Fffc Bingo Card - Happy endings

[m_findlow]

Title: Happy endings
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Ianto, Jack
Author: m_findlow
Rating: PG
Length: 1,000 words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Written for Bingo Card Prompt 6 - Cry at fffc
Summary: Jack's emotions get the better of him in the strangest ways.

It's been a long week but Ianto is glad that it's over and that they can finally kick back and make it someone else's problem tomorrow. This new arrangement of five days on, two days off is working well so far. Only once have they been called in for an absolute emergency. He wishes they'd thought of it years ago, but then again, they'd never had the manpower to make it a reality. With two of them off work, that would have left only two or three of them there to handle things at any one time. It just isn't enough when you have a rift in time and space that has no reservations about working weeks and rotas.

Now isn't the time to be thinking about work, though. He should be kicking back and enjoying the movie, even though his brain would just as happily have him shut his eyes and drift off to sleep. It's not like he even got to choose the movie. He gets his turn next week. Tonight it's Jack's selection, and not precisely Ianto's cup of tea, but love is all about compromise, and if the worst thing they can argue about is their choice of weekend movie then they're not doing too badly. 

Jack is cuddled up against him on the sofa, with Ianto's arm wrapped around his shoulder, his hand nestled comfortably against Jack's jawline. Movie or not, he'd happily just sit here snuggled like this for hours. That's all movie night is really an excuse for anyway. 

The movie probably has about twenty minutes to go, excluding the credits, but Ianto is already struggling to keep his eyes open. He won't be devastated if he doesn't know how it ends, closing his eyes and letting the sound begin to blur a little at the edges. 

Then he feels something strange. The back of his hand feels wet. Not cold wet, but just a strange, warm dampness. He opens his eyes to find Jack sitting there in complete silence and unmoving except for the tears streaming down his face. The same tears that have been dripping down onto Ianto's hand. 

‘Cariad, what's wrong?’

Jack points at the screen, bottom lip beginning to quiver. The labrador protagonist from the film is lying in the snow. It doesn't take any words to know that the dog is dead. Unsurprising since they've filmed it from puppy to about age sixteen, documenting its entire life. Old age had to come for it eventually. They bury it and as the flashbacks of its life scroll across the screen, Jack's tears don't abate. If anything they only get worse and it's all Ianto can do not to turn it off right there and then. 

There's a decidedly wet sniffle from Jack as he wipes his face with the heels of his hands and looks back at Ianto. ‘I'm okay. Really gets you here, doesn't it?’ he says, resting a hand on his chest and giving Ianto a little smile that doesn't match his red rimmed eyes and damp eyelashes. 

‘Why do you pick these movies if you know they're going to upset you?’

Jack sniffs again and Ianto is forced to offer him his handkerchief, waiting for the inevitable honk as he drowns it beyond reuse. ‘Because mostly they're the happy kind of sad.’ 

Ianto gives him a skeptical look. ‘Happy kind of sad?’ 

‘Yeah. And sometimes they're just the sad kind of sad. But in a good way.’ 

Jack is renowned for not always making sense, and Ianto has become adept at following Jack's often tenuous train of thought, which often takes a long and winding path where a straight one would suffice, or completely derails halfway. 

‘You've completely lost me now.’ 

‘Don't you ever just feel like you just need a good cry?’ 

Only all the time, he thought dryly, but usually out of sheer frustration. Truthfully he'd prefer to never find himself in a situation that could bring him to tears. Things had to be pretty bad before that particular dam broke, but he'd had more than his fair share of sorrow over the years. He couldn't ever recall a time when he felt better after crying. Crying was just the precursor to a longer and deeper form of despair. The kind that persisted long after tears had been swept away and noses finally stopped their running. 

It wasn't that he prided himself on being unemotional, only that others managed to fill the empathetic role so that he didn't have to. Gwen was a professional empathiser and anyone breaking out in tears was sure to have Gwen following suit shortly after. She was the queen of the kleenex moment. Jack took a bit more to bring down, generally speaking, but he'd seen plenty over the years that had driven him to grief of all kinds, sometimes leached up from years in the past and only surfacing when triggered by something else. 

But crying at movies left Ianto totally baffled. How could you get upset at something that wasn't even real? It was one thing for the fairer sex to fall into that emotional response, but seeing it manifest in his lover caught him completely off guard. How was it he could face down the terrible, sometimes truly awful things they saw working for Torchwood and still keep it together, but a fictitious dog lying in the snow drove him into a sobbing mess? Thank God they didn't own any real pets. He could only imagine how Jack would react. 

Ianto reached across and began rubbing away the residual dampness on Jack's cheeks with the pads of his thumbs. ‘You are completely mad and adorable,’ he said, kissing each eyelid in turn and tasting the salty remnants. ‘So long as you promise me you felt better now that you've had your cry.’ 

Jack took one of his hands and began kissing his fingers, lavishing them with tender lips and licking away whatever was left. ‘Never better.’