Disclaimer: I may not own Jack, Ianto or Torchwood, the creations of Russel T. Davies, but I shall return them in perfect working order... hopefully.

Encounter No. 2: September 2003

When Ianto finished school, he went on to take physics at university to please his father, who'd never had the opportunity of higher education, but he soon found the work tedious and boring, even if he was good at it. In his second year however, he found himself torn between new two options. Two options that could lead to jobs that Ianto could only have dreamed of.

His first was to take a job as a minor ICT support technician for the military based UNIT and his second was to take a job as a runner for Torchwood London. He'd battled for a while over what he should do, and eventually, he'd settled on Torchwood as at that point in time, he had no interest in getting involved in fighting.

By the time he turned twenty, Ianto had been working at Torchwood Tower for a month, and already his supervisors were putting him in for promotion. He continued to work diligently, never complaining about the menial tasks and having to travel up and down the building many times a day to deliver post and memos to different floors. Due to this, his supervisor decided that he should be the one to collect the head of Torchwood Three from the train station when he arrived for his annual meeting with Director Hartman.

Like every other person working in Torchwood, Ianto knew the rumours about Captain Harkness, yet couldn't claim whether there was any truth behind them. He didn't even know what the man looked like. Very few people in Torchwood Tower did, because he very rarely visited. There was some sort of feud raging between the man and Director Hartman, a feud that no one knew the reason for.

It was his curiosity about the infamous Captain that made Ianto accept the job. On the Monday morning after he received the job, Ianto found himself leaning on the car door, waiting for Captain Harkness to arrive. He found himself trying to imagine what the man would look like, what he could possibly have about him that caused the rumours; the rumours that he could get anyone he wanted into bed, whether they were male or female, gay or straight, the rumours that he could charm the wings off a butterfly with no more than a smile.

When the man he was waiting for turned the corner, Ianto almost swore. The man walking towards him, Captain Jack Harkness, was the man from the coffee shop, all those years ago. He couldn't quite get his head around it, though later, on the drive back to Torchwood Tower, he would realise that Torchwood Three was situated in Cardiff, which made the coincidence slightly less bizarre.

The man stood tall, shoulders back, chin up, with a furious expression on his face. Ianto could tell that he was about to lay into him, so he made the first move, trying to save himself from being snapped at by the admittedly stunning man. As he approached the car, Ianto held his hand out in a gesture of good faith, the Captain taking it with a slight air of reluctance.

"Captain Jack Harkness, pleased to meet you." Ianto couldn't help but smile a little at the way his tone of voice clashed with the words he was saying.

"Jones, Ianto Jones. Shall we, sir?" Ianto was trying his best to keep his expression neutral, but when Jack flung himself into the car, he couldn't help but think there was something vaguely childish about his behaviour, a natural instinct to being dragged from his home and workplace perhaps. Whatever it was, it left Ianto more than a little amused with the stories of the notorious Captain. So far, he couldn't see any credence to them at all.