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fictionalTitle: In Our Bedroom After the War
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, Mickey, Martha & the rest of the Doctor Who Cast.
Authors:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
rm & kalichan
Rating/Warning: NC-17, bdsm, d/s,
Summary: Homeward bound. Takes place during and after Doctor Who 4x13: Journey's End.
Wordcount: ~31,700 [posted in 4 parts]
Authors' Notes: This is the seventh installment of our series, I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling. The title is from a song (and the album) by Stars. This is the first piece of this arc we’ve really had to write concurrent to an episode, because of the woeful lack of Torchwood Hub in DW 4x13. This means if you've not watched Journey's End, that the first part of the story might not make as much sense as it could. Here is a link to a brief recap, a full recap, a funny recap (with captioned pictures) or just the transcript -- in case you want to know what, exactly, is going on. Or you could just dive in and hope for the best! Next up, we'll be posting a Jack/Nine/Rose followed by a few other prequels covering the early education and adventures of both Jack and Ianto before returning to where we’ve left off with them in this timeline.
Previous installments:
A Strange Fashion of Forsaking
Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny
To Learn This Holding and the Holding Back
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
I Imagine You Now in That Other City
Many of My Favorite Things Are Broken
In Our Bedroom After the War, Part 1
Jack was, frankly, always a little surprised at how well Ianto picked things up. But at Ianto's very first step towards him, filled with deliberate intent, he had felt his pulse begin to race, and it had been an effort not to either fall to his knees and take control of the tempo, or just step forward and turn this into a wrestling match. But he hadn't. He'd waited, while Ianto drew the moment out.
And then the order finally came, delivered in that gravelly, low tone that meant Ianto was either telling the truth or was deeply moved. Either way, it made Jack hard and he obeyed.
"Give me your hands," Ianto said, and as Jack did so, he felt Ianto loosen his wrist strap, and place it on the bedside table. Then he felt one cuff snap shut against his wrist.
"Put your head down, and your hands up by the headboard," Ianto said quietly, and Jack did, wondering somewhere inside himself how Ianto had managed to come up with such a submissive position for him to assume, although he supposed it was a bit obvious.
He felt tension along his arm as Ianto looped the chain of the handcuff around one of the rods in the headboard and then secured the other cuff on Jack's other wrist. And there he was, bound, as he'd wanted to be. Knees bent under him, ass in the air, maybe, but nevertheless, harnessed, secure, anchored, and he felt himself sigh involuntarily with something like relief.
"Is that good, Jack? Is that what you wanted?" Ianto asked, more with amusement than any hesitation, and Jack turned his head toward him to nod.
"Face down," Ianto snapped, and Jack jerked his head back. "I didn't hear you."
"Yeah," Jack said, low. "It's good."
Jack felt the bed creak underneath him as Ianto climbed down, and then came around to stand at the other side. He ran his hand lightly over Jack's back and hip bone, and Jack bucked back against it in response. He couldn't help himself; he knew he'd started them down this road, but now, he almost wished he hadn't, wished that Ianto would just fuck the shit out of him; it might not be perfect, but it would be now, and Jack really didn't think he could wait any longer.
"It'll be at my time now," Ianto said gently. "You wanted it that way."
"Right," Jack got out, but the word didn't come out submissively, like he'd intended; it sounded cocky and challenging, and he didn't know how that had happened, although he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised.
Without warning, Ianto's palm cracked hard against his ass; shocked, Jack heard the sound first, and then as the rush of heat and pain blossomed, he inhaled sharply.
"I don't think I like your tone, Jack," Ianto remarked.
"Sorry," he replied.
Ianto spanked him again, harder this time. "Did I ask you a question?" he inquired.
"No," Jack answered, through his teeth.
Coming forward to stand by Jack's head, Ianto reached down to caress his hair, and then rested his hand on the back of his neck, but sweet as it was, something in Jack wouldn't let him relax into it.
Suddenly, Ianto seized his hair so hard Jack felt water spring into his eyes. Ianto yanked his head back and to the side and held him there, before bending down to kiss him. The muscles of Jack's back and neck burned from the uncomfortable twist, but even with the extra sensation, he couldn't relax into the kiss either. So he tried to deepen it, sliding his tongue into Ianto's mouth.
Ianto pulled his hair harder, twisting his neck even farther, and Jack stopped immediately.
"I think you're having some trouble with this concept, Jack," Ianto said.
"Sorry," Jack gasped.
"I'm going to help you," Ianto said firmly, something clearly decided in his mind. He let go of Jack's hair and stepped away, and then Jack heard him somewhere behind him. He wondered what Ianto was doing. He wondered why he couldn't just give in to something he'd been thinking about and wanting for the whole of this whole long, exhausting day.
Then Ianto was by his head again. "Look at me, Jack," he said.
Jack turned his head, and saw one of Ianto's ties, dangling from his hands. And then Ianto was wrapping it around his head, over his eyes, knotting it taut, and he couldn't see anything at all.
"Ianto," Jack said, feeling his heartbeat accelerate. "Not the best idea."
"I don't know how else to get your attention, Jack."
"But --"
"What if you had, had my voice down there with you for all those years?"
"I don't know."
Ianto frowned. "Surely you've been blindfolded before when it wasn't a bad thing," he tried, more reasonably.
"Yeah," Jack said, still struggling for composure.
"Well, pretend it's then. And then remember it's me," Ianto said softly and something about his tone distracted Jack from his fear by almost breaking his heart.
"Okay," Jack said softly, not because he wasn't afraid and not because he'd found the place he needed to go, but because Ianto had made the thought of letting him down utterly miserable. Jack did that enough as it was.
"Good," Ianto said, and Jack relaxed fractionally at the smile in his voice and the kiss then placed between his shoulder blades.
Jack hadn't done this sort of thing in a long time, not in earnest. He'd tried, of course. Because there was nothing really that Jack didn't crave, but he was so greedy and things always went pleasantly pear-shaped or, come to think of it, even strange enough for him to wind up dead across his desk. He tried to restrict his laugh to what would seem merely a nervous hitch of breath, but Ianto slapped his ass again for it anyway, and Jack sighed, glad someone was paying attention as his mind wandered.
He had fucked one of his instructors at the Time Agency. Well, more than one, but no one really cared about what happened at end of course parties, not even Jack. But at what must have been around seventeen, he'd spent a couple of months on his knees in the hours between dinner and curfew before an old-craft flight instructor who he guessed was, at the time, a few years more than twice his age.
Suzie'd had a laugh like hers, which had always been profoundly disconcerting, and Jack had made a point of never, ever mentioning it when he'd fucked her in the Torchwood showers. But that woman back there in the future had taught Jack more than a few things, including that he was not patient and that the best way to convince anyone that you owned them was to pull their hair just so.
Jack gasped. It seemed to be a trick Ianto knew too, and it occurred to Jack that it might have been one of those things he'd taught the other man by accident in all their now hazy desperation.
It was strange relearning the man, strange relearning everything. Like reenacting a storybook only to discover the book had, had it all wrong because it was all even better. Even if every time Ianto gave him a quizzical look, Jack wondered on just what score his faulty mind and his faulty life had caused him to let this man down.
It was one reason Jack was so fond of him. He'd traveled space and time and yet Ianto still expected him to prove himself in perfectly ordinary ways. It was nice to be kept honest, really. Even if he never had been. Not really. Not even recently. At least for anyone else.
This was, in many ways, Jack thought, a new life. He'd had thousands of new lives by now, of course, but he didn't count that way. There was before the Doctor and after the Doctor, before the ground and after it. If he wanted to split hairs, there was the Peninsula and the Time Agency, the Tardis and Torchwood, or the names of too many people he'd loved too much for a guy with a big grin who'd never been supposed to do anything more than fuck his way across the universe.
At first, Jack seemed to be doing better with the blindfold on, Ianto thought as he twisted his head up by the hair once more, so he could see his face and the small smile playing now at the corners of his mouth. Ianto bent to kiss him and this time was rewarded with that moment where their lips seemed to dissolve into each other, sending electric shocks of pleasure vibrating all the way down his spine.
But then, when Ianto pulled back, wanting to feel the anticipation build again, he seemed to struggle again, tensing and then shivering, beginning to pant, and Ianto felt such a wave of desire at the sight, he had to bite his own lip hard to stay on top of it.
"I'm here, Jack," he said, hurriedly touching his back and felt Jack visibly get a hold of his panic.
Have to stop him thinking, Ianto thought to himself. That's what he wants, to feel grounded and lost all at once. Not always, not every day, thank god, but right now.
And Ianto wanted to give it to him, like some kind of beautiful, perfect present, but it was hard, because while he'd played games like this with Lisa and given other girls when they'd seemed to want it -- a few good smacks across the arse while they rode him -- it had all been just that: games.
And with Jack, he had always been impelled by rage before. He'd never had to force himself up to this pitch when it wasn't fueled by immediate, smoldering anger. Ianto tried to recall his irritation from earlier, but couldn't find anything in his heart just then but an overwhelming tenderness that made his breath catch in his throat.
Still Jack had told him what to do, and surely he could manage that much for him, who'd saved them all again and then come home instead of flying out into the horizon. Because truly, everyone followed Jack's lead in the end, and Ianto wasn't about to let him down when he could have got this from anyone, anywhere and anywhen, and had chosen, had demanded to be here instead, shackled to this ordinary bed, in this ordinary flat.
Make it hurt, Jack had said. Okay, Ianto thought and began to unbuckle his belt, pulling it loose from his trousers. He could do that.
Holding the belt bunched in one hand, he slipped the other underneath Jack to stroke his chest and then down to his cock, which was half hard, and then scratch lightly at his balls. Jack shivered and moaned, and Ianto smiled to himself.
"I know you can't see," Ianto said conversationally as he returned to Jack's cock and began to stroke it all the way hard, "but you're a gorgeous sight like this. Shackles are a good look for you."
Jack's cock felt impossibly good in his hand -- like metal, if metal were made of silk and were alive, he thought randomly -- and Ianto had to swallow so he could keep focused. He listened for the hitch in Jack's breath that told him the level of his arousal, and when he reckoned he'd got him high enough, he slid his hand back up Jack's chest and then seized his nipple between his fingernails and twisted as hard as he could; Jack grunted in surprise.
"You like that, Jack?" he said, keeping the pressure on.
"Yes," Jack gasped out.
"If you think that's good," he said, "you're going to love this." And then he let go, and Jack sighed with the surcease of pain. Just in time for Ianto to crack the belt in a vicious slice across his arse.
Behind the blindfold, Jack saw stars.
It hurt. And not in a good way, but Jack also knew that was how it always started. Was always, the few times he had done this like this -- asked for it instead of having stumbled into it or been pulled down into it -- difficult at first, and if Ianto just kept going, all that pain would turn to water and he could do his penance, wallow in all his ill-advised affection and just get off, get free, and get on with things.
He could feel Ianto pause and imagined that he was watching the tension in his back, but to tell him to go on wouldn't serve either of them. He knew that too well in a moment where he didn't want to know anything. And so while he didn't feel it, not yet, he moaned and arched his back. He would, soon enough, and Ianto certainly knew how to take a hint. A belt. Jack knew he would chuckle about that later. Ianto. So practical.
Jack cursed under his breath as Ianto hit him again, but there was no time to put on a show to encourage him onward. Not this time, as Ianto cracked a series of blows over his ass in quick succession, and there it was: that obvious feeling of warmth and that odder sensation that felt like the illion of water. Or blood.
He smiled as it was finally so simple to just slip below the surface of it all. The belt continued to crack against him, and he smiled even as he hated that his mouth was empty of everything but sound and that his hands could hold nothing but the wood of Ianto's headboard.
Ianto saw it, the moment Jack went from present and preening to lost and loud, and yet not verbal at all. It was amazing to him to see Jack's flesh move without calculation and to melt into each touch, each strike that Ianto was willing to offer him. He wondered if this was what he himself looked like when Jack had lured him down into strange places full of begging and stickiness. He shuddered with a better understanding of things already done and, in Jack's case, already half forgotten.
It had been two months now of some strange mix of delight and sorrow for them both. There weren't many privileges he, or anyone, could have with Jack who had too much experience behind him and too much life ahead of him, but it was under Ianto's hands that he had relearned how much he loved to fuck and against Ianto's flesh he had recalled the perfection of salt, and Ianto would have those moments of victory for as long as he lived.
That Jack would one day forget them, replaced, no doubt, by the salving of other horrors with other hands, other flesh, didn't matter for Ianto, because these small things, laughter and wonder from what should have been the most cynical creature on earth -- those were his prizes alone, with or without Jack, who it seemed now needed him again to fix wounds neither understood nor named.
"Oh Jack," Ianto said softly, smoothing his hand briefly over his back as he paused with the belt.
Jack made a vague interrogative noise.
"Shhhh. You're doing just fine," Ianto said, and cracked the belt against him again, unsure yet how to translate his thoughts into the kindness Jack had also demanded. It wrenched at him that Jack had, had to ask.
It was the softness of Ianto's voice that undid him, coupled with the dazzling sting of the belt crackling across sore flesh. Jack wanted to scream, to cry, to say things he had no words for and give it all over, everything -- but he couldn't have anyway, even if Ianto had asked him to speak, because he was everywhere and nowhere all at once, all the world reduced to a blinding, glorious pain, as Ianto began to really thrash him in earnest. He was gripping the fragile wood rods of the headboard so hard it was a minor miracle that they didn't break like twigs in his hands.
I'm sorry. Jack remembered. Other times, other places, and nothing the same but the rhythm and him pleading now for forgiveness and wanting desperately to be clean of it all, for anger and disappointment to slough off his skin until he was someone different, someone new. Then finally after several infinities, Jack realized Ianto had stopped. He felt his body steaming and burning and aching from the tension, and Ianto's tie was damp across his eyes with sweat or tears. And he was still sorry.
He felt Ianto behind him then, reaching around his hips to stroke his prick hard again, pressing up against his ass, and making his nerve endings sing with remembered sensation as he pressed slick fingers inside him. When they withdrew and it was Ianto's cock instead, he was too ready and aching and empty; it felt almost too sweet, too delicious, and Jack moaned.
"Please," he gasped. "Harder. Don't be gentle. Please."
Ianto paused inside him, and Jack tried to buck back against the other man. Ianto stilled him with a hard grip on his hipbone.
"Why, Jack?" Ianto said hoarsely.
"Please," Jack got out, not able to find any other words.
Ianto waited a moment and then did as asked, pulling almost all the way out and then beginning a slamming, ferocious rhythm that drove into him. Jack felt cold droplets of Ianto's sweat scatter and fall onto his back as he hammered into him, like the sparse rains of his childhood.
Ianto felt as though his heart might quite literally explode out of his chest, it was pounding so hard, but at the same time, he couldn't stop, as if Jack's words had unlocked something inside him and given him permission to fuck him without the boundaries he had so often and so awkwardly crossed before. It was as if he could finally pierce the core of him to enter some secret place that Ianto hadn't even known was there, even as he knew too that Jack was and always would be more than his mind could ever hope to really grasp and hold on to.
Normally Jack talked, constantly, while they were fucking. Commentary, praise, and odd litanies of who and what he thought Ianto should be or even was at any given moment. And Ianto, by and large, had learned to respond to it, as much as he often found it distracting or embarrassing or filled with betrayals of how he had once thought of himself.
But tonight Jack was wordless. And so was Ianto. It was just their breath and their moans and the sound of flesh, and somehow that felt like betrayal too, because neither of them were ever going to be who or how or what they were supposed to be, and they'd had the audacity to decide that didn't matter. Ianto knew they'd be paying for that eventually. Or at least Jack would. After all, he had time for all his debts to come due. Ianto didn't, and besides, he had already paid a great deal in advance.
Ianto's rhythm stuttered, and then stopped completely as he leaned awkwardly towards the bedside table to fetch the key to the handcuffs, and fumbled with the lock. After unlocking one, and tossing the key back onto the table, he managed to pry Jack's grip off the headboard and then to force his hands down to the small of his back.
When Jack, who grunted with pain and surprise as his already strained arms were moved, twisted to hook two fingers of each hand into Ianto's restraining fists, Ianto felt as if he had been asked to choose between grief and victory and love, even though he had been given all three.
As with so many things lately, he felt as though Jack had been returned to him, and yet was still somehow something unrecognizable. He felt small in the face of Jack's life, which was odd, because rationally or no, everything about Jack normally made him feel just the opposite. Jack made him grand.
There was no real time for melancholy though. Not when fucking flesh like Jack's. It pulled him in. Pulled him under. And maybe he would wonder how in the hell that had happened every day of his goddamn life. Right now though it was merely time to go harder and faster, and he put both Jack's wrists under one hand, so he could push his head down into the pillow harder, force his back to bow further, and then finally reach around to pump his cock with anything but thoughts of solace.
Ianto didn't worry about Jack's pleasure. That wasn't the nature of this exercise, though he had, in fact, found other things to worry about. He worried about using Jack and making sure the man knew it for what it was. And he worried about showing Jack that while he might be above most laws, he was not above Ianto’s, at least not now, for these few moments. Torchwood gave men too much power.
He snapped his hips as he fucked into Jack and knew he was smiling a bit smugly as he did, even as he felt those fingers grazing against his wrists, grabbing futilely for his hands again. When he came with muddy, desperate relief, he leaned over the flesh beneath him and squeezed Jack's cock cruelly, eliciting a moan of what could only be described as despair.
Ianto pulled out with a sharp gasp. Too fast, everything was too fast, even if he was the one making it that way, and he pushed at Jack's hip, rolling him onto his side and then back. Reflexively Jack stretched his arms over his head, wrists crossed and the handcuffs still dangling off one wrist.
"No," Ianto said, and pulled off the blindfold before placing Jack's arms down at his side. "Let me make this better," he said, and took Jack's prick in his mouth, and forced the man's hands into his hair.
Jack pumped his hips up so that he could fuck Ianto's mouth as if this somehow made sense, as if he weren't staring at the ceiling in shock, as if this didn't, somehow make him wonder if this were prayer. Ianto Jones, he thought, always early with the benediction and yet somehow here to save him at the end of all things, which had apparently arrived far sooner or perhaps later than he'd been expecting; he couldn't remember. He found himself wishing that Ianto would always be here, at least in these moments where worlds stopped turning.
He closed his eyes and wound his fingers tightly into Ianto's hair. It would be all right. Somehow. Because of this angry, broken man who just happened to make him happy. Strange. The universe was just strange.
Ianto was locked on to him now, sucking strong and steadily, mouth wet and hot; no finesse really, no gentleness or teasing, just everything all at once, pressure and heat, Ianto's tongue stroking him, and then sucking him deep into his throat, and Jack knew he was going to come. When he did, it was with a low guttural noise, and an orgasm that just seemed to go on and on until he couldn't stand it anymore.
When he'd come back to himself a little, Ianto's head was pillowed on his thigh. Jack petted his hair gently, and Ianto turned his head to press a kiss into his palm. He smiled, and then pulled Ianto up so that he was lying next to him on the bed.
"Thank you," Jack said, when he could find words again. "That was... exactly what I needed. Hope it wasn't too exotic for you."
"You underestimate me."
"Never," Jack said.
"Sometimes."
"Less and less."
Ianto laughed. "And even an old dog can learn new tricks. Sir."
"We didn't have those when I was young," Jack said idly.
"What?"
"Dogs," Jack said. "They'd died out, I think."
"Oh," Ianto said.
"Quite a shock first time I saw one."
"I can imagine.”
They lay there in silence for a few moments.
Then Jack said, "Speaking of new tricks. Pretty clever of you to go for the belt."
"I'm glad you liked it.”
"Ever done that before?" Jack asked curiously.
"No," Ianto said. "But it seemed like the thing to do at the time."
"Yeah," Jack agreed.
"I don't even need to ask, do I?"
"No," Jack said. "Do you think you would like it?"
"Being thrashed?"
"Yeah."
"Not really," Ianto said. "At least, I didn't enjoy it when I was young. Although better than being sent to bed without supper or whatever."
"Did that happen often?"
"Well, I used to be quite a handful," Ianto said.
Jack laughed. "Ianto Jones!" he exclaimed with mock horror. "What did you do?"
"Got in fights. Nicked ciders from the pantry. Skived off school. Locked a teacher in a supply closet. Shoplifted. Smoked. Stayed out all night. You know. The usual."
"Shoplifted?" Jack asked.
"You knew that," Ianto said. "You read my record, remember?"
"Right," Jack said, as the information came flooding back in that prickly, painful way that it did now, which still made him a bit queasy. "Convicted once. Shoplifting."
"Yeah. But that was later. Being convicted, I mean. The time I got beaten for it was when I was younger."
"What did you steal?"
"Socks," Ianto mumbled sheepishly.
"Socks?" Jack said with disbelief.
"That was the time I got caught, yeah. I nicked CDs and sweets and things too, but it was the socks when they nabbed me. Got careless. She was half blind anyway, the shoplady. Stupid old bag. Knew Mum and Dad, more's the pity. And she went straight in and rung them up. Didn't even bother with the police. God, that's embarrassing."
Jack laughed.
"Waiting for Dad to show up to collect me, that was the worst part."
"Didn't stop you though, did it?"
"Apparently not. Hardened criminal, as you see."
"How old were you anyway?"
"Twelve? Or thereabouts." Ianto said. "How about you? Did you ever get a few licks?"
"Once," Jack said.
"Such a good boy," Ianto teased.
"No," Jack said. "Not at all. But my father was mostly pretty gentle. He didn't get angry very often. And then he died."
"So what did you do that time?"
Jack stared off into space for a moment. "He caught me torturing an animal... like a rabbit, I guess. Something like that. You don't have them here. We'd been throwing rocks at it and someone hit it in the head. Everyone else ran off," he said, and when he heard Ianto hold his breath instead of gasp, he continued. "I had a knife, and it came to and was making these sounds so I kept cutting it and putting sea water in it and kelp."
Ianto noted that Jack seemed to be fumbling for his words a bit and wasn't sure if it was the content of the story making him hesitant or if the discussion of his childhood was making him want to use another vocabulary that he must have worried for a long time now he might well be in danger of forgetting.
"There were these little crabs that lived on the beach, too small to eat really. Put those in too. And then my father found me, collecting things to put inside of it while it was still alive. Cruelty and waste, he said. Big sins when you're poor and isolated and you have a father who stares at the stars as if they're a romance instead of a road map. He wasn't pleased with me. Thrashed me hard enough that I think he was ashamed of himself in the end. Not a thing I like to think about."
"He'd be proud of you now," Ianto offered, wondering if he sounded like a fool.
"Nope. He wouldn't. He didn't live to see me go to war."
"Defending your home," Ianto said trying to sound far more confident of that assumption than he was.
"Oh. You don't know what I did in that war. Well, any of them really."
"What did you do in the war, Jack?" Ianto dutifully asked, hating that he had to and dreading the answer.
"Among other things? Interrogations. Which is the nice way of saying I was a torturer."
Ianto rolled his eyes. "I suspect that's an overstatement."
Jack raised an eyebrow at him but didn't seem amused in the least. "Do you really think the things I do now are the same as the things I did then?"
"Tonally, sure," Ianto said.
"Wrong."
"Well, the weevil, for instance, and that assassin bloke. It's not like you were actually going to order me to let it go?"
"And if I had?" Jack replied.
Ianto didn't answer.
"You would have," said Jack, giving voice to what they both already knew. "You have a cruel streak, and it's one you enjoy. It's easy to see in you, and it was easy to see in me, and it is not something I'm proud of."
"We all do what's necessary."
"That ceases to be an excuse when you volunteer."
"Have we volunteered, you and I? Because from the things I know, it doesn't actually look that way from here."
"We stay," Jack said simply, and Ianto couldn't bring himself to note aloud all the reasons why there was no choice involved in that at all.
"What happened with the Doctor?" Ianto asked abruptly.
Jack smiled wanly. "Oh. That. You want the part where we saved the world or the part where I had to keep saying good bye?"
"The part that's why I had to hurt you, if you don't mind."
"All the same, isn't it?"
"I don't know, Jack. You tell me."
Jack turned his back to Ianto for a moment, and rummaged on the table till he found the key to the cuffs. He unlocked the one still snapped around his wrist, and tossed them and the key aside. He lay back down, massaging his wrist a little as he did so.
"You okay?" Ianto asked.
"Sure. Just chafed a little." Jack put his hands behind his head, and then stared up at the ceiling. "It was strange on the space station."
"Why strange?"
"Did I ever tell you about Rose?" Jack asked, in what seemed like a non-sequitur.
"No," Ianto said. "Who's she?"
"A girl. Ordinary. Used to be a shopgirl. Blonde. You might have seen her, when she was talking to Gwen. She was the Doctor's companion when I met him first. I found her hanging from a barrage balloon in WWII London. I was on the run from the Time Agency, working a con. Long story. Anyway. I saved her. And then they saved me. And took me with them. That was when my life started, I think, sometimes. You'd have liked her. I never really met anyone who didn't."
"What happened to her?"
"For a long time, I thought she'd died. At Canary Wharf. She was on the list of the dead." Jack paused, and Ianto let that thought sink in. That Jack too had believed he'd lost someone that day. "But she wasn't, even though we thought we'd never see her again. The Doctor told me about her, when I saw him the last time. She wasn't dead, but she was lost to us. Locked away. In another universe."
"Another universe?" Ianto asked, wondering if this were hyperbole or what.
"Yeah. Quantum theory, you know?"
"Ahh," Ianto said, still not sure where this was going. "You loved her?"
"I did," Jack said. "I do. Always will. She's the one who did this to me. I was dead, on this Dalek satellite, and she... she brought me back to life. For keeps. And that's why I can't die."
Ianto stared. "I thought you said she was ordinary."
"I did, yeah," Jack said, smiling sadly. "Didn't you know? It's the ordinary people that save the world. Always."
Ianto didn't know what to say. "So you said you thought you'd never see her again? Was she there? On this space station?"
"Yeah," Jack said. "She came back. To find the Doctor. I've never seen two people so happy to see each other."
"Oh," Ianto said. So she... and the Doctor... and Jack.... He tried to shut down this line of thought.
"She's with the Doctor now. Both of them."
"Both of them?"
"Another long story," Jack said. "But yeah, there's two of them now. Look exactly alike and everything."
"Seems like you would have stayed then," Ianto said, trying with all his might not to let the words sound petty.
"No," Jack said, still gazing at the ceiling. "They're... complete. Without me. But it was good to see her again."
"Doesn't that hurt? Leaving her... them, behind?"
"No," Jack said. "Not really."
"Then why, Jack? I still don't understand."
"Why what?"
"Why this need for... I don't know. Absolution. Penance. Whatever the fuck this was."
Ianto was beginning to feel a sense of panic rising, because Jack... Jack was showing signs of that crazed internal logic that defied all reason. And Ianto was really hoping that he hadn't just spent an hour or two feeding Jack's peculiar brand of crazy, which sometimes involved diving off of roofs because it was simpler that way.
Jack laughed. "Always so serious. How do you know it's not just a quest for a little variety? Some whips and chains and a mai tai or two?"
"For one thing, we didn't have any mai tais. And you forget, I know you, Jack."
"Yeah," Jack said. He paused for a long moment, and then said, low, "He was disappointed in me."
"What?" Ianto said, knowing of course who the 'he' referred to, and trying, without much success, to tamp down the resultant flush of rage.
"In all of us, really."
"You won," Ianto said flatly. "How is that disappointing? Did he want us all to die? The Earth to be overrun by Daleks?"
"No," Jack said. "Of course not. But he expected us to find another way. A better way. He would have."
"But he didn't," Ianto pointed out. "It's not like he wasn't there."
Jack laughed. And then with a terrible cheerfulness said, "It doesn't matter anyway. We are who we are, and a person... a person can only change so much. It doesn't make a difference. He's stuck with us, after all."
Ianto glared. Not for the first time, he wanted to meet the Doctor just so he could punch him in the face. Savior of the universe or not. How dare he make Jack feel this way?
"Thing is," Jack added, "I want you to know something. When I say I've been a bad man... I'm not joking, Ianto. Or exaggerating. I've done...," he broke off. And then switching gears, he seemed to start over. "I remember one night, a long time ago. I'd had a few drinks, the stars were shining brightly, both the moons were up, the blue and the white. A sight to see. We were camped out on the Dafulian Mountains. We'd caught the guy, got the answers we needed; it was routine by then, really. And I'd just got laid, and I was exactly on the right side of drunk, you know, where everything just feels good. And I thought about Dad, and said to myself, I'm glad he's dead. First time I ever thought that. Not the last though."
Ianto didn't know what to say.
Jack turned to look at him, and then laughed a little. "Don't worry," he said reassuringly. "I'm fine. I promise."
"Yeah, you really sound fine there, Jack."
"No, seriously, I am. It wasn't all bad anyway. Afterwards, in the TARDIS, it was... it was amazing. When we were flying the Earth home. I wish you could have been there."
"Well, I sort of was," Ianto pointed out. "You were towing us after all."
Jack laughed. "Didn't think of it that way, but yeah. Guess you were. And there was this woman -- Donna Noble. She was excellent. A fucking amazon. And the most fantastic tits you ever saw."
"Ahh," Ianto said. "And did you learn this from... ah... close acquaintance?"
"Did I fuck her, you mean?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
"Yeah," Ianto said.
"No," Jack said. "It was definitely on offer. But somehow I didn't think you'd appreciate that."
Ianto sputtered. "What?"
"Was I wrong? I could probably call her up...."
"What's my feeling about it got to do with anything?" Ianto said, refusing to answer. "I know you don't look at these things the same way I... we do."
"So?" Jack said, ostentatiously casual.
Ianto just stared at him, until he relented and went on.
"Look," he said. "I can't promise you much. We've found that out now. Nothing of what you ought to have, nothing normal. But this? This is something I can do. It's a choice I can make. It's not much, but it's what I've got."
"I don't know what to say to that," Ianto said, and Jack thought that he didn't sound entirely pleased.
"You don't have to say anything."
"No, I think I do."
"Okay? Shoot."
"Where did you get this idea you needed to make me promises?"
"Need's got nothing to do with it."
"Well what then, Jack?"
Jack shrugged as he tried to find a way to put it that would actually get what he meant across to Ianto.
"I was holding Rose, and she's perfect to hold really. Perfect waist, exactly the sort of girl that makes you feel like a man, you know? And I could smell her, from her soap to her cunt, the leather of her jacket, and other than gratitude and more time, what I really wanted was you there to know how fucking fantastic it is to hold Rose Tyler."
"I don't get what this has to do with --"
"Donna?"
"Promises."
"Did you want to marry Lisa?"
"Yeah."
"Have kids with her?"
"Sure."
"Then what the hell are you doing here?" Jack said harshly.
"I don't know," Ianto said, his voice a bit of breathy wonder, as he reached out to touch Jack.
"Yeah, I don't know either. And I should probably tell you to stop. Tell you I'm a monster. Tell you to run away home and take some pills and give you your life back. Or the possibility of one at least. Thing is, I'm not that generous, and if Gwen could find a way around Retcon, I figure it doesn't stand a chance with you, and trust me, I made that calculation a while ago. So here we are. I can't give you most or more or first or last and people want those things. People who say they don't are liars. Even I want those things. All the time. The massive ego you know."
"You do devour things, sir," Ianto said, and Jack couldn't help but note his voice was full of fond caution.
"I do. Here's the deal though. I used to think that the people who stuck around a while were a fraction of my life. A smaller fraction than they'd be for someone else, what with the death not sticking thing, but you know, a measurable fraction. A fourth. A fifth. A tenth. A decade. A year comparative to a typical lifespan here if I got realistic. And I was wrong. We both know that now, right? You're a fucking moth, Ianto. Three days in the moonlight, and I only get one night of it. Seems worth it to me not to get distracted, not to nod off, not to waste time."
"I didn't ask you for this."
"Nope. You didn't. But it's what you've got. You can look at it as a gift or you can ignore it. Doesn't matter to me. They'll be plenty of women with amazing tits after you're gone. You want to share someone with me? You want to play? Say the word. This isn't about being faithful, Ianto. It's about paying attention. I'm paying attention and this is the only way I know how to show you I'm doing it. That's all."
"Why do you only get one?"
"Huh?"
"One night. The moth thing."
"First night was childhood."
"Which I suppose lasted right up until that weevil in the park?"
"Yeah. Second night. That's right now."
"Third night?"
"Well, we work for Torchwood, right? Best not to count on stuff."
Ianto smiled and nodded. Jack knew he would die young and had the respect to say it to his face. Somehow it made a surprising number of things better.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?" Jack asked.
"Thanks."
Jack grinned. Maybe one day he'd tell Ianto about the moths on the peninsula and the fable of them learned from his mother and then whispered so often to Gray in the dark, calming him after nightmares.
"We should get back soon," he said.
"We need a better solution," Ianto said, groaning as he sat up.
"Hey, don't complain," Jack said, wandering into the bathroom. "You're not the one who got whipped within an inch of his life."
***
When Ianto insisted on escorting Martha down from the Tourist Information Office, and also on carrying her bag for her, she laughed.
"You know," she said, "I'm not a V.I.P. anymore; just one of the crew, at least for a little while. You're not going to walk me down every day I’m here, are you?"
"Until Jack tells me otherwise, yes, I am." He paused. "Is your family..." he asked, before trailing off delicately.
"They're all fine, thanks. A bit shaken up, but they've been through worse, and closer to it."
"Worse than a horde of Daleks stealing the Earth?" Ianto asked with some surprise.
"Yeah," Martha said. "More personal anyway. But they're all okay."
"I'm glad."
"You?"
"All dead," and then when she stared at him in horror, he smiled. "Before. Natural causes."
"Oh," she said. "I'm so sorry."
"No need. Long time ago, now."
"Got any mileage out of that U.N.I.T. cap I mailed you?" she asked, trying to lighten the mood.
"Jack looked quite fetching in it, yes."
Martha giggled. "More to you than meets the eye, isn't there?"
"Yes, indeed," Ianto said, gallantly bowing her through the cog door as Gwen looked up from some blueprints she'd got spread out in front of her.
She caught sight of them, and leapt out of her chair to give Martha a hug.
Martha squeezed her back jubilantly and then looked around. "It looks a bit worse for wear in here," she said hesitantly.
"I hear the voice of a nightingale," Jack bellowed as he came bounding down the stairs. "It's Miss Martha Jones, and she's already insulting my lair."
"Jack," she cried, and was instantly wrapped in his arms. "It's so good to see you!"
"Thanks for coming," he said into her hair.
"Anytime," she said. "Won’t stay long probably, but I’ll be here while you need me."
Mickey ambled up to give her a kiss on the cheek, with what was either some kind of alien gun or possibly a drill in one hand, and she smiled at him.
"Welcome to the madhouse, love," he said. "Put down your things, stay a while."
"Don't mind if I do," she said. Then the smile slid off her face as she remembered what news she had to give Jack.
"Jack," she said. "Could I speak to you in private? Just for a tick. Orders."
Jack looked at her closely, and then nodded. "Of course. Come up to my office," he said. "The rest of you, back to work, okay? Martha'll be here a while. You can catch up later."
She smiled at the rest of them, and then followed Jack up the stairs. Behind her, she heard Gwen say, "All right, back to work, boys. Listen, Mickey, about this wall. Is it weight-bearing?"
Ianto watched Martha follow Jack up to his office before turning his attention to Gwen's query.
Mickey traced his fingers over the blueprints and frowned. "Do you want to know what it says or what should actually be true?"
"If this place is going to fall down around us, please let us know sooner rather than later, yeah?" Ianto interjected.
"Working on it," Mickey replied, sounding less than cheerful as he glanced weakly between Gwen and Ianto. "Says it's not. I say it is."
"Great. So either we've got faulty blueprints or this place was built with alien tech," Ianto said and went to the coffee machine where he took down everyone's mugs.
"Ask Jack when you go up there yeah?" Gwen called to him.
Ianto nodded.
He gave Gwen and Mickey their coffees first.
"What's that?" Mickey asked, pointing to the space on the blueprints under Jack's office.
"Jack's cubby," Ianto said.
"He sleeps down there," Gwen clarified, and for no real reason Ianto felt like snapping at her because Jack didn't sleep, not really, and he certainly avoided spending time down there now.
He'd let Ianto sleep down there, and they'd had it off against the wall there once since his return, but other than as a place to store his things and allow Ianto an occasional retreat from the Hub it wasn't a place Jack was comfortable in anymore. Too small. Too dark. And Gwen knew it. What Gwen didn't know was that Ianto no longer smiled happily to fall asleep in that bed. It was something utilitarian now, just a cot, and not this secret part of Jack's endless world he'd been snuck into. All things passed, he supposed. Even the non-living ones.
It was this, not the lack of viability of promises from Jack, that made Ianto crazy. He had grown up understanding that some things in the world had permanence. A building would stand until it was replaced. Maps would continue to show the same land masses even as countries changed. But Torchwood and Jack made all such things a lie. Canary Wharf had taught him that about buildings. Jack had taught him that about mountains, about Cardiff, about that stupid steel-framed cot in his cubby.
Ianto sighed, fetched Jack and Martha's mugs and headed up, catching Martha on the stairs.
"Thanks," she said, smiling brightly as she took it, sipped and then clattered down the stairs, but Ianto had seen that the smile didn't reach her eyes.
When Ianto entered the office, he found Jack sitting at his desk, perfectly still. It was something that had started after Tosh and Owen had died, after his 2,000 year day and still hadn't gone. It disconcerted Ianto, but like many things, he'd learned to live with it.
"Sir," he said, trying not to make it a question as he set Jack's coffee down.
Jack shook himself and ran his hands over his face. He smiled. "Ianto."
"Bad news?"
"Always. Nothing we have to worry ourselves about though."
"Why do you look like that then?" Ianto asked bluntly.
"Imagine I had to retcon you to prevent your brain from destroying itself."
"You don't, do you?" Ianto asked, trying to be light.
Jack shook his head. "Donna. The one with the tits --"
"Yeah, I know."
"Something happened. The Doctor had to fix it. So she's gone back to being a temp now. Doesn't know she saved the world or saw that there was more than one. Didn't get to learn things, didn't get to stay strong. It's an ugly theft."
"Necessary. It seems," Ianto said blandly, unsure of what to say, unsure of whether to ask for more explanation.
"I'm sick of necessary. Aren't you?" Jack asked, looking weary and miserable.
Ianto leaned over him to wrap a hand tightly around Jack's wrist. "Yeah."
Jack closed his eyes for a moment, and Ianto watched, pleased and smug, as Jack's shoulders eased. So things were going to be like this for a while then. It wasn't what he considered ideal in many ways but enough consistency to maybe make sense of a thing certainly held some appeal.
"I'll let you alone for a bit with it?" he said, straightening up.
"Please. Thank you."
"Of course, sir," he said, all cool professionalism again, and ducked out of the office silently without even considering a look back.
***
Ianto had Jack cuffed to his headboard, face up this time and with the lights on so he could see. He'd sucked Jack hard again, and now was idly playing with a straight razor against the skin of his thigh, fascinated by the way the little cuts he made would instantly heal shut and listening to the sound of Jack moan encouragingly at each tiny slice.
Once, he'd been sad that he could never leave a mark on Jack. But now his unchanging flesh seemed like the only steady thing in a world continually adrift, and he felt a great sense of relief to know that it would continue exactly the same long after he was dust.
He didn't understand how Jack's permanence could make anyone uncomfortable or sick to look at; he found himself thinking of an old hymn his mother used to sing on Sundays, change and decay in all around I see; oh thou who changest not, abide with me. Blasphemous maybe to apply it to a man, much less one he was fucking -- he knew his mother would've thought so -- but Ianto didn't believe in God anymore. There wasn't anything left of that faith, except only and always Jack.
As Jack spurted into his mouth Ianto smiled at the bitter taste and the sign that for a few moments at least Jack had been able to let go of things, his mind taken off other, less manageable pain. Anything you need, Jack, he thought silently. Anything.
After they'd caught their breath, he moved up the bed to unlock the cuffs, and then Jack stretched out his arms in a luxurious cat-like motion.
"That was great," he said.
"Yeah," Ianto agreed, shaking his head in wonder. "Perverse, but great."
Jack laughed.
"You feeling better, then?" Ianto asked, unable to keep from bringing the subject up and needing some assurance that he'd handled the matter appropriately.
"Hmm?"
"You just... you seemed... unhappy. All day," Ianto said.
"Yeah," Jack said. "Sorry 'bout that."
"Is it still that Donna thing?"
"Sort of," Jack said.
"But why Jack? I mean, the Doctor saved her, right?"
"Yeah."
"And you would've done the same?"
"Of course."
"So then?"
"And we do it all the time, right? Take people's memories. It's just. Yeah. Hypocritical as hell, but it's the worst thing in the world to do to a person. I should know."
"You remembered," Ianto pointed out.
"I did that time, yeah. From the ground. But they did it to me, once. At the Time Agency. Two years, they took. Two years I'll never get back, never know what happened, what I did, who I was. And two years is an eyeblink now. But who knows who they murdered by doing that? Did I fall in love? Did I make friends? Did I commit crimes unimaginable? I'll never know. They're dead forever. And so's Donna."
"You remade yourself," Ianto said. "Maybe she will too."
"Yeah," Jack said.
"Did you invent Retcon, Jack?" Ianto asked, as the penny suddenly dropped.
Jack barked with laughter. "Perfected, yeah. For my sins."
"But it's the better choice, isn't it?" Ianto asked, his voice wary.
"Than what?"
"Torchwood would execute a lot more people without it, wouldn't we?"
Jack nodded. "Yup."
"I used to file the paperwork on those. At the Tower."
"How many?" Jack asked idly.
Ianto shrugged. "A few a month. Humans anyway. Didn't see the paperwork on anything else really."
"How were they doing it?"
"Bullet to the head usually."
"Almost humane of them."
"Yeah. What's Retcon like?"
"What, did you forget?" Jack asked.
Ianto snorted. “Yeah, guess I did. Too busy making coffee and trying to figure out what had happened, but that was only a couple of days. A couple of years... do you wake up muzzy, like you've been drunk? Do you feel like you'll believe whatever you're told? Does it hurt? Is there a hangover? Are you half hard because you've got just that little bit less control?"
"Yeah. All that. Until you realize you don't know the date. It's like being fucked in your sleep," Jack said with a bitter laugh.
"I've never been fucked in my sleep."
"It's nice, you know, if you want it," Jack said.
"I'll keep that in mind."
"So will I. My partner and I used to fuck around with it. The Retcon, that is. We'd fuck, pass out, wake up and he'd crack one in half and shove it into my mouth in a kiss. I'd pass out out, maybe not all the way, come to, we'd be fucking again. A week would go by with one or the other of us thinking all that we'd done in that entire time was screw."
Ianto tried not to sigh but couldn't help it. Sleazy. Erotic. Insane. And that he'd kill John Hart as soon as look at him was almost besides the point, at least as far as his body was concerned.
"So was that your job at the Time Agency? Perfecting Retcon?" Ianto asked unsure of what else to say and not wanting to betray his anger or jealousy. Jack could make certain choices now, Ianto knew, but he couldn't go back and undo those already done because Ianto was jealous and hated John Hart and believed him to be above all a thief.
Jack shook his head. "Nope."
"So why'd you do it?"
"Because I could."
Continue to next part
Pairing/Characters: Jack/Ianto, Gwen, Mickey, Martha & the rest of the Doctor Who Cast.
Authors:
rm & kalichanRating/Warning: NC-17, bdsm, d/s,
Summary: Homeward bound. Takes place during and after Doctor Who 4x13: Journey's End.
Wordcount: ~31,700 [posted in 4 parts]
Authors' Notes: This is the seventh installment of our series, I Had No Idea I Had Been Traveling. The title is from a song (and the album) by Stars. This is the first piece of this arc we’ve really had to write concurrent to an episode, because of the woeful lack of Torchwood Hub in DW 4x13. This means if you've not watched Journey's End, that the first part of the story might not make as much sense as it could. Here is a link to a brief recap, a full recap, a funny recap (with captioned pictures) or just the transcript -- in case you want to know what, exactly, is going on. Or you could just dive in and hope for the best! Next up, we'll be posting a Jack/Nine/Rose followed by a few other prequels covering the early education and adventures of both Jack and Ianto before returning to where we’ve left off with them in this timeline.
Previous installments:
A Strange Fashion of Forsaking
Dear Captain, Last Night I Slept in Mutiny
To Learn This Holding and the Holding Back
The Most Beautiful Girl in the World
I Imagine You Now in That Other City
Many of My Favorite Things Are Broken
In Our Bedroom After the War, Part 1
Jack was, frankly, always a little surprised at how well Ianto picked things up. But at Ianto's very first step towards him, filled with deliberate intent, he had felt his pulse begin to race, and it had been an effort not to either fall to his knees and take control of the tempo, or just step forward and turn this into a wrestling match. But he hadn't. He'd waited, while Ianto drew the moment out.
And then the order finally came, delivered in that gravelly, low tone that meant Ianto was either telling the truth or was deeply moved. Either way, it made Jack hard and he obeyed.
"Give me your hands," Ianto said, and as Jack did so, he felt Ianto loosen his wrist strap, and place it on the bedside table. Then he felt one cuff snap shut against his wrist.
"Put your head down, and your hands up by the headboard," Ianto said quietly, and Jack did, wondering somewhere inside himself how Ianto had managed to come up with such a submissive position for him to assume, although he supposed it was a bit obvious.
He felt tension along his arm as Ianto looped the chain of the handcuff around one of the rods in the headboard and then secured the other cuff on Jack's other wrist. And there he was, bound, as he'd wanted to be. Knees bent under him, ass in the air, maybe, but nevertheless, harnessed, secure, anchored, and he felt himself sigh involuntarily with something like relief.
"Is that good, Jack? Is that what you wanted?" Ianto asked, more with amusement than any hesitation, and Jack turned his head toward him to nod.
"Face down," Ianto snapped, and Jack jerked his head back. "I didn't hear you."
"Yeah," Jack said, low. "It's good."
Jack felt the bed creak underneath him as Ianto climbed down, and then came around to stand at the other side. He ran his hand lightly over Jack's back and hip bone, and Jack bucked back against it in response. He couldn't help himself; he knew he'd started them down this road, but now, he almost wished he hadn't, wished that Ianto would just fuck the shit out of him; it might not be perfect, but it would be now, and Jack really didn't think he could wait any longer.
"It'll be at my time now," Ianto said gently. "You wanted it that way."
"Right," Jack got out, but the word didn't come out submissively, like he'd intended; it sounded cocky and challenging, and he didn't know how that had happened, although he supposed he shouldn't have been surprised.
Without warning, Ianto's palm cracked hard against his ass; shocked, Jack heard the sound first, and then as the rush of heat and pain blossomed, he inhaled sharply.
"I don't think I like your tone, Jack," Ianto remarked.
"Sorry," he replied.
Ianto spanked him again, harder this time. "Did I ask you a question?" he inquired.
"No," Jack answered, through his teeth.
Coming forward to stand by Jack's head, Ianto reached down to caress his hair, and then rested his hand on the back of his neck, but sweet as it was, something in Jack wouldn't let him relax into it.
Suddenly, Ianto seized his hair so hard Jack felt water spring into his eyes. Ianto yanked his head back and to the side and held him there, before bending down to kiss him. The muscles of Jack's back and neck burned from the uncomfortable twist, but even with the extra sensation, he couldn't relax into the kiss either. So he tried to deepen it, sliding his tongue into Ianto's mouth.
Ianto pulled his hair harder, twisting his neck even farther, and Jack stopped immediately.
"I think you're having some trouble with this concept, Jack," Ianto said.
"Sorry," Jack gasped.
"I'm going to help you," Ianto said firmly, something clearly decided in his mind. He let go of Jack's hair and stepped away, and then Jack heard him somewhere behind him. He wondered what Ianto was doing. He wondered why he couldn't just give in to something he'd been thinking about and wanting for the whole of this whole long, exhausting day.
Then Ianto was by his head again. "Look at me, Jack," he said.
Jack turned his head, and saw one of Ianto's ties, dangling from his hands. And then Ianto was wrapping it around his head, over his eyes, knotting it taut, and he couldn't see anything at all.
"Ianto," Jack said, feeling his heartbeat accelerate. "Not the best idea."
"I don't know how else to get your attention, Jack."
"But --"
"What if you had, had my voice down there with you for all those years?"
"I don't know."
Ianto frowned. "Surely you've been blindfolded before when it wasn't a bad thing," he tried, more reasonably.
"Yeah," Jack said, still struggling for composure.
"Well, pretend it's then. And then remember it's me," Ianto said softly and something about his tone distracted Jack from his fear by almost breaking his heart.
"Okay," Jack said softly, not because he wasn't afraid and not because he'd found the place he needed to go, but because Ianto had made the thought of letting him down utterly miserable. Jack did that enough as it was.
"Good," Ianto said, and Jack relaxed fractionally at the smile in his voice and the kiss then placed between his shoulder blades.
Jack hadn't done this sort of thing in a long time, not in earnest. He'd tried, of course. Because there was nothing really that Jack didn't crave, but he was so greedy and things always went pleasantly pear-shaped or, come to think of it, even strange enough for him to wind up dead across his desk. He tried to restrict his laugh to what would seem merely a nervous hitch of breath, but Ianto slapped his ass again for it anyway, and Jack sighed, glad someone was paying attention as his mind wandered.
He had fucked one of his instructors at the Time Agency. Well, more than one, but no one really cared about what happened at end of course parties, not even Jack. But at what must have been around seventeen, he'd spent a couple of months on his knees in the hours between dinner and curfew before an old-craft flight instructor who he guessed was, at the time, a few years more than twice his age.
Suzie'd had a laugh like hers, which had always been profoundly disconcerting, and Jack had made a point of never, ever mentioning it when he'd fucked her in the Torchwood showers. But that woman back there in the future had taught Jack more than a few things, including that he was not patient and that the best way to convince anyone that you owned them was to pull their hair just so.
Jack gasped. It seemed to be a trick Ianto knew too, and it occurred to Jack that it might have been one of those things he'd taught the other man by accident in all their now hazy desperation.
It was strange relearning the man, strange relearning everything. Like reenacting a storybook only to discover the book had, had it all wrong because it was all even better. Even if every time Ianto gave him a quizzical look, Jack wondered on just what score his faulty mind and his faulty life had caused him to let this man down.
It was one reason Jack was so fond of him. He'd traveled space and time and yet Ianto still expected him to prove himself in perfectly ordinary ways. It was nice to be kept honest, really. Even if he never had been. Not really. Not even recently. At least for anyone else.
This was, in many ways, Jack thought, a new life. He'd had thousands of new lives by now, of course, but he didn't count that way. There was before the Doctor and after the Doctor, before the ground and after it. If he wanted to split hairs, there was the Peninsula and the Time Agency, the Tardis and Torchwood, or the names of too many people he'd loved too much for a guy with a big grin who'd never been supposed to do anything more than fuck his way across the universe.
At first, Jack seemed to be doing better with the blindfold on, Ianto thought as he twisted his head up by the hair once more, so he could see his face and the small smile playing now at the corners of his mouth. Ianto bent to kiss him and this time was rewarded with that moment where their lips seemed to dissolve into each other, sending electric shocks of pleasure vibrating all the way down his spine.
But then, when Ianto pulled back, wanting to feel the anticipation build again, he seemed to struggle again, tensing and then shivering, beginning to pant, and Ianto felt such a wave of desire at the sight, he had to bite his own lip hard to stay on top of it.
"I'm here, Jack," he said, hurriedly touching his back and felt Jack visibly get a hold of his panic.
Have to stop him thinking, Ianto thought to himself. That's what he wants, to feel grounded and lost all at once. Not always, not every day, thank god, but right now.
And Ianto wanted to give it to him, like some kind of beautiful, perfect present, but it was hard, because while he'd played games like this with Lisa and given other girls when they'd seemed to want it -- a few good smacks across the arse while they rode him -- it had all been just that: games.
And with Jack, he had always been impelled by rage before. He'd never had to force himself up to this pitch when it wasn't fueled by immediate, smoldering anger. Ianto tried to recall his irritation from earlier, but couldn't find anything in his heart just then but an overwhelming tenderness that made his breath catch in his throat.
Still Jack had told him what to do, and surely he could manage that much for him, who'd saved them all again and then come home instead of flying out into the horizon. Because truly, everyone followed Jack's lead in the end, and Ianto wasn't about to let him down when he could have got this from anyone, anywhere and anywhen, and had chosen, had demanded to be here instead, shackled to this ordinary bed, in this ordinary flat.
Make it hurt, Jack had said. Okay, Ianto thought and began to unbuckle his belt, pulling it loose from his trousers. He could do that.
Holding the belt bunched in one hand, he slipped the other underneath Jack to stroke his chest and then down to his cock, which was half hard, and then scratch lightly at his balls. Jack shivered and moaned, and Ianto smiled to himself.
"I know you can't see," Ianto said conversationally as he returned to Jack's cock and began to stroke it all the way hard, "but you're a gorgeous sight like this. Shackles are a good look for you."
Jack's cock felt impossibly good in his hand -- like metal, if metal were made of silk and were alive, he thought randomly -- and Ianto had to swallow so he could keep focused. He listened for the hitch in Jack's breath that told him the level of his arousal, and when he reckoned he'd got him high enough, he slid his hand back up Jack's chest and then seized his nipple between his fingernails and twisted as hard as he could; Jack grunted in surprise.
"You like that, Jack?" he said, keeping the pressure on.
"Yes," Jack gasped out.
"If you think that's good," he said, "you're going to love this." And then he let go, and Jack sighed with the surcease of pain. Just in time for Ianto to crack the belt in a vicious slice across his arse.
Behind the blindfold, Jack saw stars.
It hurt. And not in a good way, but Jack also knew that was how it always started. Was always, the few times he had done this like this -- asked for it instead of having stumbled into it or been pulled down into it -- difficult at first, and if Ianto just kept going, all that pain would turn to water and he could do his penance, wallow in all his ill-advised affection and just get off, get free, and get on with things.
He could feel Ianto pause and imagined that he was watching the tension in his back, but to tell him to go on wouldn't serve either of them. He knew that too well in a moment where he didn't want to know anything. And so while he didn't feel it, not yet, he moaned and arched his back. He would, soon enough, and Ianto certainly knew how to take a hint. A belt. Jack knew he would chuckle about that later. Ianto. So practical.
Jack cursed under his breath as Ianto hit him again, but there was no time to put on a show to encourage him onward. Not this time, as Ianto cracked a series of blows over his ass in quick succession, and there it was: that obvious feeling of warmth and that odder sensation that felt like the illion of water. Or blood.
He smiled as it was finally so simple to just slip below the surface of it all. The belt continued to crack against him, and he smiled even as he hated that his mouth was empty of everything but sound and that his hands could hold nothing but the wood of Ianto's headboard.
Ianto saw it, the moment Jack went from present and preening to lost and loud, and yet not verbal at all. It was amazing to him to see Jack's flesh move without calculation and to melt into each touch, each strike that Ianto was willing to offer him. He wondered if this was what he himself looked like when Jack had lured him down into strange places full of begging and stickiness. He shuddered with a better understanding of things already done and, in Jack's case, already half forgotten.
It had been two months now of some strange mix of delight and sorrow for them both. There weren't many privileges he, or anyone, could have with Jack who had too much experience behind him and too much life ahead of him, but it was under Ianto's hands that he had relearned how much he loved to fuck and against Ianto's flesh he had recalled the perfection of salt, and Ianto would have those moments of victory for as long as he lived.
That Jack would one day forget them, replaced, no doubt, by the salving of other horrors with other hands, other flesh, didn't matter for Ianto, because these small things, laughter and wonder from what should have been the most cynical creature on earth -- those were his prizes alone, with or without Jack, who it seemed now needed him again to fix wounds neither understood nor named.
"Oh Jack," Ianto said softly, smoothing his hand briefly over his back as he paused with the belt.
Jack made a vague interrogative noise.
"Shhhh. You're doing just fine," Ianto said, and cracked the belt against him again, unsure yet how to translate his thoughts into the kindness Jack had also demanded. It wrenched at him that Jack had, had to ask.
It was the softness of Ianto's voice that undid him, coupled with the dazzling sting of the belt crackling across sore flesh. Jack wanted to scream, to cry, to say things he had no words for and give it all over, everything -- but he couldn't have anyway, even if Ianto had asked him to speak, because he was everywhere and nowhere all at once, all the world reduced to a blinding, glorious pain, as Ianto began to really thrash him in earnest. He was gripping the fragile wood rods of the headboard so hard it was a minor miracle that they didn't break like twigs in his hands.
I'm sorry. Jack remembered. Other times, other places, and nothing the same but the rhythm and him pleading now for forgiveness and wanting desperately to be clean of it all, for anger and disappointment to slough off his skin until he was someone different, someone new. Then finally after several infinities, Jack realized Ianto had stopped. He felt his body steaming and burning and aching from the tension, and Ianto's tie was damp across his eyes with sweat or tears. And he was still sorry.
He felt Ianto behind him then, reaching around his hips to stroke his prick hard again, pressing up against his ass, and making his nerve endings sing with remembered sensation as he pressed slick fingers inside him. When they withdrew and it was Ianto's cock instead, he was too ready and aching and empty; it felt almost too sweet, too delicious, and Jack moaned.
"Please," he gasped. "Harder. Don't be gentle. Please."
Ianto paused inside him, and Jack tried to buck back against the other man. Ianto stilled him with a hard grip on his hipbone.
"Why, Jack?" Ianto said hoarsely.
"Please," Jack got out, not able to find any other words.
Ianto waited a moment and then did as asked, pulling almost all the way out and then beginning a slamming, ferocious rhythm that drove into him. Jack felt cold droplets of Ianto's sweat scatter and fall onto his back as he hammered into him, like the sparse rains of his childhood.
Ianto felt as though his heart might quite literally explode out of his chest, it was pounding so hard, but at the same time, he couldn't stop, as if Jack's words had unlocked something inside him and given him permission to fuck him without the boundaries he had so often and so awkwardly crossed before. It was as if he could finally pierce the core of him to enter some secret place that Ianto hadn't even known was there, even as he knew too that Jack was and always would be more than his mind could ever hope to really grasp and hold on to.
Normally Jack talked, constantly, while they were fucking. Commentary, praise, and odd litanies of who and what he thought Ianto should be or even was at any given moment. And Ianto, by and large, had learned to respond to it, as much as he often found it distracting or embarrassing or filled with betrayals of how he had once thought of himself.
But tonight Jack was wordless. And so was Ianto. It was just their breath and their moans and the sound of flesh, and somehow that felt like betrayal too, because neither of them were ever going to be who or how or what they were supposed to be, and they'd had the audacity to decide that didn't matter. Ianto knew they'd be paying for that eventually. Or at least Jack would. After all, he had time for all his debts to come due. Ianto didn't, and besides, he had already paid a great deal in advance.
Ianto's rhythm stuttered, and then stopped completely as he leaned awkwardly towards the bedside table to fetch the key to the handcuffs, and fumbled with the lock. After unlocking one, and tossing the key back onto the table, he managed to pry Jack's grip off the headboard and then to force his hands down to the small of his back.
When Jack, who grunted with pain and surprise as his already strained arms were moved, twisted to hook two fingers of each hand into Ianto's restraining fists, Ianto felt as if he had been asked to choose between grief and victory and love, even though he had been given all three.
As with so many things lately, he felt as though Jack had been returned to him, and yet was still somehow something unrecognizable. He felt small in the face of Jack's life, which was odd, because rationally or no, everything about Jack normally made him feel just the opposite. Jack made him grand.
There was no real time for melancholy though. Not when fucking flesh like Jack's. It pulled him in. Pulled him under. And maybe he would wonder how in the hell that had happened every day of his goddamn life. Right now though it was merely time to go harder and faster, and he put both Jack's wrists under one hand, so he could push his head down into the pillow harder, force his back to bow further, and then finally reach around to pump his cock with anything but thoughts of solace.
Ianto didn't worry about Jack's pleasure. That wasn't the nature of this exercise, though he had, in fact, found other things to worry about. He worried about using Jack and making sure the man knew it for what it was. And he worried about showing Jack that while he might be above most laws, he was not above Ianto’s, at least not now, for these few moments. Torchwood gave men too much power.
He snapped his hips as he fucked into Jack and knew he was smiling a bit smugly as he did, even as he felt those fingers grazing against his wrists, grabbing futilely for his hands again. When he came with muddy, desperate relief, he leaned over the flesh beneath him and squeezed Jack's cock cruelly, eliciting a moan of what could only be described as despair.
Ianto pulled out with a sharp gasp. Too fast, everything was too fast, even if he was the one making it that way, and he pushed at Jack's hip, rolling him onto his side and then back. Reflexively Jack stretched his arms over his head, wrists crossed and the handcuffs still dangling off one wrist.
"No," Ianto said, and pulled off the blindfold before placing Jack's arms down at his side. "Let me make this better," he said, and took Jack's prick in his mouth, and forced the man's hands into his hair.
Jack pumped his hips up so that he could fuck Ianto's mouth as if this somehow made sense, as if he weren't staring at the ceiling in shock, as if this didn't, somehow make him wonder if this were prayer. Ianto Jones, he thought, always early with the benediction and yet somehow here to save him at the end of all things, which had apparently arrived far sooner or perhaps later than he'd been expecting; he couldn't remember. He found himself wishing that Ianto would always be here, at least in these moments where worlds stopped turning.
He closed his eyes and wound his fingers tightly into Ianto's hair. It would be all right. Somehow. Because of this angry, broken man who just happened to make him happy. Strange. The universe was just strange.
Ianto was locked on to him now, sucking strong and steadily, mouth wet and hot; no finesse really, no gentleness or teasing, just everything all at once, pressure and heat, Ianto's tongue stroking him, and then sucking him deep into his throat, and Jack knew he was going to come. When he did, it was with a low guttural noise, and an orgasm that just seemed to go on and on until he couldn't stand it anymore.
When he'd come back to himself a little, Ianto's head was pillowed on his thigh. Jack petted his hair gently, and Ianto turned his head to press a kiss into his palm. He smiled, and then pulled Ianto up so that he was lying next to him on the bed.
"Thank you," Jack said, when he could find words again. "That was... exactly what I needed. Hope it wasn't too exotic for you."
"You underestimate me."
"Never," Jack said.
"Sometimes."
"Less and less."
Ianto laughed. "And even an old dog can learn new tricks. Sir."
"We didn't have those when I was young," Jack said idly.
"What?"
"Dogs," Jack said. "They'd died out, I think."
"Oh," Ianto said.
"Quite a shock first time I saw one."
"I can imagine.”
They lay there in silence for a few moments.
Then Jack said, "Speaking of new tricks. Pretty clever of you to go for the belt."
"I'm glad you liked it.”
"Ever done that before?" Jack asked curiously.
"No," Ianto said. "But it seemed like the thing to do at the time."
"Yeah," Jack agreed.
"I don't even need to ask, do I?"
"No," Jack said. "Do you think you would like it?"
"Being thrashed?"
"Yeah."
"Not really," Ianto said. "At least, I didn't enjoy it when I was young. Although better than being sent to bed without supper or whatever."
"Did that happen often?"
"Well, I used to be quite a handful," Ianto said.
Jack laughed. "Ianto Jones!" he exclaimed with mock horror. "What did you do?"
"Got in fights. Nicked ciders from the pantry. Skived off school. Locked a teacher in a supply closet. Shoplifted. Smoked. Stayed out all night. You know. The usual."
"Shoplifted?" Jack asked.
"You knew that," Ianto said. "You read my record, remember?"
"Right," Jack said, as the information came flooding back in that prickly, painful way that it did now, which still made him a bit queasy. "Convicted once. Shoplifting."
"Yeah. But that was later. Being convicted, I mean. The time I got beaten for it was when I was younger."
"What did you steal?"
"Socks," Ianto mumbled sheepishly.
"Socks?" Jack said with disbelief.
"That was the time I got caught, yeah. I nicked CDs and sweets and things too, but it was the socks when they nabbed me. Got careless. She was half blind anyway, the shoplady. Stupid old bag. Knew Mum and Dad, more's the pity. And she went straight in and rung them up. Didn't even bother with the police. God, that's embarrassing."
Jack laughed.
"Waiting for Dad to show up to collect me, that was the worst part."
"Didn't stop you though, did it?"
"Apparently not. Hardened criminal, as you see."
"How old were you anyway?"
"Twelve? Or thereabouts." Ianto said. "How about you? Did you ever get a few licks?"
"Once," Jack said.
"Such a good boy," Ianto teased.
"No," Jack said. "Not at all. But my father was mostly pretty gentle. He didn't get angry very often. And then he died."
"So what did you do that time?"
Jack stared off into space for a moment. "He caught me torturing an animal... like a rabbit, I guess. Something like that. You don't have them here. We'd been throwing rocks at it and someone hit it in the head. Everyone else ran off," he said, and when he heard Ianto hold his breath instead of gasp, he continued. "I had a knife, and it came to and was making these sounds so I kept cutting it and putting sea water in it and kelp."
Ianto noted that Jack seemed to be fumbling for his words a bit and wasn't sure if it was the content of the story making him hesitant or if the discussion of his childhood was making him want to use another vocabulary that he must have worried for a long time now he might well be in danger of forgetting.
"There were these little crabs that lived on the beach, too small to eat really. Put those in too. And then my father found me, collecting things to put inside of it while it was still alive. Cruelty and waste, he said. Big sins when you're poor and isolated and you have a father who stares at the stars as if they're a romance instead of a road map. He wasn't pleased with me. Thrashed me hard enough that I think he was ashamed of himself in the end. Not a thing I like to think about."
"He'd be proud of you now," Ianto offered, wondering if he sounded like a fool.
"Nope. He wouldn't. He didn't live to see me go to war."
"Defending your home," Ianto said trying to sound far more confident of that assumption than he was.
"Oh. You don't know what I did in that war. Well, any of them really."
"What did you do in the war, Jack?" Ianto dutifully asked, hating that he had to and dreading the answer.
"Among other things? Interrogations. Which is the nice way of saying I was a torturer."
Ianto rolled his eyes. "I suspect that's an overstatement."
Jack raised an eyebrow at him but didn't seem amused in the least. "Do you really think the things I do now are the same as the things I did then?"
"Tonally, sure," Ianto said.
"Wrong."
"Well, the weevil, for instance, and that assassin bloke. It's not like you were actually going to order me to let it go?"
"And if I had?" Jack replied.
Ianto didn't answer.
"You would have," said Jack, giving voice to what they both already knew. "You have a cruel streak, and it's one you enjoy. It's easy to see in you, and it was easy to see in me, and it is not something I'm proud of."
"We all do what's necessary."
"That ceases to be an excuse when you volunteer."
"Have we volunteered, you and I? Because from the things I know, it doesn't actually look that way from here."
"We stay," Jack said simply, and Ianto couldn't bring himself to note aloud all the reasons why there was no choice involved in that at all.
"What happened with the Doctor?" Ianto asked abruptly.
Jack smiled wanly. "Oh. That. You want the part where we saved the world or the part where I had to keep saying good bye?"
"The part that's why I had to hurt you, if you don't mind."
"All the same, isn't it?"
"I don't know, Jack. You tell me."
Jack turned his back to Ianto for a moment, and rummaged on the table till he found the key to the cuffs. He unlocked the one still snapped around his wrist, and tossed them and the key aside. He lay back down, massaging his wrist a little as he did so.
"You okay?" Ianto asked.
"Sure. Just chafed a little." Jack put his hands behind his head, and then stared up at the ceiling. "It was strange on the space station."
"Why strange?"
"Did I ever tell you about Rose?" Jack asked, in what seemed like a non-sequitur.
"No," Ianto said. "Who's she?"
"A girl. Ordinary. Used to be a shopgirl. Blonde. You might have seen her, when she was talking to Gwen. She was the Doctor's companion when I met him first. I found her hanging from a barrage balloon in WWII London. I was on the run from the Time Agency, working a con. Long story. Anyway. I saved her. And then they saved me. And took me with them. That was when my life started, I think, sometimes. You'd have liked her. I never really met anyone who didn't."
"What happened to her?"
"For a long time, I thought she'd died. At Canary Wharf. She was on the list of the dead." Jack paused, and Ianto let that thought sink in. That Jack too had believed he'd lost someone that day. "But she wasn't, even though we thought we'd never see her again. The Doctor told me about her, when I saw him the last time. She wasn't dead, but she was lost to us. Locked away. In another universe."
"Another universe?" Ianto asked, wondering if this were hyperbole or what.
"Yeah. Quantum theory, you know?"
"Ahh," Ianto said, still not sure where this was going. "You loved her?"
"I did," Jack said. "I do. Always will. She's the one who did this to me. I was dead, on this Dalek satellite, and she... she brought me back to life. For keeps. And that's why I can't die."
Ianto stared. "I thought you said she was ordinary."
"I did, yeah," Jack said, smiling sadly. "Didn't you know? It's the ordinary people that save the world. Always."
Ianto didn't know what to say. "So you said you thought you'd never see her again? Was she there? On this space station?"
"Yeah," Jack said. "She came back. To find the Doctor. I've never seen two people so happy to see each other."
"Oh," Ianto said. So she... and the Doctor... and Jack.... He tried to shut down this line of thought.
"She's with the Doctor now. Both of them."
"Both of them?"
"Another long story," Jack said. "But yeah, there's two of them now. Look exactly alike and everything."
"Seems like you would have stayed then," Ianto said, trying with all his might not to let the words sound petty.
"No," Jack said, still gazing at the ceiling. "They're... complete. Without me. But it was good to see her again."
"Doesn't that hurt? Leaving her... them, behind?"
"No," Jack said. "Not really."
"Then why, Jack? I still don't understand."
"Why what?"
"Why this need for... I don't know. Absolution. Penance. Whatever the fuck this was."
Ianto was beginning to feel a sense of panic rising, because Jack... Jack was showing signs of that crazed internal logic that defied all reason. And Ianto was really hoping that he hadn't just spent an hour or two feeding Jack's peculiar brand of crazy, which sometimes involved diving off of roofs because it was simpler that way.
Jack laughed. "Always so serious. How do you know it's not just a quest for a little variety? Some whips and chains and a mai tai or two?"
"For one thing, we didn't have any mai tais. And you forget, I know you, Jack."
"Yeah," Jack said. He paused for a long moment, and then said, low, "He was disappointed in me."
"What?" Ianto said, knowing of course who the 'he' referred to, and trying, without much success, to tamp down the resultant flush of rage.
"In all of us, really."
"You won," Ianto said flatly. "How is that disappointing? Did he want us all to die? The Earth to be overrun by Daleks?"
"No," Jack said. "Of course not. But he expected us to find another way. A better way. He would have."
"But he didn't," Ianto pointed out. "It's not like he wasn't there."
Jack laughed. And then with a terrible cheerfulness said, "It doesn't matter anyway. We are who we are, and a person... a person can only change so much. It doesn't make a difference. He's stuck with us, after all."
Ianto glared. Not for the first time, he wanted to meet the Doctor just so he could punch him in the face. Savior of the universe or not. How dare he make Jack feel this way?
"Thing is," Jack added, "I want you to know something. When I say I've been a bad man... I'm not joking, Ianto. Or exaggerating. I've done...," he broke off. And then switching gears, he seemed to start over. "I remember one night, a long time ago. I'd had a few drinks, the stars were shining brightly, both the moons were up, the blue and the white. A sight to see. We were camped out on the Dafulian Mountains. We'd caught the guy, got the answers we needed; it was routine by then, really. And I'd just got laid, and I was exactly on the right side of drunk, you know, where everything just feels good. And I thought about Dad, and said to myself, I'm glad he's dead. First time I ever thought that. Not the last though."
Ianto didn't know what to say.
Jack turned to look at him, and then laughed a little. "Don't worry," he said reassuringly. "I'm fine. I promise."
"Yeah, you really sound fine there, Jack."
"No, seriously, I am. It wasn't all bad anyway. Afterwards, in the TARDIS, it was... it was amazing. When we were flying the Earth home. I wish you could have been there."
"Well, I sort of was," Ianto pointed out. "You were towing us after all."
Jack laughed. "Didn't think of it that way, but yeah. Guess you were. And there was this woman -- Donna Noble. She was excellent. A fucking amazon. And the most fantastic tits you ever saw."
"Ahh," Ianto said. "And did you learn this from... ah... close acquaintance?"
"Did I fuck her, you mean?" Jack asked, raising an eyebrow at him.
"Yeah," Ianto said.
"No," Jack said. "It was definitely on offer. But somehow I didn't think you'd appreciate that."
Ianto sputtered. "What?"
"Was I wrong? I could probably call her up...."
"What's my feeling about it got to do with anything?" Ianto said, refusing to answer. "I know you don't look at these things the same way I... we do."
"So?" Jack said, ostentatiously casual.
Ianto just stared at him, until he relented and went on.
"Look," he said. "I can't promise you much. We've found that out now. Nothing of what you ought to have, nothing normal. But this? This is something I can do. It's a choice I can make. It's not much, but it's what I've got."
"I don't know what to say to that," Ianto said, and Jack thought that he didn't sound entirely pleased.
"You don't have to say anything."
"No, I think I do."
"Okay? Shoot."
"Where did you get this idea you needed to make me promises?"
"Need's got nothing to do with it."
"Well what then, Jack?"
Jack shrugged as he tried to find a way to put it that would actually get what he meant across to Ianto.
"I was holding Rose, and she's perfect to hold really. Perfect waist, exactly the sort of girl that makes you feel like a man, you know? And I could smell her, from her soap to her cunt, the leather of her jacket, and other than gratitude and more time, what I really wanted was you there to know how fucking fantastic it is to hold Rose Tyler."
"I don't get what this has to do with --"
"Donna?"
"Promises."
"Did you want to marry Lisa?"
"Yeah."
"Have kids with her?"
"Sure."
"Then what the hell are you doing here?" Jack said harshly.
"I don't know," Ianto said, his voice a bit of breathy wonder, as he reached out to touch Jack.
"Yeah, I don't know either. And I should probably tell you to stop. Tell you I'm a monster. Tell you to run away home and take some pills and give you your life back. Or the possibility of one at least. Thing is, I'm not that generous, and if Gwen could find a way around Retcon, I figure it doesn't stand a chance with you, and trust me, I made that calculation a while ago. So here we are. I can't give you most or more or first or last and people want those things. People who say they don't are liars. Even I want those things. All the time. The massive ego you know."
"You do devour things, sir," Ianto said, and Jack couldn't help but note his voice was full of fond caution.
"I do. Here's the deal though. I used to think that the people who stuck around a while were a fraction of my life. A smaller fraction than they'd be for someone else, what with the death not sticking thing, but you know, a measurable fraction. A fourth. A fifth. A tenth. A decade. A year comparative to a typical lifespan here if I got realistic. And I was wrong. We both know that now, right? You're a fucking moth, Ianto. Three days in the moonlight, and I only get one night of it. Seems worth it to me not to get distracted, not to nod off, not to waste time."
"I didn't ask you for this."
"Nope. You didn't. But it's what you've got. You can look at it as a gift or you can ignore it. Doesn't matter to me. They'll be plenty of women with amazing tits after you're gone. You want to share someone with me? You want to play? Say the word. This isn't about being faithful, Ianto. It's about paying attention. I'm paying attention and this is the only way I know how to show you I'm doing it. That's all."
"Why do you only get one?"
"Huh?"
"One night. The moth thing."
"First night was childhood."
"Which I suppose lasted right up until that weevil in the park?"
"Yeah. Second night. That's right now."
"Third night?"
"Well, we work for Torchwood, right? Best not to count on stuff."
Ianto smiled and nodded. Jack knew he would die young and had the respect to say it to his face. Somehow it made a surprising number of things better.
"Okay," he said.
"Okay?" Jack asked.
"Thanks."
Jack grinned. Maybe one day he'd tell Ianto about the moths on the peninsula and the fable of them learned from his mother and then whispered so often to Gray in the dark, calming him after nightmares.
"We should get back soon," he said.
"We need a better solution," Ianto said, groaning as he sat up.
"Hey, don't complain," Jack said, wandering into the bathroom. "You're not the one who got whipped within an inch of his life."
When Ianto insisted on escorting Martha down from the Tourist Information Office, and also on carrying her bag for her, she laughed.
"You know," she said, "I'm not a V.I.P. anymore; just one of the crew, at least for a little while. You're not going to walk me down every day I’m here, are you?"
"Until Jack tells me otherwise, yes, I am." He paused. "Is your family..." he asked, before trailing off delicately.
"They're all fine, thanks. A bit shaken up, but they've been through worse, and closer to it."
"Worse than a horde of Daleks stealing the Earth?" Ianto asked with some surprise.
"Yeah," Martha said. "More personal anyway. But they're all okay."
"I'm glad."
"You?"
"All dead," and then when she stared at him in horror, he smiled. "Before. Natural causes."
"Oh," she said. "I'm so sorry."
"No need. Long time ago, now."
"Got any mileage out of that U.N.I.T. cap I mailed you?" she asked, trying to lighten the mood.
"Jack looked quite fetching in it, yes."
Martha giggled. "More to you than meets the eye, isn't there?"
"Yes, indeed," Ianto said, gallantly bowing her through the cog door as Gwen looked up from some blueprints she'd got spread out in front of her.
She caught sight of them, and leapt out of her chair to give Martha a hug.
Martha squeezed her back jubilantly and then looked around. "It looks a bit worse for wear in here," she said hesitantly.
"I hear the voice of a nightingale," Jack bellowed as he came bounding down the stairs. "It's Miss Martha Jones, and she's already insulting my lair."
"Jack," she cried, and was instantly wrapped in his arms. "It's so good to see you!"
"Thanks for coming," he said into her hair.
"Anytime," she said. "Won’t stay long probably, but I’ll be here while you need me."
Mickey ambled up to give her a kiss on the cheek, with what was either some kind of alien gun or possibly a drill in one hand, and she smiled at him.
"Welcome to the madhouse, love," he said. "Put down your things, stay a while."
"Don't mind if I do," she said. Then the smile slid off her face as she remembered what news she had to give Jack.
"Jack," she said. "Could I speak to you in private? Just for a tick. Orders."
Jack looked at her closely, and then nodded. "Of course. Come up to my office," he said. "The rest of you, back to work, okay? Martha'll be here a while. You can catch up later."
She smiled at the rest of them, and then followed Jack up the stairs. Behind her, she heard Gwen say, "All right, back to work, boys. Listen, Mickey, about this wall. Is it weight-bearing?"
Ianto watched Martha follow Jack up to his office before turning his attention to Gwen's query.
Mickey traced his fingers over the blueprints and frowned. "Do you want to know what it says or what should actually be true?"
"If this place is going to fall down around us, please let us know sooner rather than later, yeah?" Ianto interjected.
"Working on it," Mickey replied, sounding less than cheerful as he glanced weakly between Gwen and Ianto. "Says it's not. I say it is."
"Great. So either we've got faulty blueprints or this place was built with alien tech," Ianto said and went to the coffee machine where he took down everyone's mugs.
"Ask Jack when you go up there yeah?" Gwen called to him.
Ianto nodded.
He gave Gwen and Mickey their coffees first.
"What's that?" Mickey asked, pointing to the space on the blueprints under Jack's office.
"Jack's cubby," Ianto said.
"He sleeps down there," Gwen clarified, and for no real reason Ianto felt like snapping at her because Jack didn't sleep, not really, and he certainly avoided spending time down there now.
He'd let Ianto sleep down there, and they'd had it off against the wall there once since his return, but other than as a place to store his things and allow Ianto an occasional retreat from the Hub it wasn't a place Jack was comfortable in anymore. Too small. Too dark. And Gwen knew it. What Gwen didn't know was that Ianto no longer smiled happily to fall asleep in that bed. It was something utilitarian now, just a cot, and not this secret part of Jack's endless world he'd been snuck into. All things passed, he supposed. Even the non-living ones.
It was this, not the lack of viability of promises from Jack, that made Ianto crazy. He had grown up understanding that some things in the world had permanence. A building would stand until it was replaced. Maps would continue to show the same land masses even as countries changed. But Torchwood and Jack made all such things a lie. Canary Wharf had taught him that about buildings. Jack had taught him that about mountains, about Cardiff, about that stupid steel-framed cot in his cubby.
Ianto sighed, fetched Jack and Martha's mugs and headed up, catching Martha on the stairs.
"Thanks," she said, smiling brightly as she took it, sipped and then clattered down the stairs, but Ianto had seen that the smile didn't reach her eyes.
When Ianto entered the office, he found Jack sitting at his desk, perfectly still. It was something that had started after Tosh and Owen had died, after his 2,000 year day and still hadn't gone. It disconcerted Ianto, but like many things, he'd learned to live with it.
"Sir," he said, trying not to make it a question as he set Jack's coffee down.
Jack shook himself and ran his hands over his face. He smiled. "Ianto."
"Bad news?"
"Always. Nothing we have to worry ourselves about though."
"Why do you look like that then?" Ianto asked bluntly.
"Imagine I had to retcon you to prevent your brain from destroying itself."
"You don't, do you?" Ianto asked, trying to be light.
Jack shook his head. "Donna. The one with the tits --"
"Yeah, I know."
"Something happened. The Doctor had to fix it. So she's gone back to being a temp now. Doesn't know she saved the world or saw that there was more than one. Didn't get to learn things, didn't get to stay strong. It's an ugly theft."
"Necessary. It seems," Ianto said blandly, unsure of what to say, unsure of whether to ask for more explanation.
"I'm sick of necessary. Aren't you?" Jack asked, looking weary and miserable.
Ianto leaned over him to wrap a hand tightly around Jack's wrist. "Yeah."
Jack closed his eyes for a moment, and Ianto watched, pleased and smug, as Jack's shoulders eased. So things were going to be like this for a while then. It wasn't what he considered ideal in many ways but enough consistency to maybe make sense of a thing certainly held some appeal.
"I'll let you alone for a bit with it?" he said, straightening up.
"Please. Thank you."
"Of course, sir," he said, all cool professionalism again, and ducked out of the office silently without even considering a look back.
Ianto had Jack cuffed to his headboard, face up this time and with the lights on so he could see. He'd sucked Jack hard again, and now was idly playing with a straight razor against the skin of his thigh, fascinated by the way the little cuts he made would instantly heal shut and listening to the sound of Jack moan encouragingly at each tiny slice.
Once, he'd been sad that he could never leave a mark on Jack. But now his unchanging flesh seemed like the only steady thing in a world continually adrift, and he felt a great sense of relief to know that it would continue exactly the same long after he was dust.
He didn't understand how Jack's permanence could make anyone uncomfortable or sick to look at; he found himself thinking of an old hymn his mother used to sing on Sundays, change and decay in all around I see; oh thou who changest not, abide with me. Blasphemous maybe to apply it to a man, much less one he was fucking -- he knew his mother would've thought so -- but Ianto didn't believe in God anymore. There wasn't anything left of that faith, except only and always Jack.
As Jack spurted into his mouth Ianto smiled at the bitter taste and the sign that for a few moments at least Jack had been able to let go of things, his mind taken off other, less manageable pain. Anything you need, Jack, he thought silently. Anything.
After they'd caught their breath, he moved up the bed to unlock the cuffs, and then Jack stretched out his arms in a luxurious cat-like motion.
"That was great," he said.
"Yeah," Ianto agreed, shaking his head in wonder. "Perverse, but great."
Jack laughed.
"You feeling better, then?" Ianto asked, unable to keep from bringing the subject up and needing some assurance that he'd handled the matter appropriately.
"Hmm?"
"You just... you seemed... unhappy. All day," Ianto said.
"Yeah," Jack said. "Sorry 'bout that."
"Is it still that Donna thing?"
"Sort of," Jack said.
"But why Jack? I mean, the Doctor saved her, right?"
"Yeah."
"And you would've done the same?"
"Of course."
"So then?"
"And we do it all the time, right? Take people's memories. It's just. Yeah. Hypocritical as hell, but it's the worst thing in the world to do to a person. I should know."
"You remembered," Ianto pointed out.
"I did that time, yeah. From the ground. But they did it to me, once. At the Time Agency. Two years, they took. Two years I'll never get back, never know what happened, what I did, who I was. And two years is an eyeblink now. But who knows who they murdered by doing that? Did I fall in love? Did I make friends? Did I commit crimes unimaginable? I'll never know. They're dead forever. And so's Donna."
"You remade yourself," Ianto said. "Maybe she will too."
"Yeah," Jack said.
"Did you invent Retcon, Jack?" Ianto asked, as the penny suddenly dropped.
Jack barked with laughter. "Perfected, yeah. For my sins."
"But it's the better choice, isn't it?" Ianto asked, his voice wary.
"Than what?"
"Torchwood would execute a lot more people without it, wouldn't we?"
Jack nodded. "Yup."
"I used to file the paperwork on those. At the Tower."
"How many?" Jack asked idly.
Ianto shrugged. "A few a month. Humans anyway. Didn't see the paperwork on anything else really."
"How were they doing it?"
"Bullet to the head usually."
"Almost humane of them."
"Yeah. What's Retcon like?"
"What, did you forget?" Jack asked.
Ianto snorted. “Yeah, guess I did. Too busy making coffee and trying to figure out what had happened, but that was only a couple of days. A couple of years... do you wake up muzzy, like you've been drunk? Do you feel like you'll believe whatever you're told? Does it hurt? Is there a hangover? Are you half hard because you've got just that little bit less control?"
"Yeah. All that. Until you realize you don't know the date. It's like being fucked in your sleep," Jack said with a bitter laugh.
"I've never been fucked in my sleep."
"It's nice, you know, if you want it," Jack said.
"I'll keep that in mind."
"So will I. My partner and I used to fuck around with it. The Retcon, that is. We'd fuck, pass out, wake up and he'd crack one in half and shove it into my mouth in a kiss. I'd pass out out, maybe not all the way, come to, we'd be fucking again. A week would go by with one or the other of us thinking all that we'd done in that entire time was screw."
Ianto tried not to sigh but couldn't help it. Sleazy. Erotic. Insane. And that he'd kill John Hart as soon as look at him was almost besides the point, at least as far as his body was concerned.
"So was that your job at the Time Agency? Perfecting Retcon?" Ianto asked unsure of what else to say and not wanting to betray his anger or jealousy. Jack could make certain choices now, Ianto knew, but he couldn't go back and undo those already done because Ianto was jealous and hated John Hart and believed him to be above all a thief.
Jack shook his head. "Nope."
"So why'd you do it?"
"Because I could."
Continue to next part
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-10 04:38 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-10 04:41 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-10 06:03 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-13 05:42 pm (UTC)I really like that you don't have Martha stay permanently. She has a life, her life and it isn't Torchwood. It's a life she can retire from. You don't retire from Torchwood, you die from it. And as upsetting as that is, you two constantly show how it isn't upsetting at all, how it no longer becomes about how everything ends but rather how it is, and the choices that are made. Jack and Ianto's relationship is deeply existential and that makes ot all the more awesome. :D
(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-14 01:56 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2008-09-14 08:24 pm (UTC)and you, for the win! *laughs*
I really like that you don't have Martha stay permanently.
Well, that was more because we wanted to stay as non-jossed as possible - and we didn't know, at the time of writing, what exactly was in store for us in S3 re: Freema Agyeman. But honestly, I think she works best that way. Especially since I like having Jack be pretty solidly in command of Torchwood, and Rank Hath Its Privileges - and in this universe, rank is pretty well attached to how close you are to the Doctor. Sadly, Martha wins that death match with Jack. Much as I might wish it otherwise. So she's a challenging force that I think works best as a consultant who lacks permanence.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 04:02 am (UTC)btw nicked and skived - perfection! and the cider!(but it would be a supply cupboard, even if it's big enough to walk in to). Can't tell you my confusion at being told to get cider and donuts when I moved here! Cider is the poison of choice for most teens, at least when I was young (or snakebite as it gets you drunk quicker; half cider half lager). No alcopops then.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 04:05 am (UTC)Also, so glad you're enjoying. This story is one of the stranger beasts in the series I think, not for plot (that's later) but for the range of emotions the characters have.
(no subject)
Date: 2009-02-03 04:11 am (UTC)