m_findlow

Title: Laying claim
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 500 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 439 - Claim at slashthedrabble
Summary: Ianto always worries over nothing

It wasn't as if Jack had shown himself to be frivolous about their relationship, he just had a way about him that meant he flirted with anything and everything that crossed his path. At times it came in handy, subduing a tense situation, or helping to wrangle useful information out of people. Other times it seemed to hinder their efforts, as if Jack couldn't help himself but to press the buttons of people he knew would never catch on to his advances. That was just Jack. He couldn't stop himself even if he wanted to; it was just as such an integral part of who he was. Asking him not to flirt would be like asking him to stop breathing. Half the time he probably wasn't even aware he was doing it.

The problem was always when the people he flirted with got the wrong idea, taking his interest as genuine. He'd had more than one stalker over the years who'd taken his flirtations a little too seriously.

Stalkers Ianto could live with, but it was everyone else that had him worried. Jack had plenty of opportunities to make the most of his outgoing nature, and there were plenty of very clever, very good looking people met along the way. Ianto wasn't sure how he was supposed to compete with that, which was to say nothing of the teasing that Jack did when he crossed paths with old flames.

Compared to most of them, Ianto felt very ordinary indeed. He wasn't sporty, he didn't have a degree in astrophysics, and he most definitely didn't have those film star looks that Jack carried off so easily. He was just a plain, ordinary Welsh bloke. Nothing special about him, unless you counted his ability to make coffee and keep things tidy. It always seemed like less of probability, and more of an inevitability, that Jack would soon grow bored of him. What he'd do with himself after that, he had no idea. Jack would be very hard to move on from. Try as he might, he didn't think sticking around was going to work, assuming he lived long enough to see that day.

'I can hear you thinking,' Jack muttered, eyes still closed, lying in the bed next to him.

He hated how Jack did that. Was it some kind of fifty-first century ESP?

'Oh, and what exactly is it you think I'm thinking?'

'You're worrying about us,' he replied plainly.

'No, I'm not,' Ianto lied.

'Uh huh.' Jack turned over and sat up on his elbow, studying the man in bed with him.

'You know you don't have to lay claim to me or anything, don't you?'

'Don't know what you mean.'

Jack grabbed him and lay on top of him so he couldn't squirm away.

'I don't want anyone else. I might flirt with the entire galaxy and sleep with half of them, but it's you that I'll always want to come home to.'

'Never doubted it for a second.'