"The bed room's up stairs." Jack called after him as he closed the door. "I'll be up in a minuite."

"OK." Gray replied, padding softly a cross the old wood and in to the bed room. Two beds were in side, one next to the window and the other nearer to the door; both with thick blue duvets and fluffy white pillows. The younger sibling opted for the one be sides the window and settled him self down, gazing up at the inky square of blackness. He didn't want to sleep. It wasn't the night mares that he struggled with, just the fact that when ever he closed his eyes thoughts and images would come wondering in and leave him paralysed with fear.

At some point he realised that Jack had come in and was sitting cross legged a top the duvet of the second bed, staring at him with an un read able look on his face. Then he suddenly chucked some thing a cross to Gray who caught it, he pulled a loop of string taunt and watched in fascination as a circle shaped stone with a hole in the middle dangled on the end; he recognised it as a Parfror, loosely translated in to ' night mare stone' from Belavian. He looked up at his brother, "Thank you." He whispered, incredibly reluctant to break the silence pressing down on them. Jack just shrugged and turned a way, curling his legs up as he buried his face deep in to his pillow. It made him look like a child, lost and far a way from home; Gray pulled the string over his head and sat looking at the immortal's back, completely help less as to what he should do next. "Do you have night mares?" he asked eventually, indecisive as to whether he actually wanted a response or not.

"I'm immortal, I don't need to sleep." Jack replied with another shrug.

"You have to sleep some time? The younger countered with a small frown, "Or at least you slept be fore you turned immortal."

"I don't want to talk a bout it."

"OK, good night Blue."

"Night."

TW

The next time Gray woke up it took him a while to work out precisely why he had been pulled so abruptly out of dream land. Then he heard the sound of the toilet flushing an the taps running and he was fairly sure that there was a sob in amongst all of that too and it was a battle of wills if he should get up and see what was happening or stay put and give Jack some space.

In the end he found him self peering out of the door down the landing and eventually forcing him self to venture out further when no sound was further emitted but a dull thud. He gazed in through the crack in the door as best as he could in the dim light and searched out his brother and found him sitting on the cold hard lino under neath the sink with a far a way look on his face. He was just a bout to turn right back a round and head back down the squeaky landing to wards the bed room when Jack suddenly called out to him. "Gray? What's wrong?" so the younger crossed the freezing cold lino and curled up next to his brother who put a comforting arm a round him and pulled him closer for some extra warmth.

"I woke up and saw that you weren't there so I came looking." Gray explained, "I could ask you the same thing."

"Needed the bath room." The ex con man shrugged, "Told you that I didn't need to sleep."

"Not even after you've died?" he asked.

"Not even then. Which is quite good be cause if I have to sleep then I would have had so much paper work back at Torchwood I wouldn't even have been able to get out the door." He was trying to smile and make it all in to a joke; even he could see that, in spite of what little contact he had had with other people as an adult. May be he ought to change the subject. Thank fully, Jack did it for him. "You used to have a right mop of curly hair you did." He commented softly.

"John cut it once when I was a sleep be cause he said that it made me look like a hobo. What is a hobo?"

"It's…." the immortal paused as he tried to remember the word for hobo in their native language, "It's a Morlube." It had been so long since he had spoken in that language! The last time had been when he was with the Doctor that still wore the leather jacket and wanted to learn more a bout his new companion over 2100 years a go. Gray blinked in surprise.

"But that's what Yalae used to call me." He said, referring to the elder boy at school who had bullied every one that he saw.

"Yeah, he called all of the people who lived near the beach Morlubes."

"'til you and Ellie threw sand in his eyes, then you were the exception and got called mekrittu."

"Yeah." The pair sat in silence for a while until,

"Was Ianto special then?" if the immortal was surprised at his younger brother's out of the blue question then he most certainly didn't let it show on his face.

"Yeah, he sure was some thing al right."

"Why?" jack pondered his answer, trying to put his feelings in to words was an activity that he had never particularly excelled at.

"Not a clue." He told Gray eventually and the younger man nodded in under standing.

"Did you love him?"

"Yeah, I did, but…" he trailed off, a blank look coming in to his eyes as he remembered what had happened in Thames House.

"What happened?"

And Jack told him, he told him all a bout the welsh man who had stalked Jack until he had gotten a job and how he had captured a dinosaur with a bar of chocolate and how he had loved his girl friend so much that he would have risked the entire world to save her and he explained a bout the Master and the year that never was and what had happened on board the Valiant and how absolutely brilliantly Ianto had looked after him when the night mares invaded every time he closed his eyes and carried on loving him in spite of the fact that Jack had lost their child and how the young man had sat up with him all night after the incident with the creature in the ware house made him so incredibly sick because it reminded him of the Valiant. He even explained about th and Alice and Thames House and all that he could say in reply to 'I love you' was 'don't'. and the two brothers carried on just sitting there and talking until the first rays of the sun began appearing to drive a way the night and Jack had reached the point where he looked as though the slightest thing would make him burst in to tears.

A silence hung over them like the Black Death, neither sibling wanting very much to be the first to break it. Gray gave a soft yawn and slumped further down Jack's side, rubbing drowsily at his eyes in a futile attempt to keep them open. "Time for bed." The immortal ex con man said with a smirk and picked him up in his arms as though he was a child a gain but he was too tired to argue.

"Aww, so you're not going to read me a bed time story then?" he giggled. Surprisingly, Jack sat down on the bed next to him and pulled his head in to his lap.

"Don't want you going cranky on me." He teased as a way of explanation. Gray mumbled some thing that sounded like a protest but snuggled down any way and so the tale begun.