Time Stands Still

---

Time stands still with gazing on her face,
stand still and gaze for minutes, houres and yeares, to her give place:
All other things shall change, but shee remaines the same,
till heavens changed have their course & time hath lost his name.
Cupid doth hover up and downe blinded with her faire eyes,
and fortune captive at her feete contem'd and conquerd lies.

When fortune, love, and time attend on
Her with my fortunes, love, and time, I honour will alone,
If bloudlesse envie say, dutie hath no desert.
Dutie replies that envie knowes her selfe his faithfull heart,
My setled vowes and spotlesse faith no fortune can remove,
Courage shall shew my inward faith, and faith shall trie my love.

"So, you want me to say 'I don't' when it comes to the wedding vows?"

Ianto rolled his eyes. "I can't believe I'm going to suggest this, but why don't we go have a look at the paperwork on the way back to the Hub? Maybe if we fight enough about it for the next year, you can persuade me to sign something."

Jack beamed at him. "Sounds like a plan."

Ianto had relived that exchange in his head no fewer than one hundred and thirty-seven times in the past three hundred and sixty-four days. Seventy-two of those times had occurred during the twenty-three days between signing the papers for the house and the time that Jack had finally persuaded him that a civil partnership was a really fantastic idea, and that they should definitely file their notice of intent so that they could do the deed as soon as possible.

The legal obstacles he'd encountered when Jack had landed in a locked ward for propositioning the Prime Minister during a press conference (loudly and with extensive coverage from the news media) were what pushed Ianto over the edge, and he had signed and posted the document. Of course, UNIT hadn't helped extricate Jack until the Santonian jester had blown the same glittery pink dust used to warp Jack's impulses onto two of their top operatives for the amusement of her Overqueen.

And here he was, sitting with Jack's head in his lap, contemplating how they'd come to be here three hundred and forty-one days later, with countless hours of bickering over marriage, civil partnerships, labels and the whole idea of ritualised commitment between consenting adults under their belts, and no CP.

Ianto rubbed Jack's arm gently. It was almost time for him to wake up, but he looked so peaceful that Ianto almost wished that Jack could just have the day off. He stroked Jack's hair and kissed his brow. "I'm sorry," he whispered. His legs were going numb.

Jack's expression remained unchanged, far more peaceful than it should have been.

Ianto sighed. "And I'm going to have to move. You're heavy when you're like this." With some effort, he shifted Jack as carefully as he could off his lap and onto the hard floor, wincing at the sick crack of skull hitting concrete. "Sorry." He sighed again, louder this time, and took off his jacket. "I really liked this suit," he grumbled before folding the jacket in half down the back seam and rolling it up to place under Jack's oozing head. "And look how bloody well I do that! Too many times, Jack." He stroked hair spiked with too much product and far too much blood. "Too fucking many times."

---

Six weeks ago

They were on an aeroplane. Since it was only half-full, it was quiet. Blissfully so compared with the frenetic, torturous journey from Cardiff. The first call had come from a highly-placed MP who'd reported Nelson's Column missing on the way into work. Soon after that, Europe, Japan, Southeast Asia, China, Australia and South America had all reported important monuments disappearing, and Torchwood had a full-fledged Situation on its hands. Fortunately, the Teens from Neene (a rather popular neo-metal band whose parents were all Board members of the Shadow Proclamation) had been easy to spot, and a quick and stern call to their parents had put a stop to this round of pranks. Divvying up the workload had been a bit counterintuitive, but the most sensible arrangement had left One taking Southeast Asia and Japan, since they were already in Tokyo for a conference, and Two taking South America, since Archie had been the one to spot the disappearance of Christ the Redeemer from his hotel in Rio, in the first place. Of course, Mount Fuji and the Great Wall of China had been such major issues that the full deployment of the MiB and their mass amnesia capabilities had been the only viable option. This had left Torchwood Three to cope with London, Europe and the Statue of Liberty in New York.

It had taken a little fiddling to find the cloaking device at the base of Nelson's Column, most specifically because it had been a pigeon that kept wandering around. This had explained the 'winking' phenomenon described by the MP. Paris had been easy. De-cloaking the Arc de Triomphe proved much easier during the morning rush hour, when nobody was looking at it as they tried to kill each other going around it, and nobody had noticed when the device at its base had fired, making it vanish. In Rome, the Coliseum had proven much more difficult, requiring a full-on campaign of lies and obfuscations, followed by finding and retconning twenty busloads of tourists who'd seen it vanish before the army had cordoned off the site. Fortunately, the trauma of the event had sent most of them to the local hospitals.

New York had been horrible in every conceivable way, but the worst thing had been the robber's stray bullet that had caught Jack just wrong and killed him, and the fact that the police hadn't allowed Ianto to stay with him, no matter how much clearance he'd flashed. He'd had no choice but to let them take Jack to the morgue, and then they'd shooed him away after he'd identified the body. He'd waited for word in the hotel room after that, and Jack had come back quiet and withdrawn twenty hours later, just in time to catch their flight home.

Jack was still quiet and withdrawn.

Ianto shifted in his seat. "Are you alright?"

"I hate waking up in morgues," said Jack quietly.

"They wouldn't let me stay with you," said Ianto, equally softly, after a very long pause. "I'm sorry you came back in the drawer."

Jack stared straight ahead, his eyes fixed on a point so far distant that Ianto shut away its implications.

Ianto twitched, reaching inside himself to reach for Jack and thinking better of it. "I brought the backgammon set along," he offered.

The look Jack gave him for just that second before he rose and shut himself in the toilet shocked Ianto in a way that he had never expected, even though he didn't understand what it was he was seeing, or why it made him ache so.

By the time Jack returned to his seat, Ianto was so lost in worry that he'd lost track of time. Staring out the window, fretting about stray bullets and glitzy dust that turned his lover-Captain-fiancé-whatever the fuck Jack was meant to be-into a jester's marionette, wondering for the thousandth time how he'd ever managed to get involved with a man-and what his family would think about it, which he dismissed from his mind with the usual warp-ten speed-and why on earth Jack couldn't stay dead (which produced the requisite pile of shit in his psyche), it wasn't until Jack nudged his arm that he realised that the flight attendant wanted his attention.

"Would you like an extra blanket, sir? You seem to be shivering rather a lot."

"Oh. Sorry about that. Yes, please."

"He's always cold," explained Jack. But his voice was hollow, missing the amusement that warmed it and Ianto, both.

The flight attendant-Andrew, Ianto remembered-smirked and handed Ianto the blanket. "So am I, when I'm just sitting, especially late at night." The smirk morphed into a sympathetic, inviting smile that at once attracted and repulsed Ianto.

"Long day," said Ianto, ripping open the bag just before he caught a movement in Jack's throat.

"The Captain will be dimming the lights shortly," said Andrew. "Perhaps you'll be able to get a bit of sleep."

"Perhaps," agreed Ianto, wishing that the man would just go and let him talk to Jack in peace. Not that he felt up to the task.

"I'll make sure of it," said Jack, with a smile that only Ianto would recognize as a ghost of its former self.

Andrew's smile reverted to a smirk as he nodded and retreated.

It was then that Ianto turned to look at Jack, just as Jack turned his face toward him. It was then that Ianto saw that Jack's eyes were red-rimmed and puffy, their hardness desperate and familiar and unnatural. "Jack-"

"I didn't come back in the drawer," said Jack, his voice unsteady. "And they didn't just use drugs and talk therapy in the psych ward."

Ianto swallowed.

"I was scared," whispered Jack. "I've always hated being alone, but now it's worse."

"Since Gray," murmured Ianto. Since being buried for nearly two thousand years.

Jack nodded, fighting for control. "They were cutting me today. I've still got the stitches." He drew his fingers down his sternum.

Ianto blinked and swallowed. "Did you have enough retcon with you?" He hated himself instantly, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment before opening them to await the inevitable.

But Jack just shook his head. "They said it happens. One guy said he'd seen three incidents just like it. They all started kidding him about it. 'Resurrection Joe,' they called him. Told me it was a good thing they'd just started. They hadn't gone through the bone yet, so they could give me a local and fix me up."

After you stopped screaming, thought Ianto. He shifted closer, willing himself into Jack's mental space. "What really happened at the psych ward?" he asked gently.

"Shock therapy," said Jack, as Ianto had guessed he would. "I hate being electrocuted."

"Jack, I-"

"I wanted you there, Ianto. I wanted someone-you-to be there when I couldn't...." Jack's eyes drifted away. "I haven't had that since my leg was crushed when I was a child," he said, so quietly that Ianto wouldn't have heard it had he not been six inches from Jack's mouth.

"Why didn't you tell me?" Ianto swallowed at the accusation in his voice.

"A man's gotta keep some things to himself," said Jack, humour twisted with bitter pain.

Ianto calculated his gaze to affix more than fix.

"Because you're-because I didn't want to scare you away," said Jack.

"Is that what you thought?" scoffed Ianto, forcing himself to speak very quietly so that the other passengers wouldn't hear them. "That I'd go running off in hysterics if I knew you'd been shocked or cut open?"

Jack shrugged defensively-more of a flinch, Ianto thought. "Well...not hysterics, exactly-"

Ianto held his gaze, unblinking. "I've seen you shot, stabbed, burnt, poisoned, crushed and yes, electrocuted to death. And I've held your arms still whilst you were reliving your live burial." This last was through teeth gritted enough to keep his voice from wavering. "Is there some sort of alien pollen you haven't told me about that might make it impossible for me to tolerate the idea that something painful happened to you?"

Jack gazed back. "You tell me. Every time I try to talk to you about registering our partnership, you find a reason why we shouldn't."

"That's different," said Ianto. Then he blinked. And cursed so far under his breath that he didn't hear himself.

"Oh? 'You just got shot, Jack. You're not yourself.' And that was three days after I'd come back. How about, 'You've just been asphyxiated by Love!death perfume. Are you sure it's not clogging your brain?'"

Ianto winced.

"Or perhaps, 'Not now, Jack; your recent swim in Marmite is making me feel a bit sick.'"

"I hate Marmite," muttered Ianto, as he stared at his blanket.

"How the hell do you think I felt?" demanded Jack. "And it wasn't Marmite!"

"I know," said Ianto, wishing he'd opted to sail back to the UK, instead.

"And then there's my favourite," continued Jack, heatedly. "'You just got eaten by the lions at Longleat. I'm not going to be able to look at you for at least a week without thinking about where bits of you've been.'"

Ianto resisted with all his might saying or even thinking, It's not the only time I wonder about where your bits have been. Fortunately, his might was enough to prevent the former.

"And I know you still think my bits wander around shagging people behind your back, although where they'd find the time between Torchwood dealings and deaths, I have no idea," said Jack.

Mortified, Ianto looked up then, and flinched at the raw hurt in Jack's eyes hardening into impenetrability. That, he couldn't bear, no matter how bad an idea some of him still thought the idea of marrying-registering a partnership with a fifty-first century immortal who'd been shagged by things with multiple legs.

He blinked again to clear his head. "God, Jack, I'm sorry," he said. "I hadn't even thought how all that sounded." A tight knot of fear seemed to grow and thicken within him.

"It's all right," said Jack, distantly.

The knot inside Ianto started to loosen in a way that made him feel a bit sick.

"You know," said Jack, "I'd always thought you'd be the one to want to settle down." He looked at Ianto. "But it's okay if you're not."

Ianto's knot loosened still more, until he noticed something tightening in Jack, a haunted look on his face that masked decades-millennia-of pain, and that would not remain masked, itself. For an insane moment, the thought flitted across Ianto's mind that the knot inside him connected to and controlled a duplicate in Jack, and that the choice to be made between Jack's comfort and his own was impossible.

Torchwood, he thought. Queen and country. He forced himself to register Jack's troubled eyes. And not being a pillock. He opened his mouth-

"Ladies and gentlemen, this is Captain Wylde."

"He sounds a bit nervous," said Ianto.

"Mm," said Jack, absently.

"We've been ordered to make an unscheduled landing in Gander. Everything's all right. We're sorry for the inconvenience."

"That sounded-what are you doing?"

In a flurry of motion, Jack had pulled a headset from his pocket and put it on, plugging it into his wrist strap. He straightened in his seat, his face transfixed.

"Jack?"

Nothing.

"Jack?" Ianto waved a hand in front of Jack's eyes.

Nothing.

"Jack!" Ianto shook his shoulder.

Nothing. Except for one tear, slowly formed, spilling in slow motion over the edge of his eye before gravity caught it.

"Jack!" Ianto wrenched the headset off Jack's head and watched as Jack slumped in his seat and the earphones swung in unnaturally slow motion straight towards his own ears as the world started to spin out of its orbit in a deafening, head-splitting squeal of noise and pressure.

"No-o-o-oh!" came Jack's voice, distorted as though through treacle.

And then the headset was ripped from his hand for the next month.

"Iiiaaahhnnto-o-o!"

Why does Jack always pronounce it that way? There's no 'h' in my name....

"Iiaahnto..."

I do rather like it, though. Or perhaps what he really liked was the fact that the world was coming back to itself. And Jack was holding him by the shoulders. Which was soothing, especially when gravity righted itself and he suddenly felt as though he were going to fly straight up into the ceiling if Jack let go.

"Ianto?"

Ianto wondered how he'd sound through treacle. "What-" It took some adjustment to find that he didn't sound treacly at all. "What was that?"

Like lightning, Jack's lips were pressed against his forehead, arms tightening around him, holding him as though he were afraid that Ianto really would slip away. "Something I'd hoped you'd never meet."

"Jack...." Ianto tried to pull back, but Jack merely tightened his grip further. "Are you alright?"

"I'm fine," whimpered Jack into Ianto's cheek.

Ianto extricated an arm with some difficulty from Jack's grip, which gave him enough leeway to stroke Jack's hair and wrap the other one around his back. "Can't be here for you if you squeeze me to death," he said, lightly.

The strategy backfired when Jack squeezed harder.

"Jack," Ianto began. He realised his mistake when he couldn't replace the breath he'd expended on the word.

"They've destroyed so many people I love," said Jack.

Or at least, that's what Ianto gleaned from the fragments of whispered strain pressed against his neck. Was Jack talking about the creatures who'd taken Gray? Were they here, on this aeroplane? I'll ask about that later, thought Ianto, firmly. "Well, then, we'd best deal with them before they take half the people aboard," he quipped.

Jack froze for a moment and then shook against him for another before pulling back enough to gaze into Ianto's face with a watery-eyed grin. "I guess so," he said, voice still unsteady, "but not now. They'll kill everyone onboard if we try that."

"And we won't be able to stop them," supplied Ianto, immediately.

"No, we won't."

And just then, the plane lurched downwards, sending Ianto's stomach somewhere too close to his head for comfort.

"Well," said Jack, as the plane levelled out a bit, "I guess we're starting our descent into Gander."

"So is this a bad time to ask why everything turned to treacle?"

Jack leaned in very close to Ianto's ear and whispered very softly, "They steal space-time."

Before Ianto could react, Jack stopped his mouth with a searing kiss.

"And you can't react out loud, or they'll destroy you," whispered Jack as he nibbled on Ianto's ear.

"Then how are you managing to talk to me about it?" whispered Ianto against Jack's cheek, slack-jawed as he melted against it.

"Call it the power of lust," mouthed Jack against Ianto's ear. "It messes up the signals so they can't sense anything else."

Ianto bit back a moan at Jack's expert assault on his second most erogenous zone. "And they don't stop us from-lusting?" he breathed.

"Not at first," murmured Jack, kissing his way down Ianto's jaw, "but we'll have to stop before they find us."

"That's too bad," said Ianto, sealing his lips to Jack's.

Jack broke the kiss and embraced Ianto long enough to whisper, "Stay away from sound."

"Oh, that'll be easy," quipped Ianto, nipping Jack's ear just so.

Jack kissed him again, deeply but not as long as either of them wanted. "And stay close to me."

"Always," said Ianto.

"Sop!"

Ianto rolled his eyes and gestured around the plane. "You see anyone else here I'd stay with? They've all gone stiff as boards!"

"They've all got their headsets on."

"Bad taste," said Ianto.

"Very dangerous," said Jack.

"So how do we-"

"Just go with the flow," said Jack, wrapping a friendly arm around Ianto's shoulders, "and go to sleep."

Ianto felt the warning squeeze on his arm and settled his head on Jack's shoulder just as he heard footsteps coming down the aisle.

"Asleep at last?" asked Andrew, and Ianto noticed a dullness to his tone.

"Yeah," murmured Jack, pulling Ianto a little closer.

Ianto played along and made an incoherent noise as he burrowed into Jack's shoulder pad.

"We'll be landing soon, sir."

Ianto felt Jack nod, and knew somehow that he was making puppy eyes.

"Alright," said Andrew at last. "But just a few more minutes and then we'll have to wake up."

"Got it," said Jack.

Ianto could just hear the grin and the wink. "Twat," he muttered against Jack.

"Shh...." Jack stroked his arm and kissed his hair. "Rest. You're going to need it."

---

The passengers exited the plane like zombies, and Ianto followed suit. Or, more accurately, he followed Jack, who imitated the others. It was as they were funnelled into the terminal that he noticed how dull everyone seemed, how heavy everybody's step. A part of him wanted to reach for Jack, but he felt keenly aware of a presence scrutinising all who passed. And Jack's back was subtly stiff, a warning not to get too close or stray too far away.

Ianto felt his own steps grow heavy, and let a remembered inner death spread over his face as he approached Customs. The fact that it wasn't hard to do bothered him in a way that almost ruined the effect. Almost. He'd learnt a bit about acting over the years. And then he saw how close he was getting to the CBSA and recognised that it might be wise to let that inner death blanket his mind as well as his face, and he thought of Jack alone in the New York morgue and let his stomach fill with rats.

The Border Services Officer seemed devoid of personality, but not in the way that Ianto had come to associate with bureaucrats and enforcement personnel. Rather, it seemed as though he'd had the life emptied out of him. Inuit, Ianto thought, quelling his excitement at the idea of meeting a person indigenous to someplace other than - well, the Himalayas. Although really, if he were to meet a truly indigenous person under authentic circumstances, it would most likely have to be in the African continent, and - there was a light igniting in the man's eyes that reminded Ianto that he needed to be dead and heavy. He wasn't sure which niggled at him more - the fact that he had to kill his own spirit to get through whatever was happening, or the way that kindling light died as Ianto remembered to be a zombie.

As they made their way through the terminal, Ianto began to feel his steps become even heavier, as though he were fighting his way through a bog. He felt weary and nervous, found himself resenting the messages from the airport officials telling passenger Jason Smith to report to Gate A-3 or passenger Cheung Li to Gate B-2 or passenger Ahmad ibn Nafud to security. Racist bastards, he thought, which jarred him out of his stupor long enough to make him reach quietly for the Calaxian earplugs he always carried with him on the job. When he opened the case, he was delighted to find that they had bred. He stroked his pair into his ears before offering the newer ones to Jack as though they were sweets.

Jack didn't respond. His eyes were fixed straight in front of him, pupils slow to respond to changes of light as he moved in lock step with everyone else.

"Jack," murmured Ianto slowly, zombie-like near his ear.

Jack's cheek muscles worked. "Iaaahhn-tohhh."

Ianto stumbled against him, grasping his shoulders high enough that when he stumbled again, his hand slipped naturally against Jack's right ear and the first of the earplugs slipped in, burrowing its way to sit snugly inside. "Sorry," he said out loud, as his hand brushed against Jack's left cheek before he righted himself and let his hand slip off Jack's chest.

Jack stumbled in turn, causing Ianto to catch him as dispassionately as possible. "Thank you," he breathed into Ianto's ear.

Ianto squeezed Jack's ribs through the folds of his coat, grateful both for the cover of the extra material and to the Calaxians for engineering earplugs that filtered out sonic, psychic and temporal interference and allowed the wearer to hear voices. And to Suzie and Owen, respectively, for having retrieved them from the crashed ship, and going on to discover that they enjoyed breeding in velvet-lined boxes.

Ten yards further on, a voice pierced through the earplugs and the background din. "Mr. Jones? Mr. Harkness?"

Ianto and Jack stopped, shoulder to shoulder.

"Come with me, please."

Ianto looked around to find the Inuit officer who'd cleared them at passport control, hand on sidearm and a vacant look on his face. No. Not vacant. Schooled. Neutral. Vacant in all but the eyes, where the light had kindled. He followed the officer without question, brushing his hand purposefully past Jack's and hoping that he'd get the message.

Jack did, though not without stiffening a finger against the side of Ianto's hand.

Ianto stifled a sigh and refused to roll his eyes.

They were taken to a windowless room as deep in the maze of the terminal as it seemed possible to go, occupied by a table, two chairs and a lamp that reminded Ianto of those he'd seen used by UNIT interrogators.

Jack stiffened at his side as the officer motioned them in and closed the door behind them.

"You are not who you say you are," said the officer, fixing Jack with his gaze.

"Oh? Care to tell me who I am, then?"

"Maybe if we ever get to know each other," countered the officer, never dropping his gaze.

"Then perhaps you'd let me sit down, Officer-" Jack's eyes flicked to the name badge and back up to eyes that Ianto realised were no longer shielded. "Your name is NOT 'Peter Smith'!"

"It is according to my father," shrugged 'Smith'.

"Probably easier than listening to your co-workers butcher your actual name," offered Ianto.

"That, and Dad was half white," said Smith.

"Mind if I sit down?" Jack's tone was light, but something about it caused Ianto to register the tremor of his right hand, the pallor of his skin and the fraught wrinkles around his eyes.

Smith waved a hand, giving his permission.

Jack all but collapsed into a hard chair, holding his head up with a difficulty only Ianto could see. "Thanks," he said, his trademark grin fading before it could quite finish forming.

Ianto stood close by-close enough to rest a surreptitious palm on Jack's shoulder blade.

"They are looking for you," said Smith, eyes back on Jack.

Jack drew in a sharp breath, a sure sign to Ianto that he was nearly too far gone to control his responses at all, and that he would likely get them both caught and killed as easily by a passing gang member as a group of space-time thieves.

"What do you mean?" asked Ianto, challenging both Jack and Smith.

Smith shrugged. "I hear them."

Jack went very still under Ianto's hand.

"Sometimes I see them."

Jack pulled out his ID card. "Torchwood," he said, shortly.

Ianto followed suit, giving Smith an apologetic look.

"Shaman," countered Smith, "or at least named for one, and no, he was not called 'Peter' or 'Smith'."

"So it's true what they say," breathed Ianto, "that Shamans can see things others can't?"

"Perhaps," said Smith, eying Ianto a bit sternly. "But then, so can you, if you work for Torchwood." He pulled out a card of his own. "Clearance," he said. "And I have a cousin who worked for Torchwood Four before he disappeared."

Ianto spared a brief, sharp glance at Jack, who remained impassive. "So who or what, exactly, have you heard or seen?"

Smith looked at Jack for a moment too long before shrugging. "Whispers and shadows. Like something fluttering by the corners of the eyes."

"Jack, are these the faeries?"

"No," said Jack, looking up at last, as though each eye were a hundredweight heavy.

Ianto could feel the effort under his hand, as well as the warning not to comfort.

Jack pinned Smith with his gaze. "What else?"

"You," said Smith, just as pointedly. "Sort of."

"Sort of?"

"You looked like you were wearing stage makeup."

"Not much of a change there, then," said Ianto.

"Hey!" Jack managed a sidelong glance at Ianto.

"You do undercover work?"

"Sometimes," said Jack, carefully.

"Can you fix the time?"

"Well, Ianto here's the one with a thing for watches-"

"Not the clocks," said Smith, "the time."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know," shrugged Smith. "You told me to ask that question."

"Okay, this is getting a bit weird," muttered Ianto.

"Oh, no," whispered Jack. For the briefest of moments, he leaned against Ianto, trembling with effort before he righted himself. "You mustn't tell me anything more about what ... I ... said."

"You told me that, already," said Smith, wryly.

Jack groaned, quietly. "When did you last see ... me?"

"After I let you through customs."

"God, I hope I'm better at this than I am now!" Jack rubbed his head, weakly.

Ianto shivered. "I don't suppose I was ... there, too?"

"No. Just him."

"Well. That's a mercy, then. Did, er ... he ... leave any instructions?"

"Ianto!"

"Yeah," said Smith.

Jack's fingers made a desperate dive for his ears.

"When my shift's over in ten minutes," continued Smith, "I'm taking you someplace safe, and then you're supposed to do what comes naturally till I pick you up in the morning."

"Do what comes naturally?" said Jack, perking up a bit.

"Mm," said Ianto. "Don't suppose you packed the temporal cannon, did you?"

"Ianto!" groaned Jack.

"Can't exactly go Weevil hunting, can we? Erm ... there aren't any Weevils in Gander, are there, Officer Smith?"

"Well, we do get 'em in the flour sometimes, and then there's a band called the Boll Weevil that my brother likes, but as far as I know, it's illegal to hunt them, no matter how bad they play."

"Well, then. Not to say, 'I told you so,' but-"

"Yes," said Jack, irritably. "Yes...." He trailed off, exhaustion evident in his voice, as though he were being drained.

"Jack? Is it the-?" Ianto glanced at Smith. "What is it?"

"Too close," whispered Jack.

Smith glanced at his watch. "One more minute and then we're out of here."

Jack stiffened without warning, tilting like a top as he clutched his head. "Too close!"

In the whirl of reaching for Jack, Ianto glimpsed something moving out of the corner of his eye, and felt the world stop as a pair too many of grey eyes caught his own for a fraction of a nanosecond.

And then the world restarted. Ianto shook his head to clear it, fighting to stay upright as Jack slumped against him in a faint. "What was that?" Did that alien really have Jack's eyes?

"What was what?"

Something about Smith's voice made Ianto glance sharply at him, but before he could question the man, Jack moaned himself awake.

"Time to go," said Smith. "You can walk, right?"

"Ungh," said Jack, his head lolling as he flailed himself away from Ianto and out of his seat.

"Want to get his other side?" said Ianto, grasping one whirligig arm just before the hand made contact with his face.

"Does he get like this often?"

More than you'll ever know. "Not at all. He's just...." Of all the times to be at a loss for words, this was probably the worst.

"Affected by disturbances in time," Smith filled in.

"How-" (Ianto) "What-" (Jack)

"Clearance," Smith reminded them, "cousin in your organisation, and I love science fiction. Oh, and I study string theory for fun."

That brought Jack awake. "You do? For fun?"

Smith shrugged. "Yeah," he said, opening the door and peering around it. "Oh, you guys got your earplugs in?"

"Never took 'em out," said Jack.

Ianto bit back his question and checked his own ears. "Neither did I."

"Okay. You're sick," said Smith to Jack.

"Not the first time I've been called that," said Jack with a wry smile.

"Yeah, well, this time, it'll get us a wheelchair and an emergency vehicle that'll get us out of here without any trouble."

"Works for me," said Jack, slumping against them for further effect. "Ooh, you're nice and muscular, Peter Smith!"

"Thanks. I work out every day with my wife."

"Oh yeah?"

"Yeah. She's a karate sensei."

"Sexy!"

"That, too," said Smith.

"Can I meet her?"

"I'm really sorry about him," said Ianto.

"I've had worse," said Smith. "If worse comes to worst, my wife'll beat him up."

"Kinky!" said Jack.

"Shut up," said Ianto.

"Jealous?"

"No. You're supposed to be a zombie, remember?"

"Oh, yeah," said Jack, serious all of a sudden. "Sorry."

For all Jack's apparent cheer, Ianto couldn't help noticing the trembling heaviness with which he settled himself between them.

"Hey, Johnny," said Smith to the young Inuit man rounding the corner to their left.

"What? Oh, he doesn't look so good."

"Yeah, he needs a wheelchair. You got one?"

"Yeah, hang on a minute." The man turned and rushed back the way he'd come, reappearing moments later with a battered airport wheelchair. "Want me to call you an ambulance?"

"Nah, I'm going by the hospital, anyway. I'll swing by so my wife can take a look at him."

"I thought you said she was a karate sensei," said Ianto.

"That's in her spare time," said Smith. "Her real job is head of ER at the local hospital." He leaned towards Johnny and muttered, "They work for the Queen. Guy in the chair's kind of out of his head. Can't risk people hearing his secrets, if you know what I mean."

Jack began to mutter rude, disjointed snippets about short little dogs and various royal facial features, making Ianto wince as he helped him into the wheelchair whilst Smith steadied it.

"Whoa! What's he got?" asked Johnny, as Jack launched into an incoherent rant in a truly wretched impression of Prince Charles's voice.

Ianto opened his mouth, only to have it shut as Jack switched characters to Princess Diana and started criticizing Charles's performance in bed entirely too loudly.

"Swine flu," said Ianto, pointedly. "We really have to get him out of here before anybody else hears him."

"Are you kidding? We gotta get this on YouTube!"

"Better not to," said Ianto, smoothly. "Don't want to cause an international incident, do we?"

"No," said Smith firmly, pre-empting Johnny's objection, "we don't. Not if we want to keep our jobs in this economy."

Jack's ramblings turned to Stephen Harper.

"Oh, dear," said Ianto. "This is going to get really rude, I'm afraid."

Johnny nodded and pulled out his iPod, eager anticipation all over his face.

Smith pulled the device out of his hand and glared at him. "Go get their bags and meet us out back."

Johnny sighed and stuffed some earplugs into place before holding out his hand. "Names? Claim tickets?"

Ianto handed him their boarding pass envelope and squeezed Jack's shoulder just a little too hard.

Jack started babbling loudly about Harper's bathroom habits.

"Anybody got any gaffer's tape?" asked Ianto, mournfully.

---

The cabin was remote, located in a peaceful spot on Gander Lake. Noticing a lifting of Smith's spirits, Ianto had coaxed an earplug out and into his hand and noted with gratitude that his time sense and movement seemed to have returned to normal. Jack looked and moved better, as well. So much so that he bounded out of the back seat before Smith's car came to a complete stop and made his way down to the lakeshore.

"I really am sorry about him," Ianto muttered to Smith as he started to open the passenger door.

Smith restrained him then with a hand on his arm. "You'll need this," he said, handing Ianto a folded piece of paper. "Don't let him see it."

Ianto glanced at the writing and froze, recognizing it as Jack's. He looked up at Smith, who nodded.

"Read it when he's asleep."

"Perfect," Ianto muttered.

"That should be around midnight," Smith replied.

Ianto's eyes widened. "Any more information about what's going to be happening tonight? What we're having for dinner, perhaps?"

"Oh, that's easy," said Smith. "Pepperoni pizza."

"Is that on here, too?" Ianto brandished the paper.

"No. There's only one place that delivers around here, and the pepperoni pizza is the only thing there that's any good. I'd recommend extra cheese."

"That'll be fine," said Ianto, with a forced smile. "Any chance of something green with that? Jack insists on vegetables."

Smith shook his head. "I wouldn't advise it. I can order you some V-8, though."

"That's all right, we can call them."

"No, you can't. No phones."

Ianto pulled out his mobile. "Got this."

"No reception. No internet, no TV, nothing."

"Then how will you-"

"CB radio," said Smith, picking up the handset. "Old, but handy."

"Not exactly secure, is it? Won't that let people know where we are?"

"It's my brother's place. I'll use the family code."

"Sounds good," said Ianto, game face on.

The pizza had been ... interesting. The garlic had been a nice touch, but he hadn't expected the blue cheese. Mixed with the mozzarella and cheddar, its medicinal taste had seemed out of kilter with the pepperoni and put him off after half a slice, and he'd let Jack consume the bulk of it whilst he picked at pepperoni bits and chewed on the crust.

Clearing up the dishes as Jack prepared to have a shower, Ianto pondered exactly what had inspired the Smith family to come up with the codename 'Odin's Thunder' for the cabin. Then he heard the flush of the toilet competing with the water for the shower and understood all.

"Sorry!" yelled Jack over the din.

In the space of three seconds, Ianto rejected attempting to correct the plumbing error that caused the problem, mostly because he hadn't studied Canadian plumbing codes.

The cabin was sparsely comfortable and quiet, aside from the obvious. Blissfully quiet. It was indeed without television, radio and Internet access, as well as phone service, and there was no mobile reception. Until Smith came to collect them at eight o'clock the next morning, he and Jack were effectively cut off from the outside world. Alone. Out of a myriad of choices, Ianto couldn't decide what scared him most about that.

He also had a hard time reckoning why it was that the silence bothered him, when it had always been something he'd craved before. He washed a plate, thinking back to a similar moment on the night when Jack had not let him escape, had not let him have the silence and solitude he'd so desperately sought, had brought leaky Thai takeout, and noise and comfort and personal terror to his life. To this day, Ianto couldn't look at an advert for an X-Men movie without grimacing through a silly grin as he remembered Jack in the Wolverine pyjamas on the night that everything had changed between them.

And then he wondered, as he washed the second plate, why the thought of accepting Jack's proposal-which he hadn't completely done, not really-was so terrifying to him. Had he been this afraid with Lisa? No, of course not. Except that where she had referred to him as her fiancé, he had steadfastly called her his girlfriend. He winced as he thought of Jack's continued hurt at his clay feet. Lisa had never said anything to him about the discrepancy between them. Nonetheless, he had noticed the looks, quickly hidden or banished, when he had bolted for solitude within the archives of Torchwood One or the nook he'd created for himself in their London flat with his books. She'd understood his need for it, just as he'd understood Jack's.

Only Jack had hurt him on occasion. He thought of when Jack had bolted for the Hub after Gwen's wedding, of how he'd refused Ianto's company as gently as he could, which wasn't really gentle at all. He thought of how he had fled from Lisa when his best friend from Newport had gone into the army, and again when he'd been killed in Iraq. "I'm sorry," he whispered against a sting of tears. He ached for her touch, just then. Longed for the comfort and softness of her arms, the whisper of her voice as he had heard it so rarely.

The ache threatened to overwhelm him and he reeled, blindsided by loss he'd thought long since mourned and put to rest. He'd cried so many tears that night that he'd thought it impossible ever to shed a single tear more, for any reason. He'd been wrong, of course, but he still kept hoping that one day, he'd put the indignity of tears behind him forever. Lisa wouldn't have wanted him to carry on so. She'd had a soppy side, to be sure, but even before she'd been mutilated in mind and body, she'd always been the take-charge, practical sort. He'd spent much of his suspension looking at pictures of her before the battle of Canary Wharf, and getting rid of anything made of aluminium or tin so that he couldn't be reminded of her fate so easily. Until her conversion, she'd been his anchor. Even afterwards, truth be told. He'd tried to be hers, but really, he'd just followed her orders. He'd never had any power with her after that.

With Jack it was different. Equal, he realised, though really it shouldn't be, given their relative ranks and positions. He valued and feared that more than he could admit to himself just then. He wondered when he'd started to feel truly competent and shut the thought down instantly, as he always did when he got too close to it.

He rinsed the sink, dried the dishes and put them away before looking at his watch. Quarter of eight. He sat and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to rub the sleep away from his eyes. Fuck, but it had been a-

"Long day?"

Ianto spun round. "Why the bloody hell do I keep forgetting to put a bell on you?"

Jack cocked a half smile at him. "Because," he said, slowly invading Ianto's personal space-slowly enough that he could be refused or escaped, Ianto noticed, "you don't want to mess up the view of my suprasternal notch." He rested his hands on Ianto's shoulders. Warm hands. Big hands, not at all like Lisa's, and so beautiful despite that. Comforting. Ianto would die for those hands.

"I did say that, didn't I?" Ianto's voice was much quieter than he'd intended it to be.

"What, no quip about it being banal or overly sentimental?" Jack's voice sounded a good deal more serious than Ianto imagined he had intended it to be.

He mustered himself and looked at Jack's throat, bared and framed by the open collar of a clean, white shirt. "It is a lovely sight," he breathed. He started to reach for it and faltered, remembering how Jack hated to be touched there. "Besides, how many people do you know who actually know the proper term for it?"

Jack smiled ever so slightly, which was lost on Ianto in the look Jack turned upon him. Probing, guarded, wistful. Infinitely sad for the briefest instant in a way that made Ianto want by turns to disappear by himself into the Canadian wilderness for good and hold Jack close enough to share a heartbeat.

Jack sighed a shaky breath and took Ianto's hand, placing it on his breastbone. Jack stroked Ianto's fingertips as they rested against the notch he'd admired from the minute they'd first met. "It's all right," he said, softly-a bit unsteadily, Ianto thought.

"I thought you didn't-I mean, I know you don't mind if I touch your face..." Like a moth to a flame, his free hand made its way to Jack's cheekbone. "But I thought the throat was still off-limits. At least, to my hands."

Jack held Ianto's hand against his throat, caressing it in a way that could turn passionate or violent with equal ease. "Not any more."

Ianto swallowed, unable to meet Jack's eyes as he stroked the delicate spot once-twice-relishing the subtle pulse under his fingertip as it came to rest at the point. He looked up then to meet an expression of such deep and unguarded yearning that he almost couldn't bear it. He took Jack's space, telling all his own reticence to stuff it, and kissed him, drawing him into a necessary embrace.

Jack held him tightly, burying his face against Ianto's neck and shaking. "Let's sit," he said, at last. "I don't think I can stand up much longer."

Ianto stroked the back of Jack's neck. "Sure you don't want to go to bed? I don't think I've ever seen you this tired."

"I need to sleep," said Jack. "I mean, I really need to sleep." He kissed Ianto's neck and pulled back, draping a heavy arm around his shoulders, steering them towards the sofa.

"And bed is a bad idea because...?"

"Because I need to be able to sleep."

"I thought extreme exhaustion generally made that possible," said Ianto, as they sat.

"Not when the nightmares are going to be this bad."

Ianto looked at Jack, then, noticing for the first time that he looked drained, somehow. Not the way that he did when he'd had a hard day, or had experienced unspeakable loss, but more as though he were coming to the end of himself. He caught his breath and steadied it as he remembered those eyes in the interrogation room. So bleak, so hard, so cynical in a way Jack never was, no matter how hard he tried to be. "You seemed to have a lot of trouble today, even after we put in the earplugs."

"You gotta tip your hat to the Calaxians. They really have a knack for selective breeding," said Jack with a smile. "By the way, did you feed them? They get kinda hungry after working so hard. Start making little earplug-sized holes in the furniture, if you're not careful."

"That would explain why they liked the birch bark better than the cheese."

Jack pulled the sofa blanket over himself, belatedly offering Ianto some of it.

Ianto rolled his eyes. "Because I'm not always cold," he quipped, and pulled it his way, settling slightly into Jack's offered arm.

"Too bad the fireplace doesn't work."

"If it's anything like the plumbing, it's probably just as well," said Ianto. "Wouldn't want to light a match and burn the place to the ground after Mr. Smith's been so kind to us, would we?"

"Not the best idea," said Jack, absently.

"Tell me, Jack," said Ianto.

"You're starting to sound like Gwen."

"I work with her twenty hours a day except when the Rift's quiet."

"Unless you're off on a special mission with me and she gets left behind to train the new crew," said Jack.

"Which took how long for you to find?"

Jack stiffened and began to pull away.

"I'm sorry," said Ianto. "That was a low blow."

Jack took a long time and then nodded slowly. "I deserved it."

"And I should let it go."

"It'll make things easier if you do," agreed Jack.

Ianto took Jack's hand and squeezed it before letting it go. "Tell me, Jack," he said, deliberately imitating Gwen, Swansea Valley accent and all.

"That SO doesn't help," laughed Jack.

Ianto smiled at him, feeling the tension lift as Jack returned his gaze and let all the work mask drop until it was just them, open to each other and caught in this snapshot of time he was sure he'd never forget.

Jack leaned forward and kissed him, then. It was soft and chaste and comforting and exactly what Ianto needed, which made him shiver.

Ianto kissed him in return when Jack didn't ask, wrapping his hand around the back of Jack's head and letting it trail down his neck to rest where Jack had put it earlier. Tell me.

Jack's eyes softened and he covered Ianto's hand gently with his own. "You've probably figured out that I'm crossing my timeline here," he began.

"The thought had crossed my mind," said Ianto, gently. "Is that what caused you so much trouble? You kept saying, 'Too close'."

Jack nodded. "Sort of. Crossing your own timeline is one of those big no-nos in the time agency, but it happens to all of us at some point. The trick is to know how to avoid yourself. They give you a year's training on it, which includes a controlled crossing so that you know how it affects you. Sort of like when parents get you drunk so you know what your limit is, or set up your first orgy so you know what your tolerances-what?"

Ianto was pulling back, his eyes going wide as saucers. "Parents? Set up orgies? For their kids?"

"They do in civilised places," snorted Jack.

"Oh, yeah, I forgot. I'm from a backward culture where kids are fucking mortified by any connection whatsoever between their parents and sex!"

"Hey, steady on! Why should the kids have all the fun? And besides, how would kids know about proper prophylactic application without parental supervision? Or the various uses, styles and flavours of sexual aids and toys that you simply can't get from your libraries or teachers? I mean, how would they know not to use peppermint lube during the mating cycle of the Lycorian squidmen when Lycorus has specifically forbidden the teaching of their practices in Sex Academy? And don't even get me started on technique! Why, I-"

"I change my mind," said Ianto, urgently. "Whatever you do, DON'T tell me. Not a thing. Ever. Seriously. In fact, please retcon me at your earliest available convenience." His eyes widened more. "You ... erm, you didn't actually have sex with your parents, did you?"

"Ugh! Of course not! I'm just saying that there are certain things that only your parents can teach you. I mean, a little judicious critique here and there is good, right?"

"What do they do, hold up score cards?"

"Not in my house," said Jack with a shrug. "But I did know this girl who-"

"So," interrupted Ianto, "about this controlled crossing. How did it affect you?"

Jack sniggered. "I so had you, there!"

"You are so going to sleep under the stars tonight," said Ianto. "Naked and with no blankets."

Jack pulled Ianto to him in that way that Ianto always wanted to hate and simply couldn't do without.

Ianto sighed, recognising the ploy, and wound his arms around Jack. "Too bad we don't have any good scotch," he said mournfully.

"Mm," hummed Jack into Ianto's hair. "I got sick the first time."

It took Ianto a moment to bring himself back through the orgy setup and the various images of parents judging the sexual prowess of their offspring before he recognised that Jack was actually back on topic. "The first time?"

Jack nodded. "Anybody who reacts like that, they make them cross again. If they can't handle it, they get booted and have their memories wiped."

"So to be a time agent, you have to have a strong stomach?"

"It helps," said Jack, evenly.

"Sorry," said Ianto.

"Look, some of us were more sensitive than others to certain stimuli," said Jack. "Different strengths and weaknesses, right? John was always really good at-"

"Murder and robbery?"

"That too. But what he was really good at was pinpoint accuracy. He could plot a course to anywhere in space-time, and be accurate to the millisecond and millimetre."

Ianto whistled. "Sounds like a useful skill to have."

"You could say that," said Jack. "Unfortunately, it didn't help his neuroses."

"Don't you mean psychoses?"

"That too," said Jack, quietly.

Ianto disentangled himself from Jack enough to sit up, back supported by the sofa, shoulder pressed to Jack's. He took Jack's hand, interlacing fingers. "You loved him, didn't you?"

"Yeah," said Jack after a long while. "I thought I did, anyway. But boy, I sure couldn't live with him outside that time loop!"

"He's in love with you, you know."

"He only thinks he is," said Jack, his voice filigreed with sorrow. "And even if he really is, there's too much that doesn't work between us."

"And maybe too much that does, in the wrong ways?"

Jack squeezed Ianto's hand, failing to cover up the sharp inhale. "Sure you don't want to go into psychology? You've got a knack for it."

Ianto snorted. "Only when I'm interested in what you're saying. Sir."

Jack kissed the back of Ianto's hand in homage, grinning so hard in his silent laughter that his eyes closed.

Ianto didn't attempt to hide the smile he felt spreading over his face. "What were you good at, Jack? At the time agency, I mean?"

"I can feel time."

"Ah."

"No, really. I always know when there's a disturbance. It happens all the time, everywhere, and I feel it all."

"How do you even manage to exist, let alone stay sane? Well, as sane as you do?"

Jack shrugged. "It becomes like background noise. It was rough when I was a child, though. Before I was about, oh, three and a half, I couldn't leave the house without getting sick, especially with all the time travel that was going on in the neighbouring systems."

"So," said Ianto slowly, "it must have been like living in a busy street in London and being hypersensitive to, what? Sound, perhaps? Exhaust fumes?"

"Sound is closest," said Jack, squeezing Ianto's hand. "You really are good at this."

Ianto squeezed back and let go, shifting so that he partly faced Jack, one leg pulled up on the sofa. "I'm really interested."

Jack smiled at him, a weight lifting. "You grow out of it after a while," he continued. "Or maybe into it. You get so you only notice the stuff that's unusual, unless you need to find something in the usual. Of course, when you can get everywhere by feel, there are certain disadvantages."

"Oh?"

"Well," said Jack, shifting self-consciously, "you, uh, don't necessarily have to be great at maths, and you don't necessarily need to pay a whole lot of attention to physics, quantum physics, space-time engineering, temporal mechanics or brane theory."

"Brain theory?"

Jack peered at him. "Are you thinkin' b-r-a-i-n?"

"Yup," said Ianto, taking his turn to squirm.

"So did I," said Jack, grinning. "Which in my day made me a very, very stupid candidate for the time agency, since everyone learned about it at home before they ever even started playing with other kids."

"So how is it spelt?" asked Ianto, growing a bit impatient.

"Oh! B-r-a-n-e. Sorry. It's short for 'membrane'. It's part of string theory right now, and in this time, it's expressed in mathematical and physics terms that give me a headache. Until I get some sleep, let's just say for now that the aliens who brought us down today work by cutting up or slicing out pieces of space-time that they can manage as physical entities in such a way that you don't notice, but that can unspool the very fabric of the universe."

"That'll make anyone have a bad day," said Ianto.

"Yes," whispered Jack, eyes suspiciously bright.

How many have you seen unspooled? "Were they there with us? In that room? When you collapsed?"

"I don't know," said Jack, blinking fiercely. "I just know that I was there."

"You mean, you from another time?"

"Yes." It sounded ripped from him.

"I take it things didn't go well on your second crossing?"

Jack laughed and took the opportunity to wipe his eyes and nose, quickly. "I got even sicker. They were kicking me out when I felt a time disturbance and saved two of the directors from being ripped apart by the intersection of two branes."

"So they decided they loved you, then."

"Well, not all of them. One of the others got kinda singed."

"Oh, dear," said Ianto. "What's the punishment for singeing a director of the time agency?"

"Sleeping with it, in this case."

"It?"

Jack shuddered. "Don't ask. I didn't enjoy anything about it, including my orgasm."

"Whoa! That never happens," said Ianto.

"Never have sex with a telepathic rock, especially when it's a control freak."

Ianto nodded earnestly to cover the disgusted scrunch of his face. "Sounds like good advice."

A few moments passed as Ianto allowed Jack to gather himself. "What happened in that room, Jack?"

Jack stared at a spot worlds away. "I felt my future self. And it-I-was so bitter. I couldn't-and then it-I-it was doing something to you, and I felt it-me-hating you, so angry with you because you left. I-it-could have killed you."

Ianto swallowed. "You didn't kill me when you should have," he pointed out. "What would have made your future self so angry with me that he'd want to kill me this time?"

"I don't know," said Jack, voice thick. "I just know that the feeling was there."

Ianto nodded.

"He wasn't the only one there, though," said Jack, with a frown.

"Oh?" said Ianto, looking up.

"Yeah," said Jack, turning slowly towards Ianto. "It was like there were little echoes of me here and there." He gave a distorted grin. "I mean, I always did have a big personality."

"Scintillating," agreed Ianto.

"Yes, that's what-oh." Jack blinked. "Ianto, you're brilliant!"

"Yeah, but why now?"

"Physics! Well, sort of."

Ianto simply blinked at him.

"Scintillation - a flash of light that is produced in a phosphor when it absorbs a photon or ionizing particle."

"Still not following you," said Ianto.

Jack turned bodily towards Ianto, mirroring his position on the sofa. "I'm a charged particle-"

"No argument there."

"When I go time travelling," continued Jack, pointedly, "I leave a signature wherever I go. Sort of a ... an imprint. Like if I pushed my thumb against your skin." He demonstrated.

Ianto watched as the skin on his hand first blanched and then turned to normal. "So you bruise the fabric of space-time?"

Jack nodded. Then lolled his head to one side. "Well, sort of. It's more like a flare that marks my position, only it's Jack-shaped."

Ianto smirked at that.

"You'd leave one, too."

"That's embarrassing, isn't it? My leaving a Jack-shaped impression on space-time? Sort of like a giant wet spot on my mam's clean sheets."

Jack cuffed his shoulder. "Impression of a giant pain in the ass, more like." He sighed and looked at his wrist strap. "This thing has a function that can find those signatures. It's beautiful, seeing space-time laid out like a phosphor. All those lights. It makes the night sky seem dull. Well, it does if you've got a Chief Director's scanner. They're the only ones who get to see everyone's signatures."

"So whose signatures can you see on yours?"

"Oh, just mine. Theoretically." Jack winked.

Ianto raised an eyebrow.

"Okay, so every time agent gets one of these things, right?" Jack brandished his wrist.

"I had formed that impression," said Ianto.

"The standard issue is one vortex manipulator, a basic bio-scanner-don't wanna be eaten by hungry natives, at least not like that, a holographic messaging system and a time signature detector to prevent you from meeting yourself and creating a pretty nasty paradox if you cross your own timeline."

"So you could check for yourself wherever you went? I'd have thought you'd like nothing better. Why don't I see you doing that all the time?" Three, two, one-

"Hey! I have a bad reaction to myself, remember?"

"Oh yeah, right. Sorry."

"No, but really," said Jack, more serious now. "I keep forgetting I have this because I never needed it. And now, I'm...." His skin turned pale.

"Scared," said Ianto, quietly.

"I have to get back to that airport," said Jack.

"Do you have to do it now?"

Jack's mouth opened to speak. "No." He looked down, as though trying to interrogate his lips. "No," he said again, coming to terms. "I'm just ... I need sleep." He turned desperate eyes on Ianto. "How do I sleep tonight?"

"Tell me about the non-standard issue."

"Huh?"

"The vortex manipulator?" Ianto tapped his own bare wrist.

"Oh! Well, you can beg, buy or steal certain additional features. Things like directed EMPs are pretty cool, though you have to hide them from the supervisors and you really don't wanna use 'em if you get distracted easily."

"Which is why you never got one."

"Oi! Well, okay, not at first," said Jack, a little testily, "but the one in here saved Gwen from-" He snapped his mouth shut, avoiding Ianto's eyes.

"Lisa's cyberconversion unit," said Ianto, quietly. "I wondered how you managed that."

Jack nodded, still not looking up. "I don't like using that feature near people. I had to point it right at Gwen."

"You could've used it to stop Lisa, couldn't you?"

Jack pulled in a desperate breath. "I saw someone die that way, once. He was wearing a metal cage, too, oddly enough. He was psychotic. Throwing people off buildings. One of the Assistant Directors made the decision to kill him before the guy went for the Chief Director." He looked up, then. "I couldn't do that to anyone else, ever."

"He made you do it," said Ianto.

"She. Mostly. And yeah, because I was the one on kill duty that hour. That was the day they decided to flunk me out of "I'll kill anything" and start me on interrogation."

"Which you got very good at doing."

Jack flashed a smile that Ianto had seen a thousand times. "Having a great package never hurts."

Ianto followed the inner niggle not to roll his eyes this time, watching Jack's expression change under his gaze.

"It was part of the job," said Jack. "After flunking killing the first time, I had to get good at interrogation, or I'd be offered to the rest of the trainees."

"For something other than sex, I presume."

Jack snorted in amusement. "Well, sex wasn't the goal, but it could be a method."

Ianto's eyes widened of their own accord before he forced himself to blink. "Leave it to the Time Agency to use sex as a means of execution!"

"It's hardly the first time in history," countered Jack. "The best assassins have been doing that since-well, since there were assassins, I suppose."

"Not the worst way to go, I suppose," said Ianto, trying very, very hard to excise the leering face of John Hart from his mind's eye.

"Depends on the agent," said Jack, with a leer of his own.

Ianto didn't blink away his surprise, this time. "You mean, you-"

"Killed a few people that way? No. Well, not on purpose...."

"No, not that! I mean-wait... by accident?"

"Well, there was this one guy who had a heart condition-that was after I got stranded here, and I didn't know he was sick, okay?"

Ianto pressed his lips together and simply shook his head once, ten degrees to the left.

Jack nodded slightly. "And there was this girl who-completely unbeknownst to me, mind you-had taken three too many N's."

"Ens?"

"Non-Regulated Energizers. Totally illegal. Everyone had 'em by the fistful several times a day. Well, not by the fistful, at least most of the time. Couldn't get through basic training without 'em. Anyway, she'd had too many, and her brain exploded when she came."

"So that's why you drink so much coffee."

"What, no 'Well at least she died happy'?"

"Erm..."

"Never mind! And then there was this cephalopoid. Oh god, they were gorgeous! Head like-"

"They?"

"Oh, yeah, they were a colony creature. Anyway, they had a head like an arrow and legs that could-whoa! Where're you going?"

Ianto looked down at himself, and then over at Jack, not sure which disturbed him more-the fact that he had seemingly teleported from the sofa to the kitchenette between 'legs' and 'could', or the fact that he was suddenly embarrassingly hard when the subject at hand was either sex that killed, sex with a cephalopod or sex that had killed a cephalopod. He didn't even allow himself to think about Jack killing people with sex-Damn! "Just gettin' some cof-water! Just getting some water," he said, bringing his heart rate and accent under control. "Want some?"

"Oh-ho-ho, yeah!" drawled Jack, focusing pointedly on Ianto's groin as he lay back against the cushions in an inviting sprawl. "You?"

Ianto stared at spread legs, delicious bulge, parted obscenely gorgeous lips, and then there were words coming from his own mouth: "Only if you promise not to kill me or turn into a squid." He closed his eyes. Jesus Christ!

"I may be flexible," purred Jack, "but I'm not a shape-shifter." He breathed in deeply. "Mmm.... You always smell so good when you're aroused."

"Fuck!" Ianto hoped that his mouth had been closed enough that Jack couldn't see or hear it.

"I sure hope so," said Jack, long fingers draped invitingly-pointedly-along the valley between leg and groin.

"Let me, uh, get the water," said Ianto, grateful for the dry rasp of his voice and the case it made for him to turn toward the sink and away from Jack before he started to fucking drool like a sex-starved idiot. Control, he thought, desperately. For god's sake, get a little fucking control!

Fortunately, two years, seven months and three weeks of dealing with Jack, including that recently revealed and now oft-tested ability to smell Ianto's arousal before even he was aware of it (something Ianto almost resented, but not quite) had trained him to walk wherever and whenever he needed to, regardless of how vehemently his dick complained. He did wonder sometimes, though, if he'd need special equipment to support it in his later years. If he had later years. He snorted quietly at the thought, the usual bitterness infusing his mouth.

He reached for the glasses in the drainer. He drew a breath as he turned on the tap. "Jack?"

"Yeah?" The happiness in Jack's voice made Ianto feel the worst kind of bastard.

"At the Time Agency, when you were training ... did the ... did you ever ... did-"

"Probably," said Jack, voice rich with amusement.

"Bastard," muttered Ianto.

"Language!" purred Jack.

Ianto didn't even blink as Jack breathed against his ear. "Bell," he murmured.

"What did you want to know?" Jack traced inside the rim of Ianto's ear, tongue flattening just enough to dip under the edge of the pinna, driving Ianto to quiet distraction.

"Ohhh ... umm ... just, er ... ooh! I ... ahh! You're not helping!"

"Sorry," said Jack, at exactly the pitch level that made Ianto's cartilage turn to jelly. "How 'bout this?" He wrapped one arm around Ianto's chest, fingers barely teasing a shirt-covered nipple as his other hand slid sinuously into place, firmly cupping flesh that Ianto thought might burst through strained material to meet it.

"Oh, god, that's so much worse," said Ianto, leaning back, barely remembering to be horrified by the ecstasy in his voice.

"So what did you want to know?" said Jack, hands still busy, this time with the huff against Ianto's tragus that made leg tendons go soft. "Careful," he murmured, steadying Ianto against him as he mouthed Ianto's ear.

He's distracting you, said the small voice that Ianto always knew he should heed.

"Am I distracting you?" Jack dragged lips that Ianto knew weren't quite swollen yet over nerves crying out for their attention.

God, his mouth! Ianto shivered.

"Oh, yes," said Jack.

"Did you ever die from sex at the Time Agency?" Ianto froze, half-startled that he'd actually asked the question, half-kicking himself for undoing the work he'd done trying to get Jack to relax enough to sleep. He braced himself, expecting Jack to withdraw.

Jack laughed quietly. "Is that what you wanted to know?" He kissed the top of Ianto's ear, nibbling it gently.

"Mmm...."

"No," said Jack, nuzzling the back of Ianto's ear. "I wasn't immortal, then. As far as I know."

"Oh, erm ... well, that's-GOOD!" This last was practically squeaked as Jack's mouth found a bundle of very tense nerves just behind Ianto's earlobe.

"That I wasn't immortal," Jack teased the sensitive spot with voice and breath, "or that I didn't die from sex?"

A long, hot swipe of Jack's tongue up the crease of ear and head, and Ianto spun around in Jack's arms, barely remembering to put the glass down first, pressing clothed hardness to-he looked down. "Good choice," he said, appreciating the sight of Jack's cock bobbing between pristine white shirttails for a brief moment before launching himself at the mouth that had so effectively turned him to sex-crazed mush for the thousandth time that year.

Ianto didn't really know how he'd ended up on the kitchen worktop, legs spread so wide he thought he'd split even without the impalement of Jack's cock, however welcome-necessary-it was. For that matter, he didn't know how he'd lost his trousers, pants, shoes and socks, or why he was still fully clothed from the waist up, excluding tie. Sort of. Well, actually, one could say that the tie had merely been relocated and was in fact now occupying Ianto's cock in such a way as to stave off the completion he'd been craving for far longer than he'd ever admit, especially to himself.

He also would never, ever admit to anyone that he never felt so alive as when he was connected to Jack. It was bad enough that he'd screamed out "Eternity!" one night when he climaxed-he clamped his mouth shut as Jack thrust just there and just right, not caring a whit that he bit his tongue and tasted blood, so long as what came out wasn't any more embarrassing than the wanton moan that wrenched his brain and made him even more painfully hard than he'd already been. He was never, ever-"Jesus, Jack!"-ever going to-"Oh, Christ!"-shout anything out-"Harder!"-that was anywhere near-"Mmf ... ohgodcomehere...."-(he really loved Jack's kisses, especially during sex, even if they were gasping, clumsy things and he couldn't quite breathe as Jack was loosening-removing the goddamned tie and stroking)-as embarrassing-"Oh, fuck!"-as that-"Goingtocomesohard...."-ever-"God, I love your cock, Jack!"-again. He hoped.

Jack went very still for a second before crying out and thrusting in so hard and so tenderly all at once that Ianto nearly went into the falsetto that hurt as he cried out his own encouragement and release as Jack trembled tight against him.

Ianto wrapped taut arms hard and low around Jack, pulling him in as far as he could go and whispering, "Rhyw" into his ear.

Jack gave a strangled cry then, hands clutching Ianto's shoulders, head lashing back and then pressing against Ianto's cheek as he came so hard that Ianto could feel it.

Ianto shuddered through an aftershock that hurt in its intensity. Sweaty, aching and sensitive beyond measure, he bucked and trembled in Jack's amplexus, too far gone to care that there was a part of him that hoped his current, rather pathetic state would never end. He held on tightly, knowing through the sex haze that Jack would withdraw soon and they'd pull themselves together and be happily independent again.

Instead of that, though, Ianto could feel Jack, still hard and twitching inside him, holding, clutching, grasping. He could feel Jack's face pressed hard against his neck, could feel the ragged breathing through hands pressed against shuddering back and breaths huffed against his own sweaty skin. "Jack?"

Jack pressed his lips hard against Ianto's cheek, and then found Ianto's mouth and kissed him deeply, opening to him in a way that Ianto didn't think he'd experienced before. Not even with Lisa.

Ianto broke the kiss gently when it seemed as though Jack's desperation had eased. "Jack, what's wrong?" He stroked damp hair away from eyes that-were open.

"Nothing," said Jack, in a voice that Ianto recognized but had never heard before. He leaned forward again for another kiss, slower, languid, deeply intimate in a way that made Ianto ache and crave and melt in a way that should have been obscene and wasn't.

Ianto took in a sharp breath at that realisation and once again broke the kiss. "Could we take this to the bedroom?" he asked against Jack's lips.

"Sure," said Jack, a soft, tired smile suffusing his face as he stroked Ianto's cheek. He showed no sign of wanting to move.

Ianto really didn't want to hurt Jack in what appeared to be a vulnerable moment, but it was still much harder than it should have been to refrain from rolling his eyes. "Then, er, would you mind..." he flicked his eyes down to where they were still very, very joined, "...before I get hip dysplasia?"

"Oh," said Jack, quickly. "Sorry." He pulled out carefully.

Ianto hissed at the feeling, and then gasped in pain as he tried to set his legs and hips to rights.

"Are you all right?" Jack set his hands on Ianto's hips.

Before Ianto could protest, the warmth from Jack's hands sank into his aching muscles and soothed them loose. "Ohh.... May be awhile before I can stand on my own, but yeah. Oh, yeah...."

Jack chuckled, but wouldn't meet Ianto's eyes. "Glad I could help."

Ianto pulled his legs together enough to wind them loosely around Jack's waist, stifling the wince that welled up. "More than." He kissed Jack softly. "I've missed this."

"Missed what? We had sex three-four ... days ... ago. Oh."

"Yup." A muscle spasm gripped Ianto's left hip. "Jack," he hissed.

Jack withdrew from between Ianto's legs and held out his hands. "Can you stand?"

"I bloody well hope so," muttered Ianto.

Jack smiled. "Come on, old man, I've got you."

"That's the pot calling the fucking teacup black!" Ianto eased himself off the worktop, refusing Jack's support and promptly stumbling and cursing in pain before Jack caught him.

"You're right. How about, 'Let me help you, you stupid prick!' Does that work better for you?"

"Twat!" But Ianto leaned against him anyway, as grateful for the warmth and closeness as for the physical support whose need was quickly dissipating.

Jack laughed. "Yeah, but you love me anyway."

Ianto stiffened for a fraction of a second before schooling it away. "In your dreams," he snorted, wincing inwardly at the vulnerability he heard in his own voice.

Jack cocked his head at him with an odd look for a moment before shrugging. "Can you walk, yet?"

Ianto took a tentative step, or tried to. "Only if you let me go or move with me."

"Oops," said Jack, relaxing his hold.

Ianto rolled his eyes, feeling blissfully normal for a second. He took a step. "Yes, I can walk."

"Good," said Jack, clapping him on the back, "then you can have a shower while I make sure the bed is clean enough for you."

Ianto blinked, turned and stared at Jack. "Who are you, and what have you done with my Captain?"

"The quicker you shower, the quicker we can be all cuddled up in bed together," said Jack with a once-over that ended with an eyebrow waggle at Ianto's groin.

"I'd be sick, except you leered at me."

Jack gave Ianto a sickly grin. "Aww, you love me."

"Don't flatter yourself."

"You so love me!"

"No I don't."

"Yes you do."

"No, I don't."

"Do, too!"

"Tell you what," said Ianto, putting on his best smile, "why don't we go see that panto that's playing when we get back home? You know, the one at the New Theatre? Let's see... green tights, guy's on every other series on the BBC?"

"Oh, yeah, him! He's cute!" Jack's eyes lit up. "And you'll take me to see him? You really, really love me!"

"Now I really am going to be sick."

Jack's face scrunched up in the silent laugh Ianto mostly loved. "You're grumpy tonight." He threw an arm around Ianto's shoulders and kissed his cheek.

Ianto was struck by how companionable it seemed. And then he saw the weariness underneath Jack's smile. "And you're sleepy." He slung his arm around Jack in return. "Now we just need five more dwarves and a beautiful girl, and we can have a panto right here."

"All we'd need is the wicked queen," said Jack, completely unable to contain the innuendo.

"There's always John Hart," grumbled Ianto, before he could stop himself.

The two-second interval was interminable before Jack said, "Yeah, he'd love it, but I'd prefer to see him as Widow Twankie, myself."

"You've just scarred my brain for life."

They reached the bathroom door. "Go on. Have your shower. I'll be waiting in-whoa!"

Ianto yanked Jack into the bathroom. "We're both sticky and need a cleanup, and you're exhausted. It'll be safer and quicker if I clean us up. Both of us. Just clean."

"I love it when you take charge!"

I love it when you do, thought Ianto. Then he shrugged as he stripped off his jacket and shirt, and said it to Jack.

"Do you?" There was something vulnerable and a bit fearful in Jack's voice. "I mean, I thought that, you know, in the bedroom ... you didn't ... well, you kind of...."

Ianto took Jack in his arms and kissed him. "I know you don't like to be in charge all the time." He pushed Jack's shirt down toned, tanned arms, kissing a muscled shoulder in the process. "Doesn't mean I hate it when you surprise me like you did tonight." He turned the shower on, holding Jack until the water temperature was right for them both. So important to find a lover with a compatible shower temperature.

"Best sex is nearly always a surprise." Jack's speech was slurred with exhaustion, even as he soaped Ianto's skin.

"Give me that," said Ianto, gently, taking the soap before it slipped from Jack's hands. "I remember you telling me that the best sex had to be planned out." He rubbed soap and warmth into Jack's tired muscles.

"Did I?" Jack frowned as much as he was able. "Must've been lying."

"Mm," agreed Ianto. "Never do it again." He shampooed his own hair quickly before pouring a blob into Jack's hand. "Do my back?"

"With shampoo?"

"Better than one of us slipping on a bar of soap."

"Point." Jack rubbed the stuff into Ianto's back quite dutifully, from the feel of it.

"Mmm, that feels so good, even when you're too tired to move properly."

"Never too tired to feel you up," said Jack.

"Spoken like a true pervert," said Ianto, turning in Jack's arms to hold him up a little. "Almost done, and then you can go to bed and be comatose for a few hours."

Jack's arms went around Ianto as he let his head drop to a waiting shoulder. "I'm so tired, I can't believe it. I never get this tired."

You do if you haven't slept properly in months. Ianto kissed Jack's head. "It's getting close to midnight, and you haven't slept in five days."

"Good point," said Jack, nodding slightly against Ianto's shoulder. "You feel good naked. Did I ever tell you that?"

"Yes, Jack, about a thousand times. And that's just in the last year."

"Sorry."

"Never hurts to hear it again, though," said Ianto, relenting.

"You feel good naked. Very, very good."

"I think we're done in here," said Ianto, turning off the water.

They dried each other off and headed for the bedroom. Ianto was very happy to find thick blankets and a duvet designed for winters far colder than any in Cardiff. "I'm going to be warm!"

Jack could only muster a sleepy smile as he all but fell into bed, holding out his arms toward Ianto. "Come here."

"Sop!"

"Yep. Big, romantic sop. Also great at torture-"

"A fact you've proven to me more than a few times...."

"Hey! I couldn't help it if you got into the Faloonian itching powder!"

"It wasn't powder at the time," said Ianto, testily. "It was beans. Beans that looked and smelt exactly like the Arabica beans depicted on the bag they occupied at the time."

"Well, I had to put them somewhere...."

"Old argument. Rotten thing to do, and you know it."

"Yeah, well, you got me back," said Jack.

Ianto scowled. "Took you five days to recognise that you were on decaf."

"That's because you served me the good stuff!"

"There is no such thing as 'the good stuff' when it comes to decaf."

"Yeah, well, you gotta admit the five-day withdrawal you put me through was pretty spectacular."

"Yup." Ianto settled into Jack's embrace. "Glad you're over it, by the way."

"Me, too! Wouldn't have made it through this trip, otherwise." Jack kissed Ianto's forehead. "Thank you for tonight," he murmured. He was asleep before the last 't'.

An hour later, Ianto had managed to slip out of Jack's arms, relieved when the only reaction to his movement had been a deeper settling into the warm spot he'd left behind. That never happened unless Jack was truly at the end of his endurance. Or as close to it as Ianto had ever seen. He wasn't sure he could face contemplating just how far from the mark he really was.

Sitting on the sofa with the note Smith had given him, he thumbed the paper. As he wondered about its source, he wondered if it really was paper or some futuristic amalgam of a substance he hadn't even dreamt could exist. Which made him realise that he didn't know everything. Which started to give him a headache. He sighed, rubbed at his forehead and opened the note.

The writing was unquestionably Jack's, even though it was different-less sure, as though he were out of practice. There was a smudge where a signature should have been, as though Jack had tried to obliterate something.

"Like I'd do anything else," muttered Ianto. "At least he remembers my name. Can't be from that far in the future, after all." He committed the number to memory. He committed every nuance of every stroke to memory, along with the exact size and feel of the paperstuff on which it was written. "Closest I'll get to spending your lifetime with you," he murmured.

And then he remembered the eyes that had locked with his, so full of bitter time. A wave of otherworldly cold overtook him and he shivered convulsively. And I thought I was so cool, fucking Eternity every night!

Caught in that lull of time that should have been three in the morning but came two hours early here, Ianto found himself faced with the very real choice of plunging headlong into certain death, going mad or saving himself. Just walking away from it all, never looking back. He could disappear into Canada, if he liked, or fly back to Cardiff, retcon Jack and Gwen and wipe all record of his existence within Torchwood clean. He could write himself a résumé and forge a set of recommendations that would get him any job in the world. He could make himself royalty, if he wanted, though the budget wouldn't allow more than a day's stipend for that without raising suspicion. The entire world was open to him, laid at his feet in a way that the richest people in the world couldn't have and would kill to get. He could do anything.

Except be with Jack.

What about madness, then?

It had an appeal. No responsibility, no memory that couldn't be dulled by a pill or driven away by retcon, if Jack cared to visit him in the loony bin. (Which he wouldn't, Ianto was sure.) He'd never have to feel properly again. Just have all his needs met without having to lift a finger or think or remember anything.

He snorted. "Romanticizing mental illness. Now I can add 'lazy bigot' to the résumé."

And he still couldn't be with Jack. Or Gwen. Or Rhys. And his life wouldn't have any meaning. Not after Torchwood.

Ianto sighed. "Certain death it is, then." He went back to bed, muttering inside about the tasteless spring in his step.

---

Peter Smith arrived at eight o'clock, coffee and doughnuts in hand.

Ianto waved him in past Jack's bleary-eyed hulk and took the coffees as he passed, sniffing one before offering the other to Jack.

"I didn't know how you took yours," said Smith to Ianto, "so I left 'em both black. There's sugar and cream in the bag." He dropped it on the kitchen table and sat down, fishing inside it. "Mind if I have the coconut one?"

"Not at all," said both Jack and Ianto, though Jack's voice was a little muffled by the coffee cup.

"There's a plane flying out to London at twelve seventeen. You need to be at the airport by ten fifteen."

"Security?" Ianto put a chocolate-frosted doughnut on a plate and nearly gave it to Jack before thinking better of it and guiding the man to the food, instead.

"You could say that," said Smith.

Ianto sipped the coffee and then added cream to it, hiding his distaste as he rummaged in the bag. "Can't you get us through faster? You are CBSA, after all." He pulled out a plain doughnut and sniffed at it. No blue cheese, thank God.

"I'm CBSA, not airport security," said Smith, pointedly.

"Ah."

"So what is it we're really supposed to do?" Jack sipped thoughtfully at Ianto's coffee.

"Go through security," said Smith. "And fix time."

Jack sipped more coffee until Ianto took back the cup. "And how do you propose we do that?"

"Stop the time dancers from messing with our brane."

Ianto nearly choked on his coffee.

"Time dancers," said Jack, thoughtfully. "Never heard them called that before."

"Don't know what else to call them," said Smith with a shrug. "Can't really see 'em except once in a while out of the corner of my eye, and then they just sort of dance right back into their hiding place. I figure they're hiding behind bits of space-time. You know, brane slices, or something."

Ianto didn't have to look or touch to know that Jack was tensing up and trying to hide it. Or use it.

Jack sat back slightly, poised in the position he used to lure his prey into spilling their secrets. "When did you see me for the first time?"

Smith held Jack's gaze. "When I first set foot in Gander airport."

"Which was...?"

"When I was five years old."

Ianto handed Jack the coffee.

"No disrespect, but that was some time ago, yeah?" said Jack.

"Forty-six years."

"And how many times have you seen me since?" Jack took a gulp of Ianto's coffee before handing it back.

"Since I started working there?" Smith shrugged. "I don't know. I think one time you didn't show up for six months, but usually it's a couple times a month, sometimes more." He peered at Jack. "You act like this is your first time, but...." He cocked his head and then shook it.

"What?"

"Never mind. They're after you."

"Any idea why?"

Only Ianto could see the infinitesimal shift of a muscle just under Jack's ear.

"They hate you? I don't know why. They just are."

"They probably hate you," said Ianto, taking a bite of Jack's doughnut.

"Hey!"

"Coffee," said Ianto, glancing pointedly at the nearly empty cup.

Smith stood up. "You guys packed, yet?"

"Yup," said Ianto.

"Almost," said Jack.

"You're packed," said Ianto.

"Of course," said Jack, voice and eyes softening a fraction.

Ianto rolled his eyes and downed the rest of the coffee.

Jack looked wistfully at the empty cup and the rest of his doughnut as it disappeared into Ianto's mouth.

Ianto picked up the bag and opened it, showing Jack three more doughnuts, two of which were chocolate-frosted. "There's coffee at the airport," he said, after swallowing. "Twat," he added, clapping Jack's shoulder as he handed him the bag.

Smith eyed them noncommittally for a moment before turning for the door.

---

Smith let them in the back door. "Don't look when I punch in the code," he said, moving his fingers slowly and carefully over the keypad. He looked at Jack as though it were something he'd said to him before. Frequently.

Jack snickered.

Ianto committed the code to memory, just in case.

Smith led the way through corridors that seemed dark for all their flickering fluorescent bulbs. Ianto slipped a pair of very healthy-looking earplugs into Jack's hand. "Want to try finding yourself, yet?" he murmured near Jack's still-empty ear.

"Not yet," said Jack, equally quietly. "I need to be in the middle of the building to see all the impressions. And I don't want to do this more than once."

Ianto felt a tremor run through Jack's arm as it bumped his own. He squeezed Jack's shoulder. "Don't blame you."

Jack sighed, more like a panicky breath that overtook him and needed to be blown out, and looked at Ianto. "Earplugs," he said at last, with a slight, fond smile.

"I just gave you-oh!"

Jack handed Ianto two wriggling, brand new earplugs before letting their parents settle into his own ears.

"Hey, you got any spares?" asked Smith. "They really seemed to work for you guys yesterday."

Ianto looked to Jack, who shrugged his permission. "Just let them work their way in." He handed Smith the newborns and let his own pair make their way into his ears.

Smith stared, first at the things in his hand and then at the ones crawling into Ianto's ears.

"They'll want a nice little box at the end of the day and a bit of food every so often," Ianto continued. "They seem to like the birch bark around here. Only don't feed them too much!"

"Sound like Tribbles," said Smith, eying the earplugs.

"Yup. Don't let them get cold."

"And don't give 'em out to just anyone when they breed," said Jack, pointedly.

"Should I name them?"

"Oh no!" said Jack and Ianto.

"Bad idea," said Ianto with a shudder.

"Very bad," agreed Jack. "They'll get way too close to you if you do that."

"Well, they are kinda cute," said Smith, dubiously.

"He means literally," said Ianto.

"They'll burrow way deeper than you want 'em to go," said Jack.

"Couldn't the Calaxians have designed earplugs that didn't crave affection?" said Ianto, rather pained.

"Well, at the time their society was predicated on-never mind," said Jack. "TMI."

Ianto's eyes widened, as did Smith's.

"TMI? From you?" said Smith.

"No such thing," said Ianto at the same time as Smith.

Ianto glared at him.

"Hey, I figured out he was an exhibitionist when I was five," said Smith.

"I'm really, really sorry to hear that," said Ianto, fervently. They rounded the corner in unexpected silence, and Ianto glanced at Jack and then at Smith. "Don't forget the earplugs," he said quietly to Smith, aware of voices and more crowding through the door and up the escalator.

Smith hesitated a moment before holding one up to his right ear, as Ianto had done. "Ohh that's not so good."

"Takes a bit of getting used to," said Ianto. "Best let the other one in before you have second thoughts."

"Too late," said Smith, but he took Ianto's advice with a grimace, shivering as the other plug found its way into his ear.

"It gets better in a moment," said Ianto.

"I'll believe it when ... oh. Oh, wow! Say something."

"Something," said Jack, under his breath. He was fiddling with his wrist strap, Ianto noticed.

"I can hear you, every nuance of your voice! But my brain's not turning to mush, anymore."

"That's the beauty of these things," said Ianto. "They block out unwanted psychic emanations and telepathic signals."

"And jam frequencies you don't want to hear," added Jack as they stepped through the door. "Now hush! Don't wanna raise suspicion."

"Does that mean I don't have to hear anymore songs I don't like on the radio?"

"I'd love never to have to hear Dancing Queen again," said Ianto.

"Me too," said Jack. "Now shh!"

"Mine's Barry Manilow," said Smith to Ianto in a stage whisper.

"I sort of like him," muttered Ianto.

"And you're totally wrong," said Jack, but the vehemence normally present for this argument was absent as Jack stared ahead at the central concourse looming before them. "Peter-"

"That's Pete. Or Mister Smith, if you like The Matrix."

"Pete," said Jack, pointedly, "can you get me to the exact centre of the building?"

"Horizontal or vertical?"

"Both."

"That might be hard." Smith led the way through the crowd and stopped right in the centre of a knot of people. He pointed up. "If you can levitate about four feet, you're there."

"Very funny," said Jack.

Ianto was almost certain that he could hear Smith muttering, "You could two weeks ago," sotto voce as he looked around the crowded room.

Jack shook his head as though something had brushed past his ear. "It doesn't have to be that exact." He looked around. "Too many people here."

"There's an executive room over there," said Smith, pointing to a door fifty yards away. "Will that do?"

"I don't know-"

"You'll skip the security line that way," offered Smith.

Jack blinked.

"I thought we already had," said Ianto.

"Oh, no," said Smith. "Not even my sister escapes security. But if you're a VIP, we can bring security to you."

"I can feel it," murmured Jack, not meeting anyone's eyes.

"You alright, Jack?" said Ianto, edging closer.

Jack gave a curt nod. "Let's do it."

As they entered the room, Jack blanched and faltered. "No," he said, barely audible, arm flung unwittingly across his stomach.

"Jack?"

Jack waved Ianto off and tottered towards the wall nearest the centre of the building, taking a deep breath before holding out his wrist and tapping the strap.

It simultaneously darkened the room and projected a hologram of the building. There was a red light roughly in the middle of it. "That's me," said Jack.

Ianto moved slightly closer, squinting at the image. "'You' you, or some-other-time you?"

"'Me' me," said Jack, his voice relaxing the tiniest bit in amusement.

The wrist strap emitted a single beep and a faint, white light appeared behind and to the right of the red one, making Ianto aware of the outline of a wall in between them. "Is that you, as well?" said Ianto.

"Yes," said Jack, tense again, "but not at this time."

The strap beeped again, another white light appearing just before a second beep, a third, four more ... and then dozens of beeps and lights were popping in all over the virtual rooms in the hologram. They came so thick and fast that the beeps blurred into a mewl that started to feed back on itself, piercing Ianto's ears and causing the earplugs to wail inside his head.

"Can you turn that off?" shouted Smith.

Jack didn't respond.

Ianto closed the distance between them in less than a second, though it seemed like years of struggling through pain, and gripped Jack's arm, hard. "Jack! Volume control, for god's sake!"

Jack seemed to wake up, grimacing as he tapped frantically at the screen. The sound stopped, but the lights kept coming. And coming. And coming.

Ianto's hand grew slack against Jack's arm as they stared together at the display.

Smith muttered a string of syllables in a language Ianto didn't recognize, though he was pretty sure of Smith's meaning.

The lights blanketed the holographic building and then spilled out into what Ianto assumed was the surrounding area outside. And overhead, underneath, inside walls and girders....

"Jack," murmured Ianto, "your wrist is smoking."

Jack slapped right hand haphazardly over left wrist.

The lights froze for a few seconds before the image dissolved.

Ianto caught Jack as he fell.

In the haze of easing Jack to the ground, checking for a pulse (a bit faster than usual, but slowing and present), Ianto forgot to worry about Smith's presence until a bottle of water appeared over his shoulder.

"He always asks for water when he's in trouble."

"Yes, I know," said Ianto, a bit testily. How do you fucking know? he thought, with even less good grace. "Thanks," he added, as he took the bottle. "Don't suppose you have any smelling salts?"

"Don't need 'em," said Jack, one hand flapping about for something.

Ianto assumed it was water and unscrewed the cap, only to have his arm gripped painfully hard. "Jack?"

"Too many mes." Jack stared ahead, unfocused.

"Now you know how I feel," quipped Smith.

Jack blinked, an odd expression on his face that caused Ianto to glare at Smith. And then he chuckled, forestalling Ianto's salvo. "How many of me have you seen?"

"At one time?" Smith shrugged. "Usually just one. Sometimes there's two or three. The worst was when there was ten of you."

"Sounds like I had my own back-up chorus." Jack squeezed Ianto's arm and sat up, taking the water bottle and a long pull from it.

"Something like that," said Smith, "although some of you looked a bit sick."

"I bet they did," said Jack, as he stood up, tossing the empty water bottle back to Ianto.

Ianto rolled his eyes and turned to Smith. "Recycling?"

"Don't worry about it. The cleaning crew will get it later."

With great effort of will, Ianto placed the bottle on a nearby table and tried to think of other things. Like how Peter Smith knew more about Jack than he did. Like how Peter Smith had met Jack from more times than he ever would. Like how Peter Smith would become Jack's focal point through god-knows how much of space-time when he would probably be forgotten in a mere fragment of it. Except that there was at least one point in space-time where Jack blamed him. Hated him enough to wish him great harm.

Perhaps obsessing on what happened to the water bottle would be better. As Jack and Smith chatted in the background, Ianto gazed at the plastic, at the drop of water hanging just on the lip and pondered what would happen if it let go and slid down to stain the wood of the table. Would some political VIP complain about it if someone didn't capture it before it spoiled the look of the mahogany veneer? More like his minion, thought Ianto. Making certain that the others were looking well away from him (not hard, as they had eyes and ears only for each other at that point, he noted with more irritation than he cared to admit), he touched the corner of a tissue to the drop and watched it crawl into the porous paper.

And then he looked up. "Jack?"

Jack turned around. "Yeah?"

"Are you everywhere?"

"Huh?"

Ianto couldn't help thinking that Jack looked as though the idea scared him so badly that he wasn't even prepared to understand it. "Are you everywhere on Earth, through time, or just here?"

"Oh, god...."

"Here," said Smith. "Mostly."

Ianto and Jack turned to him.

Smith shrugged. "It's what my sources tell me."

"Your sources?" said Jack.

"Plural?" said Ianto.

"Nobody you haven't mentioned already, and you know the rules," said Smith.

"Which you just broke," said Jack, pointedly.

"Only to keep you from throwing up on the rug," said Smith.

"Why here?" said Ianto. "Peter, how often have you seen the Time Dancers?"

"Seen? Not too often. But they're often here. Looking for you," Smith nodded at Jack.

"So what's stopped them from catching you?" asked Ianto.

"I'm good," said Jack, flatly.

"Maybe they don't want to catch you," said Smith.

There was an uncomfortable silence before Jack huffed noisily and shook himself. "So, Pete, when's security getting here?"

"As soon as I check in for work and tell them to get themselves up here," said Smith.

Ianto nodded appreciatively at him. "Excellent." He made his way to the door and peered out, narrowly avoiding a collision with a young man rushing by whilst in a heated conversation with someone on his mobile.

And then, the thing that had been niggling at him struck him, full force. "Jack, everyone seems normal."

"You never say that," said Jack. "Are you sure you're okay?"

Ianto rolled his eyes as Smith joined him at the door and then stepped out into the concourse for a moment.

"He's right," said Smith, pulling out his earplugs. "They're not here right now."

Ianto turned to Jack with a sense of relief only to see a look of confusion shifting like quicksilver into one of horror.

"They're going to the Hub," said Jack.

"I thought this was their hub," said Smith.

"It's-" Ianto stopped himself as Jack gave a minute glare.

"Oh, your base of operations," said Smith.

Jack's shoulders slumped a touch.

"Hey, remember I know about Torchwood," said Smith. "Hub, huh? You guys based at an airport?"

"You know if we told you that, we'd have to kill you," said Jack, with one of those cocky side-smiles that never reached his eyes.

"Definitely your first visit here," said Smith.

Ianto almost laughed at Jack's expression. "So does this mean it's a good time to make our escape?" he asked, instead.

"Good as any," said Jack, absently.

"If you want to stand in line for security," said Smith.

"We're British," said Ianto. "We're good at queuing."

---

The short queue and longer wait in the terminal had provided them with an opportunity to run quiet scans of Gander International, which they could only store for future reference and analysis once they had access to the Hub's mainframe. Ianto sighed about this as he tried to shift for greater comfort during the flight to Paris. Jack was restless and twitchy, his conversation stilted and uncharacteristically lacklustre, but every time Ianto had tried to drift off, Jack had jerked or joked or sighed loudly enough to prevent it. Unfortunately, the flight was fuller than it had been when they'd set off from New York, so they couldn't safely discuss anything work-related. Ianto, in turn, couldn't face anything personal, and Jack ... Jack, in the end, had just looked at him with such unfathomable pain that Ianto had sighed and raised the armrest between them, allowing the physical contact that always seemed to quiet frayed nerves.

Neither of them yet dared to listen to any sound system, which left reading, which was made difficult by Jack's insistence on pressing himself against Ianto's right arm and pretending that he had no idea that he was doing so, no matter how many times Ianto tried to convey the message without resorting to physical violence. This, then, left thinking.

In barely a year, they'd found and lost nine people. Emily and Jack (Ballard) had been killed quite promptly by a sentient (and hungry) bench that the Rift had dropped in a picturesque spot near the Scott memorial on Mermaid Quay. It was too bad, really, as Jack (Ballard) had been a good doctor with a professional, unflappable demeanour who hadn't sworn at or attempted to kill him during their brief acquaintance. Emily, on the other hand, had been planted by the Prime Minister, who had been none too pleased at her demise.

Ewan had been badly traumatised by the symbiote that had leapt through the abdominal wall of the Dibnian Ambassador on the autopsy table and performed a predatory tap-dance on Ewan's face. They'd had to apply retcon three times before it had finally taken and he'd secured a UNIT posting in Singapore.

Mickey and Martha had been brilliant as temps, of course, and then there'd been Joe (died of an aneurism) and Anna (retconned) and Phillip the sleeper agent (executed - several times).

Saira had been another government plant. They'd always suspected, as she'd been exceptionally nosy about the records they kept. However, just as Gwen had figured out how best to sack her for gross incompetence, Ianto had walked in on her as she was taking a drink of water, naked, through her roots. Even Jack had said that she'd been Torchwood's first government plant in the literal sense.

He missed Tosh so much it hurt, especially at times like this, when they so desperately needed technical help on matters that were beyond even Jack's grasp. He wasn't sure he'd ever quite be able to forgive Jack for the method of her recruitment, but she really had been the most essential part of their operation to protect the citizens of Great Britain and save the world from alien threat. And if truth be told, he missed Owen, maybe just as much, although he couldn't always figure out quite why.

"Penny for 'em," said Jack, softly.

Ianto pulled himself together and slotted his mask into place. "I was just hoping that Gwen's doing all right with Bethan and Anwar," he said.

"Well at least they passed the drinking test," said Jack.

"Thank heaven for small mercies," said Ianto.

"I miss Owen," said Jack.

"Me, too," said Ianto.

"And Tosh," said Jack with Ianto.

Ianto took Jack's hand and looked around, risking a brief kiss to Jack's temple when nobody was looking.

Jack laughed slightly through misty eyes and squeezed Ianto's hand without trying for anything more.

Ianto returned the gesture with a sense of relief that clawed at him.

---

"We should get to the Hub, Jack," said Ianto, as he rang off with Gwen.

"And I thought I was the one who never slept!"

Ianto squirmed. "Yeah, well, the earplugs are getting hungry, and Gwen told us to go home."

"See? We can-"

"Her exact words were, 'Look, Ianto, I can't talk right now, so just go home and I'll see you both in the fucking morning!'"

Jack executed a J-turn and floored the accelerator. "Why didn't you say so?"

"I give up."

"No you don't," smirked Jack. "That's why I hired you."

"Well at least she didn't sound like anyone was trying to steal her brane."

Jack glanced sharply at him. "However you're spelling that, I hope you're right."

Any misgivings Ianto might have had about finding a Hub invaded by Time Dancers were laid - or shoved - to rest when Gwen launched herself at the two of them and hugged the stuffing out of them. Her "Thank God you're here! I thought I told you to go home!" tumbled out all at once as though it were one word.

"You can thank Ianto, and obviously you didn't mean it," said Jack, almost as fast, before pressing a quick kiss into her hair. "What's going on?"

"What isn't?" countered Gwen, pulling back and pushing her hair out of her face.

"Oh, I dunno," said a male voice from the general direction of the autopsy bay. "Could be worse."

"Hey, Anwar," said Jack, shaking the hand the man proffered. "Stripped any good aliens, lately?"

"Only in the line of duty," said Anwar. "Got a hydra sort of thing down in one of the cells, but the issue there was more keeping its clothes on."

"He's right about that," said Gwen, wearily.

"Nice to see you're still here," said Ianto, shaking Anwar's hand.

"We had to wrestle it back into its clothes when we caught it with Bethan," continued Gwen.

"Is she all right?" asked Jack.

"Sort of," said Gwen.

"What do you mean, 'sort of'?"

"Well, she's all right physically," said Anwar, "at least mostly. Still hasn't cleared all the powder from her system."

"What powder?"

"Blue stuff," said Rhys, emerging from the stairway to the vaults with Ianto's silver-plate serving tray in his hands.

"What are you doing with that?" asked Ianto, thoughts of Rhys serving Janet coffee coursing unbidden through his mind.

"And why the penguin suit?" asked Jack, his voice thick with lust.

"Oi!" said Gwen and Ianto.

Rhys merely smiled and drew himself up. "Because our guest requires service fitting an establishment of this calibre." He nodded correctly and stalked towards the serving station, where he deposited the tray.

"What guest?" said Jack, fixing Gwen with his stare.

Gwen sighed. "Bethan," she said, shaking her head as she made her way to her workstation. The way she sat down made Ianto think that she hadn't had a chance to do that in several hours.

"What? Wait ... was that powder sort of blue and sparkly?"

"Blue, yeah," said Anwar. "Sparkly? Well-"

"More like shimmery," said Gwen.

"Like water on a sunny day," added Rhys.

"And the hydra...?" prompted Jack.

"Was close to her," said Anwar, guardedly.

"Very close," said Rhys, looking with great interest at the water tower.

"They were shagging when we got back with the weevils," said Gwen.

"Shagging?" Jack glared at Gwen.

Gwen snorted. "You're objecting? You?"

"She's got a point, there," said Ianto.

Jack shot him a look.

"Well she does," muttered Ianto.

Gwen rubbed her forehead. "She was meant to be on comms. We lost touch as we were coming back. You've got six new weevils in the vaults, Ianto."

"Along with a co-worker who's been hit with spawnium," said Jack, as Ianto went immediately to his workstation to look it up.

"Spawnium. You're joking, right?" said Anwar.

"No, but the Time Agency were when they coined the name," said Jack.

"Spawnium," said Ianto. "A blend of Antarean elm pollen, Barcelonian rock pheromones and ... LSD? Jack, really?"

"Lycoran Slug Dust," said Jack. "Well, dung, really, but dust sounds so much nicer for a sex powder, don't you think?"

"Gwen, love, have you got any retcon lying around?" asked Rhys.

"Number one date-rape drug in the galaxy," said Jack. "Totally illegal under the Shadow Proclamation, but nobody does anything to stop it. We'll have to keep it contained here, though. Anybody besides Bethan breathe it in or touch it?"

"Well, Gwen and Rhys gave me a bit of a scare for a moment-"

"Watch it, mate! We're fucking married, you know!"

"But," continued Anwar, "it was just a married thing. As Rhys pointed out."

Ianto busied himself with uploading the scans from Gander to the mainframe, refusing to look at Jack, even though he was sure Jack wouldn't notice.

"So," said Jack, after a pause that lasted just that eternal nanosecond too long, "how long ago did all this happen, and where does Bethan think she is?"

"We found them four hours ago," said Gwen.

"And she thinks she's having a holiday at the St. David's," said Rhys.

"She obviously hasn't been there, then," said Ianto.

"What makes you say that?" asked Anwar.

"The men there don't wear tailcoats," said Ianto.

"And how would you know that?" asked Jack, from far too close by.

"I was just, er, there."

Jack leant in to look at the screen, and then down to affix Ianto. "Doing what?"

Ianto resisted the urge to tug at his collar. "Rhiannon's planning a do."

"Rhiannon?"

"My sister."

"You have a sister?"

Ianto blinked himself back to reality. "Twat!" he said, glaring at Jack.

"Oh for god's sake, get a room!" said Gwen.

"Are you sure you didn't meet a hydra with some shiny blue powder on the way in?" asked Anwar.

"They're always like that," said Gwen.

"Squabbling like an old married couple," said Rhys.

Ianto swallowed the wrong way and choked.

"More like a studiously unmarried couple," said Gwen.

Jack cleared his throat.

"One that couldn't make up its mind, I'd have thought," observed Anwar.

"Coffee, anyone?" Ianto hoped fervently that he'd hidden any begging that might have tinged his voice.

"Bit late at night for me," said Anwar.

"Er, no thanks," said Rhys, shifting his feet.

"Not tonight, sweetheart," said Gwen.

Jack looked around at the others. "What's going on here?"

Ianto looked from face to uncomfortable face. "What happened to the coffee machine?"

Gwen and Rhys glared at Anwar.

"Well, I don't have much of a sense of smell," he said, defensively.

"Which is one reason we hired you," said Jack, helpfully.

"Yeah, exactly! 'Cause I didn't pass out over the Vominoxian."

"Mmhmm," said Jack. "And what does this have to do with what happened to the coffee machine?"

"Well, they look a lot alike," said Anwar.

"What are you talking about?" said Ianto, dangerously.

"That's the thirty second warning, mate," said Rhys.

"I put cocoa nibs in the machine instead of coffee," said Anwar.

With a furious intake of breath, Ianto was out of his chair and stopping two feet in front of a very unsettled-looking Anwar. He smiled sweetly. "Come with me," he said.

"I've heard about you," said Anwar. "What you going to do to me?"

"I'm going to show you how to clean the coffee machine. Very thoroughly."

---

Nightmare was Cybermen in evening gowns demanding silver service for their vegetables whilst trying to kill Jack, who was no longer immortal. Gwen was their impossibly reluctant Cyberqueen who was trying to make very sure that Jack stayed alive and that Ianto was properly thanked for his service by her minions. She also seemed to want him properly fed before his evening sacrifice, because she kept trying to tell him that she had food for him. He kept trying to tell her that it was all right, he was just serving dinner to the Cybermen, and he'd be done in just a tick. Her voice kept getting lower as she insisted he eat....

"Dinner is served, sir."

Ianto blinked at Jack and dinner, which was Chinese takeaway. "Dinner and nightmare. Business as usual, then."

Jack nudged him over and sat down next to him on the sofa, handing him a bowl of Buddhist's Delight.

"Better than blue cheese and pepperoni," said Ianto, sniffing at it.

"Never say I don't do you any favours," said Jack, a tinge of brittleness under the tease. "How was the nightmare?"

"Cybermen in frocks demanding good service, Gwen trying to feed me and keep you alive, Gwen turning into you ... you know, the usual."

"Interesting about Gwen turning into me. Is there something you need to tell me about our arrangement?"

"Yes, Jack. I'm a bisexual woman."

"Oh, yeah? Lemme just check that," said Jack, hand drifting to Ianto's crotch before he'd finished the sentence. "Hmm.... Nope, not a woman. Well, not a human woman. Well, not from this century. Although, I did know-"

"Hands off the tackle and mouth closed unless you're putting food in it."

"Tetchy!"

"Tired."

Jack rubbed Ianto's neck. "Long fortnight."

Ianto hissed.

"Sorry," said Jack, resting his hand lightly-so warm-on the base of Ianto's neck.

"Didn't know how tense I was," muttered Ianto.

Jack's fingers began to move again, and Ianto could feel the pain building.

Too much, too much, too fucking much. "Jack, just ... eat."

Jack gave a small sigh and withdrew. "Like I said, tetchy." He squeezed Ianto's thigh before turning to his own food. "Want me to sleep in the other room, tonight?" he asked around a mouthful of it.

Yes, by all that's fucking holy, YES! "Well-" And then he registered the act in Jack's voice. "Don't know, yet. Let me eat in peace, and you never know."

Jack nodded and ate, the effort of silence all but deafening.

Ianto gave an inward sigh and ignored the din, focusing on the taste of his food and collecting his thoughts and fractured space. Absently, he wondered if the Time Dancers had stolen part of his brain, or at least if one of their brane thefts hadn't unspooled part of its DNA.

And what of Jack? How much of his DNA would be unspooled, if the Time Dancers had their way? Would it kill him? There was a time - not long ago, although a year at Torchwood seemed an eternity, in retrospect - when Ianto would have thought that surely, it would. But now, faced with at least one future Jack who was coping - or not coping - with the Time Dancers' threat, Ianto wondered. And as he wondered more deeply, he wandered into imagining life as a massive thread of unspooled life chain. Or as an impossible thing. He sneaked a sidelong look at Jack - gorgeous skin working over broad cheekbones and prominent temporomandibular joint. Clear, blue-no, grey-eyes focused absently on his food; long, silky lashes framing his vulnerability. Luscious lips that Ianto had kissed thousands of times and still couldn't ever get enough of. Cleft chin that, when thrown back, looked more like an alien mandible hidden under overly stretched skin. That odd juncture of chin and throat that made him look a bit like a granny when it was canted just so or he was lying on his back in sleep and Ianto could sneak a look at him from just off his shoulder. Odd, that. Ianto thought Jack the only person in the world to have a receding throat. And the way that he turned his head as he was trying to capture a bean sprout slipping off his chopsticks was just - alien - as though he were sort of a lizard man going after a worm. Ianto blinked, then, to find Jack staring back at him, bean-worm dangling from the left of his lower lip.

"What?"

"Oh, er, n-nothing," said Ianto. He made a smile sprint across his face. "Just lost in thought, is all." He addressed his food, taking a bite whilst looking at Jack with just the saucy smirk that always worked.

Except this time.

"No, you weren't," said Jack, pulling the sprout into his mouth and finishing it. "You were staring." He drank some of his water.

"Where are you from, Jack?" Fuck! Am I really that tired?

"I'm from Cardiff," said Jack, with a wink that hadn't covered up his wariness for over a year.

"Originally," supplied Ianto. In for a penny, in for a pound.

"The Boeshane Peninsula," said Jack slowly.

"Yeah, I know that." Losing my nerve.

"Ianto, you know that-"

"Are you human?" Bloody hell....

"That's not a question I get asked every day," said Jack, putting his food on the coffee table. "At least, not anymore."

His hand's shaking. "So, are you?" Bastard, Jones!

"Would it make a difference to you if I weren't?"

"I suppose it would depend on what you actually, uh, were." Bastard, Jones!

"So you wouldn't want to live with me if I turned out to be a giant squid?"

"Well, I don't know about that," said Ianto. "After all, your hands do seem to manage being everywhere at once." He smiled at Jack, wondering if he could perhaps steal away and restart the day. Or perhaps the year. With Future Jack hanging about in Gander and a Time Lord apt to pop in without a moment's notice, it really shouldn't be all that difficult....

Jack huffed. "Glad I could oblige," he said. Then his lips quirked in that inquisitive way that always signalled danger. "This wouldn't have anything to do with you stalling on our civil partnership, would it?"

"No," snorted Ianto. Yes.

"Oh yeah?" Jack folded his arms. "Then how come the stick up your ass just got a stick up its ass?"

Ianto flinched inside. "I thought we weren't going to bring Owen in here too often."

Jack managed his chest-up, down-the-nose stare even as his exhaustion radiated from every muscle.

Ianto deflated. "No," he lied again, at least in part. "It's more to do with the fact that you looked for a minute like a space lizard with a worm hanging out of its mouth, and I'm too tired for that." Alright, that bit's true.

Jack's body crumpled in an odd way and he ended up half slumped against the back of the sofa, rubbing his eyes. "I have my grandmother's throat," he said, through moist laughter.

"Erm..."

"We used to call her Lizzie, and she'd always insist her name was Brenda. She didn't know it was short for Lizard."

"She knew," said Ianto, taking another bite. "They always know." Then he blinked. "Your grandmother's name was Brenda?"

"Yeah. Well, as close as it gets in Boeshane, anyway. Why? What's wrong with Brenda?"

"Nothing," said Ianto, hastily. "Just ... seems sort of ... ordinary, is all."

"You mean Welsh," said Jack, reaching for his water.

"Well, now that you mention it-wait.... You're Welsh?"

"Well, yeah! Look at my passport!"

Ianto rolled his eyes and glared.

"Not originally," said Jack. "Why? Do you only marry Welsh people?"

"Hello. Lisa."

"Okay, so do you only marry people from the UK?"

"Well, I ... dunno, yet."

"But you don't marry...?"

"Poodles," said Ianto, immediately.

"I should never have let you read Gwen's report," muttered Jack, not for the first time.

"I would've got round you," said Ianto.

"You always do."

The silence that fell was sudden and uncomfortable.

"So why are you?" Jack's arms were folded again, the down-the-nose, challenging stare back in place, even though his body was slumped.

"Why'm I what?"

"Trying to get around me?"

"About...?"

"The CP."

"I'm not." Not really.

"Yes, you are."

Yes, I am. "No, I'm not."

"Okay, can we stop with the panto, now?"

"I've just been... " procrastinating "busy."

"We're always busy, and you get more done than any five people in any room at any time, anywhere!"

"Yeah, well ... I don't usually have to go to Paris, Rome and New York to save national monuments, or deal with fut-fucking aliens trying to steal space-time."

"Yes, you do," said Jack after a pregnant pause.

"Yes, well-"

"I'm going for a walk," said Jack, rising abruptly and cutting off any more 'yes, wells'.

"Jack-"

But the door had already closed.

---

An hour later, Ianto heard the outer door open and close and familiar footsteps approaching. And then he heard the door to the other bedroom close quietly, louder than any slam. A slam would have been easier, because then he could dismiss it as Jack having a tantie, Elton John style. The quiet snick was like a throat being cut.

You really are a fucking bastard, Jones.

He turned his face into his pillow, letting his sigh heat it, resenting the heat, relishing the stars he saw as he pressed his eyes just that little bit too hard. Horrified at the stars when they reminded him of thousands upon thousands of future-Jack lights in Gander. Were they all real? Did they all have to exist? If they fixed whatever it was they were supposed to fix - did whatever they were supposed to do with the Time Dancers, would that somehow put things right? Future Jack seemed to think so. Would that make Future Jack disappear? Would it kill him? Could any iteration of Jack die? Would he, Ianto, want to kill Jack in any time or universe? Could he just get time to stand fucking still and leave him alone for a day? An hour? A minute? How did Jack stand this?

And that's what crashed in on him. Just thinking about this for two or three seconds every day or two was driving him insane. For Jack, it was inescapable. And eternal. And terrifying. And he'd left Jack twisting in the wind.

He got up and fumbled for a key he hoped he wouldn't need and slogged through his own mire to the door he had to open.

"I know I'm not supposed to come in here if you're trying to get away, but I'm sorry I was a prat, and you can kill me now."

"You cover a lot of ground for someone who doesn't want to take a detour to the Millennium Centre."

Ianto squinted in the dark, seeing only a reflected glint of stray light off what he knew to be Jack's left eye. "I ... don't really know why I've delayed. I could say it takes too long-"

"We eat lunch there at least twice a week!"

"But it would be a bit silly to do that," finished Ianto. "So. Shall I switch on the lights so you can shoot me?"

"No, I don't need that. I can see you very clearly." Jack's voice was casual and so weary that Ianto's blood ran cold at the sheer lack of bravado in that statement.

"Then," Ianto swallowed, "would you mind if I switched them on anyway, so that I can see the bullet coming?"

"I'm not going to shoot you, Ianto." Jack's voice was stilted with pain.

Ianto made his way over to the bed and sat down next to Jack. "I suppose that should be a relief." He reached tentatively for Jack's hand, coaxing it between his own. "How do you stand it?" he murmured.

"I have a feeling you're not asking about putting up with you when you're a prat," said Jack, just as softly, with almost as much fear in his voice as Ianto felt, but quashed and tempered to a degree that made Ianto blanch.

Ianto caressed Jack's hand, focusing on it even in the dark so that he wouldn't betray his feelings. And then he kissed it in encouragement.

"I don't know," said Jack, clutching Ianto's hand. Then, as if to edit the moment, the clutch became a squeeze. "It's my job," he said, voice mustered to service. "I go out there every day and pledge to keep myself sane for just one more day for Queen and Country."

Before Ianto could quip about lying back and thinking of England, he felt Jack turn towards him. Even in the darkened room, he could half-see, half-sense that Jack was searching his eyes.

"And I think of you. And Gwen, and Anwar, and Bethan, and Owen, and Tosh, and Rhys and Alex and the real Jack Harkness and the Doctor. And then it means something." Jack's voice petered out as emotion and exhaustion consumed it.

Ianto took Jack in his arms, wordless.

"You'd better go back to the other room if you don't want to see me lose it," said Jack, hands gripping Ianto's arms.

"You'll be alright," said Ianto. "I mean, unless you shoot me."

"I won't shoot you!" Jack cuffed Ianto's arm.

"Do you want me to leave?"

"Do you want to leave?"

"Jack..."

"Ianto..."

Ianto rolled his eyes.

"I heard that!"

"Come on," said Ianto, getting up and tugging Jack's hand.

"Where are we going?"

"Bed. Twat."

"We're in bed," moaned Jack.

"The one where you sleep better," said Ianto, as Jack dragged along behind him. "The one where I sleep better, too, at least when you're not shoving the duvet in my face."

"I promise not to shove the quilt in your face," mumbled Jack.

Ianto turned the thermostat down a few degrees. "I'm sure you won't."

Jack clung to him, sleepily.

Ianto suppressed a sigh and turned the thermostat down some more. "Good thing I like it warm," he said, kissing Jack's head.

"Everyone else in this country complains I'm too hot."

"Sure it isn't that they complain about you constantly reminding them how hot you are?"

"They don't need any reminding, baby!"

"You are the only person I know who leers in their sleep," said Ianto, as they crawled under the covers.

"And you're the only person I'm leering at."

"Well, with nobody else in the room, that's easy." Ianto moved to switch off the light.

"No don't," said Jack, reaching over to Ianto's arm, "not yet." He propped himself on his elbow and searched Ianto's eyes. "I'm sorry if I pushed you into something you don't want."

"What are you talking about?"

"Our year is almost up. I can't ask you for any more than that."

"Our year-you mean, the CP?"

"No. This. Sharing. House."

"In English, we say, 'living together'."

"Yeah, that."

Ianto sighed. "Jack, I'm never going to say this again, but I like living with you."

"You do?"

"Yes. At least fifty percent of the time."

"You like living with me!"

"Make that forty-nine."

"Wanna make it permanent?"

"Forty-eight. And Jack..." He stroked a limp lock off Jack's forehead.

"Don't push the CP," said Jack, a bit bleakly.

"It's not that I don't want it. At least, I don't think that's it. It's just I need some time. I think."

"All right," said Jack. "I can live with that."

The inevitability of it made Ianto shiver to his marrow. "Good," he said, "then you can bloody well get over here and warm me up."

Jack took him in his arms. "You didn't have to turn the heat down that much," he said quietly.

Ianto returned the embrace, warming Jack. I know, he thought. I'm sorry, love.

---

An hour ago

"Oh, for-how can a tree move that fast?"

"I dunno, Jack, you're the bloody expert." Ianto stood back-to-back with Jack as they turned to look around, up, down, and even out of the corners of their eyes.

"Gwen, you got anything?"

"Yeah, the sapling's just gone down Hamadryad Road and Anwar's just arrived. Cornering it now. Gotta go."

"Gwen, don't-"

"Jack," hissed Ianto.

Jack turned around, pivoting against Ianto's shoulder. "What?" he whispered near Ianto's ear.

"Down there." Ianto pointed to his shoe, where a small tree was leaning up to hug his ankle.

Jack chuckled. "It thinks you're its mum."

Ianto rolled his eyes. "Great. So what do we do with it now?"

"Oh, I don't know. We could take it home and water it, or we could try looking for its real mother."

"Acorn never falls far from the tree, you mean." Ianto looked fitfully around. "When did Cardiff turn into bloody Fangorn?"

"Since Puzzlewood marched on it?" quipped Jack.

"Is that what Tolkien wanted to happen?" said Ianto, scanning the trees around Bute Park as the seedling nuzzled his knee. "I still can't see her."

"Even Treebeard didn't move that fast," muttered Jack. "And yeah, Tollers would've been happy for all the cities to be overrun by nature, at least to a certain extent."

"Tollers? You didn't!"

"What? Know him? Talk to him? Shag him?"

"How did you meet him?"

"Time and a place, Ianto." Jack looked pointedly down. "Right now, we've gotta find your friend's mum."

Before Ianto could follow Jack's gaze, he yelped and felt his balls try to retreat about as far up as his liver. "That thing grows fast, doesn't it?"

"Nipped the tip, eh?"

"'Nipped' isn't exactly the word," said Ianto, his vocal pitch considerably higher than he'd have hoped, as he tried to escape a too-amorous twig and - oh, god - berries, "and stop leering!"

"Wow! These little guys - girls - get started young, don't they?" said Jack, trying gently to extricate Ianto's thigh - and other accoutrements - from the seedling.

"Ah-haa!" Ianto winced as twigs and leaves - not pleasurable - and Jack's fingers - extremely and embarrassingly so - tangled over sensitive flesh. He looked up, out, anywhere but down. "In the middle of Bute Park being felt up by my boss and a tree. Typical day at Torchwood, then."

"Not trying to feel you up," said Jack, his voice strained with effort. "Just tryin' to-ow!"

Ianto looked down just in time to see Jack pulling bloody fingers away from a sharp-toothed little mouth. "Any reason we can't just kill the bloody thing?"

"Its momma wouldn't like it," said Jack, through gritted teeth. "You got any extra weevil spray?"

Ianto rolled his eyes again and thrust a vial into Jack's hand before holding the seedling's head back and away from his crotch and Jack's fingers. "In your own time." If you don't fucking spray the thing right now, I'm going to kill you a few times, myself.

"I heard that," said Jack, as he sprayed the tree.

Ianto snorted. "What, you read minds, as well?" he quipped as he helped lower the little tree to the ground.

Quicker than lightning, a shadow flitted through Jack's eyes before his grin blinded it away. "I don't have to, do I?" He winked at Ianto as he tied a cloth gag around the seedling's mouth.

"Jack? Ianto?"

"Yes, Gwen?" they chorused.

"We have the sapling under control. Weevil spray seems to work-"

"Yes, we found that, too," said Jack. "Everything all right?"

"I'm fine, but Anwar needs some quiet time. He got a bit ... molested."

"Tell him I sympathise," said Ianto.

"So you have the mother, then?"

"No," said Jack. "Only a very fast-growing seedling. Which leads me to thinking that Momma don't like her babies, none."

Even Ianto could hear Gwen rolling her eyes before she replied.

"So what do we do with these things, Jack?"

"Uhm..." said Jack.

"Haven't the foggiest," said Ianto.

"Owen would've grown them in the hothouse," said Gwen, quietly.

"Yeah," said Ianto, after a moment.

"Yeah," agreed Jack. "And then they'd have outgrown their pots in two hours and torn up the Hub. Look, you got the sapling on Hamadryad Road, right? We got our seedling in Bute Park. We'll meet up back at the Hub and put them in stasis according to Owen's instructions on alien, sentient plant life, and then Anwar can run a few tests when he's recovered."

"And what about the mother tree?" said Gwen.

"She'll be leaving a trail of little walking trees all the way to Puzzlewood, if I'm not mistaken, and I'm gonna follow it!"

Ianto, loading the seedling into the Audi, turned around. "Me, too."

"No, you won't. Gwen and Anwar will need the help. I'm on my own on this one."

Stay with Jack even when it's hard.

"Gwen and Anwar will be fine on their own. I'm coming with you."

"Who gives the orders here?" demanded Jack.

"You do, but I'm right, and you know it."

"Ianto-"

"Look! Will you two stop bickering and meet us at the Hub? This sapling thing is sort of groaning!"

"Okay, okay, we're on our way," said Jack, sliding in behind the steering wheel.

"Love how you take over my car," said Ianto.

"And then we're taking the SUV, Gwen. Mr. Grumpy-drawers doesn't want me driving his car!"

"At least it's 'we', now," said Ianto.

"That was the royal 'we'. You're staying with Gwen and Anwar."

"Oh, no he's not!" said Gwen.

"Why not?" said both Ianto and Jack.

"That's why not! Christ, you can't separate the two of you even when you're not in the same room, and it's bloody impossible when you've been arguing. Christ, it's as though you've the worst of both worlds: proudly uncommitted and joined at the fucking hip!"

That, Ianto thought, stung.

"I'm warning you, Jack," continued Gwen, "If you don't stop this nonsense, I'm either going to leave or take your place as leader, and you know how much I really don't want that!"

"Oh, I don't know," said Jack, "I rather thought you liked the idea of taking over the place."

"Oh, bad one," muttered Ianto, ducking his head as though that would do any good.

"Fuck you, Jack!"

"Jack, look out!"

Jack swerved just in time, avoiding the tree, the poodle and the schoolchildren.

"What happened?" demanded Gwen.

"Tree," snapped Jack, as Ianto pulled out his scanner.

"Is everyone all right?" said Gwen.

"Yeah. Where are you?" said Jack.

"We're pulling into the garage now," said Anwar.

"Anwar? Where's Gwen?"

Ianto glanced at Jack as the sound of scuffling and swearing drifted through the comms.

"She's fighting a tree. And the weevil spray's taking longer to work."

"Hold tight, Anwar, we're on our way!" Jack floored the accelerator as he switched channels.

Flung back against the passenger seat, Ianto tried hard to keep the scanner on the last location of the tree. "Jack, how are we going to-"

But Jack was already gone. "Detective Swanson? Cap'n Jack Harkness. We've got a situation here, life and death. Can you clear us for high-speed travel from St. Mary Street to East Bute Street? I have seriously never lied to you. Well, all right, not since we rebuilt Cardiff. Look, two of my team are in grave danger, and I've got to get to them. One of them's Gwen Williams-yeah? Brilliant! Oh, and we're in Ianto Jones's Audi. Got the tracking signal? You're a star, D.C. Swanson!" He turned to Ianto. "Let's be loud and sparkly!"

"No difference there, then," said Ianto, switching on the siren and the lights. "Half the journey to get clearance for something you're already doing, and all you had to do was mention Gwen's name in the first place."

"Hers or yours, you mean. Can't believe they're still treating you like gods."

"Bit jealous, are we?"

"You enjoy this way too much," said Jack.

"Yup." Ianto slapped and squeezed Jack's knee.

"Oh-ho, you are SO gonna pay for that!" Jack shook his head and grinned. Then his face changed. "You were saying?"

Ianto raced for his mental files.

"Before I got hold of Kathy?"

File found! "How are we going to explain a tree sprinting down the train tracks at lunch?"

Jack shrugged. "We might not have to. The thing moves really fast. Besides, we'll just follow standard procedure."

Ianto nodded. "Check Twitter and the social networking systems as well as the police calls, monitor the CCTVs, and hook into all the mobile networks. We should have the tree all chopped up for firewood by tea."

The seedling began to shift and moan eerily in the back.

"Hopefully not," said Jack, as they blazed onto Lloyd George Avenue.

"You going to grow it in a rehab, or something?" said Ianto, eyeing the now five-foot tree struggling with its bonds.

"No," said Jack, "I'll take them all back to the Forest of Dean, like I've been saying."

"You never said that," said Ianto.

"Yeah, I did. Sort of."

By the time they got to the garage, the seedling was emitting a high-pitched whine audible only to Ianto, Jack and about a thousand dogs that Ianto hadn't known existed within a three hundred yard radius of the Hub. To be fair, he thought, as he helped Jack wrestle the struggling treelet out of the Audi, about two hundred of those were probably tourists, a hundred and fifty or so were visiting friends or vets, exactly one hundred and twelve were legal residents (as of his morning check, though he'd have to investigate Mrs. Powell for the Pomeranian puppies she'd been scuttling into her flat as they'd passed by), and the rest were strays. And his total might be off by approximately-

"Ianto! Watch the roots!"

Just in time, Ianto danced away from a root determined to bury itself in a place where only Jack was ever allowed to go. "Child or no," he growled, wrapping a hand around a branch that made the tree go still, "if you do that again, I'll soak you in weed killer and burn you, myself."

The seedling whimpered.

"Good tree," said Ianto. "Maybe we won't have to put it in stasis, after all." He punched in the access code for the Hub.

"I! ...wouldn't be too sure of that," said Jack, wrestling with a branch suddenly wrapped around his throat.

"Let him go," Ianto commanded, in the same tone he'd used earlier. "Burning weedkiller," he supplemented when the seedling dithered.

Jack drew in gulps of air as the branch recoiled. "Anyone in your family a professional gardener?" he panted, staring at Ianto with newfound respect.

"No. But Mum talked to her plants."

"Does she give lessons?"

"Not at Torchwood," said Ianto firmly, hitting the button for the cog door.

"Why not?"

As the door rolled shut behind them, Myfanwy screamed and dive-bombed them, pulling the seedling from their grasp and carrying it off to her lair.

"Oh, fuck," muttered Ianto. Then he glared at Jack.

"Okay, okay, I see your point!" said Jack, raising his hands in surrender.

"I suppose we should rescue it," said Ianto, with no enthusiasm, whatsoever.

"Considering it's grown five and a half feet in the last twenty minutes, I'm more worried about rescuing her," said Jack.

"Good point," said Ianto, running for the ladder as he pulled off his suit jacket and waistcoat, flinging them haphazardly at Jack.

"Got your chocolate?" shouted Jack.

"Always!"

Half an hour later, scratched, bitten and applying salve and sticking plasters, Ianto was in the passenger seat of the SUV as Gwen on comms ran them through the reports of various sorts of trees behaving very badly/oddly/at all through Cardiff. And now, sixteen people reported it at a Tesco in Tremorfa. "Splott," said Ianto. "Why do we always end up in Splott?"

"I thought you said it was pronounced 'Sploe'," teased Jack.

"That is the one hundred and twenty-seventh time you've said that in the past two years," said Ianto. "Think it might want a rest?"

"What have you got against Splott, anyway?"

"It's ugly and boring."

"Eye of the beholder," said Jack. "Besides, this is Tremorfa. You gotta admit, Tremorfa's nicer than Splott."

"Not by much. And Tremorfa's part of Splott. I always got a sense of doom in Splott."

"And Tesco," needled Jack, "and Coffee Mania, although that's deserved." He shuddered.

"You used to go there all the time," said Ianto, pausing mid-plaster stick.

"Mmm," nodded Jack. "And then you came along and shoved a real coffee in my face and ruined everything."

"Ah." Ianto finished applying the plaster with a self-satisfaction for which his mother would have banished him from polite company.

As Jack turned onto Rover Way, Gwen's voice came through. "Jack, Andy's there. He says, 'Tell Mulder and Krycek to bring the chainsaws'."

"You don't have to laugh that hard," said Ianto.

"Oh, yes I do," said Gwen, helplessly.

"Trees!" Jack slammed his foot on the brake just in time to stop as six tiny trees skittered across the road. "Quick! Get 'em into the stasis box!" he said as they peeled out of the SUV.

"On it!" said Ianto, tossing Jack a pair of gloves as he snatched up the box.

The seedlings occupying the stasis box were forgotten the second the SUV careened into the Tesco car park and Ianto watched their parent lose interest in the trees it had been assaulting (sexually, according to the reports Gwen was relaying) in favour of picking up and shaking a Nissan Note parked in an outlying spot.

"Hang on!" yelled Jack.

"Oh, you're not-yes, you are. Fuck!" Ianto held on for dear life as Jack slammed into the tree. "I'll readjust the airbags when we get back," he said, when they didn't deploy.

Jack was out of the car and waving at the tree. "Hi, there!" he shouted. "Captain Jack Harkness. And you are...?"

The tree looked at him and roared through its leaves.

"Ah." Jack moved around it, pulling its attention away from the SUV. "Ianto," he hissed on the comm, "take the wheel!"

Ianto cursed silently as the stick hit him in almost exactly the wrong place. "Done!"

"Hate to run into you like that," shouted Jack, "only you need to dial it back a bit and stop messing with people's cars." He backed away from the tree and pulled out a very large gun. "Cause if you don't, I've got a gun full of weed killer just for you!" He took three steps even further away and primed the weapon. "You got that?"

With a snarling susurrus, the tree hurled the Note directly at Jack, who dove and rolled and yelled, "Now, Ianto!"

And Ianto was there and Jack was in the car and they were racing round the back of the Tesco just feet ahead of the tree when Jack spoke.

"Let me out at the back corner of the building and get clear."

Stay with Jack even when it's hard.

"I hate that." Ianto executed a sudden stop.

"I know." Jack kissed Ianto's temple, hard, and was gone, gesticulating at and taunting the tree as he ran straight for the huge electricity pylon.

The tree didn't move, torn between Jack and the SUV.

Stay with Jack even when it's hard.

"Sorry, Jack." Ianto gunned the engine and leaned out the window. "Oi! Down here, you ugly weed!" And then he was off towards the pylon, driving fifteen yards from Jack and parallel.

And Jack understood and went to the other side of the pylon, the side away from the building, which left Ianto to slip between metal and cinderblock before hugging the corner and driving the car away from electrical lines and fire and death.

It was slow motion as Ianto saw the pylon come down, even as most of his view was blocked by the building. As was Jack, who had made the tree pull the pylon away from the building.

And then there were sparks and arcs and flames.

And screaming.

He was racing around to the back again, in spite of the screaming people he couldn't give a shit about and should, and the conflagration he would face.

There was the tree, screaming and in flames.

There was a power line, broken and writhing and spewing its load in flashes and cracks.

There was Jack, unconnected to anything. Standing. Alight. Dying.

And Ianto couldn't get to him. "Jack!"

Someone tugged him back by the shoulders. Someone strong, ridiculously tall. An interfering busybody.

"Get off me!"

"Easy, mate," said P.C. Andy Davidson against Ianto's left ear.

"Shut down the power!" screamed Ianto, watching Jack transfixed, crucified on an invisible crosspiece.

"They're doing it now," said Andy, an arm bracing Ianto steady across his shoulders, "but there's nothing you can do."

"I can sit with him," said Ianto. "I always sit with him."

"It's alright, mate." Andy's grip tightened a bit, which made Ianto realise that he'd been struggling.

"That line's not even touching him and he's all lit up." Ianto realised that he was sobbing.

"Four hundred thousand volts going through wet ground," said Andy, his own voice strained. "Even your hair's standing on end."

And then it all stopped. All except for the tree gasping its dying through the flames, and Jack, fixed as time stood still to illuminate the knife's edge between life and death and Ianto once again watched Jack hoist upon it - beautiful and terrible - before the universe resumed and Jack fell.

"Let me go!"

Andy clapped him on the shoulder and started to run with him.

Ianto stopped long enough to say, "Get us into an empty room I can lock and keep everyone else away until we leave. I'll carry Jack. No doctors, no ambulances. He never got electrocuted. Forget everything you think you see."

"Alright, alright! I know you lot are dead weird."

But Ianto was already bolting for Jack.

---

Present

Relieving the cramp in his legs, Ianto paced, staying close to Jack and hearing a knock on the locked door for - he didn't know how many times it had happened before. He hadn't kept track. He'd been too busy sitting with Jack. Holding him.

"And I cried," he muttered. "I never cry over you when you die. Not since Abaddon, and that was bloody stupid."

He was pacing faster, still keeping close to Jack. "We need to get you a perception filter. Drop it on you when you're dead so no-one comes near and the rest of us can go get a stiff drink."

He paused to look at Jack. "How can something with so much life as you die so much? And why'd you have to go and knock out the power grid for half of Cardiff and die when you could've burned down the alien tree the old-fashioned way - with a fucking flame-thrower? Do you like finding spectacular ways to die, or is that written into your contract somewhere? And if it is, why haven't I seen it? I am your archivist, after all, and I should bloody well have a copy!" Ianto ran his hand back through his hair and resumed pacing. "I mean, I know Torchwood is dangerous and you come back when the rest of us can't, and I suppose I really should appreciate how often you've saved all our lives, but do you have to go up like a Roman Candle? Couldn't you have just been a bit patient and let the poor, stupid thing immolate itself in the power lines without getting it to pull the whole pylon on top of you, or as good as? Did you have to bloody die this time, Jack?"

Ianto stood still, panting with the effort to keep himself from shouting. Pacing never did him any good, especially in a tiny space. It always make him worse, made him want to jump out of his skin. He never found the release in it that he did in walking, or running, or sex. Or Jack.

He sighed once, and again, and sat back down next to Jack's shoulder. "I'm supposed to stay with you, even when it's hard." He started to stroke the matted hair again, only to recoil at the touch, and ran his hand down Jack's cheek. "Do you really have no idea how much I hate seeing you die? How much I hate this vigil, even though it's the only time I can really talk to you about anything I want to say? Because it's the only time I can ever say how utterly besotted I am with you? Because I can never marry you, Jack, no matter how much I may want to, because you can't stand the word 'couple', and I can't stand to see you die every other day and twice on Sundays." He bent down and kissed Jack's forehead. "But it is fun living with you, and it makes sense to share living expenses until one of us actually dies and stays that way."

And then Jack revived, noisy and terrified, and bolted up, his forehead splitting Ianto's lip as he flailed and grasped at Ianto's arms.

"Shh... You're in an empty room in Tesco, and we've got to be a bit quiet or we'll scare the straights."

Jack's eyes focused and he flung his arms around Ianto. "I thought I told you to get clear," he said against Ianto's ear. "Thank you for disobeying." He pulled back enough to find Ianto's mouth for a desperate kiss.

"Mmf!" winced Ianto.

"What?" said Jack.

"No, don't stop," said Ianto, "just mind the lip you split when you revived." He traced Jack's face, searching his eyes. "You alright?"

Jack touched Ianto's lip. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "Thank you for staying with me." He enclosed Ianto's injured lip very gently between his own.

Forgetting his earlier revulsion, Ianto found his hand slipping into Jack's hair just in time to feel the head wound healing up. The sheer power of life made him shiver and deepen the kiss, even as he tried hard to will away the hardness that was forming. Too late for that, of course, as Jack would-

"You're aroused," purred Jack.

-smell him. "Time and a place," moaned Ianto against Jack's mouth.

"Mmhmm," breathed Jack. "Wanna start feeling better about Tesco?"

"I am not shagging you," said Ianto, mouthing gently at Jack's lower lip, "on the floor," upper lip, "of a Tesco in Splott." Especially where you've spent most of your time there dead. He trembled, and hid himself in a deep kiss.

"Mmm.... You sure? Might make you feel better about Splott, as well." Jack held him close, though, with more comfort than heat.

Anything but this. "Jack."

"It's okay."

"I know." Oh god no, it's not.

Jack pulled back enough to take Ianto's face in his hands and kiss him as though that were the only thing in the world that would ever matter.

"Jack." You make me want this too much.

"And we've gotta get up! My legs are starting to cramp."

"Twat." Thank you. Ianto clapped Jack on the back before rising and offering a hand up. "So. You alright?"

"I'm not going to stick my thumb on the power grid and light up Cardiff for a night, if that's what you mean," said Jack, draping a companionable arm around Ianto's shoulders.

"Yeah, given that I'm still alive after sticking my tongue down your throat, I think I had that sorted."

"I love it when you talk dirty to me," said Jack, with a quick squeeze of Ianto's arse before they exited the room.

---

Over the next three weeks, Ianto busied himself helping Gwen bring the new team members up to speed, starting with Bethan's rehabilitation. Now that she'd got most of her memory and situational awareness back, she was really quite good in the tourist office, as long as she wasn't faced with aliens possessing more than six limbs. Ianto was quite glad that she hadn't been allowed near the comms or screens during the tree incident. She'd also begun taking a serious interest in the tech again, which had forestalled Jack's invitation to lunch and retcon in the nick of time.

The only problem with this was that Bethan treated her tech fiddlings a lot like knitting projects. This got interesting when Ianto walked in on her one day as she was talking to a couple from Stafford about possible wedding sites for their daughter, who wanted to get married someplace 'dragony', whilst eviscerating a mouse-like and mostly deactivated assassination cyborg the Rift had delivered a few days previously. Fortunately, the couple were fit, with quick reflexes, and ducked when the poison sac primed and launched itself. Just as happily, Bethan and Ianto managed to keep their attention off the wall behind them as it groaned and dissolved where the sac hit. That night at dinner, Jack gave everyone a stern reminder about the rule concerning alien tech and where it was and was not allowed.

Ianto also showed Anwar some of Owen's favourite aliens and pieces of aliens not mentioned in the files, and allowed the man access to a few medical file boxes and notes that he'd kept off the records for security reasons. For all their closer ties with the other branches of Torchwood and now MiB, he still shared Jack's profound distrust of anyone they didn't personally recruit. Of most importance, he thought, he showed Anwar where they kept the Calaxian earplugs they'd bred and put in stasis, though he kept his own pair secret. Funny how those tiny little things had shifted all the way to the front of his priority queue, even though the Time Dancers hardly seemed a threat at all, now.

All in all, thought Ianto, as he worked through some much-needed archiving and maintenance, this is a positive time. We're getting stuff done, the team's coming together, and I'm not in Jack's back pocket anymore. Still fancy him too much, though. Pathetic, really. Maybe I should go on the pull.

But that thought nauseated him with a power he didn't expect.

Right. Can't have that. Time for a desensitisation program. You're going to start ogling pretty girls, again. After all, you are straight, you big poof!

"Ianto?" called Gwen.

Ianto jumped. "Yeah!" Oh, that sounds suave and untroubled!

"I'm sorry, did I startle you?"

"Not at all. What can I do for you?"

"I was just going to join Rhys down the pub. Want to come along? Maybe catch up on the rugby with Rhys?"

"Bit early, isn't it?"

Gwen frowned. "It's just gone eight o'clock. Are you all right?"

Ianto blinked and stared at his watch. "How did I lose track of time?"

"I don't know, sweetheart, but you've been burning it quite a bit at both ends, haven't you?" She tugged him up. "Come on. Bethan and Anwar are long gone. You can bring Jack, if you'd like."

"No, that's all right, he's busy."

Gwen's hand shot out to Ianto's forehead. "You sure you're all right?"

"We're not attached at the hip, you know," said Ianto, a bit more sharply than he'd meant.

Gwen smirked and tried to stifle a laugh. "That's not how it looks from here, mate. Although now that you mention it, at least I can wedge myself in between you, lately."

"Good," said Ianto. "Doesn't do to get co-dependent."

"Oh, baby, we all passed that stage with Jack long ago!"

Ianto held out his arm. "Don't remind me!" He counted himself lucky that they didn't pass Jack on the way out. He didn't actually know what Jack had planned for the night, and found himself both troubled by and revelling in that turn of events.

---

Walking up to his door at quarter past eleven that night, Ianto turned his collar up over the right side of his face and nodded distant greeting at a passing girl. He didn't look at her more than necessary to catalogue her for future reference. Ogling pretty girls at and near the pub had garnered him, by turns, giggles, disdain, two propositions he really didn't want after all, a slap, and an offer of fisticuffs from an irate boyfriend. Most humiliating of all, though, had been the threat of an irate father to call the police when he and a very attractive girl had winked at each other and she'd turned out to be fourteen years old. How had he forgotten how to gage these things?

Most of all, though, it had left him feeling lonely, pathetic and a bit sick, and after Gwen and Rhys had taken turns attempting to commiserate and get him involved in the pub quiz, he'd excused himself to have a go at sorting himself out.

It hadn't worked. Fortunately, a weevil distracted him and the ensuing hunt and fight gave him some perspective. Or maybe just more effective distraction.

He opened the door, refusing to think about whether or not Jack would be there.

Jack was there. Jack was there, greeting him at the door, taking his coat and kissing him on the cheek. The uninjured one, Ianto cursed inwardly.

"Erm.... Hi honey, I'm home?"

Jack huffed once and rested a hand on the back of Ianto's neck, guiding him into the kitchen. "So," he said, dipping the cloth into its bowl of warm water, "How's the other guy doing? Or was it a lady weevil?"

Ianto hissed as Jack's hand came near his face, and he blocked it before he realised what he was doing.

"Hey," said Jack. "It's me."

"Yeah, and I can clean that myself," said Ianto.

"Okay," said Jack, dropping the cloth in Ianto's hand and moving away. When he turned back towards Ianto, his arms were folded across his chest and his face was shuttered.

Ianto took a breath and began cleaning his wound. "I take it you followed me."

"Not exactly."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I was brooding. You happened to pass by."

"You and your roofs," grumbled Ianto. He hissed again as he scraped a painful part of the wound.

"Sure you don't want me to help?"

"Yes, quite sure, thanks." Although he really did wish his hands were a bit steadier.

"So did you have fun before you left Gwen and Rhys?"

"So you were following me, then."

Jack shrugged. "I brooded in a couple of places."

"Did anyone ever tell you, you were a control freak?"

"Part of the job," said Jack, drawing his arms tighter across his chest.

"Only if you keep it under control," said Ianto gingerly, as he poked around his right eye.

Jack sighed and deflated, a bit. "I was worried, Ianto," he said, leaning his hip against the worktop.

"Nothing to be worried about," said Ianto, with a very professional smile. "Safe and sound and ready to give all for Queen and Country."

Jack blinked. "You missed a spot. You might want to use a mirror." He turned for the door. "I'll go brood by the Bay. I won't follow you, but if you want your space, stay away from Mermaid Quay."

"Jack ... don't go. Unless you want to, I mean. Just not on my account."

"Talk about control freaks." Jack looked at him curiously. Guardedly.

"I do need space. Only it hasn't really worked out tonight."

"Care to tell me what's eating you?"

"Hello, British? Specifically Welsh? Male? Introvert who works for Torchwood?"

"Okay, so that'd be No, Depends, No, and Like Getting Blood From a Stone. Now, what's the matter?"

"All right, you don't have to snarl." Ianto raised the cloth to where his face ached most and missed.

"Come here," said Jack, tugging Ianto's hand and leading him under the kitchen light. He took the cloth Ianto held and rinsed it out under the tap. "Hold still."

"Yes, mum."

Jack wiped carefully at the wound, his face screwed up in concentration. "Keep holding still."

"Not going anywhere."

"You sure?"

"Not like I just was."

Jack reached for the tweezers. "Very steady, now."

Ianto felt his eyes start to move.

"No, don't roll your eyes! And I'm sorry, but this might hurt."

"What are you-ow!"

Jack pulled the tweezers back enough for Ianto to see them grasping part of a tooth. "Take a red pill and see Anwar in the morning," he said, applying first the antiseptic and then the wound-healing spray that the team had managed to coax over the years from the plant life Owen had cultivated.

Ianto nodded and touched his forehead briefly to Jack's. "Thanks. Don't know how I missed that."

Jack squeezed Ianto's shoulder. "You're welcome. And I'm sorry if I haven't been giving you enough space. Only you'd been acting like ... before the tree, you ... sorta seemed like you wanted to stick closer to me, or something."

"Well. I do like your company. But it's Torchwood. Don't want to get too dependent."

"It's Torchwood. We're completely dependent on each other. All of us." Jack sat wearily on the sofa. "Why do we keep having this same damn argument?"

"Cause we're male, shagging and neurotic?"

Jack gave him a slight laugh. "Yeah, I suppose that works."

Ianto sighed and inched his way over to the sofa, standing uncertainly in front of Jack. "Look ... I don't know exactly what's bothering me. Not all of it, anyway, and what I do know, I can't really tell you right now, cause I don't know the rest of it. I just ... need to piece things together, or something. I feel like I'm sort of ... losing track of myself. Like something's missing, only I don't know what."

"Sounds like Anwar, when he mislays his keys."

"Yeah, only not as noisy."

Jack slid forward and wrapped his arms around Ianto's waist, squeezing his eyes shut and pressing his head against Ianto's belly for a long moment.

Ianto caressed and rubbed Jack as much as he could, letting his hands slip through soft, spiky hair and over silk-smooth skin. "Want to have a shower with me?"

"I thought you'd never ask," said Jack.

---

The next morning, they headed their separate ways with Jack going off to the Hub and Ianto fetching supplies. Ianto had to stop home on the way back from his errands to drop off the non-work supplies, and was surprised to see Jack standing with his back to him, looking around the place.

"Jack? Are you alright? I thought you'd-"

Before Ianto could finish his thought, or even breathe, Jack had whirled on him and thrown him hard and without mercy against the wall and pinned him by the throat. "Why did you betray me?" he snarled.

Ianto tried to answer but found his breath well and truly cut off. He couldn't see Jack, because he was too close. He couldn't hear properly for the desperate heartbeat deafening his ears. He couldn't smell anything because he couldn't breathe. He couldn't feel anything because he was going under. With his last bit of life, all he could do was mouth, "Jack. Why?" He felt - and heard - his larynx begin to crack. He saw the darkness coming and wondered about the thing that might be moving in it.

And then he was falling, an assault of air drowning his lungs as the painful spots and stars and head pressure of strangulation joined the agony of lungs and larynx as Ianto Jones tried to swim and cough his way back to life. Back to Jack, who had just tried to kill him, and who looked likely to do it again and succeed.

And then Ianto's eyes began to focus, and through the din of capturing air, he realised that something was deeply, profoundly different about Jack. Something was horribly mutilated and wrong not just with the way that Jack had him by the collar or with the cold clarity of twisted, engraved hate on a face gone in the blink of an eye from beautiful to hideous, but with the very essence of Jack.

"I said, 'Stay with Jack even when it's hard'!"

Ianto didn't think. Ianto couldn't afford to think, because if he did, time would seize and the world would end. He concentrated every bit of power he could find, anywhere he could find it, and pushed back, knocking Jack-from-the-future off balance and pinning him face-first and hard to the wall. "What the fuck did you mean by that, then?" he yelled. "And I did stay with him when it was fucking hard! I watched him get electrocuted by a fucking alien tree!"

And then Jack-whoever-he-was did something unexpected. He laughed. Only it wasn't the laugh that Ianto so loved and lived for. It wasn't even the calculated laugh of the torturer that he'd heard and hated and now wished he could hear again, just to make everything all right. If ever there were a laugh that epitomised the grinding to a halt of space-time, this was it. And it was so quiet. So insane. "Poor, nasty little Ianto. So weak and whiny and pathetic. 'I watched him get electrocuted by a fucking alien tree. I can't stand to see you die, Jack. I love you, Jack.'" The Jack he'd hoped never to meet trembled. "How dare you say that to me?"

It took everything in Ianto to quell his horror and focus on his anger and his advantage. "I fucking haven't said that to you! Not in my timeline. Why would I when it would just drive you screaming into the streets or into barking fucking insanity?"

Future-Jack began to coil muscle under Ianto's hands, so Ianto slammed into him, finding the pain spots that always made Jack comply and pulling out a taser. "I know how much you hate these," he warned, pressing it against a less than perfect temple, "and this one's crude, even by today's standards. Now you tell me. Why did you write me that fucking note?"

"Because if you and Jack don't kill the Chronereptors, I'll exist."

"And what makes you think Jack can't kill them without me?"

"I didn't remember you as being that stupid," spat future-Jack.

"I'm fucking surprised you remember me at all," retorted Ianto, more than a little tempted to use the taser just for spite. "You always told me you wouldn't."

Future-Jack went still. "That was cruel of me," he said quietly, some of Jack's lucidity creeping in. "I'm sorry. And if it's any help, it's not true, at least not as much as I thought at the time." He shifted beneath Ianto's hands. "Look, while I still have this window, there are two things that could help you right now in my back left pocket. If you grab the gorget and-"

"The what?"

"Wrong word? Um, goes around the neck...."

"Is it like a necklace?"

"Yes! If you get that and put it around your neck, I can't do you any harm, even if - when - I go mad again."

"I've no reason to trust you."

Future-Jack all but sobbed under Ianto's hand. "I know. But please, it's very important that you hear me, so I don't want you to die!"

"All right," said Ianto, after a long pause.

"Hurry," said future-Jack.

Ianto reached into the pocket and pulled out a short cord with a stone on it that reminded Ianto of a summer sky in an old Technicolor print. "How do I put this on with one hand?"

Future-Jack rolled his eyes. "Just hold it up to your neck and let it do the work."

Within seconds, the cord had somehow melted into Ianto's skin and the stone sat right in his suprasternal notch. "Well, that's interesting, if not exactly comfortable."

Future-Jack gave him a twisted grin. "You always were a moaner."

"So what's the other thing?" said Ianto, pointedly.

"What other thing?"

"The second thing in your back pocket that could help me right now."

"The-oh! It's a DNA support chit. You slip it under your tongue and whatever injuries or illness you may have, it cures them."

"So this gorget thing ... does it protect me if you try to trick me into doing something harmful, or does it just use some sort of force-field to keep you from trying to strangle me again?"

"It won't allow me to harm you at all," said future-Jack, "but I wasn't trying to." There was a wistfulness in his voice that tugged hard at Ianto.

Ianto reached into the pocket again and pulled out a five-centimetre strip of something he didn't recognize.

"Stick it under your tongue with the red script facing up. Leave it there till it whistles." Future-Jack winced under Ianto's hold.

"Are you all right?" asked Ianto, guardedly.

"You do NOT want to know," said future-Jack, with a trace of the genuine humour of his counterpart. "Just take your medicine, or your Jack will come gunning for me, and trust me, you don't want him doing that." He looked pointedly at the bruises on Ianto's neck.

Ianto eyed future-Jack, but did as he was told. The whistle a few seconds later made him roll his eyes as he removed the strip from his mouth. "When you said, 'leave it till it whistles', that was not what I expected to hear!"

"Hey, this is me we're talking about!"

"And speaking of, does everyone in your time have to carry defensive amulets around with them to protect others from themselves, or is it just you?"

"Just me. Sort of. It's complicated."

"I've got time," said Ianto.

"No, you don't!" Future-Jack twisted around under Ianto's hand, eyes fever-bright, and Ianto swallowed when he recognized just how little control he had over the situation. "I'm not going to hurt you." He held up his hands. "But you have to hear me. Please, Ianto."

As future-Jack's face twisted in painful plea, something inside Ianto recognized the near end of a long and arduous path. He squeezed a shoulder that was far too bony. "Sit down. I'll get you some water while you start talking."

"How much did Jack tell you about the Chronereptors?"

"You mean the Time Dancers?"

"You and your quaint names."

"That'd be Peter Smith's quaint name."

"Oh, yeah, that is Pete's. Good man. Good focal point."

Ianto handed future-Jack the water and sat down opposite him. "I know the Chronereptors are stealing space-time slowly. Haven't quite managed to figure out the brane theory bit of it, but I know that's how they're doing it, and that it's dangerous, and it scares Jack. You said we didn't have time. Why do I have to stay with Jack? I thought I-anyone who got attached was a drag on him."

Future-Jack sighed and rubbed his fist against the back of his head. "Look, don't ever think that Jack doesn't need you."

"Do we have to get soppy?"

Future-Jack huffed moistly. "Well, I could use it, but that's irrelevant." He blinked and focused. "Set aside the general way Jack needs you - and he really does, Ianto - you and Pete Smith have a thing or two in common."

"We're both members of ancient cultures?"

"You're both resistant to the Chronereptors. You both stay sane in the face of temporal paradox. That's why you're still conscious, by the way. And you're both spaciotemporal focal points for various iterations of me. Pete more so."

"I was going to ask," said Ianto, dryly.

"Jealous?"

"Not this time, actually. Just he's seen so many more of you than I have."

"And I've seen so many more iterations of you than I can count in seven hundred and forty-nine thousand years of life."

Ianto swallowed around the faintness. "And you don't look a day over three thousand."

"Still get asked for my I.D. at the drug bars."

"So Peter Smith draws lots of iterations of you and you get drawn to lots of iterations of me? Odd sort of definition of a spaciotemporal focal point, isn't it?"

"It's more that only you - only the right you - can save me. The right me."

"From what?"

"From the end."

"I thought you wanted to die and stay dead. You've - Jack - has certainly said so a number of times."

"Ianto, the Chronereptors are stealing pieces of branes throughout all universes. Do you know what that does to the structure of existence?"

"Well," huffed Ianto, "something about unravelling it, so nothing good, I suppose."

Future-Jack nodded. "Think of the way electricity is transmitted in this century on this planet. Crudely put, the electrons take the path of least resistance, which means they travel on the outsides of the wires. So - and this is cheap and dirty science - branes are sort of like tubes - at least some of them are - and particles are like resonances wound around them."

Ianto could only nod.

"Read Stephen Hawking. He set it out pretty simply."

Ianto blinked and tried not to roll his eyes.

"Every time a brane is cut up, something gets unspooled. It could be a timeline, a bird flying off course, a lethal virus that springs up out of nowhere while another one suddenly is harmless, a person's lunchtime plans, a heart rhythm that gets disrupted, a war that nobody understands, a planet that suddenly winks out.... If they keep doing this, existence gets unwound. The branes end up being so small that nothing exists on them. And I ... Everything as we can understand it will end, except me. Everything."

Ianto blinked and decided to be glad that he was sitting down. "So-" he swallowed. "So, you'd be just ... floating in a void?"

Future-Jack nodded, eyes betraying his journey to the brink. "I've seen it."

"And you hate being alone. Jack, you said that if Jack and I ... oh, bollocks! What can I call you? Jack2?"

"Sure, why not?"

"All right, Jack2 - ugh! - you said that if Jack and I put things right, you won't exist. But if you're the only fixed thing in time and space, how can that be?"

"You've got to be at the Hub in eighteen minutes, and the answer to that question requires almost a million years-worth of space-time theory that even I don't quite get." Future-Jack - Jack2 - sighed. "Look, the Chronereptors have been unravelling space-time, taking bits and pieces of it out of context and trying to form their own universe that they can control so they never have to have anything to do with anyone else, including each other. What if they've already altered the very nature of space-time? What if I'm no longer a fixed point? A singularity? What if everything you saw in Gander was wrong?"

"What if we do this and you aren't immortal, anymore? What if it's the Chronereptors' fault you're like that in the first place?"

"Then I die," said Jack2, sounding very much like Jack at his most forlorn. "Which I really want to do." He looked up. "And so would your Jack, if he became me."

Ianto nodded, unable to speak. He didn't notice Jack2 getting up until something was being pressed into his hand.

"Take this," said Jack2, squatting in front of Ianto. "Get to Jack and make sure he uses it. I made it so I could track the Chronereptors and make them visible. But I can't stay steady long enough to keep them in my sights. You can anchor Jack, help him resist them. He keeps his focus better with you."

"Are you sure I'm the right me?"

"Yes. Most of the others either killed me, sold me out, dumped me into the Rift or propositioned me before I could get them to this point."

"Ah. Well, then-"

"And you're the last one." Jack2 looked up at him. "And it's going to be hard."

For the first time, Ianto noticed how profoundly old Jack2 looked. The lines weren't deep, the hair wasn't grey, the eyes weren't red or cloudy, but there was something in every pore, every skin cell, every tilt of weary eyelid that radiated age beyond comprehension.

"I can do hard."

"There are certain risks you find much harder to take."

Before Ianto could respond, Jack2 had risen and turned away, walking as he reached inside his jacket. He turned back towards Ianto, his face a mask. "Multiphasic bullets," he said, tossing a perfectly ordinary-looking box at Ianto. "They'll adjust to any gun that takes bullets, and they'll kill the Chronereptors. If you're wearing the wrist strap or touching someone who is, they won't miss. Also, keep an eye on the VM screen. It'll turn green when all the Chronereptors cease to exist. And one last thing." Jack2 came back to Ianto and drew him up, fingering the stone against his throat. "If this disappears, everything will have been put right and you won't ever see me again."

Ianto felt a lump rising unexpectedly in his throat. "You'll be alright," he managed.

Jack2 raised a hand towards Ianto's face and stopped it in mid-air. "I never get used to how much I miss you."

Ianto reached for him.

"Don't!" screamed Jack2, recoiling, tottering on the edge of sanity. "I can't stand it."

Ianto rolled his eyes. "You'll just have to kill me, then," he said, grasping Jack2's hand and hanging on as Jack2 tried to hit him. "Shut it, you big idiot! The necklace won't let you hurt me, remember?"

Jack2 looked down and started to shake, with laughter or tears, or maybe both, Ianto couldn't be sure. He clapped Ianto on the back, though, and clung to him. "Now I know you're the right one."

"I'm always the right one."

And then Jack2 was genuinely laughing and burying his face in Ianto's neck, awkwardly. "Save us," he whispered at last. And then, before Ianto knew what was happening, Jack2 tore himself away and vanished in one touch of his wrist.

Ianto gasped and blinked and looked at his watch and ran for the Hub. For Jack.

---

Time hit Ianto like a dank, fetid wave as the cog door rolled open and he started to feel himself unravel. He fumbled in the slowest motion for the little box in his breast pocket and felt the fingers of space-time grasp at him, tangle with his own digits as he forced them through the miasma that engulfed him. He counted heartbeats for time - one, two, still two, he must get the earplugs in by four, which seemed so far away, and he was so tired, but he pushed hard for Jack, for Gwen, for Peter Smith, three, and his hands were halfway to his ears and Jack was still and young and so very, very lost, both now and so far into a horrid future and he would have to push and make four happen right then, and - four!

Ianto stumbled forward, out of the temporal prison and towards Jack, reaching into the deep coat pocket and pulling the earplugs from the box he found there, pushing them into Jack's ears. He held himself steady as Jack collapsed against him.

"Ianto! How long?"

"I don't know," whispered Ianto, pulling Jack into a passionate embrace and kissing him gently, all in a bid to thwart the Chronereptors, he reasoned. "Let's get the others out of this." He kissed Jack with greater heat.

When they'd supplied the rest of the team with somewhat sleepy Calaxian earplugs pulled from stasis, Ianto took Jack aside into a communications-free room in the archives. "Jack, you need to see this." He went for his jacket pocket and paused. "And you might want to sit down."

"Nice stone," said Jack, nodding at Ianto's neck as he sat.

"Yeah, that too." Ianto pulled out the wrist strap. "I think you might need this."

Jack stiffened. "Where did you get that?"

"Back at home."

"Who gave it to you?"

"You did."

Jack jumped up. "You talked with me? Future-me? Do you have any idea what that could do to space-time?"

"You do sound a lot like a sort of twisted version of yourself," said Ianto.

"You don't need me to lecture you on temporal paradoxes, do you? Not after all we went through in Gander?"

"No, but you do have to take this, or you won't be able to stop them."

"Stop who?"

"The Chronereptors."

"You really did talk to someone from the future."

"Yup. And if you don't want...." Ianto swallowed, the memory of Jack's possible future haunting him. "You have to kill them, Jack. Every one of them. And this strap'll help you do it."

"Nothing can help with that!"

"This can. You designed it to do just that."

"It kills Chronereptors?"

"No, it tracks them and pulls them out into the open where you can see them." Ianto pulled the ammo box out of his other pocket. "These kill them, especially if you're wearing that strap or touching someone who is."

Jack examined the strap. "He - I - didn't happen to give you a teleport base code, did he?"

"As a matter of fact, yes."

Jack fastened the strap around his wrist. "Are you planning on hanging around?"

"I'm staying with you," said Ianto.

"For how long?"

"At least until that screen turns green."

Jack glanced at the screen and read the script that flashed across it. "So until we've extinguished the Chronereptors, then."

"Yup. Shall we get started?"

"Right after we load up," said Jack, glancing pointedly at the multiphasic bullets.

"He didn't give us very many, did he?"

Jack snorted. "Do you know how rare those things are? Especially when they're keyed to one life-form? This box probably cost him a couple galaxies-worth of pure gold, so don't shoot at anything unless you're touching me, got it?"

"I'm a pretty good aim," muttered Ianto.

Jack started replacing the standard ammo in his Webley with the multiphasics. "You're an excellent aim, but you have to be perfect with these. One bullet per monster and no more. And no strays! If these things get into the wrong hands, this brane won't be worth living in."

"Not too much pressure, then," said Ianto, loading up his Glock.

"And one more thing. I assume you have the teleport base code memorized?"

"Of course."

"Feed it to me when I need it, including any slash marks, and then step aside and let me go."

"Jack, I-"

"Just do it, Ianto! It's too damned dangerous to take you along when you can actually die."

Ianto swallowed, hard.

Jack pulled him close and kissed his forehead with a hard tenderness. "I'm sorry," he murmured. "I didn't mean that the way it sounded. I just-"

"I know."

Jack punched in a code on the new strap. "Let's go hunting!"

Shoulder to shoulder, they ventured out into the Hub. Ianto's heart felt loud, as though all the world should be able to hear, see, feel its din.

And then Jack wrapped an arm around his back and squeezed. "You'll be all right," he said.

"That's meant to be my line," murmured Ianto. He returned the caress, though, rubbing Jack's back briefly.

Jack gave him an odd glance before the strap buzzed quietly. "Autopsy bay," he whispered, showing the display to Ianto.

There was another buzz, and Ianto grasped Jack's wrist. "Workstations."

They made their way up to the workstations and Jack pressed a button on the strap. There was a shimmer and a growl, first from Gwen's workstation and then from the autopsy bay.

Ianto watched in rapt fascination as a form emerged, as though squeezed out from between layers of space.

"Ianto! Back-to-back!" hissed Jack.

Ianto was only too happy to oblige, grateful for the steady bulk of Jack's back against his own, even as the form in front of him solidified into a four-foot, vaguely humanoid shape changing colour with every shift to match the phases of light and shadow around it. He found his hand going involuntarily to his gun, lifting it from its holster, disengaging the safety, cocking it, aiming it ... far too close to.... "Jack, I'll hit Gwen!"

"No you won't. Relax and let the strap work."

Ianto felt the adductor and extensor muscles working calmly in Jack's back and relaxed into the welcome sensation, watching almost as though he weren't really there as his own fingers squeezed and the bullet flew unhurriedly, as though on a Sunday outing, towards its target.

The Chronereptor fell, a look of stunned surprise on its face, as it released Gwen's throat.

Ianto looked around and just managed to catch the movement as Jack's target wheeled around, flapping vestigial wings in vain as it slipped to the floor of the autopsy bay.

They were interesting creatures, Ianto thought, as he held Gwen and stared down at the one who'd been quietly killing her. Delicately made things that were almost beautiful until you saw the raw hate and distrust on their faces. Ianto thought he'd never complain about Janet's looks, again. And ... "They look so old," he said.

"That's because they are," said Jack, very quietly.

"Jack?" Bethan's voice asked tentatively from the autopsy bay, "Would you mind if I had one of those bullets? After Anwar's done the autopsy, I mean? I'd like to try and make another...."

Jack thought for a long moment, gauging her. "All right," he said, at last, "but keep it all in here and in front of the cameras."

And then the strap buzzed again. And again....

Following a thorough sweep of the Hub, which revealed a Chronereptor each in the morgue, the firing range, Myfanwy's lair and Jack's hole, Jack held a quick briefing, uploading a program from the Chronereptor strap into the mainframe. "This'll help you to track them inside the Hub," he said. "Make sure that you all stay here and don't let anyone else in. Keep the earplugs in! Stay off all sound systems except the comms. No other calls in or out of the Hub. If it's solid, pretend you're a zombie and don't talk. They can turn into a gas for a minute or two, so if you see that, suck it into a spaciotemporal stasis box. Any voice that isn't me or Ianto, block it!" He touched the strap.

"Can't we have some of them bullets?" said Anwar.

"Sorry, but no. Ianto and I need them all."

Anwar rolled his eyes. "Oh, right, then, and us lot just have to make do. Thanks, mate."

"You can always help Bethan with her project," said Jack, pointedly.

"We taking the car, or going by strap?" said Ianto.

"Car. We don't know how many of these things we'll have to transport back to the Hub."

"Be careful," said Gwen.

Jack pulled her to him and kissed her forehead. "You, too," he said, lingering a little longer than necessary and reminding Ianto that it rarely worked to examine surface calm too closely.

Following Jack out to the car, the rats came back. Ianto felt more than a bit sick as he associated them for the first time with Gwen.

"Ianto...."

About to climb into the passenger side of the SUV, Ianto turned to see Jack behind him, pale and shaking. He caught Jack around the waist and checked ears (plugs still in) and wrist straps (nothing on the left one that he could decipher, faint signal for Chronereptors on the right, he thought). "Is there one in here?"

"No," said Jack, reaching for the passenger-side door and missing. "Just need you to drive."

"What is it? Are you crossing your timeline, again?"

"Not sure. Feels different, somehow. Like something's changed. Landed on my chest."

Ianto embraced Jack, opening the car door as Jack leaned against him. "Do you need Anwar?"

"Not yet. Just don't let me drive."

Ianto held him for a moment. "Have you ever seen the Chronereptors before today?"

"Not so clearly," said Jack, calm voice at odds with clutching fingers.

"You told me they'd destroyed people you loved."

"I can't get into that right now," said Jack, the high-pitched tension in his voice reminding Ianto too much of Jack2.

"Shh.... I'm sorry."

"It's all right. But I've gotta sit down."

Ianto eased him into place. "You sure you can do this?"

Jack looked at him. "Sure. No problem. Just don't-"

"Let you drive. Got it." He squeezed Jack's shoulder and shut the door, careful not to catch the coat.

The strap took them to Cardiff Castle, and Jack was silent most of the way there.

Chancing a glance when they had to stop at a light, Ianto saw the skin drawn tight over Jack's temple and thought he'd never seen him so wan. He risked reaching out for Jack's hand and found it, clasping it tentatively until he felt Jack's fingers answering. "Alright?"

Jack nodded just once through a clenched jaw and squeezed Ianto's hand hard enough to hurt.

Ianto squeezed back. "You'll be alright."

Jack drew in a broken breath and nodded again, far from steadily.

"I'll stay with you," said Ianto, dismayed at how much more like offer than promise it sounded.

"Thank you," Jack gritted out.

Jack got out of the car just as it stopped and began staggering forward, not even looking at the wrist strap. "There are two of them," he said, as Ianto caught up with him.

Ianto glanced around and took Jack's arm with very public affection. "You look as though someone's dancing on your grave," he said, quietly.

Jack shot him a look that pierced his soul and tried to pull away.

Ianto almost let him go, but chose to hang on tighter, instead. "I'm staying with you," he said, "even if you make it hard."

Jack barely nodded, jaw working, as he dragged them both through the trees.

Ianto thought he saw a shimmer of movement, but that was quickly upstaged by the Renaissance-style wedding that was taking place thirty yards further on.

Jack began to laugh, hysteria tingeing his voice. "Can I have that teleport base code, now?" he asked, after a few scary seconds.

"Er, sure. It's one zero five nine slash five two six four slash seven three eight."

"Thanks." Jack looked at Ianto expectantly, then gazed imperiously at where his hand connected with Jack's arm.

"No way," said Ianto.

Jack started to set himself for a lecture.

"Let me rephrase that," said Ianto. "No fucking way."

Jack shrugged as only he could. "Suit yourself," he said, and wrapped his fingers around the strap.

There was no bright light. No sound of transference. Nothing, really, but the cell-deep knowledge that everything he'd known in life was alien and nowhere to be found. Everything, that is, except Jack, to whom he clung for dear life. He wasn't sure he could speak, and wondered if he'd lose his jaw if he tried, but then Jack was moving toward the Chronereptors twenty yards away, and Ianto had to move with him or ... he didn't really know what would happen.

And then he felt his hand being once again drawn to his Glock. As he drew and aimed, he felt Jack trembling beside him. Ianto inched slightly behind Jack, pressing up against him as much as possible without interfering with his right arm.

Jack centred against Ianto and their bullets flew straight to their marks just as two angry heads came up and fixed them with round maws that seemed to Ianto, for one insane moment, bottomless.

Wordlessly, Ianto followed Jack, hand wrapped around his arm, to the bodies. "How do we get them out of here with nobody seeing?"

"Make sure you're touching one when we shift dimensions," said Jack. "And then pick it up casually when we get back. You've seen how light works around them? It's like a perception filter, at least when they're in motion."

"Does it still work when they're dead?"

"We'll find out. And Ianto ... thank you."

Ianto blinked as the depth of emotion behind the simple words struck him.

The shift back proved even more disorientating than it had going in the other direction. Fortunately, though, the general public were focusing their attention on the wedding's lutenist and singer, who were performing a Dowland piece that Ianto had loved in secret during a particularly maudlin period of his youth. He smiled a bit as he and Jack carried their dead aliens back to the SUV, until remembered lines from the first verse drifted to his ear: All other things shall change, but she remains the same, till heavens changed have their course, and time hath lost his name.

He fingered the stone at his throat as he trudged on, hoping that Jack wouldn't notice that anything was wrong, wanting desperately to run away, wondering if Dowland had written this piece for or about Jack.

"Pretty song," said Jack, though his voice sounded a bit faint.

"Dowland," said Ianto, automatically.

They reached the SUV without incident, and Ianto began to steel himself to the idea of having to drive to - wherever the strap told them to go. He looked over at Jack. And then he realised that he was leaning hard against the back of the SUV.

"Ianto?"

"Oh." Ianto shook himself, or tried to. "It's n-nothing. Just my first time travelling by vortex manipulator, is all."

"Uh-huh," said Jack, arms folded. "My turn to drive."

"I thought you weren't supposed to do that."

"That was then. This is now."

"I'm not risking my life with you behind the wheel unless you tell me what happened and why you're better all of a sudden," said Ianto, incredibly grateful for the distraction.

A shadow passed over Jack's face, and for a moment, Ianto thought he wouldn't say anything. But then, "You said it yourself: someone was dancing on my grave."

It took a moment for Jack's words to sink in, and then Ianto couldn't have driven to save Queen or Country. He all but engulfed Jack. "And you knew the second you saw what the strap was telling you," he murmured. "Back in the garage at the Hub."

"And you got me through it when I thought I couldn't," said Jack against Ianto's ear.

"I never would've if I'd known."

Jack pulled back to search Ianto's face. "Yes, you would." It was at least half plea.

"Yes, I would." Ianto kissed him desperately, hating himself for the truth and uncertainty of his words.

And then the strap beeped.

Jack broke the kiss reluctantly and looked at the screen, still holding Ianto close. And then he laughed softly. "Looks like we're heading back to Splott."

Splott always brought out the worst in Ianto.

"It's okay," said Jack, kissing Ianto's forehead. "I promise I won't let anyone pull a pylon down on me."

Ianto shrugged him off and went to reload his gun in the passenger seat.

Jack slipped in behind the wheel and squeezed Ianto's knee. "Sorry. I keep forgetting how much you hate to see me die."

Ianto would never know what took over his mouthparts, just then. "Almost as much as you hate being thought of as part of a 'couple'."

"Hey, now that's not fair," said Jack. "I mean, you're not exactly hearts-n-flowers Jones, are you? And besides, who proposed to whom, here?"

"How many times have you sneered at us for our twenty-first century morality? For our 'quaint labels'? And I don't mean about sexual orientation, cause those are crap, but why on earth would you push for a legalised Civil Partnership when it would label you for at least a few days if not, oh..." he looked at his watch, "say, up to eight years, because it's vaguely possible that I might actually reach the Torchwood maximum age limit and live till I'm thirty-five. And then there's Gwen." Ianto had kept his eyes on his weapon, carefully not-registering Jack's expressions as he'd ranted on. But he winced as his last sentence escaped, and the silence that fell was lethal.

"What do you mean?" said Jack, very much too softly.

Ianto wished that whatever power had taken over his speech centre would come back and render him clearly a blithering idiot so that Jack could just retcon him and send him off to a library in Fiji. Or possibly the Outer Hebrides. "Oh, God." It was supplication every bit as much as swearing. "Look, it's none of my business, but it's been pretty obvious that there's something between you. Probably love at first sight, or some such thing. And who could blame you?" Ianto huffed. "She's bloody gorgeous. I'd shag her in a second if-" He bit his tongue to the point of near-injury to keep from finishing the sentence.

"If she weren't incredibly married?"

"That, too," said Ianto, quietly.

"I do love her," said Jack, wistfully. "She's amazing, and she's the only person I've met who's both a natural Torchwood operative and determined to have a life outside. If I could bottle it and force everyone in the organisation to take it, the world would suddenly be a very good place."

Ianto felt his heart sink, a little, even though Jack wasn't telling him anything new.

"She's also headstrong, wilful, absolutely convinced she's right even when she absolutely isn't, and very married."

"She'd have you in a minute, you know."

"I don't like to think about that."

"Would you have her, if you could?"

"You mean if she didn't have Rhys and I wasn't living with you?"

Ianto just held Jack's gaze.

"Yeah, I would. And we'd be absolutely great together for, oh, about a week and a half, and then she'd start killing me a lot and I'd be really awful to her, and it'd end in tears. Hopefully, it wouldn't end in pregnancy for either of us." Jack shuddered. And then he looked at Ianto. "What brought all this on? I mean, you've never had that kind of a problem with Gwen before." He started the car, and looked significantly at Ianto.

Ianto rolled his eyes and closed the door. "You could've said something," he muttered.

Jack raised an eyebrow at him.

"Just seeing you together at the Hub today. It sort of ... brought a few things into focus."

"Seems like it muddied the water, to me," said Jack as he pulled out of the private car park.

"The water was already fucking muddy!"

"I am not having this conversation," said Jack, flatly.

"Neither am I," said Ianto. "Mind the child!"

Jack swerved just in time.

Ianto settled back in his seat for the long silence to Splott.

---

"Okay, the Hub I can understand. My grave I can understand. But Tesco? Why Tesco? And why this Tesco?" Jack finished reloading his Webley and stalked away from the SUV.

Ianto gave the pylon a baleful look. "Cause it's the last place you died," he muttered under his breath.

"Ianto!" said Jack, not turning back. "You coming?"

There was a certain set to Jack's shoulders, a timbre in the voice, that made Ianto abandon the idea of just leaving him alone to deal with the Chronereptors in this particular Tesco, no matter how tempting he found it. "Yes, all right," he said, testily.

Tesco was full. Not just ordinary-full, but packed to the brim with people, including a local television news crew there to record the Civil Partnership ceremony of Mary Lloyd and Stacy Jones ("No relation," said Ianto automatically) to be held at the fish counter by none other than the The Right Honourable The Lord Mayor of Cardiff, who had just happened to be the superintendent registrar for his district before being elected to the post, and who'd made his own fame and (smallish) fortune in fish.

"How in this twenty-first century backwater did a Tesco get certified as a civil marriage venue?" whispered Jack.

"Stop insulting my time! And I don't know, but it's been on the books for a couple of years, now."

"Whatever," said Jack, before striding off to follow his wrist strap.

Ianto caught up with him. "This wasn't what I had in mind when I said I'd stay with you even if you made it hard," he hissed.

"Then why don't you get out of my face and leave me alone?"

"Because we have a fucking job to do and a universe to save!"

"Then get out of my way and let me save it!" spat Jack, fixing Ianto with a look of such angry hurt that he recoiled.

Ianto backed away, about to turn and leave for good when a shimmer caught his eye. Without thinking, he pulled his gun and fired, and the Chronereptor came into view as it fell towards them, a vicious-looking probe poised at the back of Jack's neck.

The pandemonium was instant, and it wasn't the first time that Ianto wished they'd wrested a mass amnesia device from the MiB in return for their efforts at the Statue of Liberty.

"Torchwood," said Jack, flashing his I.D. "Everybody please proceed in an orderly fashion to the nearest exit. Gone? Good!" He rounded on Ianto. "Next time tell me, and I'll use the wrist strap!"

"It was right behind you! And judging by that thing it was pointing at you, if I'd waited any longer, you wouldn't have been able to activate the bloody strap, and I don't know how!"

Jack looked down at the alien and up at Ianto and down at the probe. "You weren't touching me," he said.

"No."

"How did you see it without the wrist strap?"

"I don't know," said Ianto, calmly spitting out each word. "I just did."

"Nice shot," said Jack at last.

"I suppose that counts for something."

There was a groaning noise before Jack could reply, and Ianto thought of the sickening sound of twisting girders when the pylon had come down. They both looked around and saw a segment of store shelving blink and then wink out of existence, as though swallowed by space-time. "There go the biscuits," said Jack.

"I suppose the Chronereptors need food in their new universe," said Ianto.

"Let's follow them," said Jack, holding out his hand.

Ianto took it without hesitation and then they were in a surreal version of a building made of bits of other buildings and pieces of tree, rock, aeroplanes, living beings.... There were things for which Ianto had no name or knowledge to apply. And there were two Chronereptors fighting hard with one another, trying to swallow each other with those round, endless mouths. "Jesus Christ, how do they work together at all?"

"In bits and pieces," said Jack, leaning heavily against Ianto. "That's why this place looks the way it does. Even if they succeed in creating enough of a universe for themselves, they'll never make it work."

Ianto slipped an arm around Jack's back. "You alright?"

"Sure."

"Good, then we can kill these two and get on with it, right?"

"Yeah," said Jack, wearily. "Just ... stay?"

"I said I would."

Jack nodded and aimed at the pair, as Ianto did.

They emerged from the dimensional shift a little too close to a shelf full of instant coffee, and it was all Ianto could do to keep it from toppling and falling on top of them. However, he was very gratified to note that the biscuit aisle was once more intact, and took a look to see if the VM screen had turned green.

It hadn't. It had turned a rather nasty shade of bright red, though, which caused Jack to drop his dead alien and cling to Ianto a bit too hard. "They're firing something," he whispered.

"Can you make them visible?"

"When they've stopped firing," said Jack.

"Should we wait that long?"

"No." Jack touched a button on the strap.

Ianto heard the growl but didn't see anything until he followed Jack's wide-eyed look to see two Chronereptors converting themselves into thick clouds of gas through a small box.

"No, no, no, no, no!" said Jack hurrying after them, gun drawn, leaving Ianto behind.

Ianto watched as the clouds dispersed, one to the right and the other up and towards the ceiling. Then both clouds vanished. "Jack! What does the screen say?"

Jack stopped. "It's gone black," he said, after a pause.

"You said they could only stay like that for a couple of minutes. Will they come back here?"

"I don't know," said Jack, tapping frantically at the strap. "And I can't see any more of them on this."

"What do we do now?"

Jack looked up at Ianto, his face bleak. "I don't know."

Ianto holstered his gun and went to Jack. "I'm sorry," he said, searching Jack's face.

Jack nodded and allowed Ianto's embrace. "I don't know where they've gone," he said, tightly.

"They'll turn up. Even if we have to follow them back to Gander, we'll find them."

Jack's arms went around Ianto, then. "You've really gotta marry me."

Ianto stiffened and he pulled back. "Because...?"

"Because-haven't we had this conversation before?"

"No, we've specifically not had it. And we aren't bloody likely to have it, which is why we're neither of us likely to get married to anybody anytime within my Torchwood-limited lifespan."

"You know, you could stop working for Torchwood and unlimit your lifespan."

"I think you may have developed a faulty concept of a normal human lifespan," said Ianto, hoisting a dead alien and heading for the exit. "Are you going to help clean up, or are you leaving it to me?"

Jack sighed, holstering the Webley, and hoisted his own dead alien. "Okay, so just do me a favour."

"What?"

"Seeing as how you're going to let the notice of intent lapse, promise me that you'll watch what you say when you come."

Ianto's feet halted of their own accord. "What are you talking about?"

"Back in Gander? You said you loved me."

Ianto carefully did not mouth 'Fuck!' in the middle of Tesco.

"You can see where I might get confused and think that, you know, I actually meant something to you," continued Jack.

"Jack, I-"

"Look, Ianto, it's all right. Really. I'm a fifty-first century guy. I can live with hot sex and no strings. And baby, you are hot!" Jack winked at him and trudged off to the SUV.

"This isn't happening," muttered Ianto. "This is just a bit of brane stolen by the Chronereptors, and I'm going to find them and fucking kill them for it." He trotted after Jack. "Why do you think I'm going to let the notice of intent lapse?

Jack blinked at him. "This is the last day."

Ianto stopped again. "It can't be."

Jack traced a finger over Ianto's cheek. "It is." He turned for the SUV, radiating 'Go away'.

When they collected the third dead alien, the one that Ianto had killed without benefit of the wrist strap, they found the probe was missing. Even a search using the strap proved fruitless. "Any way to determine whether it was taken by a human or an alien?" asked Ianto.

"Not a good one. But we should probably stick around for this partnership ceremony they seem determined to have, just in case."

"What good would that do?"

"Weddings bring out the worst in people," said Jack. "You never know when some ASBO kid's going to have a go at someone in or near the wedding party. And let's face it, what better way to have a bit of fun than by sticking a giant probe up Uncle Gareth's-"

"Yes, alright, I get the point," said Ianto. "And we can distribute the retcon more easily, as well."

"Good thinking."

Mary and Stacy were delighted by the gift of wine for everybody as Torchwood's way of saying, 'Sorry for shooting up your wedding, and thanks for being such good sports about it.'

The BBC news crew were chuffed to get an interview with Ianto Jones, one of the saviours of Cardiff, even though they were clearly disappointed that Gwen Cooper wasn't present. They also agreed to wipe any footage of Ianto and Jack depicting the performance of their duties. "Not that you wouldn't do that on your own, anyway," muttered a sound man near Ianto's ear. "Bloody Torchwood!"

The Right Honourable The Lord Mayor of Cardiff made a point of shaking hands with Ianto Jones and Jack Harkness in front of the cameras while stating through the clenched teeth of his smile, "I'll expect a full report of this on my desk in the morning." Ianto nodded, knowing full well that such a report would never appear.

And Jack kissed Mary and got groped by Stacy, and worked the crowd as only Jack could, and Ianto thought he'd never seen a man more alone as Jack took Mary and Stacy's picture in front of a huge turbot brought in (and held up) for the occasion by Stacy's father. As Ianto approached the tableau, Mary said, "Oh, look, can we get a photo with you in it, Captain? You're too gorgeous to miss!"

"Is there anyone to take the picture?" asked Jack.

"That man there," said Stacy, taking the camera and handing it to Ianto. "You wouldn't mind, would you?"

"Not at all," said Ianto.

"Oh, thanks, love," said Mary. "Let's have you in the middle," she said, pushing Jack where she wanted him.

Ianto snapped the photo and checked it. "One more, I think," he said, his voice not as steady as he'd have liked.

Jack looked out at him from between two beautiful women who clearly wanted him, and all he seemed interested in doing was getting out of there as quickly as possible.

"Smile," said Ianto.

Jack did, and the image was achingly perfect.

"Look, we need a picture of you two, as well," said Mary.

Stacy rolled her eyes. "Leave them alone, Mary! Can't you see they're tired?"

"Just one, Stace. They're so lovely together."

"All right, but not against the fish," said Stacy. "That's ours."

"Damned right, it is!" Mary gestured Jack and Ianto into place. "Come on, get close. Well put your arms around each other!"

Jack sighed, pulling Ianto into his arms with an apologetic glance.

Ianto forced himself to relax into the embrace and returned it, squeezing Jacks' arm, gently. He looked at Jack just as the photo was snapped.

"Oh, that's going to be a good one!" said Mary, running over to Stacy.

"Oh, yeah! Show them, Mary."

"No, that's alright," said Ianto, as Jack walked away.

"We'll send you a copy," said Mary.

Ianto caught up with Jack, who was checking the Chronereptor strap just outside the entrance. "Any luck?"

"No," said Jack, bleakly.

"Jack ... why do - did - you want to marry me?"

"Why does anybody want to marry anyone?" countered Jack, his voice flat.

Ianto leaned against the wall. "When I proposed to Lisa, I'd prepared this big speech. All hearts and flowers and love and the smallest diamond you've ever seen on a ring."

Jack laughed softly, and Ianto smiled at him.

"And I stuttered so badly she had to stop me and tell me to get to the point. She always was the take-charge sort."

Jack's face lightened, a little.

"I never was much for flowery speeches, but it meant so much to her that I tried. And I always thought that if I ever got asked, it wouldn't matter if the words got said. Only, I thought I'd know, even if they weren't. And I don't. Because I don't really understand why you'd want to go against everything you've ever said you believed in."

Jack looked off across the river. "You are the first person in a really, really long time that I've wanted to spend a life with, and I haven't the faintest idea why that is. I mean, you're beautiful, you've got a wonderful mind and you're always there when I need you, but I've known others with those traits, and they never did it for me." He turned towards Ianto. "You did everything I hate when we first met. Everything. And you kept on persisting, even when I threatened to kill you. And then you betrayed me. Several times. And I couldn't stop loving you, even when you broke my trust. I should have executed you at least twice, not counting the decaf thing, and I didn't. That's not like me."

"Well, that's a ringing endorsement," said Ianto.

Jack laughed. "And then there's your sense of humour." He sobered. "And you love me. At least, I thought you did. Look, I don't know why I want to marry you, Ianto. I just know that I do. Very much. But only if you want it, too. There's nothing worse than being married to someone who doesn't really want it, and that includes both being buried alive for two thousand years and having your first love stolen and unravelled bit by bit by Chronereptors." Jack turned away again as his voice broke.

Ianto went to him and embraced him from behind. "I want it too, Jack. I just don't want to want it. After Lisa, I never wanted to be so much in love with anyone again, especially someone who seems so dead set against the whole idea of couples."

"It's not the love or the commitment, it's the outside demand. I don't care what any two or more people agree to, as long as it doesn't hurt anyone. Well, not without mutual, verifiable consent. I just have trouble with the idea that we all have to fit one model. I mean, I don't fit mine."

"I don't understand," said Ianto, coming to stand beside Jack.

"By this time, you know I'm from the fifty-first century," said Jack.

"I had gathered that, yes."

"But look how I dress." Jack ran his hands over coat, braces and trousers. "And look at the music I like, the gun I carry, the fact that I tend to date one person at a time."

"I thought that was so you'd minimise being put in prison, hanged or beaten to death," said Ianto, dryly.

"Well, that too," said Jack. "I'm a romantic. In my day, that's a throwback, even if your goal is to commit for life to a small group of people, instead of just one."

"So, you're saying you got teased for not having enough orgies?"

"You have no idea!"

"But why me? Why not Gwen or Rhys, or both of them? I think he'd switch for you."

Jack perked up. "You think?"

"So much for you being a throwback."

Jack squeezed Ianto in a side-on embrace. "You keep me grounded. Gwen thought she'd be the one to do that, and so did I at first, but you're the one that keeps me sane. You love me, and that helps me to sleep at night."

"No use denying it, is there?" Ianto threw a pleading look at Jack.

"Do you really want to?" Jack searched Ianto's eyes, haunted.

"No," said Ianto, his voice very small.

"Then marry me?"

Ianto choked on his reply.

"If we hurry, we can catch the mayor," said Jack.

"Oh, god...."

"It's either him or we wait at least another sixteen days, and that's just more time to lose your nerve."

"You're the devil."

"You know it, baby."

"You're not helping your case."

"Oh, yeah?" Jack sniffed the air. "Mmmm...."

"That's sex, not marriage."

"We don't have to do this."

"Yes we do," said Ianto. He bumped Jack's shoulder with his forehead. "Yes, we do."

"Wait... you mean...."

"I'll marry you. But only if we do it now. You've got a five minute window of opportunity."

Jack whirled around and dragged Ianto at a run through the supermarket, skidding to a halt in front of the Mayor. And the TV crew. "Marry us," he said.

The camera was turned on and rolling before the 's'.

"I beg your pardon?"

Mary and Stacy, now safely ensconced behind the fish counter in their wedding waders, stopped in the middle of wrapping up the turbot and stared.

"Marry us," said Jack, clutching Ianto's hand in his own. "We've got five minutes..."

"Four minutes, twenty-seven seconds," said Ianto.

"Five minutes," said Jack, pointedly, "before he says 'no' again, and this is the last day our notice of intent is in effect."

"Oh, you did leave it a bit late, didn't you?" said Mary.

"To be fair, I was the one who dragged my heels," said Ianto. "What with rebuilding Cardiff, and all."

"He has a point there," said Stacy. "Oh, go on, Mayor! You can always toss them in gaol if they're lying."

The Mayor looked from Mary and Stacy to Jack and Ianto to the gathering audience to the camera. "Oh, all right!" He cleared his throat. "Be it known that this building, having been duly-"

"Oh, come on, Evan," said Mary. "You already did the bit about the building being sanctioned for civil marriages, and all that. Just marry them!"

The Mayor huffed. "Full names?"

"Jack Harkness."

"Ianto Jones."

"By replying 'I am' to the question, are you, Jack Harkness, free, lawfully to marry Ianto Jones?"

"I am," said Jack.

"By replying 'I am' to the question, are you, Ianto Jones, free, lawfully to marry Jack Harkness?"

"I-" Ianto choked. "I am," he managed.

The Mayor turned to Jack. "Repeat after me: I call upon these persons here present..."

"I call upon these persons here present..."

"To witness that I, Jack Harkness..."

"To witness that I, Jack Harkness..."

"Do take thee, Ianto Jones..."

"Do take thee, Ianto Jones..."

"To be my lawful wedded husband."

"To be my lawful wedded husband."

"Right. Now, Mr. Jones, repeat after me: I call upon these persons here present..."

Ianto took a huge breath. "I call upon these persons here present to witness that I, Ianto Jones, do take thee, Jack Harkness, to be my lawful wedded husband."

"Oh, he did it that fast, didn't he?" said Stacy.

Ianto thought that he was very likely to faint.

"Oh, I nearly forgot," said the Mayor. "Are there any rings?"

"Not yet," said Jack.

"Nope," said Ianto.

"Good, then I now pronounce you husbands."

"Well, go on," said Mary. "Kiss each other!"

"I am going to wake up tomorrow morning and this will just have been a nightmare," said Ianto.

"Always the romantic," said Jack.

"Kiss him!" demanded Stacy.

"Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" chanted the crowd.

Ianto felt stiff as a board as Jack leaned forward and touched his lips very lightly with his own. This isn't happening. It just isn't. It really-"Jack! They're here!" The wrist strap buzzed and snapped, Ianto drew his Glock, Jack had his Webley instantly to hand and they aimed and shot over each other's shoulders as two Chronereptors made themselves visible, the one behind Jack trying to sink the captured probe even as Ianto fired a second shot at it.

Time and the world went still and quiet as the screen on the strap slowly blinked and turned green and the Chronereptors disappeared.

And time righted itself in a way that Ianto hadn't known he could perceive. And Jack was staring at him and lunging for him and kissing him so hard that he was sure he'd taste blood.

And he didn't care. He sank into Jack's arms as he felt the stone around his neck disappear, and knew that they'd fixed the time.

And he still hated Splott and Tesco.

---

Very late that night, Ianto sat on the sofa, listening to the Dowland CD he'd bought on the way home from the Hub. By turns, he had snorted at his youthful obsession with the Lachrymae, although it was a brilliant piece, found a new appreciation for Come Away, scoffed outright at If My Complaints Could Passions Move, and been simultaneously chilled and deeply moved and warmed by Time Stands Still, the title he'd forgotten at Cardiff Castle. He was listening to the second verse when Jack returned.

"Ianto-"

"Shh," said Ianto softly. He shifted, inviting Jack to sit by creating a spot.

Jack slipped quietly into place and took the bit of blanket Ianto offered, wrapping an arm around Ianto's shoulders.

My settled vows and spotless faith no fortune can remove,

Courage shall show my inward faith, and faith shall try my love.

As the lines were repeated, Ianto felt Jack's lips pressing against his temple. As the song ended, Jack kissed his eyebrow, corner of his eye, cheekbone, corner of his mouth. And then he was cradled deeply in Jack's arms and in a melting, open kiss that terrified him by how much he needed it.

And then Burst Forth, My Tears came on and Jack broke the kiss. "Yeesh! I'd forgotten what a downer Dowland can be!"

"Yeah, bit of a mood killer," said Ianto, still reeling from the loss of the kiss and the spell cast by the previous song.

Jack reached across him for the remote and turned off the CD player. "How are you, Ianto?"

Ianto looked at him. "I'm fine," he said, trying to prepare himself for whatever bombshell Jack was going to drop.

Jack returned his gaze, really looking at him. Seeing him. "Did I force you into this?"

"Into Dowland?"

"Ianto!"

"No."

"No, you won't answer, or no, I didn't force you?"

"You're going to make me say it, aren't you?"

"I just mean that I can be a bit ... forceful."

Ianto rolled his eyes. "You really are going to make me say it."

"I really need to know if you wanted m-this as much as I wanted y-this."

Ianto's mind boggled. Loudly. "You are the biggest twat the world has ever produced!"

"Gee, thanks," said Jack.

"Alright, then, before this gets any worse I'll say it. But only once, so don't fucking fall asleep. I married you in a moment of utter stupidity and borderline psychosis, but I did so of my own accord, and I cannot prove otherwise. And you know the worst thing about it? I'd do it again. Because despite all the powers of higher reasoning that I've been given as the result of having a brain, I fucking love you and life just isn't all that much fun without you."

Jack reached helplessly for Ianto, who went willingly into his arms.

"Ah, don't cry. Jack. Don't cry, love."

"Sorry," said Jack, wiping his eyes, hard.

"How long's it been since someone told you that?"

"To stop crying? You say it to me all the time!"

"No, the other thing," said Ianto.

"A long time," said Jack.

"And since they meant it?"

"A longer time."

"Cryptic answer. No change there, then. See? All nice and normal."

Jack gave a moist laugh and kissed Ianto tenderly.

Ianto stroked Jack's cheek. "I really do love living with you, you know. More than fifty percent of the time."

"Really?"

"Yes. It runs a good fifty-two, fifty-three percent."

Jack clutched at him again, shaking with laughter.

"I've a surprise for you," said Ianto.

"You do?"

"Yup. It's in the bedroom." Ianto stroked Jack's face and kissed his eyes. "Why don't you go put it on and I'll be there in ... ten."

"Make it fifteen," said Jack, wrapping Ianto in a warm embrace before pulling back. "I'm so proud of you."

"Jack...."

"Nobody else could have done what you did today."

"I think Peter Smith could've."

"No, he couldn't. He's time-sensitive, but he can't always focus. You can."

"I was scared shitless."

"That's what makes you so brave."

Ianto couldn't respond.

Jack kissed his forehead and stood up. "So. Ten minutes?"

"Yup," said Ianto, still not quite able to meet Jack's eyes.

Jack squeezed Ianto's shoulder and moved towards the bedroom. He paused and turned back. "I love you." And then he was gone.

Ianto very nearly got up and raced into the bedroom to snatch away the surprise, but he found himself too gluey to move. And then the delighted howl told him it was too late, anyway.

"I'm Mr. Incredible!"

"Oh, god," muttered Ianto. "What've I done?"

End