"Hey, Jack."
"Hmm?"
"Can I… there's something I was wondering about, but I'm not sure how to bring it up."
"You can ask, whatever it is," Jack said, running his fingers through Ianto's hair. Something in the back of Jack's mind was firing off a warning that telling secrets after sex – especially first time sex – was extremely dangerous. The rest of his mind, however, told him that he could trust Ianto with everything.
"Well… this might sound weird. I was going back through CCTV footage from just before Suzie's death – the first one. Looking for clues and all. She shot you, almost right between the eyes."
Jack sighed. "Yep."
"It didn't kill you, though. Obviously."
"Nope."
"I saw a lot in London. Never saw that, though. Mostly I heard a lot, usually about the American wanker who's been at 3 since the beginning. I never paid much attention to that, but… now I kinda wonder. It's just… I remember this old episode of The Twilight Zone about a guy who had lived thousands of years through some alchemy experiment. He died though."
Jack was quiet for a while.
"Sorry. Is that mad? Just, all the things we see here… I don't think it would surprise me."
Jack shook his head. "It's not mad, Ianto. Well, it's mad, but that doesn't make it less real. Wouldn't call it alchemy, though." Jack sighed. "I think you deserve the truth from me. I don't talk about this stuff with many people. Sometimes it would freak them out or they wouldn't know what to do with me… even the people closest to me…. I don't think you're like that though."
"It's alright if you don't want to talk about it," Ianto said. It wasn't exactly difficult to sense Jack's reluctance.
"You might be one of the few people I could tell," Jack said quietly. "I've been here… here as in Earth, about… 150 years. I came here from… uh… this is complicated, timeline stuff. Basically, I was born on another planet in the 51st century. And I can't die because of something… some accident that happened during a battle in another century. I've been here all this time because… someone who almost definitely has something to do with it will come here one day, and maybe he can fix it, make me normal again. So… anyway. That's the square truth, if not highly detailed."
Ianto looked at him for a long moment. "Does that make you an alien?"
Jack shrugged. "By some definitions, I guess. I mean, I'm human, same biology and all. With a few evolutionary advancements – by the time I came along the male chromosome had finally picked up on a bunch of cool stuff the female chomosome figured out ages ago. But from another time and place, so… same species, but not native to the environment."
"You don't even talk about it here?"
Jack shook his head. "If I give you my full personnel file, you'll understand. I've always had a deeply adversarial relationship with Torchwood. There must be something to ironic fate though, because there's no other place that would have me. I've tried to change things here; I want to do right for everybody, people and aliens. Don't know if it's possible, though. I've learned over the years – the hard way, as always – that the fewer people who know about me, the better for all concerned."
It was Ianto's turn to go quiet for a long moment. "Thank you. For telling me, Jack." He was certain that it meant something for Jack to share that with him, and it seemed to Ianto to be something incredibly more intimate than what they'd shared physically. "And, I promise, no one else will hear anything from me."
"I'll keep your secrets, too," Jack promised, with a kiss to Ianto's forehead.