Author's Notes: Okay, first of all, this was meant to be a character study one shot, but then it got completely out of control. I know that it's not the best thing in the world, but I had nearly forty degrees Celsius temperature by the time I wrote the first chapter, so... you can imagine. There will be a second one, of course, and much longer at that, from Ianto's point of view, and it's already written in a notebook, so I'll post it as soon as possible.

The song in the beginning is Falling Slowly by The Frames.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it and, just like always, feedback is most appreciated! (:

I don't know you but I want you all the more for that
Words fall through me and always fool me and I can't react

And games that never amount to more than they're meant
Will play themselves out

Jack wondered if Ianto had changed since the Lisa accident, or if it had been just him never truly noticing the young man at all. As he stood in front of Ianto's flat, nine days since the start of his suspension, he recalled the first time they had seen each other under these circumstances – eight days ago, also here.

Ianto had opened the door and his eyes had been full of heart-breaking sorrow, which had quickly taken anger's place mere hours after he had left the Hub. When he had seen Jack, he had just sighed and let him in, exhausted confusion clouding those bright blue irises as his boss – not very successfully – tried to explain what exactly he was doing there.

This was not the man he had seen through the last few months. In the Hub, Ianto was all smiles and subtle jokes and dry, comfortable sarcasm. Whenever Jack actually paid attention to him, his eyes seemed to be just the same – not that easy to read, but pleasantly open nonetheless, and the Captain often found himself – especially in the more quiet days – trying to find an excuse to call Ianto up in his office, just so he cou7ld hear him talk. It was usually rather refreshing.

All of this was a not-too-small part of the reason Jack had been so furious when things ended up the way they did. Ianto's presence had brought something new to the Hub; something Jack seemed to need as the days went on. Ianto was a quiet support that never left his side and, all of a sudden, the man seemed to despise him; the calm, patiently amused blue eyes filled with hate that overwhelmed everything else.

By the time, it'd felt like a much-needed slap on the face, reminding Jack that he should have noticed something. Anything. He shouldn't have hired Ianto just to look right through him after that, or trying to work his way beneath a mask that had turned out to be so much thicker than he had expected.

He wasn't stupid; he knew that Ianto was still hiding something. His whole CV – or, the one he'd been able to find in Torchwood One's database, combined with everything Mainframe had managed to find about him – was either entirely made up or robbed from some really necessary details.

Jack was in no hurry to find out, though. After all, he had a lot of secrets of his own. In Torchwood, privacy was an unknown concept, but he decided – hoped – that he would get what he needed from Ianto himself because the man chose to tell him, and not because Jack had carefully filed every word away and tried to get eight when Ianto gave him two and two.

If had less to do with essential information and more with getting to know Ianto, and Jack knew it. And the thought was enough to finally make him knock.

Ianto got to the door before he did it again and, while he looked extremely tired, he also seemed more at peace with himself. As he took in Jack – just like he had every other night since the start of his suspension – standing in front of his door an shifting from foot to foot just for the sake of doing something while the young man gave a sigh of resignation and leaned against the doorframe.

"You were supposed to come tomorrow night, sir," he pointed out softly. Jack raised an eyebrow.

"Do you think I've got a schedule?"

"I was sensing a pattern, yes."

"Let's say I decided to break the habit, then," Jack tried tentatively. He had always failed to understand people's need to put everything into boxes with little explanation stickers on them. Ianto's affinity for such things was even greater and should have came as no surprise that he'd managed to see some sort of pattern even in his visits.

The man in question didn't answer and just stepped back to let Jack enter. The Captain had a very bad feeling that, if he hadn't been as flawless in being a host as in everything else, he'd already have shut the door in his face by now.

"I wasn't expecting guests," Ianto pointed out and Jack realised that this was nearly worse than slamming the door. He was trying to chase him off politely.

Not that the lack of preparation made any difference. Ianto's flat was unnaturally clean anyway and Jack could imagine why – he'd been trying to busy himself with something that didn't need much thought, just to distract himself from his own mind and cleaning was, in Jack's opinion, a much safer option than many other things that had surely passed through the young man's head – which was one of the main reasons Jack had taken his gun as well. Not that he would be surprised if the man had another one somewhere around.

"I just wanted to check on you." Jack's voice was unintentionally gentle. "How are you feeling?"

"Better," Ianto assured him, and he sounded sincere. It wouldn't be for the first time, though, and Jack didn't move from where he was. "I'm trying to remember her from before. For who she was. It's helping."

The sentences were short and definite and Jack knew that Ianto wasn't willing to give anything else away, but it was still something. It was a start.

"Would you like something to drink, sir?" he asked, rummaging through his airing cupboard. Jack shook his head in vague negative response as he took a peek at the living room from the view the kitchen's door gave him.

There was some subtle change in it, and he had yet to figure out what it was. Some things that were just not where they had been the last time.

There'd been a vase in the middle of the table, now that he came to think of it. A large vase with flowers on it, he was sure of it. It was suddenly missing and he had a fairly good idea why.

It had been Lisa's. It only made sense, of course. It didn't look like something Ianto would buy, and he had got rid of it not because it didn't bring back good memories, but because it did. Because looking at it and expecting her to come through the door any minute would have been too painful. Jack knew – he'd been in the same position all too often.

"No. No, Ianto, thank you," he managed after a while, remembering that he'd been offered a drink at some point. "It's okay. I just wanted to ask how're you feeling."

Ianto, who seemed to have ignored him and kept looking for something in his cupboard, shrugged and narrowly avoided Jack's eyes once again.

"I told you, sir. Better."

"'Better' is not good enough if you want to be back at work soon," Jack stated and tried to keep going as fast as he could before the other man could interrupt him. "I want to be sure that you're completely all right before I can let you got back to work."

"What do you expect?" The lack of 'sir' by the end of the sentence was the only thing that matched the barely noticeable flames burning in those blue eyes. "Do you think I can just get over it and act like it never happened? I might not blame you any longer, but she's still gone. And I can't just go on with my life like she was never there." He slammed a bottle on the counter and Jack flinched. "I just can't, Jack."

"I know." The Captain lowered his voice. "I know, but I need to be sure that you're psychically ready to get back to the Hub." Especially since she won't be there any longer, he added mentally. He might have as well said it out loud, considering that it stood out in the silence between them anyway. "Do you think one month will be enough?" He asked tentatively.

Another long moment, and Ianto nodded.

o.O.o

Many months later for Ianto and nearly two years for Jack, he tried asking him out in the office that they had had to go through. Emphasis on tried. Jack had expected to smoothly pose the question and get a simple 'yes' or 'no'. Well, better yes that no. What he actually got was Ianto – for the first time since Lisa – ignoring him as much as he could – and avoiding even looking him in the eyes. And that made things even harder.

Which eventually led him to the though that, despite the months they had spent together, he still barely knew the man at all.

He had supposed that Ianto would be more angry that anything else, but it was much, much worse. He looked tired and pale and tense and Jack wasn't sure how he was supposed to make him open up again – if he'd ever done it at all. These brilliant blue eyes were cold and distant now and his whole face even harder to read than usual – considering that the 'usual' level had still been impossible.

Jack seemed to have forgotten how it had been once. A year of torture and nothing else to distract you could really twist your view on people and what the Captain remembered as an easy arrangement neither of them had given much thought to suddenly turned into something way more tender and careful that he wasn't completely sure he could deal with.

And, what was even worse, it wasn't Ianto who was putting all that much effort into it. Yes, Ianto was the one who could be trusted to organise the dates, because he was just good at things like that, but Jack was usually the one who tried to initiate the event in the first place. He kept trying to make Ianto say something – something actually important to him, not just banter and bickering – but to no avail. The most he could get out of him was – and that was quite rarely – a university memory or some anecdote from Torchwood One – meaning, nothing before the age of twenty.

Not that Jack could blame him – after all, Jack himself had barely told him anything about his past – but it should have been easier with Ianto. It should have been easier to access information about him, and not just old police reports of shoplifting or information about chess tournaments – and even those were low-detailed and kind of suspicious.

Jack knew that he was being paranoid at times, such as this one, but he couldn't help it.

He was in front of Toshiko's workstation, his fingers hovering over the keyboard as he tried to discourage himself. This was beyond stupid. Ianto hadn't done anything that could possibly deserve mistrust. And yet, just last night on the way back to Ianto's flat, they'd met a friend of his – Rhydian or something like that – and afterwards, when asked, Ianto had been as vague as always – 'I met him when we were six' – but it had made Jack realise that this way, quite literally, the only thing he'd ever heard about his lover's childhood.

The replay of last night's scene in his mind was enough to make him decide. He tentatively slid his hands over the buttons, typing Ianto Jones and looking through Mainframe's database once again. The sentient system of the Hub had improved its qualities lately, mostly with Tosh's coaxing; maybe it would show something new. Maybe.

No such luck. Just the bloody chess again. Not even school records, and that was absolutely ridiculous. He tried poking around One's archives again. Still nothing.

He tried setting it on a wider range – which, in their case, meant off planet, and then out of the galaxy. Still nothing – which should have been expected; Jack wasn't sure what he'd been thinking. What would Ianto do in outer space?

And yet, just to make sure... Intergalactic search didn't sound so bad.

There! A trace! To someone far, far away, that name meant something. One more result slowly crawled into existence and Jack, not even realising he'd been holding his breath, clicked on it.

Classified. There was a tiny sign next to the word – one that was well known to Earth and nearly every other person in the universe as 'danger'.

"Classified by who?" Jack asked in disbelief. Nothing was classified to Torchwood.

Ianto appeared on the stars to his office with a mop in his hand and an expression that was much more amused than it was supposed to. If he only had the faintest idea what Jack was doing, he'd have been decidedly less smug, he was sure of it, and for a moment the Captain contemplated showing him what he'd found, but pushed the thought as far as he could. Ianto's eyes seemed as innocent as always; he apparently didn't suspect a thing.

"Are you having access issues, Jack?" He asked mildly.

Jack gritted his teeth.