That box still bothered Jack. For weeks it sat on his desk, the lid slightly open and the contents all but taunting him, whispering to him.
"Remember… remember… remember…"
The coat. Jack always wore the coat when he went out. He'd been in his shirt and braces all day, still trying to organize things at the hub the way he thought Ianto would. It caused him to think of his late lover constantly; the coffee, the organizing, the recording and documenting… it was all so much work and it reminded him just how underappreciated Ianto was.
Back to the coat. The Torchwood leader was just about to leave to get a drink at the local, when he caught a whiff of something as he approached the tall rack where his coat hung.
It smelled like Ianto: Coffee, soap, mint, and something just uniquely Ianto. But it couldn't be, right? Ianto had been gone for eight years. That coat had been soiled, rained on, and wrung through and through for nearly a decade since Ianto so much as touched it. Jack wore it every day for the last eight years. How the hell did he smell Ianto?
Jack neared the coat rack and leaned in, almost cautiously, breathing in a deep lungful, trying to catch the scent again. It evaded him, like a pleasant aroma drafting in from far away. There, then gone.
Jack grabbed the coat from the rack, and pulled the rough material to his face, breathing in again and again, trying to find what it was he smelled.
He found it. Or at least, he thought he did, for another moment. He was sniffing the front lapel, a place that Ianto occasionally rubbed his cheek against when they were having a particularly long, cuddly hug.
It made sense that the smell might stay, even for eight years. But Jack couldn't smell it again. No matter how hard he tried he couldn't smell it again.
Jack cried. He cried real tears that dropped onto the coat, creating wet patches. The heaviness of the coat increased, and it eventually dropped to the floor.
The smell arose again, seemingly from the coat: coffee; soap; mint; …Ianto.
Jack let the tears fall, and the memories flood back to him like an unstoppable tsunami.
Ianto's kisses. His posh Welsh flirting. His absolutely brilliant sense of humor. His creativity in bed. His talented coffee making.
Ianto.
Ianto.
"Ianto."
Jack didn't even realize he said it aloud. The tears were gone now, and he was nothing but a panting mess. There he was, just standing in his office, completely alone, his coat on the floor.
Suddenly, there was a feeling. That box; that infernal, torturously familiar box was calling to him again.
"Remember… Remember… Remember…"
And it made him angry. He was angry that he couldn't remember what the box was for, or from.
In a sudden fit of frustration, Jack hit the box across the room. He hit it off of his desk with such force, that much of the sandy contents ended up airborne, creating an un-breathable mist of dusty fog for a full three seconds.
Once the dust settled, Jack was frozen on his feet. He looked at the floor, completely stunned; clueless, agape, dumbstruck, flummoxed; all of the completely confused adjectives in the dictionary.
There on the floor, written in sand, were the words: "Remember me?"
Even for Jack, this was new.