Two weeks passed in a sort of dull normality.  Ianto was hiding behind the facade of normal, Gwen was embracing a chemically-buoyed normal, and Jack was trying his very best to be the intergalactic, swashbuckling hero that was normally Captain Jack Harkness.  Since life usually contained a fair level of ‘screwed up’, this existence didn’t feel too foreign and they managed to function well enough to do their jobs without falling to pieces or creating too much mayhem.

When Jack stopped trying to be the swashbuckling hero he was disturbingly quiet and unrecognisably introverted, preferring to spend every free second staring at the same old CCTV footage (almost as if hoping that, the next time he watched it, it would end differently) instead of socialising with Ianto or Gwen.  Gwen pursued him, as was her way, but Ianto backed off, choosing to let Jack come to him if and when he wanted to.

After one of Gwen and Rhys’ frequent spats, Ianto had accompanied Rhys to the pub and joined him in far too much booze and the kind of conversation that couldn’t be conceived of sober.  ‘Love is a curse!’ Rhys had insisted at many times the legal limit of blood alcohol, and Ianto had willingly agreed, having met him pint for pint, but comforted them both with the insistence that curses could be broken.  After a curry, with both men untidily sprawled on Gwen and Rhys’ bed, Rhys proclaimed himself a willing victim to enchantment the moment that Gwen appeared, giggling at them, in the doorway.

Ianto had rolled off the bed and, with a two-handed wave to Gwen, excused himself before stumbling as far as the Williams’ sofa and succumbing to its siren call.  As he drifted off to sleep – a rare full night’s – he thought about curses, about love, about Jack.  And maybe, just maybe, for the sake of his ongoing well-being and sanity, it was time for this particular curse to be shattered.

…

A Tuesday morning, and at ten past six the team was standing outside a riverside warehouse, scanners in hand, Ianto and Gwen trying to concentrate while Jack and Rhys bickered over the appropriateness of spouses attending call-outs, whether or not the lift had been crucial.

“These…” Gwen indicated the readings, “are a little too perfect, you think?” she conferred with Ianto.  “Designed to get us here.”

“Hart?” Ianto replied quietly.

“Don’t you feel like you’re being watched?  Haven’t you felt like that for days?”

Ianto stared around, keeping it businesslike in an apparent search for alien life forms rather than psychopaths.  Gwen was right: everything felt dodgy, and he let her know he agreed with her assessment with a loaded look.

“Do we carry on, just in case?”

“Jack,” Gwen called; Jack stopped squabbling and marched over to them.

“Any sign of…”

“Hart,” murmured Ianto under his breath.  Jack froze.  “We’ve no proof, except…”

Gwen showed Jack the readings.

“Yes, manufactured,” he said grimly, and the tension that had been gradually mounting suddenly soared.

“Why can’t we get a reading for alien tech from him?” Gwen asked.

“Because that tech is precisely what he’s using to block our scanners.”  A last look around and Jack was gesturing them back to the SUV.  “Let’s get out of—”

Jack was interrupted by the metallic swooshing sound of weapons fire, the type this planet wasn’t due to hear for centuries; he grabbed Ianto and Gwen and threw them into the side of the building for cover, turning back for Rhys only to find him face down in a growing puddle of his own blood.  Gwen’s screech when she saw what had happened was terrifying, and she tore her way out of Jack’s grip to run to her unconscious husband, falling to her knees at his side and checking for life signs before pressing her hands over the array of small, vicious wounds in his side and hip in a vain attempt to staunch the flow of blood.

Jack hurtled off in the direction of the weapons fire, leaving Ianto calling for an ambulance and racing to bring the SUV around to provide cover when it was deigned unwise to attempt to move Rhys.  Once the vehicle was in position, Ianto leapt out and took up his own chosen position, using himself as a physical shield for Gwen’s worst exposed flank.

“Why Rhys?”  Gwen turned to Ianto when she momentarily gave up on pleading for her husband to show a glimpse of consciousness.  “That bastard could have shot any of us, so why Rhys?”

Ianto wanted to ask why any of them, and since when had Torchwood employees/associates become little more than targets for direct or indirect assassination, but he knew better than to voice those questions aloud and buried his morbid thoughts.

“Might be as simple as a good sightline.  How is he?”

“His heartbeat and his breathing are steady, but there’s so much blood.”

Ianto didn’t look, didn’t for a second take his eyes from the direction the assault had come from.

“Ambulance won’t be long.”

“I can’t believe this,” Gwen choked out as her attention returned to Rhys.  “Can’t believe it.  Rhys…”

Ianto could sympathise with that, but he was silent as his mind raced, trying to analyse Hart’s intent and predict a next move.  Needless to say he wasn’t happy with Jack’s ongoing absence, knowing how valuable he was in certain quarters; for all Ianto knew, Jack had been manoeuvred right into Hart’s trap and was already being packaged for shipping.

The ambulance arrived; Rhys was rapidly assessed and his treatment started.  Gwen naturally accompanied him to the hospital, and Ianto was grateful to see them drive away, knowing that a part of his team was now safe.  He tried for the umpteenth time to contact Jack via their earpieces, but it wasn’t until he’d finally made up his mind to pursue Jack that he received a reply.

“Where are you?” Ianto demanded.  “Are you safe?”

“I’m safe.  No sign of Hart.  How’s Rhys?”

“He’ll probably need a transfusion but the paramedics seemed quite positive about a full recovery.”

“That was a distraction, not an attempt on his life.”

“Yes, I figured out as much.”

“A message for us – all of us.”

“Everyone’s a potential victim,” Ianto said coldly.

“You’ve got it,” agreed Jack in a similar tone.  “Wait in the SUV, I’ll be there soon.”

“Take care,” emerged before Ianto could stop it.

“Don’t worry about me, keep yourself safe.  He’s out there, Ianto, and he wants us all to suffer.  Don’t stop looking over your shoulder.”

Ianto did as he was told, sitting in the driver’s seat, ready for a quick getaway should one be required or simply desired when Jack arrived.  He tried not to brood, but he was experiencing a bit of a Jack moment, blaming himself over Hart: he’d let Hart go free, Rhys could have been killed, and now the whole team was in danger.  He felt like ringing Gwen up and letting her know it was her turn to fuck up over Hart, but she’d probably remind him that she’d been there and done that.  Still, a roster perhaps?

Movement caught Ianto’s attention: Jack, thankfully.  A sprint across the deserted car park and he was climbing in beside Ianto, tapping at the controls of his wrist strap before the door even had a chance to close.

“The hospital,” he told Ianto, and Ianto drove.

“Think you can trace him with that?” Ianto asked as Jack continued fiddling with various settings.

“I doubt it.  The problem with confronting a person who has all the same training and equipment…”

“…is that they have all the same training and equipment,” Ianto finished for Jack.

“Precisely.  He’s ready for whatever I try.”  With a disgruntled sigh Jack slapped the cover of his wrist strap shut.  “I promise you – you, Gwen, Rhys, Tosh, Owen, everybody he’s hurt – I promise you all that when I catch up with him I’m going to end it.”

No answer seemed necessary.

Good news at the hospital: as the paramedics had indicated, Rhys was going to make a full recovery.  He’d come under fire from an extraordinary weapon that had left innumerable wounds, none of which had penetrated deeply enough to do damage to any vital organ, but beyond being left with hair-fine scars that might just resemble a street map of Cardiff, he’d be back on his feet in a relatively short space of time.  Gwen aggressively opted to remain with him at the hospital, leaving Ianto to face an uncomfortably quiet trip back to the Hub with Jack.

Too many nights without decent sleep started to catch up with him, and Ianto caught himself dozing in the passenger seat as he descended from the morning’s adrenalin high.  It didn’t get any better once they’d arrived at the Hub, despite having plenty to concentrate on, searching for energy spikes or anomalous readings that might match the firing of that unusual weapon as Jack attempted to source the weapon itself.  Nothing: whatever piece of equipment manufactured Hart’s dampening field was pretty spectacular and Ianto couldn’t wait to get his hands on it.

Ianto checked unrelated incoming reports, tidied up, did a little pointless organising, gazed frequently and longingly at the sofa and then, when he could barely keep his eyes open any longer, thought of something far better.  He went and tapped on Jack’s office door, waiting to be waved inside.  Jack mustered a smile for him.

“Sorry to disturb you,” Ianto started, regardless of the fact that Jack had been doing nothing, he wasn’t even glued to his monitor for once.

“What can I do for you?”

“I know it’s a liberty, but would you mind if I laid down for half-an-hour?”

“Fine.”

“Upstairs.”

“Fine.”

“In your bed,” Ianto clarified.

“It’s not a liberty,” Jack told him with the smile that had never quite gone away, “and you don’t have to ask”

“I think I do.”  They stared at one another for a few moments.  “How are you?” Ianto asked.

Jack shrugged.

“You tell me.  How am I?”

“I didn’t mean that, you seem perfectly alert and completely involved; at least…when you want to be.”

Ianto watched Jack think; the smile faded.

“I’m not deliberately ignoring you.”

“You’ve got a lot on your mind,” Ianto volunteered, ready to make whatever excuses necessary, anything that prevented them being forced further apart.

“Yes, and…  You’ve been distant too.”

“I have?”  Ianto was shocked by that.  “Have I?”

“I was wondering if…”  Jack gave a bemused chuckle and shook his head.  “Did we break up and nobody told me?”

Ianto started to speak three times before he found suitable, if inadequate words.

“After everything…  I have no expectations for us.”

Jack was obviously surprised by that.

“You don’t?  I do.”

“It’s difficult.”

“Difficult because it’s difficult, or difficult because you expect it to be difficult?”

“It’s…  I think…  No, actually, I can’t think, not on two hours sleep a night if I’m lucky.  Can we have this conversation later?”

Jack finally approached Ianto, urgent in his concern.  Taking Ianto by the shoulders so he couldn’t be brushed off, he studied Ianto’s weary face.

“Only two hours a night?  What’s wrong?”

“I’m not comfortable at the flat and…”

“Since when?”

“Isn’t it obvious?  I feel like I’m being haunted,” Ianto admitted self-consciously, “and yes, before you say anything, I know it’s all in my head.”

“The answer’s simple.”

“I know, and I will move, I just haven’t found anywhere I like, so…”

“Ianto, why aren’t you staying here with me?”

Because I didn’t think I’d be welcome.  It couldn’t be said aloud.  Ianto pushed past Jack’s hands and found a more comforting spot in his arms.  Weakened by the sustained emotional battering of late, he let Jack take charge, and allowed himself to be herded up to Jack’s quarters and sat on the bed.  Jack removed Ianto’s shoes and jacket as Ianto watched in a somnambulistic haze, then all it took was a nudge from Jack to get Ianto under the duvet and, in surroundings where he felt completely at ease, asleep in seconds.

Jack watched Ianto for a while, wondering how and why he put up with so much.  The CCTV footage had contained revelation after revelation, not just about Jack’s decline but about the way it was coped with and dealt with by Ianto, Gwen and Rhys.  His friends amazed him, but none more than Ianto, who’d taken the brunt of his unknowingly insensitive and, on several occasions, plain cruel behaviour.  It didn’t matter that it was an accepted fact of life that, in times of personal suffering, whoever was closest got to suffer too and bear the worst of any frustrated backlash, Ianto had shown the patience of a saint and a level of commitment that Jack wasn’t entirely sure he deserved.

Since he’d first known Ianto he’d taken him somewhat for granted, except for occasional and exceptional circumstances when he was forced to do more.  For the majority of the time Ianto had been quite content with that, even making jokes about it, and…why?  Not because he thought he didn’t deserve better, he was far too intelligent for that, it was most definitely a choice.  Maybe Jack, who lapped up attention from any quarter, who couldn’t tolerate being ignored, would never understand his partner’s sincere modesty and simple desire to be appreciated quietly and without any flamboyance.  One thing he could understand though was his own growing discomfort as he watched recordings of Ianto being either insulted and mistreated, or offered unguarded affection, by a stranger with Jack Harkness’ face.

In his right mind Jack could show Ianto the admiration he deserved but really didn’t have a clue how to share his deepest feelings.  Honest feelings that had crept up on him and, if he was quite truthful, rather intimidated him.  Did Ianto even know he was loved?  He’d only ever been told when Jack was losing his mind, what kind of assurance was that?

Jack wasn’t used to saying ‘I love you’, not anymore.  In the past he’d been fickle and flighty, but eventually became fed up of perpetually kicking himself because he’d rashly pronounced his love on a Monday only to be over it by Friday and feeling like shit because he was letting a partner down.  Over the years he’d learnt a hard lesson about keeping his mouth shut on this particular subject – I love you becoming synonymous with getting it wrong – but right now, with this man, that didn’t apply.

Ianto was so different to anyone Jack had had before, and not in a flowery, romantic way, in reality the complete opposite.  It was Ianto’s lack of expectation that made him so moreish, the fact that he remained so rational and unimpressed.  Any romance in Ianto’s soul that hadn’t been killed off by his past experiences was kept tidily and self-protectively away from Jack, and Jack was perfectly aware of the fact that Ianto cared for him despite, not because, of his admirable common sense.

Gwen might have been the one who taught Jack that the excuses he made to keep pushing people away were the very reasons why he needed to keep them close, but it was Ianto he’d turned to when the truth of it sank in.  When he watched the CCTV and saw his alter-ego, unhampered by the knowledge of his own faults and idiosyncrasies, getting too friendly with Ianto, Jack had felt sparks of jealousy that continued to burn in his gut.  And when he watched Ianto bear the worst that persona had to offer, but still keep caring and helping…

Thoroughly cross with himself for a plethora of reasons, many of which he’d admittedly had no control over, Jack tried to think of a way to put this right.  Ianto might not hold his mad and bad behaviour against him, but Jack wasn’t letting himself off so lightly.  Besides, he wanted to make up for more than his recent behaviour.  He wanted to let Ianto know it was all worthwhile by saying those three, tiny, terrifying words.

He thought for a good hour, dismissing all kinds of plans and gestures because they were too clichéd and would simply confirm for Ianto that Jack didn’t know him at all, when he remembered.  One evening, after a dirty, strenuous alien recovery that left Ianto with bruised ribs and broken toes, Jack had taken him home and asked what he could do to help.  ‘Feed me and fuck me,’ Ianto had said.  As simple as that.  ‘Feed me and fuck me.’

Perfect.  Two things he couldn’t make a mess of.  And, if by chance, he let certain words emerge in the aftermath of their passion…  Yes, good, not so terrifying after all.

Jack went to his kitchen to check what stores he had.  The way to a man’s heart was through his stomach, he’d heard a million times, although he had to confess that personally, a little further down the torso did the trick.  Jack grinned to himself as he explored his larder and freezer, concentrating on the here and now and feeling alive for the first time in months.  In millennia.  The lessons of the past had been cruel and twisted but they’d been learnt well: Jack wasn’t about to let grief rule his life and destroy what he’d been lucky enough to find with Ianto.  The food wasn’t all he’d be offering on a plate: food, sex, a heartfelt confession, and Ianto could decide for himself which gave him palpitations.

…

Ianto woke because someone was singing very softly in his ear.  The words didn’t make sense, so it had to be Jack.  Outside of his head, that might have sounded insulting.

He stretched and pushed the covers away, too warm now, especially with a hot body pressed along his side.

“What’s the time?” he mumbled.

“Dinner time.”

“No, I mean…”

“I know what you mean.  And I know what I mean.  Want a shower to wake you up before we eat?”

“There are some things I have to get done.”

“No,” Jack said firmly.  “Food or shower?”  Ianto dragged his eyes opened and blinked Jack into focus.  “Food or shower?” Jack repeated.

“Have you heard from Gwen?”

“There’s nothing to hear.  So…”

“We should check.  If Hart got into the hospital…”

“Not gonna happen: they have security on the inside, the police on the outside, they know who to look for.”  Ianto let himself be convinced, closing his eyes again and savouring the peace.  “Hey, no dozing off,” Jack said as he prodded him in a ticklish spot, making him wriggle grumpily before ending the torment by catching Jack’s hand.

“All right, I’m awake.  Shower, then…”  Ianto took several increasingly deep inhalations.  “Something smells nice.”

“Me?”

“Do I get gravy with you?”

“You could do,” Jack told him with a saucy flick of the eyebrows.  “But I was picturing myself more as dessert.”

The carnal interest that brightened Ianto’s expression passed quickly.

“You don’t have to make this kind of effort.”

“It’s no effort.”

“You can’t possibly feel…”

“I do,” Jack promised.  “This, here, now, you.  I have what I need.  I’m happy, it’s no act.  I’m happy.”

“But…”

“I’m happy, and you look so damn sad,” Jack mournfully observed before tilting in to kiss Ianto’s mouth, and doing so tenderly despite the surge of passion he immediately experienced.

“I’m dreading it, Jack, but we have to talk about what happened.”

“Eat first.”  More kisses.  “Better still, this first.”

“I can’t do anything unless we talk.  Jack.”

Jack’s kisses ceased, and he studied Ianto’s anxious countenance, understanding why a certain conversation was needed and dreading it too.

“Okay,” Jack agreed, backing away and off the bed, settling himself in the Jones chair and waiting for Ianto to sit up and face him.  Ianto did so reluctantly, and with an air of complete doom.  Jack wanted to reassure him, but without the remainder of what had to be said it would come over as nothing more than platitudes.

“You,” Ianto said.

“Me.”  Jack arranged his thoughts and words carefully.  “I’ve watched what happened, I’ve seen it hundreds of times.  It still doesn’t seem quite real.”

“It’s real,” Ianto assured him, voice low and aching.  “I promise it’s real.”

“Something so important…  Whatever was happening to me, you’d think I would remember.”

“You don’t remember, and I wish I could forget.  Undo.”

“No.  If you undo, you’re dead.  If you undo, we’re all dead.”  Jack considered himself.  “Or worse.”

“I promised – I swore on my father’s grave – that I would never hurt you again, I would never betray you.  The circumstances weren’t meant to matter.  If it had been me instead of Gwen…”

“You shot my brother,” Jack interrupted him sharply.

Ianto snatched a breath.

“Yes.”

Jack’s carefully manufactured demeanour softened.

“You had no choice.”

“I was sure I didn’t,” Ianto vehemently agreed.  “After Eleth, after he—  If he’d snap the neck of what he perceived to be a child what chance did any of us have?  He had Gwen, he was about to kill her, he would have moved on to Rhys, to me, and…  I was terrified of what he could do to you.  You’d never have been able to stop him, not the condition you were in.  At that point you didn’t know yourself, you were as innocent as Eleth.  The thought of Gray torturing you, and you not understanding any of it…”

Ianto’s voice cracked up and he turned his head away.  However Jack had assumed this would play out he hadn’t foreseen Ianto being hurt and overwhelmed rather than stoically certain he’d done the right thing; jumping out of the chair, Jack was at Ianto’s side in an instant, pulling him around so they could see one another’s faces.

“You had no choice,” Jack stressed.  “If I’d been in your position, I would have…  I think I would have…”  Jack stopped and shuddered.  “Thank you for ending it.”  Jack knew then that he meant more than the siege.  He couldn’t put it into coherent thought let alone words but, ever since Toshiko died, he’d known that Gray could never be revived, that he was condemning his brother to an eternal non-existence.  Consciousness for Gray would always mean being haunted by memories of unimaginable torture, his mind twisted into madness by suffering and riddled with bitter resentment, his thought processes crippled and inaccessible to any kind of reason.  But he was out of his misery now, and he’d never hurt anyone again.  It was Jack’s guilt, it shouldn’t be Ianto’s.  “Thank you for…your humanity.”

Ianto couldn’t quite make sense of that, Jack could see.

“Does that mean…  Can you forgive me?”

“There’s never been any question of that.  I don’t blame you; I don’t have to forgive you.  Now I just need you to forgive yourself.”  Jack hugged Ianto to him, although who the comfort was for was debateable.  “The boy I knew wouldn’t hurt an insect, he would have loathed what he became,” Jack whispered tearfully.  “You stopped that.  Thank you.  Thank you.”

Ianto felt quite callous, feeling so much better even as Jack wept into his shoulder, but he cuddled him back to a state approaching calm, and eventually distracted him with talk of burning food.  Jack gratefully took the prompt and, wiping eyes and nose on his sleeve, went to the kitchen to serve their meal.  Ianto followed him, wanting to be close and ready to believe Jack felt the same, the way he kept shooting glances in Ianto’s direction to make sure he was still there.  Their conversation wasn’t any kind of cure-all – nothing could be that simple – but it allowed them both a little hope: perhaps together they could come to terms with and survive any repercussions of recent, wretched events.

Feeling too post-traumatic to be hungry, Ianto was nevertheless stunned by the extent of his appetite when he sat at the table and food was placed in front of him.  Jack, when he was inclined to cook, favoured dishes that could effectively look after themselves once they were in the oven.  This evening he served up a hearty chicken casserole with a sage and onion crust, and…  Ianto almost sighed with love at the sight of a heap of perfect Yorkshire puddings.  Why Jack should be an expert at Yorkshire puddings of all things Ianto didn’t ask, but that’s what he reached for first, and with both hands.

With the weight of Gray lifting, the atmosphere became more what they were used to.  Better.  Uninterrupted time together was a rare luxury; the fact that it would only ever be a temporary state made it all the more precious.  They were nearly finished eating when Jack paused, evidently having remembered something; Ianto, trying not to immediately take that as a bad sign, tentatively looked a question.

“I read your diary,” Jack said, not quite apologetically.

“There’s a surprise.”

“You were pretty scathing towards yourself.”

Ianto gave a dull laugh.

“You’ll have to be more specific.”

“About how long it took you to accept that something was wrong with me.”

“Oh, that.  Yes, well, in retrospect, I can see that denial…”

“It came across as more than denial.  There was something you didn’t want to write down, and there’s something you don’t want to say now.”

“There isn’t anything.”

Jack’s cutlery clattered onto his plate.

“C’mon, Ianto, I know you.”

“Don’t get tetchy over nothing.  Finish your dinner.”

“I lost my appetite.”

So did Ianto, with Jack glaring at him like that.  Unlike Jack, he tidily and quietly laid down his knife and fork.

“What do you want?  Other than to ruin this little bit of time we have to ourselves.”

“I don’t want to ruin anything, I simply want the truth.”  The irony of that wasn’t lost on Ianto, and he couldn’t keep a straight face.  “Ianto…”

“I’ll tell you,” Ianto offered.  “If you have to know, I’ll tell you.  But if I do, I’ll be leaving afterwards.”

“It’s that bad?” Jack frowned.

“That uncomfortable,” Ianto corrected.

Jack sat back in his chair and irritably crossed his arms.

“Now I want you to tell me, and I don’t want you to tell me.”  Ianto rose and began clearing the table.  “Do I need to know?” Jack asked, torn between doing the right or necessary thing, and what he’d had planned for the remainder of the evening.

Ianto started to wash up; Jack leaned against the counter and stared expectantly at his partner.

“It was denial,” Ianto said quietly, “to a degree.”

“Beyond that?”

Ianto stopped what he was doing and rested his hands on the edge of the sink.

“You might profess to know me, but I don’t know you.  I couldn’t help you because…”

“You did help me,” Jack protested.

Ianto’s anger, suppressed for so long, rapidly bubbled to the surface.

“I couldn’t help you enough, couldn’t help you in time, I didn’t know you well enough to understand that your reactions weren’t normal for you.”

“The circumstances were exceptional, we haven’t been through anything quite like this before, not together.  How could you have known?”

“You noticed there was something behind what I’d written, you knew there was something I wasn’t saying.”

“That’s different.”

“Of course it’s fucking different!” Ianto snapped.  “See, I know I can be stand-offish and complicated, so I’ve tried my best to let you in.  It’s not been easy.”

“I appreciate that.”

“These past months have emphasised for me just how far you keep me at arm’s length.  That’s not about circumstances, it’s about choice.  And this isn’t me whining at the lack of frivolous pillow talk, it’s me feeling useless and redundant and being confronted by losing you yet again.  What if I’d been too late and you’d gone into a coma?  There’s nothing to suggest that drug in your system couldn’t have kept you in that state forever, whether you died or not; it’s cleverer than any of us.”  Ianto pushed away from the sink and grabbed up a towel to dry his hands.  “However close we get – and sometimes I believe I am so close to you – you obviously feel you can’t talk frankly to me, and I don’t feel entitled to question you.  You respect me too little and I respect you too much.”  Ianto threw the towel at Jack as he passed him by on the way out of the kitchen.  “I felt like shit, trying to find the right moment to ask if you were mourning, or losing your fucking mind.  I’ve had enough of feeling like shit in my life, I—”

Ianto’s rant came to a halt as Jack grabbed him from behind and pulled him close, wrapping him in a bear-hug of an embrace.  Ianto’s struggle against confinement lasted mere seconds before he grudgingly relaxed against Jack.  Jack knew that whatever he said next had to be unequivocally brilliant.  Little chance of that.  He pressed his face into Ianto’s hair and kissed as he thought.

“I don’t…because I can’t,” he said at last, inadequately, he knew.

“You’d manage for Gwen,” Ianto said bitterly.

“This is nothing to do with Gwen.”

“I never said it was.  It’s all to do with you.  You and me.”

“I’m sorry.”

With a shake of the head, a stiffening of the body, Ianto prised Jack’s arms away.  He quickly found his shoes and jacket.

“I have to go.”

“Stay.  Please.”

Ianto paused at the door, not looking back.

“I’m not sure I have any right to be so angry.  It’s not as if you’re obliged to talk to me, is it.”

“If you’re angry we should…”

“Leave it, Jack, really.  I’m going home; I’ll be all right tomorrow.”

“You can’t go home, you hate it there.”

“I’ll manage.”

Risking a glance in Jack’s direction, Ianto immediately wished he hadn’t.  Jack’s sadness wasn’t something he could deal with easily, and he had to deal.  To leave.  Before he said more that he shouldn’t, before he accused Jack of only trusting him when he was barmy.

“Ianto?”

“Perhaps you should write something down.  Instructions.  ‘In the event of.’  If you can’t be cured…”

“That isn’t necessary: you understand now.”

The flicker of pain on Ianto’s face was hastily covered by bland inscrutability.

“I won’t always be here though, will I.”

With that Ianto finally left, and Jack crossed to the window to watch his progress through the Hub.  The sadness Ianto had witnessed was just the tip of a very precarious iceberg.  However much Jack sympathised with Ianto – and he did, quite sincerely – he wasn’t sure he could give him what he wanted.  It wasn’t about keeping secrets, or being unwilling to trust his partner, it was due to nothing more or less complicated than his own selfishness.  Ianto’s parting words had stung though, and Jack goaded himself with the too-credible scenario of Ianto being the next victim of Torchwood, leaving this life believing that Jack thought so little of him.  ‘I love you’ wasn’t enough.  Smarting at the notion of more loss, Jack swore that he would explain his reasoning, and soon.  Before, in any way, Ianto left him for good.

…

Ianto didn’t go directly home, he simply couldn’t face it.  Once again he ended up perusing the contents of estate agents’ windows, this time being a little more positive and taking note of a few properties he quite liked the look of.  Feeling chuffed with himself for making progress, he nipped into the nearest pub and rewarded himself with a pint, finding a free table and helping himself to the newspaper that someone had left behind on the seat.  Away from work and determinedly not thinking about squabbles with Jack, the stress began to seep from his body, and he ended up wondering why he didn’t do this more often.  His brain unhelpfully answered that he didn’t do this more often because usually at around this time he’d be: a) looking to shag Jack; b) shagging jack; c) dozing, post-shag.

Saturday’s rugby results suddenly didn’t seem so interesting and…he’d missed his dessert.  He’d been promised dessert and then stupidly let himself be waylaid by—  Okay, it had needed to be said, the whole ‘is being honest worse than being eternally comatose?’ because next it would be ‘shouldn’t you have been frank about that rash on your shoulder before your arm fell off?’, but couldn’t he have waited until after Jack had fucked him silly?

Ianto’s self-righteous petulance didn’t have Jack’s staying power: Ianto set the paper aside, finished his beer, and began looking forward to a long, hot session, knowing Jack wouldn’t turn him away however much he’d disturbed/irritated/upset him.  Back to staying power, and thankfully Jack’s was generally more groin than sensibility based.

Whether it was his preoccupation with forthcoming pleasures or the ability of the person stalking him to fade to nothing, Ianto wasn’t aware of another presence in his space until he felt a sharp jab to his back.  Confused, he reached for the spot, only to find he could no longer feel it, and the numbness was rapidly spreading.  Sudden weakness in his legs sent him reeling into the nearest wall, and he remained there, leaning hard into it as he groped in his pocket for his phone, speed-dialling Jack and praying that their earlier friction wouldn’t prevent Jack from answering.

“Ianto?”

“Ja—” was all that would emerge, a broken gasp.

The phone slipped from his grasp as his fingers lost all sensation.  Ianto couldn’t feel his chest, couldn’t tell if he was breathing, and he certainly couldn’t feel the grazes the rough surface of the wall made on his hand, wrist and face as he scraped down it before collapsing in a heap on the cold pavement.  His call was still connected: he vaguely heard Jack’s panicked voice shouting his name at a distance.  A growing distance.

Then he was deaf.

He was blind.

He was nothing more than a diminishing thought.

And he was petrified.