Rating: T
Word count: ~ 2,700
Warnings: Angst, Torchwood weirdness, odd romance.
Summary: Five steps down, and then there's no way to turn back. Love is a many-splendored thing, but it's rarely simple, and never easy.
Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.
A/N: The section headings and Ianto's quote at the end all belong to T.S. Eliot, and are taken from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock—which also inspired the title.
Love Songs Never Spoken
I. There will be time to murder and create
It starts here, on the floor of the Hub in the eerie dimness, Ianto on the ground and staring up at Jack with hatred and fury in his eyes. Jack's gun presses an indent into his forehead, cold metal like the metal that traps Lisa, that's killing her.
It's there in a thousand touches that are suddenly a betrayal, flirtation that has become manipulation, a near-kiss in the darkness of a warehouse that has changed from innocent victory to something darker, a liar's triumph and a threat to every single person in the world. It's in Jack's fury, disproportionate even to this great a menace, and Ianto's desperate cry of monster.
Ianto looks up at Jack, sees the betrayal on his face, the fruits of disloyalty, and can feel only aching, tearing grief—not just for Lisa, not just for what has been found out and uncovered and brought to light here, in front of the team that never saw him, never acknowledged what he did for them, never acknowledged him unless he threw himself in their faces with a dry quip. But the grief is also for Jack, and for himself, because Jack is a good man, and he never deserved this. And Ianto has been through hell, has survived a purgatory of fire and steel and tramping metal boots, and all he wants is something good. Something for himself, something pure and sweet that he can hold on to.
Lisa isn't that any more, if she ever was after he dragged her from the wreckage.
What he and Jack could have had together, though—
That's an entirely different story.
But Jack steps away, lets his gun fall to his side, and doesn't take the shot.
It starts here.
II. I have measured out my life with coffee spoons
It's there in a four-week suspension that easily could have been Retcon or execution, the careful removal of evidence before UNIT can learn of what happened. It's four days of the team learning just how much Ianto did each day, when they only saw him deliver coffees and order lunch.
It's Jack, leaning on the doorbell at six o'clock in the evening, carrying a bag from Ianto's favorite Chinese restaurant and a bottle of good Irish whiskey.
Ianto opens the door—because he wants to, because this is a choice, because Lisa is dead and he's still alive, even if he hasn't truly lived since the Battle of Canary Wharf. He opens the door, and smiles a little at Jack, and steps aside.
"Captain," he says softly.
Jack doesn't smile back, but he looks at Ianto with dark, sad eyes and nods, just once.
"Ianto."
The apartment is nearly bare, stripped of almost everything that could possibly hold memories of Ianto's old life, so they sit on the floor under the living room window, eating out of the takeout cartons.
It's Jack who breaks the silence first, dropping his chopsticks into his lemon chicken and glancing around the all but empty room. He doesn't look at Ianto. "Spring cleaning?"
Ianto snorts, but he doesn't look up, either. "A new start, actually. Moving on."
A little bit of the tension eases out of Jack's shoulders, escaping like the sigh that he won't give. "Should I have you on some sort of suicide watch?"
It's blunt, but that's Jack. Ianto smiles again, wry and tired and a little weary. "No, don't bother. I'm surviving."
Jack's hand closes around his wrist, not tight but certainly there, and Ianto looks up from his lo mein. Their eyes meet for the first time since Jack handed out his mandate of suspension instead of death.
They stare at each other for a moment, a thousand things in the silence, but all of it unspoken, never to be uttered. Then Jack takes a deep breath, nods once, and lets go.
Ianto returns to his food, pretending that he can't still feel the Captain's grip like a band of fire on his arm.
III. No! I am not Prince Hamlet, nor was meant to be
It continues when Ianto finds Jack alone in his office, long after the others, silent in their fury and horror, have retreated to their homes, and left the Captain to face his demons by himself. Ianto feels it in the softening of his heart, the ache at seeing Jack slumped back in his chair, a nearly-empty bottle of whisky at his elbow, a faded photograph dangling from his fingertips.
Ianto pauses in the doorway, grip tightening on the team's incident reports, and studies Jack for a moment before turning on his heel and heading for the kitchen.
He finds it funny, in a depressingly morbid sort of way, that the rest of the team can do this to Jack. They were all so certain that Jasmine could be saved, that it wasn't worth the lives of every living soul to surrender one little girl. And yet, just over a month ago, they had condemned Ianto, looked at him with horror and a bit of disgust, for doing the same. Jasmine had been a stranger to them, an unknown. Ianto had loved Lisa with all his heart, had wanted to marry her and live beside her until they died of old age, but somehow their own indignation is worth more than his lost love.
The blender buzzes to a stop, and Ianto pours the contents into a tall glass, puts it, some vitamin C tablets, and a glass of water on a tray, and heads back upstairs.
The photograph is gone when he steps into Jack's office, but the Captain looks up at him with sharp, weary, wary eyes, and his mouth twists in a half-smirk. "I know looking after monsters is in your job description, Ianto," he says dryly, slouching back in his chair, "but it's after hours. You can go home now."
"Is it ever really after hours at Torchwood?" Ianto asks philosophically. He moves Jack's whiskey bottle and settles the tray on the desk. "Drink that, and take the pills. It will help make your hangover more manageable."
Jack eyes the pale, frothy contents of the glass with clear trepidation. "Welsh hangover cure?"
"A true Welshman can drink anyone under the table without a care in the world. We don't need hangover cures. It's a banana milkshake. Lots of—"
"Potassium," Jack finishes with a wan, somewhat crooked smile. "Yeah, I…had a friend who swore by them. Good for hangovers?"
"The best, sir." Uncertain as to what comes next—because this isn't in the script, this isn't normal or usual or anything that's ever really been between them before—Ianto turns to the papers littering Jack's desk, neatening them quickly. "Tomorrow I'll make you my famous hangover tea, and then you might even feel marginally human again." The wary look is back, so Ianto elaborates, "Lime flowers, lavender, rosemary, and peppermint. Believe me, it will help."
There's a speculative look on Jack's face, as though he's just now seeing a new side of Ianto that he'd never contemplated before—not that that's hard; Ianto knows just how forgettable he can make himself, when he tries, and he'd been trying so hard when Lisa was—
Well.
"First shoplifting and now drinking binges? Ianto, I'm shocked."
Ianto rolls his eyes. "It was uni, sir. Of course I drank. I don't know what kind of bore you imagine me to be—"
"Not at all, I'm sure you're very—"
"But I've been told that I'm quite the amusing drunk."
Jack angles a brow at him (Ianto hasn't the heart to tell him he's bollocks at it, makes him look deranged) and grins, wicked and wanton. "So are we talking dirty jokes amusing, or—?"
It's only long practice at facing friends after a night out drinking that allows Ianto to answer with a straight face. "Try a striptease on the table, sir, and you might be in the ballpark."
The Captain looks utterly delighted, and while he's distracted, Ianto removes the whisky bottle from sight.
When Ianto had been at his lowest, Jack had arrived with a silent offer of companionship and dinner. Now, Ianto's returning the favor with a hangover cure and some mortifying stories.
He's paying a debt.
No need to look any deeper into it than that.
IV. I know the voices dying with a dying fall
They take the next step when Ianto's nightmares of Cybermen and Lisa slowly strangling him are just starting to fade, and the others have only just begun speaking to Jack once more. Jack still keeps his distance from all of them except Ianto, and Ianto has found himself in the awkward position of suddenly being in great demand, if only as a means by which to pass things on to Jack.
He's tempted to tell them to go see the Captain themselves, but his fragile truce with Jack is too new for that, so he holds his peace, takes the reports and forms, and rolls his eyes where they can't see.
It's through chance that he comes to the report about swimmers drowning in the bay, and even more of a chance that Detective Swanson calls about the possibility of another while he has the file in front of him.
It's sheer bad luck that Gwen and Owen are in Newport, and Tosh is in Glasgow taking care of a tech problem for Archie at Torchwood Two, and Jack is on his way back from London and attending a meeting with UNIT.
Ianto has had basic training in case he's ever pulled out into the field, but he's in no way a field agent. He's general support, which in the real world translates to "glorified butler." The position is nothing to be ashamed of—Ianto has seen what his absence does to the place, and it's far from pretty—but right now, lives are at stake.
His talents don't amount to much, in the face of that, but all he can do is try.
Ianto calls Jack, leaves a message on his phone, does the same with Gwen and Owen, and then straps on a gun and grimly heads out.
(Jack calls him, frantic, twenty-seven and a half minutes after Ianto leaves, but Ianto doesn't hear his cell. He's already out on the water.)
*.~.*.~.*
It seems there are mermaids in Cardiff Bay, Ianto thinks grimly, kicking towards the surface so aching far above him. He reaches for it, arrows his body and thinks the lightest, most buoyant thoughts he can, but it's no use.
A long-fingered hand, the same temperature as the freezing water around them, closes around his ankle and pulls him back down.
It's human nature to look back at his captor, and Ianto does so automatically, though he already knows what he'll see. Long, drifting seaweed hair, green and green-black and reddish-brown in equal measure, spins out around a face that is narrow and sharp, with skin the color of a long-drowned corpse. It—because this creature is most certainly not a maid, and Ianto would bet a year of pay that it's some kind of alien—grins at him, if such a horribly expression can be called a grin. Ianto struggles away from those jagged shark teeth, a double row of them, and kicks at the clawed hand holding him. The thing ignores his weakening resistance, pulling him down into the darkness of the deeper waters as his lungs begin to burn.
Far above, a dark shape moves away—the boat Ianto came in, hopefully with the creatures' former victim aboard—and the burn becomes one of triumph. Ianto has done his duty, has saved another life to make up for the two Lisa took. It doesn't matter that his vision is wavering, or that he's bleeding from a long gash in his arm. It's nothing that his lungs are aching, his throat as tight as panic and his brain on an endless loop of Jack, Jack knows I'm here, he'll come for me, ohgodhewon'tI'lldiealone.
One life, and that's good. That's very good.
The darkness closes in completely, and Ianto's last thought is of Jack, and how he wants to tell the Captain something.
Whatever the words are, they're lost before they can rise to his lips, and then Ianto knows nothing at all.
V. Oh, do not ask, "What is it?"
It comes into being on a cold, rocky shoreline, with just the two of them as witnesses.
Ianto chokes and coughs back to awareness, feeling like a Hoix has kicked him in the chest, and promptly rolls onto his side and gags on seawater.
There are hands on his shoulders, on his arms, pulling him upright and into a crushing embrace. The smell of spice and citrus is in his nose, unmistakable, and Ianto wheezes out an incredulous, thankful "Jack," against the Captain's waterlogged shirt collar.
"Ianto," Jack breathes in relief. "God, Ianto, never do that to me again. I thought the Mer had drowned you."
Ianto pulls back enough to take in the fact that Jack is just as wet as he is, and they're on the rocky shore a bit past where Ianto had first seen the young woman being pulled under.
"Sorry," he offers with a crooked smile. "I couldn't help myself. She was going to drown."
"So were you," Jack returns dryly, and rises smoothly to his feet. "Come on, Owen's meeting us at the Hub. I want him to take a look at you."
Before he takes the Captain's proffered hand, Ianto glances back towards the bay. There's a dead thing floating out there, corpse-pale with seaweed hair, and he has to look away as a nearly hysterical laugh bubbles in his throat.
He doesn't even realize that he's whispering something under his breath until Jack leans in with a frown and asks, "What?"
"We have lingered in the chambers of the sea," Ianto recites, trying to tamp down the hysteria that is building, "By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown, till human voices wake us, and we drown."
Jack looks at him, and the expression on his face is not exasperation, or worry, or amusement, or disgust—not even a mixture of those. It's fond, and a little sad, but mostly warm.
And relieved. So very, very relieved.
Ianto tries not to find that too flattering.
"Oh, Ianto," Jack murmurs, and—careful of Ianto's aching ribs—drags him into another crushing hug.
It takes a moment, but Ianto returns it with all he is, clinging to Jack as the wind grows colder and their clothes threaten to freeze around them.
And this…this is what has been building for so long.
This, Ianto thinks, and it's not good, it's a thousand miles from perfect, and they're both of them so beautifully broken, but it doesn't matter right now.
This, Ianto thinks, burying his face in Jack's collar.