Ianto awoke to deafening silence, and an empty bed. He lay still for a minute or two, slightly disoriented and not entirely sure where he was. It was only as he rolled over and caught a whiff of the powerful scent of Jack that he remembered. A moment beyond that, it registered in his slightly addled mind that he was actually alone in the bed. He sat up with a jolt and scrambled up the ladder into Jack's office. The Captain sat at his desk, filling out what looked at a glance like a requisition form, and looking for the world like nothing was wrong.
The younger man did slight double-take, and promptly corrected himself. Jack sat at his desk, wearing his greatcoat. No, not just wearing it – he had it fully buttoned up, like it was some kind of protective shield. Ianto's breath quickened, and not from excitement. The greatcoat, when it was buttoned up completely like this, closed around Jack's throat at the collar. Jack hated the feeling of anything around his throat, and for that reason Ianto had only ever seen him fully button the coat on a handful of occasions, usually when it was pouring rain.
For him to be sitting at his desk, with it fully enclosed right up to his throat – when he normally did not even wear the coat around the Hub at all – told Ianto that Jack was as far from being okay as he could get. He approached slowly, desperate not to do anything that might panic Jack all over again.
"Jack…?"
The Captain looked up and smiled, but it seemed to Ianto that it was an automatic gesture. There was no warmth, and it did not reach his eyes.
"Feeling better? You must have been tired, you slept for nearly four hours."
Ianto was barely able to control his urge to gape.
"I believe the idea was to get you to rest, Jack. How long have you been up here?"
"Not long," Jack answered, his eyes flickering nervously back and forth between Ianto and the paperwork in front of him. "Really, I only came back up about ten minutes ago."
Slowly, Ianto approached the desk.
"Did you sleep at all?"
"No…" Jack admitted uncomfortably. "But then, Owen said I didn't have to. He just said I needed to rest… and I did."
Ianto couldn't argue with that logic. Jack did appear calmer than he had been earlier, although he did wonder how long the façade would last.
"Are you… I mean… How are you feeling?" Ianto asked, and immediately wanted to slap himself up-side the back of his head for asking such an inane question. Jack, for his part, didn't appear too perturbed by it.
"I'm okay," he answered after a moment's thought. He paused, and then flashed Ianto a disarming grin. "Coffee? Please…?"
"Of course," Ianto agreed automatically and turned to go and do as asked, while at the same time he wanted to scream aloud in frustration. He knew damned well that he had to talk to Jack about what had happened before Christmas, but Jack's insistence on behaving as though nothing was wrong was only making it that much harder. Then again, he had to concede that this time it wasn't Jack who should be making the effort. It was him.
Coffee, he decided wearily. Everything would be easier with a nice, healthy dose of caffeine. It occurred to him that perhaps he should be supplying Jack with a decaf brand, rather than his usual, heavily caffeinated brand, only to promptly dismiss the thought. To begin with, Jack would probably have his hide. And secondly, he simply didn't keep decaf in the Hub. No one drank it, not when he so willingly supplied them with the real thing.
"Yan…"
Ianto paused in the doorway, schooling himself not to react at all to Jack's use of that much-loathed shortening of his name.
"What is it, Jack?"
He wondered whether perhaps he'd allowed some of his irritation to filter through regardless as Jack hesitated in responding. He turned back fully, and offered Jack a warm smile, despite the chill that was gradually forming deep in his gut.
"Before… You did believe me… didn't you? When I said I was sorry? We are okay… aren't we?"
The uncertainty and fear in Jack's eyes was more than Ianto could stand, and it took superb mastery of will not to simply rush over and kiss Jack soundly on the mouth to reassure him. After what had happened earlier in Jack's little room, Ianto was reluctant to even touch him, for fear of triggering a panic attack.
Taking care not to move suddenly, Ianto walked back and crouched down in front of Jack, putting himself in a deliberately submissive position. He avoided taking hold of Jack by the wrists or hands, and instead settled for resting his hands lightly on Jack's knees.
"Jack, you have nothing to apologise for. You haven't done anything wrong, I promise you."
Jack said nothing, but the look on his face clearly told Ianto that he didn't believe him. Ianto felt a fresh surge of frustration that he had a hard time concealing. Getting frustrated with Jack now would solve nothing, and only end up opening a whole new can of worms. On the other hand, Ianto really did not want to tell him the truth, either. At least, not yet. God only knew what it would do to Jack's already fragile state of mind to be told that his lover had been too ashamed of him to let him meet his family.
Ianto shut his eyes, silently begging for a strength that he honestly didn't believe he possessed, and for the right words to convince Jack that he was not to blame for anything at all.
He felt a tentative, exploratory touch of fingers in his hair and instinctively tilted his head towards that inquisitive touch, eager to show Jack that his touch was still a welcome thing. Opening his eyes, he looked up at Jack with the most reassuring smile that he could muster.
"Why don't I go and get that coffee for you, then?"
Jack's hand withdrew, and Ianto stood up slowly. He started to go, but then turned back and leaned down to kiss Jack softly on the top of his head. It was an innocent enough gesture, but even so Ianto felt Jack flinch at the gentle and loving touch, and he felt his heart break for his lover.
"I'll be right back," Ianto reassured him. "I promise."
Ianto emerged from Jack's office to find his colleagues working with renewed vigour. He joined them, observing their frenetic work with mild curiosity.
"What's going on?" he wondered. Owen, who was on his way back down into the autopsy bay, paused to glance surreptitiously towards the closed door of Jack's office before answering.
"We're going to find the bastards who hurt Jack, and deal with them."
Ianto stared at Owen in surprise and mild concern.
"Deal with them? How? You can't kill them, Owen… as much as we might like to."
"I know. Pity about that. No, we're going to find them, and ret-con the fuckers… maybe even fit them up for a murder or two. Either way, Jack'll never have to worry about them again."
"Owen…"
"No!" Owen snapped. "Damn it, they hurt our Captain, Ianto! Like you said, we can't kill them, but we can damn well make sure that they'll never hurt anyone ever again. Especially Jack."
"That's all well and good," Ianto said tensely, "but you're going to be competing with the police over it. You know Detective Swanson isn't going to let it go, no matter how many times you pull rank."
Owen snorted.
"So we'll ret-con her, too, if we have to. Probably should've done that anyway after letting her in here to see him."
Ianto gritted his teeth together and resisted the powerful desire to answer back. Anything he might have wanted to say right then would only get him into trouble, so it simply wasn't worth it.
"Where is Jack?" Owen asked suddenly, frowning. "Still resting?"
"Depends on your concept of resting. He's sitting at his desk."
"Doing what?" Gwen asked, speaking up for the first time.
"Staring blankly at a requisition form when I last looked," Ianto answered flatly. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I promised him fresh coffee."
He hurried off before more questions could be forthcoming. After just a moment's hesitation, Tosh got up and followed him.
He was halfway through brewing a fresh pot for Jack when he heard footsteps approaching him from behind. Too light for Owen, it had to be either Tosh or Gwen.
"Ianto…?"
It was Tosh. He felt relieved, not entirely sure that he could have coped with Gwen right at that moment. Carefully schooling his expression into one of polite indifference, he turned to face her... and froze. The look on her face caught him entirely off-guard. It was not the look of general anxiety that they had all been sporting since learning about the assault on their Captain. This was a look of pure disappointment, and all of a sudden Ianto was at a loss for words.
"I spoke to Owen," she said tentatively. "He, um… He said that Jack never left with you on Christmas Eve because you… you took back the invitation to spend Christmas Day with your family."
Ianto could feel the blood draining from his face, even as she watched him with a look that pled for him to refute the accusation. It had been hard enough dealing with this with Owen. He wasn't sure that he could take it from Tosh as well.
She came forward slowly, tears in her eyes.
"I just want to know why, Ianto. Please explain it to me, because I don't understand. Why would you do that to Jack? You must know how much he'd been looking forward to spending the day with you and your family…"
"I know," Ianto whispered, feeling his eyes start to burn in a telltale and unwelcome sign that he was about to lose control of his emotions. "Damn it, I know."
"Then why? Did he do something? Or say something?"
"No!" Ianto choked out. "God, no… It wasn't him, Tosh. It wasn't him at all. It was me, being a bloody fool. I… I just never realised how badly I'd hurt Jack until it was too late."
She took his hands in hers, and squeezed gently.
"So, when you came running back into the Hub…?"
"I was hoping to catch Jack before he went anywhere," Ianto admitted miserably. "He left a… He left something in my car for me, and I wanted to tell him I was sorry, and that he could still come with me if he wanted to. But I was too late."
Tosh felt tears in her own eyes. She understood Ianto's grief. Had he been just a minute or two sooner, he would have intercepted Jack, kept him from leaving, and everything that followed might never have happened. It was a possibility that could easily drive them all insane. She squeezed his hands again.
"Talk to me, Ianto. Tell me why."
He drew in a shuddering breath, trying to find the words to explain.
"I was scared," he admitted finally. "I was scared that my parents would react badly to Jack. They… They don't know, Tosh. They don't know that I'm… that I'm not strictly heterosexual. I can't tell them that I have a boyfriend, they'd never accept it. If Jack had come with me on Christmas Day, it would have blown everything out of the water. You know what Jack is like, he wouldn't be able to help himself. He'd say or do something… and my dad isn't stupid. He'd figure it out… and all because Jack can't bloody keep his hands to himself… or just doesn't know when to keep his mouth shut." He shook his head in distress. "It was my fault, I should never have invited him in the first place. I got all caught up in the so-called Christmas spirit, and forgot that Jack wouldn't know the meaning of discretion if it bit him on the bloody arse!"
He'd just finished speaking when Tosh uttered a tiny gasp, and dismay filled her eyes. Ianto's stomach dropped unpleasantly, and with growing nausea he turned around slowly. Jack stood there, staring at Ianto with a look of hurt on his face that cut Ianto to the very core.
"Jack…"
"I'm sorry," Jack stammered. "I…"
Abruptly, he turned and bolted, cutting across the floor of the Hub, and out through the cog door before any of them could stop him.
"What the hell did you say to him now?" Owen exploded as he came back up from the autopsy bay in time to see Jack vanish through the door.
"Never mind that!" Gwen snapped. "We have to stop him from leaving! Tosh, can you trigger a lockdown?"
"If I do, it'll be a full one, and we'll be stuck here for the next six hours!" Tosh exclaimed.
"Just do it," Owen told her. "If he gets out, God only knows where he might disappear to, and he is not in a fit state of mind to be wandering around the bloody city on his own!"
Tosh ran to her monitor and her fingers flew over the keyboard.
"Ianto, get your arse upstairs and go after him," Owen snapped angrily. "You made this mess, start doing something to fix it."
Ianto didn't hesitate, but bolted through the cog door just seconds before it rolled closed with a heavy thud.
Jack ran up the stairs blindly. He didn't know where he was going to go once he was out of the Hub. All he knew was that he couldn't stay with Ianto when the younger man had made it painfully obvious that his company was not wanted.
Pain that was not of the physical kind cut through Jack as he tried to reconcile what he had heard Ianto tell Tosh. He wasn't to blame, Ianto had insisted to his face. He had nothing to be sorry for… And then he'd turned around and told Tosh… what? He had basically told Tosh that he was too embarrassed by him to risk letting him meet his family.
Jack prided himself on being relatively thick-skinned, but that truly hurt. As he ran up the long flight of steps to the surface level, another voice, insidious and evil, whispered in the back of his mind.
You really are a freak, aren't you? Your own lover can't even stand to have you around.
He reached the surface level and, with a choked sob, lunged against the door just as it swung closed and locked with a definitive click. He grunted loudly with the effort of trying to open it, but to no avail. The security door that led through into the tourist office was locked tight.
"Tosh activated a lockdown," a voice behind him explained, and Jack turned to find Ianto standing there at the top of the stairs, hands braced on his knees as he struggled to catch his breath. "Doors won't open again for another six hours."
"Why?" Jack demanded. Ianto hesitated, trying somewhat belatedly to choose his words with care.
"You can't leave the Hub yet, Jack."
A bitter look filled Jack's face.
"Scared I'll do something to embarrass you?"
Ianto winced at the tone as much as the words. He had never heard Jack sound as deeply hurt as he did right at that moment, and it tore him apart to know that he was partly responsible.
"Jack, I am sorry…"
He took a step forward, only to stop when Jack cringed back, away from him. Was it simply that Jack was too upset to want to allow him to get close, or was it an instinctive reaction born of his horrific experience just a couple of days ago? Ianto didn't know, and decided it was not the time or the place to test it out. Conceding, he sat down on the cold, dirty floor and leant back against the wall. After a long moment, Jack slowly mirrored the movement, sliding to the floor and tugging the greatcoat even more tightly around his body.
"I owe you an explanation," Ianto said quietly after a long, discomforting minute of silence. Jack said nothing, just stared back at him. Ianto went on with difficulty, forcing himself to hold Jack's gaze as he spoke.
"I wanted you with me on Christmas Day. I really did, Jack."
Silence. Ianto swallowed an instinctive desire to sigh, or roll his eyes. He needed to do everything he could to ensure Jack could see he was utterly serious.
"I'm not ashamed of you. I'm ashamed of myself for being afraid." He paused, and then launched into the explanation that he knew he should have given to Jack right from the beginning. "My parents are Roman Catholic. Strict Roman Catholic. To them, anything that deviates from heterosexuality is a mortal sin. I love my parents, Jack, I really do… and I was terrified over what would happen if they found out that I'm seeing another man."
"Why did you invite me, then?"
The question was so soft that Ianto nearly missed it.
"Because you're as important to me as my family, and I wanted to spend Christmas with you," Ianto answered equally softly. Jack looked away, rubbing self-consciously at his eyes.
"And yet you obviously thought it wouldn't bother me, taking back the invitation."
It was a statement of fact, not a question. Ianto ran his fingers through his hair, wondering if there was any way to say what he needed to say without hurting Jack even worse than he already had.
"I… I thought you weren't as serious about us."
Jack glanced up at him, and the bitter hurt in his eyes left Ianto reeling.
"You thought I couldn't possibly love you."
Ianto felt his stomach roll ominously.
"Yes," he admitted in a miserable whisper. Tears glistened in Jack's eyes, and this time he made no attempt to wipe them away or hide them from Ianto.
"Of course you did. Everyone thinks that. Jack's just a heartless bastard. Jack's just out for a good time. Jack wouldn't know what love was if it bit him on the ass."
As much as he wanted to refute him, Ianto couldn't. He and the rest of the team were all guilty of that assumption. Granted, Jack's playboy behaviour hadn't necessarily gone a long way towards changing that opinion, but even so…
And then, all of a sudden, he found himself thinking of Estelle. He hadn't really thought about her before now – the story Jack had given them had been that his father and Estelle had been in love during the war… except, now Ianto suddenly realised the truth. It hadn't been Jack's father, but rather Jack himself who had been in love with Estelle.
"You loved Estelle," he said softly. Jack nodded.
"Her… and others. I meant what I said to you that night, before we sent Tommy back to his own time. I didn't say it just to manipulate you into sleeping with me again. I just… I don't understand, Ianto. Why is it that everyone thinks I'm incapable of loving someone?"
"Because we don't understand," Ianto said softly. "You don't belong to this time, do you? The night we caught Myfanwy, we said something about fifty-first century pheromones. Is that when you're from? The fifty-first century?"
Jack hesitated for just a moment before deciding that he had little left to lose, and might as well speak openly.
"Yes. A little colony in the fifty-first century, called Boeshane. We have… different ideals about relationships than you people in the twenty-first century. People still got married and settled down, but multiple partners were common. It was an accepted fact that we were capable of loving more than one person, and no one believed there was a need to restrict ourselves to one lover. Religion was pretty much just a footnote in the history books by then, so we didn't have the same moral compass that we were expected to live our lives by. As long as we weren't hurting anyone else, no one really cared what anyone else did. And besides, humans are so few and far between by then that we tend to take it whenever it's on offer."
Ianto smiled, despite himself.
"Well, that certainly explains a lot."
Jack smiled faintly as well, the first real smile that Ianto had seen from him since… well, since before Christmas. He paused, and then decided to take another chance.
"Jack… Do you love me the same as you loved Estelle?"
"No," Jack answered without hesitation. Ianto's heart sank, but he had no chance to let the feeling take hold as Jack continued to speak. "I was able to walk away from Estelle. It hurt, but I did it. I can't walk away from you, Ianto. I tried once, but it was like trying to unlearn how to breathe. I couldn't do it. But more than that… I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to even think about living without you. With Estelle, I left because I didn't want to deal with the hurt of eventually losing her. With you, I can't walk away because I don't want to face losing you without all the memories that we have a chance to make between us."
Ianto raised an eyebrow bemusedly.
"You're being borderline romantic, Jack."
Jack didn't smile, but looked away bitterly.
"Another thing everyone thinks I only use for my own sexual convenience."
"I'm sorry," Ianto whispered. "Jack, I am so sorry. I wouldn't blame you if you didn't want anything more to do with me after this."
Jack's head snapped back around, and he stared hard at the younger man through a thin veil of tears.
"Weren't you listening to me? Did you hear anything I just said? I told you, I can't walk away from you. No matter how much it hurts, I just can't. I… I love you too much to ever want to let you go."
The last sentence came out in a barely audible whisper, and Ianto felt his head spin. He suspected he knew how much it cost Jack to make such a raw admission, and he decided quickly that it couldn't go unanswered – not if they were to have any chance at all. He shuffled across the floor to sit beside Jack. The other man winced a little in reaction to Ianto's physical proximity but, encouragingly, did not pull away.
"I love you, too, Jack. I know I hurt you badly, and I am sorry. I never meant to. Can you forgive me?"
Jack looked slowly around at him, and beyond the very palpable pain that Ianto could see in his lover's eyes, there was also a spark of hope, mixed with a healthy dose of wariness.
"I can't change who I am, Ianto."
"I don't want you to change, Jack. God, this is going to sound corny, but I have to say it. I love you for who you are, and I wouldn't want you to change. I'm the one who needs to change. I need to stop being afraid of what other people think. You're the only one whose opinion should matter to me."
He paused, and then reached a hand up to rest gently on Jack's shoulder. When there was no adverse reaction from the Captain, Ianto slid his arm across the expanse of Jack's shoulders and encouraged him to lean in against him. Jack did so with some reticence, and Ianto resisted the urge to try and force him. Jack's trust had been badly shaken in more ways than one, and he was under no illusions about the time and effort it would take to repair the damage.
Eventually, Jack began to relax just a fraction, and Ianto smiled sadly as he felt Jack's head settle against his shoulder. He knew the others were probably itching to know what was happening, but he had no intention of insisting that Jack move… regardless of how cold and uncomfortable the concrete floor was. Right then, he was just happy to have made some small connection with his lover once again. It wasn't much, but it was enough to build on, and that was all that mattered to Ianto right at that moment.
"Oh, thank God," Gwen whispered as she, Owen and Tosh watched on the CCTV as Jack settled in against Ianto where they sat in the dim corridor near the doorway into the tourist office. Owen, however, turned away from the monitor, a grim look on his face.
"Don't start thanking anyone yet, Gwen. We haven't even started to see the worst of it, yet. I guarantee it."
tbc...