A/N: I love Torchwood. I really, really do. Although oddly enough I'm not the biggest Doctor Who fan...
"Why did you do it?"
Jack looked up to see the younger man stood in the doorway, leaning resignedly against the frame. He opened his mouth as if to speak, but then appeared to think better of whatever he was going to say and started again. "Why did I leave, or why did I come back?"
"Either. Both. I just..."
"...need to know," Jack finished for him, gesturing towards the empty seat opposite his own. Ianto walked slowly towards him, lowering himself gently into the chair, eyes not quite meeting the captain's. Jack had expected insults from Owen, tears from Gwen, and something akin to cool indifference from Tosh (although he knew how much he meant to his technician - it just wasn't Toshiko's style to show too much emotion). Faced now with the most junior member of his team, however, he was unprepared for the guilt that he felt upon being left alone with him. "I thought I already explained when we got here."
"That wasn't an explanation, Jack," Ianto sighed, staring at the man who until a few hours ago had been thought gone for good. "That was a way of stopping us asking."
"Which clearly didn't work."
"Nope," Ianto sat back in his chair, fingers steepled together under his chin, eyes fixed on Jack as if waiting for him to speak. "So, are you going to tell me the truth?"
Resistance was futile.
"I waited for him for so long," Jack began, hands automatically tidying papers on his desk as if acting of their own accord. "It almost killed me to realise that he wasn't even trying to find me, and I hated him for it."
"Yet you still left," Ianto replied softly, stilling one of Jack's hands with one of his own. "If you hated him so much, why didn't you just stay here, with us?"
"Because I loved him. Couldn't stop. It almost became a motto of mine 'first I'm going to kiss him, then I'm going to kill him'," Jack smiled slightly with the memory. "That plan never did work out."
Ianto's face fell and he stood up, walking over to the glass window and looking out over the hub where the other three were still working. Every now and again one of them would glance up at the office, a relieved expression on their face when they saw that Jack was still there. It was as if they all thought he was going to leave again, just as unannounced as he had before, although nobody would admit to thinking it. It had been hours since their captain's return, and he had given not the slightest hint of disappearing again, but with Jack Harkness things never were quite what they seemed. After all, he had seemed happy enough to lead Torchwood Three, had shown no desire to leave without saying a word, and look at how that had ended up.
"I had to return to him to know if I could let him go," Jack's voice was firm, breaking the silence that had fallen between them. "I thought that when I went back, I'd never want to leave. That this place was just...just a temporary fix until I could see him again. That to come back here without him would hurt me more than I could ever imagine."
"So why come back at all?" Ianto asked, a hint of bitterness creeping into his voice that he couldn't quite control. "If it was going to hurt you that much, why not stay with him forever? We would have understood."
"No, you wouldn't."
"Never stopped you before."
"Want to know the real reason I came back?" Jack questioned, walking towards him until Ianto could back away no further. "I realised something whilst I was away."
"And what might that be? You'd forgotten your coat?" The words were harsh, but Ianto's face betrayed him. "That you missed being the one who knows everything?"
"That leaving him couldn't possibly hurt one tenth as much as leaving here did," Jack took another step towards him, and his voice lowered to a barely audible whisper. "As leaving you."
Ianto's breath caught in his throat as Jack closed the gap between them and soon he was lost in the familiarity of the other man's kiss, trying desperately to hate him for leaving but unable to think of anything other than the here and now. Jack pulled away slightly and rested his forehead against Ianto's, eyes shining with tears that stubbornly refused to fall.
"I really am sorry," he whispered, one hand firmly clenching Ianto's suit jacket whilst the other traced his jawline. "I'd understand if you wanted nothing else to do with me -"
"No you wouldn't," Ianto replied, echoing Jack's words from earlier, the ghost of a smile playing on his lips. "Do you really think that's what I want?"
"I left without so much as a goodbye. You're fully entitled to hate me."
"I do," Jack took a step back, releasing Ianto from his grip, but the young welshman pulled him back towards him. "But do you know what I'm going to do?"
Jack shook his head silently, confusion evident on his face. The smile on Ianto's face grew into a smirk as he began to speak.
"First I'm going to kiss you, and then..."
A/N: Reviews are love.