A/N: Don't own.
Just posting this to gauge reactions – if I get enough feedback, I'll post chapter one.
Prologue
Blank paper. Oh, how he loathed blank paper. To Ianto, blank paper meant creative block, the cessation of his ideas, and the bills going unpaid for another month. if he couldn't even write a half decent song, the band would go hungry. Catrin was little more than a child …
Though she argued vehemently, proud little thing she was.
Ianto smiled to himself as he thought of his little terrier … such a strong character for one so young. Even though she'd argue that he was only four years older.
Then the paper worked its way back into his thoughts, and he frowned. Surely there was something … anything …
And then his blood chilled. There was something. Something he's tried so very hard to repress over the years. Even the mere thought of the painful event, let alone dredging it up in lyric, made the poorly healed bullet wound on his heart seize, like someone had pressed a dry ice brand against the scar.
But it was all he had. The band needed new material, or the bar that they played in on Friday nights would throw them out. No more old Bruce Springsteen covers, they had said.
Ianto glowered at the paper, as if – by sheer willpower alone – he could turn it into the much-needed cash. Sure, they all had part-time jobs, but the income from making coffee, or packing bags, hardly covered the rent, food for the five of them, and the massive electricity bills they ran up from the equipment.
Okay. No other option. Ianto drew a fortifying breath, set his grandfather's rosewood fountain pen against the stark paper, and tipped his soul out.
Ianto worried the leather band wrapped around his wrist as Jonathon scanned through the green cursive on the paper, Catrin and Arianwyn reading over his shoulder, and Angelo sitting quietly in the corner, having already read the lyrics to their latest work. Catrin finished first.
'Oh, Yan,' she said, as she flung herself at him, wrapping her slender arms around his shoulders. 'Oh, my poor, poor baby.'
Ianto sighed. This was the exact reaction he had been expecting.
'It was a long time ago. I – I've moved on,' he said, deliberately looking in the opposite direction. His fingers moved from the knot of the leather to the steel ring, engraved with Celtic knots and animals, around his left middle finger. The proof of the lie he just told. That band had never once come off his finger, not since that night four years ago when he had received it. At first, he had wanted to. Really wanted to. But when he had finally worked up the nerve, he found he couldn't, like the mere thought was physically painful. Cariad, why did you have to leave me …
Ianto's train of thought was violently derailed when Catrin appeared in front of him, and lifted his face gently.
'Don't lie,' she said, reading him in that bizarre way of hers. 'You're still hurting.'
Ianto bit his lip, and considered her unspoken offer. Spill all and burden the fifteen year old, or keep quiet and face her anger. Neither option was attractive.
Eventually, he came to a conclusion.
'That song is about the man who thieved my heart, and burnt it.'
