Title: Walking over stars
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG
Disclaimer: Not mine.
Summary: Dawn found them there, and took the stars away.
A/N: Sequel to You Have the Heart of a Star
--
"Oh," Ianto said, somewhere between surprised and abashed, once they arrived at Jack's mysterious destination. One eyebrow up for dramatic emphasis.
Jack grinned, mindless with his hands in his pockets, but all purpose on his steps, leading the way like he knew the place as the back of his hand.
"I didn't know you liked football," Ianto tried, eyeing Jack with earnest curiosity. They were past the corridors that led to the changing rooms, a turn to the right, then down through the tunnels that would eventually show them to the staircase to the field.
"I don't," Jack replied.
Ianto chuckled as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. Maybe it was. "Of course you don't. You're not the sports type." He looked more attentively at his… at Jack. "Specially not the football type." The stairs appeared ahead, at the end of the tunnel. He fumbled in the inside pocket of his coat, searching for the little torch he always carried with him for lightless emergencies. Happened more often than not, in this business, certainly more often than Ianto'd like. Not that Jack had given any indications that they'd be doing work here, but, well, what else? "My question was a cue for you to tell me what we're doing here."
Jack looked closely at his hands as he maneuvered the torch, pressed one button and another, turned it on as they started to climb the staircase. Jack had a thing for his hands. Long, pianist fingers, he'd said, slender and skillful.
"I could like football," Jack said.
"And yet, you don't," Ianto replied. It was completely dark outside, as he knew it would be. He checked his wristwatch, twenty to midnight. Not a single soul would be found in that stadium at this hour. Not a single beam of light cutting through the blackness but the one from Ianto's flashlight.
Rain poured over their heads in really tiny drops, fast to fall and tingly when touched his skin. Wetted his hair pretty quick, but would take forever to soak his clothes. The lawn made a funny squeaky noise when they stepped over it. Squash, squash, as they headed to the center of the field.
"Why am I not the football type?" Jack asked, a discreet frown on his brow. Ianto addressed him a deadpanned look that said Oh, really?, but Jack remained impassive, wearing an almost insulted expression.
Ianto rolled his eyes. "Look at you, and your… braces. You'd maybe be good for football back when it was invented."
They reached the center circle, and Jack stopped. Ianto came to a halt beside him, and flashed his light at the modest bleachers of the small stadium, one that looked very much like the one where he used to practice football when he was a child. His dad would take him to the games and cheer like a madman. The very Welsh face of Kynan Jones, red like a tomato, his tiny blue eyes sparkling with pride as he screamed that that was his son. It was the only thing they ever had in common, a foot ball and a uniform. Dad would hug him tight when he scored, or pet his head when they lost, because that was a kind of pain he could share, understand.
Their closeness had always been confined between those four lines marking the lawn field. It ended when Ianto decided to drop the practices to smoke behind school and have a pint or two with his mates.
Ianto was searching for… something, with his flashlight. Didn't know what. Probably going for suspiciously alien. Anything to justify them being there. But everything seemed dully ordinary.
"I could like football," Jack muttered, and Ianto swayed the flashlight to him. He had his head down, engrossed in pressing buttons on his wriststrap.
"But you don't."
Jack grinned, shook his head. "I don't."
"Then why are we here? Are there weevils on the loose in this area?"
"Nope."
"Is this an alien landing field?" He pointed the flashlight up to the sky, nothing over their heads but raindrops and dark clouds, engulfing the light. "Are we waiting for something?"
Jack sucked the air in, then lifted his head with an enthusiastic smile plastered on his face. Ianto cocked him an eyebrow.
"No," he said. "Turn your light off."
Ianto blinked. "I'm sorry?"
"Torch. Off," he repeated, patiently, moving his head from one side to the other, eyes up on the spotlights, off, above the bleachers.
Ianto gave it a thought for another second. This was… unadvisable. Reckless, perhaps. Well, unusual at the very least. But Jack seemed very sure of what he was doing, and so oddly so that in spite of being cold and tired and starting to get hungry, Ianto was quite possible more curious than anything else.
His eyes took a while to adapt to lack of illumination; he had to blink a few times until he could finally see Jack more than as a shadow outlined in front of him.
Jack brought his arm up, pressing more buttons on his strap. "So, I dated a football player once."
"Oh." Ianto arched his eyebrows.
"Yeah. Oh. Big oh."
He grinned. "How did it work out for you?"
"Didn't last long. He had this weird quirk. Screamed goal every time we fucked, before he came."
Ianto's laughter rang rich and full across the empty stadium, reverberating on cement walls painted in red and green. "Oh, that," he struggled to rein himself in again, breathing harshly. "That gives a whole new perspective to football matches."
Jack chuckled. "Not sure it's a good perspective. But anyway – he wasn't an ace in bed, but he showed me something special one day."
Ianto widened his eyes just a little more, heartfelt interest written all over his face.
Jack turned to him again. "Remember how you said you couldn't imagine what it was like to be…" he pointed his index finger up, towards the sky.
"I…" He squinted his eyes, recollecting an awkward conversation under the night sky. "Yes."
"Well," he pressed another button on his strap. Suddenly the spotlights came to life. Not all of them, just a few, strategically positioned. Ianto had to glance away for a moment, blinded by the harshness of the bright white light. When he looked again, he was… Somewhere else.
He couldn't see the marks on the field anymore; it had grown, stretched to infinite, huge and wet and only slightly green-ish, but mostly dark. Dark, and speckled with thousands of tiny little silvery drops, reflecting the light.
An immense carpet glowing like a million stars flashing.
It was… breathtaking.
"This isn't exactly it," Jack explained, slightly apologetic. "Not the same thing as staring out a space station window, looking down on Earth." He paused, and when he spoke again, he sounded almost as though he was caressing the words. "But it's the next best thing."
Ianto swallowed, turning to one side, then to the other. The lights were all around them, and above them, the thin drops sparkling like little diamond sticks with hundreds of colors inside as they fell to the ground and formed a galaxy.
"This is- It's beautiful." He snuffed a laugh, shook his head, figuring he probably looked like a child there, staring all astonished and impressed, at the football field. Jack did this to him, sometimes. Reminded him how young and ephemeral he was by showing him these things that were there long before him, and would still be there long after. Like the universe. Right under his feet.
"Is this our date, then?" he asked, passing his shoes over the grass to shake off the star dust, only for new drops to come and replace it right after.
"Is it?" Jack asked.
Ianto turned to him. "You brought me here, you should know."
"I don't- This isn't-" he stopped, looked away, distracted by a spot where the lawn was particularly uneven, where the grass was higher than on the rest of the field. Ianto wondered if this would be the constellation Jack came from. "I was thinking of somewhere warm with good food and music. Movies, maybe, afterwards. Following the procedure."
"I didn't know there was a procedure."
"You know. Old fashioned way." Jack cracked a lopsided smile.
"Doesn't suit you," Ianto said, after a spell.
Jack faced him, eyebrows cocked in amusement. "Weren't you just talking about my braces?"
"Oh, well." He put his hands in his pockets and looked to the other side. "That's what every other date is like. I've had those. It's not what a date with you should be like."
"Enlighten me."
Ianto breathed in. "It should be… Different. Unusual. Probably make no sense. Pretentious," he smirked. "And– absurd. Like," he brushed the grass with his foot again. "Walking over stars."
There was momentary silence, before he heard the Harkness grin breaking through to Jack's lips. "Why, Ianto," he said, and moved closer. "That is the most romantic thing you've ever said to me."
"Careful. Next thing I'll be writing you a poem."
"What? You mean like roses are red, violets are blue?"
"Your cock is beautiful, but I lov- I-" He stumbled on his words, and missed the timing of the joke. Sighed, and continued for the sake of it. "I like you better."
He caught Jack giving those eyes that said I know what you did just there, but I won't mention it, although his smile was a lot more straightforward. "You have to work on your rhymes," he said, rubbing his hand on his hair to brush the excess of humidity.
Ianto admired the ridiculousness of his hair for a moment, all tousled and messy in hopelessly strange angles. He wanted to kiss him, desperately. "Rhymes are overrated."
The sound of Jack's chuckle lingered as they watched, in companionable silence, drops that ceased to exist giving space to new ones forming on the tip of the grass, a metaphor of more important things happening in split-second time right before their eyes. Something reflective of something bigger, Ianto reckoned.
"Jack," he said, after a while.
"Hm?"
"How do they end? Dates like this."
Jack pursed his lips thoughtfully. "Do you wanna go?"
Ianto's "No," came a bit too exasperated, a bit too fast, for casual.
Jack blinked at him. "No?"
"No," he said again, this time less effusive and more definitive. "How long can we stay here?"
Jack shrugged. "I assume they won't be very pleased to find us when they come to open it in the morning, but until then…" the words died in his shrug.
Ianto sat down on the lawn unceremoniously, and looked up at Jack, a smile growing wide on his face, a mix of gratefulness, and excitement, and something else as well. He tapped on the spot right next to him, pulling the hem of Jack's coat.
Jack frowned for a second, and then smiled. "I assume that means we're staying."
He nodded. "You can tell me about the stars."
Jack sat down next to him, hands almost touching, but not quite. He breathed in, and out, slowly, then turned to Ianto. "What do you want to know?"
Dawn found them there, and took the stars away.
Fin.