A.N: This is a multi-chapter fic I'm working on that centres on the Janto relationship fro start to *sob* finish. I've uploaded the first three chapters; PLEASE leave a review if you'd like more. Much love to all the Janto fans out there - Amberssister

A.N pt2: The disclaimer - I own nothing. All rights belong to RTD and the BBC. I make no money and intend to harm. I'm just having a bit of fun.

It was enough to give Jack a nervous tick if he thought about it too much, so he tried never to think about it. He'd been alive for quite a bit more time than most people, but he didn't know everything, and was certainly no psychiatrist. It was weird, sure, and Jack had never, in all of his years, seen anything else like it, but it probably wasn't a problem. Hell, most people would laugh if they found out that having a clean, neat, meticulous receptionist bothered him. He knew he would laugh if anyone else said it, but he doubted anyone else had a receptionist quite like Ianto. In all of space and time, Ianto had to be one of a kind, and that was what worried Jack.

He knew people were all unique, and all special, and all of that, but they were all generally people. Everyone had a vice, or a personality problem, or a social disorder. Jack had known drinkers, and users, bullies, and cowards, people who were altogether too clever, or too lazy, or who simply couldn't go to bed before dawn or wake up before noon. Good people, decent people, all of them, and they'd all shared the simple human trait of fallibility. No one was perfect, in Jack's experience, until Ianto.

It wasn't that he was perfect to the point of rubbing it in; that could have been considered a problem. It wasn't that he showed up on time and did his job well, and felt smugly superior at everyone else. Jack could have rolled with that, if not necessarily liked it. Jack wouldn't have given that a second thought, so of course, that wasn't it at all. The problem (well, not problem, but concern) was that Ianto was perfect in subtle small ways that most people would never notice.

He did show up on time, and he did do his job well. Even though his job changed from day to day, Ianto always did what was asked of him, without complaints, and, more importantly, without question. Not even the usual 'how do you mean, exactly?' or 'and how would you suggest I do that, hmmm?' that would have made Jack more comfortable, especially since a lot of what he told Ianto to do fell into a category of things Ianto shouldn't know how to do. But, even though he never asked, his job always, always got done, leaving Jack to assume that he either had Time Lord levels of knowledge, or he was very, very good at figuring things out for himself. Either way, it meant that Ianto was remarkably more intelligent then he at first seemed, and that wasn't concerning. A lot of people were, and it was nothing to worry about. But, it wasn't just that.

There was also the time thing. Ianto was punctual, to the point of being obsessive. He didn't just show up on time, he did everything on time. He started a fresh pot of coffee at nine exactly, every morning, and Jack had a cup in hand at 10 past, every day, on the dot. Jack always received his first, then Tosh, Suzie, and, finally Owen. Owen's was put in front of him at 15 past the hour, without fail, every single day since the first one. And, that, kids, was really freaking strange, by anyone's standards. Ianto was never late with it, nor was he early, and he couldn't have orchestrated it better if he'd religiously timed it, which was something Jack had never caught him doing. It was like he simply had an internal clock that was set to go off at 'coffee time', and also at 'paperwork time', 'snack time', and 'dinner time'.

It wasn't even something Jack would have noticed; if it weren't for the fact that Ianto's schedule was training the rest of them. Jack had found himself instinctually holding his hand out to receive a coffee mug at 10 past nine every morning, no matter what else he was doing, and he'd noticed the others doing the same thing. Nor was that the only teaching they'd received. Before Ianto, Jack's team had always been catch as catch can as far as food was concerned. They ate when enough of them complained of being hungry, or if someone had brought in biscuits. Now, they ate when Ianto served them food, which he did at the same times everyday. Normally, if Ianto had been a normal person, Jack would have resisted being trained like a puppy, but Ianto wasn't normal, and he wasn't doing it out of some Napoleonic thirst for power. Jack would have been surprised to find out Ianto even knew he was doing it, for that matter, which only made it weirder.

So, the time thing was odd, no question about it, but not as odd as what Jack had taken to calling the Cleanliness Conundrum. Theirs was a job that entailed a certain amount of clutter; there was no way around it. Everywhere you looked inside the Hub, there were small piles of junk that were in the middle of being sorted, or couldn't be sorted, or had to be left out for some project or the other. Everyone had paperwork piled up, the tables were littered with graphs and charts and gadgets and weaponry, and it was generally a mess. A very neat, organized, everything-in-its-place kind of mess. It shouldn't even be possible, but there it was.

If Ianto couldn't put something on a shelf, or stack it nicely in a cupboard, he had a way of leaving it exactly where it was, but making it seem like that was exactly where it was supposed to be. It was enough to give Jack a nervous tick if he thought about it too much. And, if that wasn't enough, not only could Ianto tell you where any piece of junk in the entire Hub was located at any given time, the others had picked up the habit of putting things back where they'd gotten them from. That made sense if you'd pulled a book off of a shelf, or a gun out of the weapons closet, but when you'd grabbed an old pie graph from the bottom of a pile of rubble, putting it back was fucking mind-blowing. Not that Jack didn't do it himself, because of course he did. The pie graph belonged at the bottom of the rubble pile, just as the rubble pile certainly belonged in the corner of the table, by dint of the fact that Ianto hadn't put it anywhere else.

Mind-blowing, sure, as was the fact that no one else had noticed these things. If it had been anyone but Ianto, anyone normal, then the entire team would have taken arms against how utterly annoying and pretentious it all was. It wouldn't matter how much easier their lives were being made, because most anyone would rather have to look for an old graph all day, then put up with being trained about rubble-piles by the receptionist. It was a human thing, a people thing, and people were generally always people. Except, they didn't notice anything strange where Ianto was concerned. Sometimes, it was like they didn't notice Ianto at all. He kept himself to himself, and he had a way of making himself sort of disappear unless he was right in front of you. In short, in seemed like it was Ianto who didn't act quite like people, and the others disregarded it because it was simply too strange.

Jack did the same, mostly; of course he did. Jack tried not to think about it too much, because when he did he had to wonder and worry about what it meant. He was positive that Ianto hadn't been born this way, but made this way by something terrible, and he knew terrible things could sometimes make terrible people. Terrible things could force decent people into terrible actions, and, if Jack was being honest, he liked Ianto too much to really think about that. Ianto had been at Canary Wharf, and he was still very young, and if the worst that came out of that was a perfectionist attitude that would make most psychiatrists turn it their coats, then so be it. It was interesting, but Jack honestly didn't think it was a problem. Mostly, he was able to convince himself that he honestly didn't think it was a problem, but, sometimes, when he was alone in the dead of night, and his thoughts turned to Ianto of their own accord, Jack knew better.