Thanks to all that reviewed including Storms-Are-My-Nature, x-Athenea-x, evilpinkbutterfly101, Solsbury Girl, Purple Sox, , GoodyThreeShoes, janto-gal, leonale, gaia-x-goddess, Flabagash, Rai Guyver, and Quicksilver.

Also, I want to say sorry about how slow I was to get this chapter out, and then it's a little shorter than the other chapters too. So, sorry!

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Chapter #3: Jack's Decision

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Later that same night, Ianto and Stephen were on a date, seated over in the corner of their favorite Italian restaurant.

"So how was your day?" Stephen asked as he put his napkin in his lap and prepared to attack his linguini.

Ianto sighed and twirled his fork idly in his spaghetti. How did you tell a current boyfriend that a past love-interest has returned and asked you on a date? "It was . . . difficult, I guess."

Stephen looked up at this, somewhat concerned. "Yeah? How come?"

Ianto decided to just spit it out. "Jack came back." And with that said, he twirled some spaghetti onto his fork and put it in his mouth.

Stephen looked curious. "And who's Jack?"

Ianto chewed and finally swallowed. "My boss," he said.

Now Stephen just looked confused. "And your boss coming back . . . that's . . . that's a bad thing? Where'd he go?"

"Well . . . no," Ianto allowed, looking like he wanted to say otherwise, but knew it would be false if he did. "But me and him," he continued, "We had a . . ." He searched for the right word to describe what he and Jack had had. "A thing," he finally settled on even though that was a rather sad description. "And we don't know where he went," he added.

"A thing," Stephen repeated flatly.

"It wasn't anything serious," Ianto hurried to assure him. "It was just sex." Though, having to be honest, Ianto then added, "At least for him, it was."

"You wanted more," Stephen said, looking like he wasn't sure what to think of this discovery.

"Yes." Ianto said with a somewhat sad nod, looking down into his spaghetti and wishing it were otherwise, but having to tell the truth. "Yes, I did."

"And were you in love with him?" Stephen asked, obviously not quite sure he really wanted to know.

Ianto hesitated somewhat to answer this, but then said, "Yes. I think I was."

"And are you now?" Stephen asked intently.

That Ianto answered immediately. "No!" he said maybe a touch too loudly, looking back up at Stephen. "No, of course not," he said in a quieter tone of voice. "I'm completely over him." Though that may have been a bald-faced lie, Ianto wasn't actually going to admit that he still had feelings for Jack, not to himself and not to anybody else.

Stephen seemed to relax a bit at this answer and Ianto figured that he could probably just conveniently forget to tell him about the fact that Jack had asked him on a date.

"So I don't have to worry about you running off into his manly arms?" Stephen joked nervously, the fear obviously a very real one.

Ianto smiled. "No, you really don't. "

"Well good," Stephen said and then obviously decided that this conversation was over. "Anything else interesting happen today?"

"Not really," Ianto said and turned back to his spaghetti, "You know, life at a tourist office and all that. Not exactly the place for thrills even if there certainly is enough drama."

Stephen just looked at him, raising a brow as if to say 'Really?' Obviously he didn't believe Ianto's insistence that he worked in a tourist office anymore, but he wasn't going to say anything. Turning back to his linguini, he got a forkful and shoved it in his mouth. Chewing quickly, he swallowed and said, "Well, my day was interesting."

"Oh?" Ianto said, looking up at his boyfriend as he swallowed his latest mouthful of spaghetti. "How so?"

"Well, you know Jessica?" Stephen said, talking about a favorite co-worker. He'd eventually found a job at a local restaurant working as a waiter and he always had little stories to tell about his co-workers and customers.

"Yes?" Ianto said, remembering the co-worker in question. This particular co-worker seemed to always be at the center of the restaurant drama. Which was probably why she was Stephen's favorite.

"She's pregnant," Stephen informed Ianto with a smirk.

"No," Ianto said, looking surprised.

Stephen nodded with that same smirk on his face. "Yep. Three months now."

"And who's the father?" Ianto asked curiously even though he knew he wouldn't know the man.

"Don't know," Stephen said, obviously finding this bit of the gossip especially amusing. "She can't remember."

"No," Ianto repeated, finding this a little hard to believe. "She's slept with that many men?"

Stephen nodded, obviously still amused.

And the conversation just moved on from there, covering such topics as the increase in the rate of single mothers nowadays, Ianto's two sisters and one niece, Stephen's one brother and his evermore quest for a woman that could handle him, and the new movie that Stephen was dying to see featuring that one actor that Ianto could never remember the name of, no matter how hard he tried. It frustrated him, the not knowing. He knew everything. Why didn't he know this one little detail?

As always, Ianto was surprised at how easy it was to talk to Stephen. It was as if they'd known each other for years instead of just two measly months. He'd worried at first about how he would eventually tell Stephen of the man that had come before him, but the words had just popped out, maybe not easily but certainly easier than had been expected.

Really, Ianto was getting somewhat worried. He hadn't been this happy in a long time and it was unusual for him to ever truly have something good in his life without something bad to balance it out. He could only wonder what shock there was on the horizon for him and hope that he could survive it.

Eventually, their conversation wound to a close and they finished up their meal. Stephen paid as Ianto had paid the last time and the two of them found their way back to Ianto's apartment.

"How come we never go to your place?" Ianto found himself asking as he unlocked his door. He had just realized that he had never actually seen Stephen's place and now he was curious.

"Because yours is so much cleaner," Stephen replied, attaching himself to Ianto's side and pushing them through the door. Playfully biting at Ianto's neck, he worked his way up to Ianto's ear and whispered, "You really don't want to see my place. Pizza boxes everywhere." Then he went back to planting kisses on Ianto's neck, cheek, then mouth as Ianto blindly started to work on Stephen's shirt, unbuttoning buttons and dragging him further into the apartment.

Pulling away from the kiss, Ianto smiled. "Then why don't you just clean?"

Stephen drew back in mock-horror. "Clean? I can't clean." Using his foot, he closed the door behind them and worked on pushing Ianto in the direction of the bedroom.

Ianto finished with the buttons of Stephen's shirt and pushed the shirt off of the other man's shoulders, Stephen obliging him by letting go of Ianto for the moment to allow his shirt to fall to the floor. "I don't see why not," Ianto said, hands tracing Stephen's chest and moving down to work on the other man's pants.

Stephen, meanwhile, started tugging on Ianto's own shirt, tugging it over Ianto's head with a little help and then reattaching his mouth to Ianto's as soon as the shirt was on the floor. "Cleaning's against my philosophy," he mumbled into Ianto's mouth, before moving down to attack Ianto's neck, saying between kisses. "I just - can't - do it."

Ianto laughed and tugged Stephen's hips closer. Smiling at the sound, Stephen raised his head and attached his mouth to Ianto's again as the two men stumbled closer to Ianto's bedroom. Then there was no talking.

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Jack stood in his office, looking down at the main part of the Hub as the others went about their day. Owen was in the autopsy bay doing an autopsy on an alien they had captured just hours before while Gwen was at her computer doing some sort of research and Tosh and Ianto were at Tosh's computer conversing softly, supposedly about some new technology. Ianto laughed at something Tosh had said and Jack smiled slightly. It was nice to see Ianto so happy.

Jack couldn't remember the last time he had actually heard Ianto laugh and really mean it, though this was probably because he'd been away and the Ianto from before didn't really have much to laugh about. It was just . . . disappointing, he supposed, that the reason Ianto was currently so happy wasn't because of Jack. It was because of The Boyfriend, whoever the hell he was.

Jack hadn't planned for this, for Ianto to have moved on. And it wasn't fair. All this time, the whole time he had been held captive on the Valiant only two thoughts had kept him sane—that Martha would save them and that, as long as Ianto was alive, he could come home to someone would could be everything he needed.

He'd had the time to do some serious thinking while aboard that ship—not much else to do between torture sessions really—and he'd come to the conclusion that he wanted more in his life. And he wanted Ianto to be that more. No more of this casual shagging, Jack wanted the whole thing, romance and commitment and all.

And then he comes home to find that Ianto had already found all of that, but not in Jack. In somebody else.

It had been a shock. One that had hurt much more than Jack had expected. He'd expected that out of everyone he could have trusted Ianto to be there for him when he came back. But apparently in this one thing, Ianto had had a mind of his own. And no matter how hard he tried, Jack couldn't fault the younger man for moving on. It had been six months after all and Jack had never once promised Ianto anything more than great sex. Why shouldn't Ianto have moved on if the opportunity had appeared? Jack would have done the same thing if he had been in Ianto's shoes, probably even sooner than Ianto had.

Jack sighed and turned away from the view of the rest of the Hub to move back towards his desk and plop down into his chair.

He didn't know what to do. Part of him, a very strong part of him, wanted to be selfish and do all he could to break up Ianto's new relationship and take the younger man as his own. He knew he could do it. It would be easy enough as Ianto couldn't possibly have gotten over Jack as completely as he appeared to have. That just wasn't in character for the Welshman.

But Jack also knew that doing this would be wrong. Ianto was finally happy, or as close to happy as he could get, and what right did Jack have to disrupt that just because he himself desperately needed the comfort that he feared only Ianto could bring? He was still having nightmares about his time aboard the Valient and Ianto had always proven in the past to be very good at keeping his nightmares at bay whenever he did happen to fall asleep with the younger man in the same bed.

Propping his head up with one hand, Jack stared at his pile of paperwork, lost in thought, going over all the possibilities, all the chances of failure and success and the consequences of each. Eventually a knock on his door made him jump in surprise and he turned in the door's direction and called out a, "Yes?"

Pushing the door open slightly, Ianto peeked through and held up a cup of hot coffee. "Coffee, sir?" he asked.

"Ah, yes," Jack said, settling down. He smiled at Ianto as the younger man continued into the room and placed the coffee on his desk. But before Ianto could leave, Jack had to ask one question. "How are you?"

Ianto tossed him a strange look. "I'm fine, sir."

Jack winced at hearing the sir yet again. "I keep telling you. Call me Jack."

"Yes, sir," Ianto said, but then seemed to realize his slip and continued, "I mean, Jack."

Jack smiled brightly. That was probably the first time he had properly heard his name uttered by younger man and Ianto's Welsh accent made his name sound so much nicer than it actually was. Or maybe that was just because it was Ianto who had said it and thus it was a rare thing. "Thank you."

Ianto nodded, smiling slightly in some bemusement, and turned to leave.

Jack watched him as he left, the door closing softly behind him, and then turned back to his thoughts.

No it really wouldn't be fair to Ianto if he did that, would it? And Jack was trying not to be the selfish man he used to be.

So it was settled. Jack would do nothing, would just see how things with Ianto and his mysterious boyfriend went, wishing them well and watching to make sure nothing went wrong. Ianto deserved all the happiness in the world and Jack would be damned if he didn't get it.

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TBC