sariagray | Forward

Title: Forward
Author:

sariagray
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Word Count: ~800
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Up through Exit Wounds.
Warnings: Smoking, canon character deaths.
Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, its characters, or its environs, nor do I receive any monetary gain.

Beta:

analineblue ♥
Summary: Jack and Ianto discuss life after Owen and Tosh.

Author's Note: Originally written for

jack_ianto_las , but as it seems to have gone away forever, and I've been sitting on this story for months now, I figured I should just post and be done with it. The prompt was "Where do we go from here?"

Forward

If you cry 'Forward,' you must be sure to make clear the direction in which to go. Don't you see that if you fail to do that and simply call out the word to a monk and a revolutionary, they will go in precisely opposite directions?
– Anton Chekov

“I lied,” Jack said.

He sank into the battered brown leather sofa and covered his eyes with his hand.

Ianto hung up his coat in the front closet. It had a sliding door that had been dented long before he’d ever signed the lease. Occasionally, he longed for a real door, for the resounding slam and snick as it shut the memories behind it. Other times, like tonight, he simply wanted to add to its damage with foot and fist.

“Oh?” he prodded as he carefully toed off his shoes; there was blood in the tread, blood that he couldn’t scrub away. “What about?”

Jack was still in his boots and his coat was wrapped tightly around him, as though it would prevent him from spilling out all over the carpet. Ianto crossed over and tentatively settled next to him, keeping an appropriate distance.

Jack fixed him with a small, sickly smile. “About the end.”

Ianto frowned, nodded, and closed his eyes. He didn’t see the faces of his friends, happy or horrified, when he did, but the holes they left in the universe; a swirling vortex like that which would appear when he would press his fingers to his eyes as a child.

He hadn’t yet turned on the lights in his flat.

“I need a cigarette,” Jack muttered and Ianto’s eyelids flew open.

“You don’t smoke.”

The words fell flat, somewhere between a reminder and a question, and Jack gave a harsh laugh as he dragged a hand down his face, wiping away the tension.

“No,” he admitted, “not usually. Not in – years.”

Ianto nodded. “Kitchen, second drawer on the left.”

“I know.”

Ianto exhaled a ragged breath and shut his eyes again. He felt Jack rise from the couch, so he peered through half-closed lids to watch him walk to the kitchen and flip on the light switch. The bulb hummed with electricity, a low buzz, and the soft yellow was too revealing after the cool darkness.

“So,” he asked when Jack returned with an open pack and a cheap, forest green disposable lighter, “why did you lie?”

“Sometimes people need a motivator. Gwen, she –” he trailed off for a moment, then cleared his throat. “And I’m fan of Eliot. ‘To make an end is to make a beginning’ is a nice thought.”

Jack removed a cigarette, placed it between his lips, flicked the lighter, and inhaled. Ianto took the pack when it was handed to him and hesitated before removing a cigarette of his own. It had been weeks since his last, after the blowout over Flat Holm, and it felt good to just hold it between his fingers again. He’d always chided Lisa for clinging to the habit after he’d given it up for good; he hadn’t been able to get her to quit until she had the choice taken out of her hands. Now, though, he was beginning to understand.

He lit it, reminiscing about the long-lost callous on his thumb, and blew out the smoke. “Please don’t tell me you slept with him.”

“Nope,” Jack smiled and then opened a drawer in the coffee table to remove a crystal ashtray. “Never even met the man.”

Ianto watched him place the ashtray on the polished surface of the table. He raised an eyebrow and Jack immediately fumbled for a coaster to slide underneath.

“It’s a little disturbing that you know where I hide everything,” Ianto muttered and Jack smiled sheepishly. “So what is the end, then?”

“It isn’t.”

Reaching over, Ianto flicked his cigarette. A tiny pile of ash landed in the center of the clean crystal.

“The end, I mean,” Jack continued, his voice dry and crackling. “There is no end, no beginning. You still have to pick up the dry-cleaning every Wednesday, we still have to retrieve the Krochoros Reactor from UNIT headquarters next Tuesday, and I still have a teleconference tomorrow afternoon. Nothing stopped, so nothing starts.”

The ash on Jack’s cigarette lengthened dangerously during his speech and Ianto gave a sharp nod in its direction. Jack stared blankly for a moment and then tipped it into the ashtray, just in time. They sat in silence, completely stationary, except for the hand that Jack placed on Ianto’s thigh. His fingers toyed with a woolen crease in Ianto’s trousers.

The smoke hung motionless above their heads, like fog.

Finally, only half finished, Ianto stubbed out his cigarette. He placed his hand over Jack’s, stilling the constant rubbing, and turned to face him.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked gently.

Jack took one last drag and set the still-burning cigarette in the small indentation on the side of the ashtray. He settled back into the cushions and pulled Ianto close until he was almost resting against his chest. Ianto breathed Jack in along with the warm, acrid smell of the smoke.

“Where we always go,” Jack whispered into his hair. “Forward.”

The End

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