Summary: Jack ages very slowly. Ianto doesn't.
Disclaimer: I own nothing to do with Torchwood. And the song is "As Long as You're Mine" from the musical "Wicked". It seemed appropriate.
Spoilers: Some for season one, but definitely none / AU for season 2 because I haven't actually seen it yet.
Timeline: Season 1 bits may be a bit off in the particulars of the relationship, because I've sort of twisted it to fit my whims. Oh, and it also completely ignores the whole "hurt" bit in Greeks Bearing Gifts.
Pairing: Janto, what else?
It all began when he lost Lisa, for the second time. Before then, sure, there had been flirting and the occasional attempted grope, but that was just Jack being Jack. He would sidestep with a poker face, letting the world believe he was nothing more than the Tea Boy, a bore, a prude. And as he made their coffee, now so used to the menial task that it required no thinking, Ianto's mind would wander down to the basement. He spent every waking minute there, either physically or just in his mind. So Jack was just a distraction, something to be borne, a means to an end.
BANG
Jack had shot her.
BANG
Every time he looked at the Captain, he could hear the shots ringing.
BANG
From then, the hypersensitivity began. Whether he liked it or not, he suddenly became aware of every move that Jack made, every step that he took towards or away. Every little movement. There was nothing sexual in it, it was a pure, animalistic reaction to a predator. He would bring in the coffee, set it down on the desk, then move away again. The only words he said for several months were "Yes, sir".
Whether through anger or understanding Ianto didn't know, but Jack never pushed the boundaries.
JXI
"Sir?" he asked in his usual subdued manner, as Jack looked up from pretending to read his paperwork.
"You've been subdued, lately. Not yourself."
"Sir."
"I just wanted you to know, that about Lisa..." he trailed off.
"Sir."
"It had to be done, you know. She would have killed us all!"
"Sir."
"Stop calling me sir!" Jack was yelling now. Vaguely, in the back of his mind, the rational part of Ianto noted that the chatter from downstairs was gone.
"No, sir."
The other man's face suddenly fell. "Right. If there's anything I can do, just ask me, OK?"
Ianto looked at his boss. The real attempt to help him almost made him reconsider. Almost. But then he heard the gunshots.
BANG
Ianto looked straight ahead of him.
"Yes, sir."
Both men knew that the request would never come.
JXI
It was almost ironic, he thought later, that what had actually drawn him out of his depression was someone trying to kill and eat him. And yet, in that moment when he managed to get loose, whilst attacking the man and screaming for Tosh to run, he was suddenly aware the sting of adrenaline rushing through his veins, as he used every sinew and muscle and thought to try to survive. It was the first time in months that there was no Lisa at the back of his mind. Then it went dark.
But for one glorious moment, he had been truly alive.
JXI
When he came around, there were the cannibals to be dealt with, people to comfort, things to do. So it was not until later that he noticed that his mental Lisa had not come back.
He took that as a sign, of sorts. It was time to move on. She would have wanted it.
That evening, when they had dropped off the others, he noted with detachment Jack's hand protectively on the small of his back as they walked into the hub. When he looked questioningly at the culprit, all he got in response were some raised eyebrows and "I thought I'd lost you."
"Well, we couldn't have that, could we?" he hadn't meant it to come out as such a murmur. They were standing so close together that he could feel Jack's breath on his face.
"No." The Captain leaned in and kissed him. When Lisa did not return, Ianto knew he was safe, and kissed back.
JXI
They had fun, then. Stopwatches could be used for so many different things!
JXI
Rationally, Ianto knew that Jack was not cut out for monogamy. He flirted with everything – Ianto sometimes thought he'd have sex with a weevil if it weren't for the fact that coming back from the dead gave him a migraine. And Ianto knew that though Jack loved him in his way, he loved Gwen too, and the Jack Harkness whom he'd met in 1941. That didn't stop the pang every time he saw Jack and Gwen share a smile. He knew that Jack wouldn't be Jack without that defining character trait, but still...
He grinned, and bore it. Even when Gwen was the one to kiss his Jack and bring him back from the dead. It should have been him. It should have been him.
When Jack kissed him in front of the entire team, a veritable declaration of their relationship, Ianto thought that it might be all right after all.
JXI
But then the dark days came. Jack was gone, and the hand too. He had run after the Doctor. And left the team behind. Left Ianto behind.
He could not, later, remember very much about those dark days. Only the methodical movements of his hands as he made the coffee.
Tosh and Owen exchanged worried glances over his head. He noticed, but said nothing. He noticed, too, when they started leaving together. Intellectually, he was happy for them, but something in him had died, so he could not voice it.
This was worse that losing Lisa. When she had gone physically, she had remained in his mind. There was no Jack there now. There couldn't be, because every fibre of Ianto's being was waiting for him to return in the flesh. There was a space in his soul, waiting to be filled.
He made a lot of coffee. Coffee kept him awake. When he slept, he remembered. So he drank coffee, and when he was so tired that he collapsed despite it, his brain had no energy left for dreams.
JXI
It was a Thursday, when he returned. He simply walked into the Hub as though he had been away three days rather than three months.
"Any rift activity, then?"
A squeal from Gwen, and a kiss on the lips. A hug from Tosh, a nod from Owen. Ianto stayed to one side, unsure. All he wanted was to go and melt into his Jack, who was there, alive, and seemed to be in one piece. But, he had left. Maybe, he had wanted to leave. Ianto thought he had better wait. He felt torn.
Jack took the decision out of his hands, by striding across the Hub and taking him in his arms. He kissed the younger man viciously. "Mine," he whispered softly.
Ianto smiled.
JXI
It was lying in bed that evening, sheets draped around them, that they at last talked about it all.
"I had to go, you know. I had to see whether he could cure me."
"I know."
"He couldn't, though. Looks like I'm stuck with immortality."
Ianto chuckled into Jack's shoulder. "I wouldn't say stuck with. It's hardly a bad thing that I don't have to worry about you dying!"
Jack sighed, and turned away.
"I'll have to watch you die."
Ianto shivered. "Yes. But promise you won't leave me like you did Estelle. Promise me that you'll stay. Don't ever go again. And then, when I am dead, which shouldn't be long, this job is always thinking up new ways to murder me, you can move on, find someone new. Just don't leave me."
The pause was so long that he thought he had said the wrong thing, that Jack was going to get up and go then and there. But then-
"The year that the Master took from me. I had to watch you, you die. I couldn't bear it. I realised then that I love you more than I've ever loved anyone. I'm not going anywhere, Ianto Jones. As long as you're on this earth, so am I."
Ianto felt his heart swell. But it was in his usual dry tone that he responded. "Good. But for now, aren't there more interesting things we can be doing in bed than talking about death?"
Jack chucked and turned back to face him. "My dear Ianto, I do believe you're right! Now, where were we before the morbidity got us?"
Later, as Jack entered him slowly, languidly, Ianto whispered in his ear. "I love you too."
JXI
Ianto was just putting Owen's cup of coffee on his desk, when he felt a pair of strong arms snake around his waist. "Yes, Jack?"
"Will you come on a date with me?"
He paused for a moment, perplexed. "Jack, you don't need a date to get into my pants, you realise? You're in them every night anyway!"
Owen turned in disgust. "Eww, don't want to think about that, important medical procedures going on here."
Jack laughed. "You're just repressed." But he dragged Ianto to a safer corner anyway.
"So, how about it? You, me, a movie, dinner?"
"But what about-"
"The rift can take care of itself for one night. Besides, the others will be here."
"Very well then, Mr. Harkness, we have a plan."
JXI
Dinner was good, not that Ianto remembered the food, particularly. He was too engrossed in the conversation. It ranged from the disgusting:
"I didn't know that was even possible!"
To the random:
"Did you know that Phoenixes actually exist?"
To the downright weird:
"I had sex with a weevil once. It nearly killed me. Well, it did kill me, but that's beside the point."
As they were walking home, Jack suddenly asked: "How old are you, Ianto?"
"23."
Jack laughed. "Practically a child!"
"Oi! You weren't saying that last night when I was- anyway, you were 26 when you got... stuck. So technically, you're only 26. You've just been 26 for quite a while!"
Their laughter echoed through the night.
JXI
Life went on. It involved stopwatches, possibly to an unhealthy extent.
JXI
On the 25th April 2020, Toshiko Sato was killed. Not by an alien, not by anything to do with Torchwood. Whilst walking home from work alone, as Owen had to work late, she was mugged. She didn't have a gun, they did. One shot was all it took.
BANG.
It was the worst 30th birthday present that Ianto could ever have imagined.
JXI
There was no funeral, for the Torchwood employee, whose only real family was also an employee. Instead, the remaining four stood around the shelf in the mortuary. Owen was silent. He had lost the only two women he had ever truly loved, first Diane, then Tosh. Gwen kissed her friend's forehead. Ianto and Jack stepped forward together, leaning on each other. They exchanged looks, but there was nothing that needed to be said. Slowly, the Captain pushed in the drawer. Ianto slid the small label into its slot.
That was all that remained of a life. A body in a cold metal drawer.
JXI
"I want you to have it. I've one too, identical."
Jack took the ring and slipped it onto the ring finger of Ianto's left hand.
The other man sighed and twisted it round.
"I don't want to do this just as a reaction to Tosh. I want to do it because we both want it, more than anything else. I'm not sure... I'm never going to be good enough for you for forever. I live in fear of you going again."
Jack took his love's face in his hands. "Tosh is gone. We're still alive. I... watching Owen, they never formalised it, they never really knew where they stood, and then, suddenly she was gone. I don't want that to happen to us. I don't want to get married, I've never believed in formality, I just want you to know... I love you and I want you to wear the ring until you die, so you'll always remember that. You're the only one for me."
"All right."
JXI
Ianto often wondered whether Gwen's sudden engagement to Rhys had been for the same reasons as his own exchange with Jack. Either way, their wedding was six months after Tosh's death.
He still felt that twinge when Jack flirted and danced with the bridesmaids. But when he came over and pulled Ianto up to his feet, and nodded to the band, and a slow song came on, Ianto smiled and forgot the twinges.
"Just for this moment
As long as you're mine
I've lost all resistance
and crossed some borderline
And if it turns out
It's over too fast
I'll make every last moment last
As long as you're mine…"
The picture of that day hung on the noticeboard in the Hub. Gwen was radiant, Rhys looked bemused but happy, Owen stood to one side, alone. Jack and Ianto shared a secret smile, ignoring the camera completely.
JXI
"What's the matter?"
Ianto turned quickly. "Nothing."
Jack leaned against the doorway, radiating pheromones as always. "I saw you staring into the mirror."
Ianto shrugged uncomfortably. "It's just.... wrinkles. I'm wondering whether I'm getting a bit to old for this job. Gwen's doing my admin, now that she's got Elsa and Jack. Fieldwork... I can feel it getting harder. I'm 45, Jack! And you, you don't look a day over 30." He sighed.
Jack had gathered him in his arms in a trice. "I love your wrinkles. You'll never be old to me. Every single one is a proof of what you've been through, a smile, a frown, a scream. Let me show you how much I love you..."
He proceeded to do so with such vigour that Ianto almost forgot his worries. But he did notice that from then on, he seemed to be required in the Hub far more than he was needed out in the field.
JXI
It was the photograph that did it. Amelia, the newest recruit, a leggy blonde who had been irritating Ianto no end by continually offering Jack sex, had snapped it of the six of them, the new Torchwood, "to have a bit of colour around the place".
It was placed on the board, by the faded old photograph of Gwen's wedding. That evening, as he carried out the coffee cups, alone in the Hub, other than Jack who was finishing the Unit paperwork in his office, Ianto looked at it.
What he saw scared him. He stood by Jack, Gwen on his left, Owen by her, and the three newbies kneeling at the front. He was smiling, and holding hands with his love, but they did not look like lovers. His hair was streaked with white, the wrinkles round his eyes prominent. He looked old enough to be Jack's father.
With a start, Ianto realised that it was ten years since he had been on a mission. In fact, all he really did at Torchwood was make coffee anymore. All the admin had been taken over by Gwen years ago, and had Owen remained in his medical post. Amelia, John and Gregory had taken over the fieldwork with Jack. In short, he was obsolete, a relic.
JXI
My dearest Jack,
I am fifty seven years old next week. How strange! I feel thirty still. You still look it.
I'm dying, Jack. I'm dying at a rate so fast that I already look like your father. In a few years I will be nothing but a burden. I refuse to hold you back like that, you've already wasted enough time on this planet because of me. Go, and return to the stars where you belong.
I know that you said you wanted to see me grow old, live out my natural life. I know you protected me for all those years in the field, trying to elongate my time on the earth. But Jack, I need to go before I grow any older. Before I can hold you back any more.
It's not that I regret our time. I wouldn't have changed a second of it for the world. I hope you will remember me until the end of the universe. I... would say that I'll remember you, except I've never believed in the afterlife. My only consolation in dying is that you've done it so many times, I can finally understand how you feel.
We always knew it couldn't last forever. But I want to go at a time of my choosing, not one dictated by the chance that rules the universe. I could live another 20 years, or another 2 days.
It doesn't matter. You don't need me any more. I'll only be a dead weight.
I love you.
JXI
BANG.