Torchwood Fic: To Learn This Holding and The Holding Back (Part 3)

[kalichan]

Title: To Learn This Holding And The Holding Back
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Tosh, Gwen, Owen
Authors: rm & kalichan
Rating/Warning: NC-17, mostly plot this time, with a serving of porn for dessert.
Summary: With every night, a morning after. Jack and Ianto try to cope.
Author's Notes: Concludes the triptych begun with A Strange Fashion of Forsaking

Comments

[jbs_teeth]

Although there are a number of elements in this fic I find myself resisting, one thing I cannot resist is the ending. The imagery of Jack walking home in the early morning alone, on the verge of something grand, brings very clearly to mind the last few paragraphs of "This Side of Paradise" by F. Scott Fitzgerald. And that is lovely indeed.

[kalichan]

Thank you! I think the image of the ending was something we both could just *see* very clearly, so I'm glad to know it worked (although any homage to This Side of Paradise was unintentional - but now that you mention, I can totally see it. *g*)

Can I ask what you had trouble with in the earlier part of the story? *is curious*

[jbs_teeth]

In general, I don't like fics that depict Ianto as being somewhat irrationally angry at a stereotypically thoughtless (masculinely oblivious) Jack. Unfortunately, its done often enough in really bad pieces that it sort of ruins the idea for the context of a more sophisticated look at this kind of real problem in intimate relationships

[kalichan]

Your points are well taken, and completely fair; thanks for sharing them! I really appreciate your willingness to go into detail, which is very, very welcome. So thank you for that, and also for the lovely compliments

[rm]

Thank you!

The sleep thing is really weird because it removed a line of demarcation from things -- I mean, is there any fashion at all in which Jack isn't bad with boundaries?

[youreyesaregems]

I am reading this story now (all in one go!) and don't really have much to say so far, but so much yes to the whole sleep issue. That seems so right (I really liked the similar themes with Owen too, actually) and this comment made me stop and go 'wow' for several minutes.

Also, I am terrible at sleeping. It's 3:30 am now - I frequently go >24 hours without sleep and can completely relate to kalichan & Jack on this.

[kalichan]

It's 3:14am here, and I'm still up working, but just thought I'd check my email -- and I saw your comment -- how apropos! It's so exciting to have someone discover this story -- after all this time, it's still extremely near to rm's and my thoughts. Thank you so much for commenting along; it gives us a chance to go along this journey again, with you, and we love that.

[burntcopper]

oh, lovely. And I'm really liking the push and pull and Ianto getting pissed off when Jack does things wrong or oversteps.

[rm]

Thank you!

They're both quite bad at this, and I'm glad it made sense to you. For me, one of the things I am interested in is that despite Jack's age, he is, in the scheme of his new lifespan, also a child, and it may be part of what he feels gives him license to be such a fuck-up. And Ianto's so concerned about making sure he stands up to him and holds his own he doesn't always pull it off in a way that's truly useful.

[darthhellokitty]

Oh, my, I enjoyed this so much! I like that, although Jack screws up repeatedly, he also tries repeatedly. I like that he puts Ianto in such an uncomfortable position, and it obviously didn't occur to him that it would be a problem, and yet they ended up having a good time! Ianto is certainly a man of his time, but he's also more flexible than he thinks he is.

I like Ianto stomping around, so pissed off at Jack for just leaving - let alone the thing with the car - considering what happened last time Jack borrowed his car, he should be! Tosh's observation at the very beginning of the story - he'd saunter in after a night of who knows what, or rather who knows who, around six - tells us that this is just what Jack does, and I doubt it occurs to him that it isn't very nice, and especially if he treats someone he has this not-quite-defined-but-certainly-more-than-a-pickup relationship with that way

[rm]

Thank you so much. I feel like some of the stuff you pointed out should have been obvious when we were writing but I am reading this comment going "Hey! We did that! Di we know we were doing that? (Kali, did we?). Awesome

[darthhellokitty]

I did that a couple of times when I wrote, put in whole subplots I didn't know about til people congratulated me on them. XD

It occurs to me that one of the very few ways Jack can lose control is in sex.

[rm]

Not only is it one of the few ways he can lose control, but it's also somethign where it has to be a little hard to keep up the novelty. I mean, Jack's an adventurous guy and he's had sex with a lot of people and beings. So to be on earth for an extended period of time in the 19th/20th/21st century can Jack really make it new with kinkiness? Eh, not so much really, although he's still a kinky guy. So for him the novelty in sex starts to become just about what reactions he can elicit in someone else, which is part of what I think we're looking at here and why the whole strangulation incident that started this is so fascinating to him -- not only was it a matter of a loss of control, but he brought what out? In who? Why? What's up with that? So I think it's why he keeps coming back to working through this thing with Ianto, eventhough it often seems like a bad or even aggravating idea to him.

[phibetafunkay]

As I despair of Jack and Ianto even getting the slightest bit close to the honesty they have in this fic on the show (TTLM being an exception), I'll be putting this one in my archives. :D

[rm]

Thank you! They are bad at the talking, but at least in fic we can see them inch along towards some sort of level place with each other.

[phibetafunkay]

So true. :)

[kalichan]

*smiles* Thank you so much! We're adding our own behind the scenes honesty, I guess - but I still have hope for canon. Of course, that's usually the way to get one's heart broken so...