Incident
Characters: Jack/Ianto, Owen
Rating: NC-17, for implication of same-sex relationship and contemplation of suicide.
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and RTD
Spoilers: General, for series 1
Summary: Owen watches Jack and Ianto and tries to understand.
Author's note: this is part of a much longer story which is extremely anti-Owen and is just being written to get it out of my system. But I kind of like this scene so I thought I would inflict... er, share it with you all. Aren't you lucky? ;-)
What really finished me was the time when I’d stayed behind after a really shitty mission. The girls had left and I was on my way out, but Ianto was doing his bloody clean-up patrol and I couldn’t take another sarky comment about growing mould cultures in my mug. I’d tell him to get a life if I thought it would do the slightest good, but he’s such a total loser it would be a waste of breath.
At least, that was what I thought. Christ, it’s weird how you can be a genius and still be thick as a brick. I’m watching him picking up the pizza boxes and then he stops, looks around and drops them, then legs it up the stairs to Jack’s office. I know Jack’s up there and not in the best of moods, so I look forward to seeing him thrown out of the office just as fast as he goes in. Only nothing happens and after a while, curiosity makes me climb up the stairs after him and find a spot where I can look in without being seen right away.
Jack’s sitting at his desk and he’s playing with a wicked little weapon we pulled out of the Rift nearly a year back. Looks like a kid’s plastic toy but it works like the phasers from Star Trek. Point it at something, press the trigger and said something vaporises. Really neat, and Ianto had it stuffed into one of the secure boxes so fast we all had friction burns and he and Jack had a real blazing row about that. Worse one ever, bar none. How the hell Jack’s got a hold of it now is a mystery, and from the look on his face, our coffee-boy is having forty kinds of fit watching Jack handle it like it’s the kid’s toy it looks like. Seeing any kind of expression (apart from long-suffering resignation) on Ianto’s face is such a novelty that I almost miss it when Jack quits playing and puts the barrel of the gun up to his head. There’s an expression on his face… I can’t even begin to describe it, but it reminds me of every disappointment, setback or downright shitty moment I’ve ever had in my life, all rolled into one big ugly ball and dropped on me from a great height. Seeing that expression, I know he’s going to pull the trigger and something inside of me… well, I don’t want to think about that too much.
And then Ianto says “Don’t” in a weird, quiet sort of voice. And “please” with something like a sob deep inside his throat.
Not exactly the most eloquent of speeches to stop someone hell-bent on killing themselves and that surprises me, because Ianto normally has a killer way with words. God knows, he’s scored more hits on me than anyone else I can remember in my life. Most of the time he just lets me needle him, but sometimes, when he’s tired or angry or just feeling too shitty to keep up that façade he has, he looks over to me and slices through all my defences with a few well-chosen words and makes me feel like the bastard I can be at times. And all Mr Perfect Word For Every Occasion can come up with is two words?
Jack stays as he is, his eyes closed and the barrel against his temple, for what seems like forever. Then his eyes open again and he looks at Ianto. And something’s changed. I don’t know what, but Ianto’s moving towards him, Jack’s lowering the gun and then he’s getting up and Ianto has his arms wrapped around him. Jack leans his head on Ianto’s shoulder and Ianto lifts a hand up into which Jack drops the gun. Ianto glances down, does something with the gun and then throws it across the room to land on the couch. Then he switches his attention back to Jack and somehow, somehow, I watch Jack come apart and Ianto put him back together again, all without a word said, or anything more than that damn embrace.
And I’m jealous. I’m so damn jealous that I can hardly see straight and a big part of me wants to walk into that room, pick up the gun and blow the pair of them away. Not because I want either of them, because I don’t, but because they have something that I can’t even begin to understand but I know it’s something I’d sell my soul to have. I mean, Christ Almighty, Ianto betrayed Jack in just about as massive a way as is physically possible, and Jack murdered the woman Ianto was in love with. They should have killed one another months back. They should have ripped one another apart; hell, they very nearly did on a couple of occasions, with Ianto pushing and Jack refusing to give and all the while I’m figuring that one day I’m going to turn up for work and one or the other (or both) will be dead on the floor of the Hub.
Except they didn’t kill one another, and somewhere along the way something changed. Maybe Ianto shoved and Jack gave ground, or Jack pushed and Ianto backed off. Something happened and they gradually started acting like they weren’t going to tear one another’s throats out first chance they got. And then Ianto got the chance to watch Jack get taken out in a majorly messy way and he very nearly wound up getting himself killed making sure it didn’t happen. Jack spent the entire time I was trying to get him back together again detailing what he would do to me if I failed, which was a weird way of motivating a person but it worked. And less than a month after that some lunatic alien with a grudge against Jack snatched Ianto and instead of heaving a sigh of relief that he was rid of him, Jack practically turned Cardiff upside down to get him back!
I can’t figure them out. I said as much to Tosh and she got this weird look on her face, like she was trying not to laugh. When I asked her what was wrong, she said ‘I wouldn’t understand’. I hate it when birds say that. If I bleeding well understood I wouldn’t have asked, would I? So I tried asking Gwen and she looked at me like I was some kind of idiot and said that if I had to ask, I was a hopeless case. What the hell is it with those two? Can’t they answer a simple question?
But I don’t understand. No way are the pair of them in love. If they are, there’s been some serious lack of dewy-eyed looks, soulful sighs and all the other claptrap you’re supposed to go through. I don’t even want to think about the two of them having sex, because the idea of Ianto getting that messy is downright perverse and judging from the anecdotes that Jack comes out with, Ianto’s got way too few limbs/eyes/sexual orifices to keep him interested for long.
I’m missing something. I know I’m missing something and I’ve a feeling that it’s something to do with what’s happening right in front of me and even watching it happen, I’m still missing it. And that pisses me off. Ianto’s only hugging him, for God’s sake, but I can see Jack coming back from that dark place he was wallowing in. Not a kiss or a word or a hand in an inappropriate place, but I could run half of Cardiff on the electricity that’s crackling around them.
God, I need a drink. More than one. Maybe that’ll help fill the hollow place that opens up every time I see them together. Maybe that’ll stop the itch to hurt one of them, just to see the look in the other one’s eyes. Maybe that’ll stop me turning into the kind of monster I find lurking in my darkest nightmares; the ones that used to be so deep but now live just under my skin.
And I have to get away from the sight of them, before I finally figure out just what the hell’s going on and my world gets that little bit darker and colder than it already is.
Rating: NC-17, for implication of same-sex relationship and contemplation of suicide.
Disclaimer: Not mine, they belong to the BBC and RTD
Spoilers: General, for series 1
Summary: Owen watches Jack and Ianto and tries to understand.
Author's note: this is part of a much longer story which is extremely anti-Owen and is just being written to get it out of my system. But I kind of like this scene so I thought I would inflict... er, share it with you all. Aren't you lucky? ;-)
What really finished me was the time when I’d stayed behind after a really shitty mission. The girls had left and I was on my way out, but Ianto was doing his bloody clean-up patrol and I couldn’t take another sarky comment about growing mould cultures in my mug. I’d tell him to get a life if I thought it would do the slightest good, but he’s such a total loser it would be a waste of breath.
At least, that was what I thought. Christ, it’s weird how you can be a genius and still be thick as a brick. I’m watching him picking up the pizza boxes and then he stops, looks around and drops them, then legs it up the stairs to Jack’s office. I know Jack’s up there and not in the best of moods, so I look forward to seeing him thrown out of the office just as fast as he goes in. Only nothing happens and after a while, curiosity makes me climb up the stairs after him and find a spot where I can look in without being seen right away.
Jack’s sitting at his desk and he’s playing with a wicked little weapon we pulled out of the Rift nearly a year back. Looks like a kid’s plastic toy but it works like the phasers from Star Trek. Point it at something, press the trigger and said something vaporises. Really neat, and Ianto had it stuffed into one of the secure boxes so fast we all had friction burns and he and Jack had a real blazing row about that. Worse one ever, bar none. How the hell Jack’s got a hold of it now is a mystery, and from the look on his face, our coffee-boy is having forty kinds of fit watching Jack handle it like it’s the kid’s toy it looks like. Seeing any kind of expression (apart from long-suffering resignation) on Ianto’s face is such a novelty that I almost miss it when Jack quits playing and puts the barrel of the gun up to his head. There’s an expression on his face… I can’t even begin to describe it, but it reminds me of every disappointment, setback or downright shitty moment I’ve ever had in my life, all rolled into one big ugly ball and dropped on me from a great height. Seeing that expression, I know he’s going to pull the trigger and something inside of me… well, I don’t want to think about that too much.
And then Ianto says “Don’t” in a weird, quiet sort of voice. And “please” with something like a sob deep inside his throat.
Not exactly the most eloquent of speeches to stop someone hell-bent on killing themselves and that surprises me, because Ianto normally has a killer way with words. God knows, he’s scored more hits on me than anyone else I can remember in my life. Most of the time he just lets me needle him, but sometimes, when he’s tired or angry or just feeling too shitty to keep up that façade he has, he looks over to me and slices through all my defences with a few well-chosen words and makes me feel like the bastard I can be at times. And all Mr Perfect Word For Every Occasion can come up with is two words?
Jack stays as he is, his eyes closed and the barrel against his temple, for what seems like forever. Then his eyes open again and he looks at Ianto. And something’s changed. I don’t know what, but Ianto’s moving towards him, Jack’s lowering the gun and then he’s getting up and Ianto has his arms wrapped around him. Jack leans his head on Ianto’s shoulder and Ianto lifts a hand up into which Jack drops the gun. Ianto glances down, does something with the gun and then throws it across the room to land on the couch. Then he switches his attention back to Jack and somehow, somehow, I watch Jack come apart and Ianto put him back together again, all without a word said, or anything more than that damn embrace.
And I’m jealous. I’m so damn jealous that I can hardly see straight and a big part of me wants to walk into that room, pick up the gun and blow the pair of them away. Not because I want either of them, because I don’t, but because they have something that I can’t even begin to understand but I know it’s something I’d sell my soul to have. I mean, Christ Almighty, Ianto betrayed Jack in just about as massive a way as is physically possible, and Jack murdered the woman Ianto was in love with. They should have killed one another months back. They should have ripped one another apart; hell, they very nearly did on a couple of occasions, with Ianto pushing and Jack refusing to give and all the while I’m figuring that one day I’m going to turn up for work and one or the other (or both) will be dead on the floor of the Hub.
Except they didn’t kill one another, and somewhere along the way something changed. Maybe Ianto shoved and Jack gave ground, or Jack pushed and Ianto backed off. Something happened and they gradually started acting like they weren’t going to tear one another’s throats out first chance they got. And then Ianto got the chance to watch Jack get taken out in a majorly messy way and he very nearly wound up getting himself killed making sure it didn’t happen. Jack spent the entire time I was trying to get him back together again detailing what he would do to me if I failed, which was a weird way of motivating a person but it worked. And less than a month after that some lunatic alien with a grudge against Jack snatched Ianto and instead of heaving a sigh of relief that he was rid of him, Jack practically turned Cardiff upside down to get him back!
I can’t figure them out. I said as much to Tosh and she got this weird look on her face, like she was trying not to laugh. When I asked her what was wrong, she said ‘I wouldn’t understand’. I hate it when birds say that. If I bleeding well understood I wouldn’t have asked, would I? So I tried asking Gwen and she looked at me like I was some kind of idiot and said that if I had to ask, I was a hopeless case. What the hell is it with those two? Can’t they answer a simple question?
But I don’t understand. No way are the pair of them in love. If they are, there’s been some serious lack of dewy-eyed looks, soulful sighs and all the other claptrap you’re supposed to go through. I don’t even want to think about the two of them having sex, because the idea of Ianto getting that messy is downright perverse and judging from the anecdotes that Jack comes out with, Ianto’s got way too few limbs/eyes/sexual orifices to keep him interested for long.
I’m missing something. I know I’m missing something and I’ve a feeling that it’s something to do with what’s happening right in front of me and even watching it happen, I’m still missing it. And that pisses me off. Ianto’s only hugging him, for God’s sake, but I can see Jack coming back from that dark place he was wallowing in. Not a kiss or a word or a hand in an inappropriate place, but I could run half of Cardiff on the electricity that’s crackling around them.
God, I need a drink. More than one. Maybe that’ll help fill the hollow place that opens up every time I see them together. Maybe that’ll stop the itch to hurt one of them, just to see the look in the other one’s eyes. Maybe that’ll stop me turning into the kind of monster I find lurking in my darkest nightmares; the ones that used to be so deep but now live just under my skin.
And I have to get away from the sight of them, before I finally figure out just what the hell’s going on and my world gets that little bit darker and colder than it already is.