Ianto's Journal

This is a Torchwood Fan fiction. The characters in this story do not belong to me and I am not making any profit from this.

Monday 17th
Jack gave me this journal today - he wants me to write down what I'm thinking and feeling. Maybe it will help me to be less repressed. All right, so he didn't actually say that, but it doesn't take a genius to guess his motives sometimes. The others think of me as a stuffed shirt who wouldn't know a real emotion if it came up and bit me, but I thought better of Jack. It makes me wonder why he wants to be with someone so boring. It's not as if he doesn't get enough other offers, Gwen for one is always following after him like a little puppy.

O cachiad now I'm depressed.


Thursday 20th
The last couple of days weren't the best I've ever had. Only I could turn a gift from my lover into a reason for jealousy and the source of a major argument. Jack was more than cross with me for doing what he calls my 'Perfect Welsh Butler impression'. He keeps on telling me to speak to him if I have a problem, but somehow the old conditioning always comes to the front and I end up going silent and formal until he gets to the bottom of it. Quite literally, ouch. You'd think I'd have learned better by now, wouldn't you?

Anyway, Jack has definitely impressed on me that he has no hankerings after Gwen, Tosh, Owen or even Myfanwy the Pterodactyl. Apparently I am quite enough to keep him satisfied. (Yes, that is a smug grin I have on my face, Journal.)


Friday 28th
Jack has no idea of how hard it is to get silk ties satisfactorily clean and pressed when they've been used and abused so much.

I must remember to go to M&S and pick up some more.


Monday 16th
I've had this journal about a month now and it's pitiful how little I've written in it. Does saving the world and life as we know it count as a good enough excuse for not doing your homework?

Jack asked if I was writing the other day. You'd have been proud of me; we had a nice civilized discussion about this whole business and I actually put across my point of view. Jack was adamant, he doesn't think I'm boring or repressed, he just thinks it will be good for me to get my thoughts clear. We already know I'm not good at saying what I'm feeling, maybe this will help. He's not going to read what I've written, but he's going to encourage me to talk about things after I've worked them out in my head on paper. Does that make sense? I know what I mean, anyway, and that's the important thing as no one else will ever see this.

How on earth did this stuffy Welshman end up with such a sexy, outgoing American, anyway?


Tuesday 17th
I might as well try and answer the question from last night's entry. Maybe then I won't get so insecure every time Gwen giggles at Jack.

Jack said nothing to me after the whole Lisa mess. See how far I've come since then; I can actually admit it was a mess. I was a mess. So desperate for love and attention I convinced myself that an evil killing machine was an ideal girlfriend. It makes me shudder when I think how naive I was, how stupid. No, I'm not going to go there. Jack won't let me call myself stupid - it's one of the few things guaranteed to get him really angry really quickly. That, my shutting down on him, and putting myself in danger, but that's another topic for another day maybe.

Anyway, something good eventually came out of the Lisa fiasco, even if it didn't seem that anything could at the time. Jack finally began to see me. He says it was my loyalty to Lisa, my blind, misguided, unswerving loyalty to my murderous girlfriend that first made him notice me as something other than the perfect administrator and tea boy. I've spent years carefully building up that image, and I can maintain it in front of everything, everyone else but Jack.

Jack values loyalty above just about everything. (How many times has he been betrayed before?) He probably values it even more than love - anyone can love, but not everyone can be loyal. He knows with me love and loyalty are so indelibly intertwined I could never betray him.

Jack let me off so easily, too easily Owen said. He thought I should have been Retconned and cut loose. The thought of losing the only home I've ever known makes me sick even now. I've only ever known this life. Mam and Dad were both scientists with Torchwood, at least until that fatal lab accident. The organisation brought me up, we (the kids of the workers) had our own school and everything. I've been training for this position all my life. I could have gone into science like my parents, or been a team leader or hub manager. But that's not me, I like to get everything organised but I don't like having to make the hard decisions. Jack's the perfect leader, so he doesn't do job evaluations but he gets the job done. I'm quite happy being his right hand man.

That sounded much more obscene than I intended it to be.

But back to Owen, Owen doesn't know everything. He doesn't know how sick with guilt, fear and despair I felt after everything went to hell. Dr. Tanizaki and Annie's deaths are on me and I will never forget that. I'll have to live with that every day of my life. But I couldn't kill Lisa, even when I knew she was evil, I couldn't turn on her. Jack said my loyalty should be to the team, not her, but he didn't shoot me when he had the chance. He knew I couldn't betray her. Just as he knows I will never betray him.


Wednesday 18th
I stopped writing yesterday - I had to go see Jack, speak to him about Lisa. We've both done things we're not proud of, we've both made hard decisions and we have to live with them. It doesn't mean we don't deserve to grab some happiness where we can find it. Another person's death doesn't mean we have to stop living.

It's taken me a long while to learn that. For days after the incident I couldn't eat, I couldn't sleep, I just stumbled from one moment to the next, barely existing. Only Torchwood and doing my job held me together, and I certainly wasn't my usual efficient self. I avoided thinking about it too much, but I knew I'd let Torchwood down, I'd let Jack down, and all over a machine, a machine who'd never even been my real girlfriend. We'd only ever had a couple of dates before she was transformed, and, well, a machine isn't really capable of sex, is it? Don't answer that. I don't really want to know if it is. Give me warm flesh and a human touch any day.

Looking back now I can see that I magnified my feelings for her. Pretending an intense longing for Lisa saved me from having to admit to any inconvenient feelings about anyone else. (Anyone being a tall, handsome, loud, dark-haired, mysterious omnisexual American.)

It doesn't make the whole thing hurt any less, though.

Thursday 19th
Had to feed Myfanwy - I must remember to order another case of barbecue sauce. We seem to have raced through the last case, I think Jack might be giving her snacks in between her meals. I must remind him that she is on a strick diet as per Owen, who's the nearest thing we've got to a dinosaur vet. It's either that or one of the team has nicked a bottle or two to take home, I wouldn't put it past them. The number of mini post-its that lot gets through has to be seen to be believed.

Crap, I wish I'd finished with this subject already, I get upset each time I think about it. It's supposed to be over and done with, Jack said so, and certainly I don't torture myself any more about it, but I can't just brush it off even now.

I was torturing myself about it. Lisa, Dr. Tanizaki, Annie, letting the team down. I couldn't bear it, I didn't think about it consciously or I'd probably have gone stark staring mad, but I wasn't coping. I didn't know how I'd ever be happy again, and I didn't much care because I didn't think I deserved happiness. Jack saw. He offered to get me over it. I agreed.

The first time Jack spanked me we weren't lovers.

That sentence looks really stupid written in a grown man's diary. It's embarrassing to admit what goes on between us. I don't know why, because it really works.

Anyone else but Jack and I wouldn't let them do it. Anyone trying would get a solid kick in the nuts, I might not like killing but I know enough self-defence and I'm big enough to take out anyone trying it on. But Jack I trust, he's got my best interests at heart. He doesn't get off on it. I won't go so far as to say it hurts him more than me, but he doesn't enjoy it any more than I do. But the closesness and the peace and the clarity it brings us to afterwards is more than worth a little pain.

That first time, it bloody hurt, I'd never been spanked before and I didn't know what to expect, didn't expect the noise and the heat and the rising pain. He didn't go easy on me. But the physical pain somehow lanced the emotional pain, and at the end I felt punished enough that I could finally feel some peace. I was a sobbing, emotional wreck but we talked it through and I slept solidly that night for the first time in days, clutching onto Jack as if he was a giant teddy bear.

We didn't become lovers straight away. Bringing sex into the equation then would have cheapened it somehow. But opening up that night led to trust, and gradually we became friends and then lovers.

And that's how a stuffy Welshman end up with a sexy American lover. More than lover, he's my cariad. My love, my rock, he's bloody irritating sometime but I wouldn't change him for anything.

Maybe this journal thing is working after all.