Title: The end is where we start from
Warnings: None, worksafe.
Spoilers: Basic spoilers through the end of S02, and 'Exit Wounds', and big ones for 'The Dead Line' radio play.
Rating: PG-13
Genre: established relationship, starts out angsty, but gets better ;)
Word Count: ~3,700

Notes: This will probably more sense if you've listened to 'The Dead Line', but I'd like to think it stands alone too? I listened to the radio plays for the first time this weekend though, and one of the things that really struck me with this one was what it must have meant to Ianto to have stayed by Jack's bedside, especially because it meant leaving Gwen to go out on her own into the field. *nod* So this started with that idea, and went from there. ;) ...Ah, and the title is from a poem by T.S. Eliot-Little Gidding, from Four Quartets.

I hope you enjoy it, and as always, comments are always begged for shamelessly greatly appreciated. 3


"Gwen," Ianto started, and almost immediately, he wished he hadn't.

Now that he was standing here, sober light of day and everything, in the quiet of the hub in the morning (though the hub always seemed quiet now) the words were having a hard time finding their way out of his mouth. He guessed he wasn't all that good at apologies when it came down to it. They reminded him of his faults, maybe, and on mornings like this, it seemed like he had so very, very many of them.

He sighed. It wasn't like him to be quite so dramatic before he'd had his coffee. Then again, what did he know, things were changing around him every day—Jack, he reminded himself, had almost died, after all.

Gwen, on the other hand, was looking at him with concern.

"What is it, Ianto, what's wrong? Is Jack—"

"No, Jack's-" Relief flooded his mind again when he thought of Jack, lying next to him in bed last night like always. Jack, alive, breathing, not in danger, not suffering in some messed-up-trance-state at the hands of some ridiculous holdover from 1972 that'd travelled through the fucking—

"Jack's fine," Ianto finished, and then sighed. "Everything's fine."

Gwen was still staring at her monitor, but when Ianto didn't continue she looked up, eyes searching his face for whatever it was she thought she'd find there.

It'd become routine, really, these past few months, since it'd been just the three of them, Gwen stopping him with a look, or a few words, when he was on his way to the coffee machine, or while he was finishing up a supply order-even when they were out in the middle of the field sometimes. Even if her intuition wasn't always exactly perfect, Ianto had to admit it was nice to know that she cared.

They were getting by, like this. Keeping busy, managing. Taking care of each other.

Ianto's stomach twisted with guilt as he remembered how completely rubbish he'd been at this lately though, especially these past few days. He shouldn't have let her go off on her own, should've been there, shouldn't have let his feelings get in the way of—

"Ianto," Gwen started sympathetically. "Jack's not going anywhere. Not anymore."

"I know," he said quickly. "That's not it." It'd been a good guess though, he'd give her that. Ianto sighed. He needed to get this over with.

Ianto pursed his lips, blinked long enough to steel himself, and then looked Gwen in the eye. "I'm sorry."

Gwen looked confused. "Ianto, I don't—"

"My behavior over these past few days has been inexcusable. It may have put you in unnecessary danger, and I'm sorry. I should be saying this to Rhys too. I don't know what-" He closed his eyes. "Just know that it won't happen again."

Gwen shook her head at him, and he was glad that he didn't have to explain anything more; she seemed to get it, at least.

"You don't have to do that, Ianto. I understand."

Ianto shook his head. "I should've been out there with you," he started again. "Especially since Jack—"

"Ianto, stop," Gwen said, her tone a little harsher than he was expecting. "If it'd been Rhys lying there, you know I'd have done the exact same thing."

Ah, right. Ianto's insides churned, just a little. Compare him and Jack to any other couple, not to mention Gwen and Rhys, and you'd probably come up a little less-than-full, but…

"I can't make the same excuses as you, Gwen," he said evenly, not meeting her eyes. "This is Jack we're talking about." He knew the flippancy in his voice sounded more bitter than anything else, but he was too tired to care.

To his surprise, Gwen didn't look put off anymore. She just looked sad, and Ianto realized something suddenly. He was really, really tired of sad.

"Ianto…"

He smiled, trying to reassure her, anything to get that look off her face.

"I should've known he'd be back, right?"

Damn, but he was off his game today. The only person he knew who could screw up a simple apology. "Gwen, I'm sorry I screwed you over and didn't help out the other day." That was how this was supposed to have gone.

"Ianto, you have nothing to be sorry about. If I'd really needed you, I'd have insisted." She paused. "Give me a little more credit, okay? I understand."

"No, you really don't."

"Dammit, Ianto!"

Ianto just closed his eyes, waiting for whatever else she had to say. Most likely a heartfelt speech involving a certain four-letter-word, if he knew her at all.

"I understand that love makes people irrational sometimes, okay. It's nothing to be ashamed of. It's normal, yeah?"

And Ianto found himself nodding, because even though he'd pretty much known what she was going to say, something had resonated anyway. For a second, he almost felt normal, when she put it like that.

God this was really a shit way to start the morning.

"Nothing feels normal anymore," he told her honestly, before he turned around, and started to walk away, knowing this was a stupid, stupid thing to say even before the words were half out of his mouth.

"Sorry," he added, pausing before he turned to make his way down to the archives, where with any luck he'd be able to spend the rest of the day buried in several decades of filing. "I didn't mean that."

"I know, Ianto. I know," he heard her say to his back, before he disappeared.

"This thing really has you shaken up, doesn't it."

They were in Jack's office. They'd sent Gwen home almost an hour ago, and Ianto had been in the middle of a veritable wall of filing downstairs until Jack had summoned him.

He glanced at the clock on the wall opposite Jack's desk, and noted to himself that it had been 49 and a half hours since Jack had woken up in that hospital room. 49 and a half hours since anything else had threatened Jack's… existence (Ianto had been going with this lately, since life felt woefully inadequate for Jack anymore). He'd started a sort of countdown in his head X days and counting since Jack has been dead/comatose/MIA and as his eyes wandered up to the clock again, his brain told him 49 hours and thirty one minutes before he could stop himself. It was possible that he was suffering from some sort of mental breakdown, clearly.

"I don't know what you mean, Jack."

"You've seen me die how many times now?"

"That's different," Ianto said quickly, because it was.

Ianto couldn't explain why seeing Jack lying in front of him not dead had been so much harder than all the times he'd seen him get shot or torn apart by a weevil, only to bleed out in Ianto's arms and then gasp back to life however many minutes or hours later. That was pretty horrible, sure—it gave Ianto chills just thinking about it-but for some reason this had just been… different.

Sitting there staring down at Jack in an actual hospital room, with monitors ticking and beeping away in his ear, and nurses coming in and out, it had really felt like Jack was dying, regardless of what he knew, regardless of the fact that Jack was Jack, and this wasn't supposed to be happening.

Because it was happening.

He'd had to fill out paperwork.

Had to listen to the doctors as they tried to prepare them for the worst, even though he knew they did this every day. That this same scenario played out every day in hospital rooms all across the country, all across the world. People died. People lost loved ones. Every. Day. And it was like some kind of horrible nightmare that Jack could be reduced to that too in the end. Ianto thought it may have broken something in him, he wasn't sure.

"What's going on, Ianto," Jack had gotten up from his desk, and was standing in front of Ianto now, gripping his elbow tightly, as if Ianto was about to run off somewhere. "You've been hiding down in the archives all day—Gwen told me you didn't even stop for lunch, and yes, I'm aware that this wouldn't be the first time that you've gotten lost in your work and skipped a meal or two, but I also know you better than that."

Ianto found himself staring down at his shoes, feeling a bit like a sullen teenager who'd been caught skipping school or something.

"Talk to me," Jack ordered, and honestly, Ianto kind of wanted to oblige him. The problem was he really didn't know what to say, or how to make this make sense to Jack when it didn't even make any sense to himself.

"I don't know," he said finally.

He shifted out of Jack's grip, choosing to lean against Jack's desk for support instead. As always, there was something about Jack's presence, something that always seemed to strip away his filters, one by one.

He didn't want to talk about this. He'd been hiding—no, he reminded himself, he'd been working- all day in the archives for the express purpose of not talking about this. After his encounter with Gwen this morning, he'd been pretty unimpressed by his ability to discuss the events of the past 48 hours with any form of coherency, and so he'd made a conscious decision to simply avoid doing it.

"I guess it just scared me," he admitted, eyeing Jack cautiously.

"Okay. Go on."

Jack had moved next to him, had put his feet up on his chair (Ianto almost cringed) and crossed his arms over his chest, and now he was looking at Ianto expectantly.

Ianto was a little touched, honestly. It was endearing, how Jack always wanted to fix everything, but if how he was feeling now—jumpy, anxious, a little trapped—was any indication, Ianto just didn't think Jack was going to be able to work his magic on this one.

"Never mind, Jack." He started to get up. "I have some things I needed to finish up downstairs. I wasn't hiding, you know," he added quickly. "Those boxes of reports aren't going to file themselves."

"Ianto," Jack had caught his arm, and was all but dragging him back to the desk, fixing him with a dangerous look. "What are you afraid of?"

Ianto sighed, and resigned himself to meeting Jack's eyes, which were, at the moment, rather intense, no-nonsense, but also, underneath all that, he just looked sad. The sort of sad that Ianto had caught him looking a lot lately, since the funeral. It was the same look that Jack used to get in his eyes when he talked about all the people he'd lost, only now Ianto had lost some of them too.

"I'm not really sure. Everything?" Ianto forced a self-deprecating laugh.

But no, that really wasn't it. There was only one thing Ianto was really scared of, one thing that had been haunting him for the past few days—and long before that, too, because of course this trance thing, and Jack lying there dying had just been an excuse. To allow himself to feel something he'd been feeling for a long time anyway.

Ianto gripped the edge of Jack's desk with both hands, and tried to maintain what was left of his composure.

"That's a lie, sorry. I really didn't want to say this, in fact, you probably already know, but…" He lowered his head because seeing Jack's face watching him out of the corner of his eye was somehow making it hard to concentrate.

"I'm scared of losing you too, Jack. Really scared."

That was a moment of almost suffocating silence between them, and then suddenly Jack was on his feet, prying Ianto's hands off the desk, pulling him onto his feet and into a tight hug. The pressure on his chest and ribs bordered on painful, Jack was squeezing him so hard, and it wasn't until Jack released him a little that he was able to focus again.

All the things he loved about being close to Jack were right here though—they hadn't gone anywhere since he'd last checked in, and there was a strange sort of relief in that. How Jack's hips fit against his, the curve of Jack's shoulders, how Jack lips always ended up hovering around Ianto's neck, and how his fingers always seemed to wander along his collarbone. He realized that his heart must have been pounding, because it was steadying now as Jack moved his hands up and down Ianto's back. He realized now that he'd left his jacket somewhere—probably down in the archives—because the warmth from Jack's hands was seeping through the thin cotton of his dress shirt, into his skin. Ianto let his wrists rest on Jack's waistband, his hands falling into place just above Jack's hips, his thumbs hooking around Jack's braces, as he let out a long breath.

"It seemed possible," he told Jack, his voice quiet. "Sitting there with you in that hospital room. Everything just felt so wrong. And I couldn't leave you there. I kept imagining you waking up, or worse, not waking up, and I just… I couldn't leave."

Jack was quiet, and when Ianto pulled away a little, so that he could properly look Jack in the eye, he allowed him the space.

"I should've been with Gwen. I let her go out alone with Rhys and it was wrong and I did it to stay with you." Ianto closed his eyes, bitterness and guilt working their way back into his mind. He took a small step backwards to put a little more space between them. "It was stupid."

"I was glad you stayed."

"You were in a coma Jack, you weren't glad about anything."

"Trance, Ianto, and I'm telling you, I'm glad you stayed," Jack said and the edge in his voice was rough, harsh. "Gwen managed. You did the right thing."

"For who, Jack?" Ianto leaned heavily on the edge of Jack's desk. "Because last time I checked, acting based on one's feelings in the field was a real liability with this job."

Jack stared down at him, looking a little defensive. "For me. What you did was the right thing for me."

"So that's official Torchwood policy now? 'Do what's right for Jack, even if it means putting everyone else in danger?' Come on, Jack, even you're not that selfish."

"Okay, fine! Maybe it was stupid. Maybe you should've gone with Gwen and left me there. Is that what you want me to say?" Jack paused, staring down at him. "No," he said, and Ianto could see the realization in his eyes when it hit him. "That's not even what this is about, is it."

At this Ianto felt his face flush, because he knew Jack was right. Of course Jack was right—Jack was always right. He stood up, because it was nerve-wracking having Jack towering over him like that.

Jack took this opportunity to move close to him again, and even though Ianto had been getting himself worked up, to the point where he was almost angry-at himself, at Jack, at everything that had happened over the last few months, Jack guided him into his arms easily.

They stayed like that for a long moment, cheek to cheek, Ianto's breath falling into rhythm with his heart, and Jack's hand on his neck, holding them still.

"You know you were the first person I looked for when I came to," Jack whispered, and Ianto could feel himself melting into Jack, into this embrace that was more intimate, more thrilling than it should be, than it could be with anyone else. It was embarrassing, really.

"Well," Ianto said when he could find his voice. "I wasn't exactly hard to find, hovering over you like that."

He felt Jack shake his head, felt Jack's strong hand against his neck, maintaining contact, warm fingers on bare skin.

"What do I have to do to convince you?" Jack's hands fell away from Ianto's neck, and instead Jack grabbed his hand, squeezing it lightly, his fingers brushing against Ianto's wrist. "That you matter to me. That you're important."

Ianto's breath caught in his throat, but he couldn't swallow. Everything suddenly felt so still, so quiet—and he didn't want to disturb it, even for a second. He lifted his eyes to meet Jack's carefully.

"Ianto," Jack said, and gave his arm a little shake, which miraculously didn't bring the universe crashing down around them. "I'm serious. Tell me what to do."

"I don't know," he said honestly, not really sure what it was that Jack wanted from him.

"Jesus," he said after a second, because Jack's intense stare was a little unnerving. "Can you stop looking at me like that?"

Thankfully Jack obliged, and Ianto stared somewhere past his shoes on the floor for several long moments, trying to figure out what to do, where this was going. It wasn't like Jack to ask for instructions—Jack had done this a million times before, surely he'd heard every line in the book.

"I don't know what you want me to tell you," Ianto said finally. Then he shook his head. "I don't have the right words either, Jack. Even when you were lying there, I couldn't-" He let out a breath. "Even now."

"Then just tell me what you want," Jack said, and that haunted look was gone from his eyes; now he just looked, well, determined. Which Ianto had to admit suited him a lot better. "Right now," Jack demanded. "Tell me what you want."

Well, that was… easy, actually.

"You," Ianto told Jack honestly. "Well, technically I want you living, breathing, and with a functioning brain. But really, Jack," Ianto swallowed, his voice catching a little. "That's all I want."

"You're sure that's it?"

"Pretty sure, yeah." Ianto nodded, watching Jack for a moment. "And just so you know, this isn't me trying to be…" He searched for the right word. "…naïve, or something. I know you can go anywhere you want, any time you want. But if you do decide to go… It'd, uh… It'd be nice to have a little warning first," he finished, and then looked up at Jack.

"Is that everything?" Jack was smiling a little, but Ianto couldn't quite read his expression.

"Yep," Ianto said. "I think so. Think you can handle it?"

He watched Jack close his eyes and give a small laugh.

"Yeah, I think I can manage that. Just don't let anyone else know how easy you are," Jack teased, eyes gleaming a little. "I don't really like competition."

"Oh come on, Jack."

"What?"

"Don't act like you actually needed me to tell you all that. This isn't your first time around the block."

"With you it is."

Ianto let out a quick laugh. "Hardly."

"You know what I mean, Ianto."

The thing was, Ianto really wasn't sure if he did.

Jack was quiet for a second. "I'm not always as smart as I look, you know."

There was a long moment of silence between them.

"What do you want, Jack?"

"I think you know the answer to that."

"Not really. I guess I'm not as smart as I look either," Ianto added with a small smile.

Jack leaned back on his hands. "Well, first off there's that smile of yours," he said. "I want that, all the time. I want you to smile so much, I see it in my dreams. Can you do that?"

"All the time?" Ianto raised his eyebrows. "Probably not. I'll do my best though."

"Well, that makes two of us."

And then, because he couldn't help it, Ianto leaned over, and pulled Jack in for a kiss. They hadn't really done this since the hospital, and then Ianto had been so relieved that Jack was moving and breathing on his own again, he hadn't really been able to enjoy it.

But now, sitting here in Jack's office, on Jack's desk, where things were familiar, where instead of the sterile, crisp cleanliness of linoleum and alcohol there was just Jack, just Jack's office, with his coat hanging on the rack in the corner and his papers on the desk around them, things were starting to feel okay again. Normal, even. This was maybe Ianto's favorite place in the entire hub, and it was definitely the only place he could kiss Jack with such complete abandon right now.

This had always been his preferred method of communication with Jack anyway— like this, he could tell Jack everything, and with this sometimes he felt like he could understand everything too.

He could feel it in Jack's lips as they pressed against his. With Jack's touch, Ianto knew that Jack needed him, knew that he mattered, that this mattered. With this he could convince himself that he stood out from the myriad of people Jack had done this with throughout space and time, that he had something to offer Jack that was unique, something that was his and his alone. With this Ianto felt like he could accomplish anything too, that he could hold Jack here in his arms forever if he wanted to. Sometimes it felt so good Ianto never wanted to stop.

They kissed for a long, long time, until finally, Jack pulled away, and grinned at Ianto, looking completely satisfied.

"Sometimes I really don't know what I'd do without you."

Ianto took a moment to catch his breath and then said, "Well, for starters, you'd spend more time in your office getting actual work done—"

"Not interested," Jack interrupted, smoothing his finger across Ianto's cheek fondly.

"And you'd probably decrease your caffeine and sugar intake by at least 50 percent."

Jack shook his head, eyes widening. "Definitely not interested."

"You'll be sticking around for a while then, I take it?"

"For you? Always," Jack said with a grin, and for the first time in days, Ianto allowed himself to relax, to breathe deeply, and then just for Jack, just for good measure, he smiled.