cyus: (Torchwood)
[personal profile] cyus
Title: 21st (the language)
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Length: 750 words
Summary: Ianto is that kind of romantic.

It's another painted line, and Ianto looks up from the paperwork at shadows playing in Jack's office. Jack is fighting demons, and he's out here just looking on. He slides the sheet of paper into the right folder and snaps it shut, keeps his eyes on it when Jack strides from his office and past him, keeps his mouth shut when there is a bit of a command in there somewhere to heel like a good boy, playing good doggie for another wrecking adventure and another, Something beautiful, Ianto, I can show you something beautiful..

Like the fuck in the arse, like the alien remains that bloom into flowers.

Gwen looks between them, bunny-caught-headlights-smash kind of look, Ianto shrugs it off and slides another sheet into another folder.

"I don't have time for domestics," Jack says, playing petty after ten minutes of exposition about a threat-but-not-that-dangerous.

Ianto looks up then and says, "Neither do I." And it's a bit stroppy, and a bit defiant, and a bit childish, sure, but Jack flouncing off hits the metre higher on that there, so it doesn't bother him much. Jack leaves a rainbow of blackened sparkle in his wake. Time flies, literally.

Cut, later the same night, Gwen's gone home after a hug, a whispered reassurance about a buried case that's ended up not quite that buried in terms of skeletons under ground, and Ianto's kept the lights on high in the Hub, less environmental protection today and more attempt not to pull the emo kid shit and make himself the twenty-six he actually is.

Jack strides in, a bit beaten up, very muddy, less pissed-off, not any less stand-off-ish. High energy, always, except when he's drinking to his secrets in his own private lairs.

"You want a kid," Jack says, hip cocked, leaned against Ianto's desk.

"No," Ianto replies, smiles tightly and sorts the folders by colour, but hey, it makes him look busy.

Jack looks through it, that quirk of the eyebrow and that smirk that turns sneer, and Ianto knows that expression from before - back after Lisa and before the Welsh countryside tried to eat him - as he pushes off the desk.

Ianto shrugs, looks up, shrugs again and gives up on an answer. A suck my cock would be more of an invitation than he wants to give. He feels about fifteen but flips Jack off anyway.

"I don't do promises."

"I didn't ask, did I?" Because fuck my corpse when I'm dead is more commitment than anyone could expect, and mostly Ianto is dying for a fag and a night not sorting things by color in lieu of leaving flowers and framed little hearts on desks.

"You love me," Jack says, drunken smile with that bit of cruel shit because there's never a question about that.

"Yes." And Ianto shoves the blue folder at Jack with print outs of something, and mostly hidden little teenage messages of lovememarrymehavemybabies and initials in heart font.

Jack takes it and shrugs and goes back to his office, and he won't get the cryptic messages because Jack doesn't.

Cut, even later, it's dark and it's dark because Ianto has turned off the lights and hid under some stairs and had a good manly cry with snot on his face.

"I'd have your kid," Jack calls out in the middle of the Hub, and it carries down and down and lower.

That's not what it says in the code in the folder. It says more about hearts and flowers, and shit about death and fucked corpses. Ianto is that kind of romantic. But, as usual, Jack doesn't speak his language.

Not English and not 21st century, or 18th, or whatever. Jack speaks expectations-of and textbook-entries and I-have-read-once and Ianto defies that a little.

He'd like a flower, sometime.

He'd settle for a paperheart.

When Ianto doesn't reply, Jack's steps make off to nowhere, and Ianto crawls out of his hiding place.

Mostly he feels lonely.

Cut, Ianto has a smoke on the plass and thinks about running away, just step by step, for something with hearts and flowers.

Aliens turning into flowers just aren't the same in 21st (the language).

Cut, Ianto wanks to thoughts of Gwen because she'd give him flowers, and then he falls asleep to thoughts of Jack trying to decode the language.

I'm really a teenage girl, sorry, is what it says, and Twilight.

It's a joke.

But he'd really like the flowers.

Date: 2009-11-10 10:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] topgeargirl2.livejournal.com
So i just had to comment again. though I'll cheat a little and cut and paste what I said.

This was very romantic in the bittersweet sort of sense.

It doesn't have that feeling of wanting to throw up in a bucket.


Date: 2009-11-10 01:18 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hazelayes.livejournal.com
Interesting, uncomfortable and different :) I like! You got any more hidden away?

Date: 2009-11-10 01:22 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] starshine24mc.livejournal.com
You really are the master of Ianto's emotions, and I always enjoy your darker Jack--not evil, just....not 21st *L* Thanks again for a really terrific read!

But Twilight? Really? ;)

Date: 2009-11-10 03:22 pm (UTC)
ext_47484: (eek)
From: [identity profile] marita-c.livejournal.com
YOU ARE AWESOME.

OMG.

My inner emo passive-aggressive 15 YO reared up her ugly head while I was reading this.

Oh, Ianto, I empathize completely. Also, grow up already and stop being such a pussy.

And Jack!!! I could so use this Jack as a model to explain my recent hatred of men, yet at the same time I loved him in this even more than usual.

I don't remember the last time anyone pressed so many of my buttons with 750 words (!!!). Have I mentioned you're awesome?

Date: 2009-11-10 03:30 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] nancybrown.livejournal.com
Oh! This was sweet and painful. Great job!

Date: 2009-11-10 10:05 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stuffphile.livejournal.com
Puzzling, and very interesting. I feel like I missed something, like the first half of the conversation.

Date: 2009-11-11 03:44 am (UTC)
From: [personal profile] jo02
I'm very bemused, but I think I liked it - enough to send flowers :)

Date: 2009-11-11 05:58 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] duck-or-rabbit.livejournal.com
Ah, I really love this. As it reads to me, there is just so much misunderstanding here between Jack and Ianto, and as much as it hurts me to say it, that's keeping in character with what we saw on the show.

Really, writing something raw like this takes talent. Loved it.
Edited Date: 2009-11-11 08:24 pm (UTC)

Date: 2009-11-11 09:25 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] owensheart.livejournal.com
Ths was very different romantic, liked it very much.

Date: 2009-11-11 07:26 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] cthonus.livejournal.com
Very nice but it sounds a hell of a lot like my conversations with my partner to make me 100% comfortable with it :p

Date: 2009-11-11 08:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] hab318princess.livejournal.com
that was wonderful, great the way you get them to miscommunicate... it feels so them

Date: 2009-11-12 08:59 am (UTC)
ext_76727: (wibble)
From: [identity profile] remuslives23.livejournal.com
It's very raw and it's a bit excrutiating how they keep hurting each other because they can't communicate. I wanted to slap both of them for very different reasons. It's extraordinarily well written - great work.:)

Date: 2009-11-14 11:26 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] monikkk.livejournal.com
wow, that was ..original :) i liked it very much:)

Date: 2010-01-25 01:41 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] penny-sieve.livejournal.com
Wow! I've been lurking in your journal reading your fics for the better part of today and I absolutely love your style and the way you portray Ianto! And I'm not into RPF in the least bit but read a couple of your JB/SG ones and was completely blown away by that too.

Hope to see some more from the Sharing Spaces universe.

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