Disclaimer: I do not own Torchwood, no copyright infringement intended. If you still want to sue bring Ianto back to Jack first. I'm taking inspiration for the chapters and the fiction titles from "Fairytale" by Kalafina, still no real stealing of the lyrics happened.

Warnings: Might contain spoilers for the TV-series. Not beta-read and English's not my native language, constructive criticism is appreciated.

Lives left behind

Gwen didn't even stop looking at the screen of her computer when a cup of coffee was placed next to her. She simply grabbed it with her hands and took a tentative sip of the dark liquid. She grimaced, but she had to admit that it wasn't as bad as she had expected.

"Thanks for the coffee, love. Have you changed blend again?"

Rhys frowned at her and crossed his arms over his chest, a resolute glint in his eyes. "I'm sure it was the blend. It 'as to be the blend, and one day I'm going to find out which one it was."

Gwen tried to keep her smirk hidden behind her cup of coffee, but Jack had no such qualms and openly laughed at Rhys's resolve.

"You might be right about the blend, but the day you will find the right one it still won't be the same." He drained his own cup of coffee and then descended the few remaining steps of the stairs that lead up to his renewed office to reach the pouting Welshman and pat him friendly on his shoulder. "Just try your best being yourself. Trying to emulate someone else won't help much."

"You should try and follow your own suggestions then, Jack." Gwen teased, sounding actually like she was more serious than what she meant to give away. "What about the last girl you were seeing?"

Jack simply shrugged. "She wasn't as good as I thought, I let her go."

Gwen turned to stare up at him, this time looking completely serious. Rhys's glance shifted from his wife to her boss worriedly, already sensing the reprimand coming forth.

"Jack-"

"C'mon Gwen, let me be." Jack interrupter her, rolling his eyes annoyed. "She wasn't what I was searching for and that's it. It's not like I gave up my love life forever. I simply wanted something more… reliable."

"Someone more reliable, maybe." Gwen huffed irritated. "What you want is Ianto, not something 'more reliable'. Think about your relationship with Angelo or what was his name! You were just replying what you had with him, it was almost painful to watch!"

"Gwen, I adore you, but you're not my mother and I don't need you to play cupid for me."

"Jack-"

"Aaaand I've got these to make me company tonight." Jack chirped happily showing her a couple of tapes he had produced from his new navy blue coat. "So, come back telling me how I'm wasting my eternal life or my worthless time only when I've finished with these sweethearts and their siblings inside the two boxes in my office."

Rhys stared confused at the seemingly anonymous tapes Jack was showing, but nothing on them or on their cover could help him guess their contents. "What the hell are they?" He asked confused.

"Jack? Where did you get those?" Gwen asked instead, having a slightly more definite idea of what those registrations might be about. She knew Jack and she knew Ianto, but more than that she knew that her friends were a couple of shameless exhibitionist despite Ianto's shyness.

"Rhiannon kindly preserved them in the proper environment to keep them unharmed, and as soon as our names -mine and yours- got cleared by the authorities, she sweetly shipped them my way. Isn't she a kind and attentive woman my dear sister-in-law?"

"Now, when did you marry Ianto and why would she keep them?" Gwen challenged him, crossing her arms on her chest and making herself even more comfortable on her chair.

"These were her brother's, how could she have the strength to throw them away?" Jack explained with a pout and a bit too much drama in it, plainly ignoring the reminding that Rhiannon wasn't actually his sister-in-law by law.

"Have you ever wondered if she'd watched them?"

The big lewd grin that appeared on Jack's face told Gwen clearly that he was most certainly hoping for Rhiannon to have done so, and that she'd enjoyed seeing them as much as he and Ianto had enjoyed filming them.

"What's in there!?" Rhys took his chance to insist, feeling ignored, but he himself realized that getting an answer from the official Torchwood staff was a something near to a Mission Impossible after they started bickering.

Gwen, however, eventually took pity on him and stood up, taking his arm and leading him straight towards the exit of their newly reconstructed hub.

"Keep your sight, Jack, you will need it" She said as a way to say goodbye, while next to her Rhys still didn't understand what she was referring to and kept stealing glances in Jack's direction, hoping to get the joke.

"I thought we were meant to help Jack with the exploding spikes" He protested.

Gwen simply rolled her eyes, whilst Jack kept grinning at them and wondered how much time would pass before Rhys stopped being oblivious and undestood the loads of hints they were casually offering for his analysis. He absolutely needed to find a way to break the news to the naïve man.

"We'll do it tomorrow, dear, now let's go." Gwen insisted, noticing Jack's evil grin. "Anwen is waiting for us."

She showed her husband through the cog door and then followed him herself.

"Have a nice family evening!" Jack chimed, weaving them goodbye. "Old and single Jack will give himself a hand! No need to come early tomorrow morning!"

Despite the hint actually being extremely tiny, he could swear that a glint of understanding had eventually crossed Rhys's eyes as the cog-door closed in front of the married couple. He bet that the Welshman's head was going to be filled with weird images for the following hours: mission accomplished.

Now that he was alone, Jack turned again to look at the hub that had been given to him as a peace token from UNIT. It was way smaller than the one they had previously owned, but he knew that now they were supposed to do very few things in there, so it would suffice.

Gone was the rift, so gone was the rift manipulator along with the aliens and the weird objects it sputtered on Earth from the other galaxies. Gone was the need to have enormous archives to store alien tech, gone were the floors full of cells to held the captives and gone were the impromptu invasions of the Earth -at least for them. Gone was also the basement, but on a second thought they didn't even know they had one at the beginning, so that didn't really stand out as a big change.

They had become nothing more than a detachment of UNIT, focused mainly on surveillance. A mini-team that could blend easily for long term stalking or pointless unauthorised interviews. The only thing that was actually left of their previous routine was the care of the Flat Holm establishment, but that was mostly because only few people were supposed to know about its existence and these people weren't on UNIT payroll.

Even if horribly mutilated, they had however got the chance to get back their work, their hub, their names and their freedom, so Jack didn't feel the need to complain too much. If UNIT wanted the exclusive on getting mauled by alien invaders, they could happily take the main spot: he was already done with it. He'd nothing left to lose and very few things and dear ones to protect.

Jack, Gwen and Rhys's names had eventually been cleared from every made-up accusation that had been thrown at them in their past, and now they all could finally live happily in the open air. They had the chance to start again their life. Once again, for the hundredth time, they could start again.

He only hoped that it was the last time they had to do such a thing.

Jack knew that for him this was impossible, but he really hoped at least to get a bit of tranquillity and steady routine for a while. His -and Gwen's- main concern was his fleeting and still bleeding heart, but at least, for his most immediate needs, sweet and darling Rhiannon had recently come to his rescue with a slightly embarrassed expression on her face and two boxes of video-tapes, DVDs and flash drives.

Grinning evilly at the two tapes he was still holding in his hands, he rushed back up to his office to take advantage of his momentary time alone. He connected his computer to and old tape recorder and prepared himself for the show. He did not remember what it was inside each one of them, but he basked in the knowledge that if they had recorded it and then stocked in Ianto's flat to preserve it from their curious colleagues, then it meant that the contents had to be good.

And as he stared at the images appearing on his monitor and prepared a new label with the proper content to put on the tape for future reference, he could only agree that videotaping that particular day had been a bloody good idea.

*H/S Revenge-tape4*

Ianto was finishing checking his camera for automatic recording, when a thoroughly aroused Jack run inside what appeared to be their old darkened projection room.

"Whoever said that it is always the quiet ones was onto something!" He said, breathing hard and glaring at him as he approached his lover, eventually becoming fully visible on screen.

"Well, you found me in the end" Ianto stated with mirth. "Congratulations."

"Yeah, I found you and all your bloody cards and photos on the way!" Jack reprimanded him. "The others are still here, this goes way beyond professional, Mr Jones"

"Am I going to be punished?" Ianto asked, sounding more interested than frightened.

Jack's lips were on the Welshman's in a matter of seconds and his hands forego any teasing to move straight to Ianto's crotch.

"Jack!" Ianto moaned in protest. "That's not fair play… The cards…"

"Fair play my ass, I found you and I'm getting my prize."

"Jack, where would it be the naked in the hide and seek game if you took me like… this!" Ianto was melting under Jack's ministrations, moreover the love bites his lover was leaving on his neck were almost good enough to make him lose his resolve.

"As long as I get you naked in the end, I don't care about the game in itself…" Jack protested, opening hastily the buttons of his lover's suit… until he noticed the camera filming them.

"Ian? You took out the video-camera?"

"Uhn?" Ianto asked, looking at his lover rather dishevelled and out of sorts.

"The camera, Ian." Jack repeated once again. "Are you filming us? Will you upload it on youporn?"

His interested question was enough to get Ianto's mind back from wherever it had gone. "What!? Why would I!?"

"Then why?" Jack asked again, looking like not only he didn't really understanding what the problem would be but also like he was actually considering uploading it himself.

Ianto just grumbled embarrassed. "Why not? I thought the end of the game would be nice to put on tape."

"Why should this be different from any other time?"

The Welshman rolled his eyes and took hastily the cards Jack had brought back from his search. "Because of these!"

"I was wondering about them."

"Didn't you read them?" Ianto quipped, fanning them in front of him.

"Something distracted me" Jack grumbled, taking the batch of photos instead and showing them in front of Ianto, who simply grinned evilly back at him.

The camera couldn't give a clear image of all of them, but the one on the top was quite visible and showed a very erotic image of a very naked Welshman.

"Oh well, I had to be sure I made your quest to find me a little less boring, didn't I?"

"Ianto, despite the effect of these on me, have you ever thought about the others finding them?" Jack reprimanded, shocked by the absolute lack of shame his normally modest boyfriend was showing.

"Oh yes" Ianto answered with a wicked grin. "Bit of a danger, isn't it? Tosh was right when she said you get fuelled by it eventually."

"I'm guessing she was not talking about sexual exploits, Ian."

"So" Ianto said, changing topic as he looked at the cards he was still holding in his hand. "Here you have 'shoes' and 'socks' and this one has 'tie'"

Diligently Ianto took off and put away the three garments he had mentioned along with the three cards he had red out aloud.

"Going on you have 'jacket' and 'waistcoat'" He undressed from the two pieces of clothing and proceeded to the last cards in his hands.

"Here you have 'undershirt' and 'underwear'" He said, peeling away all his remaining clothes under the hungry stare of his lover. "But you didn't get 'shirt' or 'trousers'"

As quickly as he had undressed himself he put on again his red shirt and his trousers, only to finally stare at Jack as he was the most professional butler around.

"So, almighty Captain Harkness, here's the deal. You're missing two cards along with two pictures of me naked, horny and needy. And your loyal friends could be out there, accidentally finding them. On the other hand, I'm here, without a stitch under my trousers. Trousers that you can't take away-"

"No, here's the deal" Jack interrupted him, striding towards him to devour his lips once again. "There are two photos of you naked still around, how does it feel? Imagine one of the girls finding them and taking them to her home… Imagine her touching herself dreaming of you, her hands slowly caressin-"

"Stop it, Jack!" Ianto protested, completely flushed as he tried to free himself from Jack's firm grip on him. "They are my friends"

"Wicked and sweet Ianto Jones" Jack murmured in his ear with a final chuckle, taking his chance to torture his earlobe as his hand wandered lower to cup Ianto's hardening groin. "There's nothing to be ashamed of. Besides, you can't deny that the idea is affecting you."

"It-it's not the idea… It's you…" Ianto tried to defend himself, failing at keeping his cool controlled aura.

"Then why did you suggest playing this game with the others still here?" Jack asked, biting him lower along the neck and teasing his hard nipples with his hands. "Is it really the danger you like or you actually wanted them to join us? Imagine, we four, all over you, touching you and kissing you…"

"Aaah!" Ianto cried out, remembering only too late that he was supposed to keep quiet because the others were still there. He bit the sleeve of his shirt to muffle the moans that dared to escape, until Jack too pity of him and stopped pinching his sensitive buds.

"I was bluffing, Jack" Ianto admitted flustered. "The cards are nowhere the team would usually go. They were all in places where only the two of us have access to"

"Still this doesn't mean that they could not find them by chance. What if Owen found out? He doesn't dislike a nice man in his bed to have fun with"

"Jack" This time Ianto's face showed him clear disgust and Jack couldn't stop himself from chuckling at it. "What? Am I the only man that turns you on?"

Ianto did not respond and only blushed shamefully, but that was even more valuable that any answer he could gave him. "You have no idea how much this turns me on."

Jack's hand went straight for Ianto's cock, slipping inside the still undone trousers as Ianto brought their lips close together to muffle his own moans. His hands moved desperately all over his lover's clothes, trying to undress him the best he could.

When he was sure Ianto was hard enough to not complain about the details of their game anymore, Jack got himself naked with Ianto's help and then hastened to lower his lover's trousers down to his knees.

"Jack…" Ianto tried to protest as he felt strong hands helping him lie down over the table.

"Don't worry, when I'll be done with you, you will still have your trousers on."

Before Ianto could complain, Jack had produced a tube of lube out of nowhere and shifted his lover's legs over his shoulder to get him ready. As soon as Ianto was sleek enough, he covered his own member with a fair amount of gel and without shifting much his lover he penetrated him slowly.

As soon as he started trusting inside him, both of them were so lost in their pleasure that the very idea of keeping quiet seemed overrated. Needy moans filled the room as much as the sound of their flesh slapping together, until they reached their limit and emptied themselves Ianto over his own chest and Jack inside him.

The two lovers on the screen, however, hadn't been the only ones to get off, but also Jack, who had been watching with a mix of longing and amusement the whole video, had eventually given into the hardcore display in front of him. It wasn't his fault that he had been missing what they had had in every possible way.

There were banters, teasing, cuddles, kisses and then the most physical part of it, the one they had started from and from where everything had evolved quicker than any of them had been willing to admit.

He looked at his dirty hand and wiped it clean, sighing dramatically. Gwen was really onto something telling him that he had to get over all this, but Jack had tried to do it so many times that now he was hurting way more than when he had just lost Ianto. Instead of healing, he had collected a new set of wounds that kept placing themselves right over his still bleeding ones, making them ache even more.

He needed something different than a new lover: he needed work to do.

And with that resolution in mind he took out his laptop and began reordering the data UNIT had sent them about the spikes registered in the area.

On the other computer monitor though, the video kept playing. This time changing the scene and showing the two of them battling over the last piece of cake after the little celebration they had held for Ianto's birthday. He was feeling better just stealing a few glances at the tape every now and then, like his life had finally been whole again.

For him there was no work in Torchwood without Ianto Jones around.

Not anymore.

T.B.C.