It was worse than Jack thought.  Bryn Price.  Not a murderer, rapist, drug dealer, thief, bigamist or alien in disguise.  Didn’t even have a point on his driving license.  No leverage there, nothing to surprise Ianto with.  It would have been too cruel anyway, Jack decided as he clicked off his headset, Ianto didn’t deserve that.  Apparently nor did Bryn, any more than his warm and demonstrative behaviour toward Ianto had warranted the two-hundred-and-thirty-four methods of murdering him that Jack had devised overnight.

A glance at the clock reminded Jack that he had a decision to make.  Ianto, creature of habit that he was, would be leaving in exactly twelve minutes to go to work.  Did Jack make himself known, or did he spend another day skulking around outside the Tourist Office?  How much better would it be to face Ianto and be told that they were officially over?  How much worse?

Jack counted down the seconds, suffering from palpitations as the last minute arrived and positive that whatever move he made would be the wrong one.  But if he truly believed that then he had nothing to lose, surely?  He stepped out of the car as Ianto was locking his front door, moving fast now to cover the distance between vehicle and house.  Jack was ten feet away from Ianto’s gate when the man in question swivelled on his heel and began to walk, turning pale and faltering when he set eyes on the approaching apparition.

Ianto took two stumbling steps backwards before giving a brief, disbelieving shake of the head and retreating, fumbling his way into his home and not bothering to secure the door as he rushed inside.  A horrendous intrusion of privacy, but that wasn’t about to stop Jack following the young man into his living room, pausing in the doorway and experiencing a rush of guilt when he found Ianto, grey-faced and breathless, leaning against the back of his sofa.

“Ianto?  Are you…”

“I’m…  It’s…”

Jack took another step into the room.  Ianto flinched.  Jack stopped.

“Can I get you anything?”

“No.”

Ianto took several deep breaths and, ordering himself to be sufficiently recovered from the shock, he forced his back straight, turning to face Jack and staring hard, studying his face inch by inch.

“It’s me, I promise,” Jack smiled.  “Just me.”

“You’re…?”

“I’m fine.  In fact…”

“Because for a long time we never knew if you left willingly, or were taken, we didn’t know if someone who could snatch you from the heart of Torchwood could kill you as efficiently, immortality be damned, we didn’t know if you were still a free man because there were rumours of inter-galactic bounty hunters, and with the tales you’ve told…”

“Didn’t the cameras show…”

“Only after months of working on scraps of recordings, a pixel at a time.  Nothing was functioning properly because of that business with the Rift.  We didn’t know, we—”

Ianto’s voice trembled apart, but once again he shied away at any sign of Jack coming closer.

“I’m sorry.”

“Not then you weren’t, when it mattered.  Losing you, not knowing what had happened to you, it was devastating, coming so soon after the way we’d—  The way we’d betrayed you.  We thought we’d let you down.  Again.  All that guilt and misery, and then when we finally saw the recordings…  We saw you choosing to leave.  Happy to leave.  You didn’t even glance back, there wasn’t a thought for us.”

“Let me explain.”

Ianto shook his head, looking at his watch but not seeing anything other than a welcome excuse.

“I have to go, I don’t want to be late.”

“You’re always early.”

“By whose standards?” Ianto snapped, stronger now he had something other than Jack to focus on.  He gestured to the door.  “After you.”

“We need to talk.”

“No.”

“Ianto…”

“Get out.”

The tension in the young man’s voice left Jack no choice.  He turned and strolled out of the house, Ianto in wary pursuit, and once Jack was on the pavement, Ianto locked up and followed, skirting Jack and rushing to his car.  When the Rover’s door was open he paused, back to staring.

“What?” Jack asked.

“Are you coming to work?”

“No.  Not yet.”

“Have you seen the others?”

“No.”

“What then?  If you don’t see them it will be easier for you to leave again?”

“Don’t tell them I’m here.”

“I don’t take orders from you anymore,” Ianto reminded Jack coldly.

“I’m asking you.  As a friend.”  With a huffed, humourless laugh, Ianto sank into the driver’s seat, the door slamming behind him.  A last, disdainful glance at Jack and the car sped away.  Jack strolled back to his own vehicle and slouched against it as he mentally re-ran the conversation.  “Could have been worse,” he reassured himself, but his instincts told him he’d barely scratched the surface of this particular problem.  He thought of the unmistakeable distress behind Ianto’s venting, inhaled deeply and released a heartfelt sigh.  “Could have been better.”

…

“Y’know, I long for the days when we didn’t hear a peep out of you for hours on end,” Owen griped as Ianto finally paused in his barrage of hurled information.  “You’d ghost in and coffee would magically appear, but barely a word was spoken.”  Ianto glared.  “What?  I’m not allowed to be sick of the sound of your voice?  The stuff Jack used to spout about Welsh vowels being anything other than the aural equivalent of scraping your knob over a cheese grater?  All bollocks, I hope you realise that.”

“Have you been paying attention?  You have to leave in…” Ianto checked his watch, “three minutes, and…”

“It’s okay,” Toshiko assured him, waving her PDA.  “All noted.”

“Maybe I should come with you,” Ianto frowned.

“Please God, no!” Owen exclaimed, on his feet and gratefully heading for the exit.  “I don’t know what’s crawled up your arse and died, but get over it, Ianto.”

As Ianto quietly fumed, Toshiko gathered what she needed from her desk and, with a sympathetic smile in Ianto’s direction, followed Owen.  Seconds later Gwen came rushing through.

“I know, I know,” she said quickly, hands held up in surrender, pre-empting him as he drew breath to speak, “but we’re not running late.  Yet.  Stop worrying.”

“It makes us look unprofessional if…”

“We’ll be there,” Gwen told him firmly, and he nodded at her back as she started to leave.  On the stairs she stopped and turned, studying him with the brand of compassion that made him sick in the pit of his stomach.  “Bad day for you?” she asked softly.

“Yes,” Ianto said through gritted teeth, expecting Gwen to understand that it was all he had to say on the subject.  Thankfully she did.

“We’ll report back.  See you later.”

Finally alone in the Hub, Ianto crossed and sank onto the sofa, elbows leant on knees, head in hands.  Bad day indeed.  He’d been intolerable from the moment he’d arrived, he knew that, and the only positive to come from it was the satisfaction of knowing he was pissing off Owen Harper.

Jack.  How was he supposed to deal with Jack?  When the captain left, Ianto had struggled to cope with the emotions warring within him, he’d been worn down by fear and sorrow long before the anger set in, but over recent months he’d made a deliberate effort to accept what had happened and get on with his life.  He’d coped the way he always coped, by boxing up his emotions and sealing them as hermetically as he did his archive material before tidying them away.  Provided the box was left undisturbed he could function, and after a while, functioning became living.  He’d proved it in his youth, his teens; proved it with the destruction of Torchwood One; proved it most recently and possibly most callously with Lisa.  The process may have left gaping holes in his being that took a while to heal, but he was one of life’s copers, that was his way, and he refused to be any different.

But…  Jack.

Trust that arrogant sod to waltz back in and prise open a corner of the box that Ianto had had the hardest time sealing because of the twisted conclusion to their association.  Death was simpler than desertion, and not always crueller.  Jack could be fickle, unpredictable to the power of n, and he’d caught Ianto by surprise yet again with his departure: this time, Ianto could find no explanation, nor make any excuses for him.

Those last hours…  Gwen was the devoted, Toshiko the disciple, Owen the forgiven, and Ianto…  What was Ianto?  The outed?  Jack had returned from the dead, rolled Ianto to expose a vulnerable underbelly to the people he least wanted to reveal any weakness to, and then abandoned the lot of them.  After ten minutes of stunned gaping, the others had all turned to Ianto, as if he would have an answer.  He could’ve laughed at their shocked and expectant faces, might have too if he hadn’t been so sure that any breach in his emotional armour would lead to the kind of outburst that would have left every relationship he’d built in his workplace in ruins.

It wasn’t long before Owen’s snide comments about the husband nipping out for a pint of milk and never being seen again emerged and, by the fourth round, it was only good reflexes on Toshiko’s part that ensured the bullet from Ianto’s gun sped past the doctor’s head rather than through it.  As Owen’s subsequent rant finally tailed off, Ianto icily reminded him that Torchwood’s tea boy could make a body disappear so successfully that even other operatives couldn’t locate it, and had apparently delivered that message in such a pointed way as to force some kind of truce.

So now – even if Owen’s warped brand of respect was based on not wanting to end up as fertiliser – they got along, they all got along.  The one factor that would turn everything arse over tit had turned up at Ianto’s home early morning.  Equality versus Jack Harkness?  Impossible odds.

The telephone rang and he automatically rose to answer it, wondering what his crack team had forgotten this time.

“What is it?”

“Ianto.  I need to speak to you.”

Ianto jerked the phone away from his ear before deciding that was probably his stupidest reaction all day.  He slowly brought the receiver back.

“I need this line free, Jack, hang up.”

“I can’t.”

“Where are you?”

“Will you come and talk to me?”

“I’ll come and shoot you.  Then I’ll hang up for you.”

“You—”

For a second Ianto thought Jack was about to tell him he didn’t mean it, and then Ianto would be obliged to make the trip to prove he did.  But it didn’t come to that.  The line, as opposed to the captain, went dead.

“Jack?” Ianto whispered.

Nothing, naturally.  Ianto replaced the receiver and stared at it, willing it to ring.  Or not.  Still nothing.  He returned to the sofa and collapsed onto it, elbows back on his knees, head back in his hands.

“Jack,” he repeated, and he grieved.

…

Ianto suspected he was being spied on when he left the Hub that night – correctly, of course – and although he tried his best to behave naturally, he was too tense, too jumpy.  It was infuriating to know that Jack would see that, when all Ianto wanted was to appear completely business as usual.  Unmoved.  Yes, right, not a chance.

He arrived at the car park and took a good look around, tingling with…nerves, or anticipation, or whatever the fuck that Jack Harkness had done to him when he’d first ‘kissed’ him.

“I’ll never be normal again,” Ianto muttered into the chilly night, and it was a lonely, lonely thought.

…

When Ianto’s phone rang he must have jumped six inches into the air.  It was with huge relief that, when he checked the number, he found it to be Bryn and almost dropped the phone in his scramble to answer.

“Bryn!”

“Watcha, Gorgeous, you sound pleased to hear from me.”

“Crap day.”

“Well, how about we make it a better evening?  There’s a new film opening, all about aliens taking over the world, I know how they amuse you.  Get a bite to eat first, and…”

“I can’t.”  Ianto wasn’t sure why he’d said that, but it seemed necessary.  “Not tonight.”

“What then?”

“Work, I have to catch up.”

Bryn gasped in faux horror.

“You mean you’re running low on leaflets about the Vale of Glamorgan railway?  How will the tourist industry survive!  Wales is in your hands, man!”

“I think I am low actually, I’ll make a note.”

Ianto genuinely did, finding a pen and writing V of Glam R on the back of a bill he’d picked up off the doormat when he’d got home.  It might have been a front for the Hub, but people did occasionally wander into the Tourist Office and Ianto made a point of being good at his alternate job.

“I’ll miss you tonight,” Bryn confessed.  “Am I allowed to say that or is it too soon?”

“Probably too soon,” Ianto chuckled, “but appreciated.”

“Gimme a call then, if you get bored.”

“I will.  Night.”

“G’night, Gorgeous.”

Ianto ended the call and, with a deep sigh, leant back against the nearest wall, closing his eyes and letting his head loll against the reassuringly solid surface behind him.  He was tired, worn out by his level of anxiety throughout the day, but still restless.  He knew part of this agitation was about still missing Jack, and about Jack being so near but, to his mind, untouchable.  Ianto hugged himself, cold despite the warmth of his home, cold and lonely.

Surely the answer was obvious?  The phone was still in his hand and, without further thought, he speed-dialled.  Bryn answered immediately.

“That was quick.  If you get bored with Wales this fast what hope does the rest of world have?”

“Usual, half-an-hour?”

“Excellent.  Just leave your leek-wielding, souvenir gonks at home.”

Ianto laughed and, once again, ended the call.  Now motivated, he leapt into action, rushing upstairs for a rapid shower, thinking about the uncomplicated, cheery soul that was Bryn and appreciating the fact that he was open and giving and sexy and there for him.

…

Bryn was already settled at their usual table when Ianto arrived, obviously delighted to see him and offering a huge smile in greeting.

“You’re eager,” Ianto said as he threw his coat over the back of his chair and sat.

Bryn gestured to the waiting beer.

“Too true.  Got you one in.”

“I’m hoping I can rely on you to get me stinking drunk and have your wicked way with me this evening.”

“A man can only do his best,” Bryn pledged stoically before looking over Ianto’s shoulder.  “Table’s free, fancy a game?”  Ianto took a long gulp of beer and nodded, following Bryn to the pool table and attempting to relax, rolling his shoulders and appreciating it when Bryn came to knead the taut muscles with his thumbs.  “What’s bothering you?” Bryn asked quietly.

“Nothing I want to bore you with.”

“I’m a good listener, Yan.”

“Good everything,” Ianto said disarmingly as he turned and ushered Bryn to the cue rack.

“I bet you say that to all the postmen.”

“Every last one,” Ianto agreed, racking up balls and fixing his mind on the matter in hand.

They were into their second game.  Bryn was distracted, chatting to the barman about Saturday’s rugby, and Ianto was about to make the kind of tricky shot that so often led to pool balls rattling onto the floor, when he felt the tingle and caught a grey blur out of the corner of his eye.  He abruptly stood and stared around the immediate area, wondering what the hell Jack could be up to, but it was only when he saw Bryn about to drink from the beer they’d left unattended that cold fear rushed through him.

“Bryn,” he snapped as he hurried over and snatched the beer from Bryn’s hand.

“What?  And…”  He gestured for his beer back.

“I think there was someone here going through our things, can you take a look outside for him?  Grey coat, long.”

Ianto had no qualms about giving the description: there was no way Jack was going to be spotted if he didn’t want to be.  Bryn’s expression hardened and he hurried to the door.  Ianto snatched up his coat from where he’d earlier thrown it, going straight to the concealed pocket in the lining that contained work paraphernalia and removing a sample vial.  He put a drop of liquid from each glass into the vial, not bothered about mixing samples because he knew he wouldn’t be any less furious if one or both drinks had been tampered with.

As Ianto returned from pouring the remainder of the beer away, Bryn reappeared at his side.

“Anything missing?”

“Doesn’t seem to be.  I was probably wrong.”

“I didn’t see anyone, not in a long coat.”

“Told you it was a crap day.  Now I’m hallucinating.”

“Where’d the beer go?”

“I thought we were off.”

“Fair enough.  Yours or mine?”

Ianto hesitated.  He didn’t want to risk a confrontation with Jack in front of Bryn if he took him back to the house, and he certainly didn’t want to lead Jack to where Bryn lived.

“Take a walk, shall we?”  Bryn looked stricken.  “What?” Ianto asked with concern.

“You’re dumping me.”

“No, I’m not, you fool.  C’mon.  I’ll buy you some chips.”

“God, you’re smooth.”

Ianto smiled and felt better, watching as Bryn pulled on his jacket and wishing he’d thought to check it over.  Still, there was always the pretence of a grope to get that done.

…

It felt like they were alone, and maybe they were.  Ianto didn’t understand why Jack would focus so intently on him anyway, it would be far better to approach Toshiko or Gwen if he wanted a warm welcome back to Torchwood: the women were so much nicer than him or Owen.

In a dark, secluded nook by the bay Bryn pulled Ianto close and distracted him with vinegar-flavoured kisses, finally gaining his absolute attention when a night-cold hand popped the button of his jeans and slid the zip down, tooth by tooth.

“Not here,” Ianto half-heartedly protested.

“Here,” Bryn’s semi-perpetual cheeky grin became downright wicked.

“It’s too cold.”

“Wimp.”

“This weather?  More limp than wimp.”

Bryn buried himself inside Ianto’s coat and stroked until Ianto apparently found the temperature a little more acceptable, but despite the rising heat, Ianto suddenly gasped and shivered.  Tingling.  Eyes wide, back to searching.

“What’s wrong?” Bryn asked, showing enough sense to realise this was going nowhere and re-fastening Ianto’s jeans.  His hand came up to touch Ianto’s face.  “You’re too hot.  If you’re not feeling right you should get home.”

“Yes.  And alone.”

“You think?  I could…”

“No.  Don’t fuss.  Let’s just…”

Ianto vaguely waved in the direction they’d come from; hand in hand they wandered back to the point where they needed to go their separate ways.  They stopped and looked at one another, and Ianto shrugged apologetically.  Bryn was all sweet sympathy.

“No wonder you’ve had a crap day if you’re coming down with something,” he told Ianto.

“Too bloody good you are, Price the Post.”

“Hardly.”  Bryn shifted his feet, suddenly awkward.  “If it was too soon to say I’d miss you if I didn’t see you tonight, I suppose you’d be downright horrified if I said—”  Ianto cocked a questioning eyebrow at Bryn’s hesitation.  Bryn moved in, holding Ianto tight and burying his face in his neck.  “Just get better.  Gimme a call if you need anything.  I mean anything.”

Ianto hugged him back.

“Are you brave enough to risk one more germ-laden kiss before I go?”

“Bring it on!”

There was kissing, there was the frisking of Bryn’s jacket under the guise of some good-natured fumbling; there was, eventually, parting.

As Ianto made his lonely way home, wondering if he did indeed have a bug rather than a bad case of Harkness-related heebie-jeebies, his hand found and wrapped around the sample vial in his pocket.  He hoped he was being ridiculous, but he’d get the contents tested first thing.

This wasn’t due to be a good night.

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