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[paperclipbitch]

Part One

Instant

Suzie can’t work out whether the metallic taste in her mouth is from the coffee or because she’s only just been resurrected, so she doesn’t mention it. The last thing she needs is Torchwood prying into what made her come back to life again. She needs to get out of here before they notice Gwen is acting strangely (and then bleeding and then, oh, what’s that? Dying), but right now she’s stuck in this interrogation room with coffee that tastes like fermented paperclips. Oh good.

The door opens and Ianto walks down the stairs balancing a tray with two steaming mugs on it. He places it on the table and brushes the blue cup of coffee Suzie wasn’t really even attempting to drink aside.

“Jack gave you instant,” he says. Suzie winces. She knows Ianto’s feelings about instant coffee off by heart, having sat through a dozen rants and a powerpoint presentation in her time. The mug Ianto carefully hands her, however, is perfect.

“God, I missed this,” Suzie almost whispers, taking a mouthful. “Your coffee is worth coming back to life for, Ianto,” she adds, and it’s not really even a lie.

Ianto laughs and sits down opposite her, picking up his own mug.

“I’m not sure that Jack will take that as a valid excuse,” he says slowly. Suzie half-smiles.

“You never know,” she tells him. There’s a brief and uncomfortable pause. “Oh, you all hate me, don’t you?”

“I always liked you,” Ianto murmurs vaguely. “Although since it turned out I was harbouring a cyberman in the basement, my opinion doesn’t count for much around here.”

Suzie’s head snaps up.

“You were harbouring a cyberman in the basement?” she repeats incredulously. “Why?”

Ianto looks awkward.

“It’s a long story,” he says uncomfortably. Suzie stops herself from saying I’ve got a long time because Torchwood are not supposed to know that she isn’t going to keel over and die in a minute, and instead remarks:

“I bet that went down well.”

Ianto laughs, a strange, bitter little sound that doesn’t sound like it should come from him.

“Well, it didn’t, but then Jack tried to feed me to cannibals a week later, so it’s mostly sorted out now.”

Suzie can think of all sorts of things to say in reply to Jack tried to feed me to cannibals, but decides not to say any of them.

“Wow,” she says, “I missed all sorts of good stuff.”

Ianto gives a non-committal little shrug. Suzie wonders perhaps if she ought to let the other members of Torchwood know that they really should try pulling Ianto out of his shell more often before it seals shut and he’s trapped in there forever.

“Are you cold?” he asks abruptly. “I mean, having a hole in the back of your head-”

Oh, yes. Fuck. She really should have picked a tidier and less obvious way to kill herself.

“Going to knit me a balaclava, Ianto?” she asks, fluttering her eyelashes.

“No,” Ianto replies in the patient voice he reserves for talking to morons. “That’s not to say I couldn’t, if I wanted to.”

Suzie leans back in her chair and drains the last of her coffee.

“You are the perfect man, Ianto,” she tells him. “You can cook, clean, organise, knit… why don’t you have a girlfriend?”

Ianto regards her a moment.

“I have Jack,” he offers. It takes a moment for it to click in her head.

“Oh,” Suzie says. “Is that pretty much the same thing?”

“It’s worse,” Ianto tells her with a shrug, standing up and taking the empty mug from her. Oh Ianto, Suzie thinks, you idiot. But she doesn’t say it aloud, just watches him pick up the various bits of crockery left around and pile them on his tray. And she waits until he’s got to the door before she speaks again.

“Thank you for this,” she tells him, “I knew there was a reason why I always liked you best.”

Ianto gives her a smile, it’s awkward but it’s real, and then he’s gone. Suzie sits and listens to the silence, contemplating how he’ll feel when it turns out she betrayed them all. Again.

Beans

The sixth time they make love (or fuck, or shag, or screw, or whatever it is that Jack calls it inside his head and Ianto doesn’t dare to presume), after, it’s four a.m and Ianto is naked to an almost ridiculous degree in Jack’s bed with sheets everywhere and he’s sticky and surprisingly cold, considering the body heat Jack is giving off could very well scorch the mattress any second. And he can’t get his thoughts to align properly.

Jack’s eyelashes are casting beautiful shadows on his cheekbones as he lies almost asleep in the half-light, but he was made for lying around nude in dim lighting, body like a Greek statue. Ianto is skinnier and paler and less in proportion and he wants cufflinks even if he isn’t wearing anything else and he automatically reaches up to adjust a shirt collar that isn’t there any more.

“Stop fidgeting, Ianto,” Jack mumbles without opening his eyes, tapping long, strong fingers on Ianto’s left thigh. “Don’t make me have to kick your pretty ass out of bed.”

That’s unsettling too; the ass not arse, Jack’s hair all mussed and he did that and Ianto is fairly sure he should not be this terrified about something that makes so much sense. Well, at certain times of the night, anyway.

“Sorry, sir,” he says.

“Back to ‘sir’, are we Ianto?” Jack finally opens those blue eyes and looks at him. “That’s not a good sign. I may have to start calling you ‘baby’ to make up for it.”

Ianto just about manages to swallow down an undignified squeak, but it’s a close-run thing. Jack can obviously see Ianto’s discomfort, and his white, white teeth bare into a shark-like smile.

“Oh,” Ianto says softly, as Jack’s hand slides around from the outside of his left thigh to the inside.

“One of these days, Ianto,” Jack whispers in his ear, “We are going to have to seriously talk about what it is you think you’re doing with me.”

“Stop it,” Ianto hisses. He loves Lisa. But that isn’t even slightly to do with what’s going on now. He moves quickly, grabbing for his clothes on the floor, but Jack has those lightning reflexes and he’s quicker than Ianto, dragging Ianto’s shirt from his hands and tossing it back over his shoulder.

Ianto runs for it, stark naked out the door, clutching his boxer shorts, his tie, and one sock. Jack is shouting after him but he doesn’t turn back, shaking like crazy, four-fifteen in the morning and he’s going to be so tired all day and what he’d really like right now is a-

By the time Jack catches up with him, Ianto is wearing his boxer shorts and counting beans into the grinder part of the giant coffee machine. Jack has at least bothered to put his underwear on, and he looks uncharacteristically awkward.

“I’m sorry, sir,” Ianto says quietly. Jack steps up behind him, skin to skin, and Ianto’s hands are shaking and the bag splits and coffee beans pour all over the counter and the floor. “Shit.”

He’s just bending down to try and tidy them when Jack catches his wrist and pulls him back up again.

“But-” Ianto begins.

“No,” Jack says.

“But the coffee beans, sir.”

“Fuck the coffee beans.”

Ianto feels insane.

“Is that even physically possible?”

Jack gives him a look and then a smile.

“No, sir,” Ianto says quickly, “I don’t want to find out.”

“Shut up now, Ianto,” Jack says, “That’s an order.”

And he kisses him. And kisses him. And just as Ianto is beginning to relax a little, Jack pushes him back to sit on the counter beside the machine, crushing countless coffee beans and sending a couple of mugs crashing to ceramic deaths on the floor. He thinks: but the mess! but Jack looks up and gives him a completely dangerous look that dares Ianto to say anything, so Ianto doesn’t, and Jack drops to his knees on top of yet more coffee and literally tears Ianto’s boxers from his skin and all coherent thought goes away.

Some time later, Ianto says:

“Sir, that was the last of the coffee.”

Jack looks at the coffee beans they’ve got stuck to them in all sorts of places that no people should ever have coffee beans ever, at the kitchen, which is trashed and covered in broken mugs and yet more coffee, and grimaces.

“Tesco is open twenty-four hours, right?”

Hazelnut Syrup

Halfway through the afternoon, the quiet tapping/banging sounds starts up. Tosh is cheerfully dismantling an alien electric toothbrush or something, sending sparks dancing across the workstation, so the sound isn’t coming from her. Gwen’s on the phone to a UNIT representative, lying though her teeth about Eugene and his apparent ghostly reappearance. Owen is off sulking somewhere, but Ianto doubts he’s tapping things. And Jack is absent, somewhere in the Hub, but no one knows where.

“This coffee is gorgeous,” Tosh says, laying down her screwdriver a minute to drain her mug. “I don’t suppose there’s any more, Ianto?”

“No problem,” he replies, smiling. At Gwen’s request, he’s started experimenting with flavoured syrups. It’s hazelnut today, which he has decided is much nicer than the vanilla he was trying out yesterday. Gwen puts her hand over the mouthpiece of the phone.

“You couldn’t get me some more too?” she asks, eyes widening like a puppy. “Please.”

Ianto nods and goes to make up another jug of the stuff. However, as he walks up towards the kitchenette, he finds the source of the tapping. Jack’s pet severed hand thing is banging itself against the glass of its jar, and it’s currently suspended in murky brown fluid. Oh God.

“Owen!” Ianto shouts, picking up the jar, and carrying it down to confront their doctor, the Hand inside flapping around.

Owen looks up, a brief guilty look on his face, which wipes itself off to be replaced by something much more confrontational.

“What have I done now?” he demands. Ianto places the jar, full of coffee and the frantically twitching hand, on the table.

“If you don’t want to drink the coffee,” he says, “Fine. But don’t pour it onto the Hand.”

They both watch the severed appendage flap about in an unsettlingly perky way.

“Oh,” Owen says. “I suppose we’d better change it before Jack sees.”

Together, they pour the sludgy, hazelnut-scented coffee liquidy stuff down the sink, rinse off the frantically twitching Hand, and plop it back in some clean storage fluid.

“Please don’t do this again,” Ianto murmurs, as the Hand returns to wiggling its fingers about in a caffeinated kind of way.

“Fine,” Owen mutters back, “Just don’t make any more of that foul flavoured coffee shit.”

After Ianto has returned the Hand to its rightful place, made some normal coffee for Owen, and some hazelnut stuff for the girls, he goes to find out where Jack has wandered off to. It takes a while, since the Hub is a pretty big place, but he eventually tracks his boss down in the shower room. Jack, clearly thinking that no one can hear him, is contentedly singing under the spray of water. Cole Porter, as ever.

“In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking; now heaven knows- anything goes…”

Ianto allows himself a fond smile where Jack can’t see him, and walks up to the shower stall door, announcing his arrival with a soft whisper of “sir”.

“Ianto!” Jack breaks off his singing to greet him with one of those delighted smiles that make Ianto feel more than a little weak. “Are you coming in?”

“To harmonise?” Ianto enquires with a wicked little grin of his own.

“Sure,” Jack shrugs. “Or, you know, we could do other stuff.”

Jack picks up singing with the next verse, as Ianto undresses and steps under the warm water.

“If you get started on that ‘if I’m the bottom you’re the top’ song again, I will get out,” Ianto warns him.

“Oh, you love it when I sing,” Jack informs Ianto, leaning in for a kiss.

“Mmmm,” Ianto says doubtfully against his mouth. Jack pulls back, frowning.

“You taste like that weird-ass coffee,” he complains.

“It’s hazelnut,” Ianto tells him. “What, is it too girly for you?”

“I’m very in touch with my masculinity,” Jack murmurs softly, water running down his face, teeth bared in a dangerous smile. “No coffee is going to make me anything less than all man.”

He grinds his hips into Ianto’s. Ianto makes a helpless little whimpering noise.

“Point proved,” he says breathlessly. Jack just laughs against his teeth.

Paper Cup

Ianto buys coffee in paper cups for Diane and Emma to sip, leaning against his car and looking across the Bay, and they like the caramel syrup he got Starbucks to add to their lattés.

“It’s not so bad here,” he tells them. Diane nods thoughtfully, although she’s still grimacing at the Smoking Kills label on her cigarette packet, but Emma doesn’t look convinced yet. She’s young, though, and Ianto knows that she’ll come around when she experiments with that mascara that she bought today and starts watching The OC repeats. This world is materialistic and maybe it’s sad, but there are bananas and there’s no war and maybe that’s all anyone can ask for. It’s John that Ianto is worried about. He’s too old and too tired to try and patch a new life together, and he knows that he shouldn’t have let him go off on his own, but they aren’t prisoners and there’s nothing he can do.

(Well, he texts Jack while Emma and Diane discuss their flavoured coffee in excitement.)

A few weeks later. John killed himself in Ianto’s car, and whatever Jack says, Ianto knows that he was sitting right there in the passenger seat, gassing himself to death too. It prickles his skin, to know that two men died in his car, even if one of them is right as rain now, and although he drives the streets in it and it’s not like it smells or anything (well, not after he got it serviced to rid it of the scent of engine fumes, anyway), he can feel them in there, tired, dead ghosts, and as the world goes to shit he doesn’t want to keep the car.

One night, when Jack is being Haunted in the Hub, Ianto takes off his tie, fills the car up with petrol, and drives it down to the part of the Bay they use for body dumps. There’s nothing but a low and incompetent fence between him and the water, shimmering bright under the moonlight, and he floors the accelerator. The car shoots forwards, and he undoes the door and rolls out just in time to watch it crash through the fence and sink without trace. He could simply have sold it, but that lacks a certain kind of finesse and even though he’s all scraped and muddy there’s a sense of relief as he looks over the ripples spreading out through the water. Ianto digs his car keys out of his pocket and chucks them in too. God knows how he’s going to get home now; maybe he’ll have to sleep in the Hub until he can organise new transportation.

The sound of clapping makes him turn. For a second, he thinks it’s Jack, but it isn’t.

Owen looks like a ghost in the half-light, pale and bruised from his suicidal encounter with a Weevil. He’s been off work for a week, healing, and Ianto can’t say that he’s missed him.

“Are you stalking me?” he asks softly. Owen shrugs. Ianto figures out that Owen isn’t going to tell him why he’s there. Good. He doesn’t care. (But he hates the thought of Owen wandering the streets at night, alone and hurting, although he can’t work out why.)

“Seems a waste of a car,” Owen tells him quietly. Ianto walks away from the broken fence and the silent water; he knows that he shouldn’t have done that, but fuck, they’re Torchwood, and it’s become increasingly obvious that they can do what they like and cover it all up as though it never happened over and over again.

“People died in that car,” Ianto tells Owen softly. It’s 1 a.m and it’s cold but he isn’t shivering. Much.

“You nearly did,” Owen points out, and as Ianto reaches him, he touches his face. Ianto wasn’t aware that he’d grazed his cheek as he got out of the car, and it’s only a flesh wound, but it stings under Owen’s fingers. He flinches back, swearing. “Really clever idea.”

“You’re the one who locked yourself in a cage with a Weevil and asked it to eat you,” Ianto points out. Owen laughs and it sounds bitter and wrong.

“Fine. We’re both fucking crazy. But you should get someone to look at your hand.”

Ianto finally notices the blood streaming from a cut between his thumb and index finger on his left hand. It’s deep and now he’s noticed it, it starts to throb with pain. So he fishes his silk tie out of his pocket and Owen helps him knot it around the wound.

“Are you still crazy?” Ianto asks as they begin the walk back around the Bay. Owen considers this.

“Probably,” he replies. “How’s work?”

“The usual,” Ianto tells him. He never really talks to Owen much and it shows; they’re just too different and they completely antagonise each other. But Owen nearly died and Diane leaving has clearly screwed up something irreplaceable in his head so perhaps he should stop and make the effort.

Maybe not.

“You’re back next week, right?” he asks eventually. Owen nods; he doesn’t look happy about it.

“Tuesday,” he says softly.

They run out of words, which is natural, and Ianto can see the warm lights of the Millennium Centre coming up ahead of them. Owen grimaces slightly.

“’Night,” he mutters, and reaches out like he’s going to pat Ianto’s shoulder or something before changing his mind and shoving his hand in the pocket of his jeans. He walks off into the dark, and Ianto walks back to the Hub alone.

“What happened to you?” Jack asks. Ianto shrugs.

“My car had an accident,” he explains, batting away Jack’s concerned hands, “And we need to get the fence around the Bay repaired.”

Jack frowns at him as he drags Ianto down into the autopsy room for gauze and things, but all he says is:

“I can’t believe it took you so long.”

Grounds

At the end of a long day, Ianto is emptying and cleaning out the coffee machine with loving care, partially because it is his Baby, but also partially because if it fails he’ll have to go back to go back to brewing it with a kettle and a lot of patience and he’s honestly too fucking tired.

After a while, he becomes aware that Jack is watching him empty coffee grounds into the bin.

“Ashes to ashes, dust to dust,” Jack mutters. “I guess that’s all we become in the end. Coffee grounds in the great garbage can of life.”

He sounds faintly drunk. Ianto thinks about his words for a while.

“Except you,” he points out.

“Except me,” Jack agrees. “Me, I just steep too long in the great mug of- whatever - and the coffee winds up undrinkable.”

Ianto frowns, then carefully fits the filter back into the machine before turning around.

“Having a bad day, sir?”

Jack makes a soft, amused sound.

“What tipped you off?”

“Extended and incomprehensible metaphors are never a good sign,” Ianto points out. He wipes his hands off and gives Jack a tired smile. “You can’t find him, can you?”

“I don’t know-”

“I’m not entirely thick, Jack,” Ianto finds himself snapping, “I know who the Doctor is and I know that you’re looking for him.”

“It’s complicated,” Jack tells him in a leave it alone kind of tone.

“What isn’t?” Ianto asks, feeling bitterness creep into his voice and unable to stop it. He sighs. “I met him once, you know.”

“Yeah?” Jack frowns. “What did you do?”

“I made him a coffee,” Ianto replies. Jack laughs, and Ianto can tell that he doesn’t believe him. But he doesn’t care.

“This isn’t going to be a good evening,” Jack says softly. “You should go home, Ianto.”

The rejection stings more than Ianto wants it to; Jack makes it seem like he’s nothing more than a cheap fuck to be abandoned at will.

“Of course, sir,” he says, “The secretary can’t possibly understand what’s going on.”

“That’s not what I meant and you know it!” Jack shouts as Ianto walks away.

“Really? Because it’s starting to look like you only want me around when you’re in a good mood, and the minute things turn bad you throw me away like I’m barely even your friend!” Ianto shouts back. Myfanwy screeches- she doesn’t like it when he gets upset- and Jack looks wounded.

“I love you,” he says. They both know that he’s lying.

“No,” Ianto screams, because the last person to tell him that, straight-out, was Lisa, and he shouldn’t be doing this, not with Jack, not so soon, “No you fucking don’t! Stop telling me that you do, you selfish, manipulative bastard!”

He clenches his fist to stop himself grabbing the nearest empty mug and throwing it at Jack, because that wouldn’t end well. He thinks Jack can read it on his face anyway.

“Ianto,” he begins slowly, placatingly, “I told you that this evening wouldn’t be good. I don’t want to argue with you.”

“You don’t want to do anything with me, except fuck,” Ianto points out, unable to stop the words spilling from his mouth and wishing he didn’t sound so jealous.

“That isn’t true,” Jack hisses, finally storming after him. “You mean a lot to me, you know you do, I’m just having a shitty evening, and-”

“-And you don’t need me around because I’ll just exacerbate the situation,” Ianto spits. “I get it. I think I’ll just go home, all right sir?”

Jack grabs his wrist and pulls him back, so hard that Ianto stumbles and falls into Jack’s arms. Jack crushes his mouth in an almost painful, bruising kiss.

“Stop it,” Ianto gasps.

“What?”

If he were drunk enough to do incomprehensible metaphors, Ianto would say something like I’m coffee grounds under your shoes, or something equally pretentious, but instead he says: “There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you, sir, you’ve got to know that, and I don’t want it to be like that, but it is, and I was supposed to still be mourning Lisa, and you-”

He’s tired and angry and upset and nothing’s right.

“Fuck, Ianto,” Jack whispers, “I’m so sorry.”

“I have no idea what I’m doing with you,” Ianto admits softly.

“I’m so sorry,” Jack repeats into his hair.

Ianto disentangles himself from Jack and starts to walk away.

“Ianto-” Jack begins.

“You really think that anything we try to do tonight is going to end well?” Ianto asks. Everything’s too close and too complicated, and they both know that. Jack nods in a defeated fashion and Ianto fucking wishes that they hadn’t left so damn much undefined. When everything is free and easy and ambiguous it’s impossible to know what to do when it all becomes serious.

He chances a glance back over his shoulder just before he walks up the stairs. Jack is just standing, looking at his boots, broken, hurt, confused, but he doesn’t look up or call after him.

Ah, Ianto thinks, There goes the honeymoon period.

Decaf

Owen accepts the coffee with the bad grace it’s given, bandage around his shoulder, scowling all over his face. Ianto shot him. And he isn’t sorry. He’d do it again in a heartbeat, and maybe next time he won’t miss.

A few days later, when Jack has died a couple of times and then disappeared completely, and the tears aren’t wrapped around every word he says, Ianto brings Owen another mug of coffee. Owen doesn’t say ‘thank you’ but the scowling isn’t quite as pronounced as it was last time.

“He’ll be back,” Ianto says quietly. Owen looks up and glowers at him. Ianto, for some insane reason, understands and so silently walks away.

Even later, when it’s established that no one wants to be here now Jack’s gone, but they can’t just walk away because Cardiff would fold in on itself fairly quickly and also if Jack comes back he’d shoot them all in the head, Owen takes over. He won’t go into Jack’s office, runs his base of operations from his workstation, snaps and snarls to make sure Tosh and Gwen get on with whatever they’re supposed to be doing, and barely makes eye contact with Ianto. At least that aspect hasn’t changed.

He comes downstairs after feeding Myfanwy to find Owen hunting through a filing cabinet, sending Ianto’s beautiful pristine papers crashing to the ground.

“What the hell are you doing?” he demands, forgetting everything but the fact Owen is completely fucking up hours and hours and hours of work.

“I need the folders on how to deal with those weird blue alien things,” Owen mutters, “What do we call them again?”

“You mean you’re trashing the Torchwood filing system looking for aliens that you don’t even know the name of?” Ianto asks, so angry that his voice is quiet and steady. “Oddly enough, I don’t file them by the colour.”

“Well, you should,” Owen mutters, sending another sheaf of A4 to the floor. Ianto winces.

“Please, stop it,” he says, “The files you want aren’t even in that particular cabinet.”

Owen stops, looks at the mess.

“Oh, sorry,” he says in a tone of voice that implies he doesn’t mean it. “Guess you’d better get on with putting this all back.”

“No,” Ianto tells him. He’d never say no to Jack, but then Jack would never do this. “Why the fuck should I?”

Owen is slamming him against the wall in the next moment.

“Because I’m your fucking boss!” he screams. “And if you don’t like it, then you can walk. Right now.”

Ianto looks at Owen and there’s a momentary battle of wills. Then he pushes Owen back, and drops to his knees to start the potentially impossible task of repairing at least twenty years’ worth of filing.

But he finds himself spending more time with Owen than he would have thought possible, because unlike Tosh and Gwen, who are just plain devastated, he and Owen are angry. They both know that anger is a bad emotion when it comes to them- Owen has two gunshot scars (entry and exit) to prove it, but it’s easier than pretending that everything is all right and is going to all work out, and Ianto starts giving Owen decaf coffee in the hope he’ll be less wound up. Owen doesn’t even seem to notice but he twitches less.

“Do you really think he’s coming back?” Owen asks at three-thirty a.m when Ianto is simultaneously trying to fix the connection between the monitors and the security cameras on level five, file yet more paper, wash up twenty-odd coffee mugs and find a suitable place to hide the mostly decomposed remains of a postman who got his head chewed off by a Weevil.

“I don’t know,” Ianto says tightly, from his position on his back on the floor, where he’s under Tosh’s workstation duct-taping cables together. He doesn’t want to be here; he wants nothing more than to sleep, but that’s a little out of the question. “And right now, I don’t care.”

Owen sighs, and a moment or two later he’s on his back beside Ianto, staring at the underside of Tosh’s desk.

“But he will, though,” he persists like a child, “Jack is coming back, right?”

“Why do you think I know?” Ianto asks irritably. “He left. I can’t tell you any more than that.”

Owen, when he rolls on his side to look at Ianto, has the appearance of a man who hasn’t eaten or slept or even sat down in days. Ianto realises that Owen wants Jack back so that he doesn’t have to be leader any more, and it occurs to him he should have figured out that Owen would want Jack to return for purely selfish reasons. Ianto then overviews his own reasons, and realises that they’re pretty selfish too.

There’s a fizzing, spitting sound from the monitor above them, and Ianto floods with relief because the picture is restored and the security cameras are all right. He starts trying to move, shift himself out from under the desk, but Owen puts a hand on his arm.

“Owen-” he begins hesitantly, but he’s tired, and Owen’s tired, and Jack is gone and- and-

Owen claps a hand over Ianto’s mouth and then shifts slowly so he’s covering Ianto entirely, chest to chest, legs twisted together, and when Owen finally takes his hand away and leans in, Ianto doesn’t say a word.

Biscuits

It’s Gwen’s birthday, only none of them really feel like celebrating because Jack is still gone and hasn’t even thought to send her an e-mail. They could all be out drinking and having a laugh but instead they’ve all shut themselves up with their melancholy in the Hub, with Ianto’s strongest coffee and some Hob Nobs. Tosh feels almost sorry for Gwen because although they’re trying to keep the chatter light, Owen keeps giving Ianto looks like the worst shade of ‘come hither’ and Ianto is pretending to ignore him but he’s getting a little twitchy and fiddling with his cufflinks too much, and Tosh can’t work out if it’s worse that they’re doing it right in front of Gwen and they don’t care, or if they’re doing it in front of Gwen and she doesn’t even notice.

Tosh had privately thought that if Jack would ever contact them, it would be for Gwen’s birthday. He made it painfully obvious that she was his favourite, whatever the rest of them did. Tosh smiles in a futile sort of fashion and sips distractedly at her coffee. The silence is strained and Tosh has a headache slamming itself against the side of her head, and everything is too bright and too vivid and for a minute she hates everyone.

Gwen cracks first. She drains her mug, swallows hard, and gets to her feet.

“Fuck it,” she mutters, and walks off towards the archives. Ianto closes his eyes, a split-second of something on his face, then returns to blandly sipping his coffee. Owen shifts in his seat.

“For her,” he mutters, “I fucking thought he’d contact us for her.”

Tosh swallows a grimace. So she wasn’t the only one to notice that Gwen is the one Jack actually liked. God knows what he was doing with Ianto and he and Owen had this love/hate thing going on, and she sometimes thinks Jack took her for granted and forgot that she was there, but Gwen; oh, Gwen was so much more to Jack than they ever were and if he won’t break this silence for her then he won’t break it for any of them.

And it isn’t fair.

“I’m going home,” Owen announces, brushing his mug off the table for them to all watch it shatter and coffee to spill across the floor. “Call me if the world ends.”

Ianto looks at the mess of smashed pottery and black coffee, and then up at Owen.

“Fuck you too, sir,” he mutters. Tosh looks between the two of them, wondering if they’ve even noticed she’s still here, and swallows.

“Do you want to make something of this?” Owen says quietly, flames in his eyes. “‘Cause believe me, Ianto, I am in no mood to start anything tonight.”

Tosh looks between them and realises just how disappointed they both are. Crushingly, bruisingly disappointed that Jack hasn’t made contact. She swallows, and places her own mug down beside the plate of biscuits none of them really wanted to eat.

“I think you should go home, Owen,” she tells him quietly. Owen nods, and turns to leave without saying anything else.

“I need to go and find Gwen,” Ianto says apologetically.

Tosh calmly finds some newspaper, wraps up the broken mug and soaks up the split coffee, bins the untouched Hob Nobs and puts their mugs in the sink for washing up later. It gives her an insight into Ianto’s life for one terrifying moment, and she pities him almost uncontrollably. There’s still no sign of him or Gwen, so she walks down the darkened archives corridor to see what’s happened.

Gwen is sobbing completely hysterically and Ianto is holding her against his chest, cradling her in his arms, stroking her hair with his eyes tight closed.

“I know,” he’s whispering. “I know.”

Tosh doesn’t want to intrude on this scene of absolute pain, but it’s cold and irrevocably lonely on her own, and, in spite of everything, Gwen is her friend and seeing her this distraught stings. Ianto opens his eyes and Tosh can see them glittering under the dim electric lighting and before she knows what she’s doing she’s walking over and hugging Gwen from the other side, and she and Ianto give each other helpless and aching looks and listen to Gwen’s powerless, heartbroken crying, because there’s nothing they can do to fix this.

Caffeine

Jack isn’t sure how he feels about this new Doctor, this new companion. Even the TARDIS seems to be different in some way, but one he can’t quite find. Still, some things never change.

If they were on a planet it would be incredibly late at night; twirling about in the vortex as they are, it could be any time. Martha’s asleep and the universe seems quiet, which makes a nice change.

“Tell me about Torchwood,” the Doctor says. They’re lying on the floor of the control room, sharing a flask of hot tea and listening to the TARDIS hum contentedly around them.

“Not a lot to tell,” Jack lies, because it sort of really hurts to think of what he left behind. “We catch the things that fall through the Rift and attempt to stop them from hurting people.”

The Doctor smiles. It’s not the right smile, but it’s a nice smile nonetheless.

“All right then,” he says, “Tell me about your co-workers.”

Jack sighs, and doesn’t look at the Doctor when he speaks.

“Gwen- she used to be a police officer. She’s our human connection. Sometimes I think that she’s the only one who really remembers what feeling actually is. And Tosh, she’s a computer genius, and great at maths and science, but she’s so much more vulnerable than she pretends. Owen, he’s a cocky bastard, he’s our doctor, and recently he’s gone kind of insane.” Jack lets out a long breath before speaking again. “And then there’s Ianto Jones-”

“Ianto Jones?” the Doctor enquires, interest sparked, “Welsh bloke, looks-”

“-Good in a suit? Yeah.”

The Doctor smiles.

“I met him once, you know,” he tells Jack.

“And what did you do?” Jack asks, feeling déjà vu.

“He made me a coffee.”

Jack tastes the bitter laughter welling up in his throat like vomit. A little belief goes a long way.

“Do you love him?” the Doctor asks. Jack sits up, shrugs.

“I don’t think so.” His smile twists; the words are difficult to say. “You and Rose- you messed me up pretty bad.”

The Doctor looks saddened, and stays lying on the floor, but doesn’t say anything else, and Jack goes to bed and lies awake in the dark. Next morning, Martha’s made coffee and it’s pretty good, because she was a med student and they know all about industrial strength caffeine, but it doesn’t taste quite right.

Two days later, he gets the email. Tossed into cyberspace with fragile hope. Jack, when he intercepts and opens it, realises that Ianto never expected him to read it.

Jack,

I think that I’m too angry to call you sir. I think we all are. Angry. Hurt. And confused. It’s amazing how much you didn’t deign to tell us, and now we’re wandering about lost and quite scared and Owen is doing a fucking awful job running this place, can I just say?

Talking about Owen and fucking, well- I am. You know. With him. Because you’re not here. Because I’m scared. Because he is. Because sometimes it’s dark and it’s late and he’s… he’s there. And what surprises me is that I don’t hate him. I don’t really feel anything for him but I don’t hate him. Maybe it’s complicated but I think I like complicated. Just look at me and you.

Sorry, Jack, I didn’t mean to bring that up- I know that you don’t care. At least, not enough. I hope that you’ve found the Doctor and you’re happy. Say hi to him for me. I hope he’ll remember. And me- I’m not pining. Three months is long enough to kill off any form of pining. You’ll do well together, I think. Two immortals knocking around the universe forever.

I don’t know what I’m trying to say here, except that I think I’m angry and I think I really sort of fucking miss you, selfish bastard that you are, but I don’t think I’m waiting for you. Don’t worry too much about us. Rift hasn’t opened yet, which I think is a good sign.

Ianto

P.S Gwen is devastated because you forgot her birthday.

Jack stares at the email for a long time, but doesn’t reply to it and lets the Hub intranet claim that it couldn’t deliver the message. He wonders if Ianto will be relieved or not. If he’ll take it all out on Owen. He can’t blame Ianto, not really.

“Do you need to go back?” the Doctor asks. Jack takes another mouthful from his fourth mug of Martha’s not-entirely-horrible coffee, considers all sorts of things.

“Not yet,” he says quietly. “Not just yet.”

Starbucks

It occurs to Ianto, when Jack has been gone for four and a half months without sending so much as a text message to let them know he’s safe, that there really is no point in going into work at five-thirty every morning. He just spends half an hour opening up the computer systems, feeding Myfanwy, ensuring that the Weevils haven’t got out of their cells and eaten each other overnight; and then he has three hours of doing practically nothing before the rest of the team troop in. They do all know that Jack used to live in the Hub to be there at all hours in order to make sure that if something happened he’d know, but they’ve all been coming in at nine a.m and the end of the world hasn’t happened (yet; but maybe there’s only time for one apocalypse a year).

So Ianto tries coming in at eight-fifteen. Myfanwy is whining because she’s hungry, but he’s sure that she’ll get used to him arriving later, and the others don’t notice anything different when they all come in, complaining about the rain and demanding coffee. Ianto spends a while in the afternoon hyperventilating because somehow breaking the routine he got used to with Jack is finally admitting that the man is never coming back.

Three days later, Ianto stops into the local Starbucks rather than making his own morning coffee, and chooses the biggest, most horrible drink he can think of- an extra large vanilla caramel latté with whipped cream. The taste assaults his mouth and it’s deeply, deeply wrong; but the sweet, cloying coffee feels like his penance, and he chokes the whole thing down. And although he knows he shouldn’t, the next day he goes back and gets another one, day after day until he’s drinking almost nothing else.

Ten days after that, and Owen pulls him into the lab.

“I get it,” he says, “You’re angry, and confused, so you’re fucking up everything that you used to represent. You don’t want to be the old Ianto anymore. It’s all very spoilt teenager-ish, but if it floats your boat...”

“Is there a point to this?” Ianto snaps, going to leave. Owen grabs his arm.

“You come in late in the morning and you don’t use your complex cross-referenced filing system now and you’re shagging me because I’m the new boss and I’m not Jack,” Owen continues, ignoring the look on Ianto’s face, “And all that’s fine. Hell, yesterday, when you came in in jeans and a t-shirt, none of us said anything; we just exchanged looks behind your back and Tosh suggested we call a psychiatrist. But we know that this is your breakdown, and you know, that’s ok.”

Ianto looks at him and decides that Owen really is insane by now. Half-crazed with fury and half-crazed with panic. Ianto would pity him, but all his pity is being used up on himself. So instead, he just stares at Owen, at Owen’s hand around his wrist, at the bandage on Owen’s hand where a Weevil bit it open two days ago, and says absolutely nothing.

“But,” Owen says, as though there hasn’t been an awkward pause, “There is a point at which you have to stop and pull yourself together.” He lets go of Ianto abruptly. “Gwen just told me she asked you for a coffee, and you told her to call up Starbucks and see if they do takeaways.”

Ianto still refuses to speak.

“Feel free to fall apart,” Owen tells him, “Just do your job at the same time. Because if you can’t, or you won’t, then I’ll have to fire you.”

“You wouldn’t bloody dare,” Ianto hisses. “You can’t fire me.” He’s horrified at the prospect and he hates that it’s so obvious.

“Then make sodding coffee when people demand it, file, tidy up, be the receptionist that you’re paid for, instead of standing around sulking.” Owen looks at him with an earnest expression that Ianto doesn’t buy for a second, “Don’t make me have to train a new secretary on top of everything else.”

What he’s saying makes sense, and Ianto wishes that he cared.

“Ok,” he mumbles, then adds ‘sir’ just because he likes the way it makes Owen wince, and heads for the door.

“Ianto,” Owen says. Ianto grits his teeth and turns back. “You couldn’t drink less of that candyfloss coffee or whatever it is, could you?”

“Why?” Ianto asks.

“It’s just it makes us both smell like vanilla, and I think Tosh is getting suspicious.”

Mug

“You get out of this bed, you’re fired,” Owen mumbles, rolling over to watch Ianto attempting to make a run for it. Ianto turns to look at him, disbelief on his face like he can’t believe what he’s hearing.

“Fuck off, Owen,” Ianto mutters, pushing Owen’s purple sheets aside to get up. Owen grabs his arm, pulls him back with all the violence he can manage, and for a moment it’s like the last five months haven’t happened, they’re back to brawling on the floor, trying to tear each other’s eyes out for next to no reason. Ianto is glaring but Owen has the upper hand.

“I am sick of you acting like I’m some kind of penance,” Owen informs him. “Fine. We shag. It’s a thing. It doesn’t mean anything and it doesn’t have to. But for God’s sake, give me the one night stand experience. Don’t creep off like you’ve got a wife to get back to.”

Ianto stares at him.

“Don’t tell me that you’re getting attached to the tea boy,” he says in a scathing tone. Owen thinks about wincing; he knew that ‘tea boy’ comment was going to come back and bite him on the arse.

Owen sighs, letting go of Ianto’s wrist, rolling onto his back. He can’t work out how to say that it’s all a lot more fucking complicated than it used to be, and he doesn’t want to be alone right now, staring into the dark, panicking and praying Jack comes back soon and takes over before he gets someone killed.

“Ianto, for God’s sake, just stay, ok?”

Ianto sits up thoughtfully, and this isn’t a conversation they should be having naked, but what the hell, life is never normal when you’re a member of Torchwood.

“I can’t,” Ianto tells him softly. “I can’t stay here, not with you, because if I do then-” his voice cracks and Owen knew he was broken but he didn’t know how broken, not till now, “- then I’m admitting Jack isn’t coming back.”

Oh fuck. Owen sighs, but of course, with Ianto, everything has to mean something. Mean everything.

“I didn’t mean-” he begins, and for one horrible, horrible moment he wonders if Ianto will burst into tears. But the laughter that pours out of Ianto’s mouth is bitter, and it sounds horrible.

“No, you don’t,” he says. “You don’t care about people enough, Owen. I do. If I want to be here with you, it means that I give a shit about you in a way I’m just not ready for, ok?”

“Ok.” Owen sighs. “You’ve made your point. Go.”

He mentally consigns himself to another evening of silence and staring at the ceiling wishing for sleep and knowing he won’t find it. But Ianto is staring at him in an unsettling way, and mumbles something angry-sounding in Welsh, before he raises his eyes to the ceiling.

“Fuck,” he mutters, slamming his fist into the mattress by his thigh. “Fuck fuck fuck.”

Then, taking a deep breath in, he lies down properly, pulling Owen’s duvet right over his head, rolling onto his side so all Owen can see is his shoulder. He opens his mouth.

“Shut up,” Ianto mutters tightly, on the verge of breaking again, and Owen obeys.

But he does sleep, even though he wakes up alone. Sighing, he scrubs a hand over his face, and reaches for a t-shirt and boxers to throw on. It’s an entirely indecent hour in the morning, but he’s got to get up so he can go to work in order to do the whole boss thing properly. Dragging himself in at ten just doesn’t cut it, it turns out. So he stumbles towards his kitchen to find Ianto, hair apparently wet from the shower, wearing one of his t-shirts and making coffee.

“Morning,” Ianto says, quiet, melancholy, and pushes a chipped mug towards Owen. It’s perfect coffee. It’s delicious. Owen gulps some down and doesn’t even burn his mouth because Ianto has his got it to the absolutely perfect temperature. How he could manage that with Owen’s old cafetiére that he hasn’t used in forever, some weird freeze-dried coffee Owen’s had in his freezer for years, and a kettle that only wants to boil half the time, Owen isn’t entirely sure, but hey; that’s Ianto all over. Small, domestic miracles on a daily basis.

“Morning,” Owen replies, awkward, but oddly grateful he’s not on his own to panic.

“I need to get to work,” Ianto says softly, “Set up the Hub for the day.” He presses a chaste kiss to Owen’s mouth, and Owen suddenly realises just why getting Ianto to stay over was probably a bad idea. But he listens to Ianto getting dressed and rushing out the door in a whirl of speed, and sips at his coffee, hands wrapped around the mug for warmth, and maybe it’s not so bad after all.

Tea

Jack falls down through time and space and lands, rather spectacularly, facedown in the Rift pool, breaking most of the bones in his body and then promptly drowning in the water. It’s a really classy way to reappear after six months of being Conspicuously Absent from the Hub, and when Jack finally regains consciousness enough to sit up and shrug his now-sodden coat from his shoulders, he discovers the team are all glaring at him. Having never been on the receiving end of a Torchwood Glare of quite this calibre before, he can’t help but be impressed; they really are all quite scary, dressed in black and looking like they haven’t slept in months.

Ah.

Ianto abruptly breaks off his glare and returns to mopping up the water Jack managed to splash everywhere, utterly silent but Jack can feel him fuming. He tries to look at the rest of the team, but the physical presence of that united scowl makes it kinda hard to focus on them without wanting to flinch away and hide behind something. And Jack has faced down fucking Daleks without batting an eyelid. He carefully reconsiders his idea of a party with three kinds of icecream and a strip-o-gram being held in honour of his return, and tries to work out if he’s in the mood to be killed over and over by the people he sort of conned into trusting him and who used to like him until he disappeared for six months and didn’t even leave them a post-it telling them he might be back sometime.

“You bastard,” Owen says, and it figures, doesn’t it, that he’d be the first to speak, after all this. God forbid Ianto might finally open his mouth and let him have it, and he knows Gwen and Tosh will forgive him if he smiles hard enough. “And you can have the command job back; I don’t sodding want it.”

Jack is about to say something along the lines of how that doesn’t surprise him when he notices the barely-healed scar running up the back of Owen’s right hand and disappearing into his sleeve, and decides that comment should be saved for another time. Or possibly never said at all. Instead, he gets to his feet, drenched to the skin from the Rift pool, throat dry because barely twenty minutes ago he was drowning.

Gwen turns away first, a sound unsettlingly similar to a sob on her lips as she runs away towards the cells, clearly not wanting him to see her cry, and Tosh gives him a look. Jack suddenly becomes aware that the team that used to be his (but probably won’t be any more) hates him.

“Fuck,” he says softly. Ianto doesn’t stop mopping up, Owen rolls his eyes, Tosh just looks plain tormented.

“You should get dry,” she says softly, in a tone that implies they’ll deal with it all later. Jack takes this to mean that they’ll never, never deal with it: Standard Torchwood Policy (don’t ask; don’t tell) will take care of everything. Owen shrugs, wanders off to his lab. Ianto won’t even look at him. Jack goes to find some dry clothing more for lack of anything else to do.

Hours later, everyone else has gone home, having said about four words each to Jack (and none of them have been “I’m glad you’re back” or even “where have you been?”), but Ianto is still pottering about. Jack wonders if he’s gone home at any point over the last few months, and his stomach twists. He finds Ianto sitting on Owen’s workstation, feet resting on the swivel chair, elbows resting on his thighs, cradling a mug of something steaming.

Jack suddenly remembers that he’s really fucking missed Ianto’s coffee (oh, and Ianto too. He’s not that heartless).

“I don’t know what you want me to say,” Jack tells him. Ianto takes another sip of his drink, the smell of warm, milky tea drifting towards Jack. Tea for shock. Ah shit. The silence stretches and takes hold. “Is that it? You’re going to ignore me now?”

“I’m not ignoring you, sir,” Ianto says in a measured tone. Jack gets the feeling that trying to get conversation out of the man will be rather like pulling teeth, and part of him is just not ready for that at all.

“Ianto,” he says quietly, moving to sit on the chair at Tosh’s workstation so that they’re at least a little closer, “What are we going to do?”

Ianto finally looks at him, and in that bland expression Jack can tell everything he needs to know about the last six months.

“Well,” Ianto begins slowly, “I suppose I could make you some coffee, sir.”

It’s not a lot.

(But it’s a start.)

~finis~