Rating: G
Warnings: None.
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairings: Jack/Ianto.
Premise: Follows lapis lazuli, so witch!Ianto AU.
Disclaimer: I don't hold the copyrights, I didn't create them, and I make no profit from this.
Jack has been to Ianto's house before, but never much beyond the bedroom and the kitchen; before, theirs was a relationship that existed almost entirely between the sheets.
It's high time that changes, though.
This time, Jack actually looks around as he makes his way through the front hall of the small house, sunk into the edge of Coed-y-Felin Woods like a wary, wild thing in the face of Cardiff's sprawl. It's a house that is very much Ianto's, and very much lived in, for all he has a quiet, sterile apartment a few minutes' walk from the Plass. Jack knows without asking that the apartment was bought more for Lisa, who loved the city, than for Ianto, who is a wary, wild thing himself and far more suited to these poorly-tamed woods. The house is small but open, full of light and mirrors and clean, functional furniture that is positioned so cleverly it makes each space seem larger than it is. Everything is tidy, but not freakishly so, and there are plants everywhere, splashes of green and gold and purple and white that make everything else come alive.
Jack skirts the living room and the hallway he knows leads back to the bedroom, bathroom, and guest room, and passes through the kitchen, full of the smells of something rich with tomatoes and wine. The windows are open to the afternoon breeze, and the back door stands ajar. From outside there comes the soft, muffled rustle of bare footsteps on grass, smooth and gliding, and Jack steps out onto the porch to see Ianto in the center of the yard, bare-chested and breathing deeply, but evenly, with a narrow, elegant sword in one hand. It's a sight that stops Jack's breath in his chest, even before Ianto launches into a series of graceful, flowing turns and lunges, the blade a swift shimmer of silver before him, because Jack has seen so much of Ianto since their return from the Nevermore. He's seen sides to the quiet Welshman that he had never previously thought existed, and each new facet is a bright and shining thing in the tapestry of uncertainty and guarded expectation that has existed since the former Witch-King came and whisked them all away into a world Jack's senses tell him shouldn't exist.
This Ianto, here and now, is entirely new, and eminently desirable. He is elegant in all things, formidable always, but with a sword in his hand Ianto seems to lose a bit of his hard-won veneer of urbanity, seems to gain just a trace of the wildness that Jack saw when their quiet, wry butler faced down a mad warlock with nothing but a few scribbles and some pretty words.
Ianto is a man of refinement and reserve, right up until the moment that he isn't. There's a power flowing through his veins that Jack can't comprehend, something primal and fierce. When he looks—really, truly looks without fearing what he'll see—Jack can make out the witch trapped beneath the human skin, can see the lord of an ancient house locked inside a modern man's form. And now, like this, with sweat beading on his pale skin and a winter river's smooth, raging power in ever-graceful motion, what is usually shut away has come to the surface.
A final lunge and parry, a final turn and block, and then Ianto steps back, bringing the sword up before him and then flicking it out to the side in an oddly formal movement, like a dueler's salute. He holds there for a moment, breathing hard, and then turns to offer Jack a faint half-smile.
"Captain," he says, stooping to reclaim a simple leather sheath from the grass and then sliding the sword away. "Sorry. Talia thinks I'm getting rusty."
Jack has met Talia twice now, and he has a sneaking suspicion that whatever she thinks, regardless of factuality, becomes truth. She's like Rose…if Rose went and chemically bonded herself with a mother dragon.
But Talia is also the closest thing to a mother that Ianto's ever mentioned, so Jack very firmly shuts that remark away and instead drawls, "Only practicing with a sword, Ianto? What if your magic gets sloppy?"
He grins to show it's a joke, but judging by the raised brow he's getting, Ianto isn't impressed. Indeed, with a faint narrowing of his eyes, Ianto raises one hand and traces a circle in the air in silver light, then inscribes a ring of glowing symbols into the center. It hovers there for a moment, glittering like sun-struck glass and lightning, and then Ianto flicks his hand up, eyes falling on a tall, swaying sunflower near the edge of the grass.
"Shut tight the seven gates," he intones, and each word ripples in the air. "Beyond the Eighth Sea, fall to pieces."
For a moment it seems like there's no change. Then the circle winks out of existence, and with a ringing hum that sets Jack's teeth on edge, four walls of light shimmer into being around the sunflower, settle, and then slam inward as though sucked into a black hole.
When they vanish, there isn't even ash left within.