After what seemed like hours, Ianto finally ran out of tears.

He regained equilibrium slowly, his breathing hitching painfully as the sobs began to subside. Everything hurt. His face burned from crying, his body was hot and sticky, his nose felt thick and clogged, and something heavy lay across his shoulders and neck. What was…

The weight across his shoulders shifted. It was an arm.

Oh, right. Jack.

Ianto snapped back to full awareness. Jack.

Oh.

Shit.

He'd been so distracted by his emotional distress that he'd all but forgotten where he was and what he'd been doing when it started. Now it all came crashing back: Jack had invited him down into the bunker beneath his office for a bit of post-work stress relief, which was becoming a semi-regular activity with them. They had undressed—without making eye contact, because that might have suggested that they were here for something other than mere physical release—and things had been progressing well until Jack's hand touched that spot along Ianto's ribs, and it was so like the way Lisa had touched him, and suddenly it had all been too much. The first sob had cracked the dam, and the second had opened the floodgates. His collapse into grief had been complete and uncontrollable.

Now that it was over, he realized he'd not even moved away from Jack to have his breakdown. Ianto cracked one eye open, and the red semidarkness behind his lids was replaced by a blurry expanse of shoulder. Ianto's nose was smashed awkwardly into the hollow of Jack's collarbone. One of Jack's arms was wrapped around his shoulders, while the fingers of his other hand traced rhythmic circles through Ianto's hair at the base of his skull. It felt… nice. Soothing. Comforting.

Ianto flinched as he realized how far across the line he'd fallen. Using each other for physical pleasure was one thing, but that was just an arrangement of convenience, and they had agreed before it began that it would never be anything more. But this—this was personal, somehow. Intimate.

Too close.

Ianto reeled back, landing on Jack's shins as he attempted to put distance between them. Jack let him move, arms relaxing at his sides as Ianto escaped their circle.

"Um," Ianto said. Eloquent, he mocked himself, and tried again. "Er. I…"

Jack handed him a tissue from the box beside the bed, and Ianto realized his nose was dribbling. "You okay now?" Jack asked. Neutral. Pragmatic. He was giving Ianto the space he needed. The space they both needed.

Ianto blew his nose and looked anywhere except at Jack. "I… yeah. I think so. I mean, no, not really. I'm a mess. But… yeah, I… I'm done. With this, I mean. For now." He grabbed another tissue and blew his nose again to stop himself babbling.

Jack shifted his weight forward as though he wanted to rise, and Ianto tried to scoot back off his legs and tumbled inelegantly off the side of the bed, barely catching himself on semi-numb legs. Jack caught his arm to steady him, then released it as Ianto's entire body tensed. Ianto shook himself. "Sorry."

"You should drink some water," Jack suggested, pointing to two bottles on the nightstand. He always kept water on hand when he was expecting Ianto; their nocturnal exertions were often physically demanding. "You'll feel better. Crying really takes it out of you."

Ianto opened the bottle and lifted it mechanically to his lips. Only when the cool moisture touched his tongue did he realize how hot and thirsty he felt. He tipped his head back and drained the bottle in three swallows.

Jack waited until Ianto had finished drinking before tipping his head toward the en suite. "C'mon."

"Where?"

"Shower. We could both stand to freshen up."

Ianto hesitated. They had never showered together, even after sex. That was something lovers did, not bosses and… well, whatever job title described an employee who got the boss off as needed. "But… You've only got the one down here…"

Jack rolled his eyes. "Ianto, you've spent the past twenty minutes straddling me naked while sobbing into my neck. I think we're a bit past the embarrassment stage." He looked down at his chest. "Though, if you need further convincing, I can count how many of your body fluids I'm covered in… Let's see, there's tears, some snot… I think that's probably drool…"

Ianto flushed scarlet and turned toward the bathroom. Clearly Jack wasn't concerned with the social implications of tandem bathing, so perhaps it wasn't as much of an issue as he'd thought. "Fine. Shower. Anything, just… let's never speak of my drooling on you again."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

They were back in Jack's bunk, side by side this time, pressed closer than Ianto was strictly comfortable with—which he knew was absurd, considering what they'd been getting up to half an hour ago, not to mention their recent proximity in the small shower cubicle. But that was different. Sex was a joint activity with a definite mutual goal, and showering had a practical function—whereas staying in each other's personal space without a specific purpose was… something else entirely.

At least there was a layer between them, now: Ianto was swaddled in a warm blanket that Jack had produced from an old trunk at the foot of his bed. It shut out the perpetual chill of the Hub, making Ianto feel warm and drowsy despite the cooling damp of his hair after the shower. Truth be told, the warmth of Jack at his side was having much the same effect, though he would never admit that.

Ianto surfaced from his ruminations to realize that Jack's question was still hanging in the air. He shrugged helplessly, the blanket rising about his ears. "I don't even know what to say."

Jack had thrown on a t-shirt and a pair of tracksuit bottoms that had seen better days, probably more for Ianto's comfort than his own. Jack never seemed to get cold in the Hub, and he certainly had never been bothered by being naked. "Let me guess," he said, worming his bare feet under the bedsheet. "You had finally built a life for yourself, a life you felt good about—and then you had to watch, helpless, as it all crumbled to dust. Everyone around you died, and you lost everything. The only thing that kept you going was Lisa, and then you lost her too. And now you're in bed with the man who killed her, and you don't know how to deal with that. You don't know how to deal with any of it. You've never stopped long enough to let yourself think through what happened, let alone cope with it."

Ianto drew his knees to his chest, burrowing deeper into the rough wool. It smelled faintly of Jack, a warm mix of sandalwood and leather and something more exotic. "That about sums it up, yeah."

There was silence between them for a long time, but their relationship hadn't reached the point where silence was comfortable. Ianto wasn't sure it ever would; silence didn't seem natural for Jack, and his own racing thoughts never made it peaceful. "So how do I?" he said at last, his words echoing in the quiet bunker. He lowered his voice. "How do I deal with it?"

Jack glanced over at him, one eyebrow raised. "Why ask me?"

Ianto bit back his initial response—because you're the only one who cares whether or not I do—and used a shrug to buy himself time to think of a safer, less personal reply. He decided it was best to stay within the bounds of their professional relationship. "You're the boss. You're supposed to have the answers."

Jack gave a humorless snort and returned to gazing at something across the room—or perhaps beyond it, as there was nothing in his field of vision but a plain cupboard. After another moment he settled his head back against the wall. "I knew a guy once," he began.

Ianto smothered a sigh and braced himself for one of Jack's cock-and-bull alien stories—and where Jack was concerned, there was usually more cock than bull involved—but this time, Jack's usual roguish smile didn't appear.

"This guy," he continued after a pause, "he'd been kind of lost, too. He was on his own, didn't have much to believe in, just sort of living for what he could get. Then he met someone." Jack shifted again, stretching his legs beneath the sheet. "Two people, actually. They turned his life around. For the first time in a long time, he had purpose. He felt good about himself. He had friends who cared about him, and he loved them, more than he'd let himself love anyone in a long time. He would have done anything for them."

Jack fell silent for a time, and the empty echoes of the Hub pressed on Ianto's ears. "What happened?" he prompted when he could stand it no longer.

Jack's head jerked up slightly, as though he'd been lost in thought. "A battle," he said quietly. "Daleks, in fact. You know what they're like."

Ianto shivered. He'd seen more Cybermen than Daleks at Canary Wharf, but even the few glimpses of the rolling cones of destruction had been enough to inspire his nightmares.

Jack's eyes fell closed. "This guy… He knew it would probably cost his life, but he wanted to protect his friends. So he fought the Daleks. He saw those monsters exterminate everyone else, until he was the last man standing against them."

Ianto waited, watching Jack from the corner of his eye, but the older man had slipped back into silence. "But he survived?" Ianto prompted again.

Jack released a long breath. "After it was all over, all he could think about was getting back to his friends. He was so grateful to be alive. He was so grateful that they were alive." Jack swallowed, rigid cords of muscle standing out in his neck. "But they left him behind. Just… abandoned him there. The only living thing in a mass grave."

Ianto turned to face him fully. "Why?" he burst.

"I don't know." Jack shook his head, his eyes glazed in memory. "I never knew. I still don't know."

Ianto caught himself as his hand moved automatically toward Jack's, and he wrenched it back. It was one thing for Jack to steady Ianto in his emotional turmoil, but it wasn't Ianto's place to hold Jack's hand. Besides, he reasoned, Jack had more than his fair share of ego, and any attempt to offer comfort might wound his pride. Ianto twisted his fingers into the blanket and waited.

Jack's gaze was still in that distant place as he continued. "If they'd died in battle, it would have hurt to lose them, but at least he would have understood why he was alone. But to watch them leaving without him…" His teeth worked at the inside of his cheek. "He watched," he added more quietly. "He watched them leave."

Ianto's chest constricted as grief contorted Jack's face. Suddenly he wanted to put his arms around Jack and hold him, as Jack had done for him earlier—but that was close, much closer than they ought to be. Even so, something in Ianto cried out to make the connection, and it was almost physically painful to resist it.

An epiphany struck him then. Was this what Jack had felt? Was this sympathy the reason Ianto had found himself held and rocked like a child as he'd poured out his anguish?

Ianto kept his fingers knotted in the blanket, but leaned a little more firmly until his shoulder pressed into Jack's. Jack returned the pressure, and it seemed to Ianto that a few of the hard lines in his face relaxed.

"What did he do then?" Ianto asked softly.

Jack shrugged listlessly. "He tried to get back to his friends, but that didn't really work out. He washed up in a backwater city and got stranded there." He looked down and rubbed at the back of his left wrist, where the skin had been worn smooth by the leather-cased device he usually wore. "Decided to stay there for a while. Got a job. Kept on living."

The story seemed to have reached its end, but Ianto wasn't satisfied. His own pain came rushing back as he realized he'd never gotten an answer. "And how did he cope?" he pressed. "When he'd lost everything, when he was all alone, how did he deal with everything that had happened?"

Jack's eyes assumed that distant gaze again. "Hope," he said at last. "He held on to the hope that he would find his friends someday. That they would help him out of the mess he'd made of his life. Again."

"What if…" Ianto swallowed, leaning into Jack's shoulder as though the contact were a lifeline. "What if there wasn't any hope? Could he have kept going?"

"Sometimes, there wasn't much," Jack said quietly. "Sometimes there was none at all, and he only kept going because he didn't have any choice." His eyes closed again. "Once, he found his one of his friends' names on a list of the dead, and it almost destroyed him, because he hadn't been there to protect her this time. And he should have been. He wanted to be there. And she died. And he'll never see her again—" Ianto looked away as Jack blinked back tears. When he'd regained control of his voice, he blew out a long breath. "It's not easy, Ianto. It's not supposed to be easy, coping with the kind of things we've been through. Human emotions aren't designed to process that kind of loss."

"So why do we do it?" Ianto's jaw pulsed. "Why do we even try?"

"Because what humans are designed for is survival. And that's what this is about. Living. Going on."

"I don't know how." Ianto pulled away from Jack as his own vision clouded with tears, and his still-raw throat constricted around the words. "I don't even know if I should. How do I go on, when I keep thinking I should have died with everyone else?"

"But you didn't." Jack shook his head. "I guess what I'm saying is… Everyone lives for something. And when you've lost what you were living for, you've got to find something to live for. And then you can keep going, even when it's hard. Even when it's hell." Jack's hand found his arm and squeezed gently. "It doesn't have to be for yourself. You can live for someone else. You can live for a cause. You can live to honor someone's memory. You can live out of pure spite, if that's the only thing that keeps you hanging on. But you find something that matters to you, and you cling to it with all your strength. You make the decision to go on, and trust that there's something ahead that's going to make your life worth living." He leaned closer, their shoulders pressing together again, warm through the blanket. "And I'll let you in on a secret that I've discovered after a very long and very shadowed life: There always is, Ianto. Always. I promise."

Ianto gazed back at Jack, at this complex, confusing man whom he had simultaneously admired and feared and hated and perhaps even loved, in his own way—this man who was reaching out to him, sharing with him, drawing him closer—and found that he believed him. "All right," he said quietly. "I will."

Jack raised an eyebrow. "You will what?"

"Go on."

"That was…" Jack blinked, searching his face. "You're… surprisingly easy to convince."

"I trust you," Ianto returned. The significance of the words didn't strike him until he registered the surprise in Jack's face, so he repeated them. "I trust you. If you tell me it's worth the pain to stay alive, then I will. If I can't find a reason to live for my own sake, then I'll live for you. For your promise that it gets better." He met Jack's eyes. "But don't lie to me, Jack. If I'm going to suffer through this, I want your word that you're telling me the truth. That it's worth it."

"It is. It will be." Jack freed an arm and slug it around Ianto's shoulders, pulling him close and eliminating the remaining space between them. "I'll make sure of it."

"You promise?"

Jack pressed a kiss to Ianto's damp hair, almost paternal in its affection. "I promise."

Ianto leaned gratefully into Jack's strength, and silence fell between them again. The quiet was less uncomfortable, now; Jack seemed to have said all he wanted to, and Ianto took advantage of the lull in conversation to mentally replay the story Jack had told him, sifting and straining the words for keys to the elusive man beside him.

Abruptly, the fragments shifted into place, and Ianto realized the source of Jack's empathy. Small wonder Jack had known just what he needed to hear. "You know, the bloke in your story and I have a lot in common."

"How so?"

"It's like you said: He had a life he felt good about, and he watched it crumble to dust. Everyone around him died, and he lost the only people who mattered to him. The only thing that kept him going was the hope of seeing the people he loved again, and then one of them died." Ianto drew a breath and decided to risk it: "And now he's in bed with one of the men responsible."

Jack pulled back, suddenly wary. "How do you figure that?"

"I was part of Torchwood One. We caused what happened at Canary Wharf." Ianto met Jack's eyes. "That is where she died, isn't it?"

Jack nodded slowly. "How did you know?"

"When I first came to work here, I saw you going through the casualty list from the battle. I was scared that you'd caught on to me and Lisa, so I checked your computer log, but the record you'd accessed wasn't a Torchwood employee." Ianto looked down at his hands. "I saw her, you know. Just briefly, when Yvonne had her brought in. Never met her properly."

Jack offered a brittle smile. "You'd have liked her. Everyone did. She was fantastic."

"I'm sorry you lost her," he murmured. Jack nodded, his lips pressed together in a white line, and Ianto added, "Were you…? You and her?"

"Me and Rose? No, not like that. Though I wouldn't have said no if she'd asked," he added with a grin. "I think she fancied me at first, but after a while we were more like brother and sister than anything. I suppose we were both too infatuated with the Doctor to get up to anything with each other."

"Oh." Ianto delicately cleared his throat. "I, ah, didn't realize you and the Doctor were…"

Jack chuckled. "We weren't. I couldn't work up the courage to ask." He rolled his eyes at Ianto's shocked expression. "What? Even I have limits."

"First I've heard of them," Ianto rejoined dryly. "Your stories certainly suggest the opposite."

"With the Doctor, it was a completely different dynamic. Being with him was like…" Jack's brow furrowed as he searched for an example. "I mean, imagine meeting your hero. Someone you truly admire, someone so far out of your league you can't imagine they would even give you the time of day, and you're grateful every time they notice you exist. You can't just casually proposition someone like that."

"Can't you?" Ianto maintained his innocent expression while Jack blinked down at him. "I suppose it's lucky for both of us I didn't know that."

It took a moment for his meaning to register. Jack's eyes widened in surprise, then softened with emotion. He leaned in to place a gentle kiss on Ianto's cheek. "Thank you," he whispered.

Ianto rested his head on Jack's shoulder. It was new, being this close, being welcomed in to each other's space, but it was… nice. He could get used to it. "No," he replied, "thank you. For this. For everything."

"Any time." Ianto could feel Jack's gaze probing him, and a moment later the grip on his shoulder tightened. "You okay now?"

Ianto nodded against Jack's neck. "You were right," he murmured.

"About what?"

"You promised it would get better." He tipped his head back to meet Jack's eyes. "It's already getting better."

Jack smiled and bent to kiss him again, and chuckled when Ianto yawned a moment later. "That's not the reaction I usually get."

"Sorry." Ianto struggled upright, blinking to clear his eyes. "I'm just… after everything…"

"It's fine; I get it." Jack glanced at the watch he'd left on the nightstand. "It's pretty late. Want to stay here tonight?"

Ianto tensed—spending the night together was something that lovers did—but the hesitation lasted only a moment. "You don't mind?"

"I'd rather have you sleep here than behind the wheel." He lifted the sheet to let Ianto move beneath it. "You warm enough?"

"Next to you?" Ianto wriggled into a recumbent position. "You're a biological furnace, Jack."

The roguish smile finally appeared on Jack's face as he slid down to Ianto's level. "Are you saying you think I'm hot?"

Ianto snorted inelegantly. "I hesitate to contribute to the inflation of your ego, but yes. In both senses." He tugged at the wool blanket, tangled up beneath his arms. "Though it is a bit chilly down here."

Jack freed the blanket and spread it over them, then shifted nearer to Ianto. "Better stay close to the heater, then."

With another yawn, Ianto rolled toward him and settled his cheek against the soft fabric of Jack's t-shirt, enjoying the warmth, the sense of security in Jack's arm circling his shoulders, the gentle strokes on his back. This was nice. This was…

Suddenly Ianto jerked back to awareness, his body going rigid. "Wait—I'm not sure this is a good idea."

Jack's fingers stilled abruptly. "You don't want to stay?"

"No—not that. I mean, I do." Ianto levered himself up, away from Jack's chest. "But last time we were in this position, I… drooled all over you."

The tension left Jack's body, and he laughed as he pulled Ianto back down against him. "I'll cope."

"But Jack—"

"Go to sleep." One of Jack's hands found Ianto's scalp, drawing soothing circles, as he'd done before. "We can shower in the morning."

We. Ianto let himself relax into the embrace, his space mingling with Jack's. The intimacy was still new and bright, but not as sharp-edged as before. With time, he sensed, it might become familiar. Comfortable.

Precious.

Worth living for.

For the first time since he'd lost his whole world, Ianto found that he had hope for the future. Holding tight to Jack's promise, he sank into peaceful sleep.