"Merry Christmas, Sir," the policeman rested his hand on the doorhandle and waited for Ianto to finish pulling his gloves on. "It's bitter cold out there. Travel safely."

"Thank you," Ianto smiled at him and turned his collar up. "Merry Christmas to you too. See you in the New Year?"

"I expect so, Mr Jones." He let his professional severity slip for a moment and grinned. "As long as you keep the aliens away from the door for another year."

"I've told them they're not allowed to invade this Christmas," he confided, po-faced. "I need this holiday."

"Don't we all, Mr Jones." He opened the door and stepped back to let Ianto out. "Enjoy the break."

"I intend to." He smiled once more and stepped out onto the street, pausing to glance up at the glittering tree next to the door. Gold and silver lights twinkled among the branches and reflected off gold baubles hanging below them, bringing a patch of warmth to a bitterly cold, grey, damp London afternoon. A gust of wind whistled down the street, shifting fallen pine needles and making the baubles swing, scattering the reflected light, and Ianto buried his hands in his pockets, tucking his head down into his collar and turning away, out of the wind and towards the gates at the end of the street. He'd been back from Australia for two weeks, almost exactly, he realised as Big Ben tolled once; the cold weather was still a shock to the system, but it did seem to be colder every day.

The five minute walk seemed to take a lot longer in the teeth of a winter gale than it did when he lingered over it in the summer, and he was extremely grateful to be able to shut the pub door behind him and leave the weather outside. A puddle had formed in front of the door from rain dripping off the coats that were squeezed onto the coat stand, and he stepped over it carefully, glad that he'd decided to wear his boots rather than his flat-soled Oxfords, as he would have had a much harder time keeping his balance on the slick tiles.

There were three steps up to the main bar area, which was helping the pool to form, and the crowd was tightly packed with people clutching pint glasses that were wet with condensation, but he eased through it purposefully, aiming for a table in the back corner. Some people grumbled and raised their drinks out of the way pointedly as he came past, but the lunch crowd was a malleable, shifting mass which parted for him without seeming to notice it.

A raised area at the back was cluttered with tables, and Ianto left the standing crowd behind him as he weaved through them to Jack, who stood up to hug him and help him out of his coat. "Hi honey," he teased whilst he waited for Ianto to get his coat buttons undone. "How was work?"

Ianto shot him a look over his shoulder and got the last of his buttons undone. "It was fine, darling. Nothing for you to worry your pretty head about. Now where's my Martini?"

Jack laughed and brushed his lips against Ianto's cheek, then stepped back and folded his coat carefully over the spare chair. "I'll go and get it. I'll order food whilst I'm at it as well, if you like?"

"Thanks." He smiled and kissed Jack again. "I'll have a burger and a coffee."

"I thought you might. Won't be long."

Ianto settled into his seat and stretched his legs out, aware of his face flushing with the sudden change of temperature. It covered the blush that had threatened during his public display of affection for Jack; although he knew that no one had been watching them, part of him wished that they had been. He'd come a long way since his first tentative steps out in public.

It took a while for Jack to return, looking like his Christmas cheer was being tested, but he relaxed again when he got settled at the table with a mug of coffee for each of them and took a sip of his own. Ianto wrapped cold fingers around his own mug and watched Jack's reactions. "Any good?"

"Not as good as yours," he admitted. "But pretty good."

"No one ever makes coffee as good as mine," Ianto pointed out. He took a sip and let the flavour run across his tongue and agreed with Jack's assessment. "Yeah, that's not bad."

"High praise," Jack teased. He set his mug down on a mat and reached for Ianto's free hand with both of his own, playing with his fingers whilst he waited for the coffee to cool a little. "So, did you get all the work you needed to done?"

Ianto flexed his fingers and curled them around Jack's, stilling his movements. "Yep. I'm loaned to Cardiff for Christmas, Ally's paperwork's done for January, the cover's all sorted here for Christmas. All done, and we have nothing to worry about for the rest of the day."

"Apart from Christmas shopping." Jack looked like he was trying not to be worried and to look forwards to the day, but shopping wasn't one of his favourite pastimes.

Laughing, Ianto leaned over to kiss him and smiled against his lips. "It's going to be fine. I know where we're going for everyone."

"What would I do without you?" Jack sighed and picked up his coffee again, keeping his other hand in Ianto's still.

Ianto stroked his thumb against the back of Jack's hand once more. "You'd pretend that Christmas happens to other people, just like you did before." He squeezed gently. "I don't want that to be your life any more."

Ianto grabbed Jack's hand and dragged him away from the watches, towards the white gold pendants. "You can look at those once we've got something for Alice and for Rhiannon."

"I was thinking of a watch for Owen," he protested, but let Ianto drag him over to the other counter. "What sort of things does your sister like?"

"She likes... kitsch," he bit his lip and trailed a finger tip across the top of the glass display case. "Showy things, pretty shapes and colours. Tasteful bling."

Jack smiled and snuck his arm around Ianto's waist. "Do you see anything suitable? How about that star... thing."

Ianto's fingers had been hovering on the glass above a pendant of cascading coloured beads and pearls, but he leaned over to look at the pendant Jack was pointing out and sighed a soft 'oh'. The pendant was circular and rimmed in silver, but it was enamelled in a bright geometric pattern that formed a star. It was gaudy and ostentatious, and completely Rhiannon. "That's perfect," he agreed. "And it'll look really special with black."

"She wears a lot of black," Jack commented, acknowledging the instant appearance of a shop assistant with a smile.

"Yeah. She thinks it's a slimming colour."

Jack sighed. "Women."

The assistant smiled when they gave her their attention and rested her hands, fingers heavy with rings, on the counter. "Have you made a decision, sirs?"

"The first one." Ianto tapped the glass cover, and she reached underneath. "The bright star design, please. Next to the spiral twist."

She pulled it out and held it out to him so that he could have a closer look. "It's a very distinct piece," she explained with excitement. "It was made here by one of our apprentice designers. She has a unique style and draws from science fiction and fantasy as well as Middle Eastern and Oriental styles for her designs."

Ianto nodded thoughtfully and handed it back to her. "I'd like to get that, but we need to find at least one more gift." She nodded and disappeared with it, and Ianto covered Jack's hand with his own. "Right. What does Alice like?"

"I... I don't really know," he admitted. "Her jewellery seems to be sort of... chunky. And simple. She seems to wear either jet or obsidian... black stones, anyway. What is it with women and black?"

He nodded thoughtfully and turned around to find that the assistant had materialised again. "Do you have any dark metals?"

"Of course, sir. If you'd like to follow me around the cabinets, they're on the far side over there." They passed cabinets that glittered with diamonds and pearls, and a cabinet full of rings that a young couple were poring over, exclaiming with cautious delight over the more ostentatious, in Ianto's opinion, examples.

The cabinet they were led to had a range of necklaces and bracelets in dark silver metals, ranging from fine chains and single drops at the left hand side to a huge, heavy disc with a spiral pattern of indentations at the right hand end of the cabinet. Jack was hovering on the larger side of halfway, clenching his jaw, and Ianto watched from next to him, resting a hand in the small of his back in reassurance. He watched Jack's eyes drifting across the cabinet, settling on something for a moment only to shuttle away quickly, but a pattern started to emerge. There was something at the top of the cabinet that had caught his attention, but he seemed unwilling to acknowledge it just yet.

He tightened his fingers on the edge of the cabinet eventually and cleared his throat. "Can I have a look at the split heart?"

Ianto's eyebrows raised slightly but he said nothing, just rubbed Jack's back once and waited whilst the assistant took the necklaces out of the cabinet. It was a three-dimensional heart shape, split down the middle in a curve into two pendants. Jack took them from her and rested one in each hand, testing their weight and shape. Each half was roughly the side of the pad of his thumb and a little thicker from front to back, and a dark chain, thicker than usual, trailed down over his fingers.

"What do you think?" he asked eventually. "Do you think it's too much?"

"I think it's perfect," Ianto slid his hand around to squeeze Jack's waist. "Don't you?"

"I do..." He paused with his mouth open for a moment, as if struggling to find the words, then held the necklaces out to the assistant again. "Can you put the two halves in individual boxes, please?"

"Of course, sir." She took them from him and looked between them. "Do you need to look for anything else, or would you like to get these now?"

They looked at each other thoughtfully, and Ianto answered. "I think we've got everything we need here. And we can always come back."

"We can. Just that, thank you." They followed her around to the cash register, where she'd already got Rhiannon's necklace in a box and was setting the two halevs of the heart in their own boxes, and Jack tilted his head. "We really need to get a joint account."

"We do," Ianto agreed. "Shall we pay on one account and then settle up later?"

"That makes sense." Jack looked sheepish. "Better pay on yours after..."

"You could be right, there." He pulled his wallet out and tried to look stern. "Don't want them thinking that you've had your account stolen, do we?"

The assistant was watching them with amusement, and gestured to the chip and PIN device when they paused for breath. "If you could insert your card and follow the instructions on the device, please, sir."

He paid whilst Jack collected the boxes in a smart bag and they left the shop, emerging into the teeth of the gale again, which had worsened whilst they were in the jewellers. Jack seized one of Ianto's hands and plunged them both into his coat pocket, where it was much warmer. Ianto buried the other in his own pocket and tucked his head down into his collar. "Bugger this," he muttered, tugging on Jack's hand, then said, more loudly, "Let's just go to Selfridges."

Late that night, with the dishes stacked on the draining board and Ella on the CD player, they sat opposite each other at the kitchen table with one of the chairs pulled out for somewhere to put rolls of wrapping paper and a large box on the chair on the other side. Ianto folded a dark purple wool coat into a gift box and put the lid on it, then set it on a roll of wrapping paper and measured it out carefully. Jack wrote the gift tag out carefully in a looping cursive and set it aside carefully, then broke off suitable lengths of sticky tape whilst he waited.

"This is my favourite bit of Christmas," he said suddenly, applying another piece of tape to the edge of the table whilst Ianto watched him curiously. "Watching kids opening their presents is a close second, but they can be so... just so much, I guess."

"They can that," Ianto agreed, returning half his attention to creating crisp folds in the wrapping paper. "I'm hoping Micah's grown up a bit since last time I spent Christmas with them."

Jack nodded and offered a strip of tape, smoothing it down between Ianto's fingers. "This is nice, though. Spending time with someone you love, a quiet night, just preparing nice things for other people."

Ianto smiled and turned the box around so that he could fold one end up, and Jack started on the other. "I like it too," he said softly. "I think... people get too stressed out about it, they miss out on this."

Jack snorted and shook his head. "Christmas is a walk in the park for you, isn't it? I'm the only thing that can go wrong, really."

"And you're very well trained." Ianto smiled over the box at him and held out a finger for a strip of tape. "I was very lucky, wasn't I?"

Jack stuck the tape to his finger. "We both were. I think we earned it, though."

"Yeah." He borrowed Jack's finger to hold the fold in place and stuck it down carefully. "We probably did."