Title: Paint By Numbers
By: Aearlor
Pairing: Jack/Ianto & Jack/stranger (although nothing really happens)
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. All the characters belong to the BBC and RTD.
Warnings: Swearing, hints of sex.
Word Count: 3, 492
Author's Notes: Gosh, this was difficult. I hope my recipient enjoys it. A big thanks to Mazz for all the help, patience and feigned interest, now, about that "thank you" I promised. All the poems are by e.e. cummings, very good poet thanks to paperbacked for getting me on to him.
Betas: Myforever (Georgina) and Nowahr.
Summary: Jack is always telling stories, Ianto wonders if that's all he's going to end up; a story.

***

Jack has always loved Ianto's flat

Jack has always loved Ianto's flat. From the sleek, dark, wood floors to the pure white ceiling. He loves the way the cupboard next to the fridge always jams and the only way to open it is to give it a swift kick. He loves the photos of Ianto's family even if they do remind him of how young and human and how relatively innocent the Welshman is, he loves the way that the cupboard under the stairs, so unlike the rest of the house, is so packed and utterly untidy the last time Jack was stupid enough to open it took him four hours and twenty three minutes to tidy up (but that's mainly because Ianto in jeans distracts Jack). He loves the slight dip in the leather sofa that stands adjacent to the TV; the product of Ianto's stopwatch and Jack's impatience.
He loves how much of a home it is, but he hates how much it makes him miss his. He misses The Boeshane Peninsula, he always had, sometimes a certain word or a certain smell and he is washed over by the feel of sand under bare feet, the smell of spice infused cooking that overwhelmed his childhood home and he can hear the stories and poems read to him and Gray, by his mother in the study. That's why of all the things he loves about Ianto's flat; it's the wall that's taken up entirely by bookcases he loves the most. (Ianto's bed is a close second, but it's totally because those blue sheets are warm dammit, and so not because Jack has a one track mind.)

That is where Ianto finds Jack after he wakes up alone in a still-warm bed.

"I didn't realize you were a fan of e.e cummings." A soft voice made Jack jump; he looked up and was met by Ianto's small, barely-there grin and light blue eyes still dull from sleep.

"I'm not really," Jack admitted. "The book just looked interesting."

"And is it?" Ianto asked, slim frame leaning on the space where two bookcases meet, a grin invading the corners of his mouth.

"There's too much punctuation and no capitalization." Ianto arches his eyebrow in response.

"He's an absolutely amazing poet, Jack, a lack of capitalization doesn't really effect that."

"Amazing is not the word I'd have used. It's more like non-sensical ramblings with random punctuation; a bit like when Owen tries to do paperwork." Ianto gives in with an exasperated noise.

"Jack, come back to bed," Ianto commands.

"Oh?" Jack replies with a quirked eyebrow and a charming smile. Ianto rolls his eyes and smiles fondly.

"To sleep, Jack, to sleep."

"You're no fun." Seeing the unimpressed look on Ianto's face, Jack relinquishes and pleads like a small child, "Just ten more minutes."

"Now, Jack," responded Ianto, playing the parent to Jack's child.

"Two more minutes?" Jack begs hands clasped in prayer.

"Fine, see you in two minutes and not a second more." He kisses Jack lightly on the cheek as he leaves.

"You better be naked when I get there," Jack cries to Ianto's retreating back but his eyes don't leave the page and he carries on reading the poem that he had started before Ianto interrupted, this one he understood, a grin claimed his face getting bigger and bigger as the poem progressed, he finished it and went to find a pen.

"Jack, your two minutes is up!" called Ianto from within his bedroom.

"I wasn't working in Earth minutes." A beat. "Are you naked in there?" asked Jack as he wrote in large cramped capitals.

"No, I'm in boxers and will remain in them for the entire night. Come to bed." Jack wrote the last full stop, wandered into Ianto's kitchen and put the sheet of paper in Ianto's favourite mug.

"I'm coming!"

Just as stated, Ianto was in his boxers, lying on top of the covers. Jack takes off the T-shirt he was wearing and climbs next to him on the bed and pulls Ianto on to him so half of Ianto's body is lain diagonally against Jack's torso and his head is just below Jack's chin.

"Jack, can I ask you something?"

"Of course."

"How come whenever you sleep at mine, I always wake up alone and you're always at my bookcases?"

"It's a long story, I'm not sure I—"

"I'm not going anywhere, Jack." Ianto's voice was soft as he sat up to look Jack in the eyes. Ianto smiles and Jack smiles back twice as hard.

"Well, back when I was a blue-eyed boy from Boe—" Jack starts, smiling in reminiscence, but is interrupted suddenly by Ianto.

"Where's bow?" Ianto asks. Jack lifts his eyebrow softly in surprise in Ianto's uncharacteristic interruption but answers anyway.

"Its real name is the Boeshane Peninsula and it isn't anywhere really. It will be, in about three thousand years, roughly where America is."

"Roughly?"

"A shifting of tectonic plates and losing land due to global warming means the Earth was, or rather will be a little differently set out."

"Time travel plays havoc with tenses doesn't it?"

"You have no idea. Well, back when I was just a blue-eyed boy from Boe. Before those things came and invaded, my Mom used to read to Gray and me, just random stories from the bookcases that lined the wall in the study, every night without fail."

"You miss them, don't you?" Ianto asks, although it's not really a question.

"I miss it. I miss her, I miss Dad and I miss Gray. I miss Boeshane."

"What was it like?" Ianto's looking straight into Jack's eyes his voice is soft, but eager.

"Sandy, warm, it was an absolute nowhere town. I was a little bit famous there because I became a Time Agent, only Boeshanian to ever be recruited. I never went back after that." Jack looks away from Ianto and stares at the ceiling. He's never felt older. "I always said I would, but there was always another adventure that just couldn't wait. There was fun to have, there were wars to be fought, people to save…"

"Time to be agent-ed." Ianto smirks. Jack breaks out of his reverie, and grins from ear to ear at Ianto. They turn over in unison so they're both on their sides. Jack pulls the duvet over them both, envelops Ianto in his arms, and whispers in his ear, "Promise me you'll never, ever change." Ianto responds by pulling Jack closer to him.

When Ianto wakes-up the next day he's, once again, alone in a still warm bed but Jack is nowhere to be found. Ianto sighs; this is not the first time he's woken up alone. He gets dressed (charcoal suit, subtle off-white pinstripes, waist coat, red shirt and black tie) and goes to make himself coffee (strong, black, one sugar) and when he grabs his favourite mug (black and red, patterned) he finds a slip of paper that looks odd not written entirely in Jack's large but cramped capitals.

REPLACE GIRL WITH BOY, ACTUALLY REPLACE IT WITH MAN ;), SHE WITH HE, ETC AND THEN THIS IS MY FAVOURITE POEM.

my girl's tall with hard long eyes
as she stands, with her long hard hands keeping
silence on her dress, good for sleeping
is her long hard body filled with surprise
like a white shocking wire, when she smiles
a hard long smile it sometimes makes
gaily go clean through me tickling aches,
and the weak noise of her eyes easily files
my impatience to an edge--my girl's tall
and taut, with thin legs just like a vine
that's spent all of its life on a garden-wall,
and is going to die. When we grimly go to bed
with these legs she begins to heave and twine
about me, and to kiss my face and head

HE MAY BE AN AMAZING POET BUT I STILL MISS MY CAPITALS.
WEAR THE RED TODAY.

JACK.

Ianto smiles and slips the sheet of paper into his suit pocket.

"So, Harkness, where have you been?" asked Owen as he walked into the hub. Jack quirked his eyebrow in curiosity. "Gwen and Tosh rung me like ten minutes ago asking if I'd seen you or Ianto."

"You have two guesses where Ianto and I spent the night."

"Oh, God."

"Yeah, Ianto said that a lot last night."

"You're a sick man, Harkness."

"Oh, I know he is." said Ianto as he walked into the main area of the hub with a tray of coffee filled mugs. Jack grabbed his cup and noticed that underneath was a sheet of paper and in Ianto's messy, inconsistent scrawl was another poem:

i carry your heart with me(i carry it in
my heart)i am never without it(anywhere
i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done
by only me is your doing,my darling)
i fear
no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want
no world(for beautiful you are my world, my true)
and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant
and whatever a sun will always sing is you

here is the deepest secret nobody knows
(here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud
and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows
higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide)
and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart

i carry your heart(i carry it in my heart)

Ianto smiled at Jack as he watched Jack read and Jack smiled back twice as hard.

"So you and Jack had fun last night I heard," Owen mocks as he takes his cup, not noticing Jack and Ianto's exchange. Ianto raises an eyebrow.

"Yes, well e.e cummings is an amazing poet," Ianto answers smirking.

"That is possibly the worst euphemism ever."

"I don't know e.e cummings," grins Jack with a wink.

"I just—Jack…Drink your coffee, Jack," Ianto says slightly exasperated.

"Yes, my darling."

"Darling? Oh, that is so sweet," said Gwen as she walked into the hub.

"Although the emphasis on 'my' is a little odd."

Tosh follows Gwen in. "Oh, I see Ianto and Jack finally showed up." She says this at the same time Owen says, "Well, they do have a weird relationship."

"Hey! I take offence to that!" says Jack, almost pouting.

"Jack, how old are you?" Owen looks at Jack over his mug.

"A hundred and fifty-ish," Jack replies, trying to do the math.

"It's quite hard to work out, really," Ianto adds, "trust me, I've tried."

"Right, so for arguments sake, let's say Jack is a hundred and fifty, Ianto is twenty-four. Ianto's lifespan can go six times into Jacks. Tell me that's not weird."

"Well," Jack begins to answer but at that the rift alarm sounds. Tosh clicks away at her computer and groans. "The rift's acting up in that spot near Spangles again."

"Again? Tosh, Gwen with me," says Jack as he grabs his great coat.

"What about me and Ianto?" Owen asks.

"I don't trust you near a strip club, Owen, and frankly, Ianto's far too pretty to be near somewhere like that."
Ianto rolls his eyes and Owen tries to but fails miserably.

So Owen and Ianto stay around the conference table as neither of them have anything to do. They sit across from one another; Owen is pulling faces to amuse himself, and Ianto his tapping his fingers across the wood of the table, staring at the other man. Ianto tersely breaks the silence. "Do you really think Jack's and my relationship is weird?" He's sort of hurt, but more worried than anything; he doesn't want his and Jack relationship to be a freak show for the team to laugh at.

"Weird as anything, we all think it. Well, apart from Tosh. She thinks it's the cutest thing in the universe."

"You all think it? Don't any of you have anything better to do than gossip about Jack and me?" Ianto raises an eyebrow; he seems to be doing that increasingly often.

"Right, Ianto mate, I'm only going to say this once, so listen carefully. You may be a stuck-up, anal, emo twat, but you're our stuck-up, anal, emo twat, the three of us still sort of care. We remember what you were like when Jack left and we don't want you to get hurt. Oh, God, I spend entirely too much time near Gwen's emoting."

Ianto smiles, he's almost touched. "Thanks Owen, but contrary to popular belief I can look after myself. Everything is fine with me and Jack and if it wasn't. I'm more than capable of doing something about it."

"But how do you put up with it?" Owen says leaning across the table to be closer to Ianto.

"With what?"

"The not knowing. I mean, you don't even know how old he is and what about all that stuff Hart said? We don't even know what a time agent is." Owen is starting to sound a bit like Gwen and Ianto thinks that Owen is right about spending too much time near her. Maybe Gwen should be in quarantine when she's being emotive, lest it infect the rest of the team.

Ianto doesn't reply to that and Owen's eyes widen.

"You do know what a time agent is!"

"Not really. I have a sort of general picture; with Jack you only ever really get half-stories."

"Why do you put up with it?"

Ianto shrugs. "Because he's Jack."

And, really, that's answer enough for them both.

Sometimes when Jack talks of his past, Ianto thinks that no matter how much he talks, Jack will never tell enough. That every anecdote and date and time and story and picture is accumulating to something, but in the end that 'something' doesn't mean anything. They're just words that don't make sense. Like Ianto's reading pages from a book, but he's never read the epilogue. Jack's reminiscing is paint by numbers, but Ianto doesn't know what number corresponds with which colour.

Sometimes when Jack talks of his past, Ianto can't help but think that eventually that's all he's going to be; Jack's past, another anecdote. "Heh, reminds me of a guy I used to date, had a stopwatch fetish…" Maybe Ianto will be the story Jack never tells, apart from when he's drunk and lonely. Maybe he'll become the story Jack only tells to the new Iantos; maybe Ianto will be a colour in Jack's paint by numbers story telling. And there'll be someone else, someone new, who doesn't know how the numbers and the colours relate.

Sometimes when Jack talks of his past Ianto can't help but think how much of it is true. Whether he and the team get the sugarcoated truth, the parts Jack wants to tell, the parts Jack can tell. Maybe they get the dramatized, action-packed version. Jack the hero, not Jack the lucky. The stories of the lives he saved, but never the lives he took.

Sometimes when Jack talks of his past it makes Ianto think about the stories he has to tell, or lack-thereof. It makes him feel so young, so inexperienced, so relatively innocent. It makes Ianto feel like he's never really lived. That his brief, linear time on earth meant just as much, just as little, as Jack's stories did.

Jack is by the bookcase again, a familiar book in his hands. Ianto's not in the flat, he stormed out after another argument about Jack's past. Ianto's sick of half-stories, he's been thinking about what Owen's said. Jack's tired of questions and feels so old.

He grabs some more paper and finds another pen. He doesn't want this to be it for him and Ianto, but Jack needs to get away. He leaves the paper on Ianto's coffee table and leaves.

The air is cold and it's wet and it's late, Jack briefly wonders where Ianto is, and whether he remembered to take a coat, but quickly puts that from his mind. Right now he needs not to think and walks into the first bar he comes to. It's small and modern, all glass and purple lighting. He drinks and he drinks and he drinks, he finds a boy, no more than nineteen, he doesn't find out his name. They find themselves in a toilet cubicle, kissing ferociously. Jack gets a text from Ianto's mobile as the other man starts unbuckling his trousers, it simply says, "Come home." Jack doesn't even think twice before he's out of the bathroom stall and is making his way to Ianto's, to home.

Ianto is sat on his sofa, a page full of Jack's writing in his hands. Ianto pulls Jack close to him. "You reek of cheap aftershave," he says, his tongue ghosting along Jack's ear. "You reek of whiskey," is Jack's retort.

"God, this is so fucked up."

"I wouldn't change it for anything."

"Neither would I."

They go to bed and the paper is left forgotten.

I CAN'T TELL YOU EVERY STORY.
I CAN'T TELL YOU I'M IN LOVE WITH YOU.
I CAN'T TELL YOU WE'RE GOING TO BE OKAY.
THE ONLY THING I CAN TELL YOU IS THAT I HAVEN'T FELT THIS WAY IN A LONG TIME AND I'M SO GLAD I MET YOU.

i like my body when it is with your
body. It is so quite a new thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body. i like what it does,
i like its hows. i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss, i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh . . . . And eyes big Love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you quite so new

J
X

Ianto wakes up, he can still taste whiskey, but now it's mixed with the taste of Jack. He's alone but through the slight crack in the door he can see a light in the living room, he knows Jack's at the bookcase.

He slips on some boxers and makes his way to Jack, who's sat naked and crossed legged under the 'B-D' case, book in hand.

He sits next to Jack and he begins to talk but Jack cuts over him, "The Time Agency was an operation in the 51st century. It was a huge thing and it was a major thing to be recruited. We used to train to…" Ianto interrupts Jack's interruption.

"Jack, why are you telling me this?" he wonders briefly whether Jack's been speaking to Owen.

"Because I want what, I hope, will be part of my future to know about my past." Jack smiles and Ianto smiles back twice as hard; if a story is all Ianto is going to end up, he's glad that Jack is the one going to tell it.

Jack carries on telling the story and the book is left forgotten on floor still open on the page Jack was looking at.

somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience,your eyes have their silence:
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near

your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you open always petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously) her first rose

or if your wish be to close me,i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly,
as when the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending;

nothing which we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the color of its countries,
rendering death and forever with each breathing

(i do not know what it is about you that closes
and opens; only something in me understands
the voice of your eyes is deeper than all roses)
nobody,not even the rain, has such small hands

***