Original Post Date: June 2011 (Posted to August 2011)
Rating: PG-13
Characters/Pairings: Jack/Ianto
Warnings: None really, just a bit abstract and a bit dark.
Summary: "He isn't normal; he never has been normal, and it's beautiful."

I am making no money from this, all characters and ideas belong to their original creators, no harm intended.

A RELATIVE TERM

He isn't normal; he has never been normal, and it's beautiful. The room is dark and the music is loud, but Jack knows he's here. It's a sense born in the present (a relative term: it's his future, Jack's past but and time and place that he would call his here and now most of the time) but Jack could feel him. He wasn't far away.

It was a diversion, a short stop that the Doctor had barely agreed to, but Jack had to be here. There – he could see him now, pick him out from the writing crowd – was a boy so full of trouble and pain, and yet so free from the trouble and pain which was yet to come. He was eighteen years old: it was five or six years before he would meet Jack Harkness and it was painful to watch. He had carried such a burden already, but Jack knew that he was free. For now.

He is beautiful. Pale skin, dark hair and clothes that make Jack's heart pound. Skin tight, black, metal and leather and laces and oh God… but Jack know that it isn't long before it will all be replaced with suits and ties and "yes, sir", "no, sir" and it almost breaks his heart.

Jack could change it all. He could take this beautiful Welsh boy out of London right now, take him away with him, but it wouldn't be the same. This Ianto Jones was broken and beautiful, but his Ianto Jones was even more broken and even more beautiful… only a little less lost in the world and just the way Jack loved him. His.