❤️ Torchwood // Janto Oneshots ❤️

Empty Yet Completely Pleased.

Yeah I'm still venting through Ianto, how could you tell?

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There were so many things in life that just felt so empty.

How was it that the advice everyone gave was simply to 'enjoy the little things in life' and so on and so forth. Most things felt numbing to him, all just a blur of things he had to react to and get done.

How was it that Ianto couldn't find any colour in the things that people usually had no trouble locating?
Was there something wrong with him?

Maybe there was.

Nobody had ever told him that feeling nothing was alright sometimes; people always promoted only happiness and joy. Why was indifference so frowned upon?

Of course, he never showed that off. He smiled, he greeted people and took an interest in everything they might want him to focus on.
It made him feel sick.
It felt wrong to smile so much, it never fit his mood to be so cheerful. Ianto was just that. Blank. He was a function for whoever above him to remain convenient, calm, and (most importantly) tolerating him.

God forbid he do something to catch anybody's eye, after all. Perhaps he'd made himself this way to transform himself into a mechanical system of polite smiles and coffee deliveries. Maybe he'd tried to be so grey that it was all he could do now.

And, just maybe, that was the reason he spent so much time with Jack...

It wasn't personal by any means. Jack didn't know him, he was quite happy to remain an enigma in that respect, but it didn't matter. He was medicine.
Ianto didn't quite have the confidence to call things good, exactly, but whatever Jack could put him through went way beyond the supposed limit.

If his everyday life was colourless, being around Jack was desperately blinding. It was everything at once: anger, pain, joy, relief, euphoria-- it was enough to throw him off balance. None of his smiles felt real unless Jack was involved. Underneath him, above him, absolutely anything was better than 'indifference'.

Perhaps there were a lot of feelings that Jack could temporarily discard. Any time he felt frustrated, Jack was there like an eager punching bag (in the absolute nicest way possible). Any time he felt terrified or overwhelmed, Jack was there like a big, handsome shield. Any time he felt empty, Jack was there like anthropomorphised ecstacy. He made him feel something. It didn't matter what, as long as it wasn't nothingness or grief.

He couldn't let himself focus on his grief.
He couldn't let himself feel any pain.

Ianto was still desperate to know why he couldn't feel anything else without 'encouragement'. Was it that he was trying to shut out the worser of two emotions? Was it simply that he felt the way that he predicted others felt about him? Did he relate to others way too much or way too little?

The process was tiring him.

With a sigh of withdrawal, he tipped his head to one side to gaze across the pillows at Jack.
He was asleep.
He didn't usually do that...
Ianto wasn't about to kick him out; they'd spent nights in the same bed before, and it had been... Nice. There wasn't anything weird about him staying the night-- Jack had half-mentioned that his company helped him rest anyway.

Deep down, he wanted to do whatever was good for him. Whether that made him 'good at his job' or just an absolute idiot, he wasn't so sure.
What he was sure of, though, was that Jack made him feel things. Even just his presence, even just his name; it all made him feel something more than 'alright'.