Something fairly shitty happened to me this morning, but I seem to have my writing mojo back and so am successfully ignoring it in favour of the Chichester story. WIN.

Also, finally, the last commentary track -- iansmomesq asked for a Torchwood one:

This story is kind of neat for me to do a commentary on because it's, uh, one of the embarrassingly rare instances where I've had something beta-read before posting. With the HP stuff I used to spam it to Katie via IM and she'd do a bit of picking, and I've done the rough_magic workshop thing with a couple of Pirates stories, but in general my combination of arrogance, impatience and lackadaisicality (… whatever, I'm sure there's a noun) means I don't do the beta thing. BUT I did it here, thanks to the lovely babel, which means this version of the story has already sort of incorporated an external commentary. Or something.

The first time Jack Harkness fucks you he keeps his clothes on.

You are on his desk, on your back, and you are clutching his red braces as he shoves his dick into you, and he is saying your name over and over: "Ianto, Ianto, Ianto." A benediction in broad American vowels — or an incantation. Certainly you feel bewitched.

Oh dear. This is going to be one of those stories which is really excruciating for me to re-read, isn't it? I'm already cringing. The first couple of lines came to me (as most of my ideas tend to do) just as I was dropping off to sleep; about 25% of the time I persuade myself to write these down, and the rest of the time they're lost to the ages.

To your embarrassment, you have turned out to be a bit of a slut. It's been a long dance, a long time coming, but in the end it's been so terribly easy for him to have you. You came to him, as you both knew you would. He stripped you methodically, distracting you with his clever tongue as he unbuttoned your shirt and shoved your trousers down. He distracted you, and you pretended to need the distraction; this is the sort of game you play.

This was the first (and, thus far, the only completed) Torchwood story I ever wrote, and I was kind of fumbling my way through the characterization, but this last line definitely owes something to a comment exchange I had with babel re: The Stopwatch Moment. I was kind of flailing around trying to make sense of what felt like a very inconsistent canon characterization for Ianto, and she made some very trenchant comments which informed the way I think about the characters quite a bit. In particular she remarked (I'm paraphrasing) on how Ianto always anticipates Jack's needs, whether they encompass a cup of tea and a biscuit or a bit of lighthearted hanky-panky to take his mind off weightier matters. This is sort of what the above is intended to convey; they both know what's what, but they pretend and play games to avoid having to be honest about the situation.

And then you were naked and he wasn't, and he was using that clever tongue to back you up against the desk. One arm slid tight around your waist, pulled you close. When he lifted you up to sit on the desk it was with his entire body, and your weight rested against him for three helpless, perfect seconds as he moved you. And then he had you on the desk. You were gasping, and he was between your legs and taking your hand. He looked you in the eyes and put your hand on the front of his trousers, and you hated him, oh, you hated him for making you do it. For making it your fault.

(When you finally fumbled his cock free he grinned that twinkling grin at you and said "Thanks, Ianto" like you'd just brought him a cup of coffee. You thought about hitting him. Kissed him instead.)

babel was all "wtf is with all the parentheses, miss" and then I just left them in anyway because I am pretentious like that. Or, more precisely, because they serve to set off certain comments which don't belong in the strict flow of the narrative, giving them the quality of a whispered aside or an off-hand remark.

He held your hand. As he put himself inside you, he held your hand: left hand on his cock, nudging you open; right hand in yours. Fingers laced, folded over your heart. Always touching, he is. Always soothing, always affectionate. Always making you feel he cares, and this is at least half of the secret, half of how Jack Harkness always gets what he wants. He's fucking you roughly and too hard, and in the morning you'll be sore in expected and unexpected places, but he makes you yearn for it in such a gentle way that you only want him to go harder. Such a simple trick, and so effective — and though you know how he does what he does, you can't help falling harder by the second.

The point has been made by others at great length, so I'll just present it as fact: Ianto knows Jack very, very well. And, at least to my mind, he knows that Jack and he aren't getting a house and a dog together, that Jack is not and never will be his boyfriend or his life partner or even remotely monogamous. And yet he's willing to settle for what he can get, because he loves him. He's going in with his eyes open, which makes him both a bit admirable and a bit tragic.

At first he was standing up, but now he's bent over you; he's let go your hand, bracing his by your shoulders for leverage. He can thrust deeper from this angle, and he does. Bends one of your knees up toward your chest to drive deeper still. His sleeves are rolled up to the elbows, so that if you turned your head to the side you could see the tense corded muscles of his forearms — but to turn your head to the side you would have to look away from Jack, and that will not do. Instead you watch the line of his throat, the triangle of white t-shirt revealed by two undone buttons. Your hands, half-clutched, half-splayed against his broad chest. Red braces, blue shirt. Periodically he leans down far enough for you to catch his lips with yours.

It is possible that you are crying.

(You aren't sure who you hate more: him for being able to take you apart so completely, or yourself for gasping his name into his mouth as he does it.)

There's a lot in this story about hate and love, which — cliché, yes, but then, Torchwood isn't exactly the subtlest of canons, and these characters tend to wear their emotions on their sleeves in a big way, with the Jack/Ianto love/hate paradigm a major recurring theme.

—

This is how it started: you didn't want to be alone, so you were tidying.

I like this line. It says a lot about Ianto and his motivations and his personality in very few words; as I've said again and again, I always strive for tightness in my writing. I'm not opposed to verbosity, I just want everything I write to be useful to the story (bearing in mind broad, broad definitions of this, which encompass a fair bit of irrelevant language for the sake of pacing). I used to, somewhat pretentiously, keep a Sticky open on my desktop with Kurt Vonnegut's rules for writing, of which the fourth is "Every sentence must do one of two things — reveal character or advance the action." These days I just have a much smaller Sticky which inquires more bluntly: "AM I TELLING THE STORY?"

It was three weeks after Lisa. The alien hordes were taking a well-deserved night off from menacing the population of Earth, and Torchwood Three was enjoying the Jubilee special with extra pepperoni. Gwen was teasing Owen about his new haircut (it did enhance certain of his more amphibian qualities, not that you'd mention it), Jack was trying not to snicker at something Tosh insisted wasn't funny, and you were tidying things which didn't need tidying so that you could stay in the Hub with their laughter.

One technique which I find I use a lot (not so much consciously, but I notice it when I look over my writing) is this mode of stating something bluntly and then going back and expanding on the initial statement. Here, we have one sentence at the beginning of the section which explains what's going on in a very basic way, and then the following paragraph expands on what it means for Ianto to be tidying because he doesn't want to be alone — he's in the Hub, everyone is having fun, he wants to be close to them and share in the social atmosphere — and the paragraph after this goes still further back to detail the this is how it started clause of the initial sentence, i.e., what happens with Jack.

Jack has a way of pretending not to be paying attention, but you know that he is always alert, always aware of everything around him. He was sitting backward on a swivelling computer chair, one arm rested atop the back and the other dangling down by his side with that artless grace he has; eyes and smile gave his full attention to the story Gwen was telling about Rhys' mum. The third time you walked behind him that dangling hand caught your wrist. He kept looking and smiling at Gwen, laughing at the right points in the story, and you couldn't do anything but stand there as his thumb and middle finger gently manipulated all the little bones of your wrist, stroked circles on your skin. You were still thinking of a flip remark when he dropped it, casual as anything else. You dusted Tosh's workstation for a second time, distractedly, and left the Hub without anyone glancing your way. Sat at your terminal, though there wasn't any real work to do. Took advantage of Torchwood's unlimited bandwidth to download the new Anja Garbarek. Browsed Craigslist. Thought about ordering new drapes for the flat you keep decorating and redecorating, as though some elusive item will finally effect the transformation into your home instead of the place where Lisa doesn't live.

I'm sure the idea of Ianto being miserable in his flat is nowhere close to an original one — my thing with large fandoms is, I have to consciously avoid reading much of the fic if I want to write anything myself, because if I read too much I get overwhelmed by the feeling that a) everything's already been written and b) whatever I write is unconsciously ripping off something else already written — but even so I know I've heard it mentioned before. Still, I think it's an eloquent device which speaks to Ianto's essential loneliness, alienation, etc., etc., which is, again, a major theme in this story — reflected both through the detached tone used throughout and through the use of the second person, which has sort of a 'spotlight' effect of singling out the protagonist.

Kept the main Hub CCTV feed live in the lower left corner of your screen. Not to watch. Just in case.

Again, this is (to my mind) so, so Ianto — detached not because he doesn't care, but because he cares a bit too much.

Later they left, still laughing, Owen's arms slung around both girls: unusual, for him to be on good terms with more than one person at a time. Tosh said "Good night, Ianto," which prompted the others to recall your existence and echo the sentiment. The reflexive smile, the appropriate response, is an important skill in your line of work. Half the time you are a galaxy away when you speak to someone, and usually it doesn't matter, because they are paying even less attention to the conversation than you yourself are. Auto-pilot. Still, politeness counts.

Jack didn't leave with the rest of them, of course. Just walked them to the door, leaned there for a moment watching them go; turned back around with that perpetual half-smile, thumbs under his braces and chin up slightly. An appraising look. Pushed off the wall a breath later and laid a hand on your shoulder for the briefest of moments as he went back downstairs. That was all.

Really, it wasn't much of a proposition. But then, everything is, with Jack: the only difference this time was you.

—

No, this is how it started: three weeks ago, with a gun in your hand and terrible, terrified love in your heart. You hated Jack then — hated him the way you can only hate someone you love, and that in itself was terrifying, the depth of your hatred for him and what it meant. You hated everything and everyone, that night. Jack for being Torchwood; Torchwood for taking Lisa from you; Lisa for leaving you alone. Yourself, for reasons too simple and complex to name.

Again, love and hate — and guilt. There are strong parallels between the hate felt by Ianto in this section and that in the first, where he hates both Jack and himself — and the parallel structure of the language reflects those emotional parallels.

One thing I am at least reasonably conscious of as I write is sentence structure and variance thereof; my natural inclination is toward long, multi-clause sentences with lots of dashes and semi-colons — like this one! — but too many of those make for very dull, low-impact reading. So I consciously break my writing up with short sentences and different types of sentences, and the last paragraph is a great example of a place where several different sentence structures are placed in a row to (I hope) strong effect.

Or perhaps it had started the week before that, when a Weevil got cheeky and left Jack with a concussion and three nasty gashes across the chest. Owen had bandaged him up, left you to play nursemaid. You'd put the kettle on and procured a chessboard from somewhere, but in the end it was Jack who drew you into conversation, rather than the other way around.

"You're not very good at this," he'd said; and "I can think of better ways for you to keep me up all night."

"I'm sure you can, sir," you'd replied. The dryness of your voice carefully calibrated, as always, but concealing a note of relief. He'd been slurring his words a bit, earlier, but he couldn't be too badly damaged if his capacity to flirt remained intact.

"Let's play a different game," he'd said, at length. "Do you kids still play Truth or Dare these days, or is that one of those silly American habits?"

"No, we play it. Sir." Slowly, but with a smile. Easy to see where this was going.

"I dare you to kiss me," he'd said. Predictable. You rolled your eyes and leaned in. No big deal. His lips, warm and dry. You thought about Chapstick. He stuck his tongue in your mouth.

Cheater. But, again, predictable. And you hadn't pulled away.

"Your turn," he'd murmured against your lips, eventually. Rocked back with a smirk that seemed to add, "I know something you don't."

Jack never chose truth, of course.

I think this whole bit with the Truth or Dare is a) a bit stupid and b) excusable because it's the kind of juvenile contrived shit the show itself uses to get people to have lesbian makeout scenes or whatever. Also, I just really like that last line about Jack never choosing truth — once again, a very direct, strong observation on Jack's character in very few words.

Or it could have started the week before that, when Nina Simone came on the radio and he danced you around his office, feather duster still dangling from your fingers. His hand had been hard at the small of your back and you'd hurried to the toilets, after; jerked once, twice and came all over the tiles. Tidied it up and went back to work. Didn't think about his hands all afternoon. Didn't think at all.

Okay, I just thought that was cute. Can't you just see Ianto, confused and wooden and still half-trying to dust, while Jack is holding him close and leaning his head on his chest and humming along to Nina Simone as he spins them slowly around his desk? I don't know. It's cute in my head. Let it never be said that just because my proclivities tend to the dirty, the angry and the sad, that I don't have room in me for cute.

Or the week before that, or the week before that. It doesn't really matter.

I was talking in my commentary on Surface Tension about narrative threads — or perhaps I should call them linguistic threads, because they tend to rely on parallel language — anyway, this sort of recurring device which helps to give the story a structure and to link the different sections together. Given the hopelessly disjointed way I write (although this story is actually better than most, which should tell you something right there), it's necessary to have something linking the various sections, and in this story it's this notion of the inevitable, of the irrelevance of time — somewhat apt, for the universe we're in — of the inexorability of fate, and the sense that Ianto is lost, out of control of the situation. (Jeez, I'm pretty sure I said the exact same thing about Surface Tension; I guess I tend to retread old thematic ground a bit, huh?)

—

The past is another country, or another galaxy, or some other platitudinous locale. The past is a place you don't live anymore. What matters is right now, and right now Jack Harkness is fucking you on his desk. Important papers are crumpling beneath your tossing head, the stapler is digging into your shoulder, and half-frantic laughter is bubbling up within you as you realize the urge to tidy is twitching in you even now.

The flipside of the irrelevance of time is that only the present matters. Again, something which comes through in Surface Tension, although not quite as explicitly as it does here — and here it's also more thematically relevant, being linked to the timeless nature of Jack himself and the universe at large.

He pauses, periodically; looks down at the place where your bodies are joined, then back up at you as he spits liberally on his fingers. Pulls out to put them inside you: twisting, drawing forth desperate sluttish sounds you didn't know you could make. Then in again, slicker and faster than before. One hand on your hip now, hard enough to bruise.

These days I'm mostly writing in 18th-century fandoms, which is grand and lovely and all, but it's a very immersive thing, and every once in a while I really do need to take a break to get all the modern dirty out of me. What I mean to say is — sometimes I just need to write a story in which someone calls someone else a cockslut or gets spanked or gets a blowjob in a bathroom stall or whatever, and to a certain extent the really nasty stuff I like just can't be done in the context of the 18th century. I mean, people can and probably do write it, but I don't think I could read it with a straight face, y'know? It's not the acts — I'm all for filthy acts in the 18th century, our fandoms are gloriously full of them and hell, if you're not okay with a bit of filth in your sex then good luck writing about sailors who don't bathe for months on end — but it's a question of the language one can use to describe it. See: cockslut. So sometimes I get around the problem by writing about Christian Coulson blowing Paul McGann on the set of Hornblower, and sometimes I avoid the problem entirely by writing about Ianto getting roughly fucked across Jack's desk with the stapler up his back.

Even his rough wordless grunts have a melody about them. You wonder if he can sing. You know a lot about Jack Harkness — probably more than anybody else — but it's still nothing next to the things you don't know.

He finishes hard, gasping and grinning like he's just run a marathon. You suppose he has, after a fashion. He kisses you, equally hard, but you can feel him trembling. Slides down your body to where you are still wretchedly hard and sucks you off with an expertise that smacks of years — centuries — of practice.

You don't finish until he slides two fingers back inside of you. It's easy, now: you're wide open and slippery, ashamed enough to blush when he does it but not enough not to want it. And when he pulls back to show you his mouthful, you think you might come again just from the sight of it.

—

In your more fatalistic moods you suppose it probably started the day he hired you. The day you met him. Before that, even: sometimes you feel you have been waiting all your life for Jack Harkness to happen to you.

The problem, of course, is what to do now that he has.

Classically, of course, a story has a beginning, a middle and an end; this story doesn't really have any of those things, and in fact is essentially about what a problem this is — throughout the story a point is made of the difficulty of analyzing Ianto's relationship with Jack, of trying to pin down its nature and origin. Appropriate, then, that rather than finishing with a conclusion, the story finishes with just the opposite — a still-unanswered question.

(And, once again, strong beginnings strong endings, et cet; I wonder how many of my stories end with a single standalone sentence like this. My guess is "almost all". Not knocking a good thing, though; I do find it effective, although I should probably try to change it up now and then.)