Hello! So, I decided to continue this. I like writing for Ianto, as do most people, but I have to say that the number of fics out there that represent him as an angsty, whiny, crying, whinging berk are mind-boggling and slightly annoying. It's just not the character!

Disclaimer: I own Gareth David-Lloyd. He's tied up in my room. HAHAHAHAHAHA!

Ianto Jones did not like the term "desperate," especially when it was used to describe him. He'd always thought of himself as incredibly put-together, as someone whom nothing could faze. But Lisa's medical condition didn't leave a lot of room for his preferences, not when all that he could think about was keeping her alive and as comfortable as possible.

Ianto had always known that he was capable of becoming obsessed. He'd just thought he was obsessed with Lisa.

But now he lay awake in his narrow bed and Lisa's welfare, while still preying on his thoughts, slipped to the back of his mind. It was replaced by a cocky grin and a pair of laughing blue eyes. That American. Captain Jack Harkness. He unsuccessfully tried to suppress a grin of his own. The name suited the boisterous man.

But he hadn't gotten the job. The thought wiped the slight smile off of his face. How was he supposed to help Lisa (the love of my life, she's the love of my life, he reminded himself) if he wasn't allowed the technology needed to do so?

He slept very badly that night—guilt kept him awake. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw that man's face, not Lisa's, and the guilt tore him up inside. So, to combat those intense and unwelcome feelings, he wrapped a blanket around his shoulders and made himself a cup of coffee (Lisa always said that he made damn good coffee, and he was forced to agree), and stared out the black window of his flat into the nighttime nothingness. The steam from the hot liquid rolled over his chin and his cheeks because he was holding his cup so close to his face, leaving them slightly damp, but he didn't care. Curled up in the one armchair in the den, the night passed more quickly than he'd ever thought that it would.

So many thoughts flickered through his head during that blurry time. He thought of Lisa, sleeping sedated in the guest room, hooked up to machinery that was so precarious and unprofessionally assembled that she ran the risk of coding at any moment. He thought of the fact that, without a job, his bank account was rapidly drying up. And he thought of Torchwood, his only way out of the mounting pile of problems that threatened to crush him, body and spirit. He reached an important decision.

He'd have to try again.

When the first weak rays of sunlight began to tint the sides of the Cardiff skyscrapers in his line of vision, he roused himself out of the chair. Also during the night, he'd assembled a mental To-Do list of morning tasks.

1.) Make more coffee. His sleepless night had left him feeling pallid and drained.

2.) Take shower. Wash off Weevil-sweat, or whatever it had been from the last night.

3.) Eat something. He tended to neglect this step normally, which led to embarrassing dizzy spells and, on one memorable occasion, his passing-out and knocking down the water cooler at Torchwood One. Lisa would never let him forget that, mostly because the falling jug had drenched her new suit.

4.) Stop thinking about Jack Harkness in anything but the strictly professional sense.

Unfortunately, his time in the shower was longer than he'd realized it would be. He had poured himself a cup before stepping in, and his prolonged shower left him panicked and frantic. He wanted to get to Torchwood before any other team members got there, mostly because he didn't think that he would be capable of dealing with more than one at a time. Jack was preferable. He didn't know why, but Jack was definitely preferable.

He was in such a rush in getting out the door that he didn't realize he was carrying a brimming coffee mug in his hand until he was two blocks away from his flat and he'd splashed his hand with the scalding liquid. Shit. Ianto briefly debated returning home to put the mug down, but a quick glance at his watch ruled that option out.

Should I ditch the cup? he wondered, walking along at a brisk pace. Does it make me look too much like a nutter? But then again, I've never acted all that sane, even on normal days. He smiled wryly and snorted a laugh. Maybe I could try to seduce him with my coffee.

Ianto had been waiting outside the Torchwood office for twenty minutes (though to him, it felt like twenty years) before Jack emerged. He was wearing the same coat Ianto had admired the night before, and Ianto felt a slight twinge of jealousy to note that the man looked none the worse for wear for the previous night's Weevil-tussel. The sight of the older man striding so purposefully made Ianto feel more uncertain about the whole business than he'd ever felt before.

"Morning," he greeted Jack. His voice was slightly weak, and Ianto wished that once, just once, he could have his sister's proclivity for false bravado. It would make this whole thing so much easier.

"Coffee?" This word seemed even weaker than the last, mostly because holding a ceramic coffee mug out to a man he barely knew on a dock seemed more like nutter-behavior than he'd ever imagined on the way over.

But Harkness was having none of it. "Don't. There is no job." Nevertheless (drawn by the tempting scent of the brew? Ianto hoped), he reached out and took the offensive mug from Ianto's hands. He watched as the older man took a tentative sip, then pulled an appreciative face. Ianto fought hard to conceal his feeling of smug success as Jack uttered a strangled, "Wow," before handing the cup back.

Oh, fuck it, Ianto thought. May as well just jump right in. If the coffee didn't do it, then nothing can.

"I want to work for you," he told Jack, who barely gave him a chance to finish the sentence before cutting in.

"Sorry, there are no vacancies."

Ianto didn't like the term "desperate," but he was rapidly beginning to understand that it applied to him more than he'd ever cared to admit before. Proof of that newfound realization began to seep into his voice, despite all efforts to the contrary. "Look, let me tell you about myself—"

This time Jack really did cut him off. "Ianto Jones, born August 19, 1983. Able student, but not exceptional. One minor conviction for shoplifting in your teens." The man began striding down the dock, and it was all that Ianto, stunned as he was by the sudden efflux of his own personal information, could do to clutch the horrible coffee mug and follow behind in a manner that he found himself comparing to a lost puppy. "A number of temporary jobs—mainly a drifter until two years ago you joined the Torchwood Institute in London. Junior researcher. Girlfriend: Lisa Hallet."

He knows about Lisa? Shit! Keep going, just keep going. He can't know the whole story. No one knows the whole story. The thoughts darted through his head as fast as photons, resolving in the one word that he uttered in order to both clarify and cloud the situation for Harkness as much as possible—"Deceased."

"Sorry." The man's tone indicated that he couldn't care less, and Ianto's reluctant desperation took a spike. Placing a hand on Jack's chest, he forced the older man to stop.

"Look—you checked me out," he pointed out, trying to ignore both the double entendre in his words and the feeling of the man's chest under his fingers. Quickly, he drew his hand away.

"You knew what a Weevil was," Harkness replied. "I thought I was going to have to come…deal with you." And now Ianto had another thing to worry about ignoring—Jack was looking him up and down, eying him like a piece of candy.

"But instead you could see I had the right qualifications for the job." Just keep plowing ahead, he told himself. If you can just—keep—focused—you'll get what you came here for.

Unfortunately, these seemed like exactly the wrong words. "We're nothing to do with Torchwood London," Jack snapped. "I've severed all links." He stormed past Ianto and kept walking down the dock.

Shit shit shit. Don't let him get away! Despite the heavy feeling that this mission was entirely useless, he chased after the other man.

"Yet when it burned, two members of your team scavenged the ruins!" He remembered this day. A man and a woman had shown up out of nowhere to rummage through the old halls. Ianto hadn't been all that interested because his main concern at the time had been keeping Lisa alive, but they'd called themselves Torchwood. That name was enough to draw anyone's attention, especially his. He realized with a couple seconds' delay that his hand had found its way to Jack's chest again. So did Jack, it seemed. The man reached up and removed the offending appendage as though it was a dead skunk.

"We don't want the equipment getting into the wrong hands."

"And you're the right hands, are you?" The words just slipped out—Ianto couldn't help himself. Despite his desperation (yes, desperation—he'd accepted it) for the job, he still wasn't all that comfortable with working for a branch of Torchwood. Too much pain had occurred at Canary Wharf—more than he could ever forget. The fact that Torchwood was behind the whole thing was stamped into his memory forever.

Jack just glared at him. Fuck! Ianto backpedaled quickly.

"Trial period. Three months."

"No." Harkness sounded as adamant as ever.

Shit.

"Three weeks." No response.

Shit. Oh, desperation was coming to claim its own, and Ianto was giving in more willingly than he'd ever imagined.

"Three days! Let me prove myself to you—I'll work for nothing!"

"No!" Now the older man was more than adamant—he was angry. Without another word, he brushed past Ianto and continued walking. A little voice in Ianto's head—that voice of desperation that he'd been ignoring for so long—sent up a little scream of aggravation.

"I saw what they did at Canary Wharf!" His voice was louder than he'd intended it to be, and his grip on the Captain's shoulder was more aggressive than he'd intended. He saw the man close his eyes in irritation, and he knew that he was treading an incredibly dangerous line.

He didn't care.

"What am I supposed to do with those memories?"

For a heart-stopping second, Ianto was certain that Jack was about to haul off and punch him in the face. Oddly enough, his one irrational thought was that of concern, not for himself, but for what he held in his hand—he didn't want to break the coffee mug or waste the coffee inside. I need to get out more, he thought.

"You are not my responsibility!" Harkness's voice was even louder than Ianto's had been. "And we are not hiring!" For the third and final time in three minutes, the older man pushed past Ianto and stalked away. But for some reason (probably a mixture of lack of sleep and caffeine) Ianto found this slightly amusing.

"Same time tomorrow then?" he called after the man's retreating back.

"There's no job for you here, and there never will be!" Fatigue and jitteriness only made this comment more amusing for Ianto, who said the only thing that popped into his head.

"I really like that coat!"

Did you like it? Please review! If I do the third part, it'll be a very long one, so I might have to split it up into two other chapters. I don't know. Whatever happens, happens.