Faces of a stranger [fic]
Title: Faces of a stranger
Rating: R
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Word Count: 1800
Prompt: 19. White for fanfic100
Summary: Jack musing on Ianto.
A/N: Title taken from "The Stranger" by Billy Joel. Contains a missable Jeeves & Wooster reference. Because Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry are the tag-team of awesome. Dedicated to laligin, who I'm informed I have corrupted into multi-ship-shipping. Go me! Thanks also to her for the late beta. I'm too post-happy.
People will tell you that you can’t sort people, personalities into categories - they will argue an endless diversity of characters and quirks, the groups and types too many and varied, the human psyche too complicated. While lacking in psychological training or education, Jack has lived far longer than any of them can have done and he’s always been something of a charmer, a people person (when he wasn’t shooting them, conning them, betraying them or otherwise screwing them over) - both of which give his opinion on the matter enough weight to at least be considered.
It’s bollocks.
Everyone’s a player. An actor. Or “actress”, or “thespoid” if we’re going to be all PC abut it. Everyone tells lies at some point and even when they stop pretending to be something they’re not they feel the need to embellish and emphasise what and who they are. Put on a costume, hold themselves a particular way, use the right words to give the right connotations - a show of strength so they won’t be challenged, playing down any strengths and skills they have to catch their peers off guard. Jack isn’t exempt - there’s a reason he wears that coat (three, actually, but only one matters right now).
Point being, people aren’t as difficult to suss as everyone makes out. The ones that are really interesting are the ones that go “against type” as the literary buffs say - the ones who lead you down one path only to turn to you and reveal that prior to inviting you to take a stroll they fiddled with all the signposts, so you aren’t really going to the Drones Club, but will in fact be dining at Totleigh Towers. Whether this is a good or bad thing, or in fact doesn’t matter, is entirely down to circumstances at the time.
Upon meeting Ianto, shaking his hand and accepting his offer of a cup of coffee and - if you were lucky - some kind of biscuit, you’d think him pleasant. A bit boring, a bit anal, but he was only background anyway. It was along the lines of what Jack thought when he met Ianto for the interview, but more stress on the “anal” side of things; he was one of those people, like Suzie, who were insanely efficient and needed things a certain way or they’d lose their heads. Always useful to have that kind of person around - they got the work done. Jack only cottoned on to just how good he looked in a suit when he left the interview with a spring in his step which lifted up his jacket just enough -
And everyone thinks he hired him for a bit of tart. That was just an added bonus. No one got a job with Jack on looks alone - they needed to be smart, competent and good looking, if they could help it. The good looking part wasn’t for Jack’s benefit, either - it was purely a safety measure, put in place by Torchwood One, following a study which showed that in dangerous situations the attractive people were always among the first to be saved. And fine, Yvonne and the department heads had been drunk when they’d passed that motion through, and the study had been made up, but still; policy is policy.
It all started out so simply between them - which is one of the things that really pisses Jack off about Ianto, because things between them have gotten fucking complicated since then.
In Ianto’s best moments (and what would (should) probably be considered as a few of his worst) Jack empathises with, maybe even admires, him. He is taking control of things, knocking his environment back into order - albeit with somewhat les violence than Jack tends to use, and a lot more stationery. He’s not going to sit around and wait for Fate (downright fickle, impolite harlot that it is) to decide what’s going to happen to him, let alone the likes of power-crazed Yvonne, who hadn’t been informed that Britain no longer ruled a quarter of the world, or Jack, the trigger-happy gun whore. And Jack likes that. Loves it, even. He’s quite confident that if Ianto put enough time and effort in, really applied himself, he could take over the world via admin and forms. He’s confident Toshiko could do the same from her laptop at home - slightly more grounding for this given that incident with the pentagon when she was six.
And yet, this same thing annoys the hell out of Jack. Because while Ianto’s smart enough to clock that no one’s going to do as good a job of protecting him as he is himself, he’s romantic enough to believe that there’s something better in people, despite all that he’s seen to prove him wrong. Twenty-six years old and the dregs of innocence are all still there - he’s fought to keep hold of them, but still, they’re there. Jack likes to think he’s disgusted by that, but that’s all an act. He resents that Ianto can still hold on to it, can still look at things for the first time with some kind of hope (Jack needs to look six or seven times before he can even try). Jack had his innocence bled from him before he was old enough to appreciate (or rather understand) what had been done.
That Ianto can - and will - still smile at him, as though he hadn’t killed the girl Ianto might have married in a year or two had the pair of them been more sensible in their career choices, still smile as if he’s really, genuinely happy to see him… the bile burns Jack’s throat. It makes him want to hit him. Try and slap some sense into him. One day he’ll probably try it. One day, if that doesn’t work, or if he doesn’t get around to it, he might end up shooting him because of those noble ideas. Despite their obvious intelligence, his team (save his charming second-in-command who ended up a bit of a psycho as a result) seem bothered by Torchwood’s stunted, backward, xenophobic policies. He sees something of it in Toshiko’s eyes sometimes, when she displays her displeasure at a particular course of action he’s approved. He worries about her following Suzie, getting too bogged down until obsession finally takes hold, trapping her in irredeemable misery, and she ends up shooting herself in the head. He worries about Ianto following Toshiko, too; becoming gradually isolated from normality, being forced to see, and hear, and feel all that’s wrong with humanity and feeling all the weaker for it. And then he follows Tosh following Suzie and Jack’s got another body.
He’d worried about Gwen becoming another Suzie when he first hired her; you took away Suzie’s glasses and her science and engineering qualifications and there stood Gwen.
Almost.
True, Suzie empathised. True, Suzie empathised too much. But she didn’t leak the caring that Gwen does - that energy was carefully poured into her work. Suzie lasted longer, too. It’s been eight months and Gwen’s already been crying into pizzas alone in the Hub and stealing retcon pills (it has to be the boyfriend - Owen would know what she’d done and Rhys is the only person she’s ever talked about). It’s only going to be a matter of time before she looks in the mirror and it hit her, as it hit Jack. She cares because she thinks she should. She cares for them, not necessarily because of who they are, but because they’re there, because out of everyone she meets she’s with them most. Which isn’t to say she doesn’t care at all - she does. Just nowhere near as much as she seems to think she does. Owen cares more about them than she does. He’s just really good at hiding it.
Ianto’s something of a bleeding heart, on top of being a romantic (how he wasn’t born French, Jack will never fathom - he seems destined to die fighting someone for insulting someone else’s honour. Jack’s already told him not to bother over his), and Jack knows that he’d do practically anything for him. This would frighten him, or at least make him feel a little unsettled, if it weren’t for the fact he also knows that anything Ianto would do for him, he’d do twice over, standing on one leg, for Toshiko. He doesn’t know it, and she doesn’t know it (which is probably just as well or she’d go red and Owen, upon figuring out why, would see fit to tease her, and Jack would come back to Owen’s lifeless body, an empty coffee machine and a note from Ianto and Tosh explaining their decision to start a new life in Norway). But Jack knows it, and that’s the way he likes it, thank you very much.
Jack remembers visiting Torchwood One, back in the days when Cardiff didn’t matter much, no matter how many pleas he made or how many members of management he shagged. Ianto doesn’t seem to be one of them. Didn’t, anyway; the more Jack’s gotten to know him the more he’s seeing Ianto’s little machinations. All banal and almost pointlessly small-scale, but there’s definite potential. Probably one of the reasons Yvonne hired him.
Of course every time Ianto’s attempted something bigger, something that will matter, it’s all broken ranks and run wild, all the while with Ianto pretending that he can handle it, that the body - bodies (the cybernetics expert, the pizza girl, the love of his life) - didn’t touch him. It amuses Jack, in a sick kind of way, to see him try again and again, like someone trying to kick a door down. He has the wits to dream the grand schemes, the dexterity and expertise to carry them out, but unless there’s something he really cares about - something he really believes in - he won’t go that last mile. Can’t.
Jack makes it look all too easy.
He’ll be able to do it one day though; when he’s hardened, when those dregs have finally been washed away while he smiles politely so no one will suspect any change. When that day comes he’ll probably be worthy of the Time Agency. It would be so easy to fall for him, if Jack’s ever around when that day comes. Which is a bit inconvenient, really, because that will probably be the day Ianto turns around and tells him to fuck off, seeing him exactly for who and what he is; a murderer, playing the hero by murdering the right people. He’ll probably end up blaming Jack for “turning” him into this, even though it was pretty much a given from the day he signed up for Torchwood. Because it doesn’t matter if you decide to fight fate, try and make your own way, there are some things you simply can’t change, no matter what face you try on.
Rating: R
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Word Count: 1800
Prompt: 19. White for fanfic100
Summary: Jack musing on Ianto.
A/N: Title taken from "The Stranger" by Billy Joel. Contains a missable Jeeves & Wooster reference. Because Hugh Laurie and Stephen Fry are the tag-team of awesome. Dedicated to laligin, who I'm informed I have corrupted into multi-ship-shipping. Go me! Thanks also to her for the late beta. I'm too post-happy.
People will tell you that you can’t sort people, personalities into categories - they will argue an endless diversity of characters and quirks, the groups and types too many and varied, the human psyche too complicated. While lacking in psychological training or education, Jack has lived far longer than any of them can have done and he’s always been something of a charmer, a people person (when he wasn’t shooting them, conning them, betraying them or otherwise screwing them over) - both of which give his opinion on the matter enough weight to at least be considered.
It’s bollocks.
Everyone’s a player. An actor. Or “actress”, or “thespoid” if we’re going to be all PC abut it. Everyone tells lies at some point and even when they stop pretending to be something they’re not they feel the need to embellish and emphasise what and who they are. Put on a costume, hold themselves a particular way, use the right words to give the right connotations - a show of strength so they won’t be challenged, playing down any strengths and skills they have to catch their peers off guard. Jack isn’t exempt - there’s a reason he wears that coat (three, actually, but only one matters right now).
Point being, people aren’t as difficult to suss as everyone makes out. The ones that are really interesting are the ones that go “against type” as the literary buffs say - the ones who lead you down one path only to turn to you and reveal that prior to inviting you to take a stroll they fiddled with all the signposts, so you aren’t really going to the Drones Club, but will in fact be dining at Totleigh Towers. Whether this is a good or bad thing, or in fact doesn’t matter, is entirely down to circumstances at the time.
Upon meeting Ianto, shaking his hand and accepting his offer of a cup of coffee and - if you were lucky - some kind of biscuit, you’d think him pleasant. A bit boring, a bit anal, but he was only background anyway. It was along the lines of what Jack thought when he met Ianto for the interview, but more stress on the “anal” side of things; he was one of those people, like Suzie, who were insanely efficient and needed things a certain way or they’d lose their heads. Always useful to have that kind of person around - they got the work done. Jack only cottoned on to just how good he looked in a suit when he left the interview with a spring in his step which lifted up his jacket just enough -
And everyone thinks he hired him for a bit of tart. That was just an added bonus. No one got a job with Jack on looks alone - they needed to be smart, competent and good looking, if they could help it. The good looking part wasn’t for Jack’s benefit, either - it was purely a safety measure, put in place by Torchwood One, following a study which showed that in dangerous situations the attractive people were always among the first to be saved. And fine, Yvonne and the department heads had been drunk when they’d passed that motion through, and the study had been made up, but still; policy is policy.
It all started out so simply between them - which is one of the things that really pisses Jack off about Ianto, because things between them have gotten fucking complicated since then.
In Ianto’s best moments (and what would (should) probably be considered as a few of his worst) Jack empathises with, maybe even admires, him. He is taking control of things, knocking his environment back into order - albeit with somewhat les violence than Jack tends to use, and a lot more stationery. He’s not going to sit around and wait for Fate (downright fickle, impolite harlot that it is) to decide what’s going to happen to him, let alone the likes of power-crazed Yvonne, who hadn’t been informed that Britain no longer ruled a quarter of the world, or Jack, the trigger-happy gun whore. And Jack likes that. Loves it, even. He’s quite confident that if Ianto put enough time and effort in, really applied himself, he could take over the world via admin and forms. He’s confident Toshiko could do the same from her laptop at home - slightly more grounding for this given that incident with the pentagon when she was six.
And yet, this same thing annoys the hell out of Jack. Because while Ianto’s smart enough to clock that no one’s going to do as good a job of protecting him as he is himself, he’s romantic enough to believe that there’s something better in people, despite all that he’s seen to prove him wrong. Twenty-six years old and the dregs of innocence are all still there - he’s fought to keep hold of them, but still, they’re there. Jack likes to think he’s disgusted by that, but that’s all an act. He resents that Ianto can still hold on to it, can still look at things for the first time with some kind of hope (Jack needs to look six or seven times before he can even try). Jack had his innocence bled from him before he was old enough to appreciate (or rather understand) what had been done.
That Ianto can - and will - still smile at him, as though he hadn’t killed the girl Ianto might have married in a year or two had the pair of them been more sensible in their career choices, still smile as if he’s really, genuinely happy to see him… the bile burns Jack’s throat. It makes him want to hit him. Try and slap some sense into him. One day he’ll probably try it. One day, if that doesn’t work, or if he doesn’t get around to it, he might end up shooting him because of those noble ideas. Despite their obvious intelligence, his team (save his charming second-in-command who ended up a bit of a psycho as a result) seem bothered by Torchwood’s stunted, backward, xenophobic policies. He sees something of it in Toshiko’s eyes sometimes, when she displays her displeasure at a particular course of action he’s approved. He worries about her following Suzie, getting too bogged down until obsession finally takes hold, trapping her in irredeemable misery, and she ends up shooting herself in the head. He worries about Ianto following Toshiko, too; becoming gradually isolated from normality, being forced to see, and hear, and feel all that’s wrong with humanity and feeling all the weaker for it. And then he follows Tosh following Suzie and Jack’s got another body.
He’d worried about Gwen becoming another Suzie when he first hired her; you took away Suzie’s glasses and her science and engineering qualifications and there stood Gwen.
Almost.
True, Suzie empathised. True, Suzie empathised too much. But she didn’t leak the caring that Gwen does - that energy was carefully poured into her work. Suzie lasted longer, too. It’s been eight months and Gwen’s already been crying into pizzas alone in the Hub and stealing retcon pills (it has to be the boyfriend - Owen would know what she’d done and Rhys is the only person she’s ever talked about). It’s only going to be a matter of time before she looks in the mirror and it hit her, as it hit Jack. She cares because she thinks she should. She cares for them, not necessarily because of who they are, but because they’re there, because out of everyone she meets she’s with them most. Which isn’t to say she doesn’t care at all - she does. Just nowhere near as much as she seems to think she does. Owen cares more about them than she does. He’s just really good at hiding it.
Ianto’s something of a bleeding heart, on top of being a romantic (how he wasn’t born French, Jack will never fathom - he seems destined to die fighting someone for insulting someone else’s honour. Jack’s already told him not to bother over his), and Jack knows that he’d do practically anything for him. This would frighten him, or at least make him feel a little unsettled, if it weren’t for the fact he also knows that anything Ianto would do for him, he’d do twice over, standing on one leg, for Toshiko. He doesn’t know it, and she doesn’t know it (which is probably just as well or she’d go red and Owen, upon figuring out why, would see fit to tease her, and Jack would come back to Owen’s lifeless body, an empty coffee machine and a note from Ianto and Tosh explaining their decision to start a new life in Norway). But Jack knows it, and that’s the way he likes it, thank you very much.
Jack remembers visiting Torchwood One, back in the days when Cardiff didn’t matter much, no matter how many pleas he made or how many members of management he shagged. Ianto doesn’t seem to be one of them. Didn’t, anyway; the more Jack’s gotten to know him the more he’s seeing Ianto’s little machinations. All banal and almost pointlessly small-scale, but there’s definite potential. Probably one of the reasons Yvonne hired him.
Of course every time Ianto’s attempted something bigger, something that will matter, it’s all broken ranks and run wild, all the while with Ianto pretending that he can handle it, that the body - bodies (the cybernetics expert, the pizza girl, the love of his life) - didn’t touch him. It amuses Jack, in a sick kind of way, to see him try again and again, like someone trying to kick a door down. He has the wits to dream the grand schemes, the dexterity and expertise to carry them out, but unless there’s something he really cares about - something he really believes in - he won’t go that last mile. Can’t.
Jack makes it look all too easy.
He’ll be able to do it one day though; when he’s hardened, when those dregs have finally been washed away while he smiles politely so no one will suspect any change. When that day comes he’ll probably be worthy of the Time Agency. It would be so easy to fall for him, if Jack’s ever around when that day comes. Which is a bit inconvenient, really, because that will probably be the day Ianto turns around and tells him to fuck off, seeing him exactly for who and what he is; a murderer, playing the hero by murdering the right people. He’ll probably end up blaming Jack for “turning” him into this, even though it was pretty much a given from the day he signed up for Torchwood. Because it doesn’t matter if you decide to fight fate, try and make your own way, there are some things you simply can’t change, no matter what face you try on.