Rating: T-ish

Warnings: Extreme angst.

Fandom: Torchwood

Pairings: Jack/Ianto (unrequited).

Premise: AU. Jack is Rhiannon's childhood friend, and Ianto has been in love with him for years. (Or, five times Jack walked away, and one time he stayed.)

Disclaimer: I don't hold the copyrights, I didn't create them, and I make no profit from this.


1.

They're in the meadow behind their school the first time it happens, still carrying their book bags and giddy with the freedom of the summer holidays. Ianto trails after the older children, far more weighted down by his many books and Rhiannon's bag. Owen and Rhiannon run ahead, heading for the middle of the field, and Jack makes to follow them, only to pause and shift his gaze to something Ianto hadn't noticed.

"Someday," Jack says, looking up at the contrail drifting lazily through the sky, and the distant aeroplane making it, "that's going to be me. I'm going to fly around the whole world and never have to land at all."

Ianto is four years younger than him, ten to Jack's fourteen, but eminently more sensible all the same. "That would be hard," he points out, dropping Rhiannon's bag with a soft huff of relief. "Why not just land? You can get fuel and food and stuff. And then you can see me." Because Jack is bright and bold and beautiful, the most important thing in Ianto's world, and Ianto worships him with painful transparency.

Not that Jack notices, because Jack never notices people so far beneath his range of interests. He has even less concern for those so firmly grounded in reality, so distressingly practical, as Ianto already is. He wants friends who hear his dreams and laugh along with him, who skive off the last half of their classes to go down to the shops and buy model planes with him. Friends who cheer him on, or shoot him down with a kind of envy on their faces that is even better than support. Friends who bring their new remote-controlled plane and hide it in their locker all day long, just to have quicker access when the final bell rings and they're done with school.

Friends who ignore the fact that Jack doesn't have parents, that his guardian is never home and he's always on his own, and don't ask questions he doesn't want to answer.

Ianto isn't one of those friends. He's the one who knows everything about a subject and can point out all the flaws in a plan, who catches them when they shouldn't be caught and tags along when he isn't wanted. He's Rhiannon's little brother, so they have to be at least a little nice or risk her wrath, but he's her little brother and she's saddled with him while their father works and their mother is in Providence Park after her latest bout of suicidal depression. It isn't as much protection from being left behind as it probably should be.

Ianto also asks the questions no one else will. Nobody thanks him for it, least of all Jack.

And Jack, at fourteen, is far too smart to be lectured by Rhiannon's little brother. He ignores Ianto and runs after Owen and Rhiannon and their new remote-control plane, laughing and happy and carefree.

He dreams of being a pilot, of flying off to distant places and meeting strange people.

Ianto, all of ten, already knows that Jack will do it. He'll be a pilot and go to those places and meet those people. They'll love him, and he'll love them, because everyone loves Jack and Jack loves everyone.

Maybe not his friend's younger brother, but everyone else, at least.

Ianto might only be ten years old, but that thought is already enough to make something funny in his chest ache and throb. He presses his hand against it, feels the steady flutter of his own heartbeat, and then picks up Rhiannon's bag.

He follows Jack, because he always follows Jack, even if Jack has never once looked back and seen him there.

He'll keep on doing it, too, right up until the day he dies.

That much he's sure of.


2.

The second time, Ianto has just turned fifteen, and Jack is nineteen and invincible and gorgeous and knows everything.

He's also leaving, and that hurts so much Ianto can hardly breathe for the pain.

Ianto spends the week before Jack's departure to flight school skulking around the house and schoolyard, avoiding everywhere he normally frequents in case Jack comes looking for him in order to say goodbye. At fifteen, Ianto's crush is no more manageable than it was at ten, and the five years in between have only strengthened it. Not that Jack has noticed.

(He never notices those so far beneath his level of interest, Ianto thinks bitterly.)

The adoration is still painful, and painfully obvious to everyone but Jack. Rhiannon has started giving him pitying looks and careful offers of "talking," though Ianto usually flees quickly after either. Owen just taunts him, same as ever, though he's not quite cruel enough to let Jack overhear anything. He's more like an older brother, hiding Ianto's secrets while teasing him mercilessly about them. Ianto might mind more, except that Owen was the one to find him and take him to the hospital after he broke his leg.

(He'd told Rhiannon that Tad was pushing him on the swings, and Tad let go too soon. She told him he hadn't held on tight enough, before Owen barreled in and interrupted the odd double conversation they were having.

Ianto's never been able to tell of Owen knows the truth, though. He partway suspects that he understands. Owen knows what drunken parents are like, because they're probably the most fucked-up bunch of friends in Cardiff.)

But Jack is leaving, and there's little chance he'll ever come back once he does, because who would want to come here when the world is at their fingertips? What on earth does Jack have to draw him back here?

Nothing, of course.

But oh, how Ianto wishes that he could be something.

Finally, the day before Jack is scheduled to leave, Ianto gathers himself and waits for Jack on the corner by the bank (because Wednesdays are when his guardian's weekly cheques come, and Jack always deposits them immediately). Perhaps it's cowardly, especially when Jack is going to have dinner at Ianto's house tonight, but he won't be able to face Jack on any terms but his own. When Rhiannon is there, when Owen and Suzie and everyone else is crowded around and calling out congratulations, Ianto will lose his nerve.

And he can't, not today, when this is his last chance to say anything at all before Jack is gone.

There's no time for second thoughts. Jack is already sweeping down the street, nearly strutting, a grin on his face. It takes Ianto's breath away to see him so happy, and it hurts to know that this happiness comes only from the fact that he's leaving.

But Ianto can't be bitter, not really. Jack is following his dream.

And Ianto is just the kind of hopeless fool to love him for it.

Feeling painfully awkward, almost to the point of mortification, Ianto steps away from the wall of the bank and reaches out to snag Jack's coat. Jack turns—not surprised, never surprised by anything Ianto does, like he's not important enough to form opinions about, and god does that hurt—and directs that grin at him instead of the world at large.

"Hey, Yan," he says, because he's never said Ianto's name the right way. (Ianto just finds it endearing, though he should probably be insulted.) "What's up?"

Faced with Jack's warm, easy charm, Ianto feels every inch of the four years between them. Sucking in a quick breath for courage, he looks up several inches to meet Jack's eyes, swallows, and blurts out, "I know you're leaving, but are you coming back? To stay?"

There's a long moment of frozen silence. Then a look that Ianto's never seen on Jack's face before crosses his features like a warning flare. "Not if I can help it," Jack says sharply, coldly, and he's gone, vanished into the bank with equally sharp, cold steps.

Ianto's stomach, full of ice, sinks down around his knees somewhere. Blankly, he catalogues the emotions he'd recognized in Jack's expression.

Anger.

Impatience.

Annoyance.

Disgust.

That's all the answer Ianto needs, really. There's nothing more to be said.


Because there don't need to be any more words between them, Ianto avoids Jack at the congratulatory-cum-goodbye party, keeping to the corners and skulking in the cover of the shadows as he watches Jack.

Jack, who is always beautiful and kind and personable, who laughs and smiles more than anyone else who Ianto knows.

Jack, who wants to leave this place more than he wants anything else in the whole world.

Ianto knows the feeling, can sympathize. He's aware that most would consider him an angsty teenager, and write off his feelings of isolation and rejection as typical of a boy his age, but Ianto also knows there's more to it than that.

He's seen what he wants most turn away from him. Right now, at this very moment, he watches it wave goodbye and saunter out the door into the night, duffle bag under one arm and vintage RAF greatcoat—a gift they all pooled their money to buy—draped over broad shoulders.

Jack doesn't look back.

Ianto decides, then and there, that he will not give Jack the chance to do the same thing again.


The next day, Jack is gone, and Ianto is sixteen. He packs his most useful belongings, clears out his bank accounts, and buys a bus ticket to London.

There's a hostel that will take him, a job opening at a local library, and enough distance to put Jack firmly behind him.

(He hopes so, at least, even knowing that it's more than likely in vain.)


3.

But, despite all of Ianto's convictions, all of his decisions, he can't control fate.

For four years and three months and some-odd days (because Ianto isn't about to admit he's so desperate that he knows the count right down to the hour and minutes level), Ianto manages to be a normal person. He works a steady job and takes night classes to finish school, takes his A-levels and then more night classes for a degree and copes with having his heart broken more or less by accident. And if he doesn't think about Jack bloody Harkness every second of those four years, it's only because he's usually exhausted to the point where he can't think at all.

But then the Head Archivist at the Torchwood Institute, where he works in the research library, notices his work ethic and decides Ianto would be best served in a place that challenges him, and has him transferred to a position as Researcher with a mobile science team.

And out of all the bloody people in the world, it's Jack Harkness who's their assigned pilot.

Really, when Ianto thinks about it, it's only natural. The Torchwood Institute is a major mostly-not-for-profit organization that possibly, depending on which Internet rumors one listens to, may or may not run the entire world from a shadow position. They have lots of money that comes from their patents, thousands of scientists and doctors studying everything imaginable in every corner of the world, and a fleet of private jets to get anywhere they're needed. There was always a high possibility that if Jack didn't go commercial or military with his flying, he'd end up at Torchwood.

It's just Ianto's bad luck to be assigned to his plane.

The third time happens something like this:

"Told you I'd set her down safely," Jack says, incredibly white teeth flashing in a broad grin.

Ianto is still a little green from the turbulence coming in, which is a good buffer from Jack's gorgeousness and charm, though both are usually overwhelming. So he settles for giving Jack a dark look and taking another gulp of seltzer water to settle his rebelling stomach.

(Ianto still loves Jack like someone who's lived in darkness all their life loves light; Jack still doesn't notice.)