Current mood:	cheerful
Entry tags:	neglected fandoms fic, pairing: jack/ianto, torchwood

Neglected Fandom Recs: Torchwood Jack/Ianto Recs
So Torchwood is a large, prolific fandom at this point and a good portion of it belongs to Jack/Ianto. This is a canon pairing that gives writers something to jump off of without having to worry about bringing them together. Except of course there are a million ways to bring them together and the show never tells us how that happens.

However I'm not reccing stories that show how they got together. I'm reccing stories that show another side of them or show outside of them. They're not necessarily together in all of them and one of them could even be considered gen.

There are only 6 recs in this set, but all of them are incredibly well-written and focus not only on their relationship, but on Torchwood itself. Oh, and occasionally The Doctor. Because I love The Doctor when he interacts with Torchwood.





1. Collective Noun: Pride by misswinterhill

This fic was written for the Pride challenge at lovingthecoat and it takes an interesting twist on pride using another definition than the one people think about initially. It's set post-Exit Wounds with a team of three and them attempting to get through each day knowing Tosh and Owen won't be there.

The writing is fantastic as it always is from Miss Winterhill and the character interaction is heart-warming. This piece is a quick read, but manages to capture a glimpse at what is a normal day at Torchwood.


"What d'ya reckon the collective noun for a group of weevils is?" asked Gwen, idly. She'd made a paper fan from a classified memo, and was trying to flap it at a high enough frequency to cool herself down. She didn't remember Cardiff ever being this hot.

"Now I know you're bored," replied Ianto, tapping a few keys onscreen to bring up the cells onscreen and their collective group of weevils. "A waddle of weevils?"

"A slump, maybe?" asked Gwen. "I like waddle. They do sort of waddle. What about Torchwood? What's our collective noun?"

A troop," said Ianto, loosening his tie.

"You just like alliteration," Gwen replied, fanning her fan. It wasn't working.

"An Empire, then."

"That's a bit creepy," she said.

"That was the old party line," replied Ianto, shrugging.



2. Pocket Watch Boy by mhalachaiswords

This fic is a crossover with Doctor Who and the writer captures both worlds wonderfully. Otherwise known as wee!Time Lord! Ianto fic, this story opens up the world of Who to the possibility of The Doctor not being the last of his kind. Ianto, who has no idea he's not human, regenerates after being killed and becomes an immediate enemy of Torchwood because as far as Jack knows, the only other Time Lord around is The Master.

But this story is so much more than that. It's about love and family and hope. It's about friendship and the survival of a species at all cost. And it's about killing Daleks which is never a bad thing.

Be prepared to dive into a nice long, plotty story that leaves you feeling hopeful and warm. I equate it to drinking a mug of hot chocolate on a cold day. And for me, those are the best kinds of fics out there.


When Ianto Jones was very small, he climbed up to the very top of the tree near his new children's home, so high that he could see all the way over the building into the valley.

Then he tried to step higher, but he was rather short for his age and his red hair was in his eyes and his hand didn't quite reach the branch and he slipped and he fell, like Alice down the rabbit hole, but the ground rushed up to meet him too fast and he landed on his head and he felt his neck snap and his skull smashed open and then everything went dark.

~~~

When Ianto Jones woke up, it was nighttime and the forest was dark and haunted around him. He sat up and touched his head carefully, in case his brains fell out, but his head was in one piece and his neck didn't flop around like a noodle and his hearts beat fast in his chest but he felt fine, so Ianto supposed he had fallen through the looking glass like Alice after all.

He stood up from the large pool of liquid he had been lying in, all black and sticky in the faint moonlight, and headed back to the children's home. Everything about him felt weird, from the trousers that were now too tight, to the odd shape of his hands, to the front tooth sitting firmly in place when Ianto knew he'd knocked it clean out of his mouth the day before.

At least his only possession, his real mother's very own pocket watch, was still in his trousers.

When Ianto came into a pool of moonlight, he pulled the watch anxiously from his pocket and opened it. He sighed happily when he saw the hands still ticking away. He wiped a bit of the dark sticky liquid from the glass, closed the watch, and put it away again.




3. My next rec is a little different. First off, it's ongoing and incomplete. Second, it's not a fic in the traditional sense. It's a media journal of the life of Torchwood told through Ianto's eyes. There are texts, emails, letters, memos, and prose that give us a day by day view of Torchwood. I'm reccing this for the entire piece, not just the wonderful underlying Jack/Ianto bits. But those Jack/Ianto bits are wonderful, caring and teasing while still being the Jack/Ianto we see onscreen.

Honestly, there's really no way to quote a bit of this piece so I'm just going to borrow a little something from the description as told by Ianto.

Ianto Jones: Receptionist and coffee-maker extraordinaire.

And so the conversation went, one blustery November day, that one should be made to keep all records of the conversations of the Torchwood crew due to the bizarre topics that arose. Naturally one Ianto Jones decided to take Owen Harper's suggestions to heart and out of it was born In These Stones; The Memoirs of Ianto Jones

inthesestones



4. Light Shining Through Water by etharei

This is a very recent fic from the horizonssing challenge which is running through all of July. The prompt was an image which is of a man diving into the water. Set post-Cyberwoman, Etharei gives us a moment where Ianto discovers that while he hates Jack, still believes him to be a monster, he doesn't want to give up on Jack just like Jack doesn't give up on him. This is the odd combination of post and pre-slash because this is after Jack's discovered Ianto used him to keep Lisa safe, but it's the start of something new for the both of them.

I couldn't find a section to quote because each word is so poised on the next that it was impossible to break out more than a line without destroying the meaning.

Ianto hates not knowing what to do, being uncertain of his place, and thus quite loathes his life these days. But he has enough dignity left to want to do his job, as best as he can, if that is all he can have.




5. Tylwyth Teg by szm

This fic is actually more of a Doctor Who fic in the sense that it's Jack traveling with the Doctor and Martha post-End of Days and LotTL. This story is another look at the faeries we meet in Small Worlds.

The TARDIS brings them to Wales where Jack meets up with a young boy who likes to play in the woods with the faeries. When he realizes that young boy is Ianto Jones and he's being chased not only by the faeries but by Yvonne Hartmann and Torchwood, Jack knows that he has to protect him or his own future will be changed

This story is not about the relationship Jack and Ianto will have in the future, but about the friendship Jack and Ianto have when he is a child. The Doctor, Martha, and Ianto's Nain play a large part in keeping Ianto from the faeries and help to give him the strength to choose his place in the world.

"I know Ianto. He works...will....*did* work for me at Torchwood." Jack rubbed the bridge of his nose, the time agency did train you in the proper use of fourth dimension tenses, but lately Jack's timeline made his *own* head hurt.

"Well." Said Martha, "he's going to be o.k. then? If he's in the future?"

"Oh, not necessarily," said the Doctor breezily.

Martha scowled. "Why not?" she asked.

The Doctor launched into his usual pantomime. He puffed out his cheeks, and ran a hand though his hair. His hand touched the glasses high on his head and he pushed them down over his eyes. "Weeeeeeelllllll," he started bouncing a few steps towards Martha. "Imagine the TARDIS is like a... bubble... no, a sponge..."

"Look," Jack interrupted impatiently. "Can we save Ianto first? You can get into your mating dance later."



6. Blinkers by blackbird_song


And my last rec is a story where sadly there is some Gwen-bashing. I like Gwen, I do. I just think there are occasions where she cannot see beyond herself. I especially felt that way post-Meat and so did many others.

Gwen comes to work the morning after Jack sends her home without forcing her to Retcon Rhys only to find the rest of the team there dealing with the aftermath of a gastrovite that attacked Ianto. This premise leads to Gwen realizing that maybe she needs to think more about her teammates and not only herself.


She snorted as she sat down at her workstation. “Where’s Jack?”

“In the medical bay, with Owen and Ianto,” said Tosh, peering at something on her screen.

“Examining something from the rift, I assume?”

“Sort of,” said Tosh, in a tone that seemed a little too absent.

“Anything interesting?”

“Nasty encounter with a gastrovite family last night. I didn’t really see anything before Owen shooed me out, but Ianto wasn’t looking too good—”

Gwen was out of her seat at a run as Tosh was muttering something about scanning for something that sounded like bad folds.

“You can’t go in there,” called Tosh.

“We’ll just see about that,” said Gwen, jaw tightly set.