Slashthedrabble Challenge 582 - Lost in the moment

[m_findlow]

Title: Lost in the moment
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Jack, Ianto
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 500 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Challenge 582 - Past Prompts Revisited & Challenge 355 - Carnival at slashthedrabble
Summary: Ianto can't help but get lost in a special moment with Jack.

'Ours was a small company, traveling the UK. Looking for paying customers.'

Ianto leaned his elbow on the table and rested his head against his hand. Tired as he was and serious as the situation might have been, he couldn't help but take a moment to just lose himself in Jack's story. It was so rare that Jack gave away anything about himself that he didn't want to. Most of what he offered up was so outlandish and unbelievable that you couldn't quite tell if he was telling the truth, embellishing the facts or lying outright.

Ianto knew that this intimate little moment of Jack revealing something about his past only happened once in a blue moon. It was easy to forget that he'd been working for Torchwood for over a century. Going undercover on a job would have suited Jack down to the ground. He was an expert in slipping into character, making you believe he was someone else.

'I was billed as the man who couldn't die.'

Ianto couldn't help but smile at that. Of course he was. Sent to work as part of the traveling show's regular company of performers, what else could he be? He wasn't muscled enough to be the strong man, agile enough to be a tightrope walker, and he would have been a nightmare trying to tame lions, but he might have gotten away with being a fortune teller with his knowledge of all things to come.

Ianto might have joked and said he'd be perfect as a clown, but this wasn't the moment. He didn't want to break the magic spell Jack was casting by delving into his deeply buried past. He was such a showman at heart that given a podium, he could have captured the attention of anyone. Ianto could hear the music and squeals of delighted children, smell the sugary scent of candy floss and almost taste the sticky toffee apples and salty popcorn. Jack brought the whole image of the carnival to life in just a few words.

There were so many questions on Ianto's mind that he thought he might burst. How had he worked his way into the traveling show's company? Was the gun real or just a fake shooting blank cartridges? Would he really shoot himself in the head just for show? The pain would have been brief but awful, and the coming back from death much worse. He knew how much Jack hated it, but for Torchwood he'd done a lot of things at great personal cost.

And then, just as soon as it had begun, the story was over, burst like a delicate soap bubble that had hovered in the air so beautifully for a few moments. The Night Traveler's. They were dangerous and they were out there, a case from eighty years ago that Jack had never solved. The time for storytelling wasn't now. They had a job to do and Ianto would help him solve the case once and for all.