Jack reworked the orange wedge through his teeth. The acidic taste of orange burned. He remembered the taste of scotch, of waking with two years of memories gone. Oranges were as close to alcohol as he could stand anymore. And today, he needed it.
"You're the biggest monster of them all!"
Ianto had said it, flung directly into the Captain's face in his worse moment of duress. The young Welshman had infrequent bouts with immaturity but was mostly quiet and dutiful. He was charming; the perfect face for Cardiff's tourist office. But, as those words twisted around, Jack knew that their lives would never be the same.
He felt the taste of the orange rind coming closer and he slammed the piece back down on the plate. His small apartment in London, overlooking Canary Wharf, was furnished with the same sparse detail as this place. Jack shook his head, burying his fingers in his hair and cried out in exasperation.
Retconning Ianto might be the best for everyone involved. Jack had to admit that he wasn't the most stable on the team. Each person had a flaw, but Ianto's was far too dangerous. He didn't know about Owen's alcoholism. He didn't know about Tosh's loneliness. He knew Gwen's heart was her downfall. But this, this was even greater than all of that combined.
Ianto could lie, manipulate footage. What else wasn't he telling them? What else could he have left to hide? Ever since they had met Jack reflected on the fact that he'd never really spoken about Torchwood One in an unofficial capacity. He had thought once that showed amazing reserve and character; that he had grieved but moved on. But no. Ianto just hadn't wanted to lie when asked later.
His continental breakfast rebelled against him. Jack stared, knowing that his answers weren't to be found on the plate bearing bits of croissant and egg. He sighed and bit his lip. Jack's eyes had been red from crying. It was his duty, however. He grabbed his little pill box from the medicine cabinet, it's only inhabitant, and slid it into his inner jacket pocket, toying briefly with the idea of not taking it with him and saying "to hell" with procedure. Captain Jack Harkness just hated his job some days.
Nothing prepared him for what he saw. Jack was met by the lady that lived in the flat beneath Ianto. He was subletting and she was worried. He had always been dutiful to her and delivered mail and lemon bars from the baker up the street. His mind had been distracted, but he had been careful to cultivate an image of a work-obsessed polite Welsh bachelor. Seeing his disregard for his former persona worried Jack more than anything.
She was an older woman, just a few years from meeting the mysterious figure Jack would never get the pleasure of meeting. But Eunice Magritte spoke with clarity beyond her years. "Something is troubling our Ianto, Mr. Harkness. Something deep. It's been here ever since he moved from London, poor thing, be he never spoke of it. Wore a mask of indifference and politeness. How did you say you were related?"
"Distant cousin. We shared a dog once." Jack grimaced slightly and she was too far-sighted to see it. She hunched over briefly to see her azaleas a little closer, revealing bits of rolled stocking beneath her flowered dress.
"Yes. You must be close otherwise you wouldn't have come. I know he'll hate me for it, but I'll go and fetch the spare key. Maybe you're what he needs Mr. Harkness." She hobbled away and returned quite quickly, leaving Jack to decide what he should do. He felt the weight of the small box in his jacket pocket.
The stereo was on. The lights were off. The room wreaked of alcohol and havoc. There had been a rummage of the cabinets and even some bits of biscuit trailed all over the carpet from the kitchen to the large couch that Ianto was snoring on. In his hand was a metallic chain, the bits of a key still hanging from it.
"Oi! Ianto." There was no response. He slammed the door but Ianto just looked towards the noise with that same kind of glazed sleeping look. Then he rolled over unceremoniously with his back to Jack. His bony shoulders popped through his button down shirt, barely hid by the carelessly flung jacket.
"What is this music?"
Jack went to the record player, still functional and popping with the grooves of being played for hours on end. Jack picked up the jacket cover and watched it reflect off of the bare slats of light coming from between the blinds. Pink Floyd's the Wall album. Was it her favorite or his? It explained so much about humanity in general, how they railed against insignificance and gave everything just for one moment of blissful recognition and glory. A character flaw? A weakness? Jack wasn't sure how even to categorize it, but he knew that it helped the race strive as a whole and it would be integral in those first peace talks come mid-century when the Arkians needed human ingenuity against the Sontaran brotherhood. That was a can of worms he truly didn't want to deal with yet.
He looked back toward the can of worms on the couch holding a key. He imagined briefly what that key was for. He thought about the warehouse he must have been living and hiding Lisa in. The place here had no real personality, save for the record player. Or maybe it was a locker somewhere that he had kept diagrams. Maybe it was his hope chest and all hope had been lost. Maybe it was a souvenir or a relic of his mysterious past. Jack wasn't sure he was in the mood to ask or to entertain a pity party. He would have helped Ianto if he had known, if he had known how. But, much like Lisa, they were far past that now.
As he turned on the humming lights of the kitchen and Ianto seemed to hiss and shy away from the grating fluorescents, Jack thought about his devotion to Lisa and how Torchwood needed that. Ianto had been right, they had taken his everything for granted. From filing to coffee and beyond that, Ianto Jones had been the most integral and yet the most overlooked of all the Torchwood employees since this branch had begun. He had become the backbone and, had this incident not occurred, probably the closest thing Jack could have had to a confidant. He looked from the little box in his hand to the man crumpled against the couch. What would Jack do without him? What would Ianto do without Torchwood? RETcon the man and give him his peaceful ending. It seemed cruel somehow, like a mistake. Like Torchwood and the paranormal were part of Ianto Jones and that Ianto Jones was part of them.
The sound of water hitting glassware caused Ianto to spring into a sitting position, eyes still glazed over. "Sir." Those were his only words, bleak and expectant. He weighed each portion from the top of the capital s to the dot just hanging over the I. The r rolled into desperate non-existence and there was something close to a squeak at the end of it.
"I hope you don't mind." Jack sat opposite him on the cluttered coffee table, a picture of the prime minister just under his left cheek.
"No. I've done worse to you." Ianto waved him off and then looked at Jack. Just for a second. In a way that made Jack gulp. "Before I take this I want to say..."
Jack waved him off. Bearing your soul before retcon did no one any good. It left the listener with hints of guilt and left the other feeling unfulfilled when they woke up. "No. You were right. Not about everything but about me. Maybe now, with Gwen, things can change. I haven't had a heart in a very long time."
"No. But you wouldn't want one, would you? Watching all those people and loved ones die. It must be worse."
"Don't count yourself out of the human race, Ianto Jones. I can't imagine anything more appalling than that." It was almost a whisper and Ianto shrank from Jack's hand on his limp, anorexic arm, folded into his shirt. Ianto wouldn't take his eyes off of Jack. He swirled the water in the glass a bit. Jack didn't breath for the entirety of Ianto chugging the contents of the glass.
"How long, then? How far back?" Jack didn't answer. "I've saved a bit of money. Don't worry about me." Jack's lips never parted. "You should go before I fall asleep and wake up. Did you run into the woman in the flat below?"
"I never noticed how skinny you were. Ianto, do you eat?"
"Biscuits and tea mostly. I haven't been that fond of food since I spent my resources mostly on..."
"It was a mistake. Not loving her, but hiding her. That was your only mistake. If you'd just been honest with me."
"Then what? You'd have had me unplug her? Face the reality of my dismal situation? Had me admit all the things I can actually do if I set my mind to it? No thanks, Jack. I don't need that kind of pressure in my life. No, maybe a quiet desk job at an actual tourist office or a travel center. Maybe I'll move. I was only in Cardiff for her."
"What if I told you there was only water in that water?"
Ianto smiled. "Procedure. Now who's made the mistake?"
"Both of us. I can't let you rejoin the human race like this. I want you to stay on a trial basis. I want you to learn how to live. I want to help you. I blame Gwen and her bloody caring for everything. If not for her, you would be asleep by now." Jack pleaded, looking into his eyes.
Ianto raised his glass in a mock toast. "Yes, well, to Gwen Cooper then. I could turn you down, you know."
"But you won't."
"And you know this because..."
"Because I am the Captain. And you are more than just a brick in the wall."
Ianto winced. "That was her favorite album." His eyes went wide and he fell back to the couch as he tried to stand and found his knees cramping. "The album!"
Jack raced over and stopped the machine and the grooves going deeper and deeper into the vinyl. "That better?"
"Much." Ianto put his hand over his forehead as he sunk back into the couch. "Where do we go from here?"
"You report Monday morning. You report to me and then we'll go from there. No more secrets and no more hiding though."
"But what about you?"
"What about me?"
"Does it work both ways? I know what I said, however..."
"You were right in more ways than you know."
"I'd like to know."
Jack folded his arms. "No, you wouldn't."
"Don't be contradictory, Harkness. How am I supposed to trust you when I don't receive anything in return?"
Jack considered it. "Point taken. But you'll have to keep a broad mind. Things were different then. And I don't remember everything anyways."
"I'm not asking for everything Jack."
"And what are you asking for?"
"An end to this bloody cramp in my knee."
"Here." Jack leaned down as he walked past the coffee table again. He rolled up Ianto's pant leg, to much protest, and began to massage. Ianto felt himself relaxing against his better judgment.
"Is this how you get them the first time?"
"Only with the complicated ones." Jack smiled at Ianto, a suggestive bit of a smirk following.
"I suppose I wouldn't be the first, would I?"
"Yes you would." Ianto looked down, confused. "You'd be the first to really know me. You'd be the first intimate one in..."
"I'm not intimate anything yet."
"You could be."
"No I couldn't."
"And why not? I'm not up to your standard?"
Ianto gaped his mouth slightly. "That's not what I'm saying!"
"Calm down, Ianto. Calm down. Look, you're tense. Just let me give you a massage and we'll take it one step at a time, then. Alright?"
"I suppose a massage is friendly, isn't it?"
"Innocent. Completely innocent."
"Yeah, and Owen only goes to the bars for the music and free peanuts."
Jack chuckled as they entered the bedroom. The place was feminine and the curtains were flimsy bits of lace. Ianto faced a blank wall, but there was still the issue of the lace. He shrugged away the look. "I haven't had time to redecorate and we saw no reason...I'm sorry. Lisa saw no reason why I should spend good money getting new curtains."
It was progress, trying to separate the we from himself, trying to disassociate painful memory from an even more uncertain present and an exotic future. Ianto Jones faced Jack Harkness and didn't breathe for exactly four seconds. Jack turned him around.
"I can't massage through clothing."
"I knew that." Ianto began to fumble with his buttons.
"Here." Jack was behind him, breath hot in Ianto's here. He fell against the heartbeat and watched as Jack skillfully paused at each button and then reached the button to his pants. Ianto regained enough of his senses in that second to untuck the last bits of the crumpled shirt and throw it unceremoniously into the corner. He mentally ticked dry cleaning on the list. He'd want the shirt pressed anyways.
It was easy to feel Jack's hands under his arms and guiding his nervous weight onto the bed. In a moment, Jack was over him and Ianto watched the two shadows intertwine in the corner. He felt wrong and raw in the hands of the Captain. He felt like salt was touching unknown open wounds. He felt old and exasperated. He felt abandoned and unloved.
Then he began to feel the weight moving just a little left of center. He began to feel Lisa moving from cybernetic material to coffee the morning after a wet beach and a small bout with pneumonia. He began to feel the hands of Jack move over each knot and deep pain, judging them and working them until Ianto couldn't stand not seeing him anymore, not looking into his eyes. He had slept for too long. He had been asleep for too long. But he couldn't turn.
"Not yet."
"When?"
"You aren't ready yet. I won't replace her."
Ianto wanted to cry, crumpling in on himself as best he could while Jack's knees were set on both sides of himself. Then Jack went to work again on the fresh tension and knots. Where he learned to massage so well without oils or ambiance did wonders on Ianto. There wasn't much this room had been used for. He had slept on a cot next to her machine so many times that it was his bedroom. He'd be grateful to have the little bit of extra money, but he'd never been attached to things. Just people. Just needing someone who never seemed to be there. Until he had met her. And now Captain Jack Harkness, international and time playboy was massaging him. If he was smart, he'd call this a mistake. He'd kick the Captain out of his bed. Ianto Jones wasn't always as smart as he'd have liked to be.
A second time he tried to turn and face Jack. He heard the sound of something rustling, but still couldn't move. "No, Ianto."
"Sir?"
"Almost. But there's more pain."
"What about you?"
"What about me?"
"Who massages your pain away?"
Jack stopped for a moment, thinking. "In a way, you do. And Owen does. Toshiko, Gwen, even Suzie." Ianto winced. He had erased the footage of Jack being shot and rising again.
"But what about now?"
"I just said."
"I know, but does anyone do what you're doing for me?"
"Some of tried. Most have failed."
"I don't know much about massaging, sir, but I'm more than I appear."
"I know, Ianto. I know."
He was finally allowed enough room to turn. His midsection ended close to where Jack's began. Jack was fighting tears and losing the battle, clearly dealing with heaviness on his own as well. Ianto moved upward and was unsure. But his hands grabbed Jack's jaw and traced the line of the tear from the eye to the chin. Ianto swept his head from side to side.
"What?"
"You are an awful liar." Ianto kissed Jack, mimicking the kiss they'd had after Lisa had left the main area of the Hub. They both needed life and something, neither wanting to be insignificant. Even if just to each other.
Jack was exhausted by the time he fell against Ianto and the bed, his elbow resting against the mattress. "My God, that scent Jack. What is it?"
"Fifty-first century pheromones."
"You smell like heaven. You can't smell like that."
"But I do."
"Jack, I..."
"Shut up and kiss me again."
