Thirteen Bad Habits.

[quigonejinn]

1. Slouching.

2. Not drinking enough water.

3. Putting junk mail into the dustbin without reading it.

4. When Ianto was moving Lisa into the chamber under the Plass, there was one night he couldn't quite endure it anymore. She was resting comfortably, but there was weeks worth of work still to be done, including redundancy mechanisms and auto-editing of the video. He ought to have stayed and worked and maybe scavenged some more parts from excess inventory, but he couldn't breathe down in the tunnels. He did everything that he could think of to calm himself, including look at Lisa, asleep under a blanket, but it didn't work, so he went back upstairs, changed into casual clothes that he kept in the locker, and went out and tried to get drunk.

5. He was a little more successful at finding someone willing to have sex with him. Every time after that first panic, too.

6. Sometimes, Ianto doesn't do the wiping-out-with-bicarbonate part of descaling the kettle.

7. Sometimes, if it's late and there isn't anybody around, he'll leave using the invisible lift just because he can. Even if he's had a horrible day, it makes him suddenly, bizarrely happy to come out of the recycled air underground and into the middle of the Plass. He can smell the Bay. He can see people. In spite of himself, he feels free. In spite of himself, he likes it.

8. Ianto's parents in Swansea still thinks that he's working in London. Yes, he has parents. Both of them are still alive. And happily married to each other. They still think he has a job with the Office for National Statistics, and it's not exactly difficult to use the Torchwood's facilities to make it look, each Sunday, like he's calling from a London mobile.

9. Lisa got shot on a Thursday. Ianto came into work on Friday and Saturday, same as usual, but on Saturday afternoon, he couldn't take it anymore, but Tosh and Owen were working on Saturday too, and doing it near the door, so he couldn't leave. Instead, he got his mobile out of his desk, went into the men's bathroom, locked the door, turned on the vents, and called home.

His mother had been gardening; his father called her in, but Ianto could hear him lurking around, worried and banging into things to give him a reason to stay around, and once his mother asked him what was wrong, Ianto started crying. He was so sorry, but he and Lisa broken up. He had dumped her. He hadn't been good enough, but he had to. Everything had gone to shit, no matter what anybody said, and the hardest part was that it had been the right thing to do. It was the only decent thing.

"My boy, my dear boy," his mother said, and then she comforted him.

He cried until his throat hurt.

Later, just to cover his tracks, he told them that he was in Cardiff for the weekend for work. He was leaving for London again by the end of the afternoon, so he wouldn't have a chance to visit.

10. Sometimes, Ianto is more than a little maudlin. At university, he was a terribly emotional drunk, and on Sunday night, he went down to the tunnel where all of those things had been. Tosh and Owen and Gwen and Jack had cleared away just about everything, but there was some debris on the floor. A few bloodstains, and the stand lamp that he'd taken down there to use was still working. He turned it on, then stood and looked at the tunnel for an hour or two.

It turned out that Jack hadn't gone to what passed for bed. At the end of it, he came up behind Ianto and put his hand on Ianto's shoulder.

11. Quite certainly a bad habit: sometimes, when he's in a bad way, Ianto doesn't remember having had sex with people. For example, one of those times when he was panicking over Lisa, he ended up doing it with the girl who works in the closest coffee shop. He met her in a club, and he didn't recognize her when he went back on Tuesday for the weekly Torchwood bag.

He doesn't think that anything happened with Jack that night, but he's not sure. Jack's hand on his shoulder. Jack's coat, hanging around both their knees, and the collar in the corner of Ianto's eye.

It's a bad habit.

12. Lisa.

13. Torchwood. And see 7.

Comments

[babel.livejournal.com]

Poor Mr. Wibbles. :(

I loved the stuff about his parents. I hadn't even thought about them yet, but your stuff works so well. And the sex stuff works well, as I knew it would even if it's not how I write it myself.

And the part about the lift is so ♥ I can't even handle it.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I have this nightmare that any moment now, somebody is going to leave me a comment that says, "You know, we don't say the word 'slouching'" or something like that.

And I'm glad you liked the part about the lift. I've been trying to get a different tone ot some of my endings, so. :D

[plasticity.livejournal.com]

look at you, writing Who-verse fic! shiny!

I confess to disliking Torchwood. there were moments of good things but I couldn't get into it in general. But! I am delighted that you are liking it, and liking Who in general, enough to generate fic. (and of course, Nine is the best. it took me a solid year with Tennant before I finally succumbed to his charms.)

I liked the bit about his parents in particular, btw. but then, family often hits me hardest.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I don't know whether I'll ever write Doctor Who fic, if only because it's about 3003284230x more intimidating than Torchwood. Doctor Who has the weight of so much more canon, OMG.

Though yeah. Nine. I succumbed to Tennant a bit faster because the first episodes I really remember watching were with him (School Reunion, which I didn't get, but adore now, and Girl in the Fireplace, which was what charmed me and got me curious about Who). But oh Nine. Nine. Father's Day made me cry until I couldn't breathe, and the way he just looks at Rose sometimes.

ALSO. OH MY GOD. HAVE YOU HEARD THE 2007 ALBUM FROM MODEST MOUSE?

[plasticity.livejournal.com]

Father's Day was indeed the kicker in a season of highs. I was holding my breath while they were fighting at the beginning and cried at least twice after that. he's just so intense, about his excitement and wonder and anger all at once. <3!

I HAVE NOT HEARD IT, NO. I have actually been rather obsessed with Andrew Bird's new release (Armchair Apocrypha, which is OMG AMAZING and you might also love it, and I can megaupload the zip if you'd be interested), which has left little room for anything else right now.

[iansmomesq.livejournal.com]

Ianto is love. I love the bit about the parents and crying on the phone and the one about forgetting who he fucks. Brilliance. Ianto is so much mystery and so much depth I can only hope to see much more of him develop in the next season beyond a mere headbutting teaboy. *G* Deep down I wonder if Ianto is truly the brains behind Torchwood... kind of a puppetmaster on the sly.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

XD No question in my mind that he's the one who keeps it all hanging together. babel also has some theories about how Ianto just happens to know all kinds of insane things and make those crazy-ass grocery-store calculations (think Bashir from DS9, you ol' Trekkie you), and yeah. Another possibility is that he's directly jacked into the Torchwood Hub, so in that case, he really wouldbe the brains, wouldn't he?

*plots*

[iansmomesq.livejournal.com]

.... directly... jacked into the ... Hub?

*feels the CRACKs forming*

I don't remember. Does Ianto wear a bluetooth? *G* There was just something about him in Countrycide and then at the end arguing with Owen about the Big Giant Rift Opening Dilemma that had me thinking that there's more to our Ianto that meets the eye.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

I'm almost positive there is. The degree to which Ianto seems ot be rooted in the series creator's brain notwithstanding (same actor playing guy with the same name in another production a couple years ago), in Out of Time, they stage an uncanny moment where he's able to MAGICALLY CALCULATE MUCH FASTER THAN HE OUGHT TO BE ABLE TO exactly how much money is left. And there re some other odd things, too, like how Ianto will RANDOMLY ALWAYS HAVE THE WEATHER and the Hub is (I read somewhere) supposed to be able to do things regular earth computers can't, like forecast the weather really well.

Though he does use a Bluetooth, at least in the ep where he's in that purple shirt.

There's also the suggestion that he might be part-converted Cyberman himself. :D

[randomalia.livejournal.com]

I love how you can come into a fandom and write something wonderfully in-character and insightful and interesting while I'm still going HEY LOOK AT THIS CHARACTER HEY HE WEARS A TIE WOO. And so on.

Now that you've put the image in my head, I love the idea of Ianto using the invisible lift and just standing there on the block, so that he can see everything and people can't see him. It's like the Ianto equivalent of Jack angsting at the top of tall buildings where he *could* jump or fall off, if there would ever be a point in that happening.

[quigonejinn.livejournal.com]

... this is why you're more awesome than I am. I hadn't even made the connection to Jack at allllllllllll.

And ahahah. I've spent the past week doing very little but blathering at babel about Ianto and Torchwood. And your comments about Ianto and the suit and complexity were incredibly helpful. So >:0 WOO WOO.