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Story: Ianto Jones Knows About Sex
Author: Melinda Kitty![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
melindakitty
Characters: Ianto/OC
Rated: Adult for slash, bisexuality, mature content, language, violence, and pretty boys being pretty boys together.
Disclaimer: Not even RTD can make Ianto as miserable as I can, and he certainly wouldn't comfort him as well either, so if he wants to hand him over, I promise to treat him right. No? *sigh...*
Spoilers: AU set in the Faithful!Verse, but possible spoilers for Fragments and other Ianto!Backstory epis.
Melinda will be back tomorrow, but before I hand the reins of control back over to her, I've got one more set of posts to make. MOO HA HA AHA HA!!! *cough* Mine is an evil laugh!! -ophymirage
AUTHOR'S NOTE: New chapters of Faithful will start going up one week from today. In the meantime, I thought I'd let y'all into my mind to see what kinds of character studies I do for the stars of my fics. (I find I can't write the characters unless I know them as thoroughly as possible, and the more I love a character, the more deeply I need to know him/her.) I've done similar character studies for other characters, but I found Ianto's story in many ways to be the most complex, the most winsome, and the most tragic. When it comes down to it, I don't believe our boy has had a very happy life. (Which is why I want so much to give him the Happily Ever After he deserves.)
In this little stream-of-consciousness, I tried to answer the questions that've been bothering me about Ianto: Who is this boy? What did he steal that got him convicted for shoplifting? How did a lovely Welsh lad like him come to be part of Torchwood 1 in the first place? (Based on "Fragments" and the other bits and pieces I've seen, no one comes into the organization either by accident or through happy circumstances.) And, most importantly of all to me: Who broke Ianto's heart and left him the adorable and yet wounded creature he is?
Love and squoobles to Ophymirage, who also thinks the idea of a Goth!Ianto is endlessly sexy.
Ianto Jones knows about sex. By the time puberty blindsides him, his parents have long since turned from passionless coupling to chaste indifference, but all the same he knows by the snickers in the hall at school. The touches in the changing room. The stolen kisses behind the school. The shameful yet oh-so-lovely mutual wanks in the alley when some pretty classmate is also not a bloody fairy.
Because he's not gay. He can't be. The flush that consumes him every time Emmeline looks his way is real. His fascination with the way Hermione's hair drapes always over one shoulder in a fall of blonde silk isn't just the fairydust-and-hairdressing fascination one might expect from a boy who likes boys. It's terribly confusing, but linked to the same instinct that makes him watch Gareth a little too closely in the shower, which earns him a sound thrashing from the much larger boy and his mates as soon as the schoolday ends.
He learns to be guarded in every crush. Secret in every fantasy. He smiles with harmless, platonic charm even as his mind slowly peels the object of his desire out of his (or her, either will do) clothing. Even the rebellious monster in his trousers will come to heel if pressed firmly (and painfully) enough. And he learns to press. To repress. To be the Friend because all the girls assume he's just a sweet bloke who likes the boys and all the boys aren't sure what to think. (And don't the Fates have a kinked sense of humour? The boys who meet him out in back of the school are often the loudest in their denunciations when their mates are listening.)
Ianto is fifth of seven, two older brothers, one younger (the unspeakable little twat) and common wisdom reckons that surely ONE of those is bound to follow in the family business in more ways than one. After all, it's hard enough to be the son of a master tailor without actually craving the kinds of touches the other kids suspect him of. But how does one explain that it's not just boys' hands he wants on his skin?
Boys' hands are easier to come by, especially when they learn how discreet he can be.
Twelve years old. The London Incident does nothing to improve his odds with either gender. One would think that running away from home to the big, bad city would give him a certain bad-boy mystique, but the too-cool rebellion is easily forgotten in the ridicule that comes with the rather colourful coterie of bruises those drunken chavs gave him. (And he begins to think the cracked ribs might never heal.)
In London, he learns the fourfold danger of being articulate, angry, effeminate, and Welsh. Bad enough to be scrawny for his age. Bad enough to have some invisible "NOT STRAIGHT" mark on him. Worse still to have the wrong accent. Worse than that to choose the wrong bloke to mouth off to. And then...
He's lucky they didn't kill him.
He's even more lucky the coppers showed up just before the chavs could make good on their threats to teach him a lesson he'd never forget.
(After all, twelve is not too young to know what rape is. Not when the bodily threat is backed up by foul breath and hard fists.)
But he knows that there is such a thing as sex. Real sex, not just the quick, guilty wank or the violent touch. Sex where people become part of each other in some way for which he's only half figured out the schematics. Sex that must mean more emotionally than the overly-choreographed and slightly painful-looking bits of skin-on-skin in the films his classmates watch with obsessive intensity.
Sixteen at last. In spite of his decidedly mediocre marks -- why bother with the drudgery of schoolwork when one can indulge in independent study? -- he scores off the charts on the placement tests. His parents, disbelieving that their forgettable middle child could be a bona fide genius, insist on another battery of tests. Again, off the charts. Perfect scores. And the scholarship comes out of nowhere. Relieved and slightly confused, Ianto looks upon his early admission to UCL as a way out.
And it is. Until now, he's hidden the eye makeup and only dreamt about letting his hair grow out into long, black wisps. (He's always loved that look. Like someone from a half-remembered dream.) He's had to pass for normal during the day because his father and mother would never forgive him if he showed them his true colour is black. Of course, it's a painful cliché that all angry and wounded young men go Goth at some point, but in Ianto's case, the quiet brooding and meaningful silences fit better than anything. He feels most himself when he looks out at the world through smoky eyes. And on the campus of University College London and the neighbouring nirvana of Camden, he doesn't have to pretend anymore.
UCL is a way out. But it's also a way in. A way into more drudgery. More distrust. More unearned dislike. (The world seems to have no shortage of those who want to brand him with one unpleasant name or another, and not just because of his decidedly noncommittal sexuality.) No matter how many classes he takes or courses of study he reads, none of them can hold his attention for long. None of them feel right, though he'll be damned if he can say why. But the mess he's making of school is worth it, because it's London, and if one must have a cruel mistress, who better than Londinium herself?
His dorm room makes the average cupboard look spacious, and after a while, his claustrophobia is as much literal as intellectual. He needs to get out. And London has so many delightful places. So many dark spaces. His nocturnal walkabouts in Cardiff were only the dress rehearsal for this. With time, he blends into any shadow. Avoids any eye. Gets in and out of places that should be off-limits. And he walks the silent hallways of the closed museums. Gets within a hair's breadth of masterpieces. Thumbs through secret collections. Absorbs all the facts and figures nighttime London has to offer, all without the daytime press of so many people.
Getting in and out of places is not that hard really. With time, he has all the security codes for the Natural History Museum (among a dozen others) committed to memory. Slip in. Slip out. Disturb nothing. Leave no traces that can't be explained away as belonging to one of the diurnal guests. Take no souvenirs that will be missed. Breathe freely among the lifeless exhibits that nonetheless hum with potential and memory and the promise of places he's never been but sincerely enjoys imagining.
People come and go during the day. He smiles in the common room. Listens more than he speaks at the pub. Learns when to be serious in class and when to tease when in both mixed and male company. But he's guarded. Always guarded. He's an outsider in ways that go beyond accent or upbringing, and crushes are still best nursed in secret.
Far easier to be the Friend than to hope for anything more.
Stacey is different, though. Intellectual. His senior by three years, and yet she is everything he's been dreaming of. Not too pretty (those ones leave the deepest scars), not too popular (those ones can ruin one's waking hours forever), not too normal (for the ones with the strangest kinks in the shadows wear the most "normal" guises during the day.)
He invites her out for a decidedly non-traditional "date". And when he comes 'round for her, she's there, in the casual clothes he suggested. Her breath fogs in the dim. Her eyes dilate in the gloom. Despite the somewhat well-worn jumper, she's absolutely lovely in her potential. In all the things she might yet be.
And she understands. Slips silently through the door to the museum. Waits for him to disarm the alarms on the wing. Her objections are more for the principle than the reality, for she's first through the door and fastest up to the glass of the first case. And, like him, she disturbs nothing. Takes nothing. It's a dizzying freedom to have a partner at last. Someone who smiles. Laughs. Looks. Drinks in the sights and sounds and smells. Someone with whom he can share this side of himself.
She kisses him first. It so takes him off guard that he just stands staring like an idiot. But when she asks him if he wants her to stop, if she's done something wrong, the stammer falls away and he kisses her like he's always wished but never dared. And she holds him, there in the dark. And he her. And for a moment he dares to believe that this might be it. Perhaps this is what he's been looking for.
It's a near thing with the night guard, but Ianto hasn’t been haunting these halls for this long without knowing how to get in and out unseen.
He knows he's asking for trouble when they pass through the gift shop and she takes a shine to earrings whose absence the adults will DEFINITELY notice. But she's asked for so little and he wants to give her so much. Besides, a bit of rearranging makes it look as though nothing is missing from the case. With luck, it'll be days before the attendants notice. And no prints to go on. (His gloves aren't just proof against the cold.)
Besides, the third snog is the best of all, all hunger and want and need and pressing flesh in too many layers of clothing. Suddenly November's chill means nothing. All he wants is her and him unclothed.
He must take the blame for what happened next, though in his defence when Stacey left him with her brassiere in his hands and ran for the next wing, the codes to disarm the alarms were the farthest thing from his mind.
She is locked inside when the automated defences kick in. He slips away with only a young woman's undergarment as proof of how stupid they really are. He means to come back for her. Be pretty and charming and glib and explain how a perfectly innocent girl came to be in a locked museum. He's lied his way out of things a dozen times before, and Stacey's worth a few gilded words and convenient untruths.
Imagine his surprise when the police are waiting outside his dorm. They arrest him. Haul him in.
He wishes he could forget the way part of his heart died when he discovered how quickly heated kisses turn to hysterical finger-pointing when an upperclassman believes her academic good standing is on the line. He is convenient for Stacey, just as he's been convenient for everyone else. Heartsick, he doesn't bother to lie. Takes responsibility for his actions like the man he's theoretically becoming. Allows her to get off with only a stern warning from the judge. (Though Stacey and her mother shoot him twin looks of hatred and contempt as they pass him in the hall of the courthouse.)
And to his surprise, the judge takes pity on him as well. He dismisses the charges for breaking and entering. Drops the charge of trespassing. Even gives Ianto a stern but encouraging smile. And for no good reason, Ianto has the sense of some as-yet unseen machinery turning in his favour.
Like the scholarship whose fortuitous appearance he still has yet to explain, the whole circumstances around his sentencing seem a bit too convenient. (Not that he'd dream of complaining.)
Community service is the chance to harden his heart a little more. And the mark on his record for shoplifting will follow him forever.
Twenty-one. One night stands really aren't his thing. Relationships in general are more trouble than they're worth. He's not sure what he's looking for, but he may as well keep moving until he finds it. Everything interests him so long as he can commit to nothing. And for all the grand promise of his placement tests, somehow the bright future UCL promises its students fails to materialize. He graduated early, but his prospects are as mediocre as his marks.
One pair of stolen earrings now makes every potential employer look askance at him.
Painful but true, he owes his father a debt of gratitude. He learnt the fine art of entertaining as a child, when his father called on him to be pretty and charming and impeccably manicured so all the old biddies who came in for hems on their husbands' trousers would coo and cluck at the perfect little gentleman butler, as Ianto offered another two lumps for their cuppa. Now coffee and tea are Ianto's bread and butter. Coffee houses are always in need of help. He's charming and efficient and quiet. He has a photographic memory for orders, a sixth sense for the quirks of new customers, and empathy for the moods of old veterans. Best of all, he can make enough to live on without committing to a career path, and it allows him to keep moving. Always moving on. Just passing through.
But the lovely boy in the corner of the cafe won't go away. Always reading. Or writing. Or sketching. Always self-sufficient to the point of politely hostile. (Touch me not. Speak to me only if you must.) Ianto shouldn't notice him. Shouldn't care. The name should be a warning in and of itself: "Darcy" is every bit as much the gorgeous misanthrope as his literary namesake. He's almost too pretty to be a boy, with long dark lashes and elven features whose loveliness is marred only by his unwavering wariness.
Ianto woos him with lovingly-prepared coffees.
Darcy replies with loaned books on every subject Ianto has always wanted to study.
Ianto always returns the books in spotless condition. Answers with the loan of a few of his most beloved volumes.
Darcy reads even more quickly than he, and no longer objects to any beverage Ianto sets before him, his implied trust warming Ianto in lovely, fluttery ways that make his hands tremble with anticipation.
With time, Darcy's smile actually reaches his eyes. (And such lovely eyes they are.)
Scraps of poetry begin to appear on serviettes in the elegant slashes of Darcy's hand.
After a week, Ianto dares to leave his first reply.
After a month, the strange, silent conversation consumes enough serviettes that Ianto receives a stern backroom talking-to from his boss.
Dark eyes deep with silent sympathy, Darcy switches to pages from his notebook.
Ianto keeps them all.
After three months, Darcy waits for him outside the shop when Ianto's shift is over.
Spoken words are Ianto's nemeses. Written words are comfortable. Controllable. Comprehensible. But as soon as the words leave the page and limp their way to his mouth, as often as not they trip and stumble and run the one into the next. He hates the stammer with quiet seething. He expects it will unman him before this beautiful and yet still distant young man.
Then Darcy takes his hand. Smiles in a way that circumvents words entirely. And they walk, hand in hand. Silence lubricates Ianto's tongue and unfreezes his brain. Before he knows it, he's telling the secrets of his cruel mistress, Londinium, to a young man who is as fascinated with her as he.
They walk for what seems hours. Footsore doesn't enter the equation with Darcy's hand warming his. Indeed, Ianto's sure that if this beautiful boy keeps smiling at him, he could run round the world without feeling the least bit tired. But even so, after a time the only gentlemanly option left him is to walk his beautiful poet to the last train home. (Irritating that the Tube can't keep more accommodating hours.)
As they wait on the platform, Darcy's hand in his gives Ianto the courage to move closer. Darcy meets him halfway. Pulls him close and closer for what feels like the first real kiss of his life. Neither of them care when the rush of stale/hot/humid air heralds the arrival of the last train of the night. Neither of them part when the hurrying shadows of passengers disembark and disappear. Neither of them move away as the train too takes its leave. There is only the heat of Darcy's mouth, the heady rush of his body pressing against Ianto's. Urgent hands at his back. In his hair (dyed an unnatural black to match the smoky eyes.) Heat and bliss and oh yes, he wants to go home, but not alone.
Darcy saves him again by suggesting maybe he could walk him to Ianto's flat instead. A loving caress through his jeans erases any doubt that Darcy is thinking the same thing as he. When he caresses back, the hot hardness sends his stomach flip-flopping and makes his breath catch in his throat. Darcy kisses him again, so tenderly Ianto's eyes prick with tears and he knows this is it. This is what he's been looking for.
They should go right away. He has a sense of the clock running down, though at the time, he can't quite place the source of his unease. But Darcy is hot and willing and more than a little insistent. The cool reserve is gone in a dizzying barrage of kisses and caresses. The hand on his cock is sure, strong, uncompromising. And Ianto could die of joy at that look of determined lust before Darcy muffles his cry of pleasure with another deep snog.
The only thing better than coming in Darcy's hand is feeling the beautiful boy shudder against him as he climaxes with the sweetest sigh.
And handkerchiefs do come in terribly handy.
They can't seem to stop kissing each other, even as they neaten and straighten a little. It's a half-spoken language. Both he and Darcy want to adjourn to more comfortable quarters for the next round (garbage and the occasional rat are not exactly romantic). Both he and Darcy keep falling into each other. Smile becomes kiss. Kiss becomes touch. Ianto might have stayed there all night had not Darcy insisted that they head to his place. Smiling like the fool he is, Ianto laces fingers with his new lover and leads him up the stairs.
And it's those few steps that save him and damn the beautiful boy he's mad for. From the dark of the tunnel comes an inhuman cry. Gunshots. Shouts. And something with too many teeth and nightmarish claws lopes out of the shadows. Runs into Darcy. Savages him. Spatters Ianto with his blood.
Perhaps men run to him. Perhaps one of them is a female agent. Perhaps they're all in neatly-cut suits. Maybe someone is more casually dressed. His memories will always be clouded. Always unsure. Always jumbled. Always spattered with blood and gore and shouting and disbelief.
When Ianto was a teenager, roaming the streets of Cardiff after dark, he would often lose time. Hours. Sometimes a whole night. And though he had a sense of the same people, again and again, he could never put names or faces to them. Whether by instinct or happenstance, he kept finding them. And finding other things too. Inhuman creatures. Unearthly events. To this day he can only recall them like shadowy pieces of a dream.
But on the night that Darcy's blood stains Ianto's black jeans even darker, he remembers the man in the coat. The man who commanded him to leave Cardiff while he could. To stop finding the monsters before they found him. To hold onto his normal life while he still could.
And then Ianto wakes in his bed. Clean. Sober. Disoriented. Alone. This has happened to him before. Some nightmare came to him and then he woke as if nothing had happened. As if hours of his life hadn't vanished without a trace. But this time is different. Even as he frantically searches for the missing scraps of paper that would prove the existence of Darcy, he becomes more and more certain.
He had a lover. A beautiful boy with a poet's heart and the hands of a courtesan. Ianto's body remembers the touch so vividly that it will broach no reasonable explanation. He loved. He was loved in return. For a few brief hours, he found what he was looking for. And in the cold light of day, he swears he will find the truth.
He returns to the platform after dark. No traces of anything. No marks. No blood. Nothing. And when he gathers his courage and carefully jumps down beside the tracks...
He wakes in his bed. Clean. Sober. Disoriented. Alone.
And now he knows. The drug in his veins tries to calm him. Soothe him. Tell him sweet lies that there was no boy. There was no kiss. There was no bliss. There was no monster. But now he knows that this siren song has been dogging him since he was twelve and saw...
No. He still can't make it out. It's still shadows and lies and my GOD is this stuff insistent.
But Darcy's blood won't let him forget. He can still feel the heat of it. The horror of it. The speed with which a beautiful young man can become so much meat. Chasing phantoms, Ianto returns again to the platform. And when the people appear from the shadows, he dares them to drug him again. But they don't. They insist that he choose: leave not just London, but Britain herself, or join them and learn to keep a new set of secrets.
And so he chooses Torchwood.
Link to previous Faithful!Verse stories
Crossposted to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
jackxianto, torchwoodslash
Author: Melinda Kitty
melindakittyCharacters: Ianto/OC
Rated: Adult for slash, bisexuality, mature content, language, violence, and pretty boys being pretty boys together.
Disclaimer: Not even RTD can make Ianto as miserable as I can, and he certainly wouldn't comfort him as well either, so if he wants to hand him over, I promise to treat him right. No? *sigh...*
Spoilers: AU set in the Faithful!Verse, but possible spoilers for Fragments and other Ianto!Backstory epis.
Melinda will be back tomorrow, but before I hand the reins of control back over to her, I've got one more set of posts to make. MOO HA HA AHA HA!!! *cough* Mine is an evil laugh!! -ophymirage
AUTHOR'S NOTE: New chapters of Faithful will start going up one week from today. In the meantime, I thought I'd let y'all into my mind to see what kinds of character studies I do for the stars of my fics. (I find I can't write the characters unless I know them as thoroughly as possible, and the more I love a character, the more deeply I need to know him/her.) I've done similar character studies for other characters, but I found Ianto's story in many ways to be the most complex, the most winsome, and the most tragic. When it comes down to it, I don't believe our boy has had a very happy life. (Which is why I want so much to give him the Happily Ever After he deserves.)
In this little stream-of-consciousness, I tried to answer the questions that've been bothering me about Ianto: Who is this boy? What did he steal that got him convicted for shoplifting? How did a lovely Welsh lad like him come to be part of Torchwood 1 in the first place? (Based on "Fragments" and the other bits and pieces I've seen, no one comes into the organization either by accident or through happy circumstances.) And, most importantly of all to me: Who broke Ianto's heart and left him the adorable and yet wounded creature he is?
Love and squoobles to Ophymirage, who also thinks the idea of a Goth!Ianto is endlessly sexy.
Ianto Jones knows about sex. By the time puberty blindsides him, his parents have long since turned from passionless coupling to chaste indifference, but all the same he knows by the snickers in the hall at school. The touches in the changing room. The stolen kisses behind the school. The shameful yet oh-so-lovely mutual wanks in the alley when some pretty classmate is also not a bloody fairy.
Because he's not gay. He can't be. The flush that consumes him every time Emmeline looks his way is real. His fascination with the way Hermione's hair drapes always over one shoulder in a fall of blonde silk isn't just the fairydust-and-hairdressing fascination one might expect from a boy who likes boys. It's terribly confusing, but linked to the same instinct that makes him watch Gareth a little too closely in the shower, which earns him a sound thrashing from the much larger boy and his mates as soon as the schoolday ends.
He learns to be guarded in every crush. Secret in every fantasy. He smiles with harmless, platonic charm even as his mind slowly peels the object of his desire out of his (or her, either will do) clothing. Even the rebellious monster in his trousers will come to heel if pressed firmly (and painfully) enough. And he learns to press. To repress. To be the Friend because all the girls assume he's just a sweet bloke who likes the boys and all the boys aren't sure what to think. (And don't the Fates have a kinked sense of humour? The boys who meet him out in back of the school are often the loudest in their denunciations when their mates are listening.)
Ianto is fifth of seven, two older brothers, one younger (the unspeakable little twat) and common wisdom reckons that surely ONE of those is bound to follow in the family business in more ways than one. After all, it's hard enough to be the son of a master tailor without actually craving the kinds of touches the other kids suspect him of. But how does one explain that it's not just boys' hands he wants on his skin?
Boys' hands are easier to come by, especially when they learn how discreet he can be.
Twelve years old. The London Incident does nothing to improve his odds with either gender. One would think that running away from home to the big, bad city would give him a certain bad-boy mystique, but the too-cool rebellion is easily forgotten in the ridicule that comes with the rather colourful coterie of bruises those drunken chavs gave him. (And he begins to think the cracked ribs might never heal.)
In London, he learns the fourfold danger of being articulate, angry, effeminate, and Welsh. Bad enough to be scrawny for his age. Bad enough to have some invisible "NOT STRAIGHT" mark on him. Worse still to have the wrong accent. Worse than that to choose the wrong bloke to mouth off to. And then...
He's lucky they didn't kill him.
He's even more lucky the coppers showed up just before the chavs could make good on their threats to teach him a lesson he'd never forget.
(After all, twelve is not too young to know what rape is. Not when the bodily threat is backed up by foul breath and hard fists.)
But he knows that there is such a thing as sex. Real sex, not just the quick, guilty wank or the violent touch. Sex where people become part of each other in some way for which he's only half figured out the schematics. Sex that must mean more emotionally than the overly-choreographed and slightly painful-looking bits of skin-on-skin in the films his classmates watch with obsessive intensity.
Sixteen at last. In spite of his decidedly mediocre marks -- why bother with the drudgery of schoolwork when one can indulge in independent study? -- he scores off the charts on the placement tests. His parents, disbelieving that their forgettable middle child could be a bona fide genius, insist on another battery of tests. Again, off the charts. Perfect scores. And the scholarship comes out of nowhere. Relieved and slightly confused, Ianto looks upon his early admission to UCL as a way out.
And it is. Until now, he's hidden the eye makeup and only dreamt about letting his hair grow out into long, black wisps. (He's always loved that look. Like someone from a half-remembered dream.) He's had to pass for normal during the day because his father and mother would never forgive him if he showed them his true colour is black. Of course, it's a painful cliché that all angry and wounded young men go Goth at some point, but in Ianto's case, the quiet brooding and meaningful silences fit better than anything. He feels most himself when he looks out at the world through smoky eyes. And on the campus of University College London and the neighbouring nirvana of Camden, he doesn't have to pretend anymore.
UCL is a way out. But it's also a way in. A way into more drudgery. More distrust. More unearned dislike. (The world seems to have no shortage of those who want to brand him with one unpleasant name or another, and not just because of his decidedly noncommittal sexuality.) No matter how many classes he takes or courses of study he reads, none of them can hold his attention for long. None of them feel right, though he'll be damned if he can say why. But the mess he's making of school is worth it, because it's London, and if one must have a cruel mistress, who better than Londinium herself?
His dorm room makes the average cupboard look spacious, and after a while, his claustrophobia is as much literal as intellectual. He needs to get out. And London has so many delightful places. So many dark spaces. His nocturnal walkabouts in Cardiff were only the dress rehearsal for this. With time, he blends into any shadow. Avoids any eye. Gets in and out of places that should be off-limits. And he walks the silent hallways of the closed museums. Gets within a hair's breadth of masterpieces. Thumbs through secret collections. Absorbs all the facts and figures nighttime London has to offer, all without the daytime press of so many people.
Getting in and out of places is not that hard really. With time, he has all the security codes for the Natural History Museum (among a dozen others) committed to memory. Slip in. Slip out. Disturb nothing. Leave no traces that can't be explained away as belonging to one of the diurnal guests. Take no souvenirs that will be missed. Breathe freely among the lifeless exhibits that nonetheless hum with potential and memory and the promise of places he's never been but sincerely enjoys imagining.
People come and go during the day. He smiles in the common room. Listens more than he speaks at the pub. Learns when to be serious in class and when to tease when in both mixed and male company. But he's guarded. Always guarded. He's an outsider in ways that go beyond accent or upbringing, and crushes are still best nursed in secret.
Far easier to be the Friend than to hope for anything more.
Stacey is different, though. Intellectual. His senior by three years, and yet she is everything he's been dreaming of. Not too pretty (those ones leave the deepest scars), not too popular (those ones can ruin one's waking hours forever), not too normal (for the ones with the strangest kinks in the shadows wear the most "normal" guises during the day.)
He invites her out for a decidedly non-traditional "date". And when he comes 'round for her, she's there, in the casual clothes he suggested. Her breath fogs in the dim. Her eyes dilate in the gloom. Despite the somewhat well-worn jumper, she's absolutely lovely in her potential. In all the things she might yet be.
And she understands. Slips silently through the door to the museum. Waits for him to disarm the alarms on the wing. Her objections are more for the principle than the reality, for she's first through the door and fastest up to the glass of the first case. And, like him, she disturbs nothing. Takes nothing. It's a dizzying freedom to have a partner at last. Someone who smiles. Laughs. Looks. Drinks in the sights and sounds and smells. Someone with whom he can share this side of himself.
She kisses him first. It so takes him off guard that he just stands staring like an idiot. But when she asks him if he wants her to stop, if she's done something wrong, the stammer falls away and he kisses her like he's always wished but never dared. And she holds him, there in the dark. And he her. And for a moment he dares to believe that this might be it. Perhaps this is what he's been looking for.
It's a near thing with the night guard, but Ianto hasn’t been haunting these halls for this long without knowing how to get in and out unseen.
He knows he's asking for trouble when they pass through the gift shop and she takes a shine to earrings whose absence the adults will DEFINITELY notice. But she's asked for so little and he wants to give her so much. Besides, a bit of rearranging makes it look as though nothing is missing from the case. With luck, it'll be days before the attendants notice. And no prints to go on. (His gloves aren't just proof against the cold.)
Besides, the third snog is the best of all, all hunger and want and need and pressing flesh in too many layers of clothing. Suddenly November's chill means nothing. All he wants is her and him unclothed.
He must take the blame for what happened next, though in his defence when Stacey left him with her brassiere in his hands and ran for the next wing, the codes to disarm the alarms were the farthest thing from his mind.
She is locked inside when the automated defences kick in. He slips away with only a young woman's undergarment as proof of how stupid they really are. He means to come back for her. Be pretty and charming and glib and explain how a perfectly innocent girl came to be in a locked museum. He's lied his way out of things a dozen times before, and Stacey's worth a few gilded words and convenient untruths.
Imagine his surprise when the police are waiting outside his dorm. They arrest him. Haul him in.
He wishes he could forget the way part of his heart died when he discovered how quickly heated kisses turn to hysterical finger-pointing when an upperclassman believes her academic good standing is on the line. He is convenient for Stacey, just as he's been convenient for everyone else. Heartsick, he doesn't bother to lie. Takes responsibility for his actions like the man he's theoretically becoming. Allows her to get off with only a stern warning from the judge. (Though Stacey and her mother shoot him twin looks of hatred and contempt as they pass him in the hall of the courthouse.)
And to his surprise, the judge takes pity on him as well. He dismisses the charges for breaking and entering. Drops the charge of trespassing. Even gives Ianto a stern but encouraging smile. And for no good reason, Ianto has the sense of some as-yet unseen machinery turning in his favour.
Like the scholarship whose fortuitous appearance he still has yet to explain, the whole circumstances around his sentencing seem a bit too convenient. (Not that he'd dream of complaining.)
Community service is the chance to harden his heart a little more. And the mark on his record for shoplifting will follow him forever.
Twenty-one. One night stands really aren't his thing. Relationships in general are more trouble than they're worth. He's not sure what he's looking for, but he may as well keep moving until he finds it. Everything interests him so long as he can commit to nothing. And for all the grand promise of his placement tests, somehow the bright future UCL promises its students fails to materialize. He graduated early, but his prospects are as mediocre as his marks.
One pair of stolen earrings now makes every potential employer look askance at him.
Painful but true, he owes his father a debt of gratitude. He learnt the fine art of entertaining as a child, when his father called on him to be pretty and charming and impeccably manicured so all the old biddies who came in for hems on their husbands' trousers would coo and cluck at the perfect little gentleman butler, as Ianto offered another two lumps for their cuppa. Now coffee and tea are Ianto's bread and butter. Coffee houses are always in need of help. He's charming and efficient and quiet. He has a photographic memory for orders, a sixth sense for the quirks of new customers, and empathy for the moods of old veterans. Best of all, he can make enough to live on without committing to a career path, and it allows him to keep moving. Always moving on. Just passing through.
But the lovely boy in the corner of the cafe won't go away. Always reading. Or writing. Or sketching. Always self-sufficient to the point of politely hostile. (Touch me not. Speak to me only if you must.) Ianto shouldn't notice him. Shouldn't care. The name should be a warning in and of itself: "Darcy" is every bit as much the gorgeous misanthrope as his literary namesake. He's almost too pretty to be a boy, with long dark lashes and elven features whose loveliness is marred only by his unwavering wariness.
Ianto woos him with lovingly-prepared coffees.
Darcy replies with loaned books on every subject Ianto has always wanted to study.
Ianto always returns the books in spotless condition. Answers with the loan of a few of his most beloved volumes.
Darcy reads even more quickly than he, and no longer objects to any beverage Ianto sets before him, his implied trust warming Ianto in lovely, fluttery ways that make his hands tremble with anticipation.
With time, Darcy's smile actually reaches his eyes. (And such lovely eyes they are.)
Scraps of poetry begin to appear on serviettes in the elegant slashes of Darcy's hand.
After a week, Ianto dares to leave his first reply.
After a month, the strange, silent conversation consumes enough serviettes that Ianto receives a stern backroom talking-to from his boss.
Dark eyes deep with silent sympathy, Darcy switches to pages from his notebook.
Ianto keeps them all.
After three months, Darcy waits for him outside the shop when Ianto's shift is over.
Spoken words are Ianto's nemeses. Written words are comfortable. Controllable. Comprehensible. But as soon as the words leave the page and limp their way to his mouth, as often as not they trip and stumble and run the one into the next. He hates the stammer with quiet seething. He expects it will unman him before this beautiful and yet still distant young man.
Then Darcy takes his hand. Smiles in a way that circumvents words entirely. And they walk, hand in hand. Silence lubricates Ianto's tongue and unfreezes his brain. Before he knows it, he's telling the secrets of his cruel mistress, Londinium, to a young man who is as fascinated with her as he.
They walk for what seems hours. Footsore doesn't enter the equation with Darcy's hand warming his. Indeed, Ianto's sure that if this beautiful boy keeps smiling at him, he could run round the world without feeling the least bit tired. But even so, after a time the only gentlemanly option left him is to walk his beautiful poet to the last train home. (Irritating that the Tube can't keep more accommodating hours.)
As they wait on the platform, Darcy's hand in his gives Ianto the courage to move closer. Darcy meets him halfway. Pulls him close and closer for what feels like the first real kiss of his life. Neither of them care when the rush of stale/hot/humid air heralds the arrival of the last train of the night. Neither of them part when the hurrying shadows of passengers disembark and disappear. Neither of them move away as the train too takes its leave. There is only the heat of Darcy's mouth, the heady rush of his body pressing against Ianto's. Urgent hands at his back. In his hair (dyed an unnatural black to match the smoky eyes.) Heat and bliss and oh yes, he wants to go home, but not alone.
Darcy saves him again by suggesting maybe he could walk him to Ianto's flat instead. A loving caress through his jeans erases any doubt that Darcy is thinking the same thing as he. When he caresses back, the hot hardness sends his stomach flip-flopping and makes his breath catch in his throat. Darcy kisses him again, so tenderly Ianto's eyes prick with tears and he knows this is it. This is what he's been looking for.
They should go right away. He has a sense of the clock running down, though at the time, he can't quite place the source of his unease. But Darcy is hot and willing and more than a little insistent. The cool reserve is gone in a dizzying barrage of kisses and caresses. The hand on his cock is sure, strong, uncompromising. And Ianto could die of joy at that look of determined lust before Darcy muffles his cry of pleasure with another deep snog.
The only thing better than coming in Darcy's hand is feeling the beautiful boy shudder against him as he climaxes with the sweetest sigh.
And handkerchiefs do come in terribly handy.
They can't seem to stop kissing each other, even as they neaten and straighten a little. It's a half-spoken language. Both he and Darcy want to adjourn to more comfortable quarters for the next round (garbage and the occasional rat are not exactly romantic). Both he and Darcy keep falling into each other. Smile becomes kiss. Kiss becomes touch. Ianto might have stayed there all night had not Darcy insisted that they head to his place. Smiling like the fool he is, Ianto laces fingers with his new lover and leads him up the stairs.
And it's those few steps that save him and damn the beautiful boy he's mad for. From the dark of the tunnel comes an inhuman cry. Gunshots. Shouts. And something with too many teeth and nightmarish claws lopes out of the shadows. Runs into Darcy. Savages him. Spatters Ianto with his blood.
Perhaps men run to him. Perhaps one of them is a female agent. Perhaps they're all in neatly-cut suits. Maybe someone is more casually dressed. His memories will always be clouded. Always unsure. Always jumbled. Always spattered with blood and gore and shouting and disbelief.
When Ianto was a teenager, roaming the streets of Cardiff after dark, he would often lose time. Hours. Sometimes a whole night. And though he had a sense of the same people, again and again, he could never put names or faces to them. Whether by instinct or happenstance, he kept finding them. And finding other things too. Inhuman creatures. Unearthly events. To this day he can only recall them like shadowy pieces of a dream.
But on the night that Darcy's blood stains Ianto's black jeans even darker, he remembers the man in the coat. The man who commanded him to leave Cardiff while he could. To stop finding the monsters before they found him. To hold onto his normal life while he still could.
And then Ianto wakes in his bed. Clean. Sober. Disoriented. Alone. This has happened to him before. Some nightmare came to him and then he woke as if nothing had happened. As if hours of his life hadn't vanished without a trace. But this time is different. Even as he frantically searches for the missing scraps of paper that would prove the existence of Darcy, he becomes more and more certain.
He had a lover. A beautiful boy with a poet's heart and the hands of a courtesan. Ianto's body remembers the touch so vividly that it will broach no reasonable explanation. He loved. He was loved in return. For a few brief hours, he found what he was looking for. And in the cold light of day, he swears he will find the truth.
He returns to the platform after dark. No traces of anything. No marks. No blood. Nothing. And when he gathers his courage and carefully jumps down beside the tracks...
He wakes in his bed. Clean. Sober. Disoriented. Alone.
And now he knows. The drug in his veins tries to calm him. Soothe him. Tell him sweet lies that there was no boy. There was no kiss. There was no bliss. There was no monster. But now he knows that this siren song has been dogging him since he was twelve and saw...
No. He still can't make it out. It's still shadows and lies and my GOD is this stuff insistent.
But Darcy's blood won't let him forget. He can still feel the heat of it. The horror of it. The speed with which a beautiful young man can become so much meat. Chasing phantoms, Ianto returns again to the platform. And when the people appear from the shadows, he dares them to drug him again. But they don't. They insist that he choose: leave not just London, but Britain herself, or join them and learn to keep a new set of secrets.
And so he chooses Torchwood.
Link to previous Faithful!Verse stories
Crossposted to
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