Fandomweekly Challenge 28 - Love songs and dedications

[m_findlow]

Title: Love songs and dedications
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 885 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 28 - Old fashioned at fandomweekly
Summary: Time and space are no barriers to true love

It had taken Jack ages but it was going to be well worth it. At least he hoped it would be.

Ianto always thought he was a bit ridiculous. Here he was, a man from the far flung future, living and working in the twenty-first century, yet dressed like he'd stepped out of the Battle of the Bulge. He was so anachronistic that it was almost laughable, yet garbed in his World War Two greatcoat and braces, and his fifty-first century vortex manipulator strapped to his wrist, he looked not the least bit out of place. Chronologically, spacially, and culturally they were a million miles apart, and yet they fit seamlessly together, like two parts of the same puzzle.

Yet on the one day it counted, they'd be separate and apart. The world had a funny way of showing them it cared. Then again, the world probably didn't care for conferences either. If you were boring enough to be attending a conference, you probably didn't have a date for Valentine's Day, anyway.

London was only three hours away by train -or two if you counted on Jack's idea of driving- but it might as well have been the farthest ends of the earth. They both had a job to do and that had to take precedence over clichéd candlelight dinners and red roses. Still, it didn't stop Jack from wanting to salvage something of the day, even if he had to suffer a blow to his pride. For all his taunting, Ianto found Jack's old world charms endlessly endearing. He was a timepiece refusing to age, still using his hands to point the way when everyone else had gone digital.

The old piece of machinery sat on his desk, as he slotted the cassette inside, listening to the satisfying click as he pressed the opening shut. Only the headphones were new, the original matching set for the device having parted ways with it during its travels through the rift. He wanted to make sure it would work and that he'd gotten it all just right.

Just finding somewhere that would sell him a blank cassette had been impossible. Even somewhere like Wales wasn't that technologically backwards. Half an afternoon in the archives though had paid dividends, wrangling a handful from a box that hadn't been touched in thirty years. No one was going to mind if he taped over a bit of Duran Duran.

It brought back so many memories: a pterodactyl tied down on the roof of the SUV late at night, whistling nervously the last melody he'd heard, and praying no one would see it, but more flustered by the almost kiss back at the warehouse, and the thought of seeing Ianto again tomorrow; a song playing on the radio when he'd picked up Ianto for their first proper date after the horror of the year that never was, the same nervousness returning once again, mingled with a joy that he'd said yes; the dance they'd shared at Gwen's wedding, one that he'd thought Ianto too craven to do in public; the song from the John Lewis Christmas advert that had made them both cry the first time they'd seen it, remembering Ianto's gentle finger brushing the tear from his face; a tune he'd discovered Ianto humming when he thought no one was listening, when Jack could think of naught he'd rather do than secretly watch his lover working; and the original version for his own outrageous attempts to take on a Welsh icon, for which Dame Shirley would no doubt have been horrified, or entertained, depending on who you asked. So many precious memories, now all in one place. The soundtrack that had become their lives, or was it the other way around?

Halfway through, a screeching sound erupted and he panicked, quickly hitting the stop button and pulling out the cassette, the fine black ribbon spilling out, entangled in the mechanics. Some things never changed.

Extracting a pencil from his desk caddy, he inserted it, and began the slow turning that would salvage his hard work, reeling it safely back inside. The motion of twirling the pencil in the tiny cogs came back to him naturally, having done it a hundred times before. You couldn't get such a simple pleasure out of a CD or an iPod. The world had become so modern and sanitised that it had forgotten some of the little joys in life.

Satisfied that it was done, he slipped both the cassette and the player in the small box, with a handwritten note. A mixed tape and a Valentine's card seemed like overkill. Besides, he could already picture the rolling of eyes in Ianto's hotel room when he opened it up.

It's so eighties, Ianto would probably say, smiling in that cute little way Jack adores. He'd been just a tyke at the time, whilst Jack had been busy saving the city from the kinds of monsters Ianto feared lay hidden underneath his bed at night. Two souls whose lives were invariably intertwined, even if they didn't know it yet.

It was a bit old school for sure, no one did mixed tapes anymore, but that was how they used to do it. It was what you did for someone you loved. Sweethearts exchanging songs for kisses.

Comments

[jo02]

Oh godd, you captured that perfectly! And took me back 30 years!

Rescuing a treasured cassette after the tape deck had swallowed it; carefully pressing and gently pulling until the machine burped out the last loop of tape; hanging it carefully upside down and smoothing out the tape as best you could - and the careful rewind with the pencil until it was all safely back inside. Such simple memories, as you say.