Torchwood FF: The difference between wanting and having (Ianto/Jack, PG-13)
Title: The difference between wanting and having
Series: Sequel to Act as if you have faith
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Ianto/Owen/Jack, this part mostly Ianto/Jack
Rating/Warning: PG-13
Genre: Drama
Length: 2,600 words
Disclaimer: All belongs to the BBC
Spoilers: All of Torchwood S1, and allusions to New Who S3
Summary: Even in their line of work, where time gets a little tangled, things can't go back to the way they were. Ianto finds Owen a distraction to getting back to normal.
AN1: Act as if you have faith isn't strictly speaking a necessary read for this one, and it isn't compatible with some of DW S3. But that's the Ianto/Owen past relationship alluded to in this one, so read it if you'd like that information.
The Hub was strange with Jack in it again.
It had been strange without him, but it was a kind of strange that Ianto had got used to. Like having a girlfriend in the basement, like the hole in his life without Lisa in it, you could get used to anything in the end. So he had no doubt they would get used to this eventually. Sooner rather than later, Owen would stop trying to burst into buildings at the head of the formation; Ianto would remember to fill five cups of coffee; Gwen would take her reports up to Jack’s office and not read them out loud from her desk; Tosh would run presentations in the conference room and not expect them to gather in front of her wall of monitors.
Ianto would get used to the feel of that shockingly warm hand between his shoulder blades. Would stop feeling like he was cheating on someone when he let Jack touch him. (Someone that was not Lisa, someone that was still watching him from across the Hub).
“Ianto?” Jack asked. More alive than anyone Ianto had ever met, and when he leant back into that strength, part of him was wishing it would rub off. This was what he had missed, but now, having it all back, there was a wrong note somewhere. Most of the problem, he suspected, was with them (him and Owen, not Gwen and Tosh) - Jack was more himself than ever.
It was the way Jack always flirted: not vague, exactly, and not even non-specific. It was always specific, that was why it worked. That was why he could have had any of his staff, or all at once if he wanted, with no more than a word and a glance. It was just that Ianto never lost the impression, no matter what Jack said, or how he looked, that he would be gone with a moment’s notice if he got a better offer. Less than a moment’s notice, it had turned out; not even a note. Gone exploring, feed the pterodactyl, don’t end the universe, love Jack. They hadn’t even warranted that.
And Owen, for all his manifold faults, was bad at leaving. He was bad at staying too, actually, and he certainly didn’t like Ianto. But Jack had, and Jack had left, so maybe there was something in that. He and Owen had both been lost without Jack, and Ianto had learnt the hard away that it was worse to be lost alone. So when Owen offered, or took, whatever it was he thought he was doing, Ianto had let himself be taken. Because Owen couldn’t leave this place any more than Ianto could. And Owen understood that they had killed Jack. They had betrayed him, without the excuse of a dead fiancé on the autopsy table, and why else would he have left? Owen had shot him, and Ianto, the one paying penance, the one who was supposed to be so pathetically in love with his boss, had stood beside him while it was done. And then Jack had left. One thing had happened, and then the other, and despite the life and the kiss in between, Ianto did not believe in coincidences. They had allowed Jack to die, and then he was gone.
Ianto saw that look sometimes, the nights his dreams weren’t of metal and a once-soft voice - the look Jack had, lying on the floor of the Hub. Not the still one, the dead one, though sometimes he saw that too. But the one before that, with the bruise just coming up and all four of them looking down at him. One day I’ll have the chance to save you. Hurt, all of a sudden, the way he hadn’t realised Jack could be. Not by them, anyway. And I'll watch you suffer and die. He hadn’t got out of the SUV. The screams might have been imagined, filled in by a feverish brain stuck on a chorus of how wrong they had been, and how right Jack was, and God, oh God, oh God what was the thing doing to him to make him make that noise? He hadn’t been able to watch in the end.
* * * *
It was three full weeks since Jack’s return (Ianto kept count of everything), and Owen was still being strange about it. Not strange with Jack, especially, or no stranger than his usual mixture of anger and hero-worship. He was strange with Ianto, and that hadn’t been something Ianto had ever thought he would need to factor in. Owen’s feelings for Ianto had, before Jack’s disappearance, run the gamut between disinterest and irritation. The period after that was an anomaly, one Ianto had explained away the evening that Owen had left the reunion without a backward glance.
Owen didn’t know what he wanted. Owen wanted everything. Owen wanted things he couldn’t have, and shouldn’t have. Like pretty brunettes with fiancées, or girls with airplane scarves and blood-red lips round a cigarette. Ianto wasn’t his type at all. All it was, after all, was that Ianto had been Jack’s. And Ianto had been Lisa’s, and Ianto had such a palpable distaste for Owen that it had been a challenge. But the challenge was gone now and still, here he was.
Watching Ianto in the reflection of his monitor with a look that was undecipherable. Hungry, Ianto might have called it, but that was closer to how he had looked at Gwen, when he wasn’t swearing at her. Jealous, but there was no reason for that. Owen had fooled around with Ianto already, and he wasn’t the kind who kept his attention long on one thing. Diane was the first time that Ianto had realised Owen was even capable of pining after a woman, instead of either screwing her or screwing someone else.
So it wasn’t a voyeurism kink. Jack would think that it was (and probably entirely approve if Ianto didn’t tell him who else was involved) but it wasn’t that. It was an intellectual question. It was the way Owen’s eyes followed Ianto following Jack.
And if that was the thought that had chased Ianto into bed, well, there were worse fantasies than watching Owen, watching him with Jack. There was nice mirroring, and Ianto appreciated that. It wasn’t voyeurism, it was Owen watching him and Jack. The way Owen stopped looking with a pale flash of fear when he met Ianto’s eyes, like he had been caught in something he shouldn’t have. Like Ianto would know what he had been thinking, or Jack would see it and take offence. Like he was thinking about something more interesting than when his next coffee would arrive. There was a tiny thrill of power in that, plus the question of what, exactly, Owen thought about when he licked his lips and swallowed hard. Ianto had always been told that he had a good imagination.
He didn’t especially need it tonight though. Not when he could feel Owen’s gaze between his shoulders every time he walked into Jack’s office. For legitimate reasons, he should add. It wasn’t his fault that Jack kept closing the doors.
His hand twisted in the sheets.
The way that, out in the open, Jack leant forward and touched Ianto’s shoulder with something that was close to a wink.
Eyes squeezed tight, replacing the view of the ceiling with that grin.
Breathing coming heavier, not as loud as the remembrance of Owen’s low growl.
The phone rang.
“Fuck.” He grabbed at the phone without looking.
“Ianto.” Jack’s voice was too loud over the line.
He forced his breathing back into steadiness. “Sir?”
“We have a situation... are you alright?”
“Sir?”
“You sound a bit...”
“I was asleep, sir. Long day. Lots of stress. And as it looks as though we’re about to start another one already, would it be alright if I...”
“Go ahead. I need to call Owen in anyway. He’s not going to take that well.”
“No, sir. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Good.” Jack hung up. Ianto took a few long deep breaths, and headed to the shower.
* * * *
Owen swore the whole time that he was patching up Tosh’s shoulder. A running commentary of abuse against her for having the audacity to get shot, Gwen for screwing up the impromptu bandaging, Ianto for “hovering, fucking get out of way, would you?”, and Jack for something Ianto cannot make out.
On the second go around, he at least remembered to factor the shooters into his list.
When he applied the last piece of tape, he turned to Jack. “Let me see.”
“Excuse me?” Jack asked.
“The…” Owen tilted his head to examine Jack, “…yes, the still bleeding gouge in your neck. Which, if you weren’t already the luckiest bastard on the planet, would have hit the artery, and you’d be dead by now.”
“Kind of wish it had,” Jack said, laughing, and then wincing at the movement. “Would heal up a lot faster that way.”
“Yeah, well, next time remember that before you let Tosh get hit first,” Owen bit out. He flicked Jack’s fingers out of the way to get at the messy flesh wound. This time he said nothing, and there were far more flickers of pain across Jack’s face than had touched Tosh’s. Finishing off, Owen tapped the dressing down sharply.
He walked over to Tosh, where she was leaning up beside Gwen. “Owen?” she asked.
“Come on.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m buying you a drink.” He looked over at Gwen. “You too, if you fancy.”
Tosh’s expression was all lit with surprise, but she nodded hesitantly. “I’d love to.”
Gwen smiled agreement, and threw an arm companionably around Tosh’s waist.
When they had left, Jack looked over at Ianto. “What was that all about?”
“I think your immortality offends him,” Ianto replied.
Jack leant his head back and laughed. More wincing, and really he should learn not to do that with a neck wound.
“You looked dead.” Ianto said, carefully refraining from adding any further comment to that, any hint of the visceral sense of loss when Jack had fallen so heavily, pulling Tosh with him, disappearing into the shadows on the ground.
“Ianto, even if I had been…” Jack started, all too reasonable.
“I know that.”
“You’re suggesting he doesn’t?”
“He knows that too. We all do. It just takes a little remembering.”
“You’re telling me you’re not used to it yet? You want me to get myself shot more often, is that it? We could just call Owen back, he was pretty good at it the first time…”
“Jack.” Ianto stilled the rant by placing a hand on Jack’s chest. He raised the other to Jack’s temple, stroking his thumb over the spot. Jack smiled, allowing Ianto to slip his hand underneath the waistcoat, to spread his palm over Jack’s thudding heartbeat. Leaning down, Jack kissed Ianto softly. “I think,” Ianto whispered, against Jack’s lips, “I think Owen expected the bullets to bounce off.”
Jack laughed again, more fond than amused this time. “Nope.”
“I know.”
“If you prick me, I bleed,” Jack paraphrased horribly.
“I know that too,” Ianto said. “Though I think that may have been an excuse for a poor innuendo. Sir.”
“I’ll have you know my innuendo is always excellent.”
“Yes?”
“It got me what I wanted, didn’t it?” Ianto had been walked back up the stairs to the doorway of Jack’s office, Jack’s hand at the small of his back, the other winding an offensively slow path to the buckle of Ianto’s belt.
“All you had to do was ask,” Ianto pointed out dryly.
Jack stepped back and away from him, the sudden lack of contact cold. He reached a hand towards Ianto, and stepped another pace backwards, hand still outstretched.
Ianto took the invitation as intended, and let himself be pulled in.
* * * *
“We had sex in here,” Ianto said, looking up at the walls of Jack’s office.
“Yeah...” Jack answered slowly, as though he thought Ianto was drunk or high.
“No... not us. Me and Owen. About a month after you left.” He knew the exact date, of course. He kept track of things like this, because someone should. But Jack didn’t need to know that.
Jack blinked, looking around at the walls himself now. The thing about Jack, the thing to remember if you ever intended to get one over him, was that while he wasn’t shocked by sex per se - Ianto was fairly convinced that there was nothing he could ask Jack that would surprise him, and nothing that he had not tried at least once from both sides - he could occasionally be startled by sex in the specific. Ianto knew that Jack hadn’t picked up on Gwen and Owen before their fieldtrip into the countryside - oh, he had seen the attraction, but he had been surprised to find out they had done anything about it. He hadn’t known about Tosh and her alien girlfriend either, though that might have had something to do with Tosh’s lack of a post-coital good mood. And he hadn’t known about this.
Jack grinned, but there was tightness to it that Ianto hadn’t predicted. Clearly he could be surprised too. “Yeah?” he asked casually. “Whatever made you do a thing like that?”
“He was here, mostly,” Ianto said. Jack didn’t seem to realise that it wasn’t an insult. Not to Owen, anyway.
* * * *
Ianto wasn’t entirely used to seeing Jack sleep. He had always known that it happened, even when Gwen was still shopping around her “Jack’s a vampire” theory. (He went out in daylight, had survived death by javelin, and spent a lot of time in front of mirrors. But Gwen was stubborn). Yet waking up with Jack sleeping fitfully on the other side of the bed - that was still new.
“Jack,” he whispered. Because Jack had managed to spread-eagle to cover the whole bed. Ianto could cope with that part, actually, but Jack’s throat was moving in a silent scream. “Jack!”
He got out of the way before one of Jack’s thrashing arms could strike his face.
“Ianto,” Jack greeted him warmly when he woke. “Sorry. Bad year.”
“Jack…”
“C’mere.”
It was all too easy to just lie back down in the space Jack made for him. Jack never answered the important questions anyway, not when you just came out and asked. Ianto wasn’t sure what would happen if he pushed for the answers that still burnt in between the two of them. What had happened when Jack was gone, and why he had needed so badly to go. Whether they had been entirely forgiven, and whether they had been part of the reason he left. Ianto was not confident enough in what the answers might be.
* * * *
It happened too fast. That is what he tells himself, what he will insist to Owen for months, and what he will try and reassure Jack with.
They were blamed for killing an envoy, never mind that he had been armed to the teeth and growling at Tosh. Jack had offered to make it good.
No one could have known.
Jack had made it clear that ritual execution wasn’t an option, and that he had an array of technology on offer. But the thing they had asked for wasn’t on earth, or not in a functional version at any rate. Jack had explained that.
Then there had been a hand around his throat, an arm around Owen’s waist, and the blurry, sickening feeling of unplanned teleportation. The last thing Ianto had seen was Jack stabbing desperately at his watch.
Link to last part
Series: Sequel to Act as if you have faith
Fandom: Torchwood
Pairing: Ianto/Owen/Jack, this part mostly Ianto/Jack
Rating/Warning: PG-13
Genre: Drama
Length: 2,600 words
Disclaimer: All belongs to the BBC
Spoilers: All of Torchwood S1, and allusions to New Who S3
Summary: Even in their line of work, where time gets a little tangled, things can't go back to the way they were. Ianto finds Owen a distraction to getting back to normal.
AN1: Act as if you have faith isn't strictly speaking a necessary read for this one, and it isn't compatible with some of DW S3. But that's the Ianto/Owen past relationship alluded to in this one, so read it if you'd like that information.
The Hub was strange with Jack in it again.
It had been strange without him, but it was a kind of strange that Ianto had got used to. Like having a girlfriend in the basement, like the hole in his life without Lisa in it, you could get used to anything in the end. So he had no doubt they would get used to this eventually. Sooner rather than later, Owen would stop trying to burst into buildings at the head of the formation; Ianto would remember to fill five cups of coffee; Gwen would take her reports up to Jack’s office and not read them out loud from her desk; Tosh would run presentations in the conference room and not expect them to gather in front of her wall of monitors.
Ianto would get used to the feel of that shockingly warm hand between his shoulder blades. Would stop feeling like he was cheating on someone when he let Jack touch him. (Someone that was not Lisa, someone that was still watching him from across the Hub).
“Ianto?” Jack asked. More alive than anyone Ianto had ever met, and when he leant back into that strength, part of him was wishing it would rub off. This was what he had missed, but now, having it all back, there was a wrong note somewhere. Most of the problem, he suspected, was with them (him and Owen, not Gwen and Tosh) - Jack was more himself than ever.
It was the way Jack always flirted: not vague, exactly, and not even non-specific. It was always specific, that was why it worked. That was why he could have had any of his staff, or all at once if he wanted, with no more than a word and a glance. It was just that Ianto never lost the impression, no matter what Jack said, or how he looked, that he would be gone with a moment’s notice if he got a better offer. Less than a moment’s notice, it had turned out; not even a note. Gone exploring, feed the pterodactyl, don’t end the universe, love Jack. They hadn’t even warranted that.
And Owen, for all his manifold faults, was bad at leaving. He was bad at staying too, actually, and he certainly didn’t like Ianto. But Jack had, and Jack had left, so maybe there was something in that. He and Owen had both been lost without Jack, and Ianto had learnt the hard away that it was worse to be lost alone. So when Owen offered, or took, whatever it was he thought he was doing, Ianto had let himself be taken. Because Owen couldn’t leave this place any more than Ianto could. And Owen understood that they had killed Jack. They had betrayed him, without the excuse of a dead fiancé on the autopsy table, and why else would he have left? Owen had shot him, and Ianto, the one paying penance, the one who was supposed to be so pathetically in love with his boss, had stood beside him while it was done. And then Jack had left. One thing had happened, and then the other, and despite the life and the kiss in between, Ianto did not believe in coincidences. They had allowed Jack to die, and then he was gone.
Ianto saw that look sometimes, the nights his dreams weren’t of metal and a once-soft voice - the look Jack had, lying on the floor of the Hub. Not the still one, the dead one, though sometimes he saw that too. But the one before that, with the bruise just coming up and all four of them looking down at him. One day I’ll have the chance to save you. Hurt, all of a sudden, the way he hadn’t realised Jack could be. Not by them, anyway. And I'll watch you suffer and die. He hadn’t got out of the SUV. The screams might have been imagined, filled in by a feverish brain stuck on a chorus of how wrong they had been, and how right Jack was, and God, oh God, oh God what was the thing doing to him to make him make that noise? He hadn’t been able to watch in the end.
* * * *
It was three full weeks since Jack’s return (Ianto kept count of everything), and Owen was still being strange about it. Not strange with Jack, especially, or no stranger than his usual mixture of anger and hero-worship. He was strange with Ianto, and that hadn’t been something Ianto had ever thought he would need to factor in. Owen’s feelings for Ianto had, before Jack’s disappearance, run the gamut between disinterest and irritation. The period after that was an anomaly, one Ianto had explained away the evening that Owen had left the reunion without a backward glance.
Owen didn’t know what he wanted. Owen wanted everything. Owen wanted things he couldn’t have, and shouldn’t have. Like pretty brunettes with fiancées, or girls with airplane scarves and blood-red lips round a cigarette. Ianto wasn’t his type at all. All it was, after all, was that Ianto had been Jack’s. And Ianto had been Lisa’s, and Ianto had such a palpable distaste for Owen that it had been a challenge. But the challenge was gone now and still, here he was.
Watching Ianto in the reflection of his monitor with a look that was undecipherable. Hungry, Ianto might have called it, but that was closer to how he had looked at Gwen, when he wasn’t swearing at her. Jealous, but there was no reason for that. Owen had fooled around with Ianto already, and he wasn’t the kind who kept his attention long on one thing. Diane was the first time that Ianto had realised Owen was even capable of pining after a woman, instead of either screwing her or screwing someone else.
So it wasn’t a voyeurism kink. Jack would think that it was (and probably entirely approve if Ianto didn’t tell him who else was involved) but it wasn’t that. It was an intellectual question. It was the way Owen’s eyes followed Ianto following Jack.
And if that was the thought that had chased Ianto into bed, well, there were worse fantasies than watching Owen, watching him with Jack. There was nice mirroring, and Ianto appreciated that. It wasn’t voyeurism, it was Owen watching him and Jack. The way Owen stopped looking with a pale flash of fear when he met Ianto’s eyes, like he had been caught in something he shouldn’t have. Like Ianto would know what he had been thinking, or Jack would see it and take offence. Like he was thinking about something more interesting than when his next coffee would arrive. There was a tiny thrill of power in that, plus the question of what, exactly, Owen thought about when he licked his lips and swallowed hard. Ianto had always been told that he had a good imagination.
He didn’t especially need it tonight though. Not when he could feel Owen’s gaze between his shoulders every time he walked into Jack’s office. For legitimate reasons, he should add. It wasn’t his fault that Jack kept closing the doors.
His hand twisted in the sheets.
The way that, out in the open, Jack leant forward and touched Ianto’s shoulder with something that was close to a wink.
Eyes squeezed tight, replacing the view of the ceiling with that grin.
Breathing coming heavier, not as loud as the remembrance of Owen’s low growl.
The phone rang.
“Fuck.” He grabbed at the phone without looking.
“Ianto.” Jack’s voice was too loud over the line.
He forced his breathing back into steadiness. “Sir?”
“We have a situation... are you alright?”
“Sir?”
“You sound a bit...”
“I was asleep, sir. Long day. Lots of stress. And as it looks as though we’re about to start another one already, would it be alright if I...”
“Go ahead. I need to call Owen in anyway. He’s not going to take that well.”
“No, sir. I’ll be there in half an hour.”
“Good.” Jack hung up. Ianto took a few long deep breaths, and headed to the shower.
* * * *
Owen swore the whole time that he was patching up Tosh’s shoulder. A running commentary of abuse against her for having the audacity to get shot, Gwen for screwing up the impromptu bandaging, Ianto for “hovering, fucking get out of way, would you?”, and Jack for something Ianto cannot make out.
On the second go around, he at least remembered to factor the shooters into his list.
When he applied the last piece of tape, he turned to Jack. “Let me see.”
“Excuse me?” Jack asked.
“The…” Owen tilted his head to examine Jack, “…yes, the still bleeding gouge in your neck. Which, if you weren’t already the luckiest bastard on the planet, would have hit the artery, and you’d be dead by now.”
“Kind of wish it had,” Jack said, laughing, and then wincing at the movement. “Would heal up a lot faster that way.”
“Yeah, well, next time remember that before you let Tosh get hit first,” Owen bit out. He flicked Jack’s fingers out of the way to get at the messy flesh wound. This time he said nothing, and there were far more flickers of pain across Jack’s face than had touched Tosh’s. Finishing off, Owen tapped the dressing down sharply.
He walked over to Tosh, where she was leaning up beside Gwen. “Owen?” she asked.
“Come on.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I’m buying you a drink.” He looked over at Gwen. “You too, if you fancy.”
Tosh’s expression was all lit with surprise, but she nodded hesitantly. “I’d love to.”
Gwen smiled agreement, and threw an arm companionably around Tosh’s waist.
When they had left, Jack looked over at Ianto. “What was that all about?”
“I think your immortality offends him,” Ianto replied.
Jack leant his head back and laughed. More wincing, and really he should learn not to do that with a neck wound.
“You looked dead.” Ianto said, carefully refraining from adding any further comment to that, any hint of the visceral sense of loss when Jack had fallen so heavily, pulling Tosh with him, disappearing into the shadows on the ground.
“Ianto, even if I had been…” Jack started, all too reasonable.
“I know that.”
“You’re suggesting he doesn’t?”
“He knows that too. We all do. It just takes a little remembering.”
“You’re telling me you’re not used to it yet? You want me to get myself shot more often, is that it? We could just call Owen back, he was pretty good at it the first time…”
“Jack.” Ianto stilled the rant by placing a hand on Jack’s chest. He raised the other to Jack’s temple, stroking his thumb over the spot. Jack smiled, allowing Ianto to slip his hand underneath the waistcoat, to spread his palm over Jack’s thudding heartbeat. Leaning down, Jack kissed Ianto softly. “I think,” Ianto whispered, against Jack’s lips, “I think Owen expected the bullets to bounce off.”
Jack laughed again, more fond than amused this time. “Nope.”
“I know.”
“If you prick me, I bleed,” Jack paraphrased horribly.
“I know that too,” Ianto said. “Though I think that may have been an excuse for a poor innuendo. Sir.”
“I’ll have you know my innuendo is always excellent.”
“Yes?”
“It got me what I wanted, didn’t it?” Ianto had been walked back up the stairs to the doorway of Jack’s office, Jack’s hand at the small of his back, the other winding an offensively slow path to the buckle of Ianto’s belt.
“All you had to do was ask,” Ianto pointed out dryly.
Jack stepped back and away from him, the sudden lack of contact cold. He reached a hand towards Ianto, and stepped another pace backwards, hand still outstretched.
Ianto took the invitation as intended, and let himself be pulled in.
* * * *
“We had sex in here,” Ianto said, looking up at the walls of Jack’s office.
“Yeah...” Jack answered slowly, as though he thought Ianto was drunk or high.
“No... not us. Me and Owen. About a month after you left.” He knew the exact date, of course. He kept track of things like this, because someone should. But Jack didn’t need to know that.
Jack blinked, looking around at the walls himself now. The thing about Jack, the thing to remember if you ever intended to get one over him, was that while he wasn’t shocked by sex per se - Ianto was fairly convinced that there was nothing he could ask Jack that would surprise him, and nothing that he had not tried at least once from both sides - he could occasionally be startled by sex in the specific. Ianto knew that Jack hadn’t picked up on Gwen and Owen before their fieldtrip into the countryside - oh, he had seen the attraction, but he had been surprised to find out they had done anything about it. He hadn’t known about Tosh and her alien girlfriend either, though that might have had something to do with Tosh’s lack of a post-coital good mood. And he hadn’t known about this.
Jack grinned, but there was tightness to it that Ianto hadn’t predicted. Clearly he could be surprised too. “Yeah?” he asked casually. “Whatever made you do a thing like that?”
“He was here, mostly,” Ianto said. Jack didn’t seem to realise that it wasn’t an insult. Not to Owen, anyway.
* * * *
Ianto wasn’t entirely used to seeing Jack sleep. He had always known that it happened, even when Gwen was still shopping around her “Jack’s a vampire” theory. (He went out in daylight, had survived death by javelin, and spent a lot of time in front of mirrors. But Gwen was stubborn). Yet waking up with Jack sleeping fitfully on the other side of the bed - that was still new.
“Jack,” he whispered. Because Jack had managed to spread-eagle to cover the whole bed. Ianto could cope with that part, actually, but Jack’s throat was moving in a silent scream. “Jack!”
He got out of the way before one of Jack’s thrashing arms could strike his face.
“Ianto,” Jack greeted him warmly when he woke. “Sorry. Bad year.”
“Jack…”
“C’mere.”
It was all too easy to just lie back down in the space Jack made for him. Jack never answered the important questions anyway, not when you just came out and asked. Ianto wasn’t sure what would happen if he pushed for the answers that still burnt in between the two of them. What had happened when Jack was gone, and why he had needed so badly to go. Whether they had been entirely forgiven, and whether they had been part of the reason he left. Ianto was not confident enough in what the answers might be.
* * * *
It happened too fast. That is what he tells himself, what he will insist to Owen for months, and what he will try and reassure Jack with.
They were blamed for killing an envoy, never mind that he had been armed to the teeth and growling at Tosh. Jack had offered to make it good.
No one could have known.
Jack had made it clear that ritual execution wasn’t an option, and that he had an array of technology on offer. But the thing they had asked for wasn’t on earth, or not in a functional version at any rate. Jack had explained that.
Then there had been a hand around his throat, an arm around Owen’s waist, and the blurry, sickening feeling of unplanned teleportation. The last thing Ianto had seen was Jack stabbing desperately at his watch.
Link to last part