Taboo
.x0x.
"Enjoy your night, boys! I wish I was young again!"
.x0x.
It was a typical Cardiff night – dark, wet and downright miserable. The rain had barely let up over the past few days and the ground was one large puddle after another. There was a cold wind blowing in up off the sea and the cloudy sky soaked up what little light was given off by the moon.
But Jack and Ianto were stumbling along a path in the darkness, hands clasped tightly between them, grinning and laughing despite the dismal weather. After much nagging and pleading and blackmailing and tantrum-throwing, they'd finally managed to get a night off for the pair of them. Gwen was at the Hub taking care of things and the two of them had had a pretty good date – and a nice rest from the Rift.
Jack had picked Ianto up and taken him out to a posh restaurant in town, afterwards, they'd gone to a bar Jack often frequented for a few drinks and were planning on heading back to Ianto's.
Hair plastered to their heads, they ran onwards, hands still clasped and water splashing up and around their legs. They were cold. So incredibly cold. But they were laughing like small children, enjoying the simple reminder that life wasn't all aliens and murder. The rain was fresh against their skin, clean and pure after the rank, stale air of the underground Hub. Everything looked beautiful in the rain, Ianto thought. He loved the crisp, earthy smell that was all natural and only rain.
Jack stopped suddenly, catching Ianto round the waist and swinging him round manically. They were out of breath and laughing hard when they kissed, cold lips sliding together and warming them both. "I've always loved the rain," Ianto said when they pulled their lips away but stayed in their embrace. His back was itching, feeling imaginary eyes staring and pointing and whispering at the two men. But Jack's body was warm and safe and comfortable and – and he didn't want to move.
"Me too." Jack nuzzled Ianto's neck with his nose, smiling to himself. It had been such a long time since he'd let himself feel like this, such a long time since he'd done all the stupid, meaningless dates and grinned like a maniac simply because he was with somebody he wanted to be with. He couldn't remember the last time he'd been content to just stand and hold somebody. He laughed out loud, feeling lighter and happier and healed. He grabbed Ianto's hand suddenly and broke into a run, pulling the Welshman behind him. "Race you!" he yelled over his shoulder.
The two of them weaved and skidded their way back to the SUV, falling against its side and kissing like a pair of love-struck teenagers for some time. Jack was pinning him back against the vehicle, Ianto's arms snaked around his waist beneath his beloved coat and Ianto's body moulded against his own.
It was only when the rain found a way to trickle down Jack's neck and drip steadily down his shirt that they finally climbed inside. With the window wipers working the best they could, the heating blasted right up and their clothes steaming, the two of them drove back to Ianto's.
Ianto was staring out the window, racing the raindrops on the glass and barely noticing the blurred landscape. His entire body seemed to be aware of Jack. They slowed down when they passed the bar they'd been in, traffic lights forcing them to stop for a second or two. "She thought we were a couple," Ianto said absentmindedly, staring at the bar, "and so did that waiter earlier-"
"Ianto," Jack warned.
But Ianto ignored him, already well aware – too aware – of how much Jack hated the word couple. It was the metaphorical elephant in their somewhat shaky relationship that neither of them ever dared confront. At least, Ianto didn't have the nerve to ask Jack about it. But something in him had changed. Whether the date had made his footing more secure or whether it was the alcohol that was still burning in the back of his throat, he carried on. "Of course, there was that woman who was asking all those questions as well. Almost forgot about her. Strange, isn't it, how so many people think-"
"Ianto, stoppit."
"-we're a couple or together or whatever. Do we just walk around with a sign on our heads that says 'In love'?"
"Ianto."
"Jack."
Jack sighed. It was a conversation that, admittedly, had been bubbling under the surface for the past few weeks. After Owen and Tosh had died, and they'd clung together so tightly for those first few, hard weeks, their relationship had changed yet again. Their relationship always seemed to be morphing. Back when everything first started so very long ago, it had been fucking. Simple, sweet and short. Then after Jack had ran away with his Doctor, it had turned into something slightly more. It had become exclusive. They'd become closer, and more dependent on each other even though Jack knew he was simply setting himself up to get hurt. And then – then Tosh and Owen had – and all that. He'd been distant at first, blaming himself and so sure that the same was going to happen to Ianto. He'd tried to force the young man out of Torchwood, too terrified of losing anybody else. But Ianto had stiffly refused to go so many times that he'd been hoarse from talking. After that, after that their relationship had transformed into something – Jack squeezed his eyes shut, dreading the word – strong. It was complicated and difficult but it was something Jack hadn't let himself be in for so very long.
"Sorry," Ianto said coldly, oblivious to Jack's train of thought, "I forgot we don't talk about that." They were past the bar now, crawling along streets of nightclubs with people spilling out of them.
"Just leave it."
"Why?" They'd left the nightclubs behind, crawling along towards the bay instead. The rain seemed darker and more oppressive now that Ianto was no longer watching it. He could hear it on the car, see the motion from the corner of his eye and it felt like a net trapping him in here with Jack, having this conversation.
"Because –" Jack frowned. "Just- I don't wanna talk about it."
"But I do, Jack."
Jack had never been so glad to pull onto Ianto's drive. He stopped the car and they sat in silence for a minute or two, listening to the rain thundering against the metal roof and staring at each other. Then Jack reached out and enveloped Ianto's hand in his. He opened his mouth, trying to think of a way to explain but -"I'm sorry, Ianto, I can't – I just, I can't."
Ianto slowly took his hand back. He smiled slightly. "Of course. What did I expect? You never tell me anything, Jack." He pushed out of the car and slammed the door behind him. Jack watched him stalk up to the front door and then slam that behind him too. He sat back and sighed, tilting his head back and closing his eyes.
He wanted to explain. He wanted Ianto to be able to understand and accept that it was yet another part of Jack's complicated nature and personality that made him so very unique. He wanted to. But he just, he couldn't find the words. And maybe, maybe a very small part of him was elated every time somebody thought they were a couple, maybe a very small part of him loved the idea of being Ianto's... partner.
Maybe, maybe he was kinda – the littlest amount possible- almost, actually, possibly inlovewithIanto.
Getting out and shutting the door behind him, he sighed. It wasn't fair on Ianto, really. His first serious relationship had ended with her being a half-converted cyberwoman and his second serious relationship was with a hundred and fifty year old time traveller from the future who also happened to be the head of a secret alien fighting organisation. Honestly, that sounded doomed from the beginning.
The front door was locked. But it was pulled open almost the same second Jack knocked. Ianto's eyes were a little red and he looked slightly, very slightly, angry. "You can't come in until you decide to tell me the truth, Jack. It hurts, you know, when you get so angry because they think we're partners."
Jack reached out to him automatically, gently touching his face. "I don't want to hurt you," he whispered. And it was true. Truer than most things he'd probably told Ianto. He knew his secrets and morals were a high divider between them and sometimes he wished he could just let himself be entirely truthful with Ianto. Sometimes, when they were laid in bed together on a night, he would watch Ianto sleep and imagine him knowing everything. He would imagine waking him up and the two of them sitting down with a cup of Ianto's coffee and talking. Really talking. He would imagine the freedom that would go with such an unburdening. He would imagine allowing himself to fall completely and totally in love with Ianto – because it would be so incredibly easy to do – but then real life would catch back up.
He'd been quiet too long. Ianto was starting to take a step back. Quickly, he shoved a foot between the door jam. "Ianto..."
"What's so bad about people thinking you're with me, Jack?"
Jack's eyes widened at that revelation of insecurity. "D'you really think I'm ashamed of you?" A part of him was horrified that Ianto's esteem was so low. "Because I'm not. Never will be. It's –" he sighed and shut his eyes. "I just hate the word."
"Why?"
Jack looked at him, shifting his weight from foot to foot and feeling totally uncomfortable. "I don't want to talk about it, Ianto."
"Why?" Ianto was almost glaring at him, blue eyes all wild and hard. Jack could just see Ianto curled up in bed on a night, stressing over this particular problem, worrying that there was something wrong with him, that he was just a consolation prize. Jack stared back at him, trying to convey in that single look that it was a sore point in his personal history and that he wanted Ianto more than anything. But Ianto either didn't see it or Jack was out of practice.
He relented and shrugged. "I'm not sure," he said, "I just- It means admitting stuff that maybe I want to pretend doesn't exist."
"Jack," Ianto said softly and Jack's heart was almost bleeding at the pitiful tone. "Please."
"Okay," he said, throwing his hands up. Ianto knew what that tone did to him. "Fine. Simply? The word has far too much damned responsibility. It means meeting the parents and – and staying in on a night and a dwindling sex life and – and caring about each other. It means commitment and I don't want-" Jack swallowed back his tirade, suddenly aware that Ianto was staring at him. "I don't want that," he finished more softly.
Ianto frowned at him. He opened the door and Jack stepped gratefully inside, the rain having soaked its way through his coat and clothes and dripping ice cold against his skin. Ianto didn't say anything, and for a moment or two they stood where they were as though frozen in a tableaux and then Jack started stripping, handing the clothes to Ianto who silently put them on the radiator. Once he was stood there in the entrance hall, shivering in his boxers and undershirt, Ianto led him into the living-room.
There was tension between them and Jack didn't like it. He'd gotten so used to their ease and comfort that it was almost like a dagger. "You need to get those clothes off," Jack said when Ianto sat down opposite him, dripping water all over the floor and furniture, "You'll catch pneumonia or something."
"Not until you explain, Jack."
Jack's grin faltered. "Right." He cleared this throat. Ianto's eyes were hard again, the expression tight and controlled and cutting Jack off from Ianto . He didn't like seeing the hurt Ianto was trying to conceal nor the loneliness it wakened inside his chest. It was so close to panic, so close to making his breathing speed up and his hands tremble. This is why. This is why he couldn't. "I feel like I'm at an interview or something. And that's something I haven't done for a lot of years. In fact, I think the last-"
"Jack, stop stalling."
Jack nodded quickly. The panic was building up inside him, gaining momentum and shape and speed and force and- and- "Why's it so important again?" If he could just keep talking, just keep his mouth moving.
Ianto glared at him. The silence in the room was oppressive. The shadows seemed larger and deeper. It was as though their relationship had been a flame and somebody had laid a blanket over it, smothering it and compressing it and forcing it.
Ianto was still staring at him. His jaw was set but his shoulders were turned in slightly, betraying their tension. Jack took in a little breath of air and then forced it back out. The panic wasn't going anywhere. He decided to bite the bullet. He took a deep breath. "It's just – The word couple implies commitment, it implies going home and joining in the family meals, it implies love and comfort and safety and – and – monogamy. It's just- It's a responsible word."
Ianto swallowed several times. His guard dropped and Jack could see again. "So – so what you mean is that – you're trying to tell me you want to sleep with other people?" His voice was slightly off-pitch, his eyes more jealous and possessive than the tone was letting on. "Because I guess we could always come-"
"No! Ianto, no, I don't –" Jack shut his eyes and snorted, "This is the scary part." Meeting Ianto's somewhat panicky gaze, he said, very slowly, "I don't want to sleep with anybody else."
"Really?" Ianto's tone of voice said it all. He didn't need to tell Jack what a bastard he was when he could make him feel an inch small with that tone of voice. He sounded so shocked, as though he'd never believed – even in all his wildest dreams and fantasies – that Jack could ever be capable of staying with one person. Jack half-wondered if Ianto knew him at all.
"Yeah. And believe me, that scares the hell out of me. The word just – symbolizes everything I hate, I guess. I just – I'm so scared, Ianto, I'm so scared that I'm going to lose you and I can't- If I get close and then- what if I lose you-"
Ianto was up and sitting next to him before he'd even blinked. There was a hesitant hand on his thigh and a comforting arm around his shoulders. The warmth, the touch, that was all he needed, that was all Ianto had to do to show he understood and accepted it. Like that. Just. Like. That. "This is Torchwood, Jack. We've been through this before, remember?" Jack nodded, leaning his forehead against the sopping wet material of Ianto's shoulder and trying to remember how to breathe properly.
"I just don't want to label what we are. It started out as just fun, and if we don't label it, then I can pretend that's all it is," he mumbled into Ianto's shoulder, "because if it's anything more-" He swallowed the words back. The panic wasn't going anywhere. It was biding its time now, lurking there on the very edge of his conscience.
Ianto pushed him back slightly and titled Jack's head so their eyes were meeting. Ianto looked a bizarre mixture of embarrassed, surprised, turned on and... sad? Jack noted, feeling more naked than he'd ever felt around Ianto. It was a small, insignificant, stupid thing. But it came so close to forcing him to face his own feelings. He spent far too much time running from them.
"The word is just – too much?"
"The word shouldn't matter," Jack growled slightly, "We are what we are. Why do we have to label that? We're not a proper couple. We don't do couple-y things. But we're not – we're not quite – less. I know how I feel about you and I don't – I just – Must we put a label on something so complex?"
"But we are together. We are in a relationship?"
"Of course we are. I thought you knew that?" Jack was frowning at Ianto now. What had seemed so obvious to Jack, what had seemed like the natural course of action was foreign to Ianto. Jack, once again, got the impression that he really must be a heartless bastard if Ianto couldn't see how much he cared. He was almost wringing his hands together, more teenager than a hundred and fifty year old immortal.
Ianto dipped his head once. "Yeah. Just after the way you've been recently – how against the whole 'couple' thing you were, I wasn't sure how you considered-" he played with the word on his tongue, "- us."
Jack smiled at him and took both his hands, looking him in the eye. "I want you, Ianto. I want to have you for as long as I possibly can. Is that good enough?" He wondered if he could give more – if there was even more of him to give – if Ianto wasn't satisfied.
"We're getting there," Ianto replied, smiling, "Just one question, Jack."
"And what's that?"
"What am I supposed to tell people we are?" There was no hesitation to the question and it threw Jack momentarily, as abruptly as though Ianto had suddenly started talking about puppies or something else completely irrelevant.
"...What?"
Ianto sighed and stood back up. He started pacing between the sofa and the coffee table, hands on his hips and jacket pushed out behind him. Jack wondered if Ianto knew how much that turned him on. "Rhiannon, Jack. She's my sister, she deserves to know. I barely ever see and now I can't even look her in the eye! But I can't just – I can't just say I'm with you. She's my sister! She deserves the truth, Jack. So what do I tell you are to me?"
Jack sat back in the chair, hungry eyes moving up and down Ianto's body. "Well, what am I to you?" he asked slowly, not really thinking.
Ianto looked at him, smiling ever so slightly. It was an odd smile, more suited to the tender touches in half-darkness under the duvet. "Everything," he said simply, "You're everything to me."
Jack's heart almost stopped. A flush of heat burned through his body and he was on his feet immediately. The panic was almost complete; he could feel the walls of a claustrophobic monogamous relationship closing in; the rising tide of pain and emotion that it was bound to bring. This is what he was scared of. This is what made it so damned easy to fall in love, and so damned difficult to give up. He kissed Ianto, having no idea what to reply to a statement like that. To be the centre of somebody's world was a heady thing indeed. To have that kind of power over another human being was both exhilarating and petrifying. And it was permission to feel the same way about Ianto, it was permission to love him and whilst he would never in a million years say the word, he was allowed to feel it.
Ianto was shivering, his skin flushed and his clothes steaming slightly. "We need to get you out of these clothes," Jack murmured, running his hands across Ianto's chest. "I really don't want you sick."
Ianto nodded and Jack started undressing him slowly, touching and kissing the expanses of skin he uncovered. Despite his earlier thoughts, there was nothing sexual in his touches – it was two people connecting, two people acknowledging a difficult conversation that they'd faced, and now, overcome.
Then he led Ianto upstairs to the shower and the pair of them stripped off completely before climbing under the hot water. They barely touched throughout their shower, except for the odd, slow kiss. Once they were done, and wrapped in huge towels, they made their way to their bedroom – and that was how Jack had come to think of it, after all the nights he'd slept there – and collapsed on their respective sides of the bed. Jack shrugged his towel off and turned over so he could spoon Ianto but Ianto simply curled up, head against Jack's chest and closed his eyes.
Jack pushed the towel off him and pulled the duvet over the pair of them. Then he kissed Ianto, forcing him onto his back, hands on Ianto's neck in his usual possessive gesture. He felt more protective now and was aware, on some very primal level, that their relationship had changed again. And would probably do so a million times more in the future. "I don't want to, Jack, not tonight," Ianto said breathlessly, when Jack pulled away, "Just – I just want to know you're here."
Jack bit his lip. He wanted to. He'd wanted to since they'd first set out on this date. But he nodded all the same, kissing Ianto chastely on the lips and rolling to a side. He wrapped his arms around Ianto and the two of them snuggled in the warm darkness of the duvet.
"'m sorry, Jack," Ianto told his chest somewhat sleepily. There was quiet after his sleep-heavy words and Jack laid awake, eyes wide and staring at nothing. He was thinking about the different people he'd been here with before, he was thinking about their smiles and laughs and the little quirks that made them so unique. Ianto mumbled something and Jack dropped a kiss to the top of his head. Ianto made a little content sound and pressed further back into Jack. "You know, I lov-"
"Don't," Jack replied thickly, cutting Ianto off with a kiss. "Please, don't."
Once upon time, in his far away past, he'd thrived on those words. He'd lapped them up and spread them around and given them no thought at all. But they meant something now. They meant everything. It was those words that would cause his heart to break and bleed and hurt. It was those words that left him empty and breathless. He had barely anything left to give, barely any strength of will to go through that again. And yet – yet the words were like a balm to his troubled soul – if he really had one – it had so many cracks from so many losses that hearing those three simple words had the power to heal him. He almost craved them.
Ianto kissed him back, eyes opening in the darkness. "Sorry," he said, sounding more abashed than apologetic, "But I do, Jack, I do. I can't just pretend I don't."
Jack was silent for so long that when he finally spoke, it was to a quiet room and a sleeping Ianto. "But it'll break my heart," he told Ianto gently, stroking the sleeping man's cheek, "and I'm too old to have my heart broken all over again. You barely survive the first time, you barely manage to get up and eat and work and pretend that everything's alright each day. But after the second? The third? The fifth? If I could die, Ianto, if there was some way for me to just sleep, I would. Oh, God, I would. But I can't. I can't and so I'm stuck here on this old dust-ball in this – this age where everything changes and there's nothing I can do. Nothing. I can't afford to fall in love, Ianto. I can't afford to."
When there was no reply, he pressed his lips once to Ianto's forehead and then buried his face in Ianto's soft, damp hair. He shut his eyes, trying not to see Ianto in his mind's eye.
"But maybe I already have," he said softly.