Author's Note: I suck, it's official. Yes, it's very late and I'm very sorry. Pretty please with a cherry on top, forgive me?

Massive thanks to Andrea (RoadrunnerGER), Harriet and Lizzy (LiquidLash) for help with this chapter.

Oh, and for those of you who don't know me, I do do erotica *shifty eyes*. I've toned it down as much as possible, but it happens here. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it. The chapter, that is, not just the erotica.

Jack propped himself up to be able to see the clock over Ianto's shoulder and drew closer to him as he lay back down. He had four more nights of this, providing the Rift gave them that, and then Ianto would be gone again; back to London and his flat and his cat. He pressed his hand softly against Ianto's chest, trying not to wake him as he measured time by his heartbeat. The click and whir of the CD player caused Ianto to start slightly, and he groped out blindly to silence the Tom Robinson band. "Bad choice for mornings," he grumbled, rearranging Jack's arm around his waist and covering his eyes with the hand that wasn't wrapped around Jack's.

"You'd have had Bonnie Tyler last week," Jack told him, tightening his arm to pull Ianto in closer against him. "That's really not good to wake up to."

"So why did you have her?" Ianto asked, tugging the quilt up and snuggling deeper, even as Jack tried to achieve the opposite. "Jack, no, ugh."

"She wasn't waking me up, just getting me out of bed," he pointed out, torn between getting Ianto out of bed and keeping him in it. Ianto seemed to prefer the latter option, as he squirmed around and lay on top of Jack, pinning him down and wrapping the duvet around them both. "Ianto..."

"No. Stay?"

Jack sighed and ran a hand up and down the duvet over Ianto's back, resting the other under the duvet on his shoulder. "I wish we could."

"I know," Ianto's sigh against his shoulder nearly broke Jack's resolve – it probably would have if he'd had one. "But I miss the mornings."

"I..." Jack choked on that one, and just shrugged slightly to move Ianto off him. "Come on, I'll get through the bathroom and do breakfast." A hand around his wrist stopped him and he sank back into the bed, fixing his eyes on the wardrobe. "Ianto, I... What are we doing?" The last two days, and this week, but soon you'll be gone again. I can't, I don't know what we're doing, if we're just a thing or if we have a thing or... I don't know."

Ianto's hand curled warm around his hip and soon the heavy weight of Ianto's head pressed against his waist, more headbutt than hug. "I think it's called a long distance relationship, Jack. It will take work and patience and commitment and all those things that we were never very good at," he sighed when Jack's hand dropped to play with his hair. "Are we worth fighting for, Jack?"

He didn't hesitate. "Yes."

"Good answer." Behind him, Ianto knelt up, pulling the quilt with him. He took a moment to arrange it so that, when he wrapped his arms around Jack's shoulders, the quilt wrapped around them both. Jack sank back against Ianto and turned his head, searching for Ianto's lips. They held onto each other, Jack gripping Ianto's arms where they were wrapped around his waist and twisted around each other to deepen their kiss.

When Ianto made to turn Jack properly, he shook his head and broke away for a moment. "No. Like this."

"Just like this?" He tugged Jack in tight against him again and smiled when Jack's hand sought his out blindly on Jack's chest and gripped it tightly, winding their fingers together. He rained kisses on Jack's shoulders as Jack tipped his head back, growling when Ianto broke away and closed his eyes, concentrating on keeping himself in control. "Pushy", he muttered, and Jack's responding laugh turned into another deep moan. Their breaths mingled as Ianto strained for Jack's mouth again to silence him and shifted him, reaching down to prepare him, then dragging Jack's hand down with his own to grasp his hips and lift him.

Jack turned suddenly boneless against him, fisting the duvet with his other hand and pushing back against Ianto, before turning his head to the side to kiss and bite at Ianto's neck. It was taking all of Ianto's willpower to keep his focus and not come apart instantly. Jack wasn't helping matters as he whispered fragmented thoughts in some alien language against Ianto's pulse point. "Jack," he gasped, squeezing both hands tightly and drawing another strangled groan from Jack.

"Like this," Jack told him, encouraged him. "Just like this," he repeated as Ianto arched up into him, then followed and trusted Ianto to catch him.

After they fell back onto the bed, warm sticky and slightly uncomfortable, they lay there catching their breaths, both thinking that they really ought to be moving soon until Tom Robinson told them "Don't Take No For An Answer" and Jack bolted upright with a grunt as his muscles protested. Ianto sat up behind him and reached for the box of tissues. "Oh God, we're very late," Jack groaned, taking another tentative step.

Ianto stood up and tugged him in to kiss him. "No we won't, aren't even, I set the clock forwards by an hour last night, but we do need to be going."

"You..." Jack stared at Ianto's retreating figure as he headed for the bathroom. "I..." neither of them was ready for that yet. "You..." there were no words to describe. "I... I'll put some toast in, shall I?" The shower turned on.

Half an hour later, Ianto took Jack's coat and went to hang it in his office, whilst Jack followed the smell of frying tomatoes and bacon to the kitchenette. Jacqui grinned at him and turned an egg over. "Good morning Jack."

"Good morning Jacqui," he leant in the doorway and folded his arms. "Did you sleep well last night?"

"I did, thank you," she didn't look up again. "Those rooms down there are nice."

"Glad you think so. Gwen took control rather," he laughed. "Anything I can get you?"

"No, thanks Jack. Have you two eaten, by the way?" she tilted the pan in his direction, offering him breakfast, but he shook his head.

"Yeah, we ate before we came in," he stepped away from the door and turned back to the main Hub. "If you need me, I'll be up in my office."

He shoved his hands in his pockets as he took a wander around the Hub, stopping to chat with Owen, who was already in the new medical suite, preparing for Jacqui and Martin's first Torchwood physicals. When he got back up to his office, Ianto was sitting in his chair, sipping on a coffee whilst Jack's cooled on the desk. "What's the plan for today then?" he asked, picking up the coffee and perching on the desk where it had been.

Ianto looked around at the office and then up at Jack. "Owen needs to do their physicals first..."

"He's got it all ready."

"Really?" Ianto raised his eyebrows. "When did he do that? Last night?"

"No, he's already down, there, I'd say he's been here about an hour."

"So they've..." the penny dropped. "Oh, you mean he's got it all ready, not he's got it already," he nodded. "Right, that's alright then. So that needs doing, I'm going to take a wild stab in the dark and predict that he won't clear them for field duty anyway. Once that's done, Tosh wants to get Martin started working on the computer systems, you've got some translations that Jacqui needs to look at?" Jack nodded. "And you and I are going to Spring clean."

Jack groaned, "Why?"

"Because, Jack, since I've been gone, this place has become a mess. We're going to start down there," he gestured to Jack's manhole, where they had slept on Ianto's first night back in Cardiff because of a late Rift alert. "And we are going to get the main Hub tidy today so that I can start on the Archives with Jacqui and Martin tomorrow. They need a proper cleanout."

"Ugh, okay," Jack grumbled, drinking his coffee and looking around the room.

Ianto was startled. "What, just like that?"

"Just like that," Jack agreed, not looking at him. "It needs doing, and it means I get to spend the time with you, getting all sweaty and dirty."

Ianto slapped his thigh and laughed. "There had to be something like that," he didn't remove his hand, but rubbed Jack's thigh gently. He seemed about to say something, but instead he squeezed Jack's leg once and stood up, holding his hand out for Jack's coffee mug. "I'll go and wash these and bring some binliners back with me."

"Okay," Jack nodded, straightening up. "Come up to the boardroom, I'll tell the others the gameplan for today."

Gwen was sitting on the table, chatting with Tosh, when Ianto walked in with the tray of coffees. Once again, Jack went to the door to help him with them and the girls exchanged grins, pulling Jacqui in with them, whilst Martin and Owen rolled their eyes at each other. "Okay, kids," Jack walked around the table with his mug and sat down with his legs stretched out towards Ianto's still empty seat. "Jacqui and Martin, you need to do your physicals with Owen this morning. Tosh, you get Martin this afternoon to teach him some of your magic. Jacqui, I want you and Gwen looking at some translations and things that need your expert eye, teach Gwen what you can will you?" the older woman nodded and beamed at Gwen across the table. Jack turned to Owen. "Do you think you can fit Ianto in this afternoon?"

"What?!" they both asked, in varying degrees of yelp.

He shrugged and pointed out "you missed your last checkup, always worth doing, and as Owen's already doing them for Martin and Jacqui."

Owen sighed and Ianto nodded. "Yup, good idea."

"Right," he looked around the table again at everyone drinking their coffees. "Anyone got any questions?"

"Who's on call today?" Gwen asked.

"Tosh, what's the predictor looking like?" He questioned.

"It's that big thing with wires in the middle of the room," Owen muttered.

Tosh hid a smile behind her hair and looked across to Jack. "All quiet again today, tomorrow looks bad though."

"Okay, what time?"

"Early, probably around 7, but it could be a couple of hours either side."

Jack groaned and scrubbed his face with his hands. "I'll think about it. Right, for today, Gwen and Tosh are on first response. Everyone set?" they all nodded and started pushing chairs back. "Good, that's what we like to hear."

Owen left Jacqui drinking copious amounts of water and getting her breath back in the med room and took his reports up to Jack's office. Martin was already sitting with Tosh by her computer and he gave them both a lazy salute as he passed. He was just about to open the office door when he hear a loud grunt and paused, raising his hand and knocking slowly. After a couple of beats of silence, loud guffaws of laughter erupted from the office and Ianto opened the door from his position lying on the floor. He then sneezed loudly. "Hello Owen," he said at last. "Spring cleaning is a dangerous business."

"Erm..."

"Yeah, I got a splinter!" Jack told him around the finger he was sucking.

"And then dropped a box of books on his foot," added Ianto as he got up from the floor.

"You had to tell him, didn't you?" Jack muttered, mostly to himself. "What's the prognosis then, Owen?"

Owen continued to stare at them, taking in the pile of black plastic binliners full of rubbish in one corner, the tidy bookcases and the clear floor and gave up worrying about it. "Neither of them is ready yet, I doubt they ever will be. Ianto, if you want a defence team, you need to get a younger group. Jacqui's forty-seven this year, she's never going to be a field agent again, and Martin never has been."

Ianto sighed and sat back down on the floor. "I thought that might be the case. Thanks, Owen."

"Yeah. You ready for your checkup now?"

He brushed his hands off and looked up at Owen. "Yeah, I'll be down in a minute," Owen gave them both a nod and left.

Jack came and sat next to Ianto on the floor, nudging him with his shoulder. "What you thinking?"

"I need to find a new team," Ianto muttered, clearly thinking carefully as he nudged Jack back. Finally, he leant sideways and pressed a soft, quick kiss to the side of Jack's mouth. "I'll go let Owen prod me, then I'll be back."

Jack watched him go with a smile and got up, pulling out the next drawer of his desk to sort it. This was his private drawer, and he was surprised to find that he hadn't minded the idea of going through it with Ianto. He ran his finger around the edge of the tin and ruffled the edge of the stack of papers underneath it, then drummed his fingers on the lid of the tin as he thought. Checking the clock, he put the pile back on his desk and opened the hatch, looking for the rucksack they'd tidied away earlier. Once the tin and papers were safely stored to take home with them, he wandered out into the Hub and leaned on the railings to watch the proceedings.

Tosh and Martin seemed to be in competition with Jacqui and Gwen, seeing which pair could translate the same text fastest. Random words were yelled out, some like "paper", "cage" and "pockets", which seemed to be amusing mistranslations, but then a theme seemed to be developing with words like "spoon", "bowl", "fire" and "potato".

"You got a recipe down there?" he called out.

Tosh and Jacqui stopped and looked up at each other, then pushed the other two out of the way. "Why didn't we think of that?" Jacqui asked, grabbing Martin's wrist and pulling him so that she could stand next to Tosh. "What have you got so far?"

"If I tell it that it's a recipe format, it should recognise some of the untranslatable words as ingredients, which will give us more of a context and structure," she muttered, typing fast. "And then we can..."

"Alien foods, is there an ingredient list?" she asked, leaning over Tosh's shoulder. "That at the top?"

"Yes, that makes sense," Tosh agreed. "What about it?"

"Print it out and let me look, you need that bit doing the old fashioned way," she looked up and grinned when Jack and Gwen laughed. "Where is he, anyway?"

"Med suite," Jack told her, wandering down to join them at last. "Can I have a look?" She shrugged and collected the printout of the ingredients list, handing it over. He looked down it and pointed to two of the symbol-pictures. "That one's pretty much universal for honey or a similar natural sweetner, and that one is your quantities. One of those squiggly symbol things is roughly equivalent to one hundred grams."

Tosh typed rapidly and set the translation running again. "Any others you recognise?"

He frowned in thought and shook his head. "I can tell you that those two are fruits, and that one's a type of cheese. The rest I don't recognise."

Jacqui took the sheet back from him and scribbled notes. "OK, well if we call those two apples and oranges. In fact, we can do a straight substitution for all of these, now we know that they're ingredients."

"Good idea," Tosh agreed. "Someone name me ingredients? I need thirteen"

"Apple, feta, celery, pork, potatoes, chocolate, lemon, bread, cinnamon, fish, strawberries, flour and butter," Gwen rattled off. "What have we got?"

"Hang on," Tosh told her. "Let the scan run," they watched as it ran quickly up to 100% and then she brought the recipe up on the screen for them to see.

"1. Heat the pork in a big heavy-bottomed pan over a middle heat. Add the lemon and cook, stirring occasionally, for five minutes, or until the lemon is mid-visible.

2. Add the feta, chocolate, strawberries, butter and flour and cook for two minutes, stirring regularly.

3. Add the potatoes, bread, cinnamon and water or 250 weird quantity squiggle/9 another weird quantity squiggle and cook, rotating much, for ten minutes.

4. Add the fish and simmer for five minutes, or until the fish is almost cooked through and tender.

5. Add the apple and honey and cook for a further 2.3 minutes, then season, to taste, with salt and freshly ground hot root.

6. To serve, spoon out into bowls and the tagine special with fresh alfaan leaves and smaller tree nuts."

They snorted with laughter and Tosh and Jacqui grinned at each other. "Job done," Jacqui laughed. "Well, nearly. Give me some time with those symbols and the archive and I might be able to cook it before I leave."

"That would be nice," Tosh agreed.

Jack clapped his hands. "Speaking of food, I'm going to call out for lunch, unless anyone has a pressing desire to cook?" there was silence. "Thought so, any preferences?"

"Chinese?" Tosh suggested, closing the translation programme. "it's been a while since we had it."

"All of about three days, I think," Owen pointed out. "But I have no objections to Chinese."

"Me neither, duck pancakes please Jack!" Gwen called over her shoulder as she returned to her desk.

"I'll get a couple of the meal orders," Jack suggested. "Should be something for everyone in there."

Ianto joined him in the TI office whilst he waited for the delivery and, with an annoyed eye-roll and a tut, straightened up the displays and leaflets. "Now I know why you insisted that I come in the other way," he muttered, looking slightly mollified when Jack started to help.

"Yeah, well, I didn't really fancy spending any time up here after you left, and then I was lazy and couldn't be bothered," he admitted, handing over a fresh pile of Cardiff Castle leaflets. "We could do with making it into something else, an actual business that we can run up here. It could be something for the rift victims, the ones we can't Retcon."

"Who are you thinking of?" Ianto asked.

Jack leaned on the desk and studied his shoes. "A girl who came in last week. Carly. She got taken to Hortona, a human colony in the thirtieth century, started a family there, then got dragged back here. She's pregnant and in isolation, because I know there was a nasty plague around there at that time and she might be a carried, but in a couple of weeks she'll be given the all clear. And she won't be born for ten years. She'll soon have a little baby to support, no family she can contact," he shrugged. "I can provide her with housing, a good reference, but it's hard to find work when you're a single mum with a newborn, no identity and no knowledge of current computer systems."

"So what are you thinking?" Ianto asked, leaning next to Jack and bumping his shoulder. "A shop of some sort? Or she could run the TI Office."

He nodded. "I'd like her to run the office initially; but she's very independent, especially now. I don't think she'd want to stay working for Torchwood forever. If we could set her up with a business loan and cheap rent on this office, she'd accept that."

"See how it goes, I think it's a good idea. It would be good if you could set something up so that some of the patients could make things on the island and they could be sold here. Then they could feel more independent, use the money to make it more like home."

"That's brilliant," Jack grinned. "The farm grows more food than they use too."

"There you go then," he got up to answer the door and they took a box each. "Do it."

"I'll suggest it to her," he agreed, leaning over his box to kiss Ianto on the cheek. "By the way, what was your physical result?"

"Cleared for take-off," Ianto told him. "What are you going to do about tomorrow?"

"I'll send Gwen home and Owen and call them in if we need them, the rest of us are staying here overnight, so that Gwen and Owen can man the fort tomorrow and we can catch up on lost sleep."

"Good plan," Ianto thumped the lift button with his elbow. "Want to try out one of the double beds down in the new rooms?"

"You know, I think I do."