The Noiseless Tune to Which We Tread

by ethelbertina

For Ianto Jones, reality is what you make of it.

Title: The Noiseless Tune to Which We Tread
Rating(s): Adult
Pairings: Ianto/Suzie, Ianto/Jack, Ianto/OC, Ianto/Lisa.
Word Count: ~3,000
Warning(s): Set in the hours after They Keep Killing Suzie, although the memories are from everywhen. Thematically inspired by CoE, but no direct references to it.

a/n: Post CoE, I think we have a much wider pool to play in when it comes to Ianto. In some sense, now, anything goes. So in noodling around with the notion that Ianto is a lying liar who lies... I started to wonder about some of those moments of his life when he felt he needed to hide from the truth. (also posted at my lj)

Summary: For Ianto Jones, reality is what you make of it.

Disclaimer: The sand and the sandbox belong to RTD and the BBC. The sandcastles are mine.

THESE are my scales to weigh reality,—
A dream, a chord, a longing, love of Thee.
Real as the violets of April days,
Or those soft-hid in unfrequented ways;
Real as the noiseless tune to which we tread
The measure we by life's old song are led;
Real as man's wonder what his soul may be,—
A guest for time or for eternity.
Real as the ocean, seen, alas! no more,
Whose tide still beats along my heart's inshore.
These are my scales to weigh reality,—
A chord, a dream, a longing, love of Thee!
"Reality" by Martha Gilbert Dickinson

Ianto wakes suddenly, panting, the dream memories of grinding steel and crinkling plastic intruding into the dim room.

Shit. Fucking nightmares.

Jack is draped across his chest, one hand curled tightly in the sheet that covers them both. Ianto concentrates on slowly smoothing the fine damp hairs of Jack's hairline.

Okay. Breathe. Concentrate.

Jack stirs, vaguely aware of the rapid heartbeat beneath his ear.

"S'alright?" he asks sleepily, trying and failing to get his eyes open.

Stay close a minute, Jack. Please?

"Budge over. Arm's numb," Ianto whispers as he pulls Jack closer and wraps both arms around him.

"S'nice," Jack mumbles as he stretches and shifts against Ianto until he finds a comfortable position. A few snuffles against Ianto skin and then Jack is fully asleep again, leaving Ianto to cast his thoughts back over the events that led him to this moment.

How strange he finds it, to wake unsettled and find comfort in this man's bed. In any man's, really, but especially this man.

Especially since it started so badly.

In addition to his newly created support duties, Jack had asked a favor of him on his second day.

"And when you have time, would you take a look at the archives, and see if you can't sort some of that out?"

He'd found "sorting out" the Archives to be very useful.

The task was endless, the dusty rooms were full of odd corners in which to lose oneself, and it was a perfect excuse if he needed to slip away to that unmentionable vault.

And also to fuck. Unexpectedly, it was Suzie who found him in an out of the way nook as he was stacking boxes of unidentified rift debris, trying to decipher their faded labels. She pressed herself up against his back, scraped his ear lobe with her teeth, and then whispered, "I don't have a lot of time here, London. Wanna see how fast I can get you off?" She slipped a ticking stopwatch into his hand, and as he turned towards her, started working at his belt and the zip on his pants.

He wondered if he wanted her to stop. It wasn't like he had a good excuse. The "I have a girlfriend" excuse wasn't going to work, given his very public admission of Lisa being dead. Ergo, neither would the corollary, "I'm not into girls."

But as she slipped her hands beneath his briefs, he stopped thinking, leaned back against the crates and gave in to the sensations of her strong, supple hands. And it was sex, just sex, not fidelity, he told himself, as the stopwatch ticked on, repeating "sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex, sex ..."

It seemed easy to reciprocate therefore, a few days later when she came down for some files, slid her hand beneath his waistcoat and slipped the ticking stopwatch in the breast pocket of his shirt, whispering "We take care of our own," in his ear.

He pushed her up against a sturdy metal work table, tugged her skirt up around her waist, and lost himself in the familiar-yet-strange sensations of curly hair under his fingers and warm skin pressed against sleek metal. Feeling, tasting, touching, he could forget his troubles for just a little while. Surrendering to the unexpectedly welcome desire for cool metal beneath his fingers, he gripped the table edge until his hand went numb. He could feel the ticking trapped between them, their pulses throbbing, and as Suzie gasped when he thrust into her, he allowed himself to think of Lisa, just a little

For in these heated minutes, he could give his imagination and his desires free rein. Deep inside he delighted in this freedom even as he hated himself for whispering nonsense words in the ear of the person who had became simply a placeholder for his passion.

They were both driven, and competitive by nature, and wound way too tightly, so the repeated challenges to beat the other's times became something of a game, some way to supplant loneliness with oblivion, and burn off some of the excess tension that was tangling them both in knots.

Oh Suzie. You taught me a lot about game playing. Did you do it on purpose?

And Suzie wasn't the only one to find him in the archives. Jack wasn't one to let a good looking man in an expensive looking suit bend over cartons without a few suggestive comments. Jack would trail around after him sometimes on quiet afternoons, offering to help, brushing up against Ianto, whispering naughty things in his ear.

God, how I hated that I wanted you.

But he'd felt somehow that for Jack, the chase was at least as important as the capture.

Then Suzie died and it became so much harder to resist Jack's teasing and tempting. When she died the second time, he'd taken it as a sign, and slipped a page out of her book and offered himself and his stopwatch to Jack.

He thinks Suzie would have approved.

She'd probably have been willing to join in. Jack would have enjoyed that.

Jack's soft breaths are tickling across his skin, reminding him of the way Jack's hands skimmed over him just hours before.

He laughs softly, and concludes that reality's always been better as a fluid concept.

Just keep talking...

When he was nine he'd brought home a puppy. Said it had followed him home. It hadn't. He made up a box for it under his bed and give it an old jumper to sleep on. He put his alarm clock in the box because he'd heard puppies like the sound. When Mrs. Evans came to say he'd stolen "our Geordie's puppy," he'd said he'd only taken it 'cause he'd seen Geordie kicking it. After a row on the doorstep, Mrs. Evans said he could keep the mangy thing and welcome. Would save her the money to feed it.

He came home from school one day not long after and his Da told him the puppy was dead, and to get on with his schoolwork and no fussing. Rhi came into their room later that night.

"You miss that dog, yeah?"

"Don't."

"Then why're ya crying, Ianto?"

"Weren't. Won't cry over no dog."

Despite his words, he curled up under his blankets, wearing the old jumper that smelt of puppy, clutched his ticking alarm clock, and silently cried himself to sleep.

Create your own reality...

When Ianto was ten, his Mam ran off to make a new life for herself. Ianto wondered why she didn't take him with her. He wondered why she didn't love him anymore.

Tired of being bossed around by Rhi, he packed a bag one day when he was fourteen and set out down the road to find himself a new life.

Ran into his Da near the bus stop.

"Where you goin' lad?"

"London."

"Whatever for?"

"Gotta go someplace new. Be something different."

"London's just the same as here, lad, though you can't tell by looking."

"How can you tell, Da?"

"Everywhere's the same. It's just inside your head that's different."

So it was back to chips in front of the telly, and keeping his dreams inside his head where they were safe.

Keep your head down, and give people what they don't know they want.

When he's sixteen, and in the Lower Sixth form, there's a new school, and Ianto can't win for trying.

Gave the right answers in Miss Morris' math class, and hisses of swot followed him down the hall. Stopped to help a girl pick up her books when she dropped them and got laughed at for his trouble. Got a black eye behind the bike shed when he shoved Ivor Morgan off little Daffyd Green.

Wasn't until he started carrying fags he'd nicked from the news agents' that he was suddenly popular.

His life of petty crime served him well for a time. Until he was caught kissing Daffyd in the alley behind the cinema. (It was just a lark, it didn't mean anything, he'd told himself.)

The copper who caught him in the news agents' a fortnight later and hauled him off to the lockup was Daffyd's brother. Got pushed into the back of the panda car, and with a knee to the groin was told to keep his queer hands to hisself in future.

So it was a shoplifting charge on his record, and one more reason to want to be somewhere other than where he was.

But first, that coy smile, and a little skillfully applied guilt, and he'd had Daffyd on his knees before him in the back of that bike shed, doing more than just kissing there in the dark.

Tell your own version of the truth.

He'd heard it said somewhere that the best way to get a job was to pretend you didn't need one. So there he sat, waiting, in a borrowed suit, with a borrowed story about looking for something challenging to do during his gap year. He didn't know what the fuck "Research and Development" meant, he just knew it paid better than the temp jobs he had been doing. So with a cheeky smile, a bit of feigned country innocence, and manners he'd picked up off the telly, he stood when his name was called and went into Torchwood's personnel office with a wink for the receptionist, a devil-may-care attitude, and the truth neatly tucked away where it wouldn't be needed.

You'll catch more flies with honeyed vowels.

"And your parents?" she'd asked him on their second date.

"My Mum's dead," he replied, not really knowing if she was or not.

And when she asked after his father, he said, "Works all the hours God gives him. He's... he's a tailor," and hopes she believes him.

"So that explains the clothes," she says with a smile, and then laughs at his confusion.

"Your suits," she says finally.

"What about my suits?"

Oh God, can she tell they're from the Oxfam shop?

She blushes, and finally admits, "Well, they're...it's just...you look really good in a suit."

And then their table was ready. As they ate, he kept her talking about her work, and the senselessness of 'those focus groups Yvonne's so keen on these days.'

After dinner, he helped her into her coat, and took her arm as they left the restaurant. He signaled for a cab, and when they slid into the back seat, he pressed himself against her. His fingers wandered up under the hem of her skirt and teased her stocking tops, distracting her from any more questions.

He leaned in and whispered, "Want to find out how good I look OUT of a suit?"

She wound her arms around his neck and kissed him.

He broke away from her just long enough to give the driver his address.

They're barely in the door of his flat before she slips off his jacket, and he's trying to unbutton her blouse.

She takes advantage of his momentary surprise when he discovers she isn't wearing a bra, to push him down on the couch, straddle his lap, and pull off his tie.

Maybe some dreams do come true...

"I really love this tie," she says, as she loops it around her own neck. He watches as her fingers move along the crisp silver silk of his tie. Her fingernails are painted the same scarlet red as her blouse, and he's sort of fascinated by that.

He grasps the tie, and pulls Lisa towards him, burying his head between her breasts, and letting his hands roam across her skin. Kissing her all the while, he unzips her skirt and runs his hands inside the waistband, breathless at finding as little under the skirt as there was under the blouse.

She grinds her hips against his a few times, and sucks his tongue into her mouth, laughing into the kiss as she feels him grow even harder beneath her.

She slides off his lap then, pushing her skirt and blouse off, and watches him clench his hands on the cushions as she stands in front of him in just his tie, black stockings and the black pumps she'd spent a week's wages on when she first moved to London.

"I assume you have a bed in this place," she murmurs as she kneels between his legs to undo his belt, and then his zip.

He can barely remember his name, much less his furniture layout when she nuzzles her face into his crotch and sucks him through the cotton of his briefs.

He moans, his head thumping back on the sofa. He winds his fingers into her curly hair, holding her still for a moment.

"Wait," he says.

He leads her into the bedroom, and slips off her shoes and stockings, leaving the tie hanging between her breasts, stopping once to pull her tight against him, and suck on those red-tipped fingers. Then he settles her in his bed, and she watches as he undresses and slides in next to her. Hands, lips, and tongues wander as they learn each other's bodies.

He's hard, and she's wet, and soon, after a fumble with the condom, he's inside her. He wants to please her, but it's so good as he pushes into her again and again that he doesn't want to stop when she suddenly says, "Ianto, wait."

Jesus, don't change your mind now...

But he's not a brute, so he stops, resenting the separation as they pull apart.

"Let's see how good you really are, baby," she says, rolling over onto her stomach and getting to her hands and knees. She guides his hands to her breasts and wonders if he's a bit slow on the uptake until he slides his right hand to her neck, winds it in the loop of the tie, and thrusts back into her. He stills as she cries out, but then she's panting "Don't stop, baby, don't stop," so he grips her tightly, shifts her a bit to find a better angle, and with the tie pulled taught around his fist, he's pounding into her.

This is more the kind of thing he's done with other men, but he puts that to the back of his mind and concentrates on the woman in his arms.

He wants to show her how much she's pleasing him. He's trying to bring her over the edge, but she bites his arm, hard, and clenches around him so deliciously that he comes hot and hard on his next deep thrust into her.

She is writhing beneath him, moaning, and so he sucks wet kisses along her hairline, slips a couple fingers inside her, and strokes her until she shudders beneath him.

He rolls them over, pulling her on top of him, and pulls the duvet over them. He winds his arms around her waist and lazily kisses her over and over, fingers slowly unknotting the tie that still hangs around her neck.

They lay there for a while, pressed against each other, dozing lightly, until he feels her lips begin to wander across his skin, tongue teasing his nipples.

He busies his hands under the covers, stroking down her sides, as her fingers are winding around his cock, teasing it hard again.

He rolls her then, pinning her underneath him.

"You ever do it blindfolded?" he asks her with a wicked grin.

"You're going to be the death of me, Ianto Jones," she says with a laugh.

"Oh, but Honey, what a way to go," he murmurs in her ear as he knots the tie across her eyes, leaving her in the darkness.

Reality is what you make of it.

"Sweet dreams?" Jack asks with a laugh when Ianto gasps awake to find that it's Jack's hands warming his skin beneath the covers.

Ianto silences him with a rough kiss. Having given in to his desire for Jack, he sees no point in kidding himself about what he really wants here. There've been enough lies between them.

"On your knees, Captain," Ianto says, voice husky with need.

Ianto kneels behind Jack, pressing tight against his smooth warm skin. He wraps Jack's hands around the metal rungs of the ladder at the foot of the bed, and his own around Jack's cock. Last night had been about Jack's demons. This morning, Ianto has a few demons of his own to exorcise.

We take care of our own.