Chapter 3: Hold Me At the Fireplace

By fireworks8725

"How did you die this time Jack?" Ianto asked me as we fell into our routine of walking over to the love seat and sipping our coffee.

"Ah, who knows…one thing or another. It's so hard to keep track these days." I tried not to give myself away, but I had a bad feeling that he would be able to see through me. Times were hard and I was alone on Earth, wandering and wondering if I would ever truly die or just roam pointlessly for all eternity. There was no sign of the Doctor, I would never be able to ask for his help. I felt so helpless, so I did the only thing I could think of. I died. Often, and of my own hand. I jumped off buildings, started bar fights, experimented with poisons and gasses. Each death was so close together, I had noticed Ianto seeming more and more suspicious at the rate of my deaths with each time we met on the love seat. Today was no exception.

"Sir, I can't help but notice you were here just a few hours ago…"

"Ianto, do you exist?'

He seemed started by my question and almost dropped his coffee mug, but being either the perfectly made man or a figment of my deceased imagination, he managed not only to avoid spilling a single drop, but he gracefully, albeit loudly, placed the mug right side up on the table.

"Pardon me, sir?" His eyebrows crunched in and he looked very serious. I was almost afraid of him.

"Are you real? Or do you only exist when I'm dead?" I asked him. I wanted answers but I also didn't want to push him too far, I didn't want to lose him.

"Both of those are correct. I've tried to explain before…but it's just...complicated…Jack, can't you at least appreciate that fact? Things are complicated and I do the best I can with them."

He stood up and walked over the fireplace. I winced at the feeling of his warmth leaving my side on the love seat.

"Why are you dying so often? Why won't you tell me how you died?" Ianto asked, hiding his face from me.

The distance was too much, so I followed him and lay my head on his back and wrapped my arms around his perfectly tailored suit, my hands finding his at his front.

"We can never seem to answer each other's questions properly." I said softly, my face nudging into his shoulder area like a cat.

"I drove off a bridge." I continued, closing my eyes and reliving the panic and terror of freefalling off the bridge, into the sky and smacking hard into the water. My body may still be trapped in the car now, or stuck under the lake somewhere. Maybe that would give me more time here, the longer it takes for my body to be found and for it to push the water out of my lungs and wake itself up. That was always the worst part.

"Why did you do that?" Ianto sounded like he was crying. I couldn't handle the sound of his sorrow and I spun him around to me. He reached for my face before the thought even occurred to me. His lips pressed against mine with an urgency and aggressiveness that he wasn't typically known for. When he tried to pull away I pulled him back, keeping him with me as long as I could, and wiping the tears from his cheeks with my thumb.

Finally he rested his head on my shoulder and I just ran my hands through his soft short hair. This was nice; I wish I could remember it when I awoke. Then at least then the suicides would make sense, I would be killing myself to come be with this beautiful loving man. But that was just my own stupidity.

"I would say that I won't do it again, but you and I both know that I won't remember you when I wake up. This conversation never even happened." I felt like I would cry at this point, but I held it in. This was real for Ianto, as real as my body floating lifelessly in the water. I couldn't let him remember me as a crying mess, I wanted to be strong for him.

"When you say to me, that you will wait for me, what do you mean?" I was terrified of the answer after putting the pieces together in my head.

"I just wait, I always wait. It's wonderful and terrible to see you here, because it means you have died again, you have felt the pain of death that I am all too familiar with. But without your deaths I would be alone here for so very very long… all alone."

"You're here alone while I am out there alive…living a life you cannot have…how is that fair?" I winced, holding him even closer to me, trying to memorize his shape and how he fit perfectly on my shoulder.

"I never said it was fair, but it is what I chose. The days when you are here with me are the best I could ever ask for." He looked up and smiled at me, eyes rimmed with tears now refusing to fall over his eyelids. Waiting there, likely for the moment when the knocking began. How much crying did this boy endure while I was out walking around in the world looking for ways to end my own life?

"It breaks my heart to leave you Ianto." He looked conflictingly happy and sad to hear me say these kinds of things.

"You must though, sir. You always must." He started adjusting my shirt and straightening it out, as if he had creased me.

"I don't want to live anymore, I don't need to be out there, I belong here with you, and you know it. I'm a man out of my own time…" I started, trying to figure out a way I could finally stay dead, maybe Ianto had a way to keep me here…

"Don't speak like that Jack. You must live because there is so much more for you to do and see. People to save, hearts to break. Without living there is so much you will be missing and many who will miss knowing you."

"Why do you have to be so smart Ianto?"

"It is my burden to bear, sir. I am also burdened with being the only being competent with a coffee machine." He smiled widely at his boast; he prided himself in his coffee making capabilities.

"I know I will never look at a cup of coffee the same my Ianto."

"I am you know, sir. And, also, as always, I will wait for you."

"You are what?" I asked holding onto his hand.

Then the knocking started and everything started to go white. I tried to hold on tighter but I felt his hand evaporate in mine.

x

I awoke with a start on the bank of a river, police cars around me, a cop walking over to me preparing to put my wrists in cuffs. Of COURSE I would be arrested for driving into a river. Excellent.

I heard a voice say "Yours" In my ear, and I looked around for the source of the voice but there was no one close enough to have made the sound in such a sad whisper near me. I shook it off and figured it was just the water leaving my ears and making me hear things. Next adventure, time for a bit of jail!