Title: A Certain Recklessness And Lust
Author: misplacedmarble
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters/Pairing: Owen/Ianto
Word Count: 508
Rating: PG-13
Summary: “He’s a fucking selfish bastard, you know.”
Author's Notes: Feedback is my drug of choice. The title, as much of a geek as it shows me to be, is a quote from Cicero’s speech vilifying Clodia in the law courts of Ancient Rome. Hints of Owen/Ianto, I hope that’s enough – I wanted this to be better than it turned out to be. Spoilers for 1x13, End Of Days.

“He’s a fucking selfish bastard, you know.”

Ianto says nothing, but this is hardly a new development. He’s been sitting, staring into space with the blank look of utter defeat ever since it first sunk in that Jack was – Jack is gone, and it’s all too much after they saved the world, after the highs and lows of love and death and rebirth and all that’s left is a kind of aching emptiness.

Too much, too fucking much, and part of him, the rational, sensible, functional part thinks –

“Yes.” He knows, he knows because that’s how it’s always been and he’s never put that much stock in the comfort of denial and fantasy that’s more like delusion. Jack could never be anything but selfish when everything he does is just a stepping stone on the path to a larger goal; obsession, fixation, compulsion, addiction, and if Ianto had started by going through the motions then Jack had never stopped.

And never would, because he’s also a fucking stubborn bastard who’ll make one mistake and gaily walk the path to destruction before turning back and admitting he was wrong.

“Then why the fuck are you still in love with him?” His tone isn’t angry; disbelieving more like, but –

“Why did you try to destroy the world for a woman you barely knew?”

His hand is a stiff fist, his jaw tight and eyes hard with anger.

Ianto wants to smile, because fighting with Jack leaves (left) him cold and alone but fighting with Owen is the only time he’s felt truly alive since some time, any time before Torchwood One became synonymous with hellfire and brimstone.

Except this is a lie, because he’s never felt like this before now; even the logical part of him is silent, and he wants someone to hurt him just to see if he’ll care.

“I loved her.”

“No,” Ianto does smile now, or what passes for one these days, and Owen might be terrified (he doesn’t do scared – fear is a weakness, terror is justified) if he wasn’t so infuriated. “You just want to believe it was more than infatuation because maybe that’ll make you more of an actual person, instead of an emotionally-stunted robot with the default setting of ‘careless bastard’,” he spits out with a flourish.

The fist connecting with his cheek is entirely expected, but Ianto makes no move to fight back or deflect the blow. He sits there, he takes it.

He smiles.

And Owen closes his eyes, gets close enough for Ianto to feel warm breath against his lips, to pick out the individual flecks of colour in his large, hostile brown eyes. Owen hisses the measured words with a vaguely threatening air of tried patience.

“I was trying to be nice.”

Ianto leans in even closer; now there’s barely a hair’s breadth between his lips and Owen’s, so close that they could kiss and call it a necessary accident, and he speaks with a breathy finality that’s like losing a fight you’ve already won.

“So was I.”