Same Ianto, Different Jack
Chapter 27
by Gracefultree
A/N: Welcome back to my story! Please enjoy some conversations between Ianto and Other Ianto. Oh, and we get a surprise visitor...
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"Enough!"
A string of choice Welsh curses flowed from Other Ianto's mouth as he left New New Jack's office in a rush, slamming the door behind him. He turned on Ianto, who stood by New New Tosh's station, going over a report.
"This is all your fault!" Other Ianto shouted at Ianto, his cheeks pink with anger. Ianto raised his hands, trying to placate him.
"I haven't done anything. I've been here the whole time," he explained. "Ask Tosh."
"No, this is more than that! Tell him —" he motioned sharply in the direction of New New Jack's office, "— that I won't stand for him mistaking us anymore! If he touches my ass even one more time —"
Ianto gave New New Tosh an apologetic look and walked over to put an arm around Other Ianto. "Come on, let's go have a pint," he suggested. "We'll get out of here… Have a night away from all this… What do you say?" He glanced at New New Tosh meaningfully. "Tosh will tell him we're off for the rest of the night, won't you?"
"Of course. It looks like you're in need of a break. I'll make sure he can't call either of your mobiles unless the world's ending."
"Thanks," Ianto said, grabbing his and Other Ianto's coats from the rack.
"Thanks," Other Ianto echoed, following Ianto sullenly.
They ended up at Other Ianto's flat, in the same building as Ianto's, but three doors down. It kept bothering Ianto, because while the layout of the flat was the same as his and New Lisa's, it was the mirror-image, and therefor confusing. Of course, he'd only visited a few times, so he hadn't actually had much time to get used to it. Other Ianto brought out the scotch immediately, pouring generous glasses for both of them.
"I don't like what you've done here," Other Ianto said after the second drink. "You swan in, seduce Jack, and now all he can think about is getting all three of us in bed together!"
Ianto sighed. "Yeah, maybe not the best of strategies," he admitted ruefully. "I honestly wasn't thinking about that when I talked to him."
"And yet he told me it was your idea!"
"I'm sorry! I wasn't thinking. I was trying to tell him to stop bothering you because you weren't interested. He took that as a challenge." Ianto glanced over at Other Ianto. "But I didn't suggest it."
"No? You certainly crawled into his bed fast enough! You're such a fucking slut," Other Ianto accused. "How many Jacks have you slept with? Eight? Ten? Twelve? And that other Lisa? God, you could give Jack a run for his money."
"At least I'm sticking to one person! I've been here two weeks and I know you've been out. You've pulled three different women!"
"Ten different Jacks isn't one person!" Other Ianto shouted. "And how is the grammar supposed to work for that sentence anyway? Jacks are? Jacks is? Argh!" He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration. "They're all different men. That's what you keep telling me, anyway. Your Jack was an over-sexed asshole who was getting better. New Jack was a broken man you salvaged and taught how to live and love again. New Lisa's Jack just wanted sex… And now you've come here and fucked up the dynamics of the Hub by seducing our Jack!"
"Do you have any idea what it's like to jump between universes? Do you have any idea how lonely I am? That all these Jacks are my only connection to sanity?"
"Explain," Other Ianto barked. "And I want more than the clean version you've been telling the others."
Ianto poured himself another drink to give himself time to process what he'd just said and what it really meant. "The one thing I truly want is to get back to My Jack," he said, staring into his glass. "I could have made a nice life for myself with New Jack. We loved each other, and it was mutual. I could have ignored the Rift flare and stayed with him. He was everything My Jack had the potential to be, and then some. He was emotionally attuned. He was occasionally romantic. He was practically perfect. But he wasn't mine. Not really. No matter how much I loved him, and I did, I always had it in the back of my head that he wasn't My Jack, that somewhere out there My Jack was suffering because I wasn't there with him."
He knocked back the drink and leaned back against the sofa. "I could have made a life with New Lisa and Her Jack. But it wasn't the same. It wasn't right. He was hot and cold with me, saying he'd like to learn to love me in one moment and then ignoring me for days at a time the next. And New Lisa? She wanted her Ianto, not me. She didn't like who I'd become. She didn't like that I still wanted Jack. She wanted the monogamy we'd had back before everything went to shit, and we did it for three months while Her Jack was away with the Doctor, and that was really great, but I couldn't give it to her once he was back, and she went along with it anyway, with me and Her Jack, but she wasn't happy. None of us were really happy, though we made a good show of it and even convinced ourselves we were, half the time.
"I loved her, too. I really liked being able to live with her, to set some of my demons around the end of her life to rest. I was able to let go of the guilt I've been carrying around for so long. Jack would be proud of me, I think. He always said I didn't have to feel guilty, that it was really his fault for falling for my deception, since he'd been around so much longer than me and should have been cynical enough to figure out something was up. With New Lisa, I was finally able to mourn My Lisa appropriately, and I think she was able to let go of Her Ianto. It was good we had that time. But we weren't happy, per se.
"And since then," Ianto continued, his voice rising slightly. "Since then I've met and slept with six more Jacks, and none of them were My Jack, and I'm starting to lose track of who's who, but the bottom line is that I'm miserable and falling apart and I want to go home!"
Other Ianto paused in thought before venturing a theory. "So, you're basically telling me that you act like a slut because you miss Your Jack and all these other Jacks are poor substitutes?"
"Maybe. I don't know," Ianto moaned, grabbing for the bottle. Other Ianto took it from him after he'd poured another generous drink, filling his own glass. "I don't know what's wrong with me! God, back in my own universe I slept with almost everyone Jack wanted, just to stay in his good graces, and the only times I really enjoyed it was when he just wanted an audience, or after the other person had fallen asleep or left, when we were just the two of us." He paused, finishing his drink.
"It just makes me so sick, thinking of him alone. Of course it's worse thinking of him with others, but I can't exactly fault him for it. We never said anything about commitment or monogamy. He's not as broken as he used to be, but he needs the physical outlet. And he needs me to balance him with the others on the team. He needs me, and I'm stuck here!" Ianto burst into tears. Other Ianto scooted over to hold him, knowing how rare these kinds of displays for him.
"I've been away from him twice as long as we'd been together, did you realize that? I was with him a year and a half, and I've been gone nearly three years, chronologically for me, and the year and a half is counting the time during and after my suspension when we weren't talking or sleeping together, and the three months he was gone with the Doctor. We had so much potential, and the bloody Rift ruined everything!"
"You'll get back to him. That's what Jack says, anyway."
"His Doctor didn't seem too happy to get his call…"
"No, but he said he'd come. That's more than New Jack's Doctor, right?"
"New Jack's Doctor wasn't even speaking to him, so yeah. And New Lisa's Jack hadn't reconnected with his Doctor when I got there, and, honestly, I was too busy putting him back together afterwards to want to ask him to contact the Doctor for me. My Jack's Doctor might help, but as far as I knew, we didn't have a way to contact him. And besides, My Jack always said that the Doctor could never stick his landings. It could be a long time before he shows up, even after Your Jack's call."
"Or it could be tomorrow."
"Do you want me to stop sleeping with him?" Ianto blurted out. "I don't know if I can or not, but I'd try, if you wanted me to."
"I don't know what I want," Other Ianto admitted. "I want it to be the way it was before, but I know that's not possible. I could deal with the flirting. I could give some back, but we both knew nothing would happen, and that was as it should be. I doubt Jack will ever give up on the idea of seducing me, now that he's been with you."
"Just one more thing I fucked up," Ianto muttered under his breath. "Dad was right. I can't do anything right. I can't even get home without leaving a trail of broken hearts and fucked-up relationships behind me."
"It's not your fault," Other Ianto protested. "Even though it kind of is. It's not all your fault."
"I didn't have to sleep with any of them."
"True, but that's not everything that's going on here. You saved New Jack from his disastrous relationship with New Gwen. You helped him get better after that horrible year he had with his Doctor, didn't you? That's good."
"One out of ten isn't a very good record," Ianto grumbled. "New Jack might have been fine, but New Lisa's Jack? Your Jack? Bitter Jack?" He snorted. "And don't get me wrong, the sex with Future Jack was fabulous, and he loved having 'Ianto' around again, and Young Jack was kinkier than any of the others, and we both appreciated that, but the only one I really helped was New Jack."
"Still, you've learned a hell of a lot about yourself, haven't you?" Other Ianto persisted. "You know you want monogamy with Your Jack. You know you want commitment. You know you can't stand to think of him with someone else."
"But he can't do monogamy!" Ianto roared. "He can't do it, and I've been such a slut he'll probably want nothing to do with me ever again anyway because even if he can't, I want to, and how am I supposed to justify my actions?" He sighed sadly. "So I'm screwed either way, if I ever get back, and, yeah, Your Jack's Doctor might be able to help, but, really, can it work? Can he really get me home?"
"We can hope. Jack seems optimistic that the Doctor can solve just about everything." Ianto grunted. "You don't agree?"
"My Jack doesn't sound as optimistic about his Doctor's abilities as Your Jack does."
"Well, we'll see what he says, yeah? In the meantime, let's figure you out. If Your Jack loves you, then won't he forgive you for doing what you needed to do to survive?" Other Ianto asked.
"I didn't have to sleep with all of them to 'survive.' I made the decision, over and over. I want something from My Jack that he can't give, and I've ruined any chance with him because I've slept with so many versions of him."
"But only him, right? And Lisa, that once? That's not as bad as strangers all the time. Look at me. I haven't been with the same woman more than twice since Lisa broke up with me and died three weeks later!"
"Are we having the same conversation as earlier, but backwards?" Ianto asked, blinking blearily. He swayed slightly as he reached for the bottle. Other Ianto helped him pour.
"Yan, Jack's from the 51st century. He has much more relaxed views about sexuality and relationships. I'm sure he won't be too upset about all of this," Other Ianto said, trying to sooth him.
"Speaking of being upset, why were you suddenly so upset today? It can't be the first time he's flirted with you, or even grabbed your ass."
Other Ianto took a long drink straight from the bottle. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. "I read an article," he admitted, setting the bottle down with the precision of someone trying to convince themselves they weren't drunk. Ianto paused in raising his glass to his lips.
"Oh?"
"On Cracked dot com."
"Oh," Ianto said, understanding. He'd read the article, too, as soon as he'd had a moment to himself with the internet after he'd arrived in this universe. 'So you're locked in a room with your clone,' sounded like an interesting premise, given the circumstances. The author's conclusion, that there were only two possibilities, both of which started with the letter 'f' and one of which Ianto had been doing with nine (soon to be ten at the time) versions of his lover, for going on four and a half years now, seemed reasonable. Fight or fuck. Ianto knew which one he'd choose.
"It got me thinking," Other Ianto said.
"Oh. I'd be up for some experimentation, if you wanted to try —"
"Now that's where you have to stop," Other Ianto interrupted, holding up a hand.
"New Jack and I switched bodies once because of some alien tech. It was weird, kissing myself, but being in his body was really hot. I wouldn't mind trying with you. It wasn't that uncomfortable."
"Yan, this is where you get past the point of no return. How can you go back to Your Jack having offered to make out or sleep with me? I mean, the offer might not be so bad, but to actually do it?"
Ianto frowned before answering. "He might just think it's kinky and want to join, like Your Jack."
"I'm not drunk enough for that kind of thing. I might never be. But the article got me thinking about Jack," Other Ianto said, trying to change the subject away from him and Ianto sleeping together. Ianto shrugged to himself and followed.
"And with your focus on him…"
"…Having him touch me like that got to me."
"Huh," Ianto mused.
"What was it like, being with him the first time?" Other Ianto asked softly. "Did you hesitate before having sex with him?"
"We jerked each other off the first time we met, so I never considered not doing it, I guess. It was part of the plan. Seduce him so I could get a job, then keep doing it if I needed to to keep him distracted and away from the Cyberman. I didn't expect to like it, but I did, so it wasn't as difficult as I thought it would be. We had sex in the warehouse next to Myfanwy a few days later. I didn't suck his cock right then, but I got my first good look at it. God, he's got a gorgeous cock. His whole body's gorgeous, come to think about it," Ianto rambled, the alcohol catching up with him. "You should feel his hands on your ass without clothes. You'd like that. And his cock..."
"Are you done yet?" Other Ianto asked, frowning. "I don't need to hear about another man's cock!"
"You just asked! But I could tell you about ours instead… I could tell you how good it feels to —"
"I noticed him that night, when we caught Myfanwy. It was my second week at work, and he picked me up from a pub because I was closest and he thought it only needed the two of us. Almost kissed him, I think, but then I thought about Lisa, the other girls I'd been with, how I wasn't gay, and ran."
"So you have thought about him?"
"I wish I haven't," Other Ianto muttered.
"Why?"
"Too complicated to sleep with your boss. Your male boss."
"Jack's never been the most professional of bosses," Ianto pointed out. "It didn't really affect work that much, me and My Jack. It made the betrayal with Lisa more personal, of course, but there was only one time I thought he wouldn't be able to stick to being the leader because I was in trouble."
"When?"
"When we were going after the space whale. I was being held at gunpoint. I was terrified. I could see it in his eyes that he wanted to do something, save me, protect me, go a little crazy like Gwen was doing for Rhys, but he didn't. He knew I was good with knots, so he managed to give me the time to get free."
"That's what happened to me," Other Ianto said.
"His voice cracked when he ordered me to go after them. I'd never heard that before. Afterwards, that night, he held me and cried, begging my forgiveness for sending me away like that, for asking me to risk my life again by going after them, for not checking in with me immediately afterwards, but he knew he'd break down if he actually spent time with me and that he needed to see the mission finished."
"Well, the confrontation with Gwen over retconning Rhys was quite interesting," Other Ianto muttered. "I almost thought he would fire her for refusing."
"My Jack explained that he was still too wound up seeing a gun pointed at me that he couldn't conceive of letting her go, letting anyone go, and though it looked like he was backing down and letting her win, he really didn't give a fuck as long as I was safe."
"He watched her on the CCTV for a long time."
"He was staring into space, trying to get through the time until the others left and he could be with me. He was completely miserable. It took days to convince him that I'd be all right in the field."
"I bet the sex that night was good, though," Other Ianto murmured.
"Fantastic," Ianto answered. "We went back to my flat and fucked each other for six hours."
"Both ways?" Other Ianto asked, suddenly curious again.
"Yep."
"And you liked it? Both ways?"
"There are times, when he's inside me, when I feel like there's no other place in the whole universe that I want to be." Ianto put down his glass. "He makes me see stars, Ianto. It's like, I don't need to go to space because he brings the stars down to me."
"You weren't scared, the first time?"
"Well, the first time, I fucked him, but a few days later he fucked me, and it was worth it! He'd talked me through preparing him that first time in the warehouse, and then again while he was getting me ready, so I knew what to expect. Sort of. I was nervous, but everything else felt so good, I just closed my eyes and trusted him. And the way he rimmed me first, God, there's nothing like it!"
"Did it hurt? Him being inside you, not the rimming."
"Only for a little while. Pretty soon you get used to the burn, you find yourself wanting it sometimes."
"And the rest? It was good?"
"Better than good." Ianto sighed. "Best thing in the universe."
Other Ianto grunted and gathered their glasses and the empty bottle of scotch, taking them to the kitchen without a word. Ianto had fallen into a light doze by the time he came back, and Other Ianto sighed, looking down at him. He straightened Ianto's hair.
"Best thing in the universe, huh?" he asked softly. "Maybe you're on to something. Maybe you're here to help me open up to the idea," he mused. "Maybe you're here to get me and Jack together, so we can support and comfort each other. Lord knows neither of us have anyone else."
"Maybe by getting you and Your Jack together, I've done enough good to be able to get home," Ianto murmured, opening his eyes to look up at Other Ianto.
They stared at each other for a long time, neither moving or saying anything. Finally, Other Ianto broke the silence.
"Do you want to stay here, or do you want the bed?"
"Bed, if you don't mind," Ianto answered. "I've slept on far too many couches for it to be much of a question."
"Yeah, the one at the Hub needs to be replaced, doesn't it?"
"Mmm," Ianto muttered noncommittally as he followed Other Ianto to the en suite to brush his teeth. "You want to share the bed with me?"
"Not if you're coming on to me!" Other Ianto exclaimed.
"Just as friends," Ianto explained. "Or brothers, if you want to think of it like that. Just to have someone to hold me when the nightmares wake me up. I don't think I'll be able to make it back to the Hub and Your Jack."
"They're that bad?"
"They get worse every time I go to a new universe. The first few trips in the Rift were horrible. I thought I was dying, over and over, and you can't imagine all the pain I was in. Once I got this, though," he said, tapping his vortex manipulator, "It wasn't as bad. But I still get nightmares."
"I suppose we can try it," Other Ianto said. "But I reserve the right to kick you out if you come on to me in your sleep."
"Fine," Ianto muttered. "You've made your position clear."
"Are the nightmares part of why you slept with all the Jacks?" Other Ianto asked once they were both in bed. It took a few minutes to figure out how to do it, neither having shared a bed with themselves before. Ianto ended up on his side, facing the door, with Other Ianto butted up against him, an arm over his waist, the other under the pillow they shared. "That you just wanted someone to be with, and having sex with them seemed like a way to get that comfort by being able to sleep next to them afterwards?"
"Maybe," Ianto answered. "I don't know anymore."
"Goodnight, Yan," Other Ianto said, giving Ianto a slight squeeze with his arm.
"Goodnight, Ianto," Ianto replied, letting his body relax now that he had someone's arm around him. He was asleep within minutes.
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"Hello there, I'm the Doctor," said the brown-haired man in the brown suit and red trainers standing next to the blue police box in the middle of the Plass. He extended his hand to Ianto. "You must be Yan. Jack's told me all about you."
Ianto shook the Time Lord's hand. "It's an honor to meet you, sir. Thank you for everything you've done for Earth!"
"Now, there's no need for that!" the Doctor protested, clearly embarrassed, pulling his hand away and rubbing the back of his neck. He put on a pair of three-D glasses and looked at Ianto through them, then changed those with a pair of dark-framed glasses and looked at him again.
New New Jack bounced next to Ianto on the balls of his feet. "Isn't he great?" he asked. Ianto didn't know who he was talking to or about, so he remained silent. The Doctor glanced at New New Jack briefly before continuing his examination of Ianto.
"Well, this is all very interesting," the Doctor said, shoving his glasses into his pocket. "Let's head inside, shall we?"
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"How many different universes did you say you've been to?" the Doctor asked Ianto as he and the entire Torchwood team settled into seats in the conference room. Other Ianto handed out coffee, and tea, in the Doctor's case.
"My home universe," Ianto started, ticking off numbers on his fingers. "Then New Jack's, then the one where we were a TV program, then New Lisa's, then Past Jack's, then Young Jack's, then Game Station Jack's, then Future Jack's, then Alex's Jack's, then Bitter Jack's, then this one. So this is the eleventh."
"That would explain it, then," the Doctor murmured, peering at Ianto through the 3D glasses again. "You're completely saturated with Void energy. And Time Vortex energy. There's no telling what would happen if you traveled again."
"I've done it safely so many times already." Ianto protested. "And it's not like I had a choice in the matter. The Rift just took me."
"True, true," the Doctor mused, tapping his cheek with a finger. He pulled out his sonic screwdriver and pointed it at Ianto for a moment, then studied the readings. "Have you ever been injured while you traveled in the Rift?"
"I don't think so, no. Why?"
"What about injured at all since you started traveling?"
"I got a gash on the forehead once, but it turned out to be much more shallow than we originally thought. It didn't even scar. That was with Alex's Jack."
"You said Game Station Jack earlier? Tell me about that one."
"Game Station Jack had just died, been killed by Daleks, when I arrived on Earth. I knew what happened because other Jacks have told me, so I hopped on a transmat station and got up there. I didn't want him to be alone like that. He and I spent three weeks getting him ready for a trip back to Cardiff, between clearing the Dalek dust and carrying bodies to the incinerators."
Everyone at the table gasped, including New New Jack. The Doctor looked decidedly uncomfortable.
"Why were you so determined to help him?" the Doctor asked.
"Jack's my lover," Ianto answered simply. "I didn't know if he was My Jack at first, but whether he was or not, he's the same man. Sort of. And those people deserved to be taken care of. Neither of us wanted them to just rot where they died."
"Could you tell if he was a younger version of Your Jack?" Other Ianto asked softly. He and Ianto had talked at length about Ianto's travels, and the different Jacks, but he'd never thought to ask this question.
"No way to tell. What we had was pretty intense, so I assume he'd remember me if we were to run into each other again, so I'm thinking he wasn't, since he didn't recognize me when we met the first time in my life. But, then again, he'd been a Time Agent and traveled with you, Doctor, so he might just have been good at keeping things to himself to avoid paradox."
"And where did you go after that?" the Doctor asked.
"Future Jack's universe. 3402AD. He'd loved and lost me back in the 21st century, so having me show up from another universe was a gift for him. We had two and a half months."
"Past Jack? Young Jack?" New New Jack asked, excited to finally get more of the story. Ianto hadn't been exactly forthcoming, and he was curious.
"Past Jack was stuck in 27AD. I got there a few days after he was buried alive and fortunately was able to find the grave to dig him up. I wasn't about to leave him there. We were together two months. He didn't recognize me, so we assumed I'd died in the Battle, like I had in New Jack's universe. He planned on going to America and hanging out by their Rift, just so he'd be on a different continent and couldn't run into himself until it was time to get back to Cardiff. Young Jack was from 1902, and I knew right away that he wasn't My Jack because he was a prisoner of Torchwood, rather than a recruit. I had three months with him, living in the Hub and hiding from the Torchwood of the time."
"Eleven universes," New New Tosh mused, tapping keys on her laptop. "Eleven different Jacks. Did you sleep with all of them?"
"All but the one where Torchwood was a TV program," Ianto answered without thinking. It was Torchwood, after all, and one's sex life was rarely a secret. Besides, New New Jack knew he'd done it, and Other Ianto knew some of the details, so there wasn't much point in trying to deny it. "That wasn't Jack at all, just an actor who looked like him. We got to be friends, though."
"You've had sex with ten versions of Jack?" New Martha demanded. "And another version of your ex-girlfriend?" She paused. "That's — wow." Ianto sighed. During the induction physical, she'd asked about sexual activity, of course, and he'd said he was active, with male partners and a history of female ones, but he hadn't thought it necessary to give her all the details about who his current lover(s?) was and how many of them he'd slept with.
"How soon after he died did you, um, you know, with Game Station Jack?" the Doctor asked, making a vague, uncomfortable hand gesture in the middle of his question.
"Is my sex life really important to the discussion of getting me home?" Ianto wondered. This was a level of detail he didn't want to discuss with everyone, especially the Doctor, who didn't seem entirely at ease with the conversation. "Thank you," he added, accepting a second cup of coffee from Other Ianto.
"Yes!" the Doctor declared. "Maybe," he amended. "I'm almost certain it's relevant. Especially in this case. I'm not so concerned about the others. It's the Time Vortex, you see. Depending on how close to Jack's, um, transformation you, you know, it might have affected your biology."
"Affected my biology, how?"
"I'm not sure. I'll have to do some tests. On the TARDIS."
"I'm not traveling anywhere with you," Ianto protested. "I need to stay here."
"Oh, no. No, no, that won't be necessary. Probably wouldn't be good for you, actually. It'll just be a quick visit, meet the old girl, see the med bay, that sort of thing. Then off we go. I mean, back here we go. Come. Whatever."
Ianto paused, thinking. "It was within a few hours, I think. It was one of those I-almost-died-and-therefor-have-to-have-sex things for him. I was amenable. He didn't realize yet what had happened. And I didn't tell him," Ianto added quickly. "I just comforted him."
"Well, that's good. Prevented a potential paradox there," the Doctor said. He stood up and motioned. "Anyway, let's go. Allons-y!"
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tbc