Title: Past In Present
Author: badly-knitted
Characters: Ianto, Jack.
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 1591
Summary: Ianto enjoys listening to Jack's stories about his long life, but it can be a bit disconcerting hearing about everything he's lived through.
Spoilers: None.
Written For: creepy_shetan's prompt 'author's choice, any +/ any, the uncanny feeling that average human Character A sometimes gets when Character B mentions personal experiences from decades/centuries/millennia ago,' at comment_fic.
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood or any of the characters.
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Ianto enjoyed spending time with Jack, just doing ordinary, everyday things, even if they didn't get to do that anywhere near as often as they'd have liked. Having a lazy breakfast together, doing the shopping, pottering about in the garden behind the small, end-of-terrace house they now shared, all felt so pleasantly domestic that sometimes Ianto could almost convince himself they were just an ordinary couple, no different from his neighbours, or the people down the road.
Then Jack would open his mouth and say something that completely obliterated the illusion of normality, and that was… disconcerting. He knew it wasn't intentional, and anyway, it wasn't Jack's fault, but it always left Ianto feeling a bit off balance.
Still, he couldn't deny that he liked listening to Jack's stories. Not just the outrageous ones about prior (or future) relationships with various alien beings, but the everyday anecdotes of what life was like growing up in the future, or living in the past.
"Couldn't get bananas during the war," Jack says one day when they're in ASDA, buying groceries. "Couldn't get a lot of things because of rationing, you wouldn't believe the tiny amounts of sugar, butter, and cheese people had to make do with, and now look. Bags of sugar, huge chunks of cheese, tubs of butter than would be a whole family's allowance for at least a month!" He smiled wryly. "And yet, despite there being so much food available, families are going hungry because the prices are so high. Things were so much better when everything was in short supply and being shared out equally." He put a bunch of bananas in their trolley. "Well, except for the lack of bananas."
It boggled Ianto's mind, he couldn't imagine living in a time when everyday food items were so scarce everyone was handed the same carefully measured amount of each to last them for a week. How had people avoided starving? He didn't ask until they'd loaded a dozen heavy bags full of food and other essentials into the boot of Ianto's car and were on their way home.
"How could people live on so little, and even manage to raise families?"
Jack shrugged. "A lot of folks grew their own veg, and some had fruit trees as well. They raised chickens for eggs and meat, bred rabbits for meat too, and traded any surplus with their neighbours for whatever they had more of than they needed. It all worked out."
"Did you grow your own?" Ianto had a hard time picturing Jack tending a vegetable garden.
"Of course I did, when I wasn't off fighting. It was all part of the war effort, but I didn't really get into in until after the war ended. There was still rationing for a while afterwards, so I grew beans, and marrows, and leeks. Had some prize-winners in the local agricultural shows. Everyone wanted to know the secret to my giant leeks." Jack grinned proudly, remembering. "I never told anyone. You know, we should grow some veg. Homegrown always tastes better."
Ianto snorted. "In my tiny garden?"
"There's room for a few leeks, some tomatoes, maybe a couple of marrow plants."
"And how much of the lawn would I have to dig up for all that?"
"None. Stick the tomatoes in growbags on the back patio, the marrows in a couple of big tubs beside the backdoor, pop the leeks in between the flowering plants…" Jack sounded so enthusiastic about the whole idea that Ianto couldn't say no, and anyway, having access to fresh, homegrown veg might be good.
"Well, if you really want to, I guess it would be alright. But we're not raising chickens. Or rabbits, for that matter."
"I can live with that." Jack stared off into space for a long moment, then, "Did you know that back at the turn of the century, right up until the end of the first war, Torchwood ran a smallholding?"
Despite priding himself on everything there was to know about Torchwood, some things had obviously slipped past Ianto's radar. "What? Seriously? Why haven't I ever read anything about that in the files?"
"I guess no one ever thought it necessary to write up reports on something that wasn't considered work-related. It wasn't exactly official, more like a sort of hobby for some of the agents at the time. They had a couple of cows for milk, raised pigs and chickens, and grew vegetables. There was plenty of manure from the horses Torchwood kept for the heavy work back then, before cars became more widely used. Couldn't carry anything big on the back of a bicycle so we had a couple of horsedrawn carts. Stabled the horses where the garage is now, part of the time anyway. We'd have two in there, the other two out at the smallholding, swap them over every few days."
"Horses."
"Yep!"
"Where we park our cars." That was a bizarre thought.
"What did you think the stone water troughs in the garage were for?"
Cleaning muddy boots and equipment, Ianto almost said, because that was what they were used for now, but he thought better of it.
"Huh. Learn something new every day."
"Some things were so much a part of life back then that no one bothered mentioning them in field reports. Everyone knew how we carried out Rift retrievals or transported larger items and aliens back to the Hub. It was simply the way things were. Sometimes I miss the horses."
"Well we definitely don't have room for a horse at the house, and we're not parking one in the garage either. A small vegetable garden is one thing; livestock is another matter entirely!"
"I wasn't saying I want to get a horse, just that I miss the ones we had back then, Bertha and Bella, Mack and Morty, and old Dan, the main saddlehorse. Someone would ride out ahead on Dan, then send back for the cart if it was needed. I spent a lot of time caring for those horses, grooming, feeding, mucking out. That was back in the early days, before they trusted me enough to let me off the leash."
"What happened to the smallholding?"
"It was sold off after the first war. Everyone figured there wouldn't be another great war, so Torchwood wouldn't need to provide for ourselves, we could buy whatever we needed, and anyway, we couldn't spare people to run it, not when so many had died during the war and the ones that were left were needed at the Hub."
Pulling into the drive, parking in the carport and turning the engine off, Ianto's head was still full of images of Torchwood in the early nineteen-hundreds, going on retrievals by foot, bicycle, or on horseback. And Jack had been there, looking more or less the same as he did now, grooming horses, perhaps feeding pigs and milking cows, living through two world wars and who knew what else, and growing prize-winning leeks…
"Ianto? Are you alright?"
"Huh?"
"We're home. You were just sitting there, staring into space."
"Was I? Sorry, I was just… thinking about how life was for you back then. You've watched everything change over the last century or so. Sometimes I forget that, and then you start talking about the past and I remember you were there, you lived through all of it, and it's… hard to wrap my head around."
"Would you rather I didn't-"
Ianto didn't let Jack finish whatever he was going to say. "No! I love listening to you talk about all the things you've seen and done. Sometimes I just need to pause for a few minutes and let everything in here…" he tapped his head with a finger, "settle into place. Like computer updates, my brain needs to reboot in order to assimilate the new information."
"Well, just let me know if it ever gets too much for you." Jack reached across to squeeze Ianto's hand, still resting on the steering wheel. "I wouldn't want to cause system failure."
"No fear of that. If the things we see at work aren't enough to make my head explode, then your stories aren't going to do it." Ianto gave his lover a reassuring smile. "So, once we've put the groceries away, why don't we nip down to the garden centre, get some growbags, tubs, and compost, a few tomato plants, whatever else you think we need? If we're going to grow veg this year, we'd better use the rest of our day off to get started."
Jack nodded enthusiastically, looking thrilled at the prospect. "We should get some tomato food too, and another watering can, maybe two. Tomatoes are thirsty plants. So are marrows and courgettes. Maybe we can ever spare a corner for some runner beans, or French beans if you prefer."
"We can look into that before we head for the garden centre. Make a list of what we need to get." Ianto unclipped his seatbelt and opened his door. "Come on, let's get everything put away before the frozen stuff defrosts and the ice-cream melts."
Sliding out of the passenger side and closing the door, Jack followed Ianto around to the boot, reaching in to retrieve several of the bags. "It was a lot harder to keep things cool back before freezers and fridges," he said.
"I can only imagine. Just goes to show how much people take for granted these days."
"I'll tell you all about it later, if you like."
Ianto grinned. "I can't wait."
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The End