Jack plunked his glass of ice-water down on the bar and spun around on his stool to scan the crowd.

"How about him?"

Ianto took a long swig of his lager. "Jack..."

"No? All right, him, then. In the back, about to bend over the pool table, if we're lucky. There he goes! Yes! There is a god!"

Ianto scanned the man wielding a pool cue and sighed. "You don't believe in God."

"I did, once. This guy I dated in the 70's, he could do things in bed that were 'out of this world', as we said that time. I was convinced he couldn't be human. Turned out he wasn't, but he wasn't a god either. At least I don't think he was. Now alien, yes, definitely. Though I never found out what galaxy he hailed from."

"Jack, are you sure that's only water in that glass? You're babbling."

Jack grinned. "What? I'm just excited. It's not often we got to go out together."

"We were out last week."

"Drinks with the team don't count. Especially since Gwen spent the whole time crying into her beer and Owen picked a fight with the bouncer and got us all thrown out."

"I told you it was too soon," Ianto admonished. "It takes more than three days to get over having your life-force sucked out of you by a dead co-worker. Or, in Owen's case, having to pick up the pieces and then get the cold-shoulder whenever he tries to make a move on Gwen."

"I was just trying to help," Jack said with a frown. "It was supposed to build team morale."

"I can't speak for the team but my morale definitely improved when we left before Midnight Karaoke."

"Pity, that." Jack sighed. "I was going to make you sing a duet with me."

He brightened when he spied a couple coming in the door. "Look at that! Identical twins, blonde, almost six feet tall. Which one do you want, the one in the blue dress, or the one in the red?"

"Jack, I told you, I'm not interested."

"Awww, lighten up. It's a game. We're not really going to pick anybody up. Well, not unless you want to," he added with throaty chuckle.

"Ja-ack!"

"Ianto-o!" Jack replied, mimicking Ianto's exasperated tone perfectly. "Come on. Just tell me who you like."

"I won't. This game is utterly juvenile."

"Most games are. That's why they're fun. Don't look now, but I think the bartender is giving you the eye. Come on, tell me you don't want her. With that spiky red hair and those piercings, I bet she's a spitfire in the sack!"

Ianto groaned.

"If she's got an equally hot friend, we could double-date."

"Jack!" Something different, something brittle, in Ianto's tone made Jack turn around and really look at him.

Ianto was wearing a strange, twisted expression and was sitting stiffly, as if it was taking all his willpower to keep himself from flying apart.

"I. Don't. Want. Anyone. Else," he whispered fiercely, the words so sharp that Jack thought he could cut himself on them. "I don't even know what I'm doing with you!"

"Yan? What's going on?"

Ianto shook his head and and averted his eyes, but not before Jack glimpsed something disturbing in them. Something broken.

Jack realized that he'd made a big mistake.

Not in taking Ianto to bed, no, that had not been a mistake. But he had assumed that given how quickly Ianto had gone from being in love with Lisa to well, being with him, that Ianto was like him: able to take pleasure with whoever life presented him without getting his heart involved. Without getting attached.

He saw now how wrong he had been. Ianto might have appeared to make a smooth transition from Lisa to Jack, but going by the tortured expression on Ianto's face, it hadn't been easy for the young man at all. It probably still wasn't.

How long had it been since Lisa's death, anyway? More than a month, but probably not two. Not long at all, by the way twenty-first century humans reckoned such things. The cryptic young man hid his feelings beneath his sardonic manner and sharp suits so well, it was easy to forget how recent that trauma had been.

Jack had been very interested in learning what lay beneath those sharp suits. But only in the literal sense.

"I never even asked how he was doing with all this,' Jack thought with a stab of guilt. He felt about six inches tall.

"Look, Ianto I'm sorry if..."

Ianto held up a hand. "Save it, Jack. I don't want to hear it."

"But..."

"I just want you, all right?" Ianto said, sounding more agitated than Jack had heard since, well, the day they'd executed Lisa. "Why is that so difficult to understand?" Several people turned around to see what the disturbance was.

The two men stared at each other; Jack open-mouthed, Ianto turning crimson. Then Ianto stood up so fast he nearly knocked the table over in the process, and made for the loo.

Jack watched him go and wondered if he'd ever truly understand this enigmatic young man.

"You do have me," he replied softly, though he knew Ianto was out of earshot.

'Even though you deserve so much better," he added in his head.Better than what he could offer, because he knew his limits. Better than what Torchwood would offer, because he knew its limits as well. But Jack would never say any of that.

And when Ianto came back, Jack knew they'd both pretend this had never happened.