Title: Too Painful To Remember
By: karaokegal
Fandom: Torchwood
Main Characters: Adam/Ianto (references to canon sex, canon UST and one OFC)
Rating: R
Wordcount:1430
Notes: Pre-ep for Adam. Awesome beta by rosecat a/k/a Rosie The Tiger and _tallian_. Thanks to everyone who encouraged me to write this. Comments and con-crit welcome. Cross-posting Ahoy!
Warnings: Rape, murder. Canon-subversion and possible AU.
Summary: Not all the memories were lies.

As he emerged from the void, even before he was able to give himself physical manifestation, the being known as Adam could sense them: Fifty-first century pheromones. The most powerful aphrodisiac in the universe.

With that stuff floating around, it was inevitable to find sex going on. The only surprise was the utter joylessness of the act, despite the physical pleasure marked by grunts and groans coming from the seated man and the one on his knees before him. The dominant emotions he could feel were guilt and obligation, flavoured with anger, regret and longing for the unattainable. He’d seen human coupling in many forms and combinations but the crossed purposes in this encounter were striking.

The man…Jack, he called himself, even if that wasn’t his real name…had his mind elsewhere. With someone named Gwen, so much so that he imagined her rather than the lad doing the work…Ianto…who was convinced that if he did this well enough, he could possess the other’s heart, which made him a fool. Human hearts were an especially fleeting commodity.

Not just fifty-first century, but Boeshane.

Lots of history there. Plenty of room to insinuate himself, but not just yet.

Adam turned his attention to the other beings on the premises, ignoring the non-human life forms. He needed brains with memories and self-awareness, and no race cherished their memories as much as humans.

Those pheromones were at work on the upper levels as well, to similar sad effect.

Toshiko Sato. So much love to give and no one to give it to. Names flitted by, attached to memories of betrayal, loss and indifference. Mary, Tommy, Owen.

And there he was. Owen Harper. Completely wrapped up in his own ego. Plenty of demons as well. No shortage of sexual partners, including Gwen… that name again, but no real happiness either. The relationships in this place were complex to say the least.

This could all be remedied to everyone’s benefit. Tosh would have a passionate lover who made her feel like the woman she wanted to be and Dr. Harper would learn some much-needed humility. Now to get one of them alone…here came the one called Jack.

He’d be easy to isolate as he was going out by himself, leaving the other two to glance at each other and then toward the direction Jack had come from. Adam could feel their disapproval and their unwillingness to say anything to their boss about what they considered the mistreatment of their co-worker, entwined as it was with their own feelings toward Jack. Gratitude. Resentment. Love. Hate.

Adam followed Jack out into the night, seeing in his mind the longing for a place where people were gathering over their dreams, drinks and delusions, finding more memories than any human should have, over a hundred years worth, but also vast pools of emptiness in the childhood years and elsewhere. Plenty of space to make Adam a physical reality. He could do it at any time, but decided to wait and learn more.

Jack wanted something, someone, and didn’t even realise why he was rejecting most of the advances the pheromones brought his way, until a specific type showed up. Long black hair. Sweet smile. Eyes you could fall into. Jack was a poet and a romantic, whether he knew it or not.

Her name was Moira and Jack couldn’t even hear his own thoughts whispering Gwen, but Adam heard them loud and clear.

The night proceeded as desire determined it must. Jack had a room available and whatever else he deemed necessary to get what he needed, even if he was still completely unaware of what was driving him. This was the stuff, or considerably closer to it. Gwen must be something if she could resist this one and her stand-in was certainly getting the best of the deal.

Moira left, completely delighted, since she was ignorant of the part she was actually playing. Jack stayed behind, trying to hold on to the ephemeral contentment. When he closed his eyes, Adam was able to slide in through the gap in his mental armour.

”Welcome to Torchwood, Adam. We’ve been looking for someone like you.”

“Happy to be here, Jack. I promise, I won’t let you down.”

Within seconds Adam was real. An actual body, all senses at the ready when the screams came, running on legs not yet fast enough to prevent the carnage, but with eyes able to see what had happened so he could make an instant decision about the best way to take advantage of the situation.

There was blood everywhere and Ianto leaned against the alley wall, gasping with a mixture of satisfaction and self-loathing.

”Ianto, this is Adam Smith. He’ll be working with us.”

“In what capacity, might I ask?”

“Bit of this. Bit of that. He’s got a lot of experience with alien tech. Believe me, you can trust him.”

“Ianto? Are you okay? What’s happened here?” His voice started out a bit hoarse as he adjusted to having one again. Luckily he could explain his breathlessness with the urgency of the situation, rather than his own excitement at being whole and surrounded by chaos again.

“I….I don’t know.”

“I’ll take care of it. Here, help me carry her. Where’s your car?”

“I’m not sure. Around here somewhere. Through Ianto’s confusion, Adam picked up only one strong impulse. Jack. Dead girl at his feet and all that mattered was his faithless lover. Adam wasn’t really equipped for empathy, but the poor guy definitely deserved better. “Adam?”

“Yeah, mate?”

“You’re not going to tell Jack about this, are you?”

“Course not. You can trust me.”

Why shouldn’t Ianto trust him? Especially since his friend and co-worker, vouched for by Jack himself, was helping dispose of the corpse that used to be Moira. Not the first one either. Adam inserted himself into Ianto’s memories of the two previous murders, both triggered by the same scenario.

There’d been so much pain and tragedy in Ianto’s life and he’d survived it all more or less intact, only to fall apart simply because Jack Harkness had the sexual attention span of a randy spaniel and a fixation on whoever this Gwen might be.

“Let’s get you home,” he suggested and Ianto readily agreed.

The shattered psyche made the next part almost too easy, but still deeply pleasurable. Now that he had a body, including a cock, he wanted to use it. Ianto was too weak to fight, and hardly wanted to once Adam threw in a few glimpses of all the times they’d done it before, practically under Jack’s nose.

He’d missed this most of all in that horrible darkness where he’d been left to rot for so long. It felt so good to be immersed in both Ianto’s body and his conflicted emotions. The pain was no cause for alarm since he could convert it to a memory of pleasure as he went along.

“Don’t, please! We can’t. Jack will….”

“Jack doesn’t give a rat’s arse and you know it.”

The truth of the words caused Ianto to collapse underneath him, not so much in acquiescence as in defeat.

With each thrust, Adam took away memories of Jack’s swinishness and replaced them with what Ianto so desperately needed; a Jack who cherished only him and treated Gwen as nothing more than a colleague.

By the time he ground a vicious orgasm into Ianto’s body, his victim was sobbing with gratitude.

He left Ianto with memories of Jack making love to him, thereby accounting for anything he’d notice physically when he woke up.

It had been a long night. Ianto deserved some rest. Adam gave him half an hour, which he spent helping himself to information from Ianto’s computer and planning exactly what he was going to do to Toshiko.

“Ianto, wake up!”

“What’s happening? Why are you doing here? Where’s Jack?”

“Don’t you remember? He got an emergency call. Something down by the docks. He sent me to get you.”

“Oh. Right. Thanks.”

“No trouble. What are friends for? We need to get to work. Apparently whatever came out of the water has a very short shelf-life.”

“I’ll get dressed.”

Adam couldn’t wait to get back to the Hub. He still needed to get into Tosh and Owen and finish his work on the confused labyrinth of memories and emptiness that was Jack Harkness. Ianto was his key to all that, and Adam now had the ultimate weapon to use against him.

The only thing more powerful than lies was the truth.