11.15
Blanket tucked beneath his arm, Ianto followed Jack into the darkness and toward the coast. Jack had asked if he could drive, as he'd had a specific destination in mind and hadn't wanted to spoil it. Ianto had reluctantly handed Jack his car keys and enjoyed the thirty-minute drive to Whitmore Bay. They laughed about the movie, poking fun at the absurdity of the plot compared to the reality of their jobs. Though it was late, there were still quite a few people out on the boardwalk when they arrived, so Jack led Ianto off the path toward one of the grassy hills overlooking the beach.
Fortunately, they were alone. Ianto thought for sure that they would run into scores of teenagers snogging and fumbling about on the grass. Jack took the blanket and shook it out, throwing himself down, kicking off his shoes, and motioning Ianto to join him. He sat down carefully, making sure Jack saw his raised eyebrow and skeptical smile.
"Is there where you usually come on the pull?" he asked lightly. Jack laughed as he laid back and stared up at the sky, hands behind his head.
"Nope, first time," he murmured. "And I'm not on the pull." When Ianto didn't reply, Jack propped himself up on his elbows and grinned. "I do think about other things besides sex, you know," he said. He patted the blanket closer beside him. "Join me. Please."
Ianto laid down next to Jack, close but not touching, and stared at the starry sky. It occurred to him that Jack had been up there, roaming those very stars, only two weeks ago. And now he was back, lying on a grassy hill by the beach with Ianto. Before Jack said anything, Ianto took a deep breath and spoke.
"Why did you really come back, Jack?" he asked quietly, making sure to keep any sense of accusation out of his voice. If he expected Jack to grow tense or sigh with frustration, he was surprised; Jack did neither and spoke evenly.
"I thought we talked about this already," he said.
"A bit," said Ianto, keeping his eyes on the stars. "We never quite finished, though."
Jack was quiet for a long moment. "Why is it so important to you?" he asked. "To know?"
Closing his eyes, Ianto took another breath and leapt. Jack had the disarming habit of answering a question with a question, but if Ianto was hoping for any sort of honesty and openness from Jack, which was the only way anything between them would work this time, perhaps Ianto had to offer it in return. "I know so much yet so little about you, Jack. I know how you like your coffee, your scotch, even a blowjob, but I don't know where you're from or what your life was like before you came here. I don't know when you came here or why." Another deep breath. "And none of us really know why you left, so trying to understand why you came back is even harder."
He paused, curious to see if Jack would offer any answers, then continued when the other man stayed silent.
"I look up there, at the stars," he raised his arm and waved it, encompassing the dark sky above them, "and know your home is somewhere out there. Your heart is out there, Jack. You belong among the stars." He let his hand fall back to behind his head and sighed. "I guess I don't understand why you would come back here, to us, when you had all that to live for instead."
Jack turned on his side to face Ianto, tapping him on the shoulder to get Ianto to look at him. Propped up on one elbow, Jack ran his free hand over Ianto's face, smiling sadly.
"I traveled with the Doctor, a long time ago. And I waited even longer to meet him again," he said. "Over 130 years, actually." Ianto couldn't help inhaling in surprise. He'd known Jack was older than he looked, but he'd never suspected Jack was that old, even with the odd bits and pieces of evidence he'd come across in the archives. Jack laughed quietly at Ianto's reaction.
"I know—I look good for my age, don't I? I came here in 1869, hoping I'd find the Doctor. He refuels his ship using energy from the Rift. I figured if I came to Cardiff and waited, eventually I would run into him." Jack sighed and flopped over onto his back again. Ianto kept watching him from where he was now leaning on his elbow.
"Unfortunately, it took until just over four months ago for me to run into a version of him from the right timeline—the one who had already met me and abandoned me on a gamestation in the future."
"Abandoned you?" Ianto asked. His voice was quiet, but he heard the sharp tone. The Doctor had abandoned Jack in the future? What kind of man was this Doctor, to earn such loyalty yet treat someone so poorly?
"I told myself he thought that I was dead," Jack whispered, his eyes falling shut. "Turns out he knew I wasn't and left anyway."
"Oh, Jack," Ianto murmured, shaking his head. Of course there was more to the story, but already Ianto couldn't even begin to imagine how heartbreaking it was. He braced himself as Jack continued.
"I ended up stuck in 1869. And I do mean stuck because this," he tapped his wrist strap, "shorted out as soon as I arrived. But I blended in and lived as best as I could in that time, although I started to notice that I wasn't aging. About twenty some years later, I was shot. And I was dead, really dead, only I came back to life in the morgue. After it happened a few more times, I realized it wasn't going to stick. I couldn't die."
Ianto had no idea how to respond, what to say. He wanted to reach out to Jack, reassure him, but it was decades ago, what could he say? He couldn't relate, he could barely wrap his mind around the fact that Jack had been living on Earth for over a century, unable to die. Jack glanced up with uncertain eyes, as if seeking validation in what he was saying, or permission to continue his bleak story. Ianto went with his gut instinct, leaned forward, and kissed Jack lightly on the lips, a brief touch of reassurance and acceptance. The smile he received in return was blinding not in its charm and personality, but in its relief and gratitude.
"What did you do then?" he asked, hoping the question didn't derail Jack's openness.
"Well, I still needed to find the Doctor, because I wanted answers as much as a way out of the nineteenth century and back to my own time. But the nineteenth rolled into the twentieth, and the twentieth rolled into the twenty-first, and still no Doctor."
Ianto frowned, because something didn't make sense. "But there are all sorts of references to the Doctor in the Torchwood London archives. Christmas was practically a regular visit for him."
Jack laughed, a bittersweet sound followed by a crooked smile. "Some of those weren't the right Doctor. A lot of them I just missed. I stayed close to Cardiff most of the time, hoping he'd be back to refuel. Then he'd end up in London, but was always gone by the time I heard about it and got there. Or he'd be in Cardiff while I was away. And don't get me started on the time my past self showed up with him in Cardiff, still mortal, and I had to lockdown the base so no one saw me."
"Time travel," Ianto murmured, trying to imagine such a situation while wondering what Jack had been like so long ago.
"I told you the movie had it wrong." This time Jack's laugh was more genuine. After a moment he stopped and glanced at Ianto before going on. "But then he showed up on the Plass four months ago, and I wanted to say something, to say goodbye, but there wasn't any time. I had to find the answers I needed. I barely made it as it was."
"But you did." Jack nodded. "And you traveled with him." Another nod. Ianto wanted to ask whether Jack had found his answers, but that question seemed more personal than anything else he had asked so far, and the one thing Ianto knew was that if he pushed too hard, Jack would likely retreat. Instead, he continued with what he had started. "Why aren't you still out there, traveling through time and space?"
Jack was silent for a long time. He had said so much already that Ianto worried Jack might not be willing to share anymore. And then one of those serendipitous insights he sometimes experienced prompted Ianto to ask a different question.
"How long were you gone for, Jack?" Blue eyes flashed in surprise. "Sometimes you look at something differently," Ianto said. "Like you can't believe it's still there. And sometimes you just look sad, as if you missed something while you were gone. You were on a time machine. How long was it for you?"
Jack turned away and let his eyes slip closed, but Ianto was relieved to see his face relax, even a small smile touch his lips as he replied. "You know everything, don't you?"
"I try my best," Ianto replied, chuckling quietly, his heart leaping when Jack joined him.
"It was a year," Jack finally answered, but his voice was weary. "A very long, very difficult year. I tried to get back, I really did…but I couldn't."
Ianto reached for Jack's hand and held it tight, as much to support Jack as to ground himself. An entire year. No wonder Jack was different. And it had been a difficult year as well, which explained so much without revealing anything more. Ianto realized at that moment that he did not need to know the rest of Jack's story; he just wanted Jack to be happy. "But you survived, however difficult it was."
"I always survive." The bitterness had returned to Jack's voice.
"You came back," Ianto said. When Jack didn't respond, he added softly, "And I'm glad you did."
Jack propped himself up again, staring into Ianto's face with a look of both fear and disbelief. "You are? Even after I left without saying anything?"
"Well, a post-it note would have been nice." He hoped Jack picked up on the teasing tone in his voice. "Maybe a phone call from Alpha Centauri."
Jack hung his head, eyes closing against some sort of difficult memory. "I wasn't anywhere near Alpha Centauri. And I didn't have a phone." He laid down again with a sigh.
Ianto watched him, sensing Jack's suffering and sorrow, and noting all the other subtle differences he'd picked up on since Jack's return. It was hard to watch the man lying across from him, knowing that Jack was in pain and that there was nothing Ianto could do about it except be there when Jack was ready to tell him more.
They were silent for a while, both wrapped up in their own thoughts. A part of Ianto wanted to keep talking, but he had his answer, however vague it was. Jack had been gone for an entire year, and it had not been a good year. Something bad had happened to him, and that had brought him back to Cardiff. Having gone through his own fair share of traumatic experiences in the past year, Ianto could understand that desire for familiarity and safety. He accepted Jack's return and could even begin to believe in the sincerity of Jack's words. It would still take time to truly trust that Jack was back with them and staying, but Ianto felt like it was a beginning, at least. For the first time that night, he allowed himself to relax completely and laid back down, a smile tugging at his lips as he stared at the sky.
Jack had left the stars behind to come home.
Without warning, the object of his thoughts was hovering right above him, gazing down into his eyes. "What're you thinking about?" Jack asked. "You're not upset, are you? About some of the things I said?"
Ianto was filled with a rush of affection for the man. He reached up, placed his hand behind Jack's head and tugged him down until their lips were almost touching, letting his fingers drift over the back of Jack's neck.
"Of course not. Thank you for telling me. I know it wasn't easy."
"I'd like it to be," Jack murmured, and Ianto swallowed at the implications, whatever they might be. He took a deep breath.
"I was thinking that this has been a wonderful night. Romantic, even. Thank you, Jack."
Jack eyes widened as Ianto pulled him forward the rest of the way and kissed him. It started slow at first, a hesitant brush of lips as he tried to keep in check the rush of feelings Jack's closeness brought forth, particularly the strong attraction they had shared since meeting. Ianto did not want to rush things; they had done that already, before Jack had left. He wanted to do things differently this time and sensed that Jack did as well. But when Jack made a soft sound, almost a whimper, and his tongue tentatively sought entrance past Ianto's lips, Ianto knew that neither of them would be able to hold back.
Ianto opened himself to the kiss, all the pent-up and buried passion of the past four months bursting forth as he eagerly claimed Jack's mouth, their tongues battling for dominance as they fought to explore one another and rediscover all they had missed during Jack's absence. Ianto's other hand came up to Jack's face, and then both trailed slowly down the man's back to wrap around his waist. Jack's hand began running up and down Ianto's chest, cupping his chin, then trailing through his hair and down along his side to his hips. This time it was Ianto who groaned, and he felt Jack grin against him. Yet if he expected Jack to make some type of innuendo-laden quip, he was surprised.
"I missed this," Jack murmured, pulling away from Ianto's lips to look at him with such heartfelt sincerity that Ianto felt his breath catch. "I missed you."
Dimly aware that he was, in fact, now snogging like a teenager, Ianto threw caution to the wind and went with it. They were alone on the beach, they'd had the beginning of a proper talk about Jack's absence, and he had to admit that it was sort of romantic. In a strange, only-with-Jack kind of way that exhilarated him as much as it scared him. There were times he would do anything for Jack.
"I missed you, too," Ianto returned, just as softly. With another grin, Jack threw his legs over Ianto's hips and practically attacked him with heated kisses. He could feel Jack's arousal, and rubbed his own against the man above him. It had been so long since he had experienced this reckless feeling that he wanted to relish in it, and he sensed that Jack did as well. They needed this. They had always connected best physically. To reconnect after Jack's absence, maybe that's what they needed as much as talking.
Ianto reached for the front of Jack's trousers, thrilled with the gasp of surprise his forwardness elicited from Jack. Unfortunately, before he could do any more than tug down the zipper, they were interrupted by a torch shining brightly in their faces. Ianto squinted against the sudden light while Jack let his head fall with a groan.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, stealing one last kiss from Ianto before a cough sounded above them.
"All right, that's enough, boys," growled a thick Welsh voice. "You're a bit old for this, don't you think?"
Ianto snorted as he sat up and straightened his clothing. "That's what I said." He was embarrassed…but not as much as he might have been. It was an odd feeling, but then, sometimes Jack had that effect on him.
"And I told him age should never stop a man from getting what he wants," Jack offered as he rolled off Ianto and zipped up his trousers.
"Get what you want at home. Or get a room. This is a public beach." The police officer shook his head. "I should ticket you for indecency."
Jack stood, hands on his hips. "Yes, well, don't bother. We're Torchwood and we're on a stakeout."
The copper looked skeptical. "A stakeout? You expect me to believe that?"
Ianto let his head fall to his knees. Now he was embarrassed. Jack held his ground, though, leaning closer to the police officer.
"It's probably the most boring stakeout I've ever been on," he said, as if sharing a secret. "But with a gorgeous Welshman. I can't help it if things…happen." He winked and offered his trademark blinding grin to the officer.
The man didn't seem to know what to do with Jack. He stepped backward and stuttered a bit. "Yes, well…er…just make sure it doesn't happen again, yeah? Save the shag for after work."
"Aye aye, captain," Jack replied. "Sound advice from Cardiff's finest."
The police officer just stared at Jack a bit longer before shaking his head. "What were you staking out, anyway?"
"The stars," Jack replied. The man opened his mouth, seemed to think better of it, then walked away, still shaking his head. Ianto was fairly certain he heard, "Bloody Torchwood" under the copper's breath.
"Well, getting arrested would have been quite romantic," Ianto offered, standing next to Jack and watching the retreating back of the police officer. "But I'm glad we don't have to call Tosh to bail us out."
Jack turned toward him and grinned. "Would have been a hell of a first date," he said.
"Nope," said Ianto, leaning down to pick up the blanket. Jack grabbed the other corners and they folded it together. "I don't do jail time until at least the third date."
Jack threw back his head and laughed, then pulled on the blanket, tugging Ianto close to him.
"You're amazing, you know that, right?" he murmured, gazing intently into Ianto's eyes. Ianto raised an eyebrow and tried to deflect the compliment, uncomfortable with the intensity of the moment.
"Of course," he said. "All part of my secret plan."
Jack quirked an eyebrow. "What plan is that?"
"Wouldn't be secret if I told you," Ianto countered. He winked, Jack growled, and with a grin Ianto leaned forward for a quick but passionate kiss. As he made to turn around, Jack took his hand and squeezed it.
"This is why I came back," he said. "This."
Ianto nodded, unable to speak as his throat unexpectedly grew tight with emotion, and together they walked silently back to where they had parked, hand in hand. This time as he gazed up at the stars, Ianto smiled. Jack might go back to the stars someday, but for now he was there, on a date with Ianto, walking hand in hand under those same stars together.
Author's Note:
Can't you just totally see these two grown men snogging on a blanket only to get caught by a copper? And wouldn't Jack totally pull the Torchwood card? Well, I could see it! I suppose I could end it here, but the date really isn't over. I don't think the next part will be as serious, though. And give me some extra time, I'm trying to finish Sacrifice. Thank you so much for reading!