![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rmTitle: Commemoration Days
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Jack/Suzie, Jack/various, team friendship
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through Fragments.
Summary: Jack commemorates everything while Ianto keeps lists. Mainly out of self-defense.
Notes: This is none of the fics I've recently claimed to be working on but some other animal. The unnamed wife and kids refers to Annie from A Holiday of Bright Mornings. The scene here owes some debt to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
airspaniel for pointing me towards the traditional song Foreign Lander as done by Red Molly which she and redstapler described to me as "Jack/Annie OTP!" (and they were right). You might also recognize some other people from that piece in this. Thanks to hllangel for the team's birthdays from Torchwood Magazine. threewalls has subsequently made me aware that Ianto's birthday differs between Fragments and the TWM info; I'm working off of the TWM info at this point - so please attribute that to the utter lack of data integrity within the TW universe or canon as you see fit.
Jack Harkness celebrates a lot of birthdays. Mostly of dead people. Usually because he's utter crap at remembering such things while they're still alive. It's not like he's prone to cultivating a particularly large social circle, and all in all, he expects most would agree he has a fair number of reasonable excuses for that.
For one thing, Jack doesn't sleep much these days, and these days have been going on quite a while now. Makes it a bit hard to keep track of the calendar, really, even if saying it would make him sound like a cad. For another, it's not like Torchwood respects the idea of schedules and plans and dates. Half the time he'll remember a birthday days after it's passed while they're all cleaning up the blood from their latest mission, their latest mess.
Ianto has taken to keeping a list of such things surreptitiously, and Jack likes that he does it in much the same mode. It is, Jack knows, a method of self-defense for the young man. But Jack has a hard time blaming him, considering it started the day he almost split Ianto's head open with a military saber. Which means it was probably Alex's birthday, which he remains fairly certain was April 7th.
Alex had trained at Sandhurst prior to joining Torchwood London, prior to being sent down to deal with the seemingly eternal disaster that was and is Torchwood Three. Maybe Jack had taken to him because he was a military man; maybe it was just that he too had no love of their superiors. Jack does't know. Doesn't much care either. While they'd been colleagues and friends, laughing and conspiring far more than was seemly for two people who weren't sharing a bed, they'd often terrorized the rest of the staff by pressing each other with sabers. It's a funny thing, but time and several worlds over, and no military could find a better tool to train courage, timing, instinct and geometry than thirty-four inches of steel. Jack misses that, misses Alex and practices but once a year. It's enough though, Jack thinks; after all, Alex killed himself and not before taking the rest of that team with him.
March 24th is for lying on his back in Western Cemetery and telling stories of the stars to the wife buried there. If other spirits listen, Ianto realizes once he gets her name, Jack would never notice or care. October 18th and Jack mostly window shops for baby things, eventually buying something for a girl and then dropping it in a donation bin in all haste. June 4th he visits the zoo, whistling, one hand reaching out to ruffle the hair of a child that was never there.
August 8th is for dance clubs and alcohol that does nothing now; drunkenness being caused, of course, by mild poisoning and Jack's cells are too quick to restore themselves for that sort of pleasure to take hold. September 2nd and opera plays in his office, while October 16th is for sitting on the hood of the SUV and watching the planes land at Cardiff International. Jets have no romance and no imagination, he says; and Ianto observes that this seems to make Jack sad.
Ianto notes the detail and and all such others on the list which grows to include date and habit and mood, and when he can find it, precious, precious name. Jack may be constantly losing his past, but somehow Ianto is instinctively driven to stem that. He tries not to examine why; it's too recursive, too complex, too much about identification and things Ianto hopes he'll never have to say even if he wants to.
Jack shoots pistols, and not in the line of duty, on November 2nd, and eats lavishly and alone on the 8th.
"Now Philip and I were all about food," Jack eventually explains about that. "There are things I don't think I'll ever be able to taste without the salt of his fingers under them."
Ianto wonders what they are, as well as when and how Philip died. He wasn't Torchwood; he's not in the vaults, and so it seems rude to ask. That's the hazard of civilians.
Jack always heads down to London for the ballet in December, but the date shifts, and Ianto can't work out if it's a matter of the program, the seats or the mere demands of being the Captain. In truth, he's not even sure it's actually birthday related - maybe, ridiculously, Jack just likes the ballet - but Ianto keeps it on the list just in case and is secretly relieved that whatever it is seems to contain itself to the later half of the month.
Ianto prefers a lack of ambiguity in his private irritations.
"Are you going to put Owen on the list?" Jack asks abruptly after the man dies and then un-dies.
"The list, sir?" Ianto asks, his voice pitched slightly too high and tight in a way Jack has grown to recognize as the man's tell when he's lying. If only he'd known that when the whole Lisa thing was going on; Jack snorts at the knowledge he'll never mention, which is that Ianto only told the truth in bed then, his voice dark and gravelly and stained with sex.
"Commemoration days. Birthdays mostly. You've been able to sort that much," he clarifies, although it's clear he doesn't need to.
"I didn't mean for you --"
"I read your diary, Ianto."
"Oh. Right. Sir." He pauses. "Regularly?" He can't help but be vaguely alarmed.
Jack smiles. It's not an answer. "And I like to watch your hands."
Ianto blushes slightly, but says nothing.
"Owen?" he asks, in an attempt at refocusing them, as if Ianto's answer will help him understand the man's status, will help him understand what he's done.
"You tell me, sir. Would you care to spend your future St. Valentine's Days debating the relative merits of alien autopsy versus the use of crass pick-up lines on various chavvy girls?"
Jack hums. "Not really my thing. But I see your point." Jack frowns.
Ianto pulls a small book out of his suit jacket pocket and makes a note with a stub of pencil that seems to come from nowhere.
"As an eventuality," Ianto says with a small shrug before pocketing the simple tools of his organizational trade.
After that, Ianto adds other dates in the name of other eventualities.
Jack's family - original, Ianto reminds himself, there have surely been many - in case the man ever allows himself the remembrance or can figure out how to convert the dates.
Suzie, for whenever Jack stops wanting to kill her again and again and again and can remember that they used to fuck and laugh; that once, it was apparently just the two of them.
Gwen's and a note for grief.
Toshiko with the quick scrawl of bombs and fondness.
His own and just not the ballet followed by the unfair and out of time addendum of I miss you, which he then hastily erases and replaces with an admonition for Jack to finish his expense reports.
When the next commemoration comes, Jack takes Ianto's hand and declares it a day for riding the ferry.
"Come with?" he asks and, when Ianto is silent, offers, "I'll tell you a story."
"Jack. You don't have to."
"No, but I know what the gaps do to you."
Ianto gives an embarrassed huff of laughter.
Jack rolls his eyes, but his grin is so sincere, so fond, Ianto thinks that one or the other of them might burst from it. But the moment passes.
"Plus, I want your thoughts on something."
"What?" Ianto asks, quickly wary.
"What do I do when the whole calendar fills up?"
Ianto shrugs and pulls away from Jack's hand to touch his cheek, not mentioning that it is statistically more likely that multiple memorials will occupy single dates long before every space is filled with death and love and memories, with Jack's terrible litany of names.
"Start again" he says with a small smile, with a shrug, as if somehow he can make it easier, as if somehow the proposition is wonderful. "Just, start again."
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Jack/Suzie, Jack/various, team friendship
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Through Fragments.
Summary: Jack commemorates everything while Ianto keeps lists. Mainly out of self-defense.
Notes: This is none of the fics I've recently claimed to be working on but some other animal. The unnamed wife and kids refers to Annie from A Holiday of Bright Mornings. The scene here owes some debt to
airspaniel for pointing me towards the traditional song Foreign Lander as done by Red Molly which she and redstapler described to me as "Jack/Annie OTP!" (and they were right). You might also recognize some other people from that piece in this. Thanks to hllangel for the team's birthdays from Torchwood Magazine. threewalls has subsequently made me aware that Ianto's birthday differs between Fragments and the TWM info; I'm working off of the TWM info at this point - so please attribute that to the utter lack of data integrity within the TW universe or canon as you see fit.Jack Harkness celebrates a lot of birthdays. Mostly of dead people. Usually because he's utter crap at remembering such things while they're still alive. It's not like he's prone to cultivating a particularly large social circle, and all in all, he expects most would agree he has a fair number of reasonable excuses for that.
For one thing, Jack doesn't sleep much these days, and these days have been going on quite a while now. Makes it a bit hard to keep track of the calendar, really, even if saying it would make him sound like a cad. For another, it's not like Torchwood respects the idea of schedules and plans and dates. Half the time he'll remember a birthday days after it's passed while they're all cleaning up the blood from their latest mission, their latest mess.
Ianto has taken to keeping a list of such things surreptitiously, and Jack likes that he does it in much the same mode. It is, Jack knows, a method of self-defense for the young man. But Jack has a hard time blaming him, considering it started the day he almost split Ianto's head open with a military saber. Which means it was probably Alex's birthday, which he remains fairly certain was April 7th.
Alex had trained at Sandhurst prior to joining Torchwood London, prior to being sent down to deal with the seemingly eternal disaster that was and is Torchwood Three. Maybe Jack had taken to him because he was a military man; maybe it was just that he too had no love of their superiors. Jack does't know. Doesn't much care either. While they'd been colleagues and friends, laughing and conspiring far more than was seemly for two people who weren't sharing a bed, they'd often terrorized the rest of the staff by pressing each other with sabers. It's a funny thing, but time and several worlds over, and no military could find a better tool to train courage, timing, instinct and geometry than thirty-four inches of steel. Jack misses that, misses Alex and practices but once a year. It's enough though, Jack thinks; after all, Alex killed himself and not before taking the rest of that team with him.
March 24th is for lying on his back in Western Cemetery and telling stories of the stars to the wife buried there. If other spirits listen, Ianto realizes once he gets her name, Jack would never notice or care. October 18th and Jack mostly window shops for baby things, eventually buying something for a girl and then dropping it in a donation bin in all haste. June 4th he visits the zoo, whistling, one hand reaching out to ruffle the hair of a child that was never there.
August 8th is for dance clubs and alcohol that does nothing now; drunkenness being caused, of course, by mild poisoning and Jack's cells are too quick to restore themselves for that sort of pleasure to take hold. September 2nd and opera plays in his office, while October 16th is for sitting on the hood of the SUV and watching the planes land at Cardiff International. Jets have no romance and no imagination, he says; and Ianto observes that this seems to make Jack sad.
Ianto notes the detail and and all such others on the list which grows to include date and habit and mood, and when he can find it, precious, precious name. Jack may be constantly losing his past, but somehow Ianto is instinctively driven to stem that. He tries not to examine why; it's too recursive, too complex, too much about identification and things Ianto hopes he'll never have to say even if he wants to.
Jack shoots pistols, and not in the line of duty, on November 2nd, and eats lavishly and alone on the 8th.
"Now Philip and I were all about food," Jack eventually explains about that. "There are things I don't think I'll ever be able to taste without the salt of his fingers under them."
Ianto wonders what they are, as well as when and how Philip died. He wasn't Torchwood; he's not in the vaults, and so it seems rude to ask. That's the hazard of civilians.
Jack always heads down to London for the ballet in December, but the date shifts, and Ianto can't work out if it's a matter of the program, the seats or the mere demands of being the Captain. In truth, he's not even sure it's actually birthday related - maybe, ridiculously, Jack just likes the ballet - but Ianto keeps it on the list just in case and is secretly relieved that whatever it is seems to contain itself to the later half of the month.
Ianto prefers a lack of ambiguity in his private irritations.
"Are you going to put Owen on the list?" Jack asks abruptly after the man dies and then un-dies.
"The list, sir?" Ianto asks, his voice pitched slightly too high and tight in a way Jack has grown to recognize as the man's tell when he's lying. If only he'd known that when the whole Lisa thing was going on; Jack snorts at the knowledge he'll never mention, which is that Ianto only told the truth in bed then, his voice dark and gravelly and stained with sex.
"Commemoration days. Birthdays mostly. You've been able to sort that much," he clarifies, although it's clear he doesn't need to.
"I didn't mean for you --"
"I read your diary, Ianto."
"Oh. Right. Sir." He pauses. "Regularly?" He can't help but be vaguely alarmed.
Jack smiles. It's not an answer. "And I like to watch your hands."
Ianto blushes slightly, but says nothing.
"Owen?" he asks, in an attempt at refocusing them, as if Ianto's answer will help him understand the man's status, will help him understand what he's done.
"You tell me, sir. Would you care to spend your future St. Valentine's Days debating the relative merits of alien autopsy versus the use of crass pick-up lines on various chavvy girls?"
Jack hums. "Not really my thing. But I see your point." Jack frowns.
Ianto pulls a small book out of his suit jacket pocket and makes a note with a stub of pencil that seems to come from nowhere.
"As an eventuality," Ianto says with a small shrug before pocketing the simple tools of his organizational trade.
After that, Ianto adds other dates in the name of other eventualities.
Jack's family - original, Ianto reminds himself, there have surely been many - in case the man ever allows himself the remembrance or can figure out how to convert the dates.
Suzie, for whenever Jack stops wanting to kill her again and again and again and can remember that they used to fuck and laugh; that once, it was apparently just the two of them.
Gwen's and a note for grief.
Toshiko with the quick scrawl of bombs and fondness.
His own and just not the ballet followed by the unfair and out of time addendum of I miss you, which he then hastily erases and replaces with an admonition for Jack to finish his expense reports.
When the next commemoration comes, Jack takes Ianto's hand and declares it a day for riding the ferry.
"Come with?" he asks and, when Ianto is silent, offers, "I'll tell you a story."
"Jack. You don't have to."
"No, but I know what the gaps do to you."
Ianto gives an embarrassed huff of laughter.
Jack rolls his eyes, but his grin is so sincere, so fond, Ianto thinks that one or the other of them might burst from it. But the moment passes.
"Plus, I want your thoughts on something."
"What?" Ianto asks, quickly wary.
"What do I do when the whole calendar fills up?"
Ianto shrugs and pulls away from Jack's hand to touch his cheek, not mentioning that it is statistically more likely that multiple memorials will occupy single dates long before every space is filled with death and love and memories, with Jack's terrible litany of names.
"Start again" he says with a small smile, with a shrug, as if somehow he can make it easier, as if somehow the proposition is wonderful. "Just, start again."
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 04:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 04:54 am (UTC)"Jack. You don't have to."
"No, but I know what the gaps do to you."
This broke me a little, for some reason. By the end, I was hovering so close to tears of... hope, I guess? It was moving, is what I'm trying to say.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 06:26 am (UTC)Poor Ianto, Jack's always reading his diary!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 06:42 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 10:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 10:48 am (UTC)And yeah, there's a whole 'nother fic of various lovers of his throwing hissy fits about the birthday thing. Hahaha.... John Hart. I can see John Hart being an utter bastard about such a thing, especially if his birthday was in the middle of the 5 year / 2 week time loop.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 10:49 am (UTC)The diary thing may be intentional on Ianto's part. I'm still thinking about it.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 10:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 11:04 am (UTC)This was just lovely. Very in character and enjoyable. Loved the last little exchange, so very them.
(Just a little thing - I followed the link from the Torch_wood community and it didn't initially work. There's a %22 at the end of the URL that seemed to stuff up the link for my browser.)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 11:46 am (UTC)I've fixed the link too.
Also, your icon? Hilarious.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 12:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 12:59 pm (UTC)I think Ianto is intellectually pretty okay with most of what he has to deal with, but I think his emotional reactions, when he allows himself to have them, are not as disciplined as he'd prefer. It's the sense of the inevitability of being a footnote that bothers him. And that the living have perhaps the least demands on Jack's time as the Rift, the job, and the dead all preoccupy Jack much more.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 02:39 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 05:26 pm (UTC)I'm almost done with season one. I saw the cannibal episode and now understand the bizarre juxtaposition of Owen and Gwen. It does make sense.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 05:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 05:58 pm (UTC)In the sense of why Owen and Gwen are fucking or in teh sense of why jack hired Gwen to make up for the utter ongoing batshit misery of working with Owen?
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 07:29 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 08:11 pm (UTC)Were you serious about wanting an epistolary partner? I need to improve my handwriting.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-15 10:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 01:39 am (UTC)Perfectly serious. You have to be Estelle and we need to find a structure for it first, and we'll have to get you the right stationary and you'll have to mail it under separate modern cover as I'm going to buy old stamps on Ebay for it. So if you can tolerate me being very obsessive, yes, I would totally do this with you!
no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 01:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 04:57 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 04:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 07:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-16 10:34 pm (UTC)I love that he lets Ianto in on the whole thing.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 12:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 03:05 pm (UTC)I'm starting to focus in on the idea that maybe his thing with Ianto is different than with all his prior relationships with emotional content because Ianto's the first one he can acknowledge this with and do grief with. It doesn't mean this is the greatest love that will ever be, but I think it's the first time Jack lets anyone really see him in this way, which is may be why he's such a fuckup about it.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 03:07 pm (UTC)Also your icon is oddly sweet to me although you really may just mean it as regards the Tardis, but I'm always writing about the idea that some people's spirits/personalities/whatever are too big for their flesh, and Jack, even for being a big guy -- it's still bigger on the inside.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 04:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 04:29 pm (UTC)Can I just say, randomly, that my favorite thing about the DW episode Boom Town is that Rose winds up on a crappy date with her sort of ex, Nine winds up on a crappy date with a Slitheen, and Jack has a grand ol' time sticking his hands in all sorts of normally hidden places on the Tardis? Funniest thing, EVER.
no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 05:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 05:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 10:42 pm (UTC)http://laurab1.livejournal.com/188300.html - Bigger on the Inside
http://laurab1.livejournal.com/195098.html - Flexible Dancer
http://laurab1.livejournal.com/197568.html - Faith
http://laurab1.livejournal.com/210140.html - Whistle
http://laurab1.livejournal.com/212731.html - Lights Will Guide You Home
http://laurab1.livejournal.com/218652.html - Burning Bright (Flexible Dancer from the TARDIS' POV, 2nd person)
http://laurab1.livejournal.com/232738.html - Detect and Repair
http://laurab1.livejournal.com/228267.html - Diversionary Tactics
http://laurab1.livejournal.com/228361.html - Is That An Arrow In Your Pocket?
http://laurab1.livejournal.com/277016.html - The Torchwood Girls (WWI fic, Nine/Rose/Jack/TARDIS (and any combination thereof) flashback scenes scattered throughout)
no subject
Date: 2008-06-17 11:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-08 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-09 02:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 04:11 pm (UTC)I love your illustration of it in the commemorations, which is such a lovely and unique idea. And I love that you don't shirk how intimidating and awkward that would be for anyone he was involved with now. I like you showing Ianto as slightly jealous and awkward but still self-possessed and tender. Really wonderful.
no subject
Date: 2008-07-10 04:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 03:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-08-19 03:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-02 11:52 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-12-02 09:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-08-24 10:32 pm (UTC)It's also good seeing Jack starting to open up and share some of his past with Ianto, testament to their deepening relationship.