The Truth I Chose for You
Title: The Truth I Chose for You
Author: jbs_teeth
Rating: R
Genre: Romance
Summary: "When he kisses Ianto for the first time, Jack knows he's been lied to."
Notes: Post-Fragments, pre-series. No actual spoilers, per se, though probably not quite as meaningful without knowledge of "Cyberwoman" and "Fragments". Thank you very much to the extremely helpful betas of antelope_writes and kel_reiley (who got a terribly rough draft and made it through anyway).
The Truth I Chose for You
When he kisses Ianto for the first time, Jack knows he's been lied to.
If he's being honest with himself (which he tries more often than not to avoid), Jack would admit to being aware of the deceit for months now; but admitting, even only to himself, that he's been taken by a pretty young thing in pinstripes, lifetimes less experienced, precludes the pleasure of this kiss. And the promise of it - lips, hands, stilted breath -- has been more than enough motivation for Jack to engage in some devoutly committed lying of his own. He has put muscle into the detailed rationalization required to ignore what's perfectly clear.
In the beginning, Jack observes from the mezzanine as Ianto catalogs the rhythm of the Hub, plots out the paths they walk through every day, determines the breaths of privacy in the nooks and crannies of the building. Jack sees Ianto observe carefully, then sees him rewarded for that diligence when the others allow him to fade into polite transparency too quickly. Jack observes Ianto observing each one of them in their turn, gathering and labeling in perfect efficiency, but Jack knows better than to believe the accomplishment of perfect efficiency is motivation for an effort like that.
Jack watches Ianto as Ianto watches him: It makes him wary, and it makes him want.
--
During his first few weeks in the Hub, Jack remains uncharacteristically still when Ianto enters the room. He notes Ianto's quiet anxiety at both his clear gaze and the lack of broad smiles and teasing quips that comprise Jack's daily camouflage with the rest of them. Though it is certainly there, in the beginning the threads of the tension between them are not made up entirely of lust; it is the weight of Jack's mistrust that pulls him closer into Ianto's path and puts them both out of alignment with themselves.
But eventually Jack's own suspicions prove his undoing, and his watchful observance for schemes reveals the way Ianto moves, hands in pocket, deceptively casual but so alert, clear-eyed, vivid, fluid; his easy grace renders Jack's diligence slack. He reminds himself to stay wary, to wonder, to watch. Because watching Ianto has become necessary, especially when he moves. Noticing the smooth white contours of Ianto's face, the jut of his curved cheekbones, is necessary; following the line of Ianto's body, of his right hip and left arm as he walks, is necessary; reviewing the play of private thoughts across his face, a momentary grimace at some internal dialogue, is necessary.
Pushing into Ianto's space has become necessary, too. After four weeks of hovering outside his office door or at conference room windows, Jack removes himself to Ianto's personal bubble, and he tries like hell to make a space for himself in it. He slips into the spaces that Ianto creates as he moves through the office and tries to absorb what knowledge he can from the air that Ianto leaves like jetsam behind him. There is certainly some secret in that space, but the closer Jack gets to the edges of Ianto's measured deception, the less inclined he is to care.
And when he has talked himself into believing Ianto's interests are narrow, Jack's emotional tide turns back on itself. He begins to pursue having: Having Ianto because the curve of his back is perfect and beckoning, because the air around him smells heady and sweet and sometimes bewilderingly metallic. Having Ianto because the way he tenses if Tosh accidentally touches him betrays the flexing of solid muscle beneath his clothes; and because the way he sits, literally, on the edge of his chair, straight-spined and stiff when he knows he's being observed, irritates and intrigues Jack.
As certain as Jack is that Ianto is hiding something desperate away from them, he tells himself it is small, tells himself there is no malice in Ianto, no intention for harm. Jack knows he is somehow being lied to or misled, and more than Jack's willingness to dismiss those secrets as immaterial, the deception somehow seduces him.
So Jack seduces back, and Ianto stands not a chance.
Though his armory is - or, rather, was at one time - large, Jack's method of seduction with Ianto is simple and pointedly effective. He simply touches, which pleases him more than he'd admit. Jack's hand on Ianto's shoulder radiates innocence and comfort, and though Ianto flinches beneath it at first, the heaviness and heat of Jack's palm on the ball of his shoulder soothes Ianto easily. Jack makes certain to touch Tosh and Owen in this way in front of Ianto to assure him of its benign nature -- and if this point of calculation is rather cold, Jack does not regret it.
The innocent hand on Ianto's shoulder learns to glide nominally upward in the first week, when Ianto has stopped jumping at the touch of Jack's fingers there. His palms slide in soothing and subtle paths until, after days of practice, Jack's fingertips find themselves on the cusp of Ianto's collar, a fraction from the skin on his nape. The third or fourth time it happens, Ianto turns slightly into Jack's body, the curve of his posture as soft as it has ever been even though his attention remains fixed on the papers in his hand. Though he wants touch the back of Ianto's neck -- just lightly, just a whisper of fingers to barely feel the skin there -- Jack does not. Not yet.
--
After a few weeks, when his hands have learned the shape and pliancy of Ianto's shoulders beneath his suit jacket, Jack becomes inordinately interested in Ianto's knee. The knee is trickier, certainly, than his shoulder, and the thought of it becomes incredibly taboo between the sheer volume of clothes Ianto insists on wearing and the hum of office equipment. A hand on a knee can't be put off as a casual gesture, construed as simple support from an engaged employer, reworked into the comforting delusion of encouragement. No, Ianto's knee should not be fair game to the soothing feints and harsh reality of Torchwood's business, but Jack needs it to be.
So he distracts with the wide smiles and casual flirtation he bestows on everyone in his sphere. Jack watches as his teasing brings on the ebb and flow of Ianto's previous concern. Ianto is relieved not to be singled out by silence, as he was before, and grins more with relief than flattery the first time Jack announces to Suzie that no 25 year old should be able to pull off a suit with as much appeal as young Mr. Jones does.
But Jack watches as the newfound ease quickly burns itself through, and well it should: Ianto Jones is no idiot, and he picks up the subtext of Jack's words perhaps a little too efficiently. When Jack tells Tosh she is too distracting to walk into the office in her new dress, he's really telling Tosh he recognizes there is more to her than technical acumen; she preens in pleasure, and kelly green becomes her even more than it did when she woke up that morning. But when Jack tells Suzie that Ianto wears gaberdine better than anyone he'd seen in a dozen years, Jack is telling Ianto, I want you. When Jack compliments his coffee, Jack says, I want you. When Jack asks for paper clips or copies or Pad Thai, he is asking for Ianto, and his new awkwardness tells Jack Ianto hears him clearly.
Fortunately for Jack, of course, this will do as well as anything else in way of distraction, and Ianto troubles himself so much with feigning confidence and witty replies that Jack's touch makes its way onto Ianto's knee with no hinderance at all. During an uneventful afternoon spent distracting his staff with ludicrous and half-true stories, Jack learns the ridges of Ianto's bones along the joint, where the geometry of the muscle and sinew beneath Ianto's skin are every bit as erotic as he's fantasized. Sitting next to Ianto on the orange faded couch, Jack risks the application of more pressure on his thigh and notes the way Ianto holds himself still for the touch.
After this, Jack finds himself sitting next to Ianto more often than not, and Jack appreciates, with pathetic gratitude, the sublime convenience that Ianto provides by actually sitting now during debriefings and lunch. The first time Ianto offers to drive the team on a mission, Jack finds himself in the heady position of occupying the same bench seat as Mr. Jones for 38 intoxicating kilometers; he gives himself the pleasure of resting his right hand a few centimeters from the heat of Ianto's left leg for the whole of the ride, and on the way home Ianto offers to drive them whenever he can be of service.
--
It's Ianto's ankle that finally does them both in, and it occurs to Jack that the stridently covered Victorians may actually have been on to something with their prohibition and restraint. After his hands makes themselves at home on Ianto's knee, Jack finds his fantasies turning to the color of the skin on Ianto's ankle, the color and texture of the hair he might find there, the jut of the small bones and tender hollows. He watches for the rise of a hem as Ianto takes to a stair, looks for even a sock-clad view of it when he sits or squats low. Sometimes Jack catches a glimpse in these moments, and the promise there drives images of teeth and tongue and fingertips and ankles through his head. Ianto's black lace-up shoes and gold-toe socks do nothing but frustrate and tease, and Jack momentarily thinks unsophisticated thoughts of flooding the floor so they might be removed.
Jack starts to see more and more of him as Ianto changes his regular paths through the Hub, and Jack indulges himself in the hopeful delusion that Ianto is putting himself into Jack's orbit with deliberate intent.
--
When they begin a nightly routine of Ianto bringing a final cup of coffee or some kind of dinner, Jack recognizes Ianto working himself up to a definitive reply. In anticipation, Jack finds his voice curiously different this time of night, his “please”s and “thank you”s heavy with the undertone of "trust me" -- though not even Jack can talk himself into the idea that trust is anything but absent between them.
And yet, finally, one day Ianto does.
Jack sprawls in his chair, where he has been facing the wall, keeping his eyes off Ianto and his deliberately covered ankles because, really, the tautness of this mood is absurd. When he hears Ianto walking to the desk, presumably with coffee in hand, Jack once again considers trading in sophistication for results by spilling coffee on Ianto's shoes.
Jack ponders the rewards of further delaying gratification and tries to determine whether Ianto would remove his wet footwear here in his office anyway (probably not). He does not really see his own legs and boots, though they lie splayed in his line of vision; so, it takes a moment to realize the shoes in question have stopped next to his own feet. Without calculation, Jack lets his left foot lift and bump onto Ianto's inner ankle, just above the top of the leather. The joint hooks itself around the back of Ianto's ankle, still gently, and rests there for a full 28 seconds in the quiet calm of the evening Hub.
In this half minute, Jack continues looking through the sight of their feet entwined and properly covered, using the time to decide delayed gratification was never really his style to begin with.
“Yes.”
Ianto says “yes,” and Jack lifts himself directly out of his chair, straight up so his body is millimeters from Ianto's body, his face a fraction from Ianto's face; Ianto holds himself still through this breach of his personal space. Jack's hands raise up as if to settle themselves in Ianto's hair but instead hover awkwardly in midair.
“Yes to what?” Jack's voice is so low and heavy he feels his own words through the vibration of his chest rather than with his ears. Ianto leans slightly closer to Jack when he speaks, and Jack loses their eye contact as Ianto's gaze slips down to watch his lips.
“Yes, to this.”
For just one more minute, Jack holds his body slightly back from Ianto, though his fingers do settle down to cradle the back of his head. One hand drifts further still to the short, soft hairs on the base of his neck, edging just beneath Ianto's collar before changing course to trace the back of two fingers from behind his ear to the joint of the collarbone at the base of his throat. At the touch of Jack's fingertip to the hollow beneath his earlobe, Ianto draws a harsh and deep breath through his nose, and Jack makes a note to return for awhile later, with his tongue.
“I should have tried for your back.” Though his lids have drifted all but closed, heavy lashes a dark smudge on the top of his cheekbones, Ianto has kept himself still so far, which Jack interprets as the savor of being touched rather than a lack of enthusiasm or effort. (The odd tenderness Jack feels at the realization that Ianto has not been touched in a very long time surprises him, though the attachment engendered by proximity could be why office romance is so foreign and tantalizing to him to begin with.)
A fraction still closer, and Jack brings his mouth, without pressure, to rest at the corner of Ianto's, not yet quite a kiss. “I wanted to touch the small of your back through your suit.” The texture of his skin there, the dry smooth curve of Ianto's lip and sharp roughness of the hair beneath his pores feels perfect beneath Jack's mouth, and he can't resist just a single taste, a quick dart of tongue tip there. “I wanted to put my hand on your body and leave it there for a moment without knowing what it looked like beneath.”
“You can't have that now,” seems like it should be cruel, but Ianto's hands have found their way onto the small of Jack's back now, and the anchoring removes all the space between them.
Ianto kisses him, and that he does it himself pleases Jack as much as the slide of Ianto's lips or the small sounds that only take a few seconds to find their way from the back of Ianto's throat. Ianto continues for long moments, full lips and clenching hands, as Jack welcomes the sideways coast of his thoughts as he waits for more.
He interprets the friction of Ianto's hands as they trace his braces as permission to move as well. Jack places his palms on Ianto's chest and flexes his fingers, then moves them outward to slide down Ianto's flanks, over his hips; Jack stops here, slightly clenching his hands to really feel the muscles there at the seam of his legs and torso. The fingers following the elastic to the top of Jack's shoulders take the opportunity to hook around each loop, push up beneath the fabric and draw a path back down each of his arms as they remove the braces.
Ianto pulls himself back marginally, shrugging out of his suit coat, trying to undo the buttons of his shirt sleeves without losing Jack's lips. Not quite successful, he takes a half step back, undoes the cuffs, and returns to drive the rest of the blood in Jack's brain to more useful areas of his body. The tongue in his mouth is urgent and curious, wanting, hot.
Jack knows he's being lied to, misled in some terrible way, though he can't quite bring himself to care about it in this moment. Because this part is no lie, and he knows for sure when pulls himself back from Ianto to ask, “Do you want me?”
The hands in Jack's hair pull him back in, Ianto's kiss reestablishing its earlier rhythm, wetly textured, sliding, languorous. “Yes.” The reluctance to release Jack's mouth, the glide of his tongue, his taste, expresses itself in the movement of Ianto's own tongue along the line of Jack's jaw, the muscles of his neck.
It's the not whole truth, but it's the truth Jack chooses for himself today. And he supposes that's as good a place to start as any.
The End
Author's Note: If you enjoyed this, you might also really like " Geode 1,2,3" by cirrocumulus (another kindler, gentler depiction of the start of their relationship). For the opposite perspective, check out "Moving In" by ukcalico, which is incredibly hot (explicit) and emotionally complex and well-written.
Fic Index
Author: jbs_teeth
Rating: R
Genre: Romance
Summary: "When he kisses Ianto for the first time, Jack knows he's been lied to."
Notes: Post-Fragments, pre-series. No actual spoilers, per se, though probably not quite as meaningful without knowledge of "Cyberwoman" and "Fragments". Thank you very much to the extremely helpful betas of antelope_writes and kel_reiley (who got a terribly rough draft and made it through anyway).
The Truth I Chose for You
When he kisses Ianto for the first time, Jack knows he's been lied to.
If he's being honest with himself (which he tries more often than not to avoid), Jack would admit to being aware of the deceit for months now; but admitting, even only to himself, that he's been taken by a pretty young thing in pinstripes, lifetimes less experienced, precludes the pleasure of this kiss. And the promise of it - lips, hands, stilted breath -- has been more than enough motivation for Jack to engage in some devoutly committed lying of his own. He has put muscle into the detailed rationalization required to ignore what's perfectly clear.
In the beginning, Jack observes from the mezzanine as Ianto catalogs the rhythm of the Hub, plots out the paths they walk through every day, determines the breaths of privacy in the nooks and crannies of the building. Jack sees Ianto observe carefully, then sees him rewarded for that diligence when the others allow him to fade into polite transparency too quickly. Jack observes Ianto observing each one of them in their turn, gathering and labeling in perfect efficiency, but Jack knows better than to believe the accomplishment of perfect efficiency is motivation for an effort like that.
Jack watches Ianto as Ianto watches him: It makes him wary, and it makes him want.
--
During his first few weeks in the Hub, Jack remains uncharacteristically still when Ianto enters the room. He notes Ianto's quiet anxiety at both his clear gaze and the lack of broad smiles and teasing quips that comprise Jack's daily camouflage with the rest of them. Though it is certainly there, in the beginning the threads of the tension between them are not made up entirely of lust; it is the weight of Jack's mistrust that pulls him closer into Ianto's path and puts them both out of alignment with themselves.
But eventually Jack's own suspicions prove his undoing, and his watchful observance for schemes reveals the way Ianto moves, hands in pocket, deceptively casual but so alert, clear-eyed, vivid, fluid; his easy grace renders Jack's diligence slack. He reminds himself to stay wary, to wonder, to watch. Because watching Ianto has become necessary, especially when he moves. Noticing the smooth white contours of Ianto's face, the jut of his curved cheekbones, is necessary; following the line of Ianto's body, of his right hip and left arm as he walks, is necessary; reviewing the play of private thoughts across his face, a momentary grimace at some internal dialogue, is necessary.
Pushing into Ianto's space has become necessary, too. After four weeks of hovering outside his office door or at conference room windows, Jack removes himself to Ianto's personal bubble, and he tries like hell to make a space for himself in it. He slips into the spaces that Ianto creates as he moves through the office and tries to absorb what knowledge he can from the air that Ianto leaves like jetsam behind him. There is certainly some secret in that space, but the closer Jack gets to the edges of Ianto's measured deception, the less inclined he is to care.
And when he has talked himself into believing Ianto's interests are narrow, Jack's emotional tide turns back on itself. He begins to pursue having: Having Ianto because the curve of his back is perfect and beckoning, because the air around him smells heady and sweet and sometimes bewilderingly metallic. Having Ianto because the way he tenses if Tosh accidentally touches him betrays the flexing of solid muscle beneath his clothes; and because the way he sits, literally, on the edge of his chair, straight-spined and stiff when he knows he's being observed, irritates and intrigues Jack.
As certain as Jack is that Ianto is hiding something desperate away from them, he tells himself it is small, tells himself there is no malice in Ianto, no intention for harm. Jack knows he is somehow being lied to or misled, and more than Jack's willingness to dismiss those secrets as immaterial, the deception somehow seduces him.
So Jack seduces back, and Ianto stands not a chance.
Though his armory is - or, rather, was at one time - large, Jack's method of seduction with Ianto is simple and pointedly effective. He simply touches, which pleases him more than he'd admit. Jack's hand on Ianto's shoulder radiates innocence and comfort, and though Ianto flinches beneath it at first, the heaviness and heat of Jack's palm on the ball of his shoulder soothes Ianto easily. Jack makes certain to touch Tosh and Owen in this way in front of Ianto to assure him of its benign nature -- and if this point of calculation is rather cold, Jack does not regret it.
The innocent hand on Ianto's shoulder learns to glide nominally upward in the first week, when Ianto has stopped jumping at the touch of Jack's fingers there. His palms slide in soothing and subtle paths until, after days of practice, Jack's fingertips find themselves on the cusp of Ianto's collar, a fraction from the skin on his nape. The third or fourth time it happens, Ianto turns slightly into Jack's body, the curve of his posture as soft as it has ever been even though his attention remains fixed on the papers in his hand. Though he wants touch the back of Ianto's neck -- just lightly, just a whisper of fingers to barely feel the skin there -- Jack does not. Not yet.
--
After a few weeks, when his hands have learned the shape and pliancy of Ianto's shoulders beneath his suit jacket, Jack becomes inordinately interested in Ianto's knee. The knee is trickier, certainly, than his shoulder, and the thought of it becomes incredibly taboo between the sheer volume of clothes Ianto insists on wearing and the hum of office equipment. A hand on a knee can't be put off as a casual gesture, construed as simple support from an engaged employer, reworked into the comforting delusion of encouragement. No, Ianto's knee should not be fair game to the soothing feints and harsh reality of Torchwood's business, but Jack needs it to be.
So he distracts with the wide smiles and casual flirtation he bestows on everyone in his sphere. Jack watches as his teasing brings on the ebb and flow of Ianto's previous concern. Ianto is relieved not to be singled out by silence, as he was before, and grins more with relief than flattery the first time Jack announces to Suzie that no 25 year old should be able to pull off a suit with as much appeal as young Mr. Jones does.
But Jack watches as the newfound ease quickly burns itself through, and well it should: Ianto Jones is no idiot, and he picks up the subtext of Jack's words perhaps a little too efficiently. When Jack tells Tosh she is too distracting to walk into the office in her new dress, he's really telling Tosh he recognizes there is more to her than technical acumen; she preens in pleasure, and kelly green becomes her even more than it did when she woke up that morning. But when Jack tells Suzie that Ianto wears gaberdine better than anyone he'd seen in a dozen years, Jack is telling Ianto, I want you. When Jack compliments his coffee, Jack says, I want you. When Jack asks for paper clips or copies or Pad Thai, he is asking for Ianto, and his new awkwardness tells Jack Ianto hears him clearly.
Fortunately for Jack, of course, this will do as well as anything else in way of distraction, and Ianto troubles himself so much with feigning confidence and witty replies that Jack's touch makes its way onto Ianto's knee with no hinderance at all. During an uneventful afternoon spent distracting his staff with ludicrous and half-true stories, Jack learns the ridges of Ianto's bones along the joint, where the geometry of the muscle and sinew beneath Ianto's skin are every bit as erotic as he's fantasized. Sitting next to Ianto on the orange faded couch, Jack risks the application of more pressure on his thigh and notes the way Ianto holds himself still for the touch.
After this, Jack finds himself sitting next to Ianto more often than not, and Jack appreciates, with pathetic gratitude, the sublime convenience that Ianto provides by actually sitting now during debriefings and lunch. The first time Ianto offers to drive the team on a mission, Jack finds himself in the heady position of occupying the same bench seat as Mr. Jones for 38 intoxicating kilometers; he gives himself the pleasure of resting his right hand a few centimeters from the heat of Ianto's left leg for the whole of the ride, and on the way home Ianto offers to drive them whenever he can be of service.
--
It's Ianto's ankle that finally does them both in, and it occurs to Jack that the stridently covered Victorians may actually have been on to something with their prohibition and restraint. After his hands makes themselves at home on Ianto's knee, Jack finds his fantasies turning to the color of the skin on Ianto's ankle, the color and texture of the hair he might find there, the jut of the small bones and tender hollows. He watches for the rise of a hem as Ianto takes to a stair, looks for even a sock-clad view of it when he sits or squats low. Sometimes Jack catches a glimpse in these moments, and the promise there drives images of teeth and tongue and fingertips and ankles through his head. Ianto's black lace-up shoes and gold-toe socks do nothing but frustrate and tease, and Jack momentarily thinks unsophisticated thoughts of flooding the floor so they might be removed.
Jack starts to see more and more of him as Ianto changes his regular paths through the Hub, and Jack indulges himself in the hopeful delusion that Ianto is putting himself into Jack's orbit with deliberate intent.
--
When they begin a nightly routine of Ianto bringing a final cup of coffee or some kind of dinner, Jack recognizes Ianto working himself up to a definitive reply. In anticipation, Jack finds his voice curiously different this time of night, his “please”s and “thank you”s heavy with the undertone of "trust me" -- though not even Jack can talk himself into the idea that trust is anything but absent between them.
And yet, finally, one day Ianto does.
Jack sprawls in his chair, where he has been facing the wall, keeping his eyes off Ianto and his deliberately covered ankles because, really, the tautness of this mood is absurd. When he hears Ianto walking to the desk, presumably with coffee in hand, Jack once again considers trading in sophistication for results by spilling coffee on Ianto's shoes.
Jack ponders the rewards of further delaying gratification and tries to determine whether Ianto would remove his wet footwear here in his office anyway (probably not). He does not really see his own legs and boots, though they lie splayed in his line of vision; so, it takes a moment to realize the shoes in question have stopped next to his own feet. Without calculation, Jack lets his left foot lift and bump onto Ianto's inner ankle, just above the top of the leather. The joint hooks itself around the back of Ianto's ankle, still gently, and rests there for a full 28 seconds in the quiet calm of the evening Hub.
In this half minute, Jack continues looking through the sight of their feet entwined and properly covered, using the time to decide delayed gratification was never really his style to begin with.
“Yes.”
Ianto says “yes,” and Jack lifts himself directly out of his chair, straight up so his body is millimeters from Ianto's body, his face a fraction from Ianto's face; Ianto holds himself still through this breach of his personal space. Jack's hands raise up as if to settle themselves in Ianto's hair but instead hover awkwardly in midair.
“Yes to what?” Jack's voice is so low and heavy he feels his own words through the vibration of his chest rather than with his ears. Ianto leans slightly closer to Jack when he speaks, and Jack loses their eye contact as Ianto's gaze slips down to watch his lips.
“Yes, to this.”
For just one more minute, Jack holds his body slightly back from Ianto, though his fingers do settle down to cradle the back of his head. One hand drifts further still to the short, soft hairs on the base of his neck, edging just beneath Ianto's collar before changing course to trace the back of two fingers from behind his ear to the joint of the collarbone at the base of his throat. At the touch of Jack's fingertip to the hollow beneath his earlobe, Ianto draws a harsh and deep breath through his nose, and Jack makes a note to return for awhile later, with his tongue.
“I should have tried for your back.” Though his lids have drifted all but closed, heavy lashes a dark smudge on the top of his cheekbones, Ianto has kept himself still so far, which Jack interprets as the savor of being touched rather than a lack of enthusiasm or effort. (The odd tenderness Jack feels at the realization that Ianto has not been touched in a very long time surprises him, though the attachment engendered by proximity could be why office romance is so foreign and tantalizing to him to begin with.)
A fraction still closer, and Jack brings his mouth, without pressure, to rest at the corner of Ianto's, not yet quite a kiss. “I wanted to touch the small of your back through your suit.” The texture of his skin there, the dry smooth curve of Ianto's lip and sharp roughness of the hair beneath his pores feels perfect beneath Jack's mouth, and he can't resist just a single taste, a quick dart of tongue tip there. “I wanted to put my hand on your body and leave it there for a moment without knowing what it looked like beneath.”
“You can't have that now,” seems like it should be cruel, but Ianto's hands have found their way onto the small of Jack's back now, and the anchoring removes all the space between them.
Ianto kisses him, and that he does it himself pleases Jack as much as the slide of Ianto's lips or the small sounds that only take a few seconds to find their way from the back of Ianto's throat. Ianto continues for long moments, full lips and clenching hands, as Jack welcomes the sideways coast of his thoughts as he waits for more.
He interprets the friction of Ianto's hands as they trace his braces as permission to move as well. Jack places his palms on Ianto's chest and flexes his fingers, then moves them outward to slide down Ianto's flanks, over his hips; Jack stops here, slightly clenching his hands to really feel the muscles there at the seam of his legs and torso. The fingers following the elastic to the top of Jack's shoulders take the opportunity to hook around each loop, push up beneath the fabric and draw a path back down each of his arms as they remove the braces.
Ianto pulls himself back marginally, shrugging out of his suit coat, trying to undo the buttons of his shirt sleeves without losing Jack's lips. Not quite successful, he takes a half step back, undoes the cuffs, and returns to drive the rest of the blood in Jack's brain to more useful areas of his body. The tongue in his mouth is urgent and curious, wanting, hot.
Jack knows he's being lied to, misled in some terrible way, though he can't quite bring himself to care about it in this moment. Because this part is no lie, and he knows for sure when pulls himself back from Ianto to ask, “Do you want me?”
The hands in Jack's hair pull him back in, Ianto's kiss reestablishing its earlier rhythm, wetly textured, sliding, languorous. “Yes.” The reluctance to release Jack's mouth, the glide of his tongue, his taste, expresses itself in the movement of Ianto's own tongue along the line of Jack's jaw, the muscles of his neck.
It's the not whole truth, but it's the truth Jack chooses for himself today. And he supposes that's as good a place to start as any.
The End
Author's Note: If you enjoyed this, you might also really like " Geode 1,2,3" by cirrocumulus (another kindler, gentler depiction of the start of their relationship). For the opposite perspective, check out "Moving In" by ukcalico, which is incredibly hot (explicit) and emotionally complex and well-written.
Fic Index