Hello people, you might have guessed: I do not own Torchwood or any of the characters displayed in this little text. And "Whatever works" is Woody Allen's of course. If you haven't seen the film, I can recommend it.

You don't ask

Funny how time, given enough of it, erodes so much, but not the liability to sprout tender feelings for people that get close to you.

You don't ask him any questions, because you have asked them all before, in times gone by, romances passed, and you finally learned that the answers, no matter what they were, turned out not to matter after a few years. They loose their meaning, go all dusty and blunt and make all the passion and the pain that once flowed into voicing them seem like a waste of energy, an unnecessary sacrifice.

You don't want that. You don't want to hear those words, filled to the brim with hot sincerity, all the boiling blood, all that lifeforce, you don't want to receive that and think at the same time – inadvertently, inescapably – 'It doesn't matter. This is nothing. Just dust in the wind.'

You don't want to feel that numbness in your mind. You don't want to commit this desecration. So you don't ask.

But you see those same questions burning in his eyes, everytime you're alone together, burning him up from inside.

And while you are thankful for his restraint, his refraining from putting into words what silently and continuously gnaws at his soul, you can't help but feel completely awful at what you are doing to him. And sometimes you want to punch your own ever-blooming face out for pulling him into this relationship that's just gonna hurt him, that can't offer him anything.

And then you only half-consciously, instinctively, treat him bad to make him break off. And he pretends he doesn't mind like he always does, but you don't miss that pained look on his face and you feel so guilty you think you're going to throw up.

In so many ways he is like a child to you. You can't help sometimes feeling so much wiser, so much more grown-up, just like you can't help loving him, despite everything.

They are all like children to you, experiencing for the first time things that you have gone through more than once. And they are all so wound up about everything.

As if these little experiences were important, as if their decisions mattered, as if those dilemmata would shape their lives. When you could easily enough tell them that none of it will seem so important in 100 years time. But they are like children, fretting, crying, despairing, putting everything they are into these fleeting moments.

And then you remember with a sudden jolt, that these fleeting moments are indeed important to them, shortlived as they are. They can't afford to waste any second by not taking it dead serious.

And you remember Ianto fighting like a wounded tiger for his now deceased and then already gone girlfriend, ready to do anything, absolutely anything to save her, although it was far too late for that.

You don't cherish that memory. It's a stab to your chest, everytime it enters your mind.

Yes, you are a jealous one, despite all your flirting and tendency to never pass any chances with a dishy man, woman, alien whatever. 'Whatever works.' your granddad used to say. 'Take every shred of happiness you can gather from this life, cause there is nothing coming after that, just darkness.'

And despite this personal philosophy that you happily live up to, you can't help it that once you've really set your eyes on someone, you are unsettlingly jealous.

It is stupid of course. Lisa is dead – how much less of a threat can a rival be? – but still you silently, secretly and forcefully hate her, there is no escaping that.

She appears in Ianto's dreams sometimes and you have a tendency to clutch him far too close for comfort, trying to keep that ghost away from him, to keep him all to yourself. It can't be comfortable in that vice-like grip, but Ianto never complains.

And in those moments you wonder, your mind starts pondering on its own accord, how much feelings does he still harbour for her? Are you just a diversion, a replacement, will you ever be loved as much as she was …?

But that's just your sleepy, jealous brain running wild on its own and you never seriously think about clarifying this.

So you don't ask.