Title: Solace
Author: Stolendreams
Pairing: Jack/Ianto
Rating: PG-13
Disclaimer: Not mine. Sadly. I'm a broke student. All I own is this computer I'm writing on and over half of that was paid for by the university.
Notes: Out of Time, and implied ones for that scene at the end of They Keep Killing Suzie
Authors Note: Slash, but so mild slash that if you prefer you could read it as friendship.
Summary: Post Out of Time, Jack brings Ianto's car back.

***

Ianto has to wait all night for Jack to come back with his car. He could just get a taxi home easily, but something tells him he's going to be needed. He doesn't know what exactly, maybe it's the fact that he's called Jack twice and got only his voicemail, or possibly the fact that the tracker shows his car hasn't moved once, but whatever it is he finds himself sitting in front of the computer screen all night waiting for the car to move.

Hours later it finally does and he sits and watches silently as it makes its way back towards the Hub. By the time Jack is parking it Ianto is waiting behind the reception desk. Ianto wants to be angry. He wants to ask why Jack didn't call and if his car is even in one piece and didn't he even care that Ianto might have needed to be somewhere tonight, only when Jack walks through the door alone the questions evaporate.

"Where's John?" he asks.

Jack looks at him with such pain in his eyes that Ianto almost cries for him. "He killed himself. He's gone."

"And you?"

"I came back," Jack says.

The desolation and the pain has always been there, under the surface, Ianto is sure of that, but he's never seen it so clearly before. Now, in the face of it, he forgets that they are in the reception area where anyone could walk in, he forgets that he was angry with Jack, none of it seems important. Instead he steps around the counter and enfolds Jack in his arms. For a moment Jack doesn't move, and then his head comes to rest on Ianto's shoulder and he clings to the back of his suit jacket with desperation Ianto hasn't felt before from Jack. Ianto has a thousand questions, but none of them seem important, so he stays quiet. Jack is silent, doesn't cry, doesn't speak, just clings to Ianto as though he's the only thing keeping him from falling apart and Ianto thinks that maybe that's exactly what he is.

***