Title: Looking at the Stars

Prompt: Looking at the Stars
Fandom/Characters: Torchwood, Captain Jack Harkness/Ianto Jones
Medium: fic
Rating: PG
Warnings: None that I can think of.
Summary: Jack and Ianto looking at the sky and chatting about stars.

Word count: 548 more or less.

Note: Written for Schmoop Bingo

Beta: Jooles34

…..

They were comfortably settled on the roof top, cuddling under the protective duvet wrapped around them. It was a wonderful cloudless summer night.

"What do you see while looking at the stars?" Ianto asked.

"What do you see?" Jack asked back.

Ianto raised an eyebrow, and threw a questioning glance at Jack.

"What I see today? Or what I used to see before you or Torchwood?"

"You got exactly my point, Mister Jones." Jack answered with a mischievous grin.

"Before, and probably like most kids born after the Star Trek generation, I used to see the stars as the future of human kind. They looked inviting, calling for us to visit. So many wonderful people and civilisations were just waiting for us to discover them..." Ianto said, his mind lingering on his lost innocence.

Jack's amused eyes were studying him tenderly.

"Then I got into Torchwood. After two or three incidents, the stars were already less attractive. After the Christmas Star, they even became menacing. After Canary Wharf, I was really sure they were not the future of mankind, unless it was the end of it." Ianto couldn't suppress the chill running along his spine.

"Do you still feel that way?"

"You mean after having seen our planet stolen away across space like it was... a car? Or a mere bicycle?" Ianto shot back.

"You know what I mean." Jack said, looking at him as if he, Ianto, was some amazing man.

"I don't know. I honestly don't know anymore." Ianto sighed. "That's why I was asking you."

"Why me?" Jack said like a teacher pointing at the link to follow to a gifted student.

"You've come from the future, from across the stars; you've seen them. I mean like I will never see them, whatever happens."

"Would you like to have a closer look?"

"Perhaps. Looking at you, knowing you, it makes me wonder again." Ianto said cuddling thoroughly into Jack's embrace. "So what do you see?" he asked.

"When I was a kid, we use to enjoy sitting on the beach at night. We would pick out a star and my father would call it by name and then tell us about it."

"I guess not all the stars you could see were inhabited though?" Ianto asked. "And please skip the part about stars being suns. They can't all have a populated planets orbiting around them."

"No of course. At least not as a proper population, but it was the fact for our home world too, you know."

"What do you mean?"

"Any planet, any satellite that could be exploited, was indeed exploited. My home world was a very small colony. You could compare it to Guernsey unless it would be settled in the Caribbean archipelago lost in the middle of oceans."

"Are you saying there only was one island occupied on your planet?"

"At least only one with a proper city. There were some hydroponic farms scattered around too."

"Whoa! I'd always pictured you as coming from a huge futuristic city, like in the Fifth Element."

"Oh that would be Tal'maran. The planet is a whole city in itself." Jack said laughing.

"Don't you miss it?" Ianto asked. "Travelling among stars?"

"Nope. I rather being watching them from here with you by my side."