Same Ianto, Different Jack

Chapter 13

by gracefultree

A/N: Sorry for the wait between chapters. Real life has a way of taking over. Rest assured that I also have a (rather long) chapter of 'Waking to Live' almost finished, as well as one of 'I'anto of Torchwood Weyr', which I hope to post later this week. Next week at the latest. Why didn't anyone tell me it was so hard to have so many stories going at once? *wink*

For now, enjoy this! As always, if you like it, let me know. ;-)

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Ianto couldn't sleep. He tossed and turned on the couch, unable to find a comfortable position. He was angry with New Jack for the phone call and incident in the cell earlier, furious, actually, and yet… New Jack wasn't His Jack, and maybe he shouldn't be mad at New Jack for His Jack's past actions and the feelings they brought up in him.

Ianto sighed. If he really thought about it, he was sad for New Jack. In some ways, Ianto's arrival was the wake-up call he needed. In others, it was a disruption in a life that seemed to be going all right. On the surface, anyway. New Jack was clear that he wasn't happy with New Gwen, that he was just biding his time until she died or grew tired of him. Perhaps the Doctor in this universe hurt New Jack more than His Jack's Doctor did? It seemed that way, if they weren't even on speaking terms anymore.

And it wasn't like New Jack had any kind of relationship, defined or otherwise, with Ianto. Who was Ianto to get mad at him for a single drunken phone call?

Deciding that it was better to keep himself busy when he couldn't sleep or figure out his own emotions easily, Ianto got up and showered in the communal bathroom before getting into one of his new suits. He went with a red shirt and tie, knowing he looked good. At least that hadn't changed in the new universe, he thought. The lighting was the same. He made coffee and settled down at New Tosh's station to do some server maintenance, among other less official activities.

By the time New Jack stumbled into the main Hub from the cells, Ianto was back on the sofa, nursing his third cup of coffee. He'd learned enough in his internet explorations to give him even more to think about, and he had no idea what he was supposed to do with the information. In his own universe... Well, he wasn't even sure what he'd do there, since he'd been clear with New Jack that he'd covered up His Gwen's indiscretions when His Jack asked him to...

But these were New Gwen's indiscretions... and they had the potential to hurt New Jack far more than His Gwen's had ever been able to hurt His Jack...

They looked at each other in silence. Ianto noticed the dark circles under New Jack's eyes and the tightness of his smile. His clothes were wrinkled, and, if Ianto was any judge, he was hung over. And miserable. Ianto didn't care.

No, he pretended he didn't care. He grumbled and moaned and spoke harshly, but he did care, deep down. Or not so deep down, he reminded himself. There was a difference between not caring and pretending not to, and he growled at himself for resorting to such measures so soon in his association with the man. It wasn't as if New Jack could tell the difference... It wasn't as if New Jack would recognize it as disapproval rather than anger and grovel his way back into Ianto's good graces, the way His Jack would have done when presented with the same scenario and tone of voice.

"There's a bottle of water and some paracetamol on your desk," he informed New Jack curtly, setting his mug down and walking away before New Jack could say anything. Before he, himself, could fully analyze his reactions and decide which Jack he was talking to. God, it was so confusing!

He watched from the kitchen area as New Jack processed that information and slowly walked over to his office, a frown on his face. He looked to be falling into one of his self-loathing moods where he felt responsible for every bad thing that happened to the Earth since he arrived there back in 1869.

Ianto remembered a time when he'd come upon His Jack with a similar expression on his face. It was the night before His Jack released young Jasmine to the fairies, the night his ex-lover Estelle Cole died.

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Ianto approached Jack hesitantly, a mug of coffee in each hand, despite the late hour. Neither of them ever refused coffee, and it would provide a prop so that he could speak to Jack about something other than work. He'd only been back from his suspension one day, and he rather doubted that Jack would welcome his presence without a prop to give them both the ability to pretend they didn't care about each other after the disaster that was the Cyberwoman attack and Ianto's betrayal.

Jack didn't look up from the photograph of a young Estelle and Captain Jack he was staring at, nor did he acknowledge Ianto in any way. Ianto put the mug in front of him and moved aside the empty scotch glass before resting his hip against Jack's desk and sipping his own coffee.

Jack glanced up.

"You shouldn't be here," he muttered, repeating what he'd said the night before.

"Neither should you," Ianto replied. "Come back to mine. You can have the bed. It looks like you need a good sleep tonight, and your cot's too small for that."

Jack sighed, resigned to Ianto being there with him. "I'm not kicking you out of your own bed," he said, closing his eyes at the one good memory of being in Ianto's flat, two weeks before the betrayal, when Ianto had decided it was time to explore the benefits of sex with Jack on a real bed, instead of the camp bed in his bunker or one of the desks/chairs/walls/floors/tables of the Hub.

"Who said I'd be somewhere else?" Ianto asked with a faux-innocent expression on his face, the first real flirtation he'd allowed himself with Jack since he returned. Jack's expression darkened to a scowl. "Look, Jack, you need comfort tonight, and while I'm not going to offer my body -"

Jack snorted, scowling even more, the warm memories of Ianto seducing him warring with the knowledge that he did it to keep him from finding out about the Cyberman in his basement suddenly in front of his eyes.

"- I want to help you," Ianto finished. He laid a (mostly) platonic hand on Jack's shoulder.

"Maybe it's your body I want," Jack suggested with a halfhearted leer. It was Ianto's turn to frown.

"Try that again when you're not so depressed and I might consider it," Ianto responded. "For now, drink your coffee and let's go. I can tell as well as you that neither of us are up for sex tonight."

Jack turned back to the picture in his hand and sighed sadly. "I'm not a good man, Ianto," Jack finally said after a long few minutes of silence. "I loved her, and yet I hurt her."

Ianto remained silent, waiting. He studiously did not think about Lisa, or, even more so, his conflicted feelings about Jack and how Jack had hurt him while professing to care about him, at least during the heat of a passionate embrace or two. Or three. Or twenty.

"We once promised each other we'd be together until we died," Jack scoffed. "As if I could even make that kind of promise."

"Did you know about yourself back then?" Ianto asked, curious. He'd never alluded that he knew about Jack's secret immortality before, but, somehow, this seemed like a safe way to discuss it. Jack didn't react to his question, confirming Ianto's suspicion that Jack already assumed he knew about it and was keeping it quiet, like the good archivist and secret-keeper he was. He'd never commented about the two separate puddles of blood the day Suzie killed herself, and Jack hadn't mentioned it, so it was yet another unspoken thing between them, along with the fact that they'd probably end up in bed again at some point, though not quite yet and for very different reasons than the first time around. Ianto didn't think either of them doubted they'd take solace from each other's company and bodies again, and it didn't seen like Jack disagreed, if his comments from the moment before were any indication.

"I knew. And I knew even as I said it that it was a lie for me. But she held on to that promise for a very long time. It was twenty years before she took another lover, and she never loved him like she loved me. Even now, she loved me." He paused. "And it got her killed."

"No," Ianto protested. "She wanted more from the fairies or whatever you call them than they were willing to give."

"But she died because of me!" Jack declared, and Ianto saw into Jack's soul for a brief moment, and the depths of guilt and grief and loneliness he hid close to his chest so often. "Everyone I love dies, and it's my fault," Jack continued. He pulled out another picture, this one of him sitting in a chair in a formal suit, with a beautiful woman in a wedding dress standing next to him, her hand on his shoulder. "I promised her fidelity, too," Jack whispered. "And ten months later I was fucking her sister while she was in labor with our son!"

Ianto started, not at the words or the admission, that level of sexuality he expected from Jack, but at the self-hatred in Jack's voice. He chose his next words very carefully, knowing he was stepping over a line that he wasn't sure Jack would allow him to cross, given the broken trust between them. Still, Jack needed something now, and Ianto would do his best to give it. Meanwhile, Jack finished his story in a broken voice.

"She died in childbirth, our son coming feet-first and strangled by the umbilical cord. Her sister killed herself two weeks later, undone by guilt, feeling that it was our transgression that killed them both."

Ianto took a breath, then changed what he had been about to ask. "Would it have been a transgression, in your time?"

Jack looked up at him sharply. Ianto merely raised an eyebrow in challenge. Another unspoken thing coming to the light this evening. More secrets coming out. It was a measure of how much Jack still trusted Ianto that he was even willing to have the conversation, let alone volunteer information about himself like he was doing.

"No," Jack finally answered, turning away again. He gulped at his coffee. "But I'm not in my time now, and I wasn't then. I can't act like I am. Doing that just causes problems."

"And not being yourself causes just as many, I'd wager, though of the more personal kind," Ianto murmured. "Come on." He extended a hand to Jack, who looked him up and down before shaking his head.

"I'll see you in the morning, Ianto. But thank you for the offer. I'll be sure to take you up on it sometime."

"You're welcome, sir," Ianto replied, accepting the dismissal. And the promise. Soon, they'd find each other again. Little did either of them know it would be the following week, after a brush with cannibals.

In the morning, Ianto arrived at the Hub to find Jack still smelling of his overnight conquest(s). With a shake of his head and a sigh that they weren't ready to help each other properly, he gathered up Jack's laundry and went about the day, knowing that if he'd offered sex, Jack might have accepted. He wasn't ready, yet, though the brief stab of jealousy towards the nameless one(s) from the night before told him he was closer than he might like to think he was.

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New Jack looked so miserable, so similar to His Jack that night, that Ianto took pity on him and brought him coffee and toast. Maybe it wasn't the world's issues that had him down, Ianto thought. Maybe it was about timing, about relationships and social interactions that were so natural to him in his own time and so backwards here? Maybe he needed to give New Jack more credit for thought than he'd been showing lately? Maybe that's why New Jack had disappeared for two days, to think? Maybe in his time, marrying one person and sleeping with another wasn't a problem at all, though now it definitely was.

As he was leaving New Jack's office, he heard New Jack sigh.

"Why are you doing this?" New Jack asked, gesturing to the breakfast sitting atop the organized desk, complete with little notes from Ianto about what to sign and a summary of what the team had done for the past two days. "I don't deserve this kind of attention. I'm doing everything I can to push you away."

"Do you want me to leave?" Ianto asked quietly. New Jack's answer would determine so many things, he thought, even as New Jack answered immediately.

"No!"

"That's why I do it."

When the silence became too much, Ianto turned and walked away. He'd reached the doorway when New Jack spoke, his voice so soft that Ianto wasn't sure he'd heard him correctly.

"I made my decision," New Jack whispered. "But I doubt it matters anymore. I seem to have a way of fucking everything up just as I figure out what I want."

"What did you decide?" Ianto asked, settling his hip against New Jack's desk in the same place he'd leaned when His Jack admitted, in a roundabout way, that he loved Ianto.

New Jack smiled nervously. "I can't marry Gwen."

Ianto nodded, expecting this.

"I -" New Jack stopped. "What you offered me..."

"Is still on the table," Ianto said, his decision made. Again. The same decision he would make and would probably be making for the rest of his life, no matter how many Jacks he met, no matter how many universes he found himself in. "We just have to do a bit of re-negotiating. I don't like being woken up like that."

New Jack gaped at him, his mouth hanging open in surprise. "You'd consider it even after last night?"

Ianto sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. "Last night I reacted to you because of what he's done in the past. It's not fair of me to hold you responsible for his actions. I'm sorry."

"So, you're not writing me off because of it?" New Jack clarified, the vulnerability in his voice almost breaking Ianto's heart.

"No," Ianto said softly. "I'm not writing you off." He accepted the hand that New Jack extended. He kissed New Jack's fingers. "But you have to tell Gwen before we do anything more than a kiss or two."

"Of course," New Jack affirmed. He stood, stepping close to Ianto. He clutched Ianto's hand tighter as he raised the other to run his fingers along Ianto's jaw. "You're gorgeous, you know."

Ianto closed his eyes, a pain constricting his chest. "That's what he always says."

"I'll have to find a different word, won't I?" Ianto opened his eyes again and nodded, sequestering the pain away to deal with later. "What about beautiful?"

"Too girly."

"Breathtaking?"

"Can't be a nickname."

"Lovely?"

"It'll do for now," Ianto murmured, leaning forward to kiss New Jack with a hint of longing and just enough passion to wet his appetite but not so much that it would distract New Jack from the necessity of talking to New Gwen. He could wait, after all. New Jack had chosen him.

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tbc