Ficlet: A Suitable Disguise

[bk_forever]

Title: A Suitable Disguise

Author: badly_knitted

Characters: Ianto, mentions Jack

Rating: G

Spoilers: Fragments, hints at Cyberwoman.

Summary: Ianto’s suits are essential to him.

Word Count: 380

Written For: juliet316’s prompt ‘Torchwood, Ianto, in a way, the suits were his armor’ at fic_promptly.

Disclaimer: I don’t own Torchwood, or the characters. They belong to the BBC.

It was fair to say that Ianto was devoted to his suits. He also took exquisite care in choosing which to wear, coordinating it with the perfect shirt and tie combination to get the most out of his chosen attire each day. He hadn’t always been that way, but since joining Torchwood Three, they’d become essential to him.

It wasn’t that he really had to wear them; the rest of the team dressed casually and no one expected him to do otherwise. But he’d seen the way Harkness looked at him that first time he’d worn one. The suit had got him the job as surely as the pterodactyl had. He’d spent most of what money he had left from caring for Lisa on a couple of better quality suits and they’d been well worth the expense. He knew he looked good in them, he had the right build to carry them off, but that wasn’t the real reason that he’d taken to wearing them.

In a way, his suits were his armour. Every morning when he slid his long limbs into the finely tailored trousers and jacket, he felt that he was arming himself for the day ahead, hiding his vulnerability beneath the calm, professional demeanour that went with them. When he wore a suit he looked older, more capable, and more self-assured. No one could see how scared he was, or how lost and desperate he felt. All they saw was what he wanted them to see, a man in full control of himself and everything around him. That was if they noticed him at all. Suits, it seemed, were as good a camouflage as they were a protection.

He felt safe in his suits; secure in the knowledge that if his new colleagues did happen to notice him, they’d have no inkling of the terrible secrets he was hiding from them. He was simply the butler, the general dogsbody, the guy in the suit who did all the jobs they couldn’t be bothered to do themselves and that suited him just fine. If they only saw the suit, he might just get away with what he was doing behind their backs. It had to work, because Lisa’s life depended on it and he couldn’t let her down.

The End

Comments

[teaboyfan.livejournal.com]

Beautiful! I'd always seen the suits as armor, but of course they're even more camouflage. "Clothes make the man," and nobody looked behind the disguise until it was almost too late for everybody. The irony is that it was already too late for Lisa. Amazing that you are still panning gold nuggets out of the apparently-exhausted Torchwood river.

[bk_forever]

Thank you!

Poor Ianto, in a way he was hiding himself from the truth as much as he was hiding from everyone's sight. He tried so hard to save someone who was already beyond saving I think because he didn't know how to stop trying. Lisa was the only thing keeping him going after Canary Wharf. If he stopped trying to save her, his entire sense of purpose would be gone, what would be the point of trying to go on?

I think there are always new angles to be found when writing about characters and a fandom you love. I still have ideas popping up, so I'll keep writing until I run out.