A/N: Someone quite rightly pointed out that this is a christmas fic in the middle of june and I completely forgot to explain why! Basically, I never got round to posting it when I posted 'Christmas Holidays?' back in January and I really thought I had! I got a PM earlier in the week asking whether it had gone missing when I did a complete -headdesk- and decided to post it!

Part 2

You visit me eight times a day at regular times…

Ianto swallowed a bark of laughter and quickly showed Jack the note. His mind obviously flicked to the same conclusion, 'More than eight times if I have my way…' Jack murmured into his ear.

"Right then, this'll be fun." Ianto said, hauling himself to his feet. He stumbled slightly and Bryn darted forwards to catch him under the arm silently. Together, with Ianto leading the way, they headed into the kitchen, straight for the coffee machine.

They were soon joined by the rest of the clan, Jack and Ellen with the youngest members.

"Well, if you're making a cup…" Jack said with a grin. Ianto rolled his eyes and plucked the silver card from inside the French press on the work surface.

"'I'm not your best friend'. Ambiguous much?" Ianto glanced at his makeshift crutch and she grinned, gesturing him to keep going. Ianto stayed still and thought for a moment. With a slight growl of annoyance, he began to move forwards, heading up the stairs and into his room, lifting up his alarm clock to find a gold card this time.

Bryn made a noise of disapproval and Ianto's lips curled in a smile. She obviously hadn't expected him to get it so quickly. He flipped the card open and found the next note.

On Easter, look to the orient…

Ianto sat down on the bed and cradled his side slightly as he thought it through, frowning slightly. He was completely aware of Bryn watching him with a slightly evil smile on her face. Easter, orient? Ianto thought in mild confusion. He shook his head and threw off the last remnants of the sedative from six hours earlier and concentrated on the clue.

Easter… third day? Orient? Chinese, middle, asia, east… 'On the third day, look to the east'! Ianto grinned.

"Tad?" Ianto called, leaning back a little and wincing as his wounds stretched. Eli appeared at the door and Ianto held the card up. "Did Mam get you those Lord of the Rings DVDs you were asking for?"

He took slightly too long to answer and Ianto was up on his feet and down the hall before Bryn caught up with him, insisting on steadying him. Ianto headed back through to the front room and fell to his knees by the DVD box and dug through it until he pulled out his father's extended edition of the Two Towers.

He shook the boxing free from the sleeve and picked up the card, this time silver again.

I was your teenage fantasy…

Ianto frowned and looked up at Bryn in complete confusion. Jack took the card, read it and promptly started to laugh, only letting it die to a chuckle when Ianto scowled at him. He turned his attention back to Bryn and the young woman shrugged.

Ianto sat back and ran down his list of teenage dreams. He was fairly sure he'd thrown out his stash of playboy magazines when he'd moved to London, and all his pin ups had gone with them. No, he was sure they were gone as he vividly remembered the bonfire he'd had in the garden.

He wasn't sure about this one at all, but instead of sitting where his cuts were rubbing slightly, Jack pulled him to his feet.

"Teenage fantasy?" Jack whispered with a grin. "I mean, I know I'm good, but before you even met me?"

"Actually, it was Madonna at the time." Ianto said pleasantly, brushing off Jack's words with ease. He looked up to see Jack's nose wrinkled.

"I thought you had better taste." Jack replied, a little hurt. Ianto leaned in and kissed him gently.

"I grew up." Ianto winked and pointed back out of the room. "Garage please."

"Your teenage fantasy was the garage?" Jack asked, a little dubious as he wrapped his arm around Ianto's waist carefully. Ianto rolled his eyes and proceeded to guide them past the others to the garage.

He couldn't help but smile when he saw his father's vintage Ford Mustang still sitting in pride of place. He pushed away from Jack and headed towards the car, finding the door unlocked and climbing in. He heard a low whistle from his lover as Jack approached.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?" Ianto asked, his voice slightly reverent as he ran his hands over the steering wheel.

"I haven't seen one of these for a long, long time." Jack said, impressed. Ianto grinned and reached over to open the glove compartment. "Would it be wrong for me to jump you right now?"

"In the 'tang? Yes, yes it would." Jack pouted slightly and Ianto winked, withdrawing his hand and a gold card. "'Back to the beginning'."

Ianto sighed and let Jack help him out of the car. Jack silently noted that the pain meds must be wearing off, for the muscles in Ianto's face were starting to set in the characteristic way they had when he was trying to cover up.

*

Five clues later and Ianto's breath was starting to get shallow, each intake of oxygen and expansion of his chest sending stabs of pain along his chest. Jack was increasingly worried, but Ianto refused to take anything until he'd found his present and could slip away from his relatives.

He found the final note, on shiny green card, tucked in the power cable of the vacuum cleaner. It simply said: Turn around.

Ianto frowned for a moment, braced against the doorway to the under stairs cupboard. After a moment, he turned his head to look over his shoulder and saw Jack, standing next to the dresser with and small parcel sitting neatly on it. Jack was leaning nonchalantly against the wall and watching Ianto with a smile.

Ianto looked up and found Ellen, Bryn, Griffin and Niamh grinning at him over the railing, his parents in the doorway to the dining room, opposite Jack.

"Before you say anything, this wasn't my idea." Jack grinned as Ianto approached him cautiously. He'd known that Jack and Eli had become good friends, sharing a surprising amount in common and it was obvious that with Bryn's help, the captain had been fully integrated into the Jones household.

Ianto blinked and took the box, opening the sealed ends carefully and shaking the contents from the wrapping paper.

The box in his hand felt reasonably heavy as he weighed it carefully. Nothing of the contents was given about by the exterior, so Ianto prized the lid up to find a fob watch, worn and a little tarnished with age.

Ianto swallowed hard and turned the watch over, examining the front before clicking it open and looking at the interior. He looked at the engraving on the inside, reading 'Gruffydd Delwyn Jones' in expert calligraphy.

"Grandtad's watch…" Ianto whispered, staring at the timepiece in shock.

"I found it at the shop a couple of months back." Eli spoke up from across the hall and Ianto looked up with a weak smile. "I figured that you were the only one of us who'd get any use out of it."

Ianto laughed gently and closed his fingers around the watch, grinning at his parents before putting the watch back in the box and pocketing it. He felt Jack's arm come around his waist again and thanked whatever deity there was that Jack had noticed him struggling with his stature.

Bryn must've noticed as well, for she herded everyone back into the front room to finish off with the presents.

Once everyone was safely chattering away again, Ianto let out a groan, gripping Jack tightly as he closed his eyes against the pain now omnipresent across his torso.

"What do you need?" Jack asked quietly.

"Not Owen's stuff, I don't want any more sedative. Mam would kill me if I fell asleep in her Christmas lunch." He attempted the joke, but grimaced as he moved his left arm a little.

"That's okay, I grabbed some normal stuff as well." Jack smiled and reached into his pocket to revealed the second bottle of pills. If Ianto hadn't wanted the drugs so badly, he would've punched Jack for making him take the sedative earlier.

Together, they made their way through to the kitchen and Jack gently held him whilst he grabbed a glass of water with his spare one. Ianto took it as Jack shook out a couple of the pills and held them out for him. In one smooth, practised move, Ianto knocked them back with the water in his hand and closed his eyes for a moment.

When he opened them, he saw Jack watching him with a sadness in his eyes.

"What's wrong?" Ianto whispered.

"Watching you take pills like that… It's like second nature to you now." He stroked Ianto's cheek gently, tracing his fingers across his jaw line, resting gently on his lips. The intensity in his gaze almost had Ianto's knees turning to jelly. Even now, after so long, he was still capable of doing that.

The thought gave him some hope.

Still, burning deep in Jack's eyes was a look of regret and utter loss. He knew that look – Jack was already thinking of the time when Ianto would no longer be there. He was already thinking of the first Christmas he'd have to spend on his own.

Ianto leaned forwards and captured his lips in an intense, fiery kiss. He brought his hands to the back of his lover's necks and felt Jack respond against his lips, pulling him tighter against him as their tongues began the never ending battle they'd been fighting for almost a decade now.

Ianto felt something change in Jack's demeanour – the desperation and loneliness subtly changing to lust and want. Whilst Ianto was in much the same predicament, he didn't fancy solving the dilemma in his mother's kitchen. He pulled back and gasped in a deep breath. Somehow, he'd forgotten to breathe slightly.

Jack sighed and ran his nose across Ianto's jaw line, breathing slowly before looking up at him again, the glint that was just Jack in his eyes once more.

"Lets not give Bryn any more reason to speculate." He said with a grin, helping Ianto back through to the living room.

*

Christmas dinner, as usual was magnificent. Over that past couple of years that Jack had been invited to the household, he'd already discovered that Christmas dinner was an all out affair for Lydia Jones.

It seemed that she was determined to enjoy every last second she had with her family, and Jack didn't blame her. She took everything in her stride and provided enough food to feed everyone for several days. That included doing roast turkey and roast chicken – Bryn and Ianto refused to eat the larger bird for some reason.

Full of roast potatoes, Yorkshire puddings and turkey, Jack spent the rest of the afternoon reading to Griffin and Niamh. AT some point, Ianto had disappeared upstairs, on his sister's orders, to get some rest. Apparently, the lack of sleep had caught up with him.

It was almost five when he stumbled his way back to his family.

"God, I'm starving." He moaned as he walked into the kitchen, where his mother and Ellen were making tea and coffee for everyone. At least, they were making tea for everyone – Ianto almost yelled at them when they made a move to make coffee.

"You only ate a couple of hours ago." Lydia said with an affectionate sigh. Ianto just shrugged and moved over to the work surface covered in the Tupperwares of leftovers.

"Oh, Ianto! That's disgusting." Ellen wrinkled her nose as she realised what he was doing.

Every year on Christmas evening, Ianto made himself a sandwich.

"All the more for me then!" He replied with a grin over his shoulder, before turning his attention back to piling the chicken, stuffing and torn up Yorkshire pudding to a slice of bread. Ellen watched with a strange fascination, as she did every year, as he spooned a layer of gravy over the top and added the final piece of bread.

He sliced it in half and put it on a plate before leaving his sister alone with her mutterings of 'typical' and 'gross' and 'brothers'. He felt the eye roll and grinned as he dropped down on the sofa next to the others.

"Ianto, that's gross." Jack said without even looking up from the book he was reading.

"Like you can talk. What was it? Left over Chinese in a wrap?" Ianto said pointedly, watching the smile flicker on Jack's face.

"Okay, okay. Fair enough." He carried on reading the storybook to Griffin – for Niamh had already fallen asleep – as Ianto ate his sandwich, making surprisingly little mess.

The phone rang in the background and Ianto heard a clatter as Bryn charged through the house to grab the phone from the hall before her mother reached it. Ianto peered over his shoulder and frowned slightly at the flush on his sister's face.

"Hello?" She asked, a little breathless from the running, ignoring her mother's expression of disapproval. "Marcus!"

She squealed in delight and laughed, disappearing up the stairs as she began to chatter happily. Ianto took a moment to consider the situation again, but Jack stopped him in his tracks.

"You already gave her your blessing." Jack said with a slight warning. Ianto pouted in mock annoyance and Jack smiled, helping Griffin climb across the sofa to settle carefully against Ianto.

"Still… I'll feel better once I get a chance to meet him." Ianto sighed slightly and wrapped his good arm around the little boy in his lap.

A/N 2: There IS a third chapter to this little fic, but it's a smut chapter and would knock the rating up to an M for the story if I posted it here. As ever, it's not integral to the actual story, so I decided not to include it over here. However, should you want to readit is -hinthint- you can access it here:

http :// butterflycell. livejournal. com/ 44698. html - FRAO/NSFW

((remove the spaces, naturally, when you plug it into your address bar)) - You have to be over 18 to access it, I think, so there's the warning for you (if you're a visitor to LJ, it should let you 'confirm that you're 18' and into the post!)

Finally, thanks for reading!! I hope you've enjoyed it :) xx.