Prompt: Love
Fandom:Torchwood
Word limit: 500 - 4000.
Word count:

Love, mused Jack, was an extraordinary thing. However many times you lost it, it would still come creeping up on you. You never realized it was there until you couldn't live without it.
Jack was an expert in seduction and in flirting and in passionate kisses and soft caresses and quick flashes and slow burns. He was an expert in sweeping people off their feet and in tender hugs that last just too long to be purely platonic, and in reducing women, men, aliens, into quivering heaps under his ministrations, and cries of don'tstoppleasemore and fuckyestherepleasepleaseplease. Jack was an expert in all those things, but he was a fool when it comes to love.
Ianto was perfect. He had snuck into his heart as an enigma of shy smiles and secrets and the most wonderful coffee. And Jack hadn't really noticed until it was too late and he had been lying next to him on the floor at Thames house, not breathing, and Jack's world had been closing in on him and he had never said those three important words and he didn't know what Ianto was to him and he would never know and even if he said that he loved him, Ianto would never hear it.
He couldn't drink coffee anymore. And people weren't allowed to call him sir. And if he heard the word 'Cariad', he just wanted to curl up in a ball and cry.
Because Ianto was gone. His beautiful, perfect Ianto was gone, and he didn't feel alive anymore.

Jack hadn't believed in love until he met Ianto. When he was young, and foolish, and picked up girls in union jack shirts in the middle of a german air raid, he had wanted love. And he had got it, in the form of of a tall northen alien, with big ears and nose and a leather jacket and a sonic screwdriver. The problem with love, though,  is when it isn't returned and you're waiting on an abandoned satellite and starving to death among the corpses and dalek dust, and you don't know what's happening because you were supposed to be dead too, and the Doctor is gone. And the Doctor has left you behind.
After that, he didn't believe in love. He believed in lust and passion and infatuation and having a good time, but he didn't believe in love.
Captain Jack Harkness had been many things. He had been companion, a con man, a time agent, a son, a father, and a grandfather. He had been a boyfriend and a friend and a mate and a shag buddy, and even, once or twice, a husband.
But until Ianto, he had never been so utterly and completely in love.

He had realized it one afternoon in the hothouse, because he just looked so damn gorgeous standing there with his hair messed up and his shirt crumpled. And he had cast it from his mind, because he was Captain Jack Harkness and he didn't believe in love.
He had realized it again when he had nearly punched a man for flirting with Ianto in a bar, because Ianto was his, but he had forgotten it because the resulting sex was really, really good.
He had realized it a third time when Ianto was ill with the flu and still dragged himself into work and Jack drove him home and he didn't care that he was pale and ill looking because he was still perfect. But then he had been so worried because the last time he saw someone close to him with flu, it was the Spanish Influenza and they had died, and it had slipped from his mind.
The final time had been after Thames house when it felt like his world was ending and every second he had been reminded of Ianto and he just wanted him back, and he wanted nothing more than to destroy the 456 for what they had done to him. And he hadn't forgotten because he missed him so much and he just wanted his Yan back.

When he was young and impressionable, he had thought of love as a bang, a spark, a flare. Love at first sight, followed by an easy ride.
Now he knew. Love was as simple and unnoticeable as falling asleep. One minute he was there, thinking clearly, staring at the the teaboy's ass, then, slowly but surely, he began to care more and more and more. It was slow, gradual, but it seemed so quick. Like being dragged towards the edge of a cliff. The end is inevitable, but you don't realize until you suddenly fall.
It hadn't been perfect, or easy, and they'd had their fair share of arguments, but it had been raw, and real, and beautiful.
He hadn't just loved Ianto. He'd been In Love with him.

"Jack, you want anything?" He glanced up at Bobby, who was holding out a worn pizza menu. He could still see the scribbled down notes at the top of the page in Ianto's handwriting, and the circled options that each of them had most often.
"No thanks, Bobby"
He nodded and left the office.
He hadn't been able to bring himself to appoint another teaboy or archivist after Ianto. They all helped out with the archives, and took it in turns to clear up. He wouldn't replace Ianto. He refused to.

Jack had had many lovers in his life, and had moved on from one to the next in a steady stream. Ianto had thought of himself as the latest in a long line, but Jack vowed that he would be the last. However long he lived, he wouldn't replace Ianto.

While it lasted, love was unconditional and perfect and beautiful and wonderful and brilliant. While it lasted, their relationship was a swirl of burning emotions and flirting and naked hide and seek and coffee flavoured kisses and stopwatches and weevil hunts and welsh vowels and beautiful blue eyes. And when it ended, love was grief and sadness and longing and pain and tears and just wanting him back.
He just wanted his Ianto back.
He had a thousand memories and for that he would be ever grateful, but it wasn't enough. It was never enough. That was the curse of immortality.

Jack Harkness sat alone in his office at ten past midnight, filling out paperwork, and remembering a certain sexy Welshman in a suit. And when he eventually dozed off, he dreamed of his Ianto. Dreamed that he had saved him. Dreamed that he had avenged him. Dreamed that he had just once told him he loved him.

A familiar whooshing noise jolted him awake, and he walked tiredly to the lift and knocked on the door of the beautiful blue box. And he remembered his old hopes and dreams and his past love, and the question the Doctor had asked him just after the Valiant. 'Who is he to you, anyway'. The question he still didn't know the answer to.
And the door swung open and he blinked to clear his vision because it was impossible and then again but he was blinking back tears and he was wrapped in warm arms and salty tears were streaming down his face and he could smell coffee and hear whispered nothings into his ear that he couldn't understand and then Jack said "I missed you" and then the same three words repeated over and over and over and over in his mind because he couldn't believe Ianto had said them.
"I love you"
"I love you too"
And then everything was right in the world again, and the hole in his heart had healed and he was kissing him through salty tears and uncontrollable sobs.
And later, when he found out that they had forever, he decided he knew what Ianto was. He was his everything.

Tje1415