m_findlow

Title: Out and proud
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 500 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 470 - Amnesty / Challenge 169 - What if...? at slashthedrabble
Summary: Jack won't stop until he's found a way to show how much he cares.

'No,' Ianto said.

'What if we were facing away from everyone? I could hold up my bag and block their view,' Jack said.

'No.'

'What if I wore a disguise?'

Ianto quirked an eye at him. 'What kind of disguise?'

'I could dress up as a woman. Then we'd look like a normal couple.'

'I thought we were a normal couple. According to you, anyway,' he qualified.

'Of course we are. I'm just trying to accommodate your twenty-first century definition of normal.'

Ianto thought about this for a moment. 'No.'

'What if everyone else were doing it at exactly the same time, so that no one was actually looking because everyone is too busy kissing everyone else?'

'You'd be too busy trying to kiss everyone else,' Ianto quipped.

Jack laughed. 'Only after I was finished with you. Assuming that was even possible.'

'Good to know I come first,' he replied.

'But would you, then?'

Ianto sighed, tiring of Jack's persistent nature. 'No.'

'What if someone offered to pay you?'

He stopped and looked at Jack. 'How much?'

'How much would make you agree?' Jack said, answering his question with another question.

Ianto rolled his eyes. 'More than someone on the street could afford.'

'What about the back seat at the movies? It's nice and dark.'

'Until the attendant comes in with their torch to check how many people are in the room and spots us going at it before kicking us out.'

Jack groaned at Ianto's constantly logical arguments. He knew Ianto wasn't all that comfortable with public displays of affection. Very occasionally he'd let Jack hold his hand, though he tended to pull it away if he thought anyone was looking directly at them. He couldn't seem to accept that people were perhaps looking at them because they made a very attractive couple, and that they might just be happy to see two people out enjoying time together. He'd simply been curious what it might take to convince Ianto that it was okay for them to kiss in public as well. He wasn't implying that they snog in the middle of a football match, or on the escalator at the local department store, but every now and then he might like to just remind Ianto how much he cared.

Jack sat back and thought hard. 'What if you suddenly stopped breathing, right in the middle of the street, and the only way to save you was to give you the kiss of life?'

'Then it wouldn't be kissing. It would be resuscitation. That's totally different.'

Jack sighed. He really hated this backward century sometimes. Why couldn't displays of love be just that and nothing more? Whose business was it if he wanted to kiss his boyfriend?

'Jack?'

'Yeah,' he said, sounding defeated.

'What if you just took me home? Then you could kiss me all you like.'

Well, it was no public display of affection, but he supposed he'd be crazy to say no to such a delightful proposition.