Title: Four Weeks
By: leastauklet
Pairing: mild Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: I don't own Torchwood.
Summary: Cliché? What cliché? Jack's gone, you know the rest. The rating's for swearing.

***

It started to bite after four weeks.

Four weeks was easy. Hell, four weeks was the clean-up.

All right, three and a half weeks was the clean-up. Half-a-week was some serious anality in the archives, looking up every second minute to see if that noise was Jack, or that movement was Jack, or just if Jack was there.

Good thing no one else ever came down, actually hearing a human would probably have sent his brain into a loop, because he knows he's only fooling himself all the other times. Doesn't get too high before remembering.

Four weeks is how long you can put off questions, though he really only has one and it's 'why?'

And if God forbid he does come back and Ianto doesn't kick his arse into the Bay, Ianto knows he won't get an answer.

Or he will, but it'll be the kind of bullshit that sends you down a blind alley before you realise there was no answer at all.

Ianto wonders if Jack was ever a politician. Figures there's newspapers on another planet with some really interesting sex scandals.

And that sends his brain down another track, the one that says all the other shit's worth it, worth it just to feel like that for a fraction of time.

And then he wonders when his life got quite so fucked up. And knows, whatever the hell happens, he's going to wait. And then makes himself say 'For now'.

***