Ianto read over his to-do list on his clipboard, and a small smug grin graced his face when he determined that everything on it had been completed to his standards.

Tosh, on the other hand, obsessively checked over her software in an effort to distract herself while she waited for news about Owen. She checked her watch again. Jack should have been back a couple of hours ago.

Ianto placed his hand on her shoulder and said, "Hey."

She turned around and replied, "Hey." She took his hand in hers and squeezed it gently.

Gwen sat at her station, reading Don Hodge's diary in attempt to make sense of his decision to participate in the fight club. Yet, she had been stuck on the same page for over twenty minutes. Tosh glanced from Ianto over to Gwen. Ianto nudged Tosh in Gwen's direction. However, neither of them budged an inch; neither of them wanting to pry.

They all turned their heads when they heard the cog door open. Jack had taken just a few steps into the hub when Tosh asked, "So how is he?"

Her eyes were wide open and naked with expectation and concern, but Jack -- still disturbed by Owen's words -- breezed past her and muttered, "You can ask him tomorrow when he comes back into work."

They were all stunned and looked at each other as if trying to elect which one of them to proceed. Although Gwen was still smarting from her break-up with the medic, she gently took Jack's elbow and asked, "Jack? Are you sure? Did the doctors say that it was okay?"

"It's not as if he's never sustained Weevil injuries before," the Captain said.

Tosh stepped in front of Jack and said, "It's not just the Weevil injuries."

But Ianto held her back. "I'm sure Owen will be on light duty for a few days while the rest of us pick up the slack. Isn't that right, Jack?"

The older man's glare zeroed in on the young man, but Ianto's eyes seemed to plead, "Say it for me."

"That's correct," Jack said. "Rules and regulations."

"It'll be better if he's with us than alone," Ianto added.

Tosh's smile was forced, but she was appeased, "You're right."

"Ianto," Jack said. "How's the clean-up going?"

"We're done with the tasks you've requested. The warehouse is clean. Janet is napping in her cell. CCTV has been wiped. All monitoring systems for fight club's ex-participants are in place."

"Now that that's settled," Jack said. "Tosh and Gwen, go home. Ianto, since you were in charge of clean-up, I'd like you to stay for debriefing."

Tosh immediately picked up her belongings and said to no one in particular, "Maybe I'll stop by and check up on him. See if he needs anything."

While Tosh was out of the hub in a flash, Gwen dawdled, and the apprehension on her face made it abundantly clear that she wasn't happy to go home. "Call me in case there are any emergencies."

"Will do," Jack replied.

"I'd just like to add that I thought Ianto did an excellent job with clean-up," Gwen said.

"He always does," Jack said. "That's why I put him in charge."

"It is my specialty," Ianto said diplomatically.

Gwen started babbling, "With all of the logistics, it might have taken me twice as long to sort out all of that mess, but he manages to streamline everything so it's all so quick and efficient. I honestly don't know how he manages to sort out all of it in his head. I really think he's…" Her voice trailed off when it was clear that Jack wasn't listening. She asked herself if that's what she looks like when she's with Rhys.

"Gwen…" Jack whispered, trying to give her the brush-off as gently as possible.

Gwen slung the strap of her bag over her shoulder and said, "Well, goodnight?"

"Good night," Ianto replied.

On her way out, Jack called out after her, "Tell Rhys I'm sorry,"

She froze while the cog door rolled open. Deer. Headlights. "Pardon?"

"For the other night when I interrupted your dinner."

"Yeah. Will do." Then, having nothing left to say, she scurried out the door.

"So?" Ianto asked. He adjusted his tie and straightened up his posture, but his eyes softened with concern. "Do you want to do this in your office or the boardroom?"

"That snotty, little bastard!" Jack yelled. He had tried to walk off his anger when he left the hospital, but it followed him into the hub anyway. "That boney, wanking asswipe! That ungrateful, whiney tosser!"

"We're not going to discuss clean-up, aren't we?" Ianto joked.

"What's to discuss? You probably did a stellar job as always, which I'll read about in your highly detailed report," Jack said. He meant what he said, but in his annoyance, his words were weighed down by a sarcastic tone.

Unfazed, Ianto asked, "How'd it go with Owen?"

"The son of a bitch is pissed off at me! He's angry at me for saving his scrawny ass from a Weevil mauling," Jack said, pacing around the room like an angry panther in a cage.

"I see."

"Then, he had the nerve to ask why I should be in charge or what makes me qualified to be leader… I don't know… Fuck… Something like that."

"Perhaps the fact that you're in charge has something to do with the fact that you've been working here longer than any of us."

Jack snapped his fingers and pointed at Ianto, "You're fucking right. I trained him. I showed him the ropes. I gave him meaning when his life was falling apart. I --"

Ianto cupped Jack's face in hands. The older man resisted slightly, but the young man's grip held. "Breathe."

"Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck," Jack groaned.

"That has got to be more 'fucks' that I've heard from you since I've known you."

"Sometimes, I hate my job," the Captain said. He stepped back and gave his arms a good stretch.

Ianto chuckled. While he didn't doubt the intensity of Jack's anger, he knew that it would pass, and Owen would be forgiven.

"This week…" Jack muttered, shaking his head. "Gwen's been a little erratic. Tosh… loyal, faithful Tosh challenged me."

"And for the record, I did agree with her about Janet," Ianto pointed out.

"Yeah, but you went along with the plan anyway."

"So did Tosh."

Jack sulked and said, "Yeah."

"And I only went along with your plan because I couldn't see an alternative at the time."

"Neither could I. I didn't really want to do it."

"I know." Ianto sat down on the couch and said, "If it helps in anyway, here's my bit of insight, even if it is obvious. Owen is angry as well. You should know better than to take whatever he's said personally."

"Yeah. I know. We all say things when we're upset and --"

"I told you that I was going to watch you die and not do anything about it," Ianto reminded Jack, even if the memory made him uncomfortable.

"And now you've become someone I can count on." There was a flicker of smile on Jack's face.

"I'd like to think so."

Jack stretched himself out on the couch, resting his head in Ianto's lap. The fingers of Ianto's hand curled up into a fist and tightened. The young man counted to ten silently and with a gentle exhale, he relaxed and allowed Jack to remain there.

"I didn't think that Owen would take Diane's disappearance so hard," Jack said.

"I don't think any of us saw it coming."

"And if I knew she was going to fly her plane into a rift opening, I would've done something to stop her. She could end up anywhere. It's not safe."

"I know," Ianto replied. Despite his better instincts, he began playing with Jack's hair.

"So what do I do about Owen?"

"I don't know," Ianto said. "You're speaking to the wrong person, and the right one's halfway home."

"Discussing Owen is the last thing I want to do with her," Jack said with a bitter edge in his voice.

"I can imagine what the first thing is," Ianto quipped, but as soon as the words left his mouth, he wanted to take them back.

They both fell silent, allowing the awkwardness to dissipate in the air.

Ianto cleared his throat and said, "If you'd like, I'll keep an eye on Owen."

"Thank you."

The young man placed his free hand on Jack's chest and could swear that he could feel Jack's heart slow down into a steady rhythm. The older man looked up at his lover and smiled in gratitude.

They were like this, in silence, for a few minutes longer until Ianto whispered, "Hate to say this but, my leg is falling asleep."

Jack chuckled softly. He sat up and swiveled around to face Ianto.

He was about to lean in for a kiss when Ianto asked, "Coffee?"

"Not what I was thinking, but I won't turn it down."

"Good. Oh, and there is a stack of documents on your desk for you to read over and sign."

"But you forge my signature so well."

"But you put me in charge for the day, and I have inventory to do. I don't want Owen to come in tomorrow and find his autopsy room a mess."

"Not that he'd appreciate your effort."

"But I'll feel better for having done something," Ianto replied.

--

Sifting through the drawers and shelves, Ianto learned that the supply of gauze and latex gloves was low. He knew that there was more in the storage closet which Owen had easy access to it; however, considering Owen's rage levels, it seemed easier for him to restock them now rather than to give Owen another reason to rant. He was about to leave the autopsy room when Jack appeared at the entrance.

"I've done all my homework," Jack said, slinking towards Ianto.

"Have you?"

Jack stepped behind Ianto wrapped his arms around the younger man. "Yep, and now, I want to play."

The word 'play' triggered a hitch in Ianto's breath. So many possibilities. "Play at what? Cards? Twister? Hide-and-seek?"

"Doctor," Jack whispered. He slid the tie off of Ianto's neck.

"Sir, I am trying to sort things out," Ianto replied even as he pushed aside Jack's braces. "Besides, what would Owen say if we used his sterile autopsy room for this sort of activity?"

Jack responded with a wicked laugh.

"Of course, you know what he'd say." Ianto quickly got rid of his shirt. "And you don't care, do you?"

"Nope," Jack said, as his hands roamed all over the other man's torso.

"He's not finding out, sir," Ianto growled with pleasure.

"Spoiled sport."

Jack fucked Ianto almost savagely over the autopsy table as if he was trying to spilt the young man apart. Not that Ianto cared as the neurons in the pleasure center of his brain fired away.

This, he thought, was what those sad, deluded men should have been doing in their quest for meaning instead of fighting Weevils. They should have been shagging each other madly. They should have been howling out each other's names in reckless abandon. This was raw and primal and real, and it made Ianto feel every inch a man, more so than any fight that he'd ever been in.

When Ianto reached his orgasm all his thoughts ran together. The speech center of his brain could only grasp and comprehend one word. Thus, Ianto yelled out, "Jack!"

For a few seconds after they both came, Jack kept his lips pressed up against Ianto's neck and clutched his lover tightly. He whispered, "I made something for you."

Jack turned on the monitors in the autopsy bay.

"What's this?" Ianto asked, still recovering his breath.

"I measured your vital stats…"

"During sex?"

"Yep."

"Why?"

"Because you were there, and I have access to the medical scanner…I got curious."

"'I got curious.' If you ever do write those memoirs, that should be the title."

"Look here. Your heart rate maxed out 116 beats per minute -- about average," Jack said while giving Ianto a playful slap on his bare ass. "Typically, the heart rate doesn't go over 130 during orgasm."

"I suppose you want to know what would it would take to get me over that number."

"Now there's an idea for an interesting experiment."

"It's good to have a goal."

Jack chuckled and brought up another set of vitals. "Hey. If you ever need proof that you send my heart racing, here you go."

"Oh, now there's a line if I've ever heard one," Ianto replied. "And this is all a bit clinical."

Jack rolled his eyes.

"Lucky for you, I like clinical," Ianto said. "It's like medi-porn."

"And it's documentation that we've had simultaneous orgasms."

"Look at us on the same wavelength."

"I'll save you a copy," Jack said.

"But for the love of anything that you find holy, if there is such a thing, please delete the originals from Owen's records."

After getting dressed, Ianto cleaned and sterilized the autopsy room; however, he wondered how he was going to share the room with Owen without breaking into a huge, silly grin.

He returned his attention to the inventory list on the clipboard and was walking to the supply closet when Jack grabbed him and dragged him into the boardroom for Chinese food and an episode of Firefly. Apparently, Tosh had recommended it to Jack.

Just as they finished their meal, the alarm went off.

"Weevil sighting," Ianto reported.

"They just couldn't take the night off, could they?"

--

Ianto began the hunt with some trepidation. It was strange knowing that the Weevils might be telepathic at any level -- that whatever pain he called this particular creature could be felt by its entire family. There was a voice in the back of his head reminding him that they had been through a lot over the past few weeks.

Of course, they were still monsters capable of tearing grown men apart. They encountered two Weevils in an abandoned building. The adolescent Weevil escaped into the streets. The adult made a wild, staggering lunge at Jack.

"Go after the other one!" Jack ordered, even as he was wrestling with the adult.

With that command, Ianto realized that things had to be business as usual.

He tracked it down a few blocks over, where it was hiding next to a dumpster outside a restaurant. The Weevil railed at him in barbaric grunts and growls, but Ianto moved closer despite being armed with only a pair of handcuffs and an anti-Weevil spray that perhaps wasn't as effective as he'd like to think.

The Weevil, while young and inexperienced, still tried to put up a fight even after it was sprayed. Ianto improvised and smashed a wooden crate against its head before spaying it again. It yawped and shuddered, but Ianto threw it savagely on the ground and pinned his knee into its back to cuff it, showing it that he wasn't a man to trifle with. He knelt like this for a while until his breath settled into a steady pattern. Then, he placed a hood over the Weevil's head and glanced around the alley for witnesses.

"Sir," he said into his comm. No answer. "Sir, I've restrained the Weevil." Still nothing. Ianto figured that Jack probably had his hands full. He waited for a minute and tried again, "Sir, can you hear me?"

"Yeah," Jack grunted.

"I've got my Weevil. What about you?"

"Took a little work," Jack replied before coughing violently.

"You all right?"

"What's your location? I'll come around to pick you up," Jack said through gritted teeth.

"Jack, I asked if you were all right. Look. Maybe I should go to you," Ianto said even as he listened to the sounds of the SUV's door opening and shutting.

"With a Weevil in tow?"

"Sod the Weevil. You sound hurt," Ianto said, but the engine roared.

"Just tell me where you are before these Weevils get any ideas," Jack insisted.

Ianto gave Jack the directions to his location and sat in the alley waiting to be picked up. He kept telling himself that Jack wouldn't drive and put people in unnecessary danger if he was hurt that badly. But with Owen's attack still imprinted in his brain, he couldn't help but worry. He would be on edge until the moment he saw Jack and saw with his own eyes that Jack was okay.

When Jack got out of the SUV, his greatcoat was buttoned up to his neck, and he was holding onto it as if the coat was keeping him from falling apart while wincing in pain.

"Jack, what's wrong?" Ianto asked.

"Nothing. I'm a little winded. It's been a while since I've had to go head to head with a drunken Weevil."

"You sit in the SUV --"

"No," Jack said. "I'm fine. I'll help."

"I've gotten this far with it. I think I can handle it on my own."

"Fine, but I'm still driving."

"Of course. Far be it from me to take away your toy."

They got back to the hub and placed the Weevils in the cells. Although Jack appeared to be perfectly normal after the drive back, Ianto was still worried. From time to time, when Jack thought Ianto wasn't looking, he kept touching the front of his coat, which was still buttoned up.

Ianto locked the cell, turned to Jack and said, "All right, sir. Up to the autopsy bay."

"What for?" Jack asked. It was like he'd forgotten he was injured.

"Since our medic won't be here until tomorrow, it's my duty perform an examination."

"I can do that myself," Jack replied.

"Let me at least take your coat."

"I said, I can do it myself!"

"Fine. No need to yell. I only wanted to confirm with my own eyes that you haven't been injured too badly," the young man said.

"I didn't mean to yell," Jack said softly. "Long day."

"For both of us."

"Why don't you go into the showers? And when I've determined that there is nothing wrong with me, I'll join you."

Despite feeling patronized, Ianto sulked his way to the locker rooms. Had he been a more emotional man, he would have crumpled up his jacket and left it into a heap on the floor. He would have tossed his shoes in his locker so that they'd make a crashing sound on the metal door. Sadly, he was the sort of man who hung his jackets on padded hangers and arranged his shoes so that on the floor of his locker, one inch apart and perfectly parallel to each other. That didn't mean that he wasn't upset.

However, Ianto remembered that Owen was running low on certain items. Despite feeling slightly embarrassed about using such a flimsy excuse to check up on Jack, he had to know what was the matter.

Once he got all the necessary supplies from the storage closet, Ianto carried them into the autopsy room. It was empty. He left all of the items on top of the table and searched for Jack.

He entered the office and immediately noticed Jack's greatcoat lying on the desk. Common sense told him to call out the Captain's name; his instinct told him to hang up the coat. He picked up the coat.

That was when he noticed the blood on the inside. He had handled the coat enough times to know that the stain was new.

Jack's manhole was open so Ianto padded towards it and crouched down to peek inside.

There was a bloody, shredded mass of fabric on the bed that Ianto recognized as Jack's shirt -- the one he'd been wearing earlier that day. As soon as Jack came into view, Ianto scurried away from the hole as silently as possible, but he couldn't leave the room. He couldn't even pick himself up off the floor. So he sat and listened to the crinkling of paper coming from the Captain's room. Finally, it was the sound of Jack's boots against the metal rungs of the ladder that compelled Ianto to stand.

Jack's mouth twitched nervously into a smile. He was shirtless, and his chest was flawless. Not so much as a scratch. He also carried a brown paper bag.

"Why aren't you wet and naked?" Jack asked with a lecherous grin.

"I was beginning to wonder what was taking you so long," Ianto answered.

"I just need to toss out this bit of rubbish. I'll be with you in a tick."

"I can take it."

"I was trying to save you the trouble."

"It's my job," Ianto replied. "You know that I'm here to take care of your things." To make his point, he picked up the Jack's greatcoat.

The older man grimaced almost imperceptibly as Ianto ran his fingers over the blood stain. Ianto kept his eyes on Jack, silently challenging him to speak. Jack said nothing, but he handed Ianto the brown paper bag.

"Looks like I was worried for nothing," Ianto said.

"Pardon?"

Ianto gestured to Jack's chest.

"Yeah. Told you," Jack said as he slipped by Ianto and out of his office.

-

Standing next to an incinerator, Ianto took the shirt out of the paper bag and held it up to examine it. Had he shown it to Tosh or to Owen, they would have told him that whoever was wearing that shirt suffered from a nasty Weevil attack based on the rips in the fabric that were outlined in red. Jack's chest was flawless. Not even a scratch.

But then there was the inside of his coat, the staggering as he came out of the SUV, his refusal to be examined. Ianto suddenly felt queasy. He always expected that Jack would break his heart by sleeping with someone else. He never expected to be feel so confused and betrayed by the sight of a blood-stained shirt.

But Jack was Jack. While Ianto knew about the 51st century pheromones and a thing or two about the time traveling, Ianto didn't even know where Jack was born or how he came to work for Torchwood amongst so many other mysteries. What made him feel slightly ridiculous and deluded was that he always assumed that Jack would open up when he was ready, when they were a proper couple.

Ianto crumpled the shirt into the paper bag, tossed it into the incinerator and lit the flame.

-

He went back into the autopsy bay to put away the pile of medical supplies he left on the table. He needed something to do, something to organize, something that would placate his mind's need for order. Jack had already started the task. Ianto entered anyway, still hoping for an explanation.

He looked at Owen's monitor. Jack was running a standard medical scan on the Weevils.

Ianto said, "I had to hit mine over the head to subdue it. Looks like no harm done."

"You did what you had to," Jack replied.

"At least, he's in one piece. Nobody could accuse us of being excessively cruel to them, not like those wankers from the club."

Jack shrugged. "That is if anyone was around to make any accusations."

"Pardon?"

"You know, outside the government and all that," Jack said. "We answer to no one."

"Oh. Right. I suppose we're working on the honor system here, aren't we? Everyone just has to trust that you will do what's best."

Jack's face was unreadable and remote. "Yeah."

"If it's all right with you, it's been a long day. I think I should go home."

"That's perfectly understandable," Jack replied. He gestured towards Ianto's bare feet. "Just don't forget your shoes."

"Right."

"And Ianto?"

"Yes, sir?" the young man asked.

"Good work today. I mean it. On days like today, I feel better knowing that someone like you is by my side."

Ianto bowed slightly and replied with a tight-lipped smile, "Thank you, sir. Good night."

"Good night."

Ianto had hope, but some days, he wondered how much it was going to cost him in the end.