Letters 1/1
#010 in my jack/Ianto prompt table "Letters"
Synopsis - Jack recieves a letter that brings bad news.
Rating - It's kinda dark. talk of death and all that. emo! jack and a little emo!ianto too.
Spoilers: mentions of all seasons.
Pairing - Jack/Ianto
Ianto Jones made his way through the large cog door; had he been working he would have been late, but seen as he and Gwen had both been gifted with a rare Saturday off, ten o'clock seemed to be an appropriate hour for a visit. He balanced the cardboard tray in his left hand, trying not to spill the coffee he was holding, and in his mouth, clutched between his teeth, he held a brown paper bag containing two jam doughnuts. He made his way over to Jack's office, putting the coffee down on Gwen's workstation whilst he shuffled out of his coat.
“Ja--” Ianto took the bag out of his mouth. “Jack!"
“Ianto?” The Captain's voice came faintly from out of his office and then he appeared in the doorway. “I thought I gave you the day off.”
“I know, but I was passing and thought I would pop in to see if you needed me for anything.” He picked up the drinks. “I brought coffee and doughnuts.”
“You do know that when I give you a day off you can actually take it without it being a hint to come in, right?”
“I know.” Ianto looked at Jack; he didn't seem quite right. For a man who didn't require sleep he looked awfully tired, and his smiling eyes had faded somehow. “You just sounded a bit odd on the phone this morning.”
“Odd?”
He emptied his hands and walked towards the older man with a faint smile that barely reached his eyes. “Sad,” he said, “you sounded a little sad.”
Jack's tone softened and for the first time since the Welshman walked in, he smiled. “You read me like a book.”
“You're more like a sonnet, I can read you but I don't always understand you, so I just pretend I do instead.”
“Nobody ever understands me Ianto,” Jack sighed, “but at least you try.”
Ianto walked towards him closing the gap between them that felt so large, and rested his hand on his cheek. “Tell me, Jack. Make me understand you.”
“I don't even know how to explain this to you without making you think too much.” Jack rested his face on the Welshman's hand wearily, and opened his eyes just a little. The redness in his eyes and the unshed tears told Ianto a story he didn't need to know. Quickly, he turned away and walked into his office and sat down at his desk. “You should go.” His tone turned a little harder, verging on distant, and he squared his Jaw. “You don't need to see this.”
“You look at me like you have a new break in your heart and you expect me to leave?”
“I want you to leave.”
Ianto walked into the room and leant on the desk, resting his heels of his hands on the edges as he loomed over Jack. “You make me sick sometimes, you really do. You never let anyone care about you, or love you, unless it's on your terms.”
Jack looked way. “I don't need you to see this today Ianto. It's not fair. And if I want to push you away so that you don't have to see it, and don't have to strain yourself to understand it, then it's my right to do so.” He took a deep breath and looked at Ianto softly. “Don't hate me for trying to stop you from hurting.”
“What could be so bad, Jack?”
“Memories.” Jack spoke quickly, as though he didn't even have to think. “Memories are bad, and choices, and mistakes.”
“We all make mistakes, God I know that I've made a few.”
Sensing Ianto wasn't going to leave, Jack sighed and leaned back on his chair. “I got a letter.”
“Okay.” Ianto sat down on the chair opposite the desk. “Care to give me any more information, or do you expect me to guess?”
“A friend of mine wrote to me to tell me that someone had died.” Jack focussed on Ianto again, hoping the Welshman wouldn't notice the watery haze that covered his eyes, or the crack that was so apparent in his voice now. “Her name was Amelia. She was eighty nine, and she was my granddaughter. She didn't even know that I existed.”
Ianto was quiet for a moment, unsure what to say. “I'm sorry.” It came out as a whisper. “I don't even know how to comfort you after that.”
“Eighty nine.” Jack repeated her age almost as though it was the answer to a mystery. “Old and grey, her hearing and her sight gone, her legs never holding up her weight. Her mind was gone too, almost regressing to childhood, calling the carers mother, shouting that they were trying to starve her ten minutes after she had eaten because she just couldn't remember.” The sadness from his soul seeped out through his eyes, and solitary tears rolled lonesomely down his face. They dripped onto the paper on the desk, making another smudge in the beautifully penned blue ink. “Her mind and her body, it just--”
Ianto covered Jack's hand. “Faded away?”
“Yeah.” The Captain gave his lover a sad smile. “Like nature intended.”
“Everyone dies, Jack.”
“Everyone but me.” His sadness turned to anger. “No matter how many times I love, I lose more often.”
“I can't change that.”
“On this planet they teach you in school that everyone dies, that they go to heaven to be comforted by the Lord and have their sins forgiven. They tell you that they stand at those big pearly gates waiting to be let into the world that waited for them all through their life. But when you get to the end there's just nothing. All those people we have loved, Ianto, they go to death and there's nothing.”
“Stop it.” Ianto pulled away from him.
“Tosh, Owen, Estelle, even Lisa, they're trapped in the darkness and they can't escape.” Jack glared at him, looking through him with an ice gaze that caught Ianto's breath. “They're trapped forever.”
“Don't!”
Jack squeezed his eyes shut and balled his fists until his knuckles turned a ghostly shade of white. “No air in their lungs, no heart beat, no heat and no cold. Just nothingness. It's so black, with no ground and no sky. You can't feel anything, just loneliness, and you think you're deaf because there's no sound. The silence is so loud that it's screaming at you, and deafening you, and there's no escape. You're like that for all eternity. Trapped in a back hole of nothing with only your memories to torture you. No heaven and no hell, just lonely spirits floating aimlessly in the dark forever. Sad, lonely spirits, angry because they expected the lie of heaven.”
The Welshman stood up and walked around the other side of the desk, kneeling at Jack's feet. He took his hand and uncurled his fingers from the angry fist. “You have to stop doing this to yourself.”
Jack ignored him. “There's no heaven, and there's no hell. There's just the darkness, and all those lonely souls floating aimlessly into the infinite night, are suffering, suffocating in isolation.” He opened his eyes and glared at the Welshman, looking through him with hard eyes that felt cold and unloving. “Do you hate me yet?” he asked, standing, “did I push you away enough to save you from me?”
Jack's question lingered in the air for a moment, creating a gap between that felt so large it seemed as though nothing could fill it, and after a while he bowed his head and took a long breath. The Welshman licked his lips and swallowed the hard dry lump that formed in his throat, then closed his eyes. When he opened them again, his eyelashes were wet and his eye was covered in a thin coat of tears; a small trail appeared down his cheek, a watery emotion that he had tried so hard not to let Jack see. He wiped the trail away with the back of his hand and looked up at Jack. Ianto felt distant, even though he could feel the heat of his lover's breath on his skin; his eyes seemed far away an his heart even further.
“Hate is a strong emotion Jack, I try never to let myself feel it, it's much like love in that respect.”
“So that's a yes then.” Jack's voice shook as he spoke, and the words creeped out of his lips like a shadow looming in a dark alleyway.
“No.” Ianto stood up, sighed and wrapped his arms around Jack. “I won't let you push me away.”
Jack leaned on Ianto, putting almost all of his weight on him. “But if you stay with me I'll only break your heart.”
“It was already broken when you found it.”
Jack sighed and gripped Ianto's back, letting tears roll onto the cotton of his shirt. “I'm tired, I'm angry with myself and I don't even deserve you right now.”
“Why don't you go and lie down and get some rest and I'll see you tomorrow.” Ianto kissed Jack's shoulder. “You need to stop thinking for a while.”
“Maybe you could stay with me.”
“Okay.”
Ianto led Jack down into his quarters and peeled back the blanket from the bed and fluffed the pillows, then kissed him softly. He slipped the braces off the older man's shoulders and then unfastened his shirt, starting to undress him a little at a time.
“You're not wearing your suit,” Jack said quietly, “you look nice.”
Ianto looked down at himself; his trademark suit had been replaced by a black t-shirt and a pair of old tight jeans. He smiled just a little. “Usually I would be offended that you only just noticed, but I know that you've had other things on your mind.” He continued to undress him, laying his clothes over a rung of the ladder.
“You were wearing jeans when we met.”
“And you were wearing a Weevil if I remember.”
Jack's smile reached his eyes for the first time that day and he kissed the corner of his lovers mouth. “You were looking out for me way before you knew me.”
“I never could resist a damsel in distress.” Ianto ran his hands over Jack's chest, letting his warm fingers create a heat trail, and pressed his lips to the Captain's bare shoulder. “No more talk of death for a while okay?” he said,“there's been too much death here recently.”
“I'm sorry.” Jack ran his hands down the Welshman's sides and tugged at the shirt, pulling it over his head, then threw it on the floor. He kissed his neck, trailing a line of kisses to his Jaw and then to his lips; Jack pulled back a little and looked at Ianto's crestfallen face. “I do love you y'know,” he said, “even if sometimes it's hard for you to tell.”
“I know.” Ianto's response was quiet, verging on a whisper.
“I should be better at showing it, but I'm not and I really doubt that I can change now.”
Ianto got into the bed and shuffled along towards the wall, then pulled Jack down with him and covered them both with the blanket. “I think you need to do a little more resting.” He wrapped his arm around his lover and pulled him into his chest, letting Jack tuck his head under his chin. “I'll stay with you for a while.”
“I can't help but notice that you didn't tell me that you loved me this time.”
Ianto sighed and kissed Jack's head. “Loving you is so hard, Jack. You hurt me daily, and sometimes, without realising it, you abuse my heart and break it in all the places it was weak to start with.” Into closed his eyes to stop himself from crying. “But hating you just isn't an option.”
“I'm sorry.”
Ianto smiled weakly and took the hand that rested on his chest, then kissed it. He felt a tear as it rolled down his chest and held onto Jack tightly in the dark, sensing the simultaneous break of two hearts at once.
~~*~~~~~~~~~~~
still needing reassurance that i don't suck. so, comments please. feed the plot bunny so the plotbunny can feed you.