Title: One
Author: Lilya
Genre: Romance
Summary: As Ianto sleeps, Jack finds himself thinking…
Main Characters: Jack Harkness, Ianto Jones
Rating: G
Disclaimer: The characters depicted in this story do not belong to me but to BBC.
Author's notes: English is not my native tongue – please forgive my mistakes. If some sentences don't make sense, please tell me and I'll try to fix them.
One
Somehow, somewhere between the desk and the bed (and the archives, and the showers and …well, you got the idea) the impossible has happened and Ianto's name has been shortened into Yan.
Yan.
Jack doesn't care much for this nickname – if you can even call it that – but it sticks, mostly against his will.
When you think about it, it's a really stupid nickname – and tonight Jack does think about it as he watches his lover sleep.
Even in the privacy of his mind, he's always Ianto. Sometimes his last name gets thrown in for good measure but it's not his fault they sound so well together.
Ianto Jones.
Much better than Yan.
Jack sighs softly and moves the sheets up to cover the younger man's shoulder.
Sure, the latter does carry some…a lot of pleasant associations – after all, it was born in those moments that leave them both gasping for breath, when even a two-syllable name is way too long.
There was a race of aliens he met while travelling on the Tardis that had only monosyllabic names, what was the system again? A, E and U for girls, O, I and the last, unpronounceable vowel for boys.
No exceptions ever.
Introductions had been real fun – and Rose's face? Priceless.
Quite sensible, really. None of those nickname-y nonsense.
Jack shifts a little, settling a little more comfortably.
Sometimes it's hard, knowing all the things he knows, especially when your brain makes the strangest associations and brings them up at the most inopportune moments.
In his old age (ha!) he's only gotten worse.
So many things, so many memories…
One of the first long-range exits with Torchwood – not Wales, but somewhere in Northern England.
He remembers the green hills and soft rain falling. An old shepherd counting his sheep – yan, tan, tethera…
Yan.
One.
But what could it mean?
One.
First. Except he's not the first, not by a long shot.
(The first to put one over him in a long, long time, maybe, but let's not go there, okay?)
The one? That's pretty ridiculous – there can't be one for him.
(and sometimes, in the dead of the night, he quietly mourns this quaint, outdated and often ridiculed concept. Nobody will know that sometimes he misses the idea of not having to start all over again.)
It stands to reason that he won't be (can't be) the last, either. Although one can never truly know beforehand.
You have to walk through the fire before you know whether you'll came out unscathed.
One.
Unique. But then, aren't we all?
Yet Jack, for all the lives he lived, is no Miss Marple – he quite despises her, actually, putting people in neat little boxes and never being wrong.
That's not how it works and if he sees echoes of friends past in the people he knows today, it's only occasionally and fleetingly.
It's always little things. There's never complete equivalence.
One.
Jack watches him smile in his sleep.
One of a kind.
One in a million.
But actually, there's nothing here that can be reduced to a mere number.
Gently, carefully, he reaches out to caress his hair and trace the outline of his face.
Ianto Jones.
Yan.
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