Jack: "I love you, Ianto Jones. You know that, don't you?"
Ianto: "Oh, you're only saying that because of the virus."

Torchwood: Outbreak


The next few days were challenging for all of them. Jack had barely recovered from his acid burns when he was shot dead by a pelt smuggler looking to make a quick credit or two harvesting the skin of human vagrants. He gasped back to life in Ianto's arms, but the presence of P.C. Andy Davidson a short distance away kept Jack from making any emotional declarations. Still, he leaned into Ianto's embrace, breathed deeply, and allowed himself a few seconds to absorb the sensations of warm and protected and loved before climbing to his feet to resume the chase.

Scarcely twenty-four hours later saw Torchwood combating a dangerous radiation leak, a rogue Weevil, an invasive alien algae that thrived on—and devoured—roof shingles, and an outbreak of Panderian measles, which they managed to restrict to Splott by bombing the surrounding areas with an aerosolized vaccine. Working around the clock, the rest of the team were sleeping in shifts on the Hub sofa, and Jack wasn't sleeping at all.

Even Ianto looked slightly bedraggled when he appeared in Jack's office Saturday morning, bearing a tray. "Morning, sir," he greeted Jack, who was mindlessly scrawling his signature on the reports from the spate of crises.

Jack dropped his pen and rubbed at bleary eyes. "Is it morning already?"

"I've just come from outdoors, and the sun is indeed visible in the sky." Ianto pursed his lips. "A bleak, dreary Cardiff sky, but the sun has risen nonetheless."

Jack took in the appearance of his general factotum. Ianto's suit was rumpled, and still bore smudges of algae around the knees and elbows. Jack knew Ianto had spent the previous day power-spraying algaecide on the roofs of Plasnewydd, but he'd been back in the Hub by suppertime. "You didn't go home last night?"

Ianto shook his head. "Took my turn kipping on the sofa, like the others. Figured you'd need everyone close by in case of another emergency."

Jack frowned. "You didn't have to. You could have used my bed."

Ianto shrugged, not quite smoothly. "I didn't… I wasn't sure if that would be appropriate, during work hours."

"Ianto, the whole team knows you stay over sometimes," Jack sighed, leaning back in his chair. "Besides, it's not as though I've seen my bed during the past forty-eight hours, so there wouldn't be anything untoward about you sleeping there."

"That's another issue entirely," Ianto muttered. He cleared a corner of Jack's desk and set down a plate bearing a couple of pastries and some dubious fast food invention consisting of bread, cheese, and a geometric fried egg patty. "I can't catch you up on sleep, but I've brought you breakfast. It's not fancy, but we've run out of nearly everything in the Hub, and I haven't had time to go to the market, so it was takeaway or nothing."

"It's great. Thanks."

"Though I'm sure what you really want is this." Ianto handed over Jack's preferred blue-and-white mug, filled nearly to the brim with fresh black coffee.

"You know me well." Jack inhaled the rich aroma before taking his daily dose of caffeine internally. He moaned in appreciation; the coffee was perfection. His lips were still dangling in the cup when he murmured, "This is amazing. Have I ever told you I love you?"

From the corner of his eye Jack saw Ianto's shoulders tense almost imperceptibly, but after an instant's hesitation he replied smoothly, "Sir, if you're going to make love to your breakfast, you might at least wait until I've left the room, for the sake of decorum." He nodded toward the breakfast sandwich. "And the coffee is well enough, but if you ask me, you could do better than an egg-and-cheese bagel. You should set higher standards for yourself."

Jack floundered mentally for a moment, but before he could sort out the turn the conversation had taken, Ianto had vanished through the office door. Jack sighed and drained the rest of his coffee, hoping the caffeine would help him make sense of it all.