This was going to be a songfic, but it grew in a different direction. Hence the rising in the rating!

For Brionyjae, for getting me addicted to the song.


"Jack needs me."

Owen laughed. Owen made a comment about part time shags. Didn't hurt, though, because it was so far off the mark as to be funny. Owen had no idea.

Ianto knew Jack needed him. He'd told him so. So many times.

I need you to forgive me. The first one, the weirdest one. Screamed into his face somewhere during Ianto's suspension after Lisa. It didn't make any sense. He couldn't understand why Jack wanted his forgiveness, let alone needed it.

It was something to think about, during the sleepless nights that followed. And finally, on the edge of sleep, he remembered Jack actually saying Sorry, that night. Apologizing, before he'd taken aim at Lisa for the last time. Somehow that cracked the walls of grief Ianto had hidden behind for so long he'd forgotten when he built them. Numbing, walls thick as steel, as safe as a secret, shattering under the weight of knowing that, sometimes, being Torchwood meant having to commit acts you'd be sorry for. That you were sorry for before you did them. It was difficult to keep blaming Jack after that. And when he'd forgiven Jack, somehow he'd forgiven himself as well. Still wasn't sure how that worked.

So many different types of need. Different needs. Better needs.

I need you. Whispered against his neck in the bunker, lips slick against the sheen of sweat, stopwatch lying forgotten on the floor, after they'd laid Suzie to rest for the second time. I need you to remind me that life is more important than death. I need you to make me live, Ianto, make me feel alive. Make me want to live. Make me stop hating life. Big ask, he'd thought at the time. Apparently he'd accomplished it though. Which was kind of flattering. Ianto liked being needed.

I need you here when I come back. Mumbled into his stomach, hiding from the world when death rejected Jack yet again.

He'd been scared when Jack died after Abaddon, but in the deepest, most unselfish place in Ianto's heart he tried to be glad Jack might have finally achieved the mortality he wanted so desperately. Jack was so tired of being alive, of losing everyone.

"I would have come back faster, if it'd been you sitting with me," Jack told him later.

"I know," Ianto answered. "But I thought….I thought you wanted to go."

"Not as long as you're here to come back to."

I need you to wake up. Over and over, with a voice ragged from overuse, filling the silence between the beep of the monitors. Selfish bastard. It was so nice, floating here above that battered body in the bed. No pain. No Weevils. No Weevils with their sharp teeth slicing through the skin of his neck, seeking the pulsing blood beneath. Even if he came back from this, he'd never feel Jack kiss him in that spot, the one just below his jaw, the one that was all skin graft now, no nerve endings anymore. But the voice, and the need, tugged him back. So he went. And he woke. It was nice to be needed.

It was nice to be needed by Jack.

-XXX-

"Owen calls me your part-time shag," Ianto said, warm in a nest of sheet and duvet, safe in a tangle of limbs. "In my dreams, apparently."

Jack didn't even raise his head from its comfortable pillow, otherwise known as Ianto's shoulder. His laughter sounded soft and low, like distant thunder, felt more than heard, a counterpoint to Ianto's heartbeat.

"In your dreams," Jack said lazily, listening to the hearbeat accelerate beneath his wandering hands. "You're only part-time in your dreams."

A flurry of movement and Jack loomed above him, smiling the smile that turned his bones to water.

"Dreams where you actually get a full night's sleep," Jack concluded, voice low, eyes laughing. "Unlike tonight. Unlike now." Eyes closed, words muffled against skin, uttered between kisses. "Need you. Need you now, Ianto."

After which there was no more talking. At least not any coherent sentences.

And they wondered why Ianto fell asleep in the archives sometimes.

-XXX-

Ianto knows Jack loves him. But for Jack, that's nothing. Jack loves everyone. But he needs Ianto.

And that's enough for both of them.