Fic: Whilst The World Is Full Of Troubles
Title: Whilst The World Is Full Of Troubles
Rating: T
Word count: ~4,600
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Jack/Ianto
Time line: Set post-‘From Out Of The Rain’, with reference to ‘Last of the Time Lords’ from DW and Estelle from 'Small Worlds'.
Disclaimer: The characters aren't mine, the canon isn't mine, the specific universe is, but I’m making no money from this.
Beta'd by: cazmalfoy and et_muse
Series: The 'Human Child' series, following on from ' Come Away, Oh Human Child', ' The World's More Full Of Weeping', and ‘ To The Waters And The Wild’. These should be read first.
Notes: After the events involving the Night Travellers and the Electro, Ianto retreats to lick his wounds and take comfort from his fey subjects. An argument with Jack is the catalyst for a change in their relationship.
When Ianto goes home, after the boy is saved and the others are not, after the film is destroyed and the camera is safely stored in Jack's secure archives, his flat is filled with roses.
He isn't surprised by this in the slightest; they know what the Electro means to him, or meant, because it will never mean the same again now. One of his few, precious memories of his father has been desecrated by those beings of light and shadow, the Night Travellers. He had been looking forward to the re-opening of the Electro, but no longer.
He drops his keys onto the coffee table and takes off his coat. It is wet, needs hanging in the airing cupboard, but Ianto lacks will and energy. Instead he gives it a half-hearted shake and hangs it on the hook behind the door. White rose petals drift from the sleeves and pockets, and he knows they were not there a moment before. It doesn't really matter, he isn't really surprised. He pulls off his shoes, and then his socks, and walks bare-foot across the carpet strewn with petals, white and red and pink and yellow.
It is velvet beneath his feet, and the heady scent of roses all around, but it is no consolation.
Ianto wanders around his flat for a few minutes, pausing in the kitchen, by the television, beside the bed, as if he is trying to decide what to do. He doesn't want coffee, or to watch the news, which will be full of the tragedy of today, or to go to bed. He doesn't want anything except his father back, and he can never have that.
He stops in the bathroom, stares at the bath. It is full, the water hot, and rose petals float on the surface. They are here, he knows they are here, but they are hidden. Perhaps, he reflects, they know he cannot welcome comfort from any thing right now.
Jack hasn't called him, hasn't come to see him, and Ianto tries to decide whether he is relieved or disappointed. He shakes his head at himself and strips quickly, hanging his suit on the back of the door before slipping into the bath. A sigh escapes his mouth as the water soothes muscles that he hadn't realised were aching.
Somewhere in his flat, someone giggles. Ianto smiles despite himself.
"Not while I'm in the bath," he calls, and the giggle gets louder as others join in. His fairies. They respect his need for privacy, even if they do not understand it, and he knows he will not see them until he emerges from the bathroom.
The smile slips from his mouth and he leans his head back against the rim of the bath, closes his eyes and tries not to think about anything. If he thinks about something, it will lead back to the Night Travellers, and he has no wish to think about that. Later, perhaps, he will allow himself to dwell and to work out what he is so unhappy about - the boy? The family? His father's memory? Jack? - but now he will rest in the hot water, rose petals all around and filling his senses, and soon he will let his fairies comfort him.
Eventually he pulls the plug and leaves the bath, wrapping a towel around himself as he watches the water drain. He could think of poetic, symbolic ways to describe that - water going down a plughole - but he is too tired, and too empty.
And there is a fairy perching on his shoulder, tugging at his earlobe.
"I'm alright," he says wearily. "Don't worry about me."
"Ours to worry about," the fairy says in reproof. It is the fairy that, so many months ago now, stayed with the Doctor in the year that was wound back. She has stuck close to him recently, but he doesn't know why and won't ask, won't concede that to them.
Won't speak of that year, not even to Jack, despite the immortal's questioning. Some things...some things he cannot share, even now that he is sharing so much of himself with Jack.
As if summoned by his thinking, Jack rings the doorbell. Ianto knows it is Jack - no-one else leans that hard on the bell, rings that loudly to demand entry. It is a demand, he knows, and he knows it is because Jack is worried about him.
He sighs and leaves the bathroom, wrapping a dressing-gown around himself before he answers the door. Jack crowds in at once, closing the door behind him, and he takes in the roses scattered everywhere with a glance and a scowl.
"Ianto," he says, and his scowl turns into a smirk as he looks at Ianto properly. "Did I interrupt?"
"I was finished," Ianto says, turning away and retreating along the petal-strewn hallway to his bedroom. Jack follows after a moment, and when Ianto glances at him again, his lover is without coat and boots. "Are you alright?" he asks, just a habit, and Jack rolls his eyes.
"I'm always alright," he says. "But you're not."
"I'm fine," says Ianto, an unconvincing lie, not least because the fairies, invisible for now, follow his words with a hiss and a murmur of disgust. Jack hears them, but doesn't react. He is used to this now, this unseen presence at more than a few of their interactions. Used to it, but Ianto knows he doesn't like it.
"Have you eaten? I could cook," says Jack, leaning against the door frame as Ianto rummages for clean boxers and t-shirt. Ianto feels him watching, but is unashamed when he discards the dressing gown and takes a towel from the radiator to rub himself dry.
“I’m not hungry,” he says, and there is silence as he dries himself and pulls on faded boxers and a t-shirt that has seen better days. “But you eat. If you want.”
“Ianto,” sighs Jack, but he says nothing else and Ianto isn’t sure he wants to know why Jack seems so frustrated. He doesn’t know if he wants to have that conversation.
He runs his fingers through his damp hair and brushes past Jack to return to the living room, going to his CD player and brushing petals aside so he can turn it on. The CD is one of Jack’s - Vera Lynn, left here last time Jack stayed over. Ianto doesn’t bother to change it, knowing he only put music on to fill the silence.
Jack is behind him suddenly, hands on his waist and chin resting on his shoulder, and Ianto closes his eyes and curls his icy fingers into fists. Jack wants something from him, but he doesn’t know what it is, doesn’t have anything to give right now.
“Ianto,” says Jack, voice low and gentle. “Ianto, talk to me.”
“What do you want me to say?” Ianto asks, and hears Jack’s exasperated sigh as if he is separated from Jack by thick glass. Distant, cold, alone…
Small hands wipe away tears, and he smiles just a little at the offered comfort.
“Talk to me about that,” says Jack, loud now and pulling away. Ianto turns, startled out of his reverie, and is almost surprised to see that Jack is angry. “Talk to me,” he says, pointing at the visible fairy, “about that.”
Ianto presses back against the cabinet and the CD player as Jack begins to pace. Jack is angry - furious - and Ianto realises that this has been brewing for months. He doesn’t want to do this now, doesn’t want to have this conversation, but he knows Jack. There is no choice now it has been brought into the open.
“What do you want me to say?” he asks again, and hates how plaintive his voice sounds. “What do you want from me, Jack?”
“I want some honesty.”
Ianto flinches as if slapped, and he stares at Jack in disbelief. He cannot believe Jack has said that - cannot believe it, after so many months spent carefully building up a relationship that is no longer formed on half-truths and outright lies. He had thought he had been truthful with Jack. That Jack thinks otherwise makes his stomach twist.
“I thought you’d forgiven me for that,” he whispers at last. “I thought…”
Jack shakes his head, impatient. “This isn’t about who you are,” he says. “Or maybe it is.” He pauses, staring at Ianto for a long moment, and then he turns away and waves his hands to indicate the roses everywhere. “It’s about this, Ianto. It’s about you coming back here after a bad day and getting comfort from…from them.”
“Them,” Ianto echoes, shaking his head. “They’re - I don’t understand.”
“You keep going to them,” says Jack, whirling back to face him. “You never come to me.”
Ianto stares at him, feeling as though Jack has punched him in the stomach. For a moment it is as if he cannot breathe, but then he feels cold ice creeping across his fingers and palms, up his arms, and he knows Jack sees it, sees how his turbulent emotions are manifesting. He has less control than he used to, around Jack at least. It isn’t something he likes to think about, although he knows both Jack and the fairies have noticed it.
“You never come to me,” Jack says again, and Ianto is shocked to see that he is upset, really and truly distressed almost to the point of tears. He has seen Jack crying before, but only rarely, and never because of him.
“Jack,” he says helplessly. “I…” But he trails off, wordless, and shakes his head. He doesn’t know what to say. Jack looks back at him, expression betraying his hopelessness, and Ianto cannot think of the words.
The single visible fairy comes to rest on his shoulder, but Jack’s eyes, his face, the way his lips press together in disappointment…
Ianto shakes the fairy off and waves his hand at the others, the ones he knows are there.
“Go,” he says, not loudly but his intent is clear. He wants them gone, knows this is a conversation that cannot be held with the fairies present. A wind sweeps through the room, pushing him away from Jack and making the rose petals swirl through the air. He shakes his head, and the wind drops. “Go,” he says again, and just like that, they are gone.
Jack closes his eyes for a moment, shoulders sagging, and Ianto wants nothing more than to soothe the lines from his face.
“Thank you,” Jack says at last, and his gratitude makes Ianto choke.
“You’re right,” he whispers. “You’re right. I do take their comfort.” He turns away, switches off the music and busies himself with placing the CD back into its case. “It’s easy,” he says, and hears Jack move away.
“I know that much,” Jack says, and Ianto hears him settle onto the couch. “C’mere, Ianto. Talk to me.” It isn’t an order - isn’t quite a plea - but Ianto obeys anyway. He perches uneasily, watching Jack cautiously. “Ianto - I just want to know why,” Jack entreats. “Why do you never come to me?”
“I don’t go to them,” Ianto says uneasily.
“But you don’t come to me,” whispers Jack, and Ianto has to acknowledge the truth in that. But then anger surges up within him and he clenches his fists.
“Why should I?” he demands, almost spiteful now - except he is never spiteful, so rarely feels any desire to hurt another person. “You never come to me.” Jack frowns at him, but Ianto doesn’t pull back. “You never come to me when you’re upset,” Ianto says, and wants to point at his lover but doesn’t because of the ice on his fingers. “You don’t talk to me, Jack.”
“How can I?” Jack returns, growing angry. “You’re never alone with me. Not really. They’re always here, Ianto!” He rises and begins to pace, unable to keep still. “Whenever I want to share something with you - whenever - they only leave you alone when we’re having sex, Ianto!” He lifts his hands to his head, drops them, whirls to face Ianto and shoves the coffee table with his foot. Petals fall, scatter, drop into random patterns on the floor. Ianto closes his eyes.
“All I want is some of you,” says Jack almost desperately. “That’s all I’m asking for, Ianto.” He comes to kneel in front of Ianto, takes his cold hands in his own, and Ianto opens his eyes again, blinking away tears. “You have all of me,” says Jack, a promise that will never be fulfilled, and Ianto wants to rip himself from the fairies’ clutch if only it will make Jack truthful.
“I spent a year doing what they wanted, being what they wanted me to be,” Ianto whispers at last. “I can’t go back now.”
“I’m not…” Jack trails off and bows his head over Ianto’s hands. He kisses away the traces of ice, the thin patina over the skin, sucks at one finger where the ice is particularly thick. “I’m not asking you to go back,” he says at last.
“Then what are you asking?”
“Come to me,” Jack says. “Not to them. Send them away.”
Ianto looks at him for long minutes, seconds ticking by and dragging at them both, wearing his resolve down, but he knows the only answer he can give.
“I can’t,” he says, and Jack tears himself away, rising and backing away. The look on his face causes hot tears to sting into Ianto’s eyes.
”Can’t,” Jack repeats. “Won’t.” Ianto says nothing, can say nothing to the accusation that sits heavy between them. “They’re not human,” Jack says then, and this at least is old territory. They have had this argument before, Ianto knows what comes now. “They kill humans,” Jack continues. “They killed -”
“Estelle,” Ianto interrupts, weary again now. “Yes.”
Jack stares at him. “And yet you’re still defending them.”
Ianto sighs and looks away. “Jack,” he says, a bite in his voice, “I can’t change the past. I’m not a Time Lord. I tried to stop them - what do you want me to say? That I’m sorry? Of course I am. But I don’t control them.”
“You rule them.”
“Either you want me to rule them or you don’t!” says Ianto, rising as he gets louder. “Make up your mind!” He is shaking, he realises, and knows nothing will change, this argument will be the same as it ever was. “I told them to leave Estelle Cole alone,” he says, and the carpet is stiff with frost beneath his feet. “I told them! I ordered them! But they didn’t listen to me, I didn’t rule them the way I should have, and so they killed her!” He steps close to Jack, eyes narrowed and vindictiveness in his mouth. “They killed her to hurt you,” he breathes. “Because they hate you.”
Jack almost hits him, but Ianto ducks out of the way in time.
“It was not my fault,” Jack seethes. “I loved her!”
“No,” Ianto agrees. “It was my fault.” That makes Jack pause, staring at what he must see as a contradiction, but Ianto knows the truth. “It was my fault,” he repeats, “because they wanted you to leave me alone.” He is shaking, is once again close to tears, and Jack’s hands come to clasp his arms and keep him from falling to his knees. “They hated that I loved you,” he says, voice rough. “They still hate it. They hate that I can give myself to someone they think is…wrong.”
“Ianto,” Jack whispers, and he pulls Ianto close. Ianto sobs into his lover’s warmth, cries at last for the hurt that has festered for so many months, years even. He loves Jack, despite his subjects and despite his own common sense. He knows this will not, cannot end well, but it is Jack, and he cannot help himself.
”Ianto,” Jack says again. “Ianto, is that why they never leave us alone? Why they’re here so much?” Ianto nods against his shoulder, but then shakes his head and pulls back so he can look at Jack properly.
“No,” he says. “I meant it - before. I was what they wanted me to be. For a whole year.”
“You ruled them,” Jack murmurs, and Ianto nods again, fighting inexplicable dizziness. “And they don’t want you to stop.”
“They want me with them,” whispers Ianto, and his tears freeze on his cheeks, stinging his skin, and Jack kisses them away. “They’ve always wanted me with them. My mother too, and her mother, and her father, all the way back.”
“Why don’t you go?” Jack asks, far too gentle for such a harsh question. “Why don’t you go with them?”
Ianto steps away from Jack, cold in a way that has nothing to do with his temperamental emotions and powers. He will never admit that he has thought about it, many times. So many times he has thought about giving in, giving up, about going with his subjects and letting them whirl him through time, about going back to live in the village and letting the people there take care of him as they wish to, about leaving Torchwood and leaving Jack.
He will never admit it.
“Why would I go?” he asks, a question for a question. “Why would I go, Jack? What is there for me in that?”
“What is there for you here?” Jack asks, bitter. “Death by Torchwood.” He reaches out, lifts his hands to cup Ianto’s cheeks. “You could have died today.”
“I could die every day.”
“No.”
“I could be driving,” says Ianto distantly. “I could be driving along, minding my own business, and crash and die.” He manages a smile for his lover. “The fairies can’t stop that, Jack.”
“Your mother,” Jack murmurs, and Ianto nods. “What would she have wanted for you, Ianto?”
“She would have told me to follow my heart,” says Ianto truthfully.
Jack stares at him, and his hands fall away. “What are you saying?” he asks breathlessly. “Ianto, what are you saying?”
Ianto rolls his eyes; Jack is being obtuse, deliberately or otherwise, and it isn’t something he tolerates well.
“I’m saying I’m not going anywhere,” he says, and Jack curls his arms around him again, holds him close and presses his face into Ianto’s shoulder. He doesn’t quite shake, but Ianto clings to him, holds him up, realises how much this means to Jack, realises how much he hasn’t noticed over the past months.
“I would never go with them,” he murmurs into Jack’s hair, and Jack’s fingers grip his upper arms tightly. “I thought you knew that.”
“You’ve been so quiet,” Jack mumbles. “This whole thing with the Electro…”
Ianto sighs and pulls away. “Come on,” he says. “Come to bed.” Jack looks confused, but he follows Ianto into the bedroom and undresses, folding his clothes with military neatness and placing them on the chair before sliding into the bed next to Ianto. Ianto sits up against the wall and Jack lays close to him, head in his lap. His hair is soft beneath Ianto’s fingers.
Ianto stretches out his senses, uses the powers he so seldom allows himself access to, and the rose petals in the room wither, fade, turn into dust, and a wind blows the dust away. Jack doesn’t look; he watches Ianto, silent, and Ianto smoothes his fingers through Jack’s hair.
“My father took me there when I was a child,” he says at last. “The Electro.” Jack says nothing, just looks up at him with no demands, no expectations. “He used to say…” Ianto has to smile now, remembering. “He used to say I needed something real.”
“Did he know?” Jack asks softly then. “About the fairies?”
“Of course.” Ianto leans his head back against the wall, looks up at the ceiling as he thinks about how his father had known and understood, or tried at least. “Mam used to say…she said that it was hard for him. That the fairies don’t like most people.” He smiles sadly. “Once they hurt a girl I liked. I didn’t talk to them then, and my dad…” He closes his eyes, lets his fingers move restlessly through Jack’s hair. “My dad took me into the shop, showed me another way, but he knew I wasn’t for that. Wasn’t for him, not really.”
“Did you always know what you were meant to be?” Jack asks. “That you were…meant to rule them?”
“No,” Ianto says, and frowns in confusion. “And yes.” He remembers sitting at his mother’s knee, playing in the garden in Cardiff and in Roundstone Woods and in the fields and woods of the village, remembers knowing he was different but not knowing what she meant when she called him ‘little prince’, her princeling. He shrugs. “Does it matter?”
“No,” says Jack quietly. “I’m just curious.” He still watches Ianto, eyes clear and face free from any hint of recrimination. “You don’t talk about it much.”
“No,” says Ianto, and his fingers still. “No. I think…I think maybe I made a mistake.” Jack is silent, and Ianto looks down at him again. “I never meant to push you away,” he whispers. “I’ve never…shared myself with anyone before. Not like this.”
“Lisa?”
“No.” Ianto shakes his head and closes his eyes again. “She never knew. How could I tell her? If it’s alien…”
“It’s ours,” says Jack, completing the unofficial motto of Torchwood London, pursued with such aggression by its leaders. “You were afraid.” Ianto nods, just once, and Jack reaches up to brush his thumb across Ianto’s cheek. “Why did you work for them, then?”
“I don’t know,” sighs Ianto. “It seemed the thing to do at the time.” He bends over, presses a kiss to Jack’s forehead. “I was young.”
“I don’t think you were,” counters Jack. “Not really. You’d seen both your parents into their graves. That’s hard.”
“I hated them when my mother died,” says Ianto after a while. “They couldn’t save her. They don’t…they don’t stop us dying, Jack. Not from something like that.” He gives a bitter laugh. “I blamed them for it, and for my father’s death. They didn’t care about him, though. They mourned for my mother, but they didn’t care about my father.”
“Tell me about him,” Jack coaxes, and Ianto does. He tells about the way his father read the Sunday paper while eating cereal, about the way he knotted his tie, about how he taught Ianto to measure a gentleman without so much as touching him. He speaks of his father’s neatness in all things, of his support of the Welsh rugby team, of his quiet support in the wake of his mother’s death. He remembers his father’s gentle, kind ways and his manner of speaking.
He doesn’t realise he is crying again until Jack sits up and kneels on the bed, wiping the salty water from his cheeks with gentle hands. Jack says nothing, doesn’t offer empty platitudes or meaningless comforts, but his presence is enough, and stories spill from Ianto’s mouth of rainy Saturday mornings at the Electro with his father, of cheap tickets to old classics, of falling in love with Olivia de Havilland and Humphrey Bogart, of watching a marathon of James Bond, of laughing at silent comedy films.
Stories of his father, of the calm and order he embodied, away from the entropy that is the fey folk and his lineage.
“I met her once,” says Jack at last. “Olivia de Havilland.”
Ianto rolls his eyes and pokes him with one finger. “Do not,” he says firmly, “tell me that you slept with her. Leave me some illusions, Jack.”
“Never did,” says Jack with a laugh. “She’s a born lady.” Ianto nods and slides down the bed, rests his head on Jack’s chest and listens to his heartbeat. “Thank you, Ianto,” Jack says then, and the words rumble through his chest, and Ianto smiles at the sensation. It is human and it is now and it is normal, and he loves it. Jack holds him close, skin warm against skin, and then Jack’s hands creep under the hem of his shirt and Ianto’s smile widens.
“You’re awful,” he murmurs. “Pouring my heart out, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“I noticed,” says Jack, feigning injury. “Can I help it if you’re irresistible?” Ianto laughs, a proper laugh, and Jack grins down at him. “I cheered you up, anyway.”
Ianto sobers again, and he pulls back, rolls over and leans up on his elbows. “Jack,” he says, and pauses. He has lost the words that only seconds before had swelled up within him. How to say what he means? How to tell Jack why he has held so much back, why he wants to share everything, why he wishes he were not Teague of the Teagues and Jack were not Captain Jack Harkness.
He dares not. No matter what Jack does, what he seems to show, Ianto has no real way to know what Jack really feels, how he feels about him.
He is scared, and knows it, but knows too that if the worst should happen - when the worst should happen - his subjects, his fey folk, will be there to pick up his pieces and put him together again, as they did at his mother’s death.
“What is it?” Jack asks as seconds, minutes drag by. “Ianto?” His face shows nothing but concern, and Ianto falters again. “Ianto?” Jack asks again, and Ianto smiles and shakes his head.
“Nothing,” he says. “Just…thank you.”
Jack is bemused, but he smiles and nods and pulls Ianto close again. “Of course. You know I’d do anything for you.”
A wind and a giggle herald their return, and small feet dance up the bedclothes, tickling at their legs, until a fairy perches on Jack’s chest. It is the one fairy that Jack has never shown resistance to - the fairy that Ianto appointed to stay with him during that long, hard year. This little one, a graceful male with a mischievous smile, dances a solo waltz on Jack’s bare chest until Jack chuckles, dislodging him. Ianto wants to ask why, why this one is special, but he remains silent and watchful.
It isn’t something he needs to know, and he has learnt with Jack that asking for things he merely wants to know rarely gets him any answers.
“Will you look after him?” the fairy asks, voice a silver whisper that soothes even as the words make Ianto wary. “Will you look after him, Jack No-Name? Will you protect him to your dying breaths?”
“Of course,” says Jack at once. “Of course I will.”
“Jack,” Ianto warns, recognising their formality, knowing the quality of what this fairy is asking. “Jack, don’t -”
But the fairy smiles, baring teeth. “Done,” it says gleefully, and disappears in a shower of red rose petals. Ianto curses, sweeps the petals from Jack’s chest, and sits up to check the rest of his bedroom. There is nothing; they know he will be infuriated, that he knows what they have done with this. His mother warned him of this, when he was young and venturing on his first dates.
“What was that?” Jack asks, and Ianto can only sigh. He lays down again, curling into Jack, and allows himself a small smile. They let him have Jack, once. Once they decided that it would do no harm, decided that he could have this one thing for himself. Now they have gone further, and he knows Jack will no longer feel pressured by their constant watchfulness.
“Nothing,” he says. “I’m tired, Jack.”
Jack is slow to respond, but at last he wraps his arms around Ianto.
“Go to sleep,” he says. “I’ll be here when you wake up.”
“I know,” says Ianto, and he does know. Jack will be here, and when he is not…well, when at last he is not here, Ianto will still have his fairies.
Comments are love. And yes, there's always more to come :p