Fic: Discussion Tabled (Torchwood) [1/1]
Title: Discussion Tabled
Author: Sirocco
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R, to be safe
Warnings: M/M slash
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and was created by Russell T. Davies.
Archive: Please ask.
Summary: My quick-and-dirty take on the fabled "two-minute kissing scene" described in John Barrowman's autobiography, based on speculation that it might have happened during episode 2x10, "From Out of the Rain."
Edited on 03 April 2008: Minor corrections for pronoun clarity and chronology as established in 2x12 "Fragments."
Jack locks the flask in Secure Archives and exhales a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He wants to believe the whisper of carnival music was his imagination, but he knows better. The Night Travellers are out there, and there's nothing he can do but wait for their next victims to appear.
He'll only have nightmares if he tries to sleep tonight, so he wanders the Hub under the pretense of a security check. It stings him that Ianto left so abruptly, but Jack can't really blame him. The frequently gruesome nature of Ianto's cleanup duties notwithstanding, innocent death still hits him hard; doubly so when children are involved. It's too easy, sometimes, for Jack to be callous about it, and it's a trait he hopes Ianto never learns to emulate.
The light is still on in the conference room when he passes by, so he leans through the doorway to flip the switch and discovers that Ianto hasn't gone home after all. He's sitting at the table, elbows on the polished surface, forehead resting on his folded arms. Even with his fists clenched as they are, he could be sleeping, and Jack starts to back silently out of the room, but is stopped short by a long ragged sigh that sounds too much like a sob.
Jack freezes, uncertain whether to approach or to leave Ianto to grieve in private. But Jack is grieving too in his own way, and he doesn't want to do it alone. He's stepping into the room and speaking Ianto's name before he realizes he's made up his mind.
Ianto gasps and leaps to his feet, and Jack sees the panic in his face at being caught out like this before he turns away, looking at anything but Jack. His hand is scrubbing through his hair, mussing it, and he's pacing jerkily around the room like a trapped animal. He is trapped, since Jack is between him and the door, and Jack thinks, This is wrong.
He watches as the man who's been sharing his bed off and on for the better part of two years -- well, in this timeline, anyway -- refuses to look at him, to let Jack see him with tears on his face, and Jack himself has certainly been a stellar example of emotional accessibility, hasn't he?
He thinks, It shouldn't be like this. Not with us. And decides to do something about it.
He lays his hands on Ianto's shoulders and finds his grip shrugged off before he can turn the other man around to face him. He's still pacing, still agitated, still keeping his back to Jack.
"I should have run faster," he says, and the pads of his fingertips claw down his face. "Or farther. I should have held on to the flask more tightly." He looks over his shoulder to glance at Jack. "But he touched me and I -- I could feel my life draining out of me. I couldn't hold on. I tried --" He pivots away from Jack again, but he's not trying to escape now. "It wasn't enough." His fist meets the nearest wall with a flat thump. "It's never enough!"
He turns to face Jack at last, leaning against the wall. His cheeks are wet but his eyes are flinty and his voice is deep and angry and rough. "I had their lives in my hand, Jack. And I couldn't save them. Because I couldn't keep hold to a bottle."
He shoves off from the wall and starts to stalk past Jack, toward the door. Jack grabs him around the waist and gets an elbow in the jaw; he sometimes forgets how hard Ianto can hit, especially during his rare displays of temper. He twists away from Jack, fighting him, trying to pry himself out of Jack's grasp. But Jack hangs on this time, drawing on a century of combat experience to keep him in place without injuring him, eventually wrestling him into an awkward embrace.
Even like this, with the two of them breathing heavily on each other, Ianto turns his head and won't meet his eyes until Jack presses a palm to the side of his face and makes him look. His eyes are watery and red.
"How do you do it?" Ianto rasps, his voice hollow and hoarse. "How do you watch people die, time and again, knowing you can never do enough to save them no matter how hard you try?" He stands rigid in Jack's arms, his breath coming hot and damp and shallow and quick, and Jack is struck, painfully, by how young he is.
"You just do it," Jack replies steadily. "You're grateful for the people you can save and you mourn the ones you can't. And then you concentrate on saving the next one." He holds Ianto's face in both hands now, their foreheads touching. "There's a little boy who's alive tonight because of you. He's lost everything he knows and his life is never going to be the same, but he'll survive if he's strong enough. And he'd never have had that chance at all if it weren't for you."
They're standing too close to see each other clearly, but Ianto stares at him for a long, long moment before nodding and closing his eyes. Jack wraps his arms around his shoulders, and feels Ianto loosen against him, his chin dropping to Jack's shoulder, his hands sliding around the back of Jack's ribcage.
They stand like that for a while, leaning on each other, holding each other upright, and it feels like years since Jack last did this with anyone. Just taking comfort in someone else's touch, and giving it back. He kisses Ianto's temple, and since it feels nice and Ianto doesn't object, he does it again, on his cheek. He draws back a little and finds Ianto watching him, unreadable.
Jack leans in carefully to press a chaste kiss to his lips, but Ianto's fingers suddenly cup the back of Jack's head, tangling in his hair and yanking him forward to crash against Ianto's open mouth. Jack lets out a startled grunt and "chaste" drops out of his immediate vocabulary. Not at all what he'd intended, but he's not about to complain.
Except that he can still taste Ianto's tears through his own rising want, and even though Jack's already hard and Ianto is too, he's trying to convince himself that he still has something resembling a conscience. He reluctantly pushes himself to arms' length away and stands there panting until he thinks he can trust his voice not to crack.
"I didn't mean -- " he begins, shaking his head slightly. "If you don't want -- " he starts again, but then he can't form words anymore because his mouth is full of Ianto's tongue and that answers that. If this is what Ianto needs, then by the gods, Jack is going to give it to him.
This particular kiss doesn't want to end: Ianto is licking him and tasting him and biting and sucking at him, his hands squeezing and wandering -- over Jack's shoulders, across his chest, down his back, along his arms -- as if he's reassuring himself that Jack isn't going anywhere. Jack is doing some exploring of his own, and he's getting sweaty handprints all over Ianto's red silk shirt; they haven't come up for air in ages and Jack can't feel his own lips anymore but he forgets to care when Ianto's fingers insinuate themselves underneath his waistcoat. It's all distracting enough that Jack doesn't notice he's being muscled backward until the conference table bumps the backs of his thighs.
Ianto settles his hands on Jack's hips and manhandles him around until he's seated on the table and Ianto is standing between his spread knees, and Jack is bewildered to realize that, somehow, they've never done it in here, not since the Hub was rebuilt. Definitely not on this table.
Ianto is unbuckling Jack's belt and Jack has to make one last attempt at this 'manners' business. "Maybe this isn't the best time. Or the best place."
Ianto's fingers, unfastening Jack's trousers, go still. "Not interested?" he asks. He's gone poker-faced and Jack could swear the room temperature has dropped five degrees.
"No!" Jack cries. "I mean yes!" he amends and locks his ankles behind Ianto's legs for clarification. He glances around himself, down at his own reflection in the glossy tabletop. "I mean -- under the circumstances, I just thought maybe you'd rather not -- "
The fingers start moving again and Ianto's expression turns quietly menacing. "Ask me if I'm sure about this and I shall tie you bare-arsed and spread-eagled to this table and leave you that way for tomorrow's staff meeting."
Jack considers the possibilities. "You know everyone'll want to sleep through it anyway. Might liven things up for once."
"Without bringing you off first."
Jack, horrified, knows it's no empty threat. Ianto directs him to lean back on the table and he complies, resting his weight on his elbows while his trousers are tugged down. "Fine. But I can hear your teeth grind every time a coffee mug goes bareback on your nice shiny finish here."
Ianto strips Jack's trousers off over his boots and drops them into a chair. "The furniture polish is freshly restocked as of three days ago. I'm willing to make the sacrifice if you are. Just this once," he warns, grabbing Jack's knees and pushing them up and apart. "You'd be well-advised not to get used to it."
The hardwood table is unyielding and unforgiving, and Jack is bruised and sore in the morning, and the meeting is exactly as boring as expected, but he can't wipe the stupid grin off his face.
Author: Sirocco
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: R, to be safe
Warnings: M/M slash
Disclaimer: Torchwood belongs to the BBC and was created by Russell T. Davies.
Archive: Please ask.
Summary: My quick-and-dirty take on the fabled "two-minute kissing scene" described in John Barrowman's autobiography, based on speculation that it might have happened during episode 2x10, "From Out of the Rain."
Edited on 03 April 2008: Minor corrections for pronoun clarity and chronology as established in 2x12 "Fragments."
Jack locks the flask in Secure Archives and exhales a breath he hadn't realized he was holding. He wants to believe the whisper of carnival music was his imagination, but he knows better. The Night Travellers are out there, and there's nothing he can do but wait for their next victims to appear.
He'll only have nightmares if he tries to sleep tonight, so he wanders the Hub under the pretense of a security check. It stings him that Ianto left so abruptly, but Jack can't really blame him. The frequently gruesome nature of Ianto's cleanup duties notwithstanding, innocent death still hits him hard; doubly so when children are involved. It's too easy, sometimes, for Jack to be callous about it, and it's a trait he hopes Ianto never learns to emulate.
The light is still on in the conference room when he passes by, so he leans through the doorway to flip the switch and discovers that Ianto hasn't gone home after all. He's sitting at the table, elbows on the polished surface, forehead resting on his folded arms. Even with his fists clenched as they are, he could be sleeping, and Jack starts to back silently out of the room, but is stopped short by a long ragged sigh that sounds too much like a sob.
Jack freezes, uncertain whether to approach or to leave Ianto to grieve in private. But Jack is grieving too in his own way, and he doesn't want to do it alone. He's stepping into the room and speaking Ianto's name before he realizes he's made up his mind.
Ianto gasps and leaps to his feet, and Jack sees the panic in his face at being caught out like this before he turns away, looking at anything but Jack. His hand is scrubbing through his hair, mussing it, and he's pacing jerkily around the room like a trapped animal. He is trapped, since Jack is between him and the door, and Jack thinks, This is wrong.
He watches as the man who's been sharing his bed off and on for the better part of two years -- well, in this timeline, anyway -- refuses to look at him, to let Jack see him with tears on his face, and Jack himself has certainly been a stellar example of emotional accessibility, hasn't he?
He thinks, It shouldn't be like this. Not with us. And decides to do something about it.
He lays his hands on Ianto's shoulders and finds his grip shrugged off before he can turn the other man around to face him. He's still pacing, still agitated, still keeping his back to Jack.
"I should have run faster," he says, and the pads of his fingertips claw down his face. "Or farther. I should have held on to the flask more tightly." He looks over his shoulder to glance at Jack. "But he touched me and I -- I could feel my life draining out of me. I couldn't hold on. I tried --" He pivots away from Jack again, but he's not trying to escape now. "It wasn't enough." His fist meets the nearest wall with a flat thump. "It's never enough!"
He turns to face Jack at last, leaning against the wall. His cheeks are wet but his eyes are flinty and his voice is deep and angry and rough. "I had their lives in my hand, Jack. And I couldn't save them. Because I couldn't keep hold to a bottle."
He shoves off from the wall and starts to stalk past Jack, toward the door. Jack grabs him around the waist and gets an elbow in the jaw; he sometimes forgets how hard Ianto can hit, especially during his rare displays of temper. He twists away from Jack, fighting him, trying to pry himself out of Jack's grasp. But Jack hangs on this time, drawing on a century of combat experience to keep him in place without injuring him, eventually wrestling him into an awkward embrace.
Even like this, with the two of them breathing heavily on each other, Ianto turns his head and won't meet his eyes until Jack presses a palm to the side of his face and makes him look. His eyes are watery and red.
"How do you do it?" Ianto rasps, his voice hollow and hoarse. "How do you watch people die, time and again, knowing you can never do enough to save them no matter how hard you try?" He stands rigid in Jack's arms, his breath coming hot and damp and shallow and quick, and Jack is struck, painfully, by how young he is.
"You just do it," Jack replies steadily. "You're grateful for the people you can save and you mourn the ones you can't. And then you concentrate on saving the next one." He holds Ianto's face in both hands now, their foreheads touching. "There's a little boy who's alive tonight because of you. He's lost everything he knows and his life is never going to be the same, but he'll survive if he's strong enough. And he'd never have had that chance at all if it weren't for you."
They're standing too close to see each other clearly, but Ianto stares at him for a long, long moment before nodding and closing his eyes. Jack wraps his arms around his shoulders, and feels Ianto loosen against him, his chin dropping to Jack's shoulder, his hands sliding around the back of Jack's ribcage.
They stand like that for a while, leaning on each other, holding each other upright, and it feels like years since Jack last did this with anyone. Just taking comfort in someone else's touch, and giving it back. He kisses Ianto's temple, and since it feels nice and Ianto doesn't object, he does it again, on his cheek. He draws back a little and finds Ianto watching him, unreadable.
Jack leans in carefully to press a chaste kiss to his lips, but Ianto's fingers suddenly cup the back of Jack's head, tangling in his hair and yanking him forward to crash against Ianto's open mouth. Jack lets out a startled grunt and "chaste" drops out of his immediate vocabulary. Not at all what he'd intended, but he's not about to complain.
Except that he can still taste Ianto's tears through his own rising want, and even though Jack's already hard and Ianto is too, he's trying to convince himself that he still has something resembling a conscience. He reluctantly pushes himself to arms' length away and stands there panting until he thinks he can trust his voice not to crack.
"I didn't mean -- " he begins, shaking his head slightly. "If you don't want -- " he starts again, but then he can't form words anymore because his mouth is full of Ianto's tongue and that answers that. If this is what Ianto needs, then by the gods, Jack is going to give it to him.
This particular kiss doesn't want to end: Ianto is licking him and tasting him and biting and sucking at him, his hands squeezing and wandering -- over Jack's shoulders, across his chest, down his back, along his arms -- as if he's reassuring himself that Jack isn't going anywhere. Jack is doing some exploring of his own, and he's getting sweaty handprints all over Ianto's red silk shirt; they haven't come up for air in ages and Jack can't feel his own lips anymore but he forgets to care when Ianto's fingers insinuate themselves underneath his waistcoat. It's all distracting enough that Jack doesn't notice he's being muscled backward until the conference table bumps the backs of his thighs.
Ianto settles his hands on Jack's hips and manhandles him around until he's seated on the table and Ianto is standing between his spread knees, and Jack is bewildered to realize that, somehow, they've never done it in here, not since the Hub was rebuilt. Definitely not on this table.
Ianto is unbuckling Jack's belt and Jack has to make one last attempt at this 'manners' business. "Maybe this isn't the best time. Or the best place."
Ianto's fingers, unfastening Jack's trousers, go still. "Not interested?" he asks. He's gone poker-faced and Jack could swear the room temperature has dropped five degrees.
"No!" Jack cries. "I mean yes!" he amends and locks his ankles behind Ianto's legs for clarification. He glances around himself, down at his own reflection in the glossy tabletop. "I mean -- under the circumstances, I just thought maybe you'd rather not -- "
The fingers start moving again and Ianto's expression turns quietly menacing. "Ask me if I'm sure about this and I shall tie you bare-arsed and spread-eagled to this table and leave you that way for tomorrow's staff meeting."
Jack considers the possibilities. "You know everyone'll want to sleep through it anyway. Might liven things up for once."
"Without bringing you off first."
Jack, horrified, knows it's no empty threat. Ianto directs him to lean back on the table and he complies, resting his weight on his elbows while his trousers are tugged down. "Fine. But I can hear your teeth grind every time a coffee mug goes bareback on your nice shiny finish here."
Ianto strips Jack's trousers off over his boots and drops them into a chair. "The furniture polish is freshly restocked as of three days ago. I'm willing to make the sacrifice if you are. Just this once," he warns, grabbing Jack's knees and pushing them up and apart. "You'd be well-advised not to get used to it."
The hardwood table is unyielding and unforgiving, and Jack is bruised and sore in the morning, and the meeting is exactly as boring as expected, but he can't wipe the stupid grin off his face.