So it was going to be one of those days.
Through the gaps between the curtains and curtain rod, Ianto could see a light sky—not sunny and yet too bright—and the sprinkling of snow. The curtain itself shivered in a slight breeze. That was right. They had cracked open the windows several days ago to accommodate the coming spring.
Now, Ianto wanted to bury his face in the pillow and hide from the chill. If he burrowed under the blankets, he wouldn't have to deal with the cold; and the window would stay open and keep letting the air in.
He swallowed and weighed the pros and cons.
Pros: the window would close, it would be warm, and he would be able to keep sleeping.
Cons: he didn't think he could get up.
Ianto turned into the pillow, face titled just enough to breathe the too-crisp air, and tried to keep sleeping.
He dozed in and out of awareness, his toes cold and seeking out Jack's calves, his shoulders hunching up to his ears to warm his neck where the blanket slid down. One hand was under his cheek, fingers twitching—he'd heard once that all you needed to do to fall asleep was lie still for fifteen minutes, but the moment he tried, he needed to move. Either a leg was itchy or a hand was restless, or the position wasn't right, the mattress digging into his back or the pillow not firm enough.
It wasn't right now, either. The duvet was no longer his thick winter one and didn't do enough against the sudden snow. It was April! There wasn't supposed to be snow!
Ianto knew that the irate thoughts running too quickly through his mind wouldn't help him fall asleep, but neither would the ache that throbbed from his thigh up to this stomach and across his chest.
His other hand had found its way to his thigh, trying to soothe away the pain, but met nothing but metal. Fused to his skin, warm in the way metal shouldn't be but cold and smooth in the way skin wasn't. Below the metal plate, his muscles spasmed, uncomfortable in the sudden cold, begging him to make it better. He moved his hand slowly over it; it had been two years since he'd escaped a broken conversion chamber, yet sometimes he felt the implant as if for the first time. Smooth. Cold. Seamlessly blending into the surrounding skin. Sometimes Ianto imagined that it hadn't been fused on, that he had been born like this. It wasn't true, of course, but that didn't make it any better. With just his palm—there were more touch receptors in the tips of his fingers than anywhere else in the body—Ianto couldn't tell where metal ended and skin began. With his fingers, he could feel some transitional tissue. Sometimes he wanted it to scar, to tell a story, to speak of struggle. But the truth was that when Ianto had been captured he had been unable to move, had stood perfectly still as he had been turned into metal, and had regained humanity after a too-long pause.
His hand curled into a fist and moved to the front of his body, inside his shirt, resting against his stomach. It was warmer there. Ianto's fingers could never get warm enough, Jack complained about it often enough.
Jack... Ianto could wake him up. How long had it been? Jack could sleep through anything but he woke up quickly when asked for. He would look at Ianto with sad, wide eyes, something more than sadness swirling within them, when he'd wake up and see the open window and Ianto struggling to sleep.
Ianto squeezed his eyes shut and let his fist dig into his stomach. Not enough to hurt—there was enough of that already—but enough to feel human. There. Pain. He didn't feel pain where metal covered his leg, or where it snaked up and around his belly button, thin strips meant to connect the thigh plate to other hardware that had never gotten fused to him. No, that wasn't right—he didn't feel conventional pain. He'd tried to stab at it, once, when Jack had been gone, but the knife had bounced off and dulled. At the same time, ripples of pain pulled at his knee and made bending it impossible, made him limp when he needed to run, kept him from sleep on a day off.
One. Ianto imagined a sheep heading into a barn.
Two. The second sheep left the flock and returned to the field, a dog chasing it through what he imagined were highlands.
Three. This sheep followed the one in front of it dutifully.
Four. The sheep bleated and was silenced by a sharp look from the one next to it.
Five. It bumped into the one in front of it and exchanged a scared look with it.
Six. The sheep entered the same barn as the first.
Seven. It bleated. The eighth and ninth sheep exchanged looks. The sound was wrong.
Ten.
Eleven, twelve, thirteen sheep, in and out of the barn, going in warm and whole and coming out covered in metal—
Ianto opened his eyes and took in the window again. Maybe counting sheep hadn't been the best idea.
The curtain still moved. Ianto didn't.
He moved his left leg—the one that could still do it without pain—and kicked at one of Jack's calves. Hopefully the cold and the jarring motion would be enough.
"Jack," he said for good measure.
"Yeah?"
Ianto wished he could see Jack's face. There was always a moment, right when he woke up, when his face flitted between attractive and confused, slack, still relaxed from the night. Ianto wasn't able to turn over, however—wasn't able to sleep on his right side—and settled for imagination.
"It's snowing," he said after a moment, when Jack's warm hand rested on his waist over the blanket.
"It's April."
"Tell Tosh to check for the Rift, the window's still open." And if I have to stay awake in this temperature any longer, I might cry, he didn't say, but Jack heard it anyway. He was attentive like that.
Jack brushed a kiss down onto his hair, then turned and stood. The mattress shifted, rocked a little; a gust of cold air assaulted Ianto's back for a moment when Jack lifted the covers.
Jack traversed the bed, shivering theatrically, and Ianto closed his eyes when he moved aside the curtains to get to the window. A rough slide, a click, a rustle of the curtains closing.
"Done."
Ianto opened his eyes to Jack's triumphant smile, which almost immediately shifted to a look of concern.
"It's fine," he said preemptively. There wasn't anything to do if he wasn't.
Jack shot him a dubious look and left the room. Rude. Jack could be abrupt like that, but Ianto wasn't going to complain, especially when Jack returned with the winter duvet in hand and made short work of adding it to the bed.
"I love you."
Jack snorted. Stupid fifty-first century hearing. "I assume you were talking to the blanket?"
"Mostly."
Jack laughed and kissed him again. It was still early. He settled in behind Ianto—there was that chill again—and held him gently, hand on his hip, a skin-covered part that they had long ago discovered didn't hurt. Much. The warmth was nice.
Ianto could hear Jack swallow before what was a rehearsed and common conversation. It was too early for this. "I'm sure," he said before Jack could speak.
"You didn't know what I was going to say."
Ianto didn't grace that with a response.
Maybe if he counted pterodactyls...
.oOo.
When Ianto awoke, it was still snowing, but the bed wasn't empty and the air wasn't cold.
A hand rested on his shoulder. Jack.
Ianto smiled but didn't greet him. It was too early; Jack understood and kept his hand in place, warm and heavy, grounding him, giving him all the time he needed.
Had it been any other day, Ianto would have turned onto his back and looked at Jack. Well—not any day, but most days. When he didn't feel like his body was eating him from the inside out. He didn't want to move but he needed to. Not yet.
Not yet, just a moment more. Ianto's right hand was still touching the front of his shirt. Even through the fabric—highest concentration of sensory cells—he could feel the warmth of his skin, the cold of the metal. Spidering up his body, warping the skin where he'd come back to himself and fought against the conversion, ripping the metal off. A six-point star, incomplete, snaking away from the thigh plate and across a square piece just over his hipbone. Its points moved up, around the side of his ribcage, breaking off on the way and giving way to skin. Some of it had healed over the metal—not metal. He didn't know what it was but it had been made clear to him—he didn't remember by who, it was too long ago, he had been mad with pain and grief—that it wasn't metal. A natural substance. Wasn't metal natural, too?
It moved up towards his chest where the skin had been torn, had healed wrong; where it chafed against shirts and itched on the worst days.
Ianto turned and let out a grim smile. So it wasn't one of the worst days, then.
Just his leg. His hip. His knee, with the way everything was attached. His stomach, some of the metal anchoring onto the muscles there.
"Hey," Jack said when their eyes met.
"Hey."
Ianto didn't say anything else, only squeezing Jack's hands when they connected. What was there to say? Please help me up when I want to brush my teeth? Can we do breakfast in bed? Please do the dishes later, I don't think I'll be able to stand up, let alone stand for that long?
Yeah, no.
Stupid pride.
Jack had been reading. He did that a lot, no matter the jokes. Ianto didn't understand them—Jack was older than all of them, of course he read. He was smart, he was capable, he was—
He was brushing a hand through Ianto's hair, petting him, scratching his scalp—Ianto liked that.
He heard Jack chuckle and felt the movement where they were touching. "You're like a cat."
"Hmm."
"A big cat."
"Don't—"
"Like a tiger, Tiger Pants."
If Ianto complained too much, Jack would stop playing with his hair, and the absence of touch would remind Ianto of other sensations, pain that had flared up the moment he moved, that not even Jack's gentle touch could fully distract him from.
Jack's hand slowed, his other found Ianto's; Ianto held on. He tried not to squeeze too hard no matter how often Jack said he didn't mind, but yesterday had been a good day.
They'd slept on opposite sides of the bed. With Ianto unable to sleep on his right side and their habit of changing up sleeping positions, it didn't make sense to have a set side of the bed. The previous night, Ianto had held Jack—he hadn't wanted to, when this first started. Jack always pushed back into him, wanting the greatest amount of contact, and more often than not, they slept shirtless, and the closer Jack pressed, the more often he woke up with markings on his back from Ianto's body.
Rough, uneven lines, some straight, some curved, indents pressed over each other when they moved in their sleep. Red, angry; Jack insisted they didn't hurt and they really did look a bit like pillow creases. But Ianto wasn't a pillow. And whenever he spooned Jack, he woke up to see the signs of his disfigurement on Jack's body.
Yesterday he'd woken to the sight but had only felt a touch of guilt. He'd been more focused on Jack's wandering hands and his inviting smile, had gone out to lunch in the warming spring day.
Now, he woke up to Jack fighting a pitying expression and too-careful hands doing their best to keep him calm, in his body but away from the pain.
"Let me get you something," Jack said.
Ianto chuckled. "You can't make coffee."
"I meant pills."
He sighed. "I know you did. Yes, fine, go, I don't—yeah."
"And breakfast."
"And breakfast."
If he didn't think about his leg, which—Ow, what—"Don't—"
Too late.
Ianto breathed out slowly, consciously letting out tension. Yet some remained in his shoulders and he took a deep breath, his chest tight. Jack was gone, he could hear him moving elsewhere in the flat. A good thing, Ianto would have growled at him, cursed him, yet the pillow Jack had slid underneath his knee helped ease the ache. Not enough, not nearly enough, but—enough.
With his leg fading into a familiar pain, a background that he'd learned to live with, Ianto tried to relax until Jack returned. It really wasn't so bad if he thought about it, and it would be even better in an hour. And his stomach wouldn't hurt quite so much, the metal webbing pressing into it. It didn't move as much as it should, not wired into receptors or a larger cyber unit; a blessing, until it wasn't. Until it felt like breathing with a thick plate on his diaphragm, like living pressed against a barbed fence. All this pain, and why? A few strips of metal.
There was no better case for the importance of details and small parts.
Jack returned. There was little ceremony when he helped Ianto. Dwelling too much on it led to arguments and emptiness, Jack fussing in an attempt to not think about Ianto's mortality and Ianto getting defensive and obstinate when he felt cornered or challenged.
"Thanks," he said when Jack was almost out of earshot by twenty-first century standards. It was easier to pretend that he hadn't held onto Jack when he'd levered himself up into a sitting position against the headboard, that tears hadn't come to his eyes when he'd jostled his hip.
Ianto hadn't liked the snow as a child. Hadn't had anyone to play with. Had no nostalgia as a result and could curse the temperamental Welsh weather as much as he pleased.
He smiled slightly. It was a little tight but nothing that couldn't stand up to scrutiny. Not Jack's scrutiny, of course.
"The snow, not—" He waved his hand in the window's general direction when Jack shot him a look. "Just stupid that it's falling, is all."
"Should be raining by the end of the day."
"Oh, joy."
"Tosh says it's not the Rift."
"Even better." Ianto hadn't really thought it was the Rift. Snow in April was too deliberately mean for it to be the Rift; no, normal weather was spiteful enough. "At least I've got a day off already."
"You know you never have to worry about that."
Ianto caught the hurt in Jack's eyes seconds before he hid it. He relaxed as much as he could and held out a hand for Jack to come in from the doorway, no matter that it would deprive him of the view. "I know. Benefits of sleeping with the boss." He paused. "And you. You're great, you know—don't get a big head, I don't say it often."
But he thought it all the time.
Jack held his hand then raised it to his lips. Just romantic enough. Ianto pouted at him—a brief moment, enough to lure Jack in for a real kiss before falling out of it with a hiss.
"No, I—" He swallowed, breathed heavily, and waved away Jack's concern. "Just moved too quickly, I'm fine—not fine—you know what I mean, it wasn't you."
The furrows didn't leave Jack's forehead.
Ianto clicked his tongue. "You'll get a headache sitting like that."
Jack shot him a look that made it very clear which one of them was in danger of pain.
"I know." Ianto squeezed his hand reassuringly. "I'm fine, it hurts, it'll be a minute, but you don't—come here."
He opened his arms and waited for Jack to lean in. He kept his weight off Ianto, just resting his forehead on a shoulder—the right shoulder, far from the metal and scarring on Ianto's chest—one hand fisted in the blanket and the other resting on Ianto's undamaged hip.
Ianto rested his chin on the top of Jack's head. His hair was spiky and soft, clean-cut but not full of product. It was nice.
"Pheromones," he said with a smile.
Jack leaned away from him to laugh. Ianto ached for the closeness, for the warmth—he could never get warm enough with the metal against his body, with it a part of his body—but shot him a grateful look nonetheless.
Jack returned it, leaned back in for a quick kiss, and stood.
"You—"
"Look adorable when you're pouting."
"Jack."
"I'm just getting breakfast."
Ianto wiped the betrayed look off his face. Talking, sitting with Jack, thinking about his life and not his struggles, helped keep the pain at bay. Even if Jack teased him.
"Don't take too long," he said, and enjoyed the sight of Jack walking away.
Inspired by when it snowed a few weeks ago, and I was very over it. Thanks for reading, and please let me know what you think!