Ianto handed Jack his coffee. Why are you so bent on getting Martha to get me a red cap?'

'Red's your colour.'

'Really. And where exactly do you think I'll wear it?'

'I thought we could start in the bedroom...'

Ianto shook his head as he moved away, he knew he shouldn't ask but he still did. He turned back to Jack as he stood in the doorway, feeling forever trapped in the space between rooms even if only metaphorically. Wondering if it might be like this for Owen now too, only he was stuck halfway between fully dead and just only dead. 'You haven't forgotten about Christmas, Sir.'

'Oh yes.' Jack's eyes lit up. 'You promised me anything except other people if I make you work this Christmas, I haven't forgotten.'

'Tofu Jack.'

He grinned at how serious Ianto looked. 'Don't worry, I definitely need you here this Christmas.'

'Good, thank you, it's just, we can't be at my flat my mam or Rhi are liable to just pop over. So I can't be there, not even hiding under the bed.'

Jack frowned, did that mean Ianto didn't want them to know about him. They were living together, he'd renovated the bathroom. 'Um Ianto, tonight, when everyone else has gone home, I think I need to ask you about something.'

'They don't know Jack. I don't know how to tell them, that's your question isn't it.'

He shook his head. 'Not quite but it does answer it all the same.'

'Fantastic, no need to chat about it then.'

'Ianto.'

'Jack.'

'No, nothing.' He knew no good could come of pushing Ianto right now. This was how too many angry words had been exchanged and arguments started. Sometimes he missed the sweet shy Ianto Jones he'd first fallen in love with. He didn't know that he always recognised this Ianto. He also knew he didn't know what the rules were either. He was Ianto's boss, bringing him home to met the family at Christmas was a big deal. And Ianto was very private concerning his family. Not that Ianto had been the only one, he'd hardly been forthcoming himself. Something he would have to deal with one day, just not today.

Christmas was still a few weeks away. So he drank his coffee and waited for the day to unfold, wondering what it would bring. Wondering what was happening to Owen, what Martha would find. He didn't want to think about what it would be like not to be able to taste Ianto's coffee, to feel someone brushing against his body. To be fragile, like a butterfly's wings, moving, still existing despite death. Lost. He'd been lost until he'd found Ianto, now he watched everyone tiptoe around Owen. Gwen torn between organising her wedding and guilt over Owen.

Tosh distraught, grieving for the lost chances to tell him she'd always loved him. Jack sighed, he didn't want that to be him and Ianto, he'd tried to tell Ianto how much the Welshman meant to him. Words abandoned him, so he renovated a bathroom instead. And he was considering installing a better kitchen in the Hub for Ianto. Candlelit baths and kinky sex he could do, but chasing those three little words made him freeze up. Which usually led them straight into an argument filled with frustration and irony. Irony because he knew if he could just say it they wouldn't end up fighting at all.

Ianto wondered what Jack had been about to say when he'd said 'nothing'. It hadn't started sounding like nothing. Was it just stress because of Owen? Had Martha reminded him of what he'd run away from, or to? He sighed, sometimes he didn't know if he was coming or going with Jack, well. He knew when he was coming, it was everything else he didn't understand. Did it matter if he didn't know how to tell his family about Jack. They were his family, that was all and Jack was even more evasive about his own family and past. For all he knew Jack had a dozen children out there on the edges of Cardiff. But it all paled in comparison to what Owen was dealing with.

Those gloves were evil, pure and simple. No wonder they had been thrown away, unless it had been deliberate to toss them into the rift, to be found. He shook his head, such thoughts were not designed to lead to pleasant conclusions. He looked at Tosh, why had Jack called her in so early, insisting she be at the Hub. When had he called her, he could only have done so before they'd made love early that morning. Which mean they would have been having sex while she was chasing energy readings, alone in the Hub. He kept his face blank as he carried his tray back to the kitchen. Maybe Jack had done it to keep her busy. He smiled for a moment as he thought of some of the ways Jack liked to keep him busy.

Martha looked at her results before looking around the autopsy room, the flavour of the last few days one of surreal irony as the very dead but very human Doctor Owen Harper was running on a treadmill. She wasn't sure what Jack wanted her to find, Owen was an unknown, an actual genuine zombie minus the haz-chem warnings and the craving for brains. And she wasn't finding anything that justified locking him up. She could review her test results six ways until Sunday it wouldn't change the findings. Owen was one hundred percent human, dead, but human. She didn't think Tom was ever going to believe her this time.

Ianto watched Owen walking into the conference room with a tray of coffees, that was his tray, it was his coffee machine, and if Owen broke it. He stopped at that thought, he could hardly threaten to shoot the man, he was already dead. Jack was so getting decaf for this, and forget about the chocolate biscuits. He was going to be lucky if he got the broken ginger nuts from the bottom of the tin at this rate. The whole world was upside down.

Gwen was taking the lead on the bizarre energy spikes at the home of Henry Parker. Owen was making coffee, and he was shagging Jack. He thought about what Owen had said, wondering what he'd meant by having finally won. Won what? An all expenses paid holiday to Antarctica? All the tofu he could eat? He already had doubt and uncertainty by the truck load. So what if he had Jack, Owen could have had Tosh if he'd bothered to look. The number of times the woman had practically thrown herself at the man, it was like pouring petrol on the barbecue and wondering why you had no eyebrows left.

He just hoped Jack knew what he was doing, giving Gwen the case, he hadn't seen her when she took charge while he was away. She was one of those people who if you gave them an inch they were moving their toothbrush into your flat. Not unlike Jack himself he mused. Still, he had his own toothbrush here. Although they all did as a rule, but not for the same reason. God help any of them if it was the same reason or Owen wouldn't be the only corpse Jack was dealing with. And there were no more gloves left to bring anyone back this time.

Tosh felt like she was watching the world move as she stood still. Her world had crumpled, she was being pushed down hill in a car with no breaks. Standing still while the world rushed past her in a blur of muddy colours. Standing in a vacuum screaming but there was no sound. Nothing. She was frozen between heartbeats, frozen in time. Like Owen. She sat in her silence staring at the wall, every hope and expectation gone in that frozen space between heartbeats. She'd finally found the courage to ask him out, he'd even said yes. And now, everything was gone, they were stuck in a space filled with nothing. All they had now was a popped balloon forgotten after a child's birthday party.

Gwen checked her phone, no message from Rhys to say Banana Boat was back in the country. She was going to kill him if he cocked her wedding up because of his scams. She knew she should feel bad for Owen, and she did, but he'd made it pretty clear when Jack had first brought him back that she wasn't the one he'd wanted to say goodbye to. And she did understand that, really. She was marrying Rhys, she loved Rhys, but she wanted Owen to want to say goodbye to her too.

She shook her head, she had a case to manage and a wedding to organise. The seating plans were doing her head in. She wondered if Ianto might help, he was such a whiz with all things administrative, a really helpful unit. She could even forgive him for the decaf while Jack had been away. Jack. Ianto was still a bit, touchy, about that, about the whole Jack thing, there were times she was sure she could fell him looking at her.

She did wonder what it would be like to be kissed, properly kissed by Captain Jack Harkness. His lips looked so soft, so giving, and his hands, he had such fine fingers that looked like they could make a woman sing. She closed her eyes a moment as she considered what that would feel like. She jumped as her phone began to ring, it was Rhys. 'Oh hello love, yes I was just thinking about you...'

Ianto could hear Gwen's voice trail off as she moved though the Hub. He'd seen that look on the woman's face a number of times now, and always in connection with Jack. He hoped Rhys was happy marrying her, he seemed like a genuinely nice guy. Still, as long as she kept her hands off Jack she could look all she liked. If she ever actually tried anything she'd be waking up in a mental hospital drugged so full of retcon she wouldn't know her own name.

Jack was a flirt, Ianto suspected that was never really going to change. He just hoped he didn't push the man into stepping over the line from flirting to doing. He'd felt the beginnings of a fight and he didn't want to argue with Jack. Sometimes he wanted to run away with him and pretend the world didn't need saving, but he never liked fighting. Although the angry make up sex was pretty amazing. It was the emotional roller coasters he could do without. He wondered if he should talk to Tosh, he had his own idea of what it was like to loose the man you loved. Except unlike Owen, when Jack died, he kept coming back. He looked up and saw Jack watching him.

Jack smiled, he wasn't stupid, Ianto wasn't happy he'd suggested Owen could make coffee. The man loved that coffee machine. Although Owen seemed, under supervision, to manage to make coffee for them, it wasn't the same as Ianto's coffee. Something had gotten Ianto in a bit of a mood. He hadn't been happy about his retrieving the glove, a church full of weevils, he perhaps should have minimised that detail. And he wasn't sure how he felt about Ianto not telling his family about their relationship.

Jack sighed softly, they hadn't exactly had a conversation about it themselves, so what was Ianto going to say. Mum, Morris, I'm shagging my boss? Hadn't he had this conversation with himself before? So he leaned in a doorway, watched Ianto and smiled at the man. 'Do you think we can get everyone to bugger off early so I can have you to myself?' He watched Ianto walking towards him. He loved that slight swing of the man's hips, not to mention the hips themselves. And the red tie. 'You're wearing a red tie Ianto.'

'Jack, I'm wearing the tie you picked out.'

He shrugged. 'I know.' He reached out to Ianto and pulled him into his arms. 'I like you in red. Maybe latter you can wear it in bed for me.'

'Anything else you want me to wear at the time? Sir.'

Jack whispered in his ear. 'Just me Ianto, just me.'

'Jack, do I need to remind you, everything has gone just a little bit mad around here. Or more so than usual. Owen is dead but is still vertical. Martha has stepped out of her life in UNIT to help you out by running tests on him. She has a boyfriend to go home to by the way. Gwen is planning a case and running her wedding. No, that should be running a case and planning a wedding. Either way, you've put her in charge and Owen is making my coffee. And Tosh, well I don't know if she's what I'd call coping, Sir. And you want to have sex with me wearing a tie.'

'Well not right now, and not when you sum it all up like that. I know things are a bit mental around here. It could be argued, Ianto Jones, that things are always a bit mad in the Hub.' He pulled back from Ianto. 'I don't really know what to do about Owen, he seems all right, Tosh seems to be adjusting. Gwen needs to be kept busy, so does Owen.' He ran a hand though his hair. 'You are the only one I can let my guard down around Ianto, and sometimes I don't know what's happening. I lo-.'

'Jack.' Gwen rushed into the room waving her cell phone.