I'm really pushing the T rating as far as it will go here… but it's lower rated than what was on the show, it's nothing I haven't seen on daytime TV on broadcast channels, and it's nothing I wasn't doing as a teen.

CHAPTER THREE

Jack had to bribe the doorman at Club X to get them in. As with Metros, the interior was loud and dark, but the patrons here seemed a little more energetic. Less inhibited. The crowd was also full of aliens and wildly costumed humans, and it was going to take some work to search the crowd. He sent Ianto to look around at the bar while checked out some of the darker alcoves where he knew from experience that there would be some not-so-discreet sexual acts.

Across the dance floor, there was a scuffle. Jack saw one person break free from the group and bolt for the door. By the swaying of limbs and the trail of sparks, Jack could tell it was their target.

"Ianto! There he goes!" he shouted into the comms, hoping to be heard over the pulsing beat. Ianto immediately took chase, darting through the crowd, dodging around people on the dance floor, and making it to the exit only slightly behind the alien. It took Jack a little longer to get out, and when he did, Ianto and his quarry were nowhere to be seen. "Ianto, where are you?"

"He's dodged between buildings, heading East. I think I can catch him, but I'll need your help once he's down."

Jack turned a corner to see Ianto's retreating form and admired the grace with which he negotiated the various obstacles in the alley, slipping through narrow spaces and leaping over debris. He was clearly gaining on the alien when they both disappeared between buildings. Jack followed as best he could, but he was somewhat bulkier and less agile than Ianto; there were times when being quick and lean was an advantage. He should have had Ianto with them when they were after Bernie Harris, it would have saved a lot of hassle. Jack heard a thud and a scuffle, then silence.

"Ianto?"

"Got him, sir!" he responded, breathing heavily. "Turn right, then left after the open door. We're behind the tip."

Jack caught up, and found Ianto kneeling with a knee in the tangle of branches on the back of their prone target, who was oozing sap from a split lip. Ianto was flushed, hair disheveled, and had a scrape near his eye and glitter all over, but he didn't appear at all discomfited by the situation. Clearly a chase through the back alleys of Cardiff was nothing new to him. Jack took out his Webley, and Ianto let the man up.

Once they got Nicholas Beckett calmed down and talking, they discovered that he had thought Jack was there to confiscate his perception filter. He'd settled in; he had a wife, a family, and a job with Harwood's Haulage. He went by 'Nick' and had human friends. His wife knew where he was from (and didn't mind him going out in his natural form once a year), but no one else did, and so he needed the filter to keep the life he'd grown to love. When it was threatened, he'd run. Jack and Ianto assured him that they were pleased that he was assimilating, and made sure he knew that he could call on them if he had trouble. When Ianto explained the actual reason for their visit, Nick's expression went wooden (Jack chuckled to himself) and he swore he had no idea. He practically shoved the device at them, and it took some convincing for him to accept reimbursement for what he had paid. It was Ianto who finally talked him into it. It was amazing to watch; not a quarter hour before, Ianto had knocked the man down in an alley, and Jack had pulled a gun on him, and now Ianto had soothed Nick to the point of sharing photos of his family and swapping stories about how hard it is to settle into a foreign culture. (Ianto swore that a Welshman in London had at least as much trouble as a tree man among humans.) Watching him in action, Jack wondered if he should put Ianto in charge of inter-agency communications. Certainly, the budget negotiations could do with his deft touch.

They took their leave of Nicholas Beckett and headed back to the SUV with the device. "Should we tell Gwen that her boyfriend has an alien working for him?" Ianto asked with a smirk.

Jack thought about it for a moment. "I don't know. On one hand, it would be amusing to watch her trying to find out who, but she'd never let it go, and I think Nick deserves his privacy. He's trying to fit in, and he's not hurting anyone. I think we owe it to him to let him create the man he wants to be and not hold him back with his past. It's not my place to out him."

Ianto looked first thoughtful, then hopeful, and Jack knew that his message had been received. They drove back to the Hub without further conversation.

-OitO-

While Ianto tagged and catalogued the artifact for archiving, Jack considered how to ask the question he knew he needed answered. He should have realized, given Ianto's competence and eye for detail in every other aspect of his job that he'd pick up on the clues Jack didn't even realize he was dropping. If it had been only tonight's slip, he might have considered Retconning the evening away, but that wouldn't work. Ianto had been collecting bits of information for months, and Jack, frightened as he was of having the truth come out, couldn't bring himself to take that much from a man who had already suffered such loss. But still, he had to know.

"You can stop pretending to be stupid now," he said.

Ianto stopped what he was doing and stood straight, turning to face Jack with his hands on his hips. "Pardon?"

"What have you figured out about me, Ianto? You mentioned what you've noticed, what conclusions have you made?"

"Ah." Ianto tensed, his posture stiffening, as if gathering courage. "I've been working in the archives for months—not just the artifacts, but the files. There are references to you all over them, if you know what to look for. They go back over a century, with 'administrative leave' during the war. The uniforms are yours, sir. Not only is the fit perfect, they still smell, very faintly, like you."

"And why were you looking for me in the archives?"

Ianto looked as if he was considering what to say, and then, with a nod suggesting that he'd decided, said, "It's what I do. What Torchwood trained me for."

And there is was. He'd admitted… something. Jack wasn't sure what, but he'd as much as confessed that the information in his file was compromised. "Your file says Junior Researcher."

"Would you have hired me if you'd known Torchwood London sent me to Uni, and I'd been with them for seven years?"

"Probably not."

"Exactly, so I had to hide it. As I was altering my past anyway, I adjusted some other things; school records, arrest record, family… I only had the resources to change the Torchwood file, though. All the original information is still in place if you look. You didn't. You saw exactly what you expected, what you wanted to see: a low-level lackey. Someone you could safely ignore."

"So you lied."

"At the time, dishonesty was the least of my concerns. And much of it is true in spirit, if not in fact. My parents are dead, and my sister and I are hardly close. I did well enough in school, but never wanted to stand out. I went through a difficult phase where I made poor choices. You didn't see me as a person, so the specifics were irrelevant."

That stung. Jack had always believed that he was better than Yvonne Hartman because he cared, but Ianto was right: he had been a mystery, then an obstacle, then a challenge, then invisible. Jack had ignored the fact that Ianto was also a survivor, and he was ashamed. Beyond his initial check of Ianto's file, he'd never bothered to ask Ianto anything about his time at Torchwood One. "What did you do in London?"

"I was an Analyst. Grade Two. My department was sent all the raw data Torchwood collected, and we sifted through it to pick out what was important. We saw patterns and made connections, then collated the data and sent it up to the decision makers with our recommendations. So when I came here with something to hide and I wanted to know how to keep you from noticing me, I paid attention. You made some comments, some things just didn't fit, so I went to the archives. There were gaps in the data. I looked deeper, and there you were."

"I'll ask again: Why were you looking? Why do you care?"

Ianto turned slightly pink, but he evaded the question. "You're at least a hundred years old. And then you tell these stories, refer to alien races that aren't mentioned in the archives as if you know them. Your clothing has rips and blood stains, but you never appear to be injured. You claim to have eaten dinosaur meat, and you have those fifty-first century pheromones that make me want—" He broke off and looked away, flushed to the tips of his ears.

"Want what, Ianto?" Jack asked softly. Ianto shook his head and didn't answer.

"You're a time-traveler, Sir. Like the Doctor. You heal quickly, and you don't age. There are references in the archives to you dying, but there's more than one. You don't die."

"I do, I just don't stay that way."

Ianto nodded at the clarification. "The night Suzie… died, there were two gunshots, two bloodstains. She was killed by a single bullet, and I've cleaned up enough of our messes to recognize the spatter pattern on the back of your coat as a close-range headshot. She killed you that night. Gwen saw it. That's why you hired her."

Jack was breathless. Ianto knew. Knew all of it, and had for a while. Had known while Lisa was still hidden in the basement, and hadn't told anyone. He had betrayed Jack with one hand while keeping his deepest secrets with the other. His feelings about the man, already muddled, were rapidly becoming more so. "You never said anything."

"Neither did you. It was easier for everyone if I simply… pretended. None of it matters, after all. It doesn't change who you are as a leader, as a person, or as a man."

At this, Jack looked up and met Ianto's storm-blue eyes. "And who am I? To you, I mean. I thought—before that night, I thought you wanted me." He hadn't intended to say it; he dreaded the answer almost as much as he needed to know. "Was that part of the deception? To get yourself hired?"

Ianto choked back a laugh. "Everyone wants you, there was never a question of that. I didn't want to want you, I've never wanted a man before, but there you were with your scent and your coat and the way you undressed me with your eyes when you thought I couldn't see, and I wished things could be different. It gnawed at me every time I flirted because I couldn't help myself. I couldn't stop thinking about you, even when I was with Lisa. God, why am I telling you this? You would have executed me! You did execute her!"

"And I wish I hadn't had to. That wasn't Lisa, you have to realize that."

"I know," whispered Ianto, turning away, and Jack's heart broke for him.

Jack placed a comforting hand on the other man's shoulder. "I'm sorry."

Ianto leaned into his touch, closing his eyes and brushing his cheek against Jack's knuckles. Jack felt a wave of tenderness wash over him; this was Ianto, his true self. Honest, bare, so very young, and beautiful in a way that made Jack ache inside. He turned his hand to cup Ianto's face in a gentle caress.

Ianto put his hand over Jack's. "I'm sorry too." He took Jack's hand, still cradled in his own, and placed a feather light kiss on the palm. Jack moaned at the touch of the soft lips he'd thought about so many times and, without thinking about it, pulled Ianto into a kiss.

-OitO-

It wasn't technically the first time he'd kissed Ianto Jones, the first having been on the floor of the Hub after he'd nearly been killed when Lisa threw him (the nearly was up for debate, though Jack preferred to think about that as little as possible), but at that time Ianto had tasted of fear and despair, and he had pulled away as soon as he regained consciousness. Now Ianto's mouth, soft against his, was sweet and yielding. Jack moaned, and Ianto, to his surprise and delight, used the slight parting of his lips to tease Jack with his tongue. Jack opened to him fully, and the kiss deepened.

It was everything he'd hoped it would be. Jack pulled Ianto close, heedless of the lingering sparkles, and the man melted into his embrace, wrapping his hand behind Jack's neck and ruffling the short hair at his nape. It was perfect. Ianto kissed like he was giving a gift, and Jack did his best to show that he understood, that he knew this was more than comfort or lust (though there was certainly lust too), and that he felt the same way, that this meant something. With one hand still behind Jack's head, Ianto's other hand inched lower, first to his lower back, then, tentatively, to rest on his hip. Jack bent his head slightly to nibble his way along Ianto's jaw to his pulse-point, relishing the feel of the other man's heartbeat beneath his lips, the salt of his sweat, and the way he tilted his head back with his eyes closed and his lower lip caught between his teeth. He reached up and, using his thumb, gently teased Ianto's lip free, only to draw a gasping breath when Ianto bit down gently.

Jack needed more. It wasn't enough to feel Ianto hot and hard against him, he wanted the man trembling at his touch. Sliding his hand between them, he undid the buckle and brass buttons holding Ianto's (Jack's) jacket closed, then ran his palm under the rough wool and across the crisp shirt that burned with the heat from Ianto's body. Ianto shivered, and this was what Jack had been wanting for so long. All pretense was gone, and in that moment he knew he would never be content merely with sex, he wanted the connection. Ianto knew him, and was here anyway, and it had been so long since Jack had a lover who knew. He wanted nothing more that to push Ianto up against the wall and drop to his knees, but he had to take things slowly. Ianto had admitted inexperience, and Jack didn't want to push him too far or too fast. He held back as much as he could, but when he thumbed across Ianto's nipple through the cloth, Ianto murmured his name low in his throat, and Jack couldn't help himself. He yanked the offending shirt out of Ianto's trousers, desperate to feel skin, sliding one hand around his waist and one up his abdomen to his chest. Ianto didn't protest, and in fact, leaned into his touch, pulling Jack forward into a messy kiss. Jack grew bold, and let his fingers drift lower, to the buttons fastening Ianto's trousers.

It wasn't until Jack brushed lightly against Ianto's cloth-covered erection, eliciting a twitch from his own, that Ianto pulled away. His eyes were wide with desire, but his expression was deeply troubled.

"I didn't mean- I'm sorry-" he stuttered. Then he closed his eyes and took a deep breath, and all emotion disappeared from his face and posture. It was devastating to watch, and Jack wondered anew where Ianto had learned to remove every trace of self from his appearance. It wasn't a skill that one picked up in a happy childhood; Jack wasn't sure even he could do it as completely as Ianto could. He resolved to search out Ianto's original records.

"I'd best go," Ianto said in a voice lacking even a quiver. "I'll see you in the morning, sir." He turned and walked somewhat stiffly away.

Jack raced to his office to watch Ianto on the CCTV. His calm exterior never cracked, and if Jack hadn't seen the moment of panic before he closed himself off, he'd have no idea the man was feeling anything at all.

-OitO-

Jack awakened, surprised that he had actually slept. Out in the Hub he could hear Ianto starting to putter around with the coffee maker. No, the espresso machine. He chuckled. Only Ianto would be so pedantic, but now Jack understood why he cared. He wasn't sure what to hope for this morning… he had seen Ianto's open passion and his cold distance, and he had no idea which would greet him today. He climbed out of his quarters and, knowing Ianto would deliver his coffee shortly, sat down at his desk to wait, still wearing the trousers and undershirt he'd worn under his flight suit the night before. Ianto didn't disappoint; a few minutes later he arrived in Jack's office with two mugs and the Service Dress uniform he'd worn neatly folded and tucked under his arm. Jack stood, wanting to talk to Ianto as a person, rather than an employee. Ianto set the coffees down on the desk and passed Jack the uniform. It was freshly laundered and pressed, with no Rift Glitter in sight. Ianto must have been up all night.

"Thank you for letting me wear this, sir," he said somewhat awkwardly.

"You're welcome. It looked good on you, made me feel young again."

"Is that… is that why you kissed me?"

"Of course not. I've wanted to kiss you from the moment I saw you hit a Weevil with a stick, then calmly come on to me; it just never seemed to be the right time. Not that I think last night was the right time." Jack set his mug down and reached for Ianto's hand. "You don't regret it, do you?"

"No, Jack. Kissing you, being in your arms… it felt totally natural. That's part of the problem. My heart still thinks Lisa died two months again, even though my head knows it happened long before. I want to, but I'm not ready. It's still too raw."

Jack nodded in understanding. "If you ever are ready, let me know. Meanwhile, keep the uniform, if you'd like. I think it's time for me to let go of that part of my life. And maybe I'll get to see you in it again."

"Perhaps." Ianto took his hands from Jack's and reached for his mug. "Jack?"

"Hmm?"

"Tell me something about yourself. Something small, but true."

Jack thought for a moment, wondering what he could tell Ianto that would be meaningful, but wouldn't jeopardize the timeline. Something personal. "I grew up by the ocean. Every once in a while, when the wind blows across the water, Cardiff smells just like home."

It was the right thing to say. Ianto smiled at him; a soft, secret smile that was like the sun breaking through clouds. They stood together in comfortable silence until the alarm sounded, signaling someone's arrival. Gwen's voice floated through the Hub. She was describing the party she and Rhys had attended, and it sounded like they'd had a wonderful time.

"Then Rhys said, 'I can't believe some of these costumes! When I was a boy we'd dress as ghosts using sheets, but I saw people with horns and wings and testicles!' Testicles, he said. I about died."

Owen laughed. "He's right, though. I went home with a gorgeous girl with her skin painted bronze and her hair up in a knot. Only it wasn't hair, it was some sort of wig that looked like ropes. I don't remember what we got up to last night, but I can barely walk this morning!"

Jack burst into laughter, and Ianto took a sip of his coffee, cheeks tight and eyes snapping with mirth. When he spoke, it was in his usual impassive, professional tone, but his eyes were still crinkled at the edges.

"I suppose you'll say I can't tell Owen about his shag last night?"

"As much as it pains me, no. Yamali deserves his secrets. We all do, until we chose to share them."

Ianto nodded. "I'm glad we did, sir."

"Jack," said Jack. Ianto raised an eyebrow at him. "I'd really like it if you called me Jack."

"Well, maybe for special occasions."

And there it was. He and Ianto had learned more about each other in that one night than they had in all the months they had worked together. They had become friends, and now that things were out in the open, Jack was looking forward to seeing where it would take them.

AN: Hope you had fun! Thank you again to Gmariam, who supported, enabled, and beta read this. She's got a story called Role Reversal up if you want some more Halloween themed fun. And while you're at it, if you haven't already, read everything else she's written.