rm | TW fic: All These Days After Tomorrow (Jack/Ianto; PG)

Title: All These Days After Tomorrow
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG
Spoilers: Series 3 -- if you're trying to stay unspoiled, skip this for now as it will either make no sense or give you spoilers or both.
A/N: thanks to

xtricks for chattering with me about this particular topic and helping me solve the name problem.
A/N #2: Spoiler sites are contradictory on whether "Steven" is the name of Alice's son (Jack's grandson) or Ianto's nephew in Series 3. The kid's name here will get changed when we actually know what's what.

"I'm having lunch with Alice today," Jack says, fastening his cufflinks. Ianto knows they won't last past 11am; Jack will get bored or irritated or otherwise uncomfortable and they'll wind up sitting in the paperclip holder on his desk when Jack decides to roll up his sleeves.

"Are you expecting this to be a good one or a bad one?" Ianto asks, as noncommittally as possible. He's not sure he actually cares, except in the abstract. Merely, he can tell Jack wishes to talk about it, and he knows Jack can only do that if he responds.

"I'd like to see Steven."

"Is she bringing him?"

"No."

"Ah."

Jack stops fidgeting with his cuff then and turns to smile at Ianto. Why Jack likes it when he makes that noise of I-don't-know-what-to-say-realisation, he has no idea, but it's impossible not to smile back, even if it's awkward, even if Ianto will never quite get over the oddity of dressing side by side with him in the mornings.

Ianto walks out of the bedroom as Jack checks his Webley.

The four minutes from then until they manage to get out the door are passed in silence. This too, Ianto finds odd; Jack is almost always talking, but these mornings in the flat are always like this, quiet and nearly suffocating. That there is an ease in that sense of suffocation doesn't surprise Ianto, it just makes him smirk.

He tosses his keys impatiently in his hand as he waits for Jack, who has stopped to open the refrigerator and drink orange juice straight from the carton. Again. Oddly, he suspects Jack does it to make him laugh and so Ianto does, before letting the silence return.

It is only once they're in the car, Ianto putting it into gear, that Jack speaks again.

"You could come with, you know," he says.

"I can't imagine that would be a good idea."

"Why not?" Jack asks, and Ianto knows he's trying to provoke. But it's not about him, of course. It's about Alice.

"How old is she again, Jack?"

Jack frowns, thinking. "Thirty-four?"

"How old am I?"

"Oh."

Ianto glances at him and give a brief apologetic smile. "I will if you want, but I truly don't think she'd be amused."

Jack gives a long, frustrated sigh. "You always take this conversation so well," he says. It's ridiculously obvious that he's unhappy.

Ianto shrugs. "What am I supposed to do, exactly?"

"Be disturbed," Jack offers lightly, in a way that Ianto thinks is vastly cruel and unfair to all concerned.

"Sorry," he says, keeping his eyes on the road, "no interest in contributing to the family drama."

"No. Of course not. Always so calm, so even, our Ianto."

Ianto snorts. "We both know that's not true."

"Doesn't it bother you?" Jack asks after a while, and Ianto realizes it's likely he'll be petulant all day.

"What then?"

"That one day you'll look older than me. It certainly bothers her."

"Oh, I think she's probably bothered by a good deal more than that," Ianto says, stifling the urge to tell Jack they both know he won't live that long and that he shouldn't be that intentionally obtuse besides. It's unbecoming.

"The not dying," Jack supplies. It's almost a non-sequitur, but not, Ianto thinks, enough of one.

"Yeah, the not dying. Does she know about that?"

"No."

"Oh." Ianto frowns. He doesn't always know why Jack brings certain things up, except to wound.

"Does it bother you?" Jack asks into his obvious confusion.

"No, not really."

"Not really?"

"It used to."

"Really?" Jack asks. Ianto can hear him smile, like he's caught him out at something. He hasn't.

"Really."

"Why?"

"Doesn't everyone want to live forever when they're sixteen? Didn't you?"

"Oh, yeah, sure."

"And then one day, you grow up and you realize that would be a terrible thing. Although," Ianto teases, "maybe you never got around to that."

Jack chuckles, and Ianto offers him another smile, not nearly as reluctant as he thinks it should be. It's easier than talking about Lisa though, easier than reminding Jack that maybe he shouldn't get his average opinions on mortality from a bloke who's been ready to die on and off for a while now.

"I would like you to meet her eventually," Jack says, face pressed to the window and looking out at the road.

Ianto glances over at him and wishes there were something he could do that would actually be of help. But there isn't. He can't make Alice like her father and he can't make Jack stop trying to wedge all their lives into either the habits of some normal mortal earth that has never actually existed or some colony not even yet to be.

"Not today, okay?" Ianto says quietly, knowing, that if Jack chooses to press, he'll acquiesce nearly immediately to no one's particular benefit.

"Yeah," Jack says, fidgeting with his cuffs already as if everything in the world just takes too damn long. "Not today."