Jack wasn't sure what his favourite time of the day was anymore. He used to think it was at the end of the day, after everyone else had gone home, leaving him the knowledge that they were safe. That after facing whatever the rift had thrown at them they were in their own beds. With the exception of Owen, one never really knew who's bed he'd end up in. There was a magical quality in the silence when he was the only one in the Hub. The water feature providing white noise and he could rest assured that this had been another day the world hadn't ended on his watch.

Now, he thought it could be waking up in his bedroom in his own home, knowing the immaculately dressed Ianto was cooking breakfast downstairs. Or perhaps it was when the young man would hand him that first cup of coffee before vanishing into the archives. Or the moment in which he caught the look on his teams faces as they too received their first cup of coffee at Ianto's elegant hand.

If the rift was quiet, Ianto would emerge from the archives for lunch and fresh coffee, shared around the conference room table. There would be lies and jokes and laughter. But Jack knew that wasn't really it, that his favourite time of the day was still that time of day that gave him the same sense of peace he felt when he knew his team were going home. Of course now it meant he could go and find Ianto, who would take them home too.

Walking into his previously abandoned home at the end of the day he was left with the certainty that he didn't have a favourite time of the day at all. That it wasn't a time or a feeling that even made this home. It was a man, one that wasn't even his to keep. Leaving him hoping that he wouldn't have to say good bye.

Today was Friday, Ianto had been in Cardiff for four days as he looked up when Jack sloped into the archives. 'Is it time to go Sir?'
'I thought you were heading to London.'
Ianto sighed. 'No. I spoke with Lisa and she's snowed under with work place reviews. Hartman does live for paperwork, she might be all green energy but it's "bugger the trees, give it to me on paper", that woman.'
'So your back up plan is?'
'We need more groceries and I'm visiting my sister tomorrow, I think she wants to take the kids out somewhere.' He began shutting his computer down.
'Well I'm done for the day, I even fed Janet.'
'That's one less thing for me Sir.'
'I've told you that isn't in your job description. We can stop at the market on the way home.'

Ianto looked at Jack. 'How much of the last hundred or so years have you actually spent, in Cardiff? Sir.'
'Duno, I travelled rather a lot, so probably about half.'
'So you could, reasonably, be expected to know that the market is no where near being on the way home. Unless you are coming in via Bristol.'
'Details Ianto Jones, mere details.'
Ianto raised an eyebrow and nodded. 'And you wonder why I wont let you drive.'
'Whatever, put your pen away and lets go.'

'Did Tosh talk to you about the program she's helping me with? To track your artifacts.'
Jack shrugged. 'I may have stopped listening, what was she all excited about?'
Ianto rolled his eyes rather than trust himself to speak.
Jack repeated his shrug. 'I'm sure whatever it is, she will get it going and it will be brilliant.'
'Ah and when she does, it will be that much easier for you to maintain your archives.'
'So you can go back to London.'
'Well, yes.'
'We have paperwork here, you could stay, in Cardiff I mean.'
'Not sure I see the attraction Sir.'
'Your Lisa, she could do the paperwork and you can have the archives.' Jack watched as Ianto kept his face blank. 'You should think about it.'
'Maybe if it was just me, but it isn't.' Ianto tucked his hands into his pockets as he walked with the older man. 'Come on, lets get to the market, groceries don't shop themselves.'
'We could get a personal shopper.' Jack turned as Ianto was rolling his eyes. 'Or not.'

Ianto took the trolley from Jack. 'Why did I let you talk me into this.'
'Because we needed groceries. Oh my.'
'Jack? Did you just squeal?' Ianto watched in amazement as Jack all but pounced on a display of little marzipan covered cakes that went into the trolley along with the packets of tea cakes and jammy dodgers he'd foun.
'I love these things and I did not squeal.'
'I'm sorry, was it a manly expression of delight?'
'Yes.' Jack pouted as Ianto rolled his eyes. 'So, what do you tell people you do?'
'Archivist for Government funded research, official secrets act stuff.'
'That's brilliant, and it's even practically the truth...' Jack's voice trailed off as his eyes fell on a display of kitchen appliances.

Ianto groaned.
'Oh my, I totally need this.' Jack picked a box up. 'I almost don't care what it is.'
'You do not need a juicer. Other than coffee I've only ever seen you drink water.'
'But it's so shiny.'
'Hmm, I think we need to restrict the sugar in your coffee.' Ianto shook his head as he watched Jack pawing at boxes of appliances he had no use for. He looked from Jack to the trolley where the man had put his carefully selected grocery items. Apart from a bag of oranges there wasn't another thing in his half of the trolley that wasn't junk. Crisps, biscuits and little cakes all sat next to Ianto's fresh fruit and vegetables. Like garish clowns at the opera their bright colours mocked the nutritional value of Ianto's choices.

Jack saw Ianto turn as he thought he'd heard the man's name being called, only to see a small child leap into the air chattering away in Welsh. He heard Ianto reply and had to revert to his default setting of thinking about puppies and spiders to not come in his pants. There was no amount of waving a Torchwood ID about that would get him out of the sort of scene it would create otherwise.
Ianto tickled the giggling child, switching to English. 'And where is your mam young lady?'
'Duno uncle Yan.'
'Uncle Yan?' Jack asked, eyes dancing now he was firmly in control once more.
'Mica Davies, this is someone I work with, Jack.'
'Captain Jack Harkness.'
'She's four, at her age captains are pirates and I'm not sure she needs your full title.'
'That's not my full title.'
Ianto was interrupted by a slightly older woman pushing a trolley of her own.

'Mica Mariah Davies, you do not run away from me like that.' She looked to the man holding the child and nodded. 'Hello Yan, I see you found someone.'
'She found me. Rhi, this is one of my work mates, it's his guest room I've commandeered while I'm in Cardiff.' He handed the child back to her mother. 'Captain Jack Harkness, this is my sister, Rhiannon Davies, and my niece you've already met.'
'Nice to meet you.' She nodded as she tucked the child into the trolley, ignoring her protests. 'I've been trying to get this one to visit for ages if he wont move back.'
'I'd like to keep your brother if I could.'
She smiled, ignoring the look on Ianto's face. 'I wouldn't mind it, if he moved home. He's the only other family I've got, but London calls, as it were.'

'Never saw the attraction myself.' Jack replied. 'But Cardiff, with your lovely Welsh vowels, that's a very different matter.'
Rhi laughed. 'You're a terrible flirt Captain.'
'I thought I was rather good.'
'Now you've done it Rhi.' Ianto laughed as Jack began to pout.
'He doesn't half try it on, puts Dav to shame he does.' She turned to Jack. 'Yan'll have to bring you around for tea so you can show my boy how to do that. His puppy eyes look isn't half as good as yours.'
'I'm not sure that's a compliment.'
Ianto nodded. 'It's not.'
'You are still okay to pick us up at ten tomorrow? It's just Johnny's picked a few extra shifts up and you know how it is.'
'Yeah, I'll see you tomorrow.'
She leaned in, her voice low, speaking in Welsh so only Ianto could hear. 'Bring Romeo if you like, if he's got nothing else to do.'

Ianto turned back to look at Jack, seeing him distracted once more by the boxes of appliances. 'We'll see, I better go before he sees it.'
'Sees what?' She asked.
'Ianto!'
'That.' Ianto sighed before waving to his niece and shaking his head at Jack who was trying to fit a coffee maker into the trolley. 'What exactly do you think you need that for? You can't even work the photocopier.'
'For at home and I can so use the photocopier, you just wont let me show you.'
'Tosh warned me about your show and tell.'
'Well, you can teach me.'
'Why? When I go home it will just sit on the bench in your house and collect dust.'

Jack shrugged. 'We all leave eventually, it's my house and my money and I'm buying it.'
Ianto shook his head, knowing they possibly looked like a couple having a domestic as he muttered in Welsh. 'But I'll be the one bloody using and cleaning it.'

'I may not know what you said, but I'm sure it was unkind.'
'You only know swear words in Welsh don't you.'
Jack shrugged. 'Never seemed like a good time to learn the rest.' He looked over his shoulder. 'And if you keep rolling your eyes like that they will eventually fall out.'
'Remind me to get Owen to give you a lecture on the orbital muscles of the human eye. So he can explain, in that so very friendly tone of his, why that's a load of bollocks.' Ianto rolled his eyes again to prove his point before following Jack.

Monday morning rolled around, with the eternal inevitability that sees weekends move so much faster than the rest of the working week. This time, Jack decided he really did have a new favourite time of day as he walked into his kitchen to find not only a full cooked English breakfast but a cup of freshly brewed coffee waiting for him.
'I could really get used to this Mr Jones.'
'Could, you already are and I've barely been here a week.'
'You do look after me, I can only guess how much your Lisa is missing you if this is what you do for a default setting.'
Ianto looked down at his own plate before reaching for the toast. 'Anticipating what others want is simply one of my skills Jack. Butter?'
'You really need to update your resume, it's practically written in braille it's that empty.'
'I'm twenty three Jack, how much do you think I could have possibly done by this stage in my life.'
'So no uni?'
Ianto shook his head, concentrating on his breakfast instead of answering questions about his past. The council estate his sister lived on was quite the step up from where they'd grown up as children and he didn't want to remember anything else.

Jack wondered what nerve he'd managed to hit with Ianto at breakfast. The younger man was usually a presence of wit and delightful snark but today he was just a little reserved. He held himself back from interacting with the team as he handed out coffees before vanishing into the bowels of the Hub. It worried Jack how easily the archivist was able to vanish into the background and simply blend in. The others hadn't said anything if they'd even noticed. And judging by Owen's arrival with Suzie this morning, almost on time even. They had picked up their on again, off again relationship over the last few days.

He wondered how long it would take for them to get back to the hurled barbs and insults they usually exchanged. He didn't need a withdrawn Ianto, while Suzie and Owen were engaging in the predictable dance around the disaster that their sleeping together would inevitably become. Although Owen and Suzie were both capable of getting past their train wreak fling, it was the effect it had on Tosh that was the hardest to watch. She actually liked the caustic doctor and it always took her a few days to come back to herself when Suzie and Owen slept together. He knew he could ban inter-office relationships, it had been done before, but it was even more of a disaster than the relationships invariably were themselves. So he made a note to bring an extra packet of jammy dodgers in for his technical genius and steadied himself to wait it out.

Ianto decided he'd been hiding in the Hub long enough when he felt his stomach reminding him that he hadn't had lunch and it was two pm. Jack had called out to tell him they were off to a rift retrieval so there was no one to remind him to eat. He moved out of the archives, not telling Jack that with his near perfect recall he hadn't actually needed string or breadcrumbs to find his way around. Now he'd drawn a map, he could be blindfolded and he'd still know the fastest route back to the surface. Checking if Tosh needed anything he headed to the Plass, pulling his phone out to call Lisa.

Tosh was about to start looking for Ianto when she realized he'd been gone for an hour and she hadn't seen him come back in when the cog door rolled back. Alarm blaring as Ianto walked in with Jack. She frowned. 'Where are the other two?'
Her question was answered when Suzie strode into the Hub, a thundercloud practically hanging over her head. Followed by Owen, carrying a containment box.
'I said I had it covered.'
'And I said.' Suzie snapped. 'You bloody didn't.'
'What's the big deal, no one got shot, we're all still bloody alive and we got the, whatever the fuck Jack called it. Mission accomplished I reckon.'
'Well I reckon you're a bloody moron.'
'Snapping turtle's her spirit totem or Native American astrology sign isn't it.' Owen muttered to himself as he dumped the container he was carrying on a desk. 'Right, teaboy, do your archivist-y thing with this lump of moon rock will ya.'
Ianto frowned. 'I'm not sure what you think an archivist does all day but I will not be examining your rock.'

Owen pulled fresh gloves on and opened the box. 'It's harmless.' He picked the rock up.
Ianto backed away. 'This never ends well, no matter how many times you slant the evidence.'
'What, not in the job description?'
'You forget, I have access to your files. You're a doctor, how many times can a person have their eyebrows singed off before they stop growing back.'
'Jesus Christ, that was a one time thing.'
'Nope.' Suzie shook her head. 'You've lost your eyebrows at least three times.'
'Who bloody counts these things?' Owen asked, waving the rock around while Ianto and Suzie both took another step back.
Jack folded his arms across his chest as he watched the scene before him. 'I said it's probably harmless so I'd really appreciate it, if you stopped doing that.'
'What's the worst that could happen, really?'
Ianto and Suzie groaned in unison, waiting for the inevitable explosion.

In hindsight it was less an explosion and more an anti-climatic 'pop' that left Owen covered in what could only be described as vibrant orange snot.

'Why is it always me?'
'My guess.' Tosh said, speaking for the first time since the others had walked in the door. 'Is because you're a wanker.'
'How does that qualify me to be the one who always get's slimed?'
'You take risks and you don't listen.'
'Thanks Tosh, I was thinking of that as a more rhetorical question.' Owen took the paper towels Ianto handed him and wiped his face, he looked over at Jack. 'Is this stuff dangerous?'
Jack accepted the scanner Tosh handed to him and used it on Owen. 'Not this time although you might want to wash it off before your hair goes green.'
Owen's face fell. 'Oh Christ no.' Turning he raced to the showers. 'It's always fucking me.'

Smiling to herself Suzie gathered a sample and headed to the mass spec to get it analyzed.
Jack laughed. 'It's not going to show much of anything Suzie, it's basically the alien equivalent of silly putty.'
She turned to Jack. 'Seriously? He got slimed by alien silly putty?' She laughed. 'What a wanker.'
Ianto turned to Jack and Tosh. 'Well that escalated quickly.'
Jack nodded. 'Could you find his change of clothes and take it into him, I don't think any of us need to see him wearing just a towel again.'
'You could keep lockers in the bathroom area, Sir.'
'Where's the fun in that.'
Ianto rolled his eyes before following after the medic.

Tosh looked at Jack as they were left alone. 'He's right, it did escalate quickly this time.'
'Yeah.' He nodded as he thought about the retrieval. 'It was a fairly standard exercise you know what those two are like. It never takes much.' He handed back the scanner and patted her on the shoulder. 'Come on, I'll make you a green tea, I've got some biscuits in my office.'
'Thanks Jack.'
He nodded as he gave her a fond smile. Of all his team she'd been the one who had most needed him. They were all like his children in a way, each damaged by their life experiences, each with something to prove. For Tosh he sometimes had to remind her that she had escaped the UNIT cell. And if it meant keeping a supply of biscuits hidden in one of his desk draws, then he was willing to do it. The fact he kept eating the biscuits and had to keep replacing the packets was just a hazard of the job.

Suzie came over with a print out and handed it to Jack. 'It's a harmless substrate, shall we file it under silly putty?'
'If you can fit that on the form before you go home.'
'Thanks Jack.'
He nodded as she headed to her own desk and reached for a new folder while he turned back to Tosh. 'Come on, I think the world is safe enough for today.'
'Unlike your biscuits.'
'Yeah.' Jack guided Tosh towards his office. 'Ianto was really funny about my buying them the other day.'
'You went to the supermarket with Ianto?'
'Was I supposed to leave him in the car?' The Welshman asked, joining their conversation. 'Although, it might have been safer.'
'Ha, admit it, the coffee machine was a good idea.'
'Better than buying a juicer Sir.'

By Thursday Ianto was actually optimistic he would get to London for Lisa's birthday.
Owen shook his head. 'Famous last words teaboy.'
'Yes but if everything does turn to shit, you won't need an archivist to sort it out until after the fact.'
'True.' Owen agreed. 'But we would get it dealt with faster if you were on hand with the coffee.'
Ianto gave him a brief smile. 'I'm not the butler.'
'I've never said you were.' Owen pointed out as he headed back to the Tralothian they'd found washed up in the bay. 'I'd love to stay and chat but I've got an alien to autopsy.'
'That should keep you entertained for the rest of the afternoon. Will Sir still be needing his nap at three today?' Ianto asked.
'Someone's snarky, good thing you'll be seeing your ball and chain tomorrow night.'
'Are you implying that sex makes a person less snarky?'
'I am.' Owen nodded.
'So if you're having as much sex as you claim you are, why aren't you nicer to be around?' Ianto smiled before walking away.
Tosh looked up from her computer, laughing.
'Oh shut it.' The medic snapped before storming off to the autopsy bay and his dead alien.

Jack walked up and stood beside Tosh. 'What did I miss?'
She grinned as she pulled the CCTV footage up. Waiting for him to laugh she wasn't disappointed. She'd always enjoyed the sound of Jack's laughter. She particularly enjoyed how much more he'd been laughing over the last two weeks. Something she put down to their borrowed archivist.
'Ianto Jones, you saucy minx.' Jack muttered before heading to his office. 'If there's even the slightest chance of a rift emergency I'll be in my office, phoning London. Don't hesitate to interrupt me.' He looked over his shoulder at her. 'I mean that, anything at all, you come get me.'
'Sorry Jack, nothing's brewing today.'
He gave an exaggerated sigh before vanishing into his office and the bi-weekly teleconference with his counterparts.

Archie at Torchwood Two, had as little time for their London office as he did. Yvonne Hartman and her delusions of clean and free energy. He knew the technology for that wasn't going to exist for another two centuries but she wouldn't listen. That and there was a reason why the pursuit of that sort of knowledge was the founding basis of several science fiction horror stories. Picking the phone up he dialled into the secure line and wondered what emergency he could manufacture this time. He considered confronting Yvonne on her ghosts, but he never knew if that would shut her down, or just encourage her to wax poetic on the advantages of the free energy they provided. Sometimes he wondered what god he'd been cursed by, to be surrounded by people like her. But she'd sent him Ianto, and the man didn't even try to spy on them and report back to London. He had of course, asked Tosh to check. It occurred to Jack that London likely had no idea of the sheer volume of secrets were hidden in the man's very attractive head. His memory alone was the sort of asset wars had been fought over, and then there was the coffee. He was jolted from his musing by a harsh voice yelling down the line.

'Harkness! I said do you have anything to report from Cardiff!'
Jack heard a thick Scottish accent cut in before Yvonne could get even more wound up. 'Steady on there lassie, no need for an aneurysm the lad's a busy man. Not all of us sit in wee glass towers communing with the gods ya ken.'
'Hmm, and when do I get my archivist back?' She asked.
'I can't keep him?' Jack quipped.
'That depends, who did we send?'
'Ianto Jones.' Jack heard typing followed by a dismissive snort down the phone.
'He's hardly important, you can keep him for as long as you want. Now, about this expense report Archibald. Can you explain the increase in your stationary costs? You're one man in Scotland, how many paperclips do you really need.'
'You wanted it itemized lassie.'

Jack had to consider, in that single moment stretching out like forever over the phone, that Archie was just playing with Yvonne. Listening to the man speak at length about the differences between using staples and paperclips in his filing. Jack took the opportunity to finish some of his paperwork while the other two argued over paperclips. If he was to take Yvonne at her word, he could keep Ianto, but the young man wanted to get home to his girlfriend. Leaving Jack conflicted.

Ianto had a life, one that included Lisa and for all his flirting, that was one line he wouldn't cross. Of all the dilemmas he'd ever faced, this wasn't the one he thought he'd ever have the most trouble with. He might mock what to him was a puritanical approach to the pleasures of the flesh, but he respected established relationships. Leaving him with a crush on his archivist that he was unlikely to ever get to act on.