Fanfic - Sweet As Love [Torchwood: Ianto/Lisa]
Title: Sweet As Love
Rating(s): PG-13
Pairing(s): Ianto/Lisa, minor mention of Jack/Ianto
Summary: In which a sacrilegious possibility is put forth, and life, love and longing are discussed via beverage metaphors.
Warning(s): Angst. Spoilers for Canary Wharf and How Ianto Got The Job.
Sweet As Love
Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. - Turkish Proverb
Ianto Jones hates coffee.
All his life, he has been a tea-drinker through and through. He had his first cup when he was six and has never looked back since. He doesn't like the smell of coffee, that horrid pungency that lingers forever and agitates rather than soothes. Tea is calm and peacefulness and reserved dignity, everything he aspires to be. Coffee is the cousin you never talk about, that terrible embarrassment to the family, with the loud clothes and louder music and riff-raff hanging about them all the time.
No, Ianto does not like coffee. Till he reached twenty-two years of age, he was quite happy to have never had a cup of coffee near him.
Then he meets the exception to the rule. Her name is Lisa.
Lisa loves coffee. Ianto loves Lisa. Somehow, this translates into Ianto becoming a coffee aficionado.
Only in terms of understanding it, though. He still doesn’t drink it, but he likes trying different blends, experimenting to find the one that makes her go “Oh, wow!” and thereafter leads to them enthusiastically getting off with each other. He likes watching her frantically smooth down her rumpled suit and rush off to work, likes the faint scent of her perfume that clings to him the entire day.
He’s even willing to put up with the taste of coffee on her.
Clearly, it is love.
So they muddle along, a tea-drinker and coffee-lover. The best coffee blends live alongside the loose tea leaves in their kitchen cupboard. The coffee-maker is probably even more used than the kettle. Lisa declares that Ianto has missed his calling as a barista. Ianto declares that Lisa is the only one he cares to make coffee for, and he will not otherwise subject himself to the stuff, thank you very much.
She laughs and kisses him and the taste of coffee follows him to work.
It stays with him as the Cyberman and Daleks destroy everything he has ever cared for.
Ianto pulls Lisa out of the wreckage. He does not know how he manages it. He drags her, stiff, uncooperative, down the hallways. Out. Afterwards, when he thinks of it (and he tries not to) he thinks of the way the metal had burned him. Of the fire and the way it turned the metal redbrowngoldenalmosthuman before flickering back into greyevilcold. Of the way the metal wrapped around Lisa, cradling her, holding her fast.
The way it smelled. He remembers that. The acid taste of iron settling in his nose and filtering down to his tongue, mingling with the faint aftertaste of coffee. That stubborn, stubborn taste, refusing to disappear completely, refusing, like Lisa, to give up.
Lisa is alive, for now. Ianto is absolutely determined to keep it that way. For that, he will need Torchwood’s resources, and with One now gone, there is only one other place he can go.
Ianto smuggles Lisa back to the place he’d sworn never to return to.
As first meetings go, this one has been less than spectacular.
In Ianto’s defence, he has spent the past two years at a desk job. The only exercise Torchwood has ever required of him has been carting boxes of old archival material up and down a very tall building. (Some items had a tendency to stall lifts and then send them plunging to certain doom.)
He does try to keep in shape, but going to the gym is a little different from wrestling Weevils at night.
So he plots, as he walks away from the site of that first meeting. The next one will have to be successful. He has already given the Captain his name. He has no doubt that within the day, Three’s leader will know everything there is to know about him. The next time, he will have to do something spectacular, something to make Jack Harkness think he is worthy of hiring.
He has a Rift activity locator he scavenged from the ruins of One, along with other miscellanea. He follows its lead and finds a pteranodon.
After a Weevil, this is only mildly disturbing.
Ianto lures it into a warehouse with chocolate (the only thing he has on him, and he really hopes it doesn’t have the same effect on pteranodons as it does on dogs) and locks it in. Then he straightens his clothes and goes back to Lisa.
The next morning, Ianto wakes up early.
He kisses Lisa in greeting. Her eyes track him, but it takes too much effort for her to return the kiss. The metal trapping her face won’t let her.
Ianto gets a tub of water and carefully washes Lisa. He remembers cleaning her when they first got here. Washing all the dirtbloodshitbrainsfleshmud from her body. It is easier now, since she is mostly clean, and Lisa closes her eyes as the cloth runs gently over what skin is visible.
Ianto wonders if she can still feel it. When he is finished, he covers her with an unnecessary blanket, then goes to attend to himself. Out of habit, he lays out his suit before showering. Then he drops the shoes just as he is setting them out.
One no longer exists. He does not need to wear this.
Shuddering, he climbs into the shower and tries to let the water wash away the memories. It does not work. He forgoes shaving, puts on a pair of jeans, a shirt, the first casual clothes that come to hand. Normalcy, normalcy, he needs it but it is nowhere to be found and the strange walls mock him as he walks.
He makes a cup of tea and a cup of coffee.
Lisa spits out the first mouthful he had carefully spooned in. It tastes horrible, she croaks out around the metal constricting her mouth, it doesn’t taste like it should, god, Ianto, what’s happening to me.
Ianto is left holding the cup of coffee. He feels like he is tilting, like the room is tilting, like everything has slid sideways and forgotten to take him with it and he is walking on the wall of a room he cannot see into.
He flees.
He only realises that he’s still holding the coffee when he sees Jack Harkness. For that matter, he only realises where he is when he sees Jack Harkness. Momentarily, he considers turning tail and running. This is not the ideal way to formally introduce himself. The pteranodon awaits him and the Captain.
“Coffee?” he says instead, thrusting Lisa’s cup at the Captain.
The cup is accepted, a sip taken. An eyebrow is raised in obvious appreciation, and Ianto feels something black coming over him. The coffee has not changed. The coffee has not changed. Only Lisa’s tongue has. Only Lisa has.
This was a mistake, he thinks, it was a mistake coming here like this and thinking Jack Harkness might hire him on the strength of his desperation. He will return and attire himself in his suit, his armour, his calmness and dignity, and bring the Captain to the pteranodon, and that will be the way into the job.
For now, the job is not his. But it will be.
For a moment, lying face to face with Jack, Ianto feels as if he knows how to breathe. The thick, musky scent Jack radiates is going straight to his head, turning him bright with delight and anticipation. He has proven himself and Jack is impressed and this is it, Jack will give Jack will let Jack will Jackwillwill
Coherence brings with it a rush of disgust so strong Ianto is surprised Jack Harkness does not see it. He rolls himself off the Captain, pulls himself to his feet. He will try his luck another time, but for now he has to return, has to find himself again.
Jack Harkness’s breath had smelled of coffee.
Ianto hears a voice telling him to report for work the next day. He does not know if he wants to cry or throw up, and hurries off before he can do either.
Torchwood Three lives off coffee.
Torchwood Three thinks Ianto loves coffee.
It is an understandable mistake, Ianto thinks in some remote corner of his mind. The Captain has told them how good that first cup was. On his first day at Three, Ianto makes all of them cups of his usual blend, the one that Lisa likes best.
They love it. They also think that since it is Ianto’s own blend, clearly he appreciates a good cup of coffee.
He does not correct them. He continues to make them coffees. He never sits in on meetings, so they don’t realise that he doesn’t actually drink anything but water or tea while at work.
Sometimes, he cannot take making another cup, and buys the team’s next caffeine fix from Starbucks. Lisa has often said that it is swill next to Ianto’s coffee, but if it is a choice between Starbucks and Ianto’s sanity, he rather thinks she will forgive him this occasional indiscretion.
Once, Ianto tries a sip of his coffee. He sits there in the pantry for almost an hour before rising, tipping out the rest of the cup, and getting back to work.
If you know someone, you know all the little things about them.
Ianto knows that Lisa likes her coffee black and strong. He knows that she collects CDs as much for the artwork as for the music. He knows that she loves orange but hates the way it looks on her, and that is the reason for the beautiful orange dress in the back of her cupboard, the one she never wears. He knows that when Lisa is sick she gets tired and whiny and miserable and needs constant attention. He knows that she spent her teenage years struggling with anorexia, and that the food diary she maintains now is not merely an affectation.
Lisa knows that Ianto has a diamond ring hidden in the back of his sock drawer.
Torchwood Three knows that Ianto loves his coffee.
Even after they murder Lisa, even after he slowly, painfully begins to forgive them, forgive himself, even after all the complete shit his life has turned into because of Torchwood, the team still thinks he loves coffee.
He will never enlighten them.
Two months after Lisa is murdered, Ianto has sex with Jack Harkness for the first time. Afterwards, he makes himself a cup of coffee and drinks it slowly, every drop.
It feels like penance.
~fin
Rating(s): PG-13
Pairing(s): Ianto/Lisa, minor mention of Jack/Ianto
Summary: In which a sacrilegious possibility is put forth, and life, love and longing are discussed via beverage metaphors.
Warning(s): Angst. Spoilers for Canary Wharf and How Ianto Got The Job.
Sweet As Love
Coffee should be black as hell, strong as death, and sweet as love. - Turkish Proverb
Ianto Jones hates coffee.
All his life, he has been a tea-drinker through and through. He had his first cup when he was six and has never looked back since. He doesn't like the smell of coffee, that horrid pungency that lingers forever and agitates rather than soothes. Tea is calm and peacefulness and reserved dignity, everything he aspires to be. Coffee is the cousin you never talk about, that terrible embarrassment to the family, with the loud clothes and louder music and riff-raff hanging about them all the time.
No, Ianto does not like coffee. Till he reached twenty-two years of age, he was quite happy to have never had a cup of coffee near him.
Then he meets the exception to the rule. Her name is Lisa.
Lisa loves coffee. Ianto loves Lisa. Somehow, this translates into Ianto becoming a coffee aficionado.
Only in terms of understanding it, though. He still doesn’t drink it, but he likes trying different blends, experimenting to find the one that makes her go “Oh, wow!” and thereafter leads to them enthusiastically getting off with each other. He likes watching her frantically smooth down her rumpled suit and rush off to work, likes the faint scent of her perfume that clings to him the entire day.
He’s even willing to put up with the taste of coffee on her.
Clearly, it is love.
So they muddle along, a tea-drinker and coffee-lover. The best coffee blends live alongside the loose tea leaves in their kitchen cupboard. The coffee-maker is probably even more used than the kettle. Lisa declares that Ianto has missed his calling as a barista. Ianto declares that Lisa is the only one he cares to make coffee for, and he will not otherwise subject himself to the stuff, thank you very much.
She laughs and kisses him and the taste of coffee follows him to work.
It stays with him as the Cyberman and Daleks destroy everything he has ever cared for.
Ianto pulls Lisa out of the wreckage. He does not know how he manages it. He drags her, stiff, uncooperative, down the hallways. Out. Afterwards, when he thinks of it (and he tries not to) he thinks of the way the metal had burned him. Of the fire and the way it turned the metal redbrowngoldenalmosthuman before flickering back into greyevilcold. Of the way the metal wrapped around Lisa, cradling her, holding her fast.
The way it smelled. He remembers that. The acid taste of iron settling in his nose and filtering down to his tongue, mingling with the faint aftertaste of coffee. That stubborn, stubborn taste, refusing to disappear completely, refusing, like Lisa, to give up.
Lisa is alive, for now. Ianto is absolutely determined to keep it that way. For that, he will need Torchwood’s resources, and with One now gone, there is only one other place he can go.
Ianto smuggles Lisa back to the place he’d sworn never to return to.
As first meetings go, this one has been less than spectacular.
In Ianto’s defence, he has spent the past two years at a desk job. The only exercise Torchwood has ever required of him has been carting boxes of old archival material up and down a very tall building. (Some items had a tendency to stall lifts and then send them plunging to certain doom.)
He does try to keep in shape, but going to the gym is a little different from wrestling Weevils at night.
So he plots, as he walks away from the site of that first meeting. The next one will have to be successful. He has already given the Captain his name. He has no doubt that within the day, Three’s leader will know everything there is to know about him. The next time, he will have to do something spectacular, something to make Jack Harkness think he is worthy of hiring.
He has a Rift activity locator he scavenged from the ruins of One, along with other miscellanea. He follows its lead and finds a pteranodon.
After a Weevil, this is only mildly disturbing.
Ianto lures it into a warehouse with chocolate (the only thing he has on him, and he really hopes it doesn’t have the same effect on pteranodons as it does on dogs) and locks it in. Then he straightens his clothes and goes back to Lisa.
The next morning, Ianto wakes up early.
He kisses Lisa in greeting. Her eyes track him, but it takes too much effort for her to return the kiss. The metal trapping her face won’t let her.
Ianto gets a tub of water and carefully washes Lisa. He remembers cleaning her when they first got here. Washing all the dirtbloodshitbrainsfleshmud from her body. It is easier now, since she is mostly clean, and Lisa closes her eyes as the cloth runs gently over what skin is visible.
Ianto wonders if she can still feel it. When he is finished, he covers her with an unnecessary blanket, then goes to attend to himself. Out of habit, he lays out his suit before showering. Then he drops the shoes just as he is setting them out.
One no longer exists. He does not need to wear this.
Shuddering, he climbs into the shower and tries to let the water wash away the memories. It does not work. He forgoes shaving, puts on a pair of jeans, a shirt, the first casual clothes that come to hand. Normalcy, normalcy, he needs it but it is nowhere to be found and the strange walls mock him as he walks.
He makes a cup of tea and a cup of coffee.
Lisa spits out the first mouthful he had carefully spooned in. It tastes horrible, she croaks out around the metal constricting her mouth, it doesn’t taste like it should, god, Ianto, what’s happening to me.
Ianto is left holding the cup of coffee. He feels like he is tilting, like the room is tilting, like everything has slid sideways and forgotten to take him with it and he is walking on the wall of a room he cannot see into.
He flees.
He only realises that he’s still holding the coffee when he sees Jack Harkness. For that matter, he only realises where he is when he sees Jack Harkness. Momentarily, he considers turning tail and running. This is not the ideal way to formally introduce himself. The pteranodon awaits him and the Captain.
“Coffee?” he says instead, thrusting Lisa’s cup at the Captain.
The cup is accepted, a sip taken. An eyebrow is raised in obvious appreciation, and Ianto feels something black coming over him. The coffee has not changed. The coffee has not changed. Only Lisa’s tongue has. Only Lisa has.
This was a mistake, he thinks, it was a mistake coming here like this and thinking Jack Harkness might hire him on the strength of his desperation. He will return and attire himself in his suit, his armour, his calmness and dignity, and bring the Captain to the pteranodon, and that will be the way into the job.
For now, the job is not his. But it will be.
For a moment, lying face to face with Jack, Ianto feels as if he knows how to breathe. The thick, musky scent Jack radiates is going straight to his head, turning him bright with delight and anticipation. He has proven himself and Jack is impressed and this is it, Jack will give Jack will let Jack will Jackwillwill
Coherence brings with it a rush of disgust so strong Ianto is surprised Jack Harkness does not see it. He rolls himself off the Captain, pulls himself to his feet. He will try his luck another time, but for now he has to return, has to find himself again.
Jack Harkness’s breath had smelled of coffee.
Ianto hears a voice telling him to report for work the next day. He does not know if he wants to cry or throw up, and hurries off before he can do either.
Torchwood Three lives off coffee.
Torchwood Three thinks Ianto loves coffee.
It is an understandable mistake, Ianto thinks in some remote corner of his mind. The Captain has told them how good that first cup was. On his first day at Three, Ianto makes all of them cups of his usual blend, the one that Lisa likes best.
They love it. They also think that since it is Ianto’s own blend, clearly he appreciates a good cup of coffee.
He does not correct them. He continues to make them coffees. He never sits in on meetings, so they don’t realise that he doesn’t actually drink anything but water or tea while at work.
Sometimes, he cannot take making another cup, and buys the team’s next caffeine fix from Starbucks. Lisa has often said that it is swill next to Ianto’s coffee, but if it is a choice between Starbucks and Ianto’s sanity, he rather thinks she will forgive him this occasional indiscretion.
Once, Ianto tries a sip of his coffee. He sits there in the pantry for almost an hour before rising, tipping out the rest of the cup, and getting back to work.
If you know someone, you know all the little things about them.
Ianto knows that Lisa likes her coffee black and strong. He knows that she collects CDs as much for the artwork as for the music. He knows that she loves orange but hates the way it looks on her, and that is the reason for the beautiful orange dress in the back of her cupboard, the one she never wears. He knows that when Lisa is sick she gets tired and whiny and miserable and needs constant attention. He knows that she spent her teenage years struggling with anorexia, and that the food diary she maintains now is not merely an affectation.
Lisa knows that Ianto has a diamond ring hidden in the back of his sock drawer.
Torchwood Three knows that Ianto loves his coffee.
Even after they murder Lisa, even after he slowly, painfully begins to forgive them, forgive himself, even after all the complete shit his life has turned into because of Torchwood, the team still thinks he loves coffee.
He will never enlighten them.
Two months after Lisa is murdered, Ianto has sex with Jack Harkness for the first time. Afterwards, he makes himself a cup of coffee and drinks it slowly, every drop.
It feels like penance.
~fin