Disclaimer: I still don't own Torchwood, as much as I wish I did. I do own this bowl of chili, though, and it's delicious.
*.*.*
"The space between the wicked lies we tell is where we hope to keep safe from the pain."
–Dave Matthews Band, the Space Between
*.*.*
Jack pulled Ianto close, the sweat coating their bare skin making them stick to each other slightly, but it didn't bother the older man at all. In fact, it only made it better. He felt like he couldn't get close enough.
The day had been long and draining. Gwen had gone behind his back. Ianto had betrayed him. Again. He was right, but he still.
None of that mattered, just then, not to Jack. He only wanted to delete that horrendous scream from his memory or, failing that, push it back to the far reaches of his memory.
Sex, especially sex with Ianto, usually was enough of a distraction, but tonight…tonight Jack needed more.
"Tell me something true," he whispered.
"True?"
Jack shuffled closer, a bit and murmured into the other man's skin. "We spend so much time lying to each other, either by omission or outright. And usually…usually it doesn't matter, because who we are here is what matters. But there's too much deception between us. So tell me something that's true."
With a sad smile, Ianto brushed a lock of hair from Jack's face. "What do you want me to say?"
"Anything."
Ianto was silent for a bit, and Jack was just starting to think he wasn't going to answer when he spoke. "When I was about fifteen, I'd really wanted to get a job. Nothing big, just for spending money. My dad, he was proud and didn't want his mates thinking he couldn't support his family."
He took a deep breath, waiting for some smart-arsed comment from Jack. None came.
"So, I took up pick-pocketing. I was…I was really very good at it. I never stole from women, or anything, and I never stole from anyone who looked hard-up themselves. But I'd swipe the wallet, take about twenty or thirty pounds and then jog up to the bloke and tell him he dropped his wallet. They were always tripping over themselves with relief, nobody suspected a thing."
"Why didn't you just keep the wallet?" Jack asked. He knew Ianto had gotten in trouble for stealing before, it was in his record. And really, with all the things he'd done in his own past, he was in no position to judge.
"Before…before she got sick, someone swiped my mam's handbag at a jumble sale. I remember her saying that she didn't care that someone made off with the money, but she'd had pictures of Rhiannon and me that she'd never get back. I didn't want to do that to somebody."
"What'd you do with the money?"
"Fags, mostly. Or flowers for my mam. She loved daffodils. Saved a bit for my grand escape to London, too."
The pair drifted off into silence again, with Ianto content to rub lazy patterns onto his lover's skin and Jack letting the steady rhythm of their heartbeats calm him.
"I had a son, in 1935. Named him Franklin. My wife…she thought I'd named him for the American president, but truth be told, I'd completely forgotten him. I…I named him after my father."
He shifted to his back and stared up at the concrete ceiling of his bunker.
"I was so stupid. I was already with the Royal Air Force, trying to work my way up the ranks the normal way before the war started. I hadn't meant to get anybody pregnant. But, well. These things happen. I left in '39, when we declared war. Torchwood…well, they were cheesed off that I'd gone off to fight, so they sent Gerald to tell my wife the truth, all the big, dark secrets about me. I can't die, I'm not really American. They made me out to be some kind of Martian spy, I think. Either way, the next letter I got from her included divorce papers and a warning to never show my face again."
"Did you?"
Jack sighed. "She told Frank I'd been shot down by a pair of Luftwaffe. I saw him a few times, when he was older. He worked down at the docks, was engaged to a real sweet girl called Molly. Or Mary. I can't remember. She was a nurse."
"Engaged?" Ianto said, as delicately as he was able. "They didn't marry?"
He sniffled, determined not to cry over something that had happened so long ago. "They died in '57. Asian flu. About two weeks before the ceremony was set."
Ianto gathered him up and held him close and pressing soft kisses to his temple.
Jack thought it was strange that, despite the sadness that had crept back into their talk, how much better he felt.
*.*.*
A/N: Mostly, this is just shameless headcanon. As far as the fact-checking for this one goes, Franklin D Roosevelt was President of the US between 1933 and 1945 and the Asian flu was a pandemic that swept the world in 1957. It killed 6,716 people in England and Wales (a total of 30k English and Welsh died as a result of the virus, if not from the virus itself), and also about 70K Americans. The worldwide death toll was about 2 million.
Thank you for reading.