reads what's posted here (more ♥).
No beta, and the first part especially was just sort of stream of consciousness so I can't even promise that it makes all that much sense!
The first segment was written a few weeks back and is set just after Cyberwoman. It's Ianto's POV. The second segment is set post-series one finale. Rated PG-13, and featuring... Jack/Ianto, Rose/Doctor, teensy bit of Jack/Rose
I.
I don't want to go to work today, and I never say that. Really, if you knew me at all, you'd know that I never say that. I live for my job; they don't realise it, no one realises it, but I do. The rest of my life is shadows. I have family, but they're on the fringes; can't let them too close or they might get swallowed up. Like everything, like Lisa, that's what happens when you make the decision to have a life and a job like this, you risk everything. I could have lost her every day, every minute of every day, she was in danger and eventually it happened; she died she kind of died she almost died she sort of died but not really because I kept her alive and in the basement, splayed out on a table with nothing but the rats and a cd player to keep her company, how did she stand it how did I stand it, and now I have to go back there every day and face all of those people that don't know me but think they do. I hate that this is the insight I gave them, tears and a snotty nose, choking on my own grief before her blood was even cold. They saw one side of me, one raw and jagged side, and what if they think that's all there is to me now?
I don't want to go to work don't want to ever go there again because Jack, oh, God, Jack will be there. He confuses me and tortures me. I think its punishment but I'm not sure if he's punishing me or him. Maybe he doesn't realize it. Maybe he's - well, he's not dumb, that's for sure. Hand on my shoulder, sliding down my back. Maybe it’s supposed to mean that he forgives me. Maybe it's innocent. As innocent as Jack ever is. Maybe he wants to comfort me. Maybe he really doesn't know that every touch makes my cock hard and my stomach feel like it’s full of lead.
I have to go. Have to take a deep breath and get out of my car. Maybe they'll all be gone. Off on some adventure, leaving me behind to sort the mess. Have the coffee made by the time they get back, order in some lunch. Jack usually tries to let me know what time they'll be back in. Keys seem very cold when I take them out of my pocket. Spend a few minutes straightening the front area, refilling pamphlets (why are there even any missing? get a legitimate visitor once, twice a month, shouldn't be any gone) and straightening my little desk. This is what I have; not a fancy computer with a wide, flat screen or intricate technology. I have a desk, a drawer with no bottom and a bucket of pens and pencils. But it's mine, and even though I'm sure I'm being watched on CCTV (can imagine maybe just Jack, maybe all of them gathered around watching every movement that I make, they're such smug bastards, aren't they, knowing I won't be able to look them in the eye for another week at least) but I take my time because I don't want to go behind the doors. Then I don't have to, because Jack's walking down. His coat swings over his shoulder. "Going out for a bit?" I say, and if my voice is a little deeper than normal it's just because I've spent the past forty-eight hours staring at a turned-off telly screen wondering why I even bother to go on breathing when I know that it's all just going to come to nothing.
He shrugs. "Maybe. Take a walk with me."
I look down at the calculator in my hand. I've accidentally pressed a button or two: 5395 it reads. I hit clear and put it down. The plastic makes a thunk on the surface. "All right."
He goes first. I walk a step behind. One foot in front of the other, staring at the ground. It goes on and on and on; the silence. He stops and turns around. We're well out of direct sight of the water tower, but still (always) visible to CCTV. If this job has taught me nothing, it is that privacy is an illusion.
He stands directly in front of me, chest to chest. He still isn't wearing his coat. Bound to get a chill like that. I have to push back the urge to tell him to wear it.
"Do you want to be back here, or not?" He asks. His face holds none of the carefully crafted mix of humor and confidence that it normally is. Nor is it the cold, hard anger that I saw when- that day. It's something different, something less conversational. Ianto feels that he has to weigh each word he says in response carefully, but doesn't know how to begin.
"It's my job. It's my life."
Jack nods. "I know. But if you could have another life, would you?"
I look off to the side, at the ground again. "Depends on what sort of life, I think."
"What if that life involved going places beyond your wildest imagination, visiting any era in your history or the history of a thousand other planets?"
Such a bastard he can be sometimes. He's taking the piss. I start to get mad, start to open my mouth and spout off, but he puts a hand square on my chest and stops me.
"What if." Jack stopped. "What if I told you that someone was coming for me. I don't know when, I don't know if it'll be in your lifetime or your grandkids lifetime, but someone is coming for me and when they get here I'm going with them and I probably won't ever return. What if I told you that if it is in your lifetime, and don't ask me how but I think it will be, I think it'll be soon. What if I said I want you to come with me, to that new life?"
His words repeat in my head, over and over, as I try to make them make sense. "So the coffee is that good?" I say, sounding and feeling a bit dumb.
But he laughs, that wide grin splitting his face. His teeth are so white. Unnaturally white. "Yeah, it really is."
"I still don't have the faintest idea what you’re talking about." I point out. "Time travel? Other planets?"
"I'll explain it to you," he promises. "I promise I will. I'll tell you everything when he - when they come for me. If you'll come with me. Just think about it, you don't have anything left here." His hand grips mine, surprisingly. I look down. He's squeezing hard and it almost hurts. There's something desperate there, something that doesn't quite make its way to his voice.
"Jack." I pull my hands away. "You killed my girlfriend four days ago."
"I know. I know. That's why - I. I can't explain it. You just... I saw what you did, how far you went. That kind of brilliance, that kind of potential is just - it's wasted here." There's a flash of frustration, almost anger, and then it's gone. He's back to soothing and sweet-talking.
I just shake my head.
"What is it you're asking me, exactly?" I want to know. "To go way with you? When, today? Right now? Tomorrow?"
"I don't know! I don't know."
"Five years, ten?"
"I don't know!" He shouts, startling a few people at a chip shop across the street.
"Then why are you asking me this now?"
"Because I'm afraid if I don't, I won't have a chance to. I know this isn't the best time but if I wait you may be gone. I know," he hisses, "I know you probably hate me, and that's all right. I know what it's like to lose people, I know how confusing it is and how many different emotions you go through. And I know you, and I know what's going through your head. This is your life and I thought, I think you'll stay here in Cardiff, but I know just how clever you could be. If you wanted to disappear, you could. And I wanted - I want to get you before you do."
"Jack." I stare at him. "That doesn't make any sense." I'm lying though, because bits of it do. Make perfect sense, because I have thought about it. Wiping myself from the system, disabling CCTV long enough to get out of the country. Traveling - all the places Lisa and I wanted to go. Spin a globe and pick a city, live there for the rest of my life. Get away from aliens and ghosts and all of it. Get away from my captain, Captain Jack, who never lets anyone in any part of him but his pants, but who doesn't really let them get too far away, either. And that's when Jack kisses me. Right there, right on the middle of the sidewalk at 8:12 on a Monday morning, he kisses me. His mouth is damp and hot and he kisses like a normal person. Well, nice, but there are no fireworks and I keep my eyes open even when his are closed. When he pulls away there's a wet smack. I lean forward, more caught up in it than I wanted to think I was, but his hands on my face stop me.
"You're right. I killed your girlfriend a week ago. I shouldn't be asking you to come away with me. But I am. So deal with it."
"You want me to say yes or no right now?" I'm dumbfounded. "You - you snogged me."
"Yeah. Um." He frowns. "Spur of the moment, kind of. That wasn't in the speech I had prepared."
"You prepared?" I almost snicker, imagining him bent over a notebook scribbling phrases. But this situation is much too confusing and much too strange for any snickering, really. "Jack, I can't do this."
He stops me talking before I can even get to the point. "Go home if you want to. Take a few more days. I'll tell the crew that you weren't ready yet."
"I'm ready to come back to work." I say. "I want to."
"Okay, then." He looks miserable, and makes no attempt to hide it. "Okay."
I walk in front of him on the way back to the hub. I feel like a light breeze could knock me over, but either the winds are very still or I'm exaggerating my state a bit. I can hear him behind me, and it's aggravating. We're just in front of the water tower when I turn around. "Who is it that's coming for you, exactly?"
"The Doctor." He says. My brow furrows instantly. "Yeah, that one."
"The one... Torchwood was founded..."
"Right. But they have it all wrong. I've traveled with him before. We have.... a history." My face must give something away because he backs up rather quickly. "Not that kind of history. It wasn't... like that."
Somehow I doubt that was for a lack of Jack's trying.
"You traveled with The Doctor?"
"And I'm going to again one day. And I want you with me." He shrugs. "That's all I got. I mean, I can give you all the details you want-"
"I want lots of details."
"Okay. Right. Later, though, okay? We need to get back inside or they'll start to worry."
"What, that I've gone ballistic and stuffed your dead body into a trunk?" I say.
"Ianto," he sighs. "No one thinks that-"
"I don't care." I do and he knows it, but he lets me get away with being a bit macho. "Why do you want me to come with you?"
He puts his hands on my shoulders and turns me around, then pushes me forward. "Because of the coffee, we've already gone over this."
I don't say anything else until we're back in the hub. I glance warily up at the CCTV camera that's nicely out of plain sight. "And the snog, that was for the coffee, too?"
"Nooo..." Jack gives me a guilty look. "That's because you look so damn cute in that suit."
II.
Ianto trails a few feet behind Jack, who trails behind the Doctor.
He doesn't think he'll ever get used to Jack accepting someone else's authority so unquestioningly. He'd been afraid, to begin with, that what Jack felt for the Doctor was something he'd have to compete with. He realized in under twenty four hours that they were on completely different levels. The Doctor may be fit and smart and a bit of a flirt, but Ianto senses there is no real danger beyond a bit of hero worship. He can't blame Jack for that, either. He finds himself increasingly in awe of the Doctor, too.
Martha is somewhere off doing her own thing. Ianto is surprised at how little they see of her. Jack doesn't particularly like her. Ianto can tell by the way Jack acts toward her; perfectly polite. He doesn't tease, he doesn't flirt. He's cordial and friendly, but not anything more.
"What do you think?" Jack slows down to let Ianto catch up.
Ianto looks at the sky over them. "Purple."
"Purple!" The Doctor chirps from in front of them. "Violet, really, more like. Sort of... blue... blue-ish..." He trails off, chasing bunnies in his mind that no one else can fathom.
Jack and Ianto walk side by side. The backs of their hands brush every few steps.
"The weather is great here." Ianto says.
"Should have seen it before the volcano erupted." Jack laughs. "Dreadful back then."
"How long ago?"
"Few thousand years." Jack's fingers play with one of his buttons. He still wears the coat every day that he can. Every day that they aren't somewhere where it would be horribly out of place.
"Jack," The Doctor spins around, sliding his specs back into his pocket. "Do you remember."
He stops.
Jack waits. "Yeah?"
The Doctor glances at Ianto, then shakes his head. "Nothing. Just. What song did you dance to, you and Rose?"
Jack looks stricken. He swallows. "I don't remember."
Ianto suspects he's lying. He sees the Doctor frown, and knows the Doctor knows Jack is lying, too.
"Right, then." The Doctor claps. "We'll split up for a while, then? You two go off and do your... whatever... those things that humans do."
Jack stops walking and watches him go. "Something's not right. He's planning something."
Ianto isn't sure if he's supposed to ask or not, so he takes a chance and does. "What is he planning?"
"What?" Jack looks at Ianto like he's forgotten that Ianto was there. He smiles, and takes Ianto's hand. "I don't know. But I bet it has something to do with her."
Her.
Rose.
The Doctor may evoke none of that jealousy that Ianto knows he's capable of, but somehow he doesn't think the same would be true of Rose if she were here. He tries sometimes to imagine what sort of person she was. Is, still is, somewhere in the universe. Somewhere in that other universe.
The Tardis let him into her room once. There was a framed picture on the bed of Rose and her mother. She was not at all how he had imagined her to be. She looked silly and young and not at all deserving of such love and devotion of not one, but two great men.
"Should you go after him?" Ianto asks. He wonders, if he died would Jack be as moved by the loss?
Jack hesitates and then shakes his head. "No. I doubt I could find him now, anyway. Not if he doesn't want me with him. We should have fun. Day off, right?"
"Until something catastrophic occurs." Ianto says.
"Oh, yeah." Jack laughs. "Those sorts of things do have a habit of happening, don't they?"
"They do, yes, sir."
Jack puts an arm around Ianto's shoulder and kisses him lightly on the mouth. "You're great, you know?" He kisses him again. "I'm glad you're here."
Ianto smiles, pleased with himself and Jack and the fact that they're alone. His satisfaction gives life to boldness. "I think you should take me somewhere to eat, Jack. Introduce me to this alien cuisine."
Jack nods and pats Ianto's cheek with warm fingers. "Let's go feed you, then."