Jack swept both hands over his face, trying to wipe away the uncommon fatigue that had settled so heavily upon him. In the bed beside which he sat, Gwen slept on, though during Owen's last check-up he'd assured the Captain that the most recent dose of sedatives would wear off soon and she would wake within the hour.
Smiling grimly to himself, Jack shifted in the plastic chair, attempting to get more comfortable as he settled in to wait. He was determined that Gwen would know he'd been there for her, even if it had taken him far too long to realise that necessity for himself.
Ianto had been right to accuse him of avoiding spending time alone with her. He'd actually managed to surprise himself with his behaviour; he had truly thought he'd become accustomed to seeing the people he cared for die, hence his insistence on seizing the day and making the most of every moment he might have with them.
Of course with Gwen, it seemed, that practise had been shot to hell.
Jack studied her sleeping face, wondering at which precise moment she'd gotten under his skin. He knew he had admired her impetuous and determined personality from their very first encounter, and of course she was more than just a little attractive, but somewhere along the line he'd realised that there was something else that set her apart from most of the people Jack had met in his lifetime.
And those she was similar to were ones with which he'd ended up in serious relationships.
Jack lifted a hand and tidied Gwen's hair, straightening her fringe and moving a stray dark strand from across her face. He could easily fall in love with her, already did love her to a certain extent, but he'd held back from allowing anything to happen between them and, even more importantly, from allowing himself to give her his heart.
At the start he'd restrained himself to better enjoy the game. It was clear she wouldn't have resisted for long if Jack had really turned on the charm, but that was far too easy and so he'd refused to act until he'd had a bit of fun watching her squirm.
As he'd come to know her, however, and recognised what they could have together, he'd hesitated again, his mind ensnared by the holes his previous loves had left in his heart. And when Gwen had agreed to marry Rhys, he'd realised that he couldn't deny her the chance of a normal love, even if Torchwood meant there would be nothing normal about the rest of her life.
Of course those decisions, which Jack knew to be for the best, did not stop him from questioning that choice now that she was so close to death.
"I do regret it," he said quietly, resting a hand on Gwen's bandaged arm. "But it was the right thing to do. If I'd given it a chance, one of us would have had to change, and I'm not sure that would have been good for anyone."
Alex smiled down at the man on the floor. "Strip," he repeated warmly. "You don't want to get your nice suit creased, do you?"
Caught off guard by the suddenly pleasant tone, Ianto shook his head. When Alex turned away, he pulled himself to his feet, torn between demanding to know precisely what was going on and simply giving into the order. He eyed the door but didn't make a move towards it, held in place by the need that had brought him here. He wanted to be rid of the tumultuous emotions that were troubling him and only Alex was capable of doing that.
Even if he was insisting on a different tone and location for it.
Ianto toed off his shoes then bent down to pull at his socks, trusting the other man to know what he was doing. He was a professional after all, a highly recommended one at that, and Ianto had been happy with everything else he'd provided in the previous few months.
"Sit," Alex said from across the room, his back to Ianto.
Rolling his eyes, Ianto sat and continued to undress. Perhaps when Alex had said he wanted to do something different he'd meant treating Ianto like a dog. What would be next? 'Fetch'? 'Roll over'? The young man bit back a chuckle at the idea and hoped that wasn't the case.
Some people might dream of wearing collars, but not Ianto. Unless it was a tie, Ianto didn't like things around his neck; he had an inexplicable, albeit entirely normal, fear of strangulation. He had, in fact, informed Alex of that whilst they were setting the ground rules, so he was fairly sure dog collars and leashes were off the menu. Thankfully.
Alex turned around once Ianto was down to only his trousers, revealing that he now held a padded cuff in each hand. Ianto licked his lips as he recognised them as the beautifully crafted leather ones he'd admired earlier that week and his back warmed instantly with the phantom memory of being lashed.
He knew those cuffs, he wanted those cuffs, and he stood up, his arms outstretched. A quiet and detached voice in the back of his mind noted his clearly Pavlovian response but he ignored it, wanting only the familiar tightness around his wrists.
Alex smiled knowingly. "Trousers," he said and Ianto hurried to rid himself of the final item of clothing, folding them neatly and adding them to the rest piled on the corner of the bed. When he straightened up, Alex was beside him and he fixed the snug cuffs to the wrists Ianto presented again promptly.
"Sit," he said again and Ianto did so. "Arms behind your back." He leaned down and reached behind Ianto to attach the short chain on one cuff to a hook on the other, binding his arms firmly in place.
Alex pulled back, trailing a hand over Ianto's bicep and then around to the back of his neck. He smiled, moving to sit beside Ianto, but as he turned, he tightened his grip and pulled the young man with him.
In one graceful movement, Ianto found himself staring at the carpet.
He blinked dumbly, trying to work out what had just happened, as Alex rearranged them both, widening his legs to help Ianto balance. A hand settled on the small of his back, beneath his own trapped hands, whilst the other slid between his shoulder blades. Ianto's mind finally caught up with his position across the other man's lap, his head almost touching the floor and his backside sticking up in the air. If the blood wasn't already rushing to his face from being upside down, he would have blushed.
"Alex," he began, only to be silenced by a sharp slap to the backs of his thighs.
"You said you trusted me, remember?"
It was clearly a rhetorical question and so Ianto said nothing, merely grudgingly accepted the truth of his words. He had said that, and he did trust Alex – he undoubtedly knew more about this kind of thing than Ianto himself – it was simply rather unsettling to find himself sprawled across someone's knees without any warning.
Fingers swept over his back, over the faint lines that had almost entirely faded since their last session. Ianto shivered, remembering, and tried to focus on his breathing as Alex's hand slid down across his twisted arms to the waistband of his underwear. Ianto's heart began to race. He'd known what this position had meant the moment Alex had swung him over, but the observant part of his mind only started speaking up when the other man's hand traced one round buttock through the tight dark cotton.
He shifted automatically, discomfort rising and got another slap to his thighs for it.
The fingers returned to the band of elastic and tugged slowly downwards, exposing Ianto's backside but not completely removing the garment, letting the waistband hug the underside of his ass and pull against his cock where it was still trapped inside the material.
"You have a male lover, don't you?" Alex asked suddenly, his hand stroking over Ianto's skin. "That's why you insisted I only leave light marks on your back."
Ianto's breath was coming faster now, his attention divided between trying to balance himself on his toes and reminding himself that he needed to trust this man.
"But you can't be that close if you're confident he won't notice anything even as faint as this on your body." Ianto could hear the smile in Alex's voice. "Unless you top...but somehow I can't imagine you limiting yourself like that." The older man ran his hand over the base of Ianto's spine. "I suppose you could only use certain positions until the marks had faded, but how would you explain such a request?" The legs under Ianto's chest shifted slightly as the older man shrugged. "Either way, he doesn't have a clue what makes you tick. He doesn't know about this at all, does he?"
Ianto stared at the carpet, unwilling to respond. Jack had nothing to do with this part of his life and he certainly didn't want to start discussing how close – or not, as the case might be – he was to the Captain.
Alex's hand fell heavily against Ianto's ass. "I asked you a question."
Ianto jerked in surprise, the slap harder than the ones on his thighs had been. "No," he said. "He doesn't."
"What's his name?"
Ianto hesitated and received another smack almost instantly. He shook his head, refusing to answer. Alex slapped him again and his hips jolted forward, pushing his trapped cock into the older man's thigh. A strangled noise escaped his throat, embarrassment threatening to overwhelm him. He squirmed and Alex's other hand moved to the back of his neck, stilling him with that simple touch.
"Tell me his name," Alex said, quiet but firm, accompanying every following moment of silence with a stinging slap.
He repeated the question a number of times, but Ianto could only hear his voice and not his words, the sound a distant murmur as the strikes against his backside continued. His buttocks clenched in anticipation of every smack and his entire body rocked as they increased swiftly in strength. Whack...whack...WHACK! A particularly harsh hit to the increasingly tender area made Ianto gasp out loud.
"Owen!" he cried through gritted teeth, only just able to retain hold of his senses to keep from answering honestly. "His name's Owen!"
He braced himself for the next slap, half expecting Alex to see through his lie, but it didn't come. Instead the older man's palm rubbed over his reddened skin, gentle and soothing. "Good boy," Alex murmured and Ianto swallowed a bitter laugh, reminded of his earlier thoughts about being treated like a dog.
"Do you know why you come here?" Alex asked casually, as though he wasn't currently fondling the ass of the fully-grown man lying across his lap.
Ianto frowned at the question, feeling like he was two steps behind and even further out of his depth. He thought about it for a moment...why was he here? Here in this man's bedroom, almost entirely naked and being spanked?
His face burnt with humiliation as he pictured what he must look like, bent over Alex's knees like a misbehaving child in need of discipline, his backside exposed and covered in bright red handprints.
As though in response to his thought, another sharp blow fell, making him jump from both the sound and the pain upon his sensitive skin. He shook his head, then realised that wouldn't be enough of an answer. "No!" he cried out.
He'd been avoiding considering too deeply the reason why he felt the need to have this man hurt him; when he was at work or at home (on the odd occasion he was actually there) he made the effort not to think about it, lest his secret show through in his behaviour. When he was here with Alex, he stopped thinking all together and instead simply felt his way through the sessions.
Despite Ianto's response, the open palm continued to strike against his backside, falling harder and harder, causing him to jerk rhythmically against Alex's leg. WHACK...WHACK... His cock began to swell with blood, the friction exciting him against his will, and though he squirmed, ashamed, the older man had too firm a hold upon him and he could not move away. His groin rubbed against the strong muscled thigh beneath him, creating a luscious counterpoint to the stinging of his abused cheeks.
"You're lying."
"No!" Ianto said again, only barely aware of the strained conversation, whilst the sensations throughout his body tried their best to distract him.
"You come here to forget about your problems," the older Welshman answered for him. "To let go and step outside yourself." He accompanied his words with a flurry of hard, bruising blows and then, without warning, Ianto was on his back, shoved from Alex's knees to the floor. His side burnt from scraping across the carpet but that barely registered as he stared up at the man looming over him, trying to work out how he could have been pushed down again without instinctively trying to defend himself. Where had all his training gone?
Alex twisted slightly, snatching up Ianto's hastily, yet neatly, folded clothes from the corner of the bed and flinging them to the floor. "Up," he commanded.
Ianto glanced at his crumpled suit in mute dismay and a fist closed in his hair, dragging him to his knees. "Up," Alex growled again and Ianto found his feet just in time to keep from being hauled onto the bed by his hair. He sprawled over the covers in an ungainly heap and then struggled to push himself up when he realised what position he was in.
Just as he managed to sit upright, legs caught in a tangle beneath him, the bed dipped with the other man's weight and warm skin pressed against his back.
"You're a very reserved man, Ianto. You pride yourself on your control, don't you?"
Ianto tensed in alarm as Alex's cloth-covered groin pushed against his bound hands, the hardness there unmistakable. It was bad enough that his own cock still stood defiantly half-erect in the confines of his underwear, but to know that the other man was aroused as well almost sent him over the edge into a full-blown panic attack. His heart raced, his breathing loud and laboured and Ianto was struck with a sudden memory from the first day he'd met Alex.
"Before we discuss anything else, I have to make something very clear. I'm not selling sex here. I'm not a whore."
Ianto gasped as lips touched his neck, strong arms encircling him and hands smoothing over his chest.
"I didn't presume that you were."
Alex curled his fingers, digging his nails into Ianto's flesh and scraping them down his pectorals, leaving eight individual arcs of red in their wake. Ianto gasped and tried to flinch away from the pain, yet only managed to push back harder against the other man.
"One can only hold back their emotions for so long," Alex murmured into his ear. "Then they have to be expelled." He rocked against Ianto's balled fists. "You chose light bondage and pain to counter your strict need for control, but it wasn't enough."
He removed one hand from Ianto's chest and fumbled between them, pulling down his jogging bottoms and letting his cock spring free.
Ianto began to tremble.
"Open your hands."
Ianto shook his head. He couldn't speak.
"Open your hands," Alex repeated, and this time there was clear warning in his rumbling tone.
Ianto obediently loosened his fists and the other man slid his erection into their grasp. Alex used his free hand to curl Ianto's fingers around his stiff flesh before returning it to his chest.
"Tell me how you feel."
Ianto gave a weak laugh of disbelief and Alex began to push into the tunnel formed by his hands.
"You're scared," Alex said. "You're embarrassed. You can't do anything to stop me." The older man reached down and pushed his fingers into Ianto's boxers. "I'm stronger than you. Even if your arms weren't tied, you'd be no match for me." He pulled the material down over Ianto's hard cock, wrapped a hand around it and began to stroke. "You've got no control, Ianto. I can do whatever I want and you have to take it."
Ianto drew in a sharp breath, the heady mixture of what was happening to his body and the revelation that he truly had no power over this situation sending an astonishing sensation of freedom through him. He wasn't doing anything, he didn't have to do anything, everything was happening to him and all he could do was let it.
His hips lifted slightly in response to the stimulation and Alex's other hand slipped down to cup his balls, rolling them firmly between his fingers. Behind him, Ianto's own fists tightened, squeezing the hardness they held. Hot breath gusted over his ear, Alex leaning even closer as he thrust into Ianto's hands. He licked at Ianto's neck, directly over the throb of his racing pulse, then nipped at the skin and the younger man's head dropped back in submission, giving him better access.
The fingers around his cock tightened, thumb slipping into the leaking slit at the peak of every jerk, and his balls were kneaded until they ached.
Ianto fought the sensations, hated the way his body pushed into the other man's hands, the way his hands gripped the thick cock and imagined what it would be like to have it forced inside him. It was wrong, so wrong, but still he spiralled up towards orgasm with alarming haste, breath hiccupping out of dry lips until suddenly he was coming in a violent burst, spilling himself across the sheets with a pained cry of ecstasy.
Alex continued to stroke him, milking him until it hurt. "Harder," he whispered into Ianto's ear and the young man's hands dutifully clenched around Alex's cock, sending him over the edge with a joyful grunt, his seed arcing up across Ianto's faintly striped back.