"The point is," Jack continued, "Do I like this hat because it reminds me of itself, three months ago when you will give it to me, or do I like this as a hat qua hat, and the temporal displacement is simply incidental?"
“I merely offered you refreshments in an attempt to cheer you up,” Ianto says patiently. || Owen's having a bad day; Ianto indulges him with snark. What Owen doesn't know won't hurt him, but it will add a delicious layer of ouchy irony.
"Let's see," said Ianto. He put a foot on the bench and leaned on his knee. "As I see it, you're his past, you're history. He told you to get lost." || I admit, I'm a sucker for smart Ianto dialogue.
"Well, we can't have you crossing your own timeline, that's asking for untidiness," Ianto said briskly. || Accidental time travel. Though not overly burdened with plot, this is too smart banter-y to be fluff. Fun!
"So," Ianto said, when he'd finished pulling almost obscene faces over his first mouthful of cake, "two weeks to go. Getting nervous?" || You don't need to read the story that this is a sequel to, but it's good, too.
Ianto thought it had been perfectly obvious all along what side he’d been on, and just because Jack hadn’t liked or wanted the answer, hadn’t changed the facts.
The thing he misses most is the having of a name, and he's had a lot of them. || Difficult to read because of how perfectly the narrative captures the quality of senescence; worth the struggle.
"You've known everything about me all along, haven't you?" he asked, trying not to let his voice crack... || Jack's marriage. Story made me cry twice, and it's not that long, folks.
Ianto notes the detail and all such others on the list which grows to include date and habit and mood... Jack may be constantly losing his past, but somehow Ianto is instinctively driven to stem that.
simpy
