tampered | Log; ongoing

Log; ongoing

When; Wednesday, April 30th
Rating; PG
Characters; Boy Blue

playstheblues and Ianto Jones

king_coffee
Summary; Blue needs some truths, and Ianto's cursed to spill them.
Log;

After being in the City for five months, Blue could almost wake up and taste the Curse day in the air.

Today was a day like that. Blatant honesty in person (who knew that one of his co-workers was thinking of cheating on their boyfriend's with the girl next door?) blatant honesty on the Network. Blue normally valued honesty, but he had a good idea of privacy as well, and most of the things that had been blurted out he really hadn't needed to know.

In that regard, he knew that it would probably be right, even honest, in a way, to cancel his meeting with Ianto. But Blue was a bit too intent now; cancellation was not an option.

He knocked on the door of Ianto's apartment; that is, of the Torchwood complex (which, by the looks of it, would soon encompass the entire third floor of building seven) and rocked on his heels a bit. His advantage was his age as compared to his appearance, and Blue knew how to manage that, at least.

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Ianto had been expecting Blue so he wasn't too surprised to hear a knock at the door about the time they'd arranged.

Having been alone in the flat for most of the day, Ianto hadn't really spoken to anyone so far, spending most of the time cleaning the place - oh how it had needed it - rather than checking the network.

The person, however, that stood on the doorstep looked nothing like what Ianto had expected. "You're so young!" he blurted before he blinked, shocked at himself. "I'm sorry, that was rude."

It was rude so much as it was unusual, mostly because everyone in Fabletown knew exactly how old he was. He smiled a bit. "Didn't mean to surprise you," he said apologetically. "What were you expecting, someone in their twenties?"

He moved out of the way so Ianto could step out of the door and said, "I brought my Vespa, if you don't mind riding with me, or we could just walk, if you prefer. I wasn't sure what you like as your usual method of transportation, I thought I would offer both."

He was trying to be extra-polite; if only to make up for the fact that he was taking utter and complete advantage in the end. In the grand scheme of things, he realized that he should probably start feeling guilty rather soon.

"Yes," Ianto said with a nod, "from the way Tosh talked about you, I thought you were older." Of course, Ianto had no idea of Blue's real age. Considering who he kept company with though, if he did know he probably wouldn't be too shocked.

Ianto did step out, shutting the door carefully behind him after he'd checked he had his wallet and his keys. "I don't trust those things, though" he said, pointing to the Vespa, which was ridiculous considering the things he encountered every day. "Mind if we walk?"

Blue smiled and nodded. "Sure thing," he said leading the way.

"Tosh is really nice, and I'm her piano teacher so I can see how that would happen," Blue explained. "I guess Jack doesn't talk about me very much," he paused and wondered if he wanted to go in that direction so soon. "Anyway, Tosh told me to talk to you, but to be honest, I'm really not sure what to ask you."

Well. That wasn't awkward at all. Blue shoved his hands in his pockets. "I guess I'm not really making any sense at all." He inclined his head a bit. "Why don't we get to the cafe first, and then I'll try and explain myself in a way that doesn't make me sound completely insane."

"Tosh is lovely," Ianto said, and considering the day, he really meant it. "She wanted to learn piano for a long time. Show it to Tommy." Had he just said that? He really hadn't meant to. He cleared his throat, tried again. "Jack... doesn't talk about anything very much, and he only does if you're patient enough."

"Don't worry about it," he said, giving Blue one of his half smiles, "I'll answer what I can, if I think I should."

Blue went a little quiet. "She told me she wanted to show someone, but she didn't tell me who." He felt the beginnings of guilt worming their way into his stomach. He didn't really have the right to know that, not yet. Tosh should have taken the chance when she was ready to tell him herself. It was like telling people about Ride. It was a matter of trust.

Blue opened the door to Cafe Juliet and let Ianto in first, then himself. Finding seating wasn't hard - curse day, mostly the cafe was empty. He gestured for Ianto to sit down then sat across from him.

"I guess...I guess I should explain. Jack and I were friends, but a lot of mistakes were made and misunderstandings happened and Jack's head is about as thick as a brick wall. So Tosh told me to talk to you about it, that you knew him really well." Blue looked down, and tried not to look pathetic, which was really difficult with features like his. "So. Do you know if you can help me?"

"I... shouldn't have said that," and Ianto was ready to tape his own mouth shut. What on earth was wrong with him? Usually he was very good at keeping his mouth shut. What was so different?

Ianto took the seat, putting his folded hands on the table in front of him.

"It was you," he said, leaning forwards slightly, "Jack told me that he'd screwed up-" Ianto clapped a hand over his own mouth, really what on earth was wrong with him?

He shook his head and tried again.

"I don't know him really well, but I suppose I know more than the rest of the team," he said, tipping his head slightly, "I can try?"

"I'll pretend you didn't," Blue hastily interjected He really would, he wouldn't mention the name Tommy to Tosh unless she brought it up first. "I'm pretty good with secrets," he added as an afterthought.

He paused as Ianto almost spoke, then pressed, rather unfairly, "What did Jack say about me?" It was something important, something he needed to know. "I want to know what he's thinking. I try and get him to talk to me but he acts like we don't know each other now, and it's so...it's so difficult."

Ianto breathed a sigh of relief. "Thanks. I had no right to say anything about that." He muttered a silent apology to Tosh, though. He'd make it up to her later, somehow.

"He- he said that he made a bad mistake and he hurt you, I assume it's you... what am I saying?" Jack had told him that in what Ianto regarded to be the strictest confidence.

Blue looked away for a moment, then turned his face back to Ianto. He took a deep breath, and explained, "I made Jack a promise. It's an important promise, one of the most important promises I've made in my life. I really would like to keep it, but he keeps turning me away."

He had already sawed away at all the trust he had left; this was almost abusive. Maybe he could buy Ianto something nice, afterwards. "I know you two are...sort of together? And I know it's not right, I know I shouldn't do this, but can you..."

Blue paused and took a deep breath. "Can you tell me how I can make him talk to me? For real? I don't know what to do anymore and no one will help me and I want to be able to talk to him. I don't get used to having a lot of close friends and I'd really..."

Blue paused. "Like to keep the ones I've made."

Sort of together? Ianto wasn't sure he knew himself what to call it.

And it wasn't right, Blue shouldn't have been asking but Ianto felt compelled to answer anyway, as if the words were coming out by themselves, and Ianto had no control over them.

"You can't make him. You have to listen, listen at the right times, don't ever push him but don't let him push you, either," Ianto sighed and rubbed his eyes. "You have to be patient. But never, once you've made a stand to him, back down. He'd never lose a friend willingly."

Blue closed his eyes. He shook his head, and felt sick to his stomach, and he wished Cori had been able to stop him; he wished that this hadn't happened this way. "I'm sorry," he said earnestly. "I'm so sorry."

It almost felt like trying to puzzle out the Witch Cloak, but Blue had almost two hundred years with it before he had to test it out, not just a few weeks. Jack was all walls and Blue would feel those dents, and he felt the old stubborness to get the walls out of the way.

"I think he already did, you know. Lose a friend willingly."

"You're wrong," Ianto said, shaking his head, "he wouldn't. Sometimes he does some downright stupid things, but unless he thought it was absolutely the best thing, or that there was no other way he wouldn't willingly lose someone, he cares too much.

You're wrong.

Blue hated, loved, and feared those words all at once. You're wrong were the words he had said to himself about Ride, before he slept with her and before she tortured him.

Blue nodded and looked Ianto in the eye. "Do you love him?"

Crossing the line was always his specialty.

"Yes," Ianto said before the question had even registered in his mind.

There was a second or two of silence, and he blinked.

"I love everyone on my team."

Which was the truth. So he wasn't lying when he said that, but Blue hadn't specified, had he?

Blue had caught it.

He knew.

Of course, telling Jack; whether it came from Ianto or from Blue would be a bad idea, and Blue knew that, he recognized the terrible underpinnings of the word love on an idiot like of Jack's calibur. Only the finest idiocy would find fault in something that insipidly innocent, and Blue knew that Jack would manage.

"Good." He said, simply. "He needs people to love him. He's too much of an idiot to manage on his own." That wasn't precisely the truth, but it wasn't precisely a lie, either.

He was glad that Ianto loved him; glad because Blue couldn't provide anything that wasn't intensely platonic.

Ianto nodded. He found it so strange that Blue could know Jack so well in that respect, but seemingly not at all in others, if the conversation they'd just had was anything to go by.

"He's so stubborn. That's why you just have to be equally as stubborn."

The sad and altogether manipulative truth was that Blue knew everything about what they had just discussed; he had been hoping for more insight, maybe, but he remembered what Jack had said, You know me better than anyone, except maybe the Doctor.

Blue laid his hands out on the table and spread them broadly in a gesture that he hoped could be taken as inviting. "I'm sorry I kind of honed in on you like this. If it's any consolation at all, you can ask me anything, and I'll answer truthfully even though I'm not cursed."

That was the truth.

With a half shrug, Ianto shook his head. "I don't know anything about you at all, actually. Apart from Ellington, so tell me about yourself?"

No, Ianto wasn't going to store every little bit of information in that good memory of his, really.

Blue paused and considering how much he owed this man, and how much he was willing to say.

"My name is Blue; but you knew that. I was born in Albion, which doesn't mean anything until I say I was born near Dover but I moved to New York City so long ago that I've lost all traces of my accent and most memory of what it was like living there. I worked as an office clerk, then on a farm. I like the 1940's, because the music is good. I play more instruments than I remember."

He thought about it. "I can make Jack cry if I play Blue Skies when he's feeling sad, and I can make Cori, that's my boyfriend, be nice to people, which he very rarely ever is."

Blue paused again, then started up. "I'm not very good at lying. My mother taught me that honesty wasn't just the best policy, it was the only one that mattered. I'm really sorry I asked you questions that make you uncomfortable, and I hope that you'll be able to forgive that bit of selfishness. I never had many friends until I came here, and now that I have them, I hope I never lose them."

Blue looked up at Ianto and cocked his head a bit. "Does that help?"

Ianto had noticed that while Blue had told him a lot of things, it was really nothing at all. But he also wasn't willing to push.

"It's told me some things," he said, offering Blue a smile.

For all the time they'd been there, Ianto realised, they hadn't ordered yet. Oops. "Weren't we getting something to drink?"

It was true, and it was something Blue was practiced at; telling a lot but not saying much; it was something that was encouraged by the rest of the Fable population.

"What would you like?" Blue asked. "It's on me."

"Orange juice, if you don't mind. Like I said, not mad on coffee from places like this."

Not that the coffee was necessarily bad, it was true, but Ianto could make so much better himself.

Blue ordered a juice for Ianto and a hot chocolate for himself and came back to the table, sipping at the drink.

"I assume you're normally a lot more discrete, right?"

Accepting the juice with a thank you, Ianto nodded. "Yup. Usually I don't say very much at all." He drank a little of the juice and found that he was actually quite thirsty.

"First time I've been cursed, too."

Blue smiled knowingly.

"There are worse curses, but the first one is always a doozy." He remembered his first curse and shook his head. "You kind of get used to them, after a while."

"I think I arrived halfway through something to do with the Titanic? I never really found out, you know." He shrugged a little. "I don't like the idea of getting used to this, though."

"Can I give you some advice?" Blue said a little softly, "as someone who's been here for a while."

Advice? Ianto was ready to take any advice that he could get.

"Yes please, I would appreciate it."

Blue nodded. "Find the people you trust and stick to them. Don't ever let them down. On a curse day where you're cursed, know that you're going to be doing things that aren't you and be okay with it. On days that you're not cursed, take care of your friends." He took a long drink. "And always avoid getting on the Network on days you feel like you have to say something revolutionary?"

He sighed. "This place gets to you if you don't make friends. But sometimes the people you least expect are the ones you lean on the most."

And to Ianto, it sounded like very good advice.

"Thank you," he said, and of course he meant it,

Blue smiled back at Ianto. He meant every word.

"You're welcome, of course."

He always meant it.

[ooc: Anywhere else you want to go with this?]

[ooc: Nope! I'll close it, then!]

[ooc: Okay~]

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