Torchwood: Fanfic: Moving on

[m_findlow]

Title: Moving on
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 919 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for m_findlow's prompt "Any, any, an empty apartment" at fic_promptly
Summary: For Ianto, it's finally time to move on.

Ianto stood there and stared around the empty space. Without all the furniture it looked so much bigger than it had always felt. He half wondered what would happen if he put all the furniture back. Would it suddenly feel bigger?

For years he'd wanted to get out of here. It was always too cramped, too many floors up, and not enough parking. There wasn't a single view to be had out of any window except for the walls of yet another apartment block, and even if there hadn't been one of those, it wasn't exactly what he'd call a picturesque neighborhood. If anything, it wasn't much better than Splott.

It had been an apartment of convenience. Not his first since he'd returned to Cardiff, but neither was it quite what he'd really wanted when he'd finally ended the lease on the pokey flat that had lingering memories of Lisa, and of that first fateful night he dragged Jack back there, unable to tear his tongue out of Jack's mouth. No, this had come along afterwards. This was still rented - he'd never been game enough to buy - but it was better than what he'd had, and it was close enough to work that he could catch the train two stops and be right by the bay. Given his unpredictable schedule, that was just a plus.

Despite the fact that he was hardly ever here, he quickly came to despise all the little inconveniences, like the fact that the lift never worked properly and clunked loudly in the night for all the residents to hear. The stairs were lacking any sort of safety grip paint on their edges and more than once when he was tired he'd nearly broken bones trying to climb the four flights to his flat. There were no garbage chutes, so every second day he had to traipse down to the bins behind the block to dump his meagre little bag into the offensively smelling dumpsters. That and his post was always had hanging out of the tiny little boxes mounted on the wall near the door. Sometimes it was simply on the floor, trodden on by a half dozen people as they passed through. Lucky he didn't get much mail.

He supposed he shouldn't really complain. He had hot running water and lots of it, his immediate neighbours were relatively quiet, and on the whole nobody minded his comings and goings, which became even more erratic when he started bringing Jack back here on a regular basis. To his credit, Jack never once complained about Ianto's flat, but then at the hub Jack had lived in a dark cramped little space under his office that barely qualified as habitable, so he supposed the bar was set pretty low. If anything, Jack probably wondered why he persisted living in a dumpy neighborhood, paying someone else to occupy a flat he could have bought three times over.

Buying a place just seemed so final, as if you were condemning yourself to live there forever. How many times had he idly thought about becoming a hermit and settling in some tiny little secluded valley in the middle of nowhere, rather than persisting with the hum and hubbub of city life? Then again, Torchwood wasn't so bad. And he had Jack, and more to the point, Jack wanted him.

This thing between them was well beyond the serious phase. It was headed into the "we've been together forever and we're still bunking in student accommodation" phase. It was high time he grew up and sorted out his life on a more permanent basis. A move would be good for him, and for them both. Finally somewhere than wasn't the hub which they could call theirs. A little escape from the insanity that was neither his place nor Jack's. A nice little townhouse in a nice street where nothing weird ever happened, where they could make lasagne and curl up on the sofa to watch trashy game shows, fold their laundry and pretend that for five whole minutes there was absolutely nothing abnormal about them.

Still, it felt strange to be finally leaving this little apartment behind. It and Ianto had been through a lot together. It had so often been his little refuge from the world when it all got too much. It only occurred to him now that not once in all the years he'd lived here, had his sister ever visited. He'd always insisted on going to hers. Not that they were living in five star luxury, but somehow he always felt like seeing this place might be considered a reflection of where his life was at.

It wasn't so bad once you put the furniture back in, really. He'd had a nice new TV, the sofa was only a year or two old, he'd fixed all the kitchen cupboards so that they didn't squeak anymore, and had the windows resealed to keep out the worst of the winter chill. The next owner of his little abode would be happy about that. He would be leaving a little bit of himself behind in this place, but he also knew it was time to move forward.

Torchwood wasn't going anywhere, and neither was Jack, so Ianto was staying put so long as both of those things remained in his life. That didn't mean he had to keep everything exactly how it was, though. Like the squeaking cupboard doors, everything could do with a little bit of change.

Comments

[bk_forever]

Awww! I can imagine that no matter ho many downsides the flat had, it would still be a wrench leaving its familiarity and all its memories behind in favour of the new and largely unknown, but 'm sure he and Jack will be happy in their new home.

[m-findlow.livejournal.com]

It's been a good refuge for a long time but he knows he's ready to move on to a new phase of his life.