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It was just sex.
There wasn’t a meaning behind it; just bliss. Just breathe moulding together in a split second of forgotten desire; just damp skin sticking together; just a brief moment of passion- it didn't mean anything. The air stuck to their bodies and they collapsed on the bed like giggling teenagers. Clothes peeled off of the men’s skin and sunk to the floor. Lips collided half-empty words were murmured and breathe in. Or is the glass half full? Just sex, nothing more.
But Ianto remembered it all, clear as day. The way his head span as jacks hand collided with his chest, tracing patterns along it sending Ianto into limbo: he was stuck between fireworks and called back by butterflies. Ianto remembered the way jack drooled his name. The way the word seemed to fit in the man's mouth so perfectly, each syllable leaking, dripping the sentimentality and ripping away the mask of discomfort.
Just sex.
It felt good. So good. Better than any sex he’d had before- but that was just based on jacks experience... right? The way Ianto couldn’t think of anything other than jack in those moments was purely based on the way the older man knew iantos body like a map- like he was the cartographer. Jack had laid Ianto out on a desk and scratch each detail of him into paper, burnt iantos name into it, engraved iantos hips, his thighs, his neck, and made it his own. Jack then wrote his name, right in the centre of iantos brain, until
it became a last resort- the last word Ianto would ever say, the only word Ianto would be able to form in a panic, the only word jack needed Ianto to know off by heart. ‘Jack’.
It was ‘jack’ when his vision blurred and his mouth stopped working. It was ‘Jack’ when his hips stuttered forward rapidly and his hands grabbed at the skin beneath him. It was ‘Jack’ when he woke up alone. It was ‘Jack’ when the hub was in chaos. It was ‘Jack’ when he woke up at four AM, and it was ‘jack’ when Ianto felt the ghost of a nightmare cackling at his pathetic screaming. When Ianto felt Jacks hands trail across his chest, fingertips dancing down over his nipples, cascading like water over the cracks in his skin whilst lightly scraping his nails to send that bolt of electricity through iantos body, Ianto could only squirm. He could only mumble his word under his breath and let a breathy moan plunge out of his lips and into the air as he arched his back into Jack It was only sex.
It wasn’t anything else. They didn’t love each other, let alone want to be with each other. But those half-empty words had to mean something to someone; they had to be an amount of full to be half empty. Jack would never be iantos, Ianto could never be Jacks- it didn’t work like that. Even if in serenity plaza they playfully muttered “boyfriend” passionately, as though was a prayer, that didn’t mean they felt like that. That was just messing about, fucking with each other because they were bored, it was funny and they had a domestic role to abide by. It was a joke. It wasn’t real. That man had never once mentioned to jack that he loved him. Not without a passing remark, a smirk, a team meeting- he never meant it. Jack, loves everyone: he’s made to love; he was born to love; to have the deepest, most complex emotions and Ianto hated him for it. Because if Jack was born to love, how could ianto know who he **loved**. “tosh you’re a genius, I love you!”
“Gwen you caught them? I love you so much right now!”
“Ianto you know how I love you? Can I have a coffee?”
“Owen, I'm gonna need the reports on my desk in ten. Love you, bye”
He loves everyone.
So when Ianto turns around, moonlight cupping his face through a crack in the blinds, and turns around to face jacks weighted, sleeping form, he strokes the hair from jacks brow.
He slides down the bed, sweat beads still clinging to his damp skin, and places a kiss on the side of jacks temple. He wants to speak. He wants to scream to jack how much he wants to do that again, how much he feels like he’s floating when jacks around, how he wants to lie on the floor waiting for jack to peel him off and coat him in flowers, how he wants to thread his fingers through jacks hair and never let go. Ianto wants to tell jack how much he wants to sit and breathe him in. Ianto studies Jacks sleeping cheekbone in admiration, wishing he could say to jack how much he wants to drag his tongue across jacks neck until he can feel blood pooling in his boxers, begging for jacks touch.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he does one thing, my dear reader just one. He leans down to jacks ear, and he whispers his word. “Jack.”
It might not just be sex.