cyus

Title: Cardiff's
Characters/Pairing: Ianto Jones, Jack Harkness
Type/Setting: Gen
Rating: G
Length: 600
Summary: At the egde of the water and Cardiff behind them
Notes:

horizonssing summer challenge, day two prompt

"I can see you."

He doesn't turn around, and the whisper, like a secret imparted, swims between them. The night's still warm after a summer day, but there are clouds coming in from the sea to bring tomorrow's rain.

"Can you?" It's a non-reply to the waves below. It's mocking of the tenderness and mocking of the hands on his coat, the thumb at the nape of his neck. It's mocking of them, or the glimmer of the unity they may be if they stopped to put it into words. And they don't stop.

"You stand out a like a beacon."

He doesn't need to turn around for the upturn on the lips but he does when the hands leave his body anyway. Ianto stands, hands in the pockets of his slacks. Cardiff behind him makes him its mascot when he shouldn't be. He doesn't have the coat or the immortality for the role.

Jack smiles. Maybe a little. "Must be my charm."

"Might be your arse."

An honest laugh, a moment that flickers between the warm day and the brooding rainclouds. Ianto steps next to Jack and looks down with him, the water below.

"What's down there? Alien fish you have to save?"

Jack shrugs, peers down himself. "Just water, really." He opens his lips to say more, a deep breath under the memories of no-water and nothing, the clenching of his heart at losing and loss and-

"It's not your fault." Ianto shrugs, straightens. "Them, people dying, it's not your fault."

Jack turns back to the city, alien lights blinking in the dark. There is laughter faraway, a group of blokes straggling home from the pub. "My responsibilty, my-"

"Out here doing practical philosophy then?" Ianto raises an eyebrow, kicks at a small stone that pitches into the waves. "It's called brooding these days."

"So?"

"You're not fifteen. No need to slit your wrists." He pauses, mocking concern to mirror Jack's earlier comment. "You weren't, were you?" Ianto looks down as if to check.

Jack rolls his eyes. "They were-"

"You couldn't have saved them. They make their own choices."

Jack shrugs, toes the edge of the water. Petulance hunches his shoulders in non-reply.

Ianto laughs. "You can save your omnipotence for Torchwood employees only, if that makes you happier."

"Would you save me?" He stares at the water, small upturn to the lips as he glances at Ianto from the corner of his eye. "If I jumped in, would you save me?"

"It's freezing."

"It's summer."

Ianto rolls his eyes. "It's freezing."

Jack shrugs out of his coat, pulls off the braces. He looks Ianto over, the hands still in the pockets of the slacks, looking on with a doubting eyebrow and a tap to the tarmac with the sole of his shoe.

"You're not really doing that."

Jack smiles. "Watch me." He dives from the quay into the dirty waves, the scream of a gull overhead. Water splashes.

Ianto shakes his head, watches.

Jack's head bops out through the waves. "Will you save me?"

"Is that a song?"

"Practical philosophy."

Ianto shrugs out of his suit jacket, watching Jack in the waves.

"I can see you," Jack echoes Ianto's earlier words. The rainclouds are coming closer, promising a storm for later that night, maybe all of the next day.

"I know." It's only the movement of the lips as the words get lost in the sound of the water between them. It doesn't mock. It just exists.

Then Ianto jumps, and Cardiff glows with life behind him.