Torchwood Fic (I didn't really sleep last night, so...sorry)
Title: Fire
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Ianto/Jack
Warnings/Spoilers: Spoilers for all of Children of Earth, warnings for canon compliant character death.
Notes: Insomnia happened. That is all. I still can't seem to write Ianto in anything but second person.
When you were a child, you held a fascination for fire. You loved candles (could stare, mesmerized, for an hour, sliding your fingers in and out of the flame, holding still only enough for the heat to alert you to its presence before sliding away).
“Our little pyromaniac,” your dad called you, laughing.
Neither of you mentioned how carefully he watched you, how much apprehension his eyes showed whenever he looked at a fire and saw you watching it. It was easier to ignore it, easier to pretend it was normal.
You think, sometimes, that those moments are a brilliant analogy for your life.
When you are older, your flat is filled with candles (Lisa had hated it, but it was only after her death
that you considered removing them). Like a careful collection of stamps, you have none that are the same. They sit on tables, on window ledges, on book shelves. You have a box of matches, always hidden from yourself, in the bottom drawer of your desk, to be opened only on special occasions.
The first time Jack comes to your flat (making an obvious effort to not be tentative), you cringe in embarrassment when his attention is caught by the candles on every available surface. He surveys the room slowly, focusing on each candle before turning back to you and raising an eyebrow.
“Where are your matches?”
That night, the light of your candles flickers against Jack's pale body as you move in him. Your attention is caught, in turns, by Jack as he writhes and moans beneath you, and by the play of shadows across his torso. He moans your name when he orgasms, and later you will think about that, dissect it until you have reached every possible conclusion and discarded them as inconclusive, but for now you watch the shadows darken his face as the glow illuminates his chest, and you stay completely silent.
“So...” Jack muses an indeterminate amount of time later, his foot sliding up and down your leg in a way that should be annoying but isn't because it's Jack and Jack could get away with murder and you'd still have trouble staying annoyed ,or mad, at him for long. Has, in fact, gotten away with murder (and you forgave him in an exchange of nods).
“Mm?” you ask, from where you have slumped against his chest (you're sure he can't be comfortable, but you don't have the energy to move unless he asks you to).
“Fire kink,” Jack states, managing to sound both certain and musing at the same time.
You groan. “Not a kink,” you mutter. “I just like candles. We can't all have weird fetishes.”
“Oh but we can,” he says, smiling against your hair.
Every time Jack dies, you buy another candle. It's not really something you think about, just something you do automatically. Every time Jack dies, you buy a candle, and go to your flat, and you light it and watch the wax start to melt, dripping down the sides until only a puddle is left. Occasionally, during your watch, you will hover one finger over the flame, lowering slowly until the heat has formed a blister of your skin (a reminder of your mortality and proof of your continued existence) and you move it away, continuing your study of the colours within the flame.
Jack always notices the blisters, and frowns at you and purses his lips, about to remonstrate you, and he always opens his mouth before deflating and running a finger of his own against the blisters, a silent apology and complaint of confusion. And you never explain.
Because he doesn't need you to, not really. The answer's always there, whether it's hidden behind “sirs” or cups of coffee or within the flames of a candle. It is always there.
Fin
Sequel Drabble:
Title: Flames
Notes: It's only separate from 'Fire' because I changed POVS and to third person narrative. Set after 'Day Four.'
After the 456s are gone, Jack breaks into Ianto's flat and and places bagfuls of candles on the kitchen counter. He goes through the rooms and places them carefully, and then he returns to the kitchen and takes the two largest candles (one in the shape of the Welsh dragon, the other an intricately designed column of wax vines and leaves) and sets them on the window ledge. He takes the matches out of the desk drawer, and strikes one alight, holding it aloft and staring into it before it burns his fingers and he has to light another. He starts in the bedroom, lighting every candle, and makes his way slowly through the flat until he reaches the kitchen once again. There, he lights first the column and then the dragon, their wicks catching fire with faint sputtering sounds.
“I love you,” he hears Ianto say, and as he stares into the flame atop the dragon and hundreds of lights flicker behind him, Jack thinks “Oh.”
He gets it, now, what's always been there.