Torchwood: Fanfic: Singing your heart out
Oct. 18th, 2017 08:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
Title: Singing your heart out
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 768 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for badly_knitted's prompt "Any, any, Singing songs in a language they don't understand" at fic_promptly
Summary: You can't be perfect at everything.
'Once more. With feeling,'he said, emphasizing the word feeling and gesticulating wildly. Ianto wanted to roll his eyes, knowing that once more only meant until his mentor couldn't take anymore and make him repeat it again.
And again. And again.
'I want you to sing like you've just lost the love of your life. Feel the sorrow and emotion!'
This was all Jack's fault. Catch a monster tearing out people's vocal chords. No worries, we'll just put Ianto up as bait. Brilliant.
He wasn't a singer, not even in his own shower. Jack on the other hand, had a lovely singing voice, and he wasn't above sharing it. In fact, he was rarely without a tune in his head, so why on earth was Ianto standing here being crucified? Probably because Jack would find any excuse to get him to exercise his vocal chords a bit more. Why couldn't he just learn to appreciate it when Ianto did speak?
Ianto tried again, forcing the words out as best he could, knowing his tutor would cringe and pull faces. They didn't make any sense to him. Opera wasn't his thing. For one, it was all in Italian, and even if it wasn't, the way they sang made it almost unintelligible, even on the rare occasion that it was in English.
'No, no, no! Now you're emphasizing the wrong syllables!'
Ianto wanted to growl. How was he meant to emphasize words he didn't know? Perhaps if someone had given him a translation... He looked at the other man and decided that asking him would be a really bad idea. He didn't need to upset him any more than was strictly necessary.
'I told you. Sadness and sorrow. A lover dying in your arms. Imagine how much that would hurt. Again!'
He could. He really could, and the words were hurtful in more than one respect. It was their fault his singing partner was dead; the love of his life gone and never to return. Never again would he get to hear his lover's sweet voice sing with him. Every time he looked at Ianto, he must have hated him, seeing him standing there in his place. They couldn't bring him back. All they could do was try to stop the monster before it struck again.
And they hurt because there was the insinuation that Ianto had no idea how he felt. How many times had he watched Jack die, knowing there was absolutely nothing he could do; nothing but to be there and watch his own lover in pain, life slowly fading from him. It was horrible and gutwrenching and made him want to scream and cry all at the same time. Just thinking about it brought all those feelings to the fore, and without realising it, the emotions that he'd buried so deeply inside himself seemed to fill out into the music. Suddenly it didn't seem to matter that he had no idea what the words meant or whether he was pronouncing them right. It was just as if something clicked, and the music alone told the story.
'About bloody time,' he said, as the music faded away. 'Looks like the message is finally sinking in.'
Ianto felt a slight relief that he'd managed to do something right for a change. He wasn't used to this much constructive criticism, the majority of it being criticism, and not feeling much in the way of constructive feedback.
His mentor gave him a curious look. 'What were you thinking about when you sang that time? It must have been something pretty powerful to make that much of a difference.'
He didn't want to say. He didn't want to upset the man by bringing up memories of his own lover, and more to the point, he didn't want to admit his own feelings on the matter. Couldn't it just be enough that he'd found a way to make it work, even if it meant dredging up emotions he didn't like to think about?
'Nothing,' he said, knowing it sounded like the outrageous lie that it was.
'Hmph. Well, whatever you did, keep doing that. There's hope for you yet. Don't think you're going to win any national competitions, but you might attract one or two fans.'
Right now the only thing he wanted to attract was their alien. The sooner this was over, the better. From now on, Jack was on his own if he wanted someone to carry a tune. The only time Ianto wanted to sing from now on was if there was a cake with candles on it.