Author's Note: Dedicated to Harriet, who gave me words, envy-inducing phone calls and many kicks up the arse, and to Lizzy, who gave me fudge, pretty pictures and much love. Without you both, this chapter would... Well, who knows, you both exist. So love to you both.

I disclaim. Oh, and if anyone wants the Hub area I've described, bob me a message and I'll pop it up on the Exchange on the Sims 2 site, I built it.

When they were first designing a base of operations for Torchwood in Cardiff, the need for medical facilities was obvious. The sudden emergence of Rift activity there had caught Torchwood by surprise and the casualties had mounted up before they could do anything about it, injuries which couldn't be explained to an ordinary doctor. This area of the Hub had served that need. Small rooms formed a horseshoe around a central open-plan area. During its former useful life, the central area had been a large ward, designed to deal with a large number of patients in case of emergency, whilst the smaller rooms around the horseshoe, separated from the main ward by the walls of two long corridors leading to sections G and D of the archives, provided private rooms, a dispensary, toilet facilities and a laboratory for the medical staff.

At the turn of the twentieth century, the Cardiff team was completed with the recruitment of Captain Jack Harkness, and the 'ringers' from One returned to London. The smaller team rarely needed to or could use such a large medical suite, and besides, most of their medical treatment consisted of the Captain's rough and ready field medicine, so the area was gradually abandoned, used for storage and dumping.

Then along came Ianto Jones (and his predecessors in the archives, but between archivists the area got untidy again) and the rooms were cleaned and emptied, rubbish disposed of and everything else carefully stored in the right place. The area was fresh for reuse.

What had been the ward area, a sort of keyhole shaped area, was turned into a living area. A kitchen at the bottom was set up to cater for up to two dozen people, and next to it was a mess-style dining area, with long tables. The main living area had three comfy sofas clustered around low tables, a dining area just large enough for the usual team and a bank of desks and computers.

Up the sides of the horseshoe, there were four private rooms, each equipped identially with a bed, desk, bookcase and chest of drawers. Next to each end room (there were two on each side) there was a bathroom. The next room on the left was a dorm-style room with eight beds, whilst on the other side there was Owen's new medical area, with facilities to treat one person (he could always use one of the private rooms if he needed more space, each pair were connected with a small room housing the medical equipment he might need) and a small gym. Between the medical area and the dorm was a pair of shower rooms.

All four private rooms were, theoretically, in use. Tosh's room was empty, but she was asleep with her head on Jacqui's shoulder whilst her laptop dropped into standby on their laps where it had been playing Love Actually. In the next room, Martin sprawled across the whole bed with one leg flung out from under the covers and the quilt half on the floor. And in the mirror room to Martin's, Jack watched the numbers on the bedside clock change, trying not to let the seconds slip away as he felt Ianto's heartbeat beneath his palm and against his chest.

Ianto grunted and tried to roll over onto his front, but Jack's arm wrapped around his chest held him still. The restriction of his movements woke his slightly, and he craned to look back over his shoulder, covering Jack's hand on his chest with his own to keep it in place and tangling their fingers together. "Stop watching me," he grunted, "G' sleep."

"I'm not watching you," Jack told him with a smile. "I'm watching the clock."

"Wishing the time away?"

'The exact oppposite', Jack thought, but didn't say. "Playing countdown."

"Uh," Ianto nudged his head backwards against Jack's cheek and settled down again, falling asleep almost instantly. Jack grinned and blew gently on the back of his neck, earning another dozy headbutt for it.

"Three nights after this," he whispered into Ianto's hair. "Three nights until we're sleeping alone again." He couldn't deny that they'd the most of the time available to them. No Torchwood operative was ever going to be able to sleep at 8 o'clock after a day like the one before, no matter how much they expected to need it the next morning, so Ianto had challenged him to wear him out; he had been more than happy to oblige. Several hot, horny hours later and Jack had returned from the sink in the small room linking his and Ianto's with Tosh's – thankfully empty – room to find Ianto curled up and more than half asleep, just waiting for Jack to spoon up behind him before he dropped the rest of the way.

Jack played with Ianto's fingers gently, trying to join him in sleep, but it wouldn't come. His mind was going too fast, preparing for the predicted Rift spike, searching for excuses to go to London to visit Ianto, planning what he wanted to do with Ianto that night, dreading Sunday morning when Ianto would leave again. Strong fingers squeezed his own and he fell still again, closing his eyes tightly and wriggling even closer. Ianto grumbled quietly and shifted so that Jack could see the clock easily over his shoulder. "Four thirty," he groaned. "No chance of sleeping tonight."

"Try, Jack," Ianto grumbled, now awake again. "Try to sleep or go fidget somewhere else..." he yawned through the end of the sentence and then blinked at Jack apparently expecting an answer.

"Pardon?" Jack tried, propping himself up so that they could see each other.

"I said, try sleeping, or go somewhere else, I can't sleep with you wriggling," he was getting more coherent and didn't seem pleased by the fact.

"I like being here when you wake up," Jack muttered, tightening his hold like a child who had been told to put his teddy down.

Ianto grunted and pushed his arms away, sitting up and straightening the pillows. "You have been, repeatedly. I like it when you're there too, but that only works if I'm asleep in the first place."

"I'm sorry," Jack sighed and sat up, swinging around to sit on the edge of the bed, digging his bare toes into the carpet. "I'll go and get breakfast started, so we can grab and go, let you sleep."

"No," Jack felt the mattress bounce as Ianto crawled across it , then Ianto's arms wrapped around his shoulders. "I'm awake now."

"So you are," Jack smiled and craned around to kiss Ianto again. "So we have a few hours to kill..."

"We do, don't we?" Ianto grinned against his lips. "What will we do with ourselves?"

Jack shifted along the bed so that he was looking sideways and up at Ianto. "I'd like to just talk, really."

"Talk?" Ianto looked worried. "When you say 'talk'..."

"You know," Jack shrugged. "Open our mouths and sound comes out. I dunno, about what life in London is like, what you do when you're not at work, what you've seen on your work trips abroad."

"Just talk..." Ianto pulled the quilt up to drape it over their shoulders and shuffled closer, sitting down next to Jack, nearly in his lap. "I'm not much of a talker."

"I know," Jack smiled. "And I talk too much, but I know there's things you want to know... We could do questions."

"Do you think that's a good idea?" Ianto asked dubiously.

"Well," Jack started. "There's nothing I won't tell you, unless it's something I can't tell you, for the timelines. Unless..."

"No, there's nothing," Ianto told him, resting his head on Jack's shoulder. "You start."

"Did you have pets growing up?"

"A cat called Albert," Ianto told him. "Big, fat, tabby who slept with my sister. And we had a gerbil for a week. Albert happened," he twined his fingers together with Jack's. "Most embarrassing injury you've ever had."

"Ooo, that's a tough one," Jack laughed. "Actually, no, easy. I fell off a horse whilst trying to impress a girl, got trampled and died in bed a couple of hours later," he chuckled. "Fortunately, no one noticed, because she was fainting and wailing all over the place. And then married my best friend," he shrugged. "More fool him. Favourite author."

"Pratchett, you knew that," he smiled. "Or were you expecting Fforde?"

"Wondered which you'd choose," he smiled. "Is that your question?"

"Only if that was yours," he hummed lightly and turned Jack's hand so that he could massage it lightly. "Do you have any family?"

Jack sucked in a breath and hesitated. But he had said, hadn't he, that he would answer anything Ianto asked him. "My dad died," he started slowly. "In an alien attack on our homeworld, and they took my little brother with them. I was supposed to look after him, but... I don't, I don't know if I could have done anything."

"How old were you?"

"Thirteen," he sighed. "Grey was ten. I went looking for him, searched everywhere, but I think that by the time I left, he must have been dead."

"I'm sorry."

"Yeah, me too," he took his hand from Ianto's grasp and wrapped both arms around his shoulders, pulling him in tightly so that Ianto was even more in his lap. "Anyway, my Mom is still in the future with the grandparents about about half a dozen cousins on either side. Since I came back here, I had a son called Tommy, he was in the navy in the Second World War and his ship was sunk by a U-Boat," Ianto's arms tightened around him and he closed his eyes, taking a deep breath he said, "And I have a daughter called Alice who lives just outside Cardiff, she's a Literature lecturer at Cardiff University and she has a son called Stephen who is nine. I... I don't get to see them often." He was relieved that Ianto didn't move away, so he continued, "Alice resents my immortality, the fact that she looks older than I do."

"As if it didn't hurt you enough already," Ianto held him slightly tighter, then pulled back. "Thank you for telling me."

"I said I would."

"Yeah, but..." he kissed his cheek and the corner of his eye, feeling Jack's eyelashes fluttering against his lips. "I shouldn't have asked."

"I should have told you about Alice and Stephen, you're part of my life, more than they are."

"Hey, I know now," Ianto nestled in against him again. "Your question."

Jack rocked Ianto slightly, not really aware that he was doing it, and thought. "Where was your first time?"

Ianto's answer was muffled in Jack's neck. "Penetrative?"

"Whatever you count as your first time."

"In a tent near Tenby. A group of us went away after our GCSEs and sex ensued with Sally Davenport," he groaned. "Not my finest moment. What's your favourite place to have sex?"

Jack ran his hand up and down Ianto's arm and smiled. "There's this island near Bermuda, it belongs to Torchwood, we used it as a research base into the Bermuda Rift, and it's all set up so that it can be activated in the event of the Rift there going active. And there's this cave, with these tidal pools that are warmed by the sun and kept fresh by the waves, it's beautiful. I've never had sex there, but I'd like to,." he leaned his head against Ianto's. "My question, can..."

They both jumped as the alarm above the door blared out. Ianto scrambled from Jack's lap and went to get the clothes they'd laid out the night before, passing Jack's across to him and pulling his own on. They dressed hurriedly and quietly, sitting down on opposite sides of the bed to pull their boots on. When Ianto made for the door, Jack beat him to it and held it closed. "My question first. Can I take you there, to my island?"

Ianto grinned and pulled him in by his braces to kiss him soundly. "Om nom nom."

"Om nom nom?" Jack stared at him.

"Means yes."

"No it doesn't," Jack pulled the door open. "It means delicious."

"Well you are," Ianto leered.

"Massive Rift activity at the castle," Tosh yelled across the room. "CCTV shows something came through."

They changed direction and ran up through the Hub with Tosh on their heels, grabbing their weapons in the Hub. As they fell into the lift, Jack raised an eyebrow at Ianto. "So that was a yes?"

"Yup," he grinned.

"Good. Tosh, what have you got?"

Ianto watched Jack, all white teeth and flirting and commanding, and reflected on how very different he was from the man who had loved him so tenderly the night before, who had held him through the night just to be there when he woke up, who would miss him so terribly when he left again. There had to be a way for him to come back for good.