The stopwatch was the beginning. When Jack slipped into his office ten minutes later, giddy, Ianto was already there, staring down at his stopwatch with a mystifying expression. He didn't look up when the door closed, stroking his thumb against the glass face. "Jack," he'd said. "You have thirty seconds to convince me I'm not making a mistake."
He was more than up to the challenge, and a scant breath after he'd started the stopwatch Ianto found himself pinned to the wall, discovering quite seriously why, exactly, one kiss from the man had been enough to satisfy a climax-eating alien. He'd managed to hang on to the timekeeper but only just, sagging bonelessly against the wall, watching Jack with glazed eyes. In those short moments he'd found himself with his tie and belt undone, his suit jacket slid down to his elbows and his shirt freed from his pants, experienced fingers already finding a myriad of sensitive spots along his ribs and spine.
"How'd I do?" Jack'd asked with that certain grin, dragging blunt fingers down Ianto's stomach.
"I'm convinced," he'd answered shortly, fingers curling around the back of the American's neck and tugging him forward.
They'd gone through a late night, finding themselves later sitting in a corner, bare and unashamed, Ianto leaning against Jack as the older man stroked his neck. "You've no idea," the captain had said, "how I've been waiting to get my hands on you." The man had chuckled against him, fingers stroking down the length of a bicep, curling around his lower arm.
"I've some idea, sir."
"We're alone here, Ianto."
"I know, Jack." And he'd smiled, and it had been beautiful.
There had been no real unfolding in their relationship. It was a lightning strike in the woods- a sudden inferno, raging across the forest.
They'd been laying on the hidden bed in headquarters at three in the morning, Ianto's eyes still glazed, hazy in the aftermath. Jack had dragged his fingers down the line of Ianto's chest, watching his lids flutter, watching his mouth open in a soundless inhale, watching his back arch, and wondered at his luck.
The night after John Ellis' death had been slow and dark, possessive, desperate in Jack's need to reduce Ianto to absolutely nothing but thoughtless bliss, but he was ashamed to say that had been far more about him, inside his own head, than the sweet man beneath him.
He hadn't quite understood what he was getting involved in until the Weevil fight club incident. On their return to the base, the man had only said his name- just "Jack," minimum inflection, in passing. The others got out but he paused, turning the car engine off, turning to Ianto with a bright and curious smile as the others vanished into the base. Ianto was looking at him with an expression he somehow couldn't decipher- subtle, curious, considering. He shifted to face him better with a broad, questioning smile. The man leaned over him, reaching past him and pulling a lever.
Jack hitched a breath in surprise when the seat slid back and he suddenly found himself with a lap full, warm hands pressing against his neck, warmer lips sealed over his own.
"Ianto-"
"No, let me."
And he tried as much as possible to forget everything but the feeling of the man against him, and afterward wondered how Ianto had managed to understand him, at least this well.
It went on and on- Ianto was always more than willing to do anything he asked, contacts and hide and seek and all, feeling and responsive and gorgeous. But like that fire, hot and sparking against the torrential rain, it left a black trail of steaming ash. The man sank into himself without seeming to know it, clinging more while they dozed, burying his face against Jack's shoulder, sleeping in the captain's coat.
He knew Ianto wanted to know more. "Tell me," he'd ask sometimes, half asleep and more talkative but crying from a nightmare- Owen or Toshiko or Suzy or, God help, Lisa. "Please, tell me. Anything."
And he'd smile and pull the man to him and tell him to go back to sleep, and Ianto would sink farther.
He wasn't always sure if it was love or just a lover. The line had started to blur, he wanted to say he'd loved all his lovers, but some of them were one or the other and he didn't know.
Ianto didn't know what Jack felt, either, and it got worse. The storm was winning. He was almost afraid he'd lose him, sometimes, but he was more afraid of losing himself, so he never shared- never wanted to, not with anyone. So he let him break, a little, and tried to ignore it, and they went on.
And then Ianto was gone, and as suddenly as that first tree had exploded in a shower of red was the blaze snuffed by the frozen rain, and the man lay cold in his arms. He knew then, with astounding clarity, the depth of feelings that haunted him.
"I've killed you, my love," he thought to himself, his entire being brimming with soundless screaming, and left earth to escape them, and thought he'd never forget.
Forever was a long time, and a year with a man that wore suits and made amazing coffee faded, and the silence blanketed him in. A hundred lovers more, a thousand, ten thousand, and time was a strange thing. Human kind was strange. One could love with their all- and then do it again, every time. He fell in love again, but whenever he remembered Ianto, he still loved that man with all his heart.
But the memories came slower, and old triggers were replaced. Small things, like pterodactyls and coffee, vanished, and the memories sank away.
And then he never remembered at all, and smiled the same smile and spoke of boyfriends with twins and without mouths that meant nothing, that didn't even always exist.
A man in a suit lay in the darkness, in nothing, alone, thinking of promises and futility, fingers curled around a broken stopwatch, and waited for the end.