Fic: The Secret Garden of Ianto Jones
TITLE: The Secret Garden of Ianto Jones
AUTHOR: Erin Giles
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood and it's characters are property of the BBC.
RATING: PG
PAIRINGS/CHARACTERS: Ianto/Jack
WORDS: 514
SUMMARY: Ianto knew that you never find love, love finds you. Quote at end for 'The Secret Garden'.
CHALLENGE: horizonssing Day 20:
But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiousity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchaned garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.
- Evelyn Waugh,
Brideshead Revisited
Ianto Jones knew as well as the next poetic man that you don’t find love, love finds you. He also ironically knew that the minute you stopped looking for love it presented itself rather overdramatically to you in some form or other. So he shouldn’t have been quite so shocked when one summer afternoon not long after Jack had returned from his travels with the Doctor he found himself uttering those three words unconsciously to one Captain Jack Harkness.
The words felt almost comfortable in his mouth as he spoke them without apprehension or curiosity as to whether they would be reciprocated or not. He hadn’t spoken them in a long time to anyone and truly meant it. The last person he’d uttered those words to had been the monster Lisa had become and now as he tried to dig through his watery memory he couldn’t remember the last time he’d told her he loved her when she had been human. When she had been his Lisa. She’d been his first and only love to date and he’d revelled in the rush of emotion every time he saw her, how his chest ached when he was away from her. He’d relished in every new feeling as he’d felt his emotions sky rocket. He’d secretly thought he’d never feel that much emotion ever again, not when in the months after Canary Wharf he had felt a creeping numbness consume him like ivy, blocking out the light in what once had been his garden.
Now though he was telling Jack, without hope or agenda that he loved him, unequivocally, shocking even himself. The truth was he never expected Captain Jack Harkness to love him let alone fall in love with him. So when those words were uttered back to him on the breeze with heartfelt meaning he felt like he had found the key to his secret garden again.
He realised Jack had been the one nursing it back to health for the last few years behind closed doors, sowing seeds when Ianto wasn’t looking, tending to it in the winter of it’s life when spring seemed like a cold dead memory. Ianto was so profoundly aware that Jack had stolen his heart without realising, on that day when Ianto had got the job for Torchwood Three, trying to catch Jack without thinking. It was like he’d given Jack a bit of earth in his garden, and that was all that Jack had needed to make that garden bloom.
Ianto smiled into the kiss they now shared publicly in the middle of Cardiff City Centre. He couldn’t smell the diesel from the bus just past them, or the coffee of the Starbucks they were stood outside. All he could smell was grass and flowers, hear birds singing in close proximity as the sun shone through gaps in the leaves of trees, a cool breeze wrapping it’s arms around them in approval.
The secret garden is always open now. Open, awake and alive. If you look the right way you can see the whole world is a garden.
AUTHOR: Erin Giles
DISCLAIMER: Torchwood and it's characters are property of the BBC.
RATING: PG
PAIRINGS/CHARACTERS: Ianto/Jack
WORDS: 514
SUMMARY: Ianto knew that you never find love, love finds you. Quote at end for 'The Secret Garden'.
CHALLENGE: horizonssing Day 20:
But I was in search of love in those days, and I went full of curiousity and the faint, unrecognized apprehension that here, at last, I should find that low door in the wall, which others, I knew, had found before me, which opened on an enclosed and enchaned garden, which was somewhere, not overlooked by any window, in the heart of that grey city.
- Evelyn Waugh,
Brideshead Revisited
Ianto Jones knew as well as the next poetic man that you don’t find love, love finds you. He also ironically knew that the minute you stopped looking for love it presented itself rather overdramatically to you in some form or other. So he shouldn’t have been quite so shocked when one summer afternoon not long after Jack had returned from his travels with the Doctor he found himself uttering those three words unconsciously to one Captain Jack Harkness.
The words felt almost comfortable in his mouth as he spoke them without apprehension or curiosity as to whether they would be reciprocated or not. He hadn’t spoken them in a long time to anyone and truly meant it. The last person he’d uttered those words to had been the monster Lisa had become and now as he tried to dig through his watery memory he couldn’t remember the last time he’d told her he loved her when she had been human. When she had been his Lisa. She’d been his first and only love to date and he’d revelled in the rush of emotion every time he saw her, how his chest ached when he was away from her. He’d relished in every new feeling as he’d felt his emotions sky rocket. He’d secretly thought he’d never feel that much emotion ever again, not when in the months after Canary Wharf he had felt a creeping numbness consume him like ivy, blocking out the light in what once had been his garden.
Now though he was telling Jack, without hope or agenda that he loved him, unequivocally, shocking even himself. The truth was he never expected Captain Jack Harkness to love him let alone fall in love with him. So when those words were uttered back to him on the breeze with heartfelt meaning he felt like he had found the key to his secret garden again.
He realised Jack had been the one nursing it back to health for the last few years behind closed doors, sowing seeds when Ianto wasn’t looking, tending to it in the winter of it’s life when spring seemed like a cold dead memory. Ianto was so profoundly aware that Jack had stolen his heart without realising, on that day when Ianto had got the job for Torchwood Three, trying to catch Jack without thinking. It was like he’d given Jack a bit of earth in his garden, and that was all that Jack had needed to make that garden bloom.
Ianto smiled into the kiss they now shared publicly in the middle of Cardiff City Centre. He couldn’t smell the diesel from the bus just past them, or the coffee of the Starbucks they were stood outside. All he could smell was grass and flowers, hear birds singing in close proximity as the sun shone through gaps in the leaves of trees, a cool breeze wrapping it’s arms around them in approval.
The secret garden is always open now. Open, awake and alive. If you look the right way you can see the whole world is a garden.