![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Title: Setting the bar low
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 500 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 432 - Expectations at slashthedrabble
Summary: Date night is always filled with a certain amount of trepidation
Ianto has come to learn that when Jack starts organising date night, there's always a chance it will all end in disaster. Over time he's learned to automatically lower his expectations. It isn't that Jack is completely hopeless at organising anything, he is in fact unusually good at planning, especially when the whole aim of the exercise is to impress Ianto. He'll go to any lengths for his young Welshman. It's just a nasty habit that Jack often tries to bite off more than he can chew, which necessitates the pair of them having to undo half of Jack's efforts in order to spare the public, save someone from inevitable disaster, or simply to maintain a semblance of dignity.
That said, Jack does occasionally impress, though sometimes it's with a certain amount of what Ianto would describe as cheesy, corny, or just plain soppy. Jack is a romantic at heart, and though Ianto loves him with every fibre of his being, he's not quite as open about his feelings as Jack - not in public at least. Champagne breakfast in bed, snuggled up together is just fine at home, but a four-piece quartet and two dozen red roses at a restaurant is more than Ianto's reserved personality can cope with.
Several of Jack's efforts have been successfully pulled off by treading that fine line between beautifully romantic and slightly embarrassing, which have included, but weren't limited to, the enormous bunch of red helium balloons marched across the plass, the horse and carriage on Christmas Eve that paraded them down Queen Street, and the enormous ten foot chocolate Easter bunny, which was ironically too big to get through the tourist information office by the poor courier who had the task of delivering it.
There were plenty of disastrous dates too, not all of them ruined by the rift. There was the time Jack took them for a walk along the beach at midnight, forgetting that they'd predicted a king tide which had risen and cut them off from the main beach, forcing them to spend the night on the unsheltered headland. There was the time Jack had treated him to a night in a nice little hotel out in the valleys, where they'd ended up making out in the hotel laundry, only to be caught in the act by their fellow holiday makers, when it turned out the hotel had been fully booked out by a local convention of nuns.
Then of course there were the endless incidents involving various alien technology and other substances whose effects turned out a little less enjoyable than planned, or which had unexpected consequences morning after. Being purple and glowing was always difficult to explain to coworkers.
Still, for all of his efforts, Ianto loved the fact that Jack cared enough to try. Tonight could go either way, and though he'd lowered his expectations sufficiently to cover most possibilities, he secretly hoped that tonight would be one of those nights when Jack got everything just perfect.
no subject
Date: 2017-01-23 10:18 pm (UTC)