Title: The Undeniable
By: b-w-williams
Pairing: Jack/Ianto & Ianto/OMC
Rating: AO
Disclaimer: These characters aren't mine!
Series: Sequel to The Uninvited. (However it is not necessary to have read that story to understand this one.)
Timeline: Set after 'A Day In the Death'
A/N: This story includes a subject that I have no *personal* experience with, however it is something I hinted at in the Uninvited and decided would be fun to explore in its own story. If I seem naive with some details, that's because I am, but hopefully the story will not suffer for it. I won't tell you any more because it will ruin the surprise ;) Enjoy! (Oh, also totally not beta'd, so excuse any typos.)
Warnings: Language, slash, some violence, light BDSM, moderate non-con. (Also Gwen is a bit of a plot-device in this story. Not intentionally tho, so don't think I'm a Gwen basher!)
Summary: Ianto's been acting twitchy recently and Jack decides to find out why – but Ianto fights him every step of the way and Jack can't fathom this sudden lack of trust.

***

The object was matt black and shaped like an over-sized peanut M&M. At least that's what Gwen had decided upon seeing it, but then she hadbeen complaining of feeling hungry at the time. Ianto had been a little more reserved when he'd logged the item's discovery into the Hub's database; describing it as a two-foot long ovoid without any defined edges. It was apparently constructed from a single sheet of unknown metal and the only marking upon it was a faint line etched around one end with no apparent purpose.

Jack stood in front of the workbench, arms folded across his chest as he contemplated the unusual pod. He'd never seen anything like it before and there was nothing in the archives to give them a clue as to its origin or function. It had come from about ten metres down in the ground, brought to the surface when developers of a new apartment complex had begun digging the foundations the previous week. As finds went, it wasn't the most outwardly exciting, but Tosh had leapt upon the challenge and spent every spare minute in the lab submitting the metallic pod to test after fruitless test.

Ianto appeared silently at Jack's side and it was only because of his experience with the young Welshman's ability to materialise out of thin air that Jack didn't embarrass himself by jumping in alarm. Ianto didn't say anything in greeting, merely leaned forward to study the pod with the vain curiosity of someone who knew there was nothing new to be found by looking, but simply couldn't help himself.

"See anything?" Gwen asked from Jack's other side. She'd been standing there for the past five minutes, attempting to emulate Jack's method of glaring down an enigma until it announced its raison d'être just to stop his intense scrutiny.

She'd so far had as much luck as Jack himself in this case.

"Nope," Ianto replied, sounding entirely disinterested, despite having his nose practically squashed against the dull surface.

Gwen gave a disappointed sigh. "I hate this kind of mystery. It's like a really odd-shaped present under the Christmas tree and you want to shake it just to find out what's inside. Only shaking this thing does nothing at all. It doesn't even make a noise, like when you accidentally break the crystal fruit bowl your Mam had bought specially for your Nan to replace the last one you broke..."

Jack could see the minute twitches in the muscles of Ianto's face that meant he was biting back laughter. The young man glanced out the corner of his eye at Jack, knowing he would have seen it, then turned a perfectly impassive expression towards their colleague. "You were a terror as a child, weren't you, Gwen Cooper?"

"Yeah, but I was a great little actress too," she told him, winking conspiratorially. "No one ever believed I was trouble because I could pull the best innocent act of all my friends and siblings."

"Ah, I see. Now I know who to suspect the next time the biscuits disappear."

Gwen giggled guiltily. "There were only a few left. And I was in desperate need of a chocolate fix, honest."

"I know," Ianto assured her. "That's why I've put an extra packet in your bottom drawer for next time."

Gwen's eyes widened in glee and she dashed off towards her workstation, shouting a thank you over her shoulder as she went.

Jack grinned at her retreating back, then turned his attention to Ianto. His smile softened with fondness as he studied his lover, who was still examining the pod as though nothing special had just happened. But Jack knew otherwise.

There weren't many people who truly believed in the concept of 'less is more'; who knew that small and thoughtful gestures were often appreciated more for their sincerity than big displays meant only to impress. There were even fewer who adopted the trait naturally into their lives, but Ianto was undoubtedly one of these rare individuals. Whilst he tended to the team's official requirements as his contract dictated, he also went the extra mile and provided those subtle personal touches that made all the difference in the world.

Whether it was catering for Gwen's sweet tooth, providing a sounding board for Tosh when everyone else had zoned out, bickering with Owen to allow the doctor to vent safely, or any of the countless other invisible services Ianto wove into his daily routine, it was all done without the expectation of being thanked or even recognised for having done anything at all. Jack suspected Ianto wasn't consciously aware of half the things he did, nor realised just how much it meant to the others, even if they didn't realise how much it meant to them either.

"You're looking at the wrong thing," Ianto said quietly, tilting his head to peer at the etched line from a different angle. "We already know what I am. It's the pod we need to figure out."

Jack's smile expanded again. "I don't think anyone will ever really know what you are," he said, the words tumbling from his lips without a thought.

Ianto's pretence of aloofness melted away as he turned bemused eyes towards the Captain. "That's either very profound or very rude," he said cautiously.

"I get that a lot," Jack countered. "Must be something in the delivery."

"Hmm," said Ianto. "Must be."

He returned his gaze to the pod and fell silent again. Jack's grin faltered when it became apparent that Ianto had no intention of asking which of the meanings applied to his comment. He cursed inwardly; not because of what he'd said but because Ianto's reaction – or lack thereof – was yet another entry to add to the mental list Jack had recently been compiling.

The list that documented all of Ianto's increasingly uncharacteristic behaviour.

Deciding to push a little harder, he leaned over to murmur in the young man's ear. "Let me guess," Jack began, "you're just itching to dust it."

The corner of Ianto's mouth, which Jack was watching carefully, curved upwards slightly. "No, I'm not."

"What's that in your hand?"

Ianto glanced down at the item he was holding. "That would be a feather duster, Jack," he replied evenly.

"Well unless you've developed a new kink, surely that means you intend to dust something," Jack said, encouraged by the petulance in Ianto's tone. He pressed closer, wondering if physical contact was the key, but Ianto tensed and took a step away from him.

"I do not have kinks," the young man said, biting out each word as though wary of getting one of them wrong somehow.

His expression closed up and Jack noted the change with alarm, taken aback by the sudden shift from nonchalant to offended in the blink of an eye. He frowned in confusion, but at the same time could not help but feel some degree of victory as well, because he'd unwittingly struck a nerve. For just a split second he had seen true emotion flash in Ianto's blue eyes and that was a rare thing indeed these days.

It had started a few months ago, after Ianto's body had been used by a mind-hopping alien with a grudge against Jack. He'd been trapped inside his own head, watching himself betray his colleagues and friends, even hurting them on one occasion.

To make matters worse, the alien had also messed with his senses; causing him to feel things he would never normally feel, including an insane lust for one Captain John Hart and an impossible physical pain every time Jack touched him.

Since that incident the young man had been rather more withdrawn than usual and, whilst it was a perfectly understandable reaction under the circumstances, Jack had two reasons to be worried about him.

First was the fact that enough time had passed for Ianto to have gotten over losing control of his body. Even though Jack knew Ianto hated being out of control, that he prided himself on his mastery of all things including himself, he had regained that control in a very empowering way and should have moved on by now.

The second reason was one Jack did not like thinking about at all, and it was one unique to Ianto. Had it been anybody else acting overly quiet and introvert, Jack wouldn't even have needed to number his concerns. But it was Ianto, or at least a version of Ianto, and Jack was forced to admit that this guarded facade was one that he recognised.

And that recognition was the true cause of his worry, for it harkened back to a time when Ianto was still new to Torchwood Three.

He'd been a far more reserved man back then, focusing solely on his work and content to linger at the edge of the team, an invisible and entirely non-threatening entity. The problem was that he had been withdrawn not because he was the new recruit employed only to clean up and help from the sidelines, but because he had a secret. A dark and deadly secret he couldn't risk exposing by getting too close to his new colleagues.

Now that he seemed to have adopted that wary persona once again, Jack couldn't help but fear that it meant he had another secret to hide.

Jack had been watching him carefully for the past few weeks, taking note of the way Ianto would deftly go about his day, no less competent or thorough in his work than before, but with a distance in his eyes that hadn't been there for a long time. When he joked with someone Jack could tell it was half-hearted, though the others didn't seem to notice. About the only time Jack could be sure he saw honest emotions in Ianto's eyes anymore was when they were alone together, but even the atmosphere during those moments had changed, with Ianto restless and eager and sometimes even irritable.

Jack had so far discovered no real explanation as to this curious development and although he sometimes did wonder if he was over-reacting, the memory of steel-wrapped death emerging from beneath his Hub assured him there was too much at risk if he ignored his instincts.

"Here," Tosh said, abruptly cutting through Jack's disturbing contemplations. He blinked, mind returning to the present to find he was still staring at Ianto, who in turn was staring resolutely at the pod and ignoring Jack's heavy gaze.

"Huh?" asked Jack, looking over to Tosh. Her hand was extended towards him, six plastic earplugs sitting on her open palm, whilst the rest of her attention was on a laptop perched beside the pod, her free fingers tapping rapidly away at the keys.

"If you're going to stick around, you'll need these," the tech wiz explained. "I'm going to start testing with some sonic frequencies and you won't want to be nearby without these."

"Huh?" Jack said again, only to be kept from further explanation as Ianto reached across and nabbed two of the plugs.

"You put them in your ears," the young man said dryly and once again Jack found himself wrong-footed by Ianto's reaction. How the hell could someone jump from impassive to affronted to sarcastic so quickly and make it seem perfectly natural?

Jack took a pair of earplugs for himself and slipped one into place. He held onto the other, not wanting to miss anything else that might be said, and noticed Ianto doing the same. "So what number is this on the list then?" he asked Tosh, instead of responding to Ianto's mocking.

"Sixteen," she said, tapping one final key before looking up from the monitor, apparently done with it.

Jack waited for her cue to put his other earplug in but she didn't move. He tilted his head at her. "Are we ready?"

Tosh nodded. "I thought we'd wait for Gwen to get back."

"She is rather excited about it," Jack agreed. "Even after all these fai-" Tosh's dark eyes flashed and he quickly amended his choice of words, "-fabulous tests that haven't gone wrong at all, no sir!"

"I'm excited about what?" Gwen asked, reappearing in the gap between the two men and saving Jack from a death-by-scowling. She stuffed the remaining half of a biscuit into her mouth, at which point realisation apparently dawned. "Oh, that, yes!" she said, trying to swallow and speak at the same time.

Tosh handed the last pair of plugs to Gwen then fitted her own and Jack hurried to put his second one in too, watching Ianto as he did so. A slight hint of disgust had creased the young man's brow at Gwen's poor manners, but it had vanished almost instantly and Jack was half tempted to break a few rules of etiquette just to see if he could get the same candid reaction.

A sharp squeal, muffled by the earplugs, interrupted his thoughts and he allowed himself to be distracted by Tosh's experiment, not entirely sure that he should be considering forcing Ianto out of his current stony disposition by insulting his sensibilities.

Working from her laptop, Tosh changed the pitch of the noise at regular intervals, hoping to hit a note that would open the container. If it was indeed controlled by sound. And if it actually did open, of course.

Ten minutes later and the frequency had reached so low that Jack was positive his entire body was physically vibrating. The pressure in his head was verging on painful and he was immensely grateful when Tosh stopped the programme and tugged out her earplugs in defeat. The other three did the same, faces tight with discomfort.

"Well, that was fun," declared Jack, working his jaw as though trying to pop his ears. "Perhaps we could pipe that stuff through the comm. system on quiet days to make sure we all stay awake."

"Thank god we don't have quiet days," Ianto muttered. He rubbed at his temples and Jack automatically sidled closer.

"Headache?"

Ianto nodded, still rubbing small circles over his skin.

"You know what they say about how to cure headaches..." Jack said with a wink.

Ianto gave him a heavy-lidded glare and Jack grinned before turning back to Tosh. "Onto number seventeen, then?"

"Definitely," Tosh agreed with a determined glint in her eye, animated by the persistent challenge.

Gwen was leaning over the pod as they spoke, a disappointed pout on her face. She poked at the strange object. "I bet there's nothing in it," she said. "It could just be solid metal. Did we x-ray it?"

"The sensors couldn't penetrate the surface," Tosh explained. She began pulling out a coil of wire from a drawer, most likely for whatever number seventeen entailed. "But logic dictates there's a compartment inside, otherwise what purpose could it have?"

"It could be art," Ianto suggested, straightening his already impeccable tie. Jack had always taken that gesture to be one of anxiety, but there was nothing for him to be anxious about right then. Was there?

Gwen made a rude noise. "I don't think much of their taste then," she said. "Whoever they are." She prodded the metal oval again then jumped back in surprise as the lid toppled off onto the desk with a hiss of compressed air and a heavy 'clunk'.

All four of them stared at the now divided object.

"Uh," Gwen began cautiously, "yay me?"

Tosh recovered quickly and whipped out a portable scanner. "One of the frequencies worked after all," she said excitedly. "The top must have been stuck."

Emboldened by the other woman's reasoning, Gwen stepped forward, moving aside the lid and peering into the container with undisguised fascination. "Oh," she exclaimed. "Look!"

Everyone else bent their heads. There was a small square of empty space, the back of which was lit by a display of tiny coloured lights, blinking frantically at them in random patterns.

"Pretty," said Jack. "But obviously whatever it's meant to hold wasn't put inside."

"Unless it wasn't meant to hold anything. The lights could be a control system for whatever this thing does," Tosh said thoughtfully. Her gaze was still fixed on her scanner.

"Maybe. Work on it, but it isn't a priority, okay?"

"Mm-hmm," Tosh agreed, already tuning everything out but the new mystery.

Jack grinned at her enthusiasm, catching Ianto's eye to share the amusement. The younger man smiled back, though it seemed more than a little strained.

---

The rest of the day passed slowly, with a distinct lack of alarms or crises or anything else of interest to occupy the team. As the hours dragged on, Jack continued to obsess over Ianto's behaviour. Though the incident of his over-reaction earlier was nothing major, nor new, it had triggered something within Jack which could not be settled. No matter the harmlessness of the situation, he was through merely accepting Ianto's method of dealing with his problems.

---

Ianto pushed open the door to the underground car park and hurried over to his car. He could feel his shoulders hunching with tension, part of which was due to guilt over the flimsy excuse he'd just given Jack in order to get out of the Hub in the middle of the afternoon.

Chest constricted with discomfort and an almost tangible pressure following him out of the secret base, he slid into the driver's seat and sat there for a few seconds, relishing the feeling of escape that came with simply being inside a vehicle that could take him anywhere he wished to go.

Once the impending panic attack was safely deflected, he fished out his mobile and punched in a number from memory. It rang twice before it was answered.

"Hi, it's Ianto," he said anxiously. "I know it's only Tuesday but-"

"But you've had a bad day?" the voice on the other end of the line guessed. "It's okay, you're welcome to come over. You know I keep my afternoons free for emergencies."

"I know, thanks," Ianto sighed, the weight already beginning to lift from his shoulders. "I'll see you in a few minutes."

***

Gwen tumbled through the door into the Tourist Office well after her usual time of arrival. "Hi," she slurred, causing Ianto to glance up from where he'd been fastidiously arranging leaflets on the counter.

"Out late last night, were we?" he teased, taking in her pale face and the circles beneath her eyes.

"No," she protested weakly. "I think I'm getting the flu or something."

"Ah." Ianto moved a tiny step backwards as he reached for the button that opened the Hub's concealed entrance. "How about I make you a Lemsip?"

Gwen smiled gratefully at him. "Oh God, that would be perfect. Could you?"

"Of course. Let me lock up here and I'll be right down."

"Thanks, Ianto." Gwen shuffled over to the door, then paused to look back at him with narrowed eyes. "It only takes a second to lock up. You just don't want to get in the lift with me, do you?"

Ianto gave her an innocent smile. "The thought hadn't even crossed my mind."

Five minutes later, he set a steaming mug on the desk by Gwen's elbow. She was slumped forward, head resting on her folded arms and her eyes shut tight. Ianto smiled and tentatively placed a hand on her shoulder, feeling slightly uncomfortable at the personal gesture. "You should be in bed," he said. "Why don't you go home and I'll let Jack know you're ill."

Gwen shook her head as best she could without lifting it from her arms. "I'll be fine," she told him. "I'm just tired."

Frowning, Ianto moved his hand to her forehead. "You're burning up." Gwen tried to dislodge him, but Ianto held on, noticing something else as he did so. "What's this?" he asked, brushing aside her hair to better see her left arm. There was a small discoloured patch of skin trailing from the back of her hand up onto her forearm, the surrounding flesh lined with the tell-tale red marks of relentless scratching.

"Just a rash," Gwen mumbled, trying to return her head to the pillow of her arms.

A sinking feeling settled over Ianto and he removed his hand. "I'm going to get Owen."

---

Owen turned away from the slumbering form and carefully climbed the steps up from the autopsy bay. As had become his new habit, he kept one eye on the floor and the other on his hands and the towel with which he was drying them. It was perhaps one of the most frustrating things he had to deal with since his 'resurrection'; having to look at what his body was doing because he couldn't feel anything, not even the ground beneath his feet.

It wasn't a problem he admitted to the others – the fact he had to teach himself to walk all over again was not something he felt like sharing with his colleagues – so instead he was especially careful to stay aware of his surroundings.

At the top of the steps he swung a sharp left towards Jack's office, tossing the used paper towel towards his desk as he passed and clenching his fist in celebration when it dropped directly into the bin beside his chair. His victorious grin faded as he stepped into the office and caught sight of the worried faces within.

"Bad news," he announced, forgoing any preamble. "It's that Rash-ese disease again." He grimaced as he said it and glared at Ianto. "We've really gotta stop letting you name things."

The younger man shrugged. "It produced a rash," he countered. "And, if I recall correctly, you found it funny at the time."

Owen rolled his eyes. "Oh sure, 'cept you asked my opinion when I was hopped up on painkillers."

"How did Gwen get it?" Jack asked, absently pushing aside some papers on his desk. "And why didn't we? Wasn't it highly contagious last time?"

Ianto reached across to pull the papers back in front of the Captain. "Sign them," he told him firmly. "And yes, it was. It spread between us within a couple of hours of skin-to-skin contact. If we're not showing any symptoms she must have been exposed to something we haven't encountered ourselves yet." Realising something, Ianto lifted a hand and squinted at his palm. "Well I definitely touched her earlier, so it looks like I'm out of the hunt for whatever caused this. The question is, has anyone else touched her or me since she started to feel ill?"

"Gwen said Rhys is away on an extended stag-do or something, so we don't have to worry about him, and of course I don't count," Owen announced cheerfully. "I've got a get-out-of-the-frustratingly-itchy-rash card, right here." He tapped his chest, directly over the bullet hole that would never heal.

"How wonderful for you," Ianto said dryly. "I don't think you've touched me today, have you, Jack?"

The Captain pouted. "No, you've been extra slippery this morning."

Ianto ignored his sulky response and took another step away from the desk. "Okay, well if Gwen's got the medical bay then I guess I'll go quarantine myself in one of the guestrooms. I'm sure you won't mind making house calls to me there Owen, as you're so fortunately resistant to the disease." The medic gave him a dark look but Ianto had already turned to Jack. "You'll have to fend for yourselves for the next few days, but I'm sure you'll survive. Oh, but if you could remember that Gwen and I need to eat as well, I'd appreciate it." He fixed each of them with a pointed look, making sure they remembered how hairy things had become the last time they'd all been exposed to the virus. Especially when the supply of food in the locked-down Hub had began to run out...

"How about you don't quarantine yourself and Tosh and I just avoid touching you until you're all better again?" Jack suggested, pulling a face at Ianto's words.

"Then you'd definitely catch it, wouldn't you? Sorry, Jack, I'd rather sit in a room by myself for five days than deal with you whining about being itchy." Ianto smirked at Jack's mock outrage and deftly stepped out of reach when the older man made a grab for him.

He left the office and began to gather up a few things to keep himself entertained whilst he was isolated, far from enthusiastic about shutting himself away but aware from experience that it had to be done; if they all caught the virus again then Torchwood would be out of commission for the better part of the week, possibly longer.

---

Jack tentatively prodded the mug Owen had just deposited on his desk with the end of a pencil. The dark liquid inside quivered but barely moved, reminding Jack of the thick viscous excretions that came out of a Mynark's reproductive glands. Having become closely acquainted with that substance once before in his lifetime, the Captain wasn't very eager to repeat the experience at all. He shoved the mug away, and then a further inch to the side for good measure, lest the 'coffee' inside decided to make its own way out of its ceramic prison.

"A-hem."

Jack glanced up to find Owen glaring at him and he shrugged, unrepentant. Immortality might bring him back from a coffee-related death, but it certainly wouldn't remove the memory of the taste.

The doctor rolled his eyes and slid further down in his chair. Beside him, Tosh was engaged in a very curious form of twitching that involved both her body and her face and Jack had to resist the urge to laugh.

"So it was in the pod?" he asked, though that had already been established moments earlier.

"Bet you regret giving Tosh free reign over that thing now, eh?" Owen said.

The older man lifted an eyebrow. "As if I could've stopped her." He grinned over at the woman in question, who was still performing some kind of dance, or perhaps it was a new type of aerobics, in her chair. "Besides, I'd say she regrets it more than me."

"AH!" Tosh cried out, surging forward as she contorted an arm around to the middle of her back and began scratching furiously. "The more you talk about it, the worse it gets!"

Jack bit back a chuckle. "But this is purely psychological, right?" he pushed Owen, because Tosh was doing a very good job of convincing him otherwise.

"Yeah, she's fine. I ran her samples three times because she didn't believe me either and they all came out negative."

"So why didn't the internal sensors pick up the presence of the virus when we opened the pod?" Jack flipped his pencil between his fingers, attempting to distract himself from the slight tickling at the back of his neck.

"Because the sensors only recognise airborne oddities and this ain't one of them," Owen said, folding his hands behind his head and looking rather stiff as he did so. Jack eyed him with sympathy for a few seconds before Owen noticed the pity and scowled back at him.

"Okay, that makes sense I suppose, even if it does highlight a gaping hole in our security around here." Jack frowned and turned his attention back to Tosh. "But why is Tosh clear of the virus?"

"Two possibilities," Owen replied immediately, having clearly already considered the question. "One: Gwen came into contact with a part of the pod that Tosh didn't."

"Unlikely," Tosh said, now rubbing her back against the chair like a bear at its favourite tree. "I worked with it for hours but she was only there when it opened. I can guarantee we touched the same things."

Jack had to agree it was a bit of a stretch to think otherwise. "Second possibility?"

"Second possibility is that Tosh simply wasn't infected by the virus this time."

Jack's frown deepened; that seemed almost as much of a stretch as the first option to him. "And that could happen?" he asked dubiously, to which Owen gave him a rakish grin that told Jack he already had an answer for that.

"It could happen if she has an immunity to the virus. One she developed after, say, being exposed to it previously..."

Ah. Jack nodded sagely, approving Owen's speculation despite having no real knowledge of such things. There was a reason why he had a medic on the team after all. "Okay, so, that's good, right? It means we're all immune to it. Apart from Gwen, of course, who'll just have to suffer like we did for that horrible, horrible week of which we shall never speak again." He tapped his chin thoughtfully, a plan forming in his mind. "We could tell her it's another part of her initiation and see if she still buys that line, like last month with the Orli eggs."

Tosh pulled a face at the memory – though it could've been partly due to her phantom itches – and Owen smirked openly. Jack grinned as well, relief easing his concerns that the team would be overrun by the frustrating, if harmless, ailment. Gwen wouldn't have a good week, but at least Torchwood wouldn't be entirely compromised again.

"So Ianto doesn't need to be quarantined after all," Jack went on, once again eyeballing the thick gloop that Owen had dared to present him with.

"No, he does," Owen announced with far too much enthusiasm. "We still need to rule out the possibility that Gwen herself is infectious. I should have him all cleared and out of isolation by the end of the day if my theory's correct."

Jack's expression fell as he imagined the rest of the day without a good drink or a great backside to ogle. Oh, it was an improvement on Ianto being shut away for a week, but now that he knew the Welshman was most likely clear of the virus, he couldn't find the patience to wait.

"Fine," he sulked. "Go update him, then get on with those tests. I'm sure a gifted doctor as yourself could get them done much quicker than you think."

Owen crowed with laughter as he left the office, seeing right through Jack's weak attempt to flatter him into compliance. Tosh gave him a tiny smile then followed Owen out, her movements jerky as she valiantly tried not to start scratching again.

---

Later that afternoon, in the bare room that he'd claimed as his temporary new home, Ianto was talking with Tosh whilst correcting a report that Jack had apparently written in about ten seconds flat.

The day of isolation had been a surprisingly nice change of pace for the young man, especially once he'd found out he probably hadn't caught Gwen's virus and had stopped worrying about when the infuriating itching would begin. He'd managed to get through a backlog of reports and requisitions and his peace had only occasionally been broken by Owen brandishing a needle or Jack calling over the comms to ask something he really should have known himself.

The more of those needles that made their way into his arm and the more questions that he fielded, the more Ianto considered barricading himself in the room and switching off his earpiece just to get some of the benefits of true isolation.

"I don't understand," Tosh was saying with a sigh. "There's a pattern to the lights, but I can't find anything at all that can tell me what they might mean."

"You've only be working on it for a day, Tosh," Ianto said, typing swiftly as he spoke. "Give it time and I'm sure you'll get there."

"Hmm," she said doubtfully and Ianto smiled to himself.

"Have you eaten yet?"

"Uh..." There was a pause whilst Tosh checked the time. "Oh! No, not yet."

"Why am I not surprised?"

The door swung open suddenly and Ianto looked up to find Owen had barged into the room again.

"You don't even consider knocking anymore, do you?" the younger man asked mildly as he returned his attention to the screen.

"Hey, if you do anything in these rooms you don't want seen, then it's your own fault if you get caught," Owen retorted and Ianto felt his face heat up immediately at the insinuation, though he managed to restrain himself from showing any other reaction.

"I always suspected you were a voyeur, Owen," he said, proud of the control in his own voice. "Sorry to disappoint you."

"This time," the doctor added smugly and Ianto finally threw him a cold look, ruffled by the uncomfortable memory of being caught in a compromising position with John Hart in one of these very rooms.

"Was there something in particular you wanted, Owen?" he asked, his tone all business. "Another pint of blood, perhaps?"

"No blood; this time we're going to have us a little examination. Go on, get yer kit off!"

Ianto blinked across the room at him, a feeling of dread growing in his chest. He was accustomed to Owen's poor bedside manner by now, but the curt command was not what gave him pause; he really didn't want to get undressed in front of the other man right then.

"I don't..." he began, struggling for a good reason to keep his clothes on.

"What, are you shy?" Owen asked. "Or are you worried I'll be so excited by what I see I'll immediately jump you?" He grabbed his crotch ruefully. "No need to worry on that front, mate."

Ianto grimaced, troubled by the reminder of Owen's current not-quite-dead state, but not so much that he'd give into the command to strip out of sympathy. "I'm not itching," he told the doctor instead. "And look, no rash." He pushed up one sleeve of his shirt and waved a pale forearm in punctuation.

With a sigh, Owen stalked across the room and took hold of the proffered arm. Ianto let him, instinctively relinquishing command of the situation, and Owen pushed the sleeve all the way to Ianto's elbow before repeating the action on the other arm. "Good. Now shoes and socks."

"What?"

"Take off your shoes," Owen repeated slowly, "and your socks." When Ianto still hesitated, Owen sighed again. "Look, I'm all for you being prudish, it's not like I harbour any secret desire to get you naked, but at least meet me halfway and show me your damn feet. The rash starts at the extremities, so I have to check hands and feet if nowhere else."

Ianto eyed Owen for a moment longer, both surprised and relieved by his reaction. Whilst he was certainly glad to avoid risking discovery by the other man, he'd never suspected that he would win when Owen had his doctor hat on. He supposed this was another change that death had brought about within the medic, a frustration with the living and their vain habits.

Glad, even if it was at Owen's expense, Ianto quickly slipped off his polished shoes and dark socks before pulling his trouser legs up to his knees and revealing rash-free feet and shins. Owen gave them a cursory look over and grunted in approval.

"How's Gwen doing?" Ianto asked, taking the grunt to mean Owen was content with what he saw and starting to put his clothes back in order.

"No better, no worse. She wanted to get out of bed and I had to sedate her so she could get some rest." Owen shrugged and looked around the room absently.

"That sounds about right," Ianto said. He snagged the suit jacket from the back of his chair and pulled it on, grateful for the additional layer between Owen and his body. "So I can get out of here now?"

"Let me just do one more round of blood tests, then you can come out." Owen began unwrapping a sterilised needle whilst Ianto looked away to hide his grimace. "And for God's sake, make Jack some coffee first. He's been bitching all day about my 'lack of mastery' over that damn machine of yours. It was funny at first, but now I just want to tip the stuff over his head."

---

The first thing Ianto did after leaving his self-imposed quarantine, even before considering Jack's coffee, was check in on Gwen. She had apparently been unhappy about staying in the medical bay, so Owen had moved her to one of the rooms along the hall from Ianto's.

The virus had evidentially hit Gwen hard, for she was still asleep on the low bed despite the sedatives having worn off some time earlier. Even from the doorway, Ianto could see the inflamed colour of her skin and guessed that the rash had spread across most of her body already. When she woke she would itch all over and the next few days would be torment for her until the rash began to clear. Although Ianto felt sorry for what she had to come, he didn't mind at all that he wasn't going to experience the same problem himself. Once was more than enough, in his opinion.

Leaving her to sleep, Ianto made his way back to the centre of the Hub, setting his laptop down on one of the desks before moving over to the kitchenette. Jack appeared as soon as the smell of fresh coffee spread through the air, his presence filling the small space and alerting Ianto to his arrival before he'd even spoken. The young man turned to see the Captain's expression was a mix of both suspicion and eagerness.

"So...?" Jack pressed, narrowed eyes darting between Ianto's face and the machine gently whirring away.

"Apparently I haven't got it," Ianto told him. "Well, obviously I haven't got it," he amended, "otherwise I'd be red, blotchy and scratching."

"Good. That's good," Jack said, watching Ianto's hands moving empty mugs and bags of coffee beans around.

"Did you manage to get hold of Rhys and let him know what was going on?" asked the younger man, taking his time preparing the Captain's drink purely for the thrill of making him wait.

"Yeah, he picked up our messages a little while ago, called back and proceeded to shout down the phone at me. For some reason he thinks I'm responsible for all this."

"I think he probably blames you for everything by default," Ianto said dryly.

Jack nodded, still staring at Ianto's hands as he worked, and Ianto fancied that if he drew it out any longer the immortal would start hopping impatiently from foot to foot. He smiled to himself and considered tormenting Jack further, sure he could start something highly inappropriate for the time of day, but his professionalism won out. "Here," he said, handing over the mug at last. "One of these days I'm going to remember that you know how to use this thing and you'll have to get your own."

Jack harrumphed into the scorching hot liquid. "You can't do that, it's in your contract."

"My contract says I have to fetch you coffee even when ill and indisposed?"

"Well, it says you're to do as I command, no matter what."

Ianto cocked an eyebrow at him. "Really? I think I'll have to query that in our next progress review."

"Hey, you begged for this job, you can't complain about the terms of your employment now. Anyway, you're not ill or indisposed and I've been waiting patiently all day for a decent drink."

"Oh yes, you've been very brave," Ianto teased, rethinking his decision not to start something. It was technically almost early evening...

Jack considered him for a long moment in silence, long enough for Ianto to start feeling uncomfortable beneath that penetrating blue gaze. There was something not quite right in Jack's expression, something that shook awake the same bead of panic that Owen had caused to form earlier when demanding that he strip.

"So, crisis averted, hey?" the Welshman said, his voice catching ever so slightly. "Not that I don't feel sorry for Gwen, but I'm glad only she's caught this thing. I foresaw a week of 'I'll scratch your back, you scratch mine' jokes and oven mits taped over our hands." He was babbling and he knew it and any moment now Jack was going to call him up on it.

Jack continued to stare intently at the younger man. "I think we need to talk."

Shit. "About what?" Ianto asked carefully. 'Needing to talk' was universal code for 'I want to break up', but he and Jack weren't an item so they couldn't break up. Right?

Instead of answering, Jack tilted his head back towards his office. "Come on," he said and the amicable tone of his voice did nothing to clue Ianto into what they were about to discuss.

Inside the office, with the door closed, the young Welshman watched as Jack moved towards the desk, then turned around instead of sitting down behind it. To Ianto's trained eye that meant it would be a personal chat, one that wasn't work related and yet couldn't wait until they were alone later on. Which did not bode well.

Jack fixed him with a firm gaze. "I need you to be honest with me about something," he said, before Ianto could attempt another nervous quip to lighten the mood. "You've not been yourself for a while now and I want to know what the matter is."

Ianto blinked. Shit, shit, shit. "Nothing's the matter," he responded, fighting to keep the alarm from his expression. "I don't know what you mean."

"I know it's been difficult since Lurrelia..." Ianto shuddered at the name, memories of the loss of control over his body causing a heavy feeling of nausea to settle in his stomach. "...but I thought you were dealing with what happened," Jack went on.

"I was," Ianto hurried to assure him. "I am." He shifted uncomfortably under Jack's scrutiny, heart thumping against his ribs. The older man might not have learnt anything concrete that Ianto was attempting to hide, but the fact that he'd noticed something amiss was bad enough. "Should I not be troubled by aliens messing with my head?" he asked, pitching his tone to show his indignation.

"Being troubled is fine," Jack replied, choosing his words with care. "You, however, are infrequently troubled by anything for long, Ianto. You take things in your stride, and if you can't do that, you find a way around any obstacles you might encounter. That hasn't been the case recently."

Ianto's jaw clenched slightly. "Have I been neglecting my work?" he asked.

"No, of course not," Jack told him, waving away the concern. "As always, I can't fault the execution of your tasks." He locked his gaze with Ianto's and the young man swallowed nervously. "But your heart's not in it anymore. You're going through the motions and I can't see the reason why that might be."

Ianto was unable to look away from Jack's piercing eyes. "That isn't true."

"Even your interaction with the others has changed," Jack went on, ignoring his protest. "You say things that you would have said before, but you don't mean them now. It's as though your words are forced out when you would prefer to stay silent. You're more withdrawn, even though you make yourself talk and joke."

Shaking his head, Ianto struggled to find the words that would stop Jack's list of grievances. He began to tremble, panic rising as it became clear that his attempts to behave normally were not as successful as he'd thought. He had to stop this inquisition before it was too late.

With a sigh, he dropped his eyes and adopted the stance of one defeated. "It is still hard sometimes," he admitted and took solace in the honesty of his own words. It might be only a fraction of the tale he could tell, but it was the truth nonetheless and his conscience could work with that.

The young Welshman glanced up, sensing the questions gathering in the air around them before Jack had even opened his mouth. Another frisson of panic shot through his body and he licked his lips, lifting a hand and placing it against the immortal's chest. He held Jack's gaze intently. "I guess these things just take time," he suggested, mentally crossing his fingers that Jack would abandon this awkward conversation for something he knew – and did – far better.

For a moment it seemed that Jack would protest, but then he smiled wryly and drew Ianto forward until their foreheads touched briefly before pressing his mouth to the younger man's. The kiss was deep from the start, lips parting at first contact and tongues entwining without any of the playful graduation of more casual and lengthy encounters.

Ianto welcomed the solid presence of Jack's body as they came together, the warmth and strength reassuring and all thoughts of shame and deception fled his mind in favour of the far more pleasurable business of distracting the Captain.

Jack's fingers worked their way quickly past the buttons of Ianto's shirt and the younger man smiled against his lips. "Did you miss me?"

"You were only in there for a few hours," Jack replied, sliding his hands across Ianto's torso in a quick eager sweep before moving down to his belt.

"And yet you can't keep your hands off me."

Jack moved his lips to Ianto's neck. "I was worried," he admitted absently, in between kisses, and Ianto very nearly pulled away in surprise at the quiet words. Jack continued his ministrations, entirely ignorant to the response that his simple comment had evoked within the younger man.

Ianto forced his hands to move around onto the older man's back, guilt spearing him through the chest, but then Jack's fingers found their way into his underwear, wrapped themselves around his swiftly growing erection and Ianto's attention was directed swiftly and gladly downwards, away from the endless mystery of his labyrinth-like emotions.

***

Gwen sat propped up in bed, rubbing a palm over one of her bandaged forearms, and Jack grinned in amusement at her compromise to Owen's no-scratching rule.

"Don't you laugh at me, Jack Harkness," she growled, trying to give him an evil look through eyes too tired to pull it off. "You should be more sympathetic, knowing what I'm going through."

Jack shrugged and sat down on the edge of her mattress. "I'm thinking of making it mandatory every time we get a new member," he said casually.

Gwen pulled a face. "Like a vaccination? Measles, mumps and alien rashes?"

"I was thinking more hazing without the paddles." Jack considered his own words for a moment. "Or maybe with paddles too."

"I can't believe you're all immune to this thing already," grumbled Gwen, ignoring him.

"Hey, we all suffered our own week of hell. At least you've got us to look after you now; back then we were all trapped in here under lockdown, scratching like mad. We weren't sure if we'd ever get better and, worst of all, we were forced to live off Suzie's stash of out of date vegetable cupasoups." Jack shuddered at the memory. "Not even the mutual creaming sessions could make up for that horror."

Gwen looked at up him, apparently undecided whether to groan, laugh or hit him. In the end she rolled her eyes and slumped further into her pillows. "At least I'll be immune after this too, I suppose," she said, yawning deeply.

"Exactly," Jack agreed. He stood up again. "You should try and get some more sleep. You look like death warmed up."

"Always the charmer," Gwen murmured, her eyes sliding shut.

Jack leaned forward to press his lips to her hair and then retreated from the already slumbering woman.

---

"Ianto!"

Jack waved him over the moment the young man stepped through the cog door, only to immediately disappear into his office.

"What is it?" Ianto asked as he stopped behind Tosh's workstation, eyeing the details that filled her bank of monitors.

"Seems the Rift figured out we were down one and decided to start pissing around," Owen answered, folding his arms and scowling. "But then I guess we've been lucky not having any major disasters recently."

"Well, you've just gone and tempted fate, haven't you," Ianto said blithely, glancing up as Jack emerged from the office with his greatcoat on.

"We've got multiple events across the city," Tosh began to explain. "Nothing big-"

"-but I want them sorted ASAP," the Captain interrupted as he rejoined them.

There followed a flurry of activity as everyone set about preparing for an excursion and before long Jack, Ianto and Tosh were armed and in the SUV, heading through Cardiff at the usual breakneck speed. Ianto rolled around in the back seat, absently considering the irony of how grateful he felt that the Rift had started acting up.

If they'd had to leave two of their team behind at other time, he might have felt some concern about heading out to investigate an unknown disturbance, however in this instance he was glad for something to distract Jack for a while. The older man had been scrutinising Ianto very closely the past couple of days; his questioning from the evening before and the way his eyes followed Ianto wherever he went – and not in the usual way – was starting to make Ianto feel like he had a target painted between his shoulder blades.

The young Welshman hadn't believed he'd been acting any differently, but then it was always difficult to judge normality when trying so hard to be normal. The thought of Jack finding out why he was still on edge three months after becoming an alien's puppet sent bolts of fear though Ianto's body. He was evidentially going to have to work much harder at keeping his lover firmly in the dark.

"Over there," Tosh announced, before much time had passed, and pointed through the windscreen at a shopping centre up ahead of them. Jack threw the vehicle into a screeching arc, just scraping through the car park entrance he'd almost overshot, and then followed Tosh's finger to a green verge off to the side of the complex. A small crowd of people were gathered there, but others were walking past without stopping, seemingly untroubled by whatever lay in the overgrown grass.

"Well, that's not the scene I was expecting," Jack admitted to his companions, bringing the SUV right up to the curb and climbing out. "Okay people, out the way, coming through!" he called, pushing between the onlookers to the middle of the circle. Once there he stopped, surprised, and turned back to face Tosh. "Am I missing something here?" he asked, waving a hand at what lay at his feet.

Tosh edged her way through the observers. "Oh," she declared weakly and Ianto, two steps behind, peered around her to see what had got everyone rather less excited than they should have been.

On the grass there appeared to be a slug; larger than usual, at perhaps a foot long and very fat, but slug-like in every other way.

"It looks..." Tosh was saying hesitantly, wary of the people around them, "...normal..."

"What is it?" someone asked, clearly accepting that Jack and the others were there to deal with the creature. "It can't be a slug, it's too big."

Jack lifted an eyebrow at the teenager. "It looks like a slug," he pointed out simply. "What else do you think it could be?"

"But it's...it's huge!" the youth said in disbelief and Jack grinned.

"You wouldn't believe how many times in a day I hear that," he said, winking at the woman beside the lad. He crouched down next to Tosh and they both watched her modified PDA as she scanned the creature. Jack snorted at the distinctly unimpressive results and looked up at Ianto. "Get the gear from the car."

Ianto turned away to comply whilst Jack stood and faced the onlookers still gathered nearby. "Really?" he asked them. "You're wasting your afternoon staring at a giant slug?" They gaped at him, shifting uncomfortably at his reproachful tone. "Go," he urged, waving his hands in a shooing motion. "Go buy frivolous things, eat junk food, enjoy your lives!"

The crowd dispersed quickly, chastened by his words and perhaps realising that they really could find something better to do.

"Is it okay to let them go?" Tosh asked, moving aside as Ianto placed a small containment unit down beside the creature.

"It's a freakishly large slug," Jack told her, shrugging. "Hardly front-page material. Besides, do you really want to try and Retcon all these people?"

"You mean do I want to try and Retcon all these people," Ianto corrected, handing a pair of heavy-duty gloves to the Captain. "Now, if you'd be so kind..." He motioned towards the clear box he'd set next to the slug.

Jack looked from the box to the Welshman to the slimy creature on the ground. "But you're in charge of clean-up," he pointed out and tried to give the gloves back.

"And you're in charge of alien capture." Ianto smirked in faint satisfaction and kept his hands behind his back. "This is more alien than clean-up, so you get the honour, Sir."

Jack narrowed his eyes. "Fine," he said before a grin broke across his face. "But when we get back to the Hub I'm spilling coffee all over my paperwork and you'll have to clean it up."

"Oh?" Ianto raised an eyebrow. "You'd waste my coffee like that?"

Tosh hid a giggle behind her hand as Jack tugged on the gloves with a pout and petulantly got to work.

---

The alien proved no trouble at all to secure; apart from almost slipping out of Jack's hands due to the copious amount of slime that covered it. It had remained motionless pretty much since they'd arrived, only squirming a little at Jack's touch and showing hardly any reaction at all to being on another world, which, whilst encouraging, was certainly curious as well.

They moved on to investigate the other instances of Rift activity, only to find more slugs at each new location, much to Jack's dismay. He'd tried convincing Tosh to take over handling the wet, squishy creatures but she'd only laughed at his plea. Ianto had simply glared him down before he'd even opened his mouth to ask.

By the end of the afternoon his skin felt sticky inside the sodden and apparently porous gloves and he'd vocally blamed Ianto for that fact at least a half-dozen times already, especially as the slime had proven resistant to wet-wipes and thus he'd been unable to drive the SUV for the rest of the day.

"Don't move," Ianto commanded the moment they were back in the Hub, and Jack found himself standing just inside the large cog-wheel door, hands held away from him as though they might move of their own volition and spread the stickiness over the rest of his body without his prior approval.

Tosh skirted around the Captain, giving him a wide berth and an amused smile, and Jack growled back at her playfully.

Ianto reappeared before him with a thick plastic bag and a bowl filled with various bottles in his hands. "Right," he said in his no-nonsense voice, "gloves in here." He held out the bag as Jack peeled off the rancid material, glad to be rid not only of the clinging items but also the smell of the vile slime. Ianto sealed the bag and set it aside, hopefully in order to destroy the gloves later on, rather than attempt to clean and reuse them.

"Come on," Ianto continued, dragging Jack's glare away from the offensive apparel. The young man turned, leading his Captain across the Hub and down a level to the large communal wetroom. Ianto set his bowl down beside one of the deep sinks and began running the taps to fill the porcelain. Jack stood in the middle of the room, hands still uselessly aloft, and watched Ianto as he poured various liquids into the water.

The young man glanced back over his shoulder and raised an eyebrow at Jack. "You enjoy it that much?" he asked.

"Enjoy what?" Jack replied, eyes fixed to Ianto's backside as he leaned over the sink.

"Having that stuff all over your hands."

Jack forced his attention upwards and wiggled his fingers. "It does have a certain tactile appeal," he said, lunging forward with his hands outstretched threateningly. Ianto simply shook his head and stepped aside, grasping one of Jack's arms as he passed and plunging his hand into the frothy water.

Chuckling to himself, Jack set about washing himself, occasionally flicking droplets of water at the other man and then finally sighing in relief when he pulled back from the sink, skin clean at last.

Ianto held out a towel but Jack countered by holding out his hands expectantly. The older man bit back another laugh as Ianto rolled his eyes and obediently patted them dry before producing a bottle of lotion and starting to smooth it over Jack's reddened skin.

Jack watched him, smiling affectionately at the absolute focus the young Welshman gave to his task. He was reminded of his recent concerns about Ianto's reversion to an almost entirely detached and professional demeanour. He wanted to believe his lover's assurance that it was simply a lingering ghost of being used, but something still didn't sit quite right about that.

"Ianto." The moment he spoke, the other man tensed. Jack marvelled briefly at the skill Ianto possessed in reading his thoughts and intentions, but then he frowned at the sudden atmosphere that had gathered around them. "I was thinking maybe we could go out later." The Captain tilted his head, trying to catch Ianto's eye. "Grab some dinner or something. It's been a while, y'know."

The corner of Ianto's mouth curved up into a smile. "It has," he agreed. His body relaxed again and Jack nodded slightly to himself, glad that he had changed his tactic at the last minute, but fully intending to take advantage of the more casual setting that a meal out would provide.

"Jack?" Owen's voice suddenly crackled in his ear. He pulled one hand free of Ianto's slick grasp and activated the comm.

"Owen," he replied, realising for the first time that they hadn't seen the doctor upon their return to the Hub. "What's up?"

"Tosh said you got covered in some kind of alien secretion?"

"Oh yeah, just a little slug juice." Jack held his hand back out to Ianto, even though there was no cream left to rub in. "Shame you weren't with us, you would've loved playing with the slippery little buggers."

Owen made a doubtful noise. "Yeah, well, just make sure you've got none of it on your skin or your clothes if you come in to see Gwen. I don't want to risk bringing anything toxic into the room right now."

Something in the doctor's tone alerted Jack's instinct for danger. The movement of Ianto's fingers also ceased and they shared a look. "Something wrong, Owen?" Jack asked carefully.

"You could say that," came the prickly response. "Gwen's skin has started to blister."

---

Jack and Ianto hurried to rid themselves of any trace of the alien slime before dashing back through the Hub to Gwen's room. Tosh was already there, hovering on one side of the bed whilst Owen stood on the other, injecting something through an IV line attached to the back of Gwen's hand.

The change from the last time Ianto had seen her was drastic. Earlier that day she'd been tired and itchy but in good spirits, yet in the interim her complexion had become sallow, the circles beneath her eyes were darker than ever, and her gaze slid lazily around the room, completely unfocused.

The two men eased their way in past Tosh, eyes fixed on Gwen's forearms. Owen had unwound the bandages and they could see that the rash had become a violent cherry-red and small lesions now covered her skin.

"What happened?" Ianto asked. "We didn't get anything like this before."

"Yeah, well, it's obviously a different strain, isn't it," Owen growled unhappily. "Whatever we were exposed to before must've been a weaker version, one that didn't develop past the initial stage of the rash."

"But it was enough to give us immunity to this one?" Ianto repressed a shudder, imagining what might have happened if the entire team had been struck down by this form of the virus. There was no doubt about the fact that Gwen couldn't care for herself, so if everyone had fallen ill with it at the same time...

"Lucky, eh?" Owen said into Ianto's grim visions. He scowled at the machines he had set up to monitor Gwen's new condition, as though he could find a solution within their displays. "The rash has got worse as well," he told them as he worked. "It's like this all over her body now." He waved a hand at the bright red limbs, his jaw clenching with anger and concern.

"And the blisters?" Ianto asked, feeling a little queasy.

"Only on her arms."

So far, Ianto added silently to himself. He glanced to his side, where Jack stood, eyes fixed on Gwen's pallid face.

"Can you treat this?" the Captain asked in a monotone.

Owen pursed his lips. "I don't know yet. I could only ease the discomfort of the original rash, so I'm not sure if I can do any better with this." He busied himself with the collection of bottles and instruments he'd gathered there over the past few days, studiously avoiding looking at the others.

Ianto could read the tension in the young doctor's shoulders, but he was more concerned with the blank look creeping across Jack's face.

Over the years Ianto had become very adept at reading the immortal's expressions and so he knew without a doubt that there was fear gathering in his lover's heart. This new development, so unexpected and vicious, had Jack worried, and that was not an easy thing to do at all.

Ianto swallowed, his own anxiety growing at the dulling of Jack's eyes. Whatever the other man had planned for that evening would clearly have to wait; Jack wouldn't leave the Hub after this news and Ianto...well Ianto wanted to be somewhere else right then.

---

With a gasp, the young man dropped to his knees, legs unable to hold his own weight and he paused a moment, gathering himself. His chest heaved, skin damp with sweat, and his back stung deliciously.

"Does it ever stop?" he asked abruptly, surprising himself with the question. Now was not the time for speaking; now was the time for collecting his possessions and leaving in silence so he didn't have to analyse what had just happened.

"Does what ever stop?" came the response, the speaker's voice rich and strong and endlessly reassuring.

"Needing this." Ianto tilted his head, as though to look up, but couldn't lift his eyes from the floor. "Will I ever get enough and just stop?"

There came a sigh from above and then legs appeared beside him. "I couldn't say for sure." The other man crouched down and still Ianto refused to meet his eyes. "People change, needs change. Sometimes once is enough to get it out of their system. Sometimes they come here regular as clockwork but then something changes in their everyday life and they stop." A hand drifted over Ianto's shoulder, not quite touching but letting him know the offer was there. "It's all relative, depending on the individual."

"Do you ever want to stop, Alex?"

A quiet laugh. "Occasionally. When clients come here for certain other reasons and have no concept or appreciation of what I truly offer."

"But you don't turn them away," Ianto guessed.

"No, I correct them," replied Alex. "My own needs still stand."

Ianto said nothing, simply nodded. He stared at the padded cuffs around his wrists, fascinated by the intricate detail that had gone into them. They must have been made by a specialist, he decided, someone who cared about their creations, but how many people who wore them ever noticed the artistry within the fine metal and leather?

The notion disturbed him and he felt a sudden need to be free of their confines. Who could think the cuffs beautiful when they knew what they were used for? He scrabbled at them, nails sliding over the catches in his haste to be rid of the heavy shackles, and only when the other man caught his hands did he realise what he was doing.

"Let me," Alex said quietly, and he quickly removed them, setting them aside out of sight.

Ianto deflated in on himself, momentarily as still as a statue whilst he began to prepare himself for standing and leaving the room. It didn't take much; he'd been entrenched in lies one way or another for most of his life and so pulling on his impassive mask was like second nature to him. No, it didn't take much, and yet it was still getting progressively harder every time he left one of these sessions.

"Would you like to shower before you go?" Alex asked, returning to the ritual they had established for this part of the encounter. The same question, posed at the end of each scenario, and their time together was officially over. Their temporary roles dissipated into the heavy air and the truth of their identities began to seep back in.

But then he touched Ianto, actually touched him whilst the young man was still collecting the shattered pieces of his façade from the hardwood floor. Ianto looked at the hand upon his forearm, stared at it as though it were completely alien, and found himself more disturbed by the contact than if the hand had belonged to an alien.

"No," he said, because he always said no; the journey home, sticky with sweat and exertion, was another part of his return to the normal world and the shower in his home was always the final resting place of the demons he'd expunged during the session. "Thank you," he added, because he was always polite.

"Okay," Alex said. He leaned forward and pressed his lips to Ianto's forehead. "I'll let you get dressed." And then he was gone, leaving Ianto alone and staring blindly at the door through which the other man had left. First the touch and then a kiss? His mind reeled, unable to cope with the unexpected when he was not yet back within himself; when he was not quite Ianto Jones again, but still the half-empty shell that resembled everything that was wrong with him.

The chaste kiss upon his brow left behind it a searing heat, almost strong enough to counter the fresh stripes of fire that ran across his back, and Ianto found himself floundering, unsure which he should focus upon, which would bring the least pain to his heart.

It proved to be no easy decision and so he instead chose the third option; the easy way out. He chose to ignore it.

Standing, Ianto reached for his clothes, where he'd placed them, neatly folded, an hour or so earlier, numbly re-donning the costume that would get him safely back to his flat, where he could then fix the persona fully into place and no longer need the suit to hide within.

His movements caused his back to twist, reminding him of the reason for his presence there, for the truth of his arrangement with Alex, even if the other man was forgetting himself, and he clung to that thought as he finished dressing.

He then took the coward's way out again, emerging from the 'playroom' into the empty living room beyond and standing there for a moment without calling out. Alex was nowhere in sight, and when he didn't appear at the sound of Ianto moving about, the young man gladly grasped the opportunity to sneak from the apartment and back out into the safe darkness of the night.

***

Jack tapped his pen against the desk, the beat a rhythmic counter to his disjointed thoughts. It was a sign of his concern, a tell he really should have been able to suppress, but he was worried, more worried than he'd been in quite a while.

Owen had spent most of the night locked away in the lab, testing and re-testing samples he had taken from everyone, looking for something that made Gwen's virus different from the previous strain. Tosh had helped him for a while, before returning to the alien pod to look for any clue about the disease it had carried, but at one in the morning Jack had seen the fatigue drawing on her and he'd told Ianto to take her home and then get some rest himself.

The Welshman had indeed driven Tosh back to her apartment, but he'd returned a few hours later, impossibly refreshed and determined to help wherever he could. He'd ignored Jack's glares and commands to go home and spent the hours before dawn making sure that Owen had everything he needed and Gwen had someone with her every time she woke up, despite the fact that she drifted in and out of coherence without warning.

That fact in itself was alarming, but when her breathing had begun to labour, the atmosphere had grown even tenser than before. Now there was an oxygen mask clamped over her face, Owen sported a permanent scowl and Jack's mind was skirting around a fearful possibility he did not want to consider.

A shadow passed across the open doorway and Jack threw down the pen as he leapt to his feet. "Ianto!" he shouted, rounding his desk and crossing the room in two steps. "Get Martha on the phone right now!"

Out in the open area, Ianto had apparently just emerged from the autopsy bay, his arms filled with a variety of medical equipment. "Will do," he replied, his tone calm where Jack's was agitated.

The Captain took a moment to sweep his gaze over the other man, checking for signs of fatigue or illness or anything else that would add to the knot growing in Jack's chest. Fortunately there was no hint of any adverse effects of Ianto's prolonged contact with Gwen, just the usual impeccable bearing and a neutral expression.

"How is she?" Jack asked quietly.

Ianto shrugged eloquently within his neatly pressed suit. "Her breathing's still thready and Owen's been giving her more morphine than he'd like, but the lesions have only spread a little further up her arms and..." he paused and studied Jack. "You could come see for yourself," he suggested casually, though the underlying accusation was anything but light.

Jack clenched his jaw. He hadn't been back in Gwen's room since returning to the Hub the day before and he really shouldn't have been surprised that Ianto had noticed.

"Owen doesn't need me getting under his feet," he said defensively and the words sounded weak even to his own ears. He scowled, unhappy not only with the chain continually tightening around his heart, but also his inability to cope with a sensation that he'd thought himself accustomed to.

He'd encountered a lot of illness in his time, seen too many loved ones struggle for their lives, but this...it troubled him all the more because it was Gwen. Even beyond the fact that he couldn't do anything to aid Owen in his search for a treatment, he couldn't do anything at all, and it was rare for him to feel so helpless.

Ianto was still watching him knowingly. Jack had no doubt at all that the other man knew the root of his anxiety and he didn't know how he felt about someone being able to grasp his thoughts so easily. Unable to deal with that on top of everything else right then, Jack shook his head and stepped back into his office, away from the blue gaze which could see right through him.

---

Toshiko returned to work late the next morning, feeling more alert and upbeat than she had expected. She'd had to get a taxi in because her car was still at the Hub, and she hated making small talk with taxi drivers, but she was grateful that Jack had insisted she spend the night in her own bed.

She had, of course, argued at the time, but he and Ianto had skilfully manoeuvred her out the door and into Ianto's car without paying her protests the slightest bit of notice. When they'd reached her flat and Ianto had walked her to her door, he'd tried to pacify her by pointing out the fact that he was going home for a rest as well, but she doubted he had stayed away for the whole night.

Still, she couldn't deny that the sleep had done her the world of good and she was now brimming with ideas for her ongoing tests on the pod. Whether any of them would provide results Owen could use in helping Gwen was another matter, but unravelling the mystery of the alien object was the only real contribution Tosh could make towards the search for a cure.

After being updated on Gwen's condition by Jack and Ianto – the latter of which deftly avoided the subject of what time he'd returned to the Hub – she headed to Gwen's room and let herself in as quietly as possible. Owen was already inside, as she'd expected, fussing over the machines monitoring the other woman's progress.

"No change?" Tosh asked, setting down her laptop on one of the tables that had been moved into the room.

"Not really, but at the moment I'd have to say that's a good thing. Neither the sores or her breathing have got any worse in the past–" he glanced at his watch, "-two hours. If they remain stable, there's a chance she'll start to improve soon." He turned to see Tosh setting up her computer. "What's going on?"

"I thought I'd sit with her for a while," Tosh said. "Give you a chance to take a break, get some...well, not sleep, but rest, I suppose."

Owen shook his head. "No need, I'm fine."

"You're not fine, Owen, you've been working non-stop all night and before that you were in here every available moment seeing to her rash. Even if your body doesn't need to relax, your mind does." Tosh paused, a little surprised by her own outburst. "You need to take some time away from trying to figure this out," she went on, softer than before. "Maybe you'll have some blinding flash of insight and realise how to fix it."

On the bed Gwen stirred from her doze at Toshiko's raised voice. She opened her eyes a fraction and peered up at the new arrival. "Kick 'im out," she croaked through her oxygen mask.

Tosh smiled, partly for the sentiment but mostly for the fact that Gwen was awake and lucid, which was an improvement on when Tosh had last seen her the day before. Her arms were still wrapped in thick bandages, beneath which her skin was apparently in a bad state, but at least her eyes were no longer completely vacant.

She glanced across at Owen. "Two against one," she said innocently and the doctor scowled at her.

"Fine, I can tell when I'm not wanted," he announced, his lips tightening into a thin line and his eyes flashing with frustration. He tugged off his medical gloves as he made for the door, tripping slightly over his own feet as he strode out. Tosh could hear him cursing in the hallway and couldn't hold back the affectionate chuckle that slipped out.

Gwen briefly laughed as well, until she fell silent with a wince.

"Are you okay?" Tosh asked, immediately hurrying to her side and helping her pull aside the mask.

"Yeah," she said hoarsely. "Just hurts."

Tosh struggled to keep hold of her smile. "Is the morphine not helping? I can get Owen back in here if-"

"No," Gwen interrupted. "Got this." She lifted a hand and showed Tosh the button she was holding. She pressed it and sighed a moment later as another dose of morphine made its way through her IV. "Instant high," she explained dreamily.

Tosh took a moment to study her colleague, her eyes lingering on the thick white salve spread over the visible skin of her red upper arms. She supposed Owen was hoping to keep the blisters from spreading with the rash, but if he couldn't treat them already, she wasn't too sure if he could prevent them either.

Apparently the additional drugs in her system hadn't managed to completely distract Gwen, for she noticed the look upon Tosh's face and waved a limp hand to get her attention. "Hey," she said, making Tosh jump with guilt. "Don't."

Tosh grimaced. "Sorry."

"Not your fault."

"But if I hadn't opened the pod..."

"If, if, if," Gwen chanted, grinning blearily through the morphine. "Don't be silly. Always risk an' danger. Don't blame you."

Tosh smiled but it was forced. It didn't help ease her feeling of culpability, but protesting wouldn't do any good and she knew it. "Rhys sends his love," she said, hoping to change the subject.

"Aw, bless 'im," Gwen slurred. "He's coming in?"

"Oh, um, I'm not sure..."

"Really wanna see him."

"Oh, of course you do. I'll find out. Do you want me to find out?" Tosh asked, feeling suddenly very uncomfortable. She had a feeling Jack wouldn't allow Rhys into the base, but she couldn't very well tell Gwen that.

When Gwen didn't respond, however, Tosh leaned forward, noticing that her eyes had closed and her breathing had evened out. Deflating with relief, Tosh replaced the oxygen mask before moving back to the table and slumping into the plastic seat beside it.

---

Ianto wheeled a chair over to Tosh's desk and sat down beside her, nudging her shoulder with his own in quiet reassurance. Tosh was the only person Ianto could touch so freely – apart from Jack of course – and not feel awkward doing it, although it still happened rather infrequently.

"You okay?" he asked, noticing her gaze was fixed on her keyboard even though she wasn't typing.

Tosh sighed softly. "Gwen's been asking for Rhys."

"Ah."

"I mentioned it to Jack but he didn't seem too thrilled by the idea."

Ianto nodded and smiled faintly. "Yeah, that wouldn't surprise me."

"I think she thinks she's going to die," Tosh went on, looking up at Ianto at last. Her eyes weren't red, but Ianto could see she was struggling to hold back her fear and worry. He knew it wouldn't take much to draw tears from that dark gaze.

Ianto placed a hand on her arm, then changed his mind and slipped it across her shoulders instead. "She won't. Jack won't allow it."

"What can he do to stop it?" Tosh asked, voice dropping into a whisper and eyes darting towards the door to Jack's office. "And if she dies he can't even bring her back like Owen now that both gauntlets are gone." She winced. "Not that I'd wish that upon her."

Ianto didn't know what to say to reassure her, so he held his tongue and rubbed her arm gently.

"It's all starting to fall apart, isn't it?" Tosh went on quietly after a moment. "Gwen's on her deathbed, Owen's body would shatter if he tripped down the stairs and Jack..." She guiltily dropped her eyes away from Ianto's. "Jack already disappeared once..."

And he might disappear again at any moment, Ianto finished silently for her. He didn't rush to defend the Captain, finding himself unable to lie on his lover's behalf, especially as he'd experienced those same concerns ever since Jack had returned from the little trip that he still refused to talk about.

"It won't fall apart," he eventually said, feeling the slight tremors in Tosh's shoulders. "We'll get through this, just like always."

"It can't last," she replied, either not hearing or simply ignoring his words. "The things we do...it's all going to come crashing down around us sooner or later." She shook her head. "Sooner, most likely."

Ianto frowned, troubled by this fearful side of his friend that had suddenly emerged. Tosh didn't just give up like this, she kept pushing and pushing until something clicked into place and opened up a new path that in turn led to a solution; they all did that, in fact, which was probably why they had been, why they were, such a capable team.

But maybe Tosh had a point. The turnover for Torchwood employees was far higher than any other organisation in the country, possibly in the world, so perhaps she really wasn't being too fatalistic to worry that the end was nearing for their little family.

It was still unlike her, however, to be cowed in such a way, and in a sudden flash of insight, Ianto realised the truth of the matter. This was her grief for Owen; the grief she'd refused to face when he had been shot was finally breaking through thanks to the emotional upheaval surrounding Gwen's illness. It was perfectly understandable and Ianto had been expecting her grief to emerge at some point; despite holding back her mourning as Owen wasn't actually gone from their lives, Tosh still needed to grieve for what had happened to him.

Ianto laid his free hand over hers, where they lay folded together in her lap. "We'll get through this," he said again, hoping for her sake that he wouldn't be proven wrong.

---

Alex opened the door, a smile already on his lips. He stepped back and waved Ianto inside. "Three times in four days," he said cheerfully. "I could get used to this."

Ianto scowled at him. "Please don't sound so happy about it."

Chastened, the smile faded from Alex's face. "Sorry. That was insensitive of me."

"It was," Ianto agreed, the tension thrumming in his body stretching his politeness to the limit.

There was a moment's hesitation as Alex studied him carefully. "If you wanted," he began, "you could try talking about it." Ianto's lips pressed together unhappily and the other man shrugged. "I'm serious. To go from once a week to this...has something happened?"

"It's not been a good week." Ianto looked away and sighed. "I don't come here to talk, Alex. That isn't part of the deal."

"No, it isn't. But I'm still offering it."

Ianto said nothing for a long minute and then shook his head. "I can't," he said, his chest beginning to feel constricted; the emotions roiling deep within him conflicting with his instinct to suppress them. "I'm not much of a talker." He grimaced around the words, pained by the effort of admitting his weakness.

"It's okay, I understand," Alex said soothingly. "But maybe it's time we consider changing your scenario. It isn't enough for you anymore, is it?"

"It works."

"It could be better," the older man told him. "If you'd just let me show you."

Ianto looked away and shrugged helplessly. "I don't want to try anything new right now."

Alex sighed quietly. "You're the boss." He took a step away and motioned towards the door behind which the young man could face his secret needs in safety.

***

Ianto set the mug beside Jack's motionless hand and took a step back, waiting for a reaction.

It was Sunday evening and coffee was the most Ianto could hope to get Jack to consume. The day before he'd only managed to coax some buttery toast down the immortal's throat and he suspected that was purely because Jack had been so distracted at the time.

Since Friday Ianto had barely seen his lover. Jack had seemed to be avoiding everyone that morning, hiding in his office before suddenly disappearing from the Hub without a word. He'd been out of contact for the rest of the day, right up to when Ianto had felt compelled to see Alex yet again; the stress of Gwen's condition, Tosh's fear and Jack's despair pushing his own anxiety to new heights.

He hadn't wanted to go, partly because he would be imitating Jack in abandoning the Hub, and partly because he would be admitting that he had grown so weak recently. Unfortunately, it seemed he was now on a slippery slope without any control over his descent and thus he had given into the urge to escape. Afterwards, Ianto had hurried home, showered, changed and returned to the Hub only to find that Jack still hadn't reappeared. At that point, however, Ianto had felt so calm and in control that he'd been more than capable to handle a Weevil sighting at the Docks on his own, though he had been a little surprised that a quiet Jack had only turned up to help after Ianto had secured the pair of aliens roaming about aboveground.

On Saturday, after catching a few hours of sleep in Jack's bed – alone – Ianto had woken to discover that the Captain had gone off again. When she'd told him, Tosh's eyes had flashed with distress and Ianto had been reminded of her concerns that Jack would leave them at a time when they needed him most. Owen, in turn, had grumbled about 'selfish pricks' whilst earnestly reading the latest e-mail he'd received from Martha.

They'd had real trouble getting a hold of Doctor Jones; none of her contact numbers had been answered and direct calls to UNIT had proven fruitless. News of their efforts, however, had evidently reached her, for late on Friday night she'd called to explain that she was out of the country, seeing to a project she couldn't talk about. Even though she couldn't be there to help in person, however, Martha had insisted that Owen send her all his notes on the virus and they'd been throwing theories back and forth via phone and e-mail ever since.

The rest of Saturday had passed in a fairly sedate manner: Owen was busy with Martha and her ideas, Tosh had finally been convinced to take a break from the pod and put some time into her other projects, and Ianto had tried to mop up everything else that had been put aside for the past few days, throwing himself into his work in order to ignore the puzzle of what Jack might be doing. He'd called in a couple of times for updates, but didn't reappear again until later that night, when he'd shown up at Ianto's apartment looking tired and dejected.

After being refused an explanation, Ianto had set out tea and toast on the small dining table and sat across from the older man, watching as he silently ate without paying any attention to the food at all.

Owen and Tosh had surmised that Jack had been roaming the city the past two days, pressing his various contacts for help, or perhaps merely hoping to trip over an answer in the street, but Ianto knew it went deeper than that.

There was no doubt in his mind that, above all, Jack was trying to avoid the reality of the situation. By escaping the Hub, he was escaping the undeniable fact that Gwen might die. That he could lose her from this disease. The pain which arose from that possibility was too much for Jack to handle and Ianto saw that it was driving him to keep from thinking about it as much as he could.

Even though he had purposefully held back from getting too close to Gwen in order not to get hurt, Jack was still suffering as her demise became more and more likely. He'd kept himself from loving her for nothing and now he was on the verge of forever losing both her and the dream of what they could have had together.

Ianto couldn't help but feel a surge of sympathy for the immortal man. He'd always been aware of Jack's tricks to keep from getting into situations that could hurt him; the humour, the bravado...they might have once been reflections of his personality, but now he carried them like a shield, distancing himself from other people as he prepared for an eternity of loss and loneliness.

Only the shield wasn't as strong as it seemed and the man behind it felt pain regardless. He tried to hide it, but Ianto wasn't fooled.

The only consolation Ianto could see was that Jack had only been gone for a few hours on Sunday morning, instead of the whole day. Even though he'd returned and confined himself to his office once again, he was at least no longer physically avoiding the Hub. Ianto hoped that meant he'd realised he couldn't truly run from what was happening to Gwen.

"Everything all right?" he finally asked, when the Captain made no sign of noticing the other man in the office.

Jack acknowledged him a brief flick of his eyes and nothing more.

"She'll be okay. Martha will contact your Doctor, he'll turn up and fix her, and then we can all vow never to open any more mysterious packages that fall through the Rift."

Jack managed a weak smile. "We'd never be able to resist the temptation."

Ianto moved around the desk and stood behind Jack's chair, resting his hands upon the older man's shoulders and rubbing them gently. "She'll be okay," he repeated confidently.

"How can you be so sure?" Jack asked, his voice entirely devoid of emotion. "How can you know that?"

"Because she can't die like this. I don't think someone like Gwen could ever be destined to just slip away quietly."

Jack tilted his head and looked up at the younger man. "Destined? You're going to try and preach the notion of destiny to me?"

"Why not? Don't you sometimes feel that things are meant to happen a certain way?"

"How can we know whether there's any meaning behind anything?" Jack retorted. "People spout claims like fate and destiny without considering the fact that things will always keep happening whether there's some great plan or not directing them."

Ianto sighed and removed his hands. He perched on the edge of Jack's desk and waited for the Captain to meet his gaze. When he did, Ianto could see the fear set deep into his blue eyes.

"I don't know how to fight this, Ianto," Jack admitted in a pained voice. "I can't kill it or outwit it. I can't even yell curses at it. I feel useless and I hate feeling useless."

Ianto reached out to take his hand, entwining their fingers in a rare show of intimacy. "I know. We all feel the same, but – and not to sound defeatist here – but you can't fix everything, Jack, especially not an illness like this."

"No," Jack agreed dejectedly and then sighed. He stared at their joined hands for a long moment before speaking again. "Owen said that, with the damage spreading to her internal organs, tomorrow morning will be the latest we can safely put her through the cryo process."

"She said she didn't want that," Ianto quietly pointed out.

"She made that decision when she was healthy. Now she's facing death, she'll change her mind."

"I thought we were waiting for your Doctor-"

"You don't know the Doctor," Jack interrupted tersely. "He doesn't work to our timeline. If we leave it to chance, he could turn up too late, so we have to freeze her as she is now."

Ianto grimaced, hating to quash Jack's hope but unable to deny reality. "She made it clear that when it was her time, when we'd exhausted all avenues, we were to let her go."

"That's only because of what happened to Owen," Jack argued with a frown. "She was talking about us trying to bring her back like we did with him."

"I don't think she was."

"Then you're wrong!" Jack barked, letting go of Ianto's hand and folding his arms across his chest.

"I recall the conversation quite clearly..."

Jack silenced him with a glare. "We'd only be putting her in there for a while; she won't even know what's going on until she wakes up, back to normal again."

Ianto's eyes slid over the determined expression upon the other man's face, slightly awed by the power Gwen had over Jack to cause such ferocity. He stood silently and walked over to one of the filing cabinets on the other side of the room, forcing himself to move, to ignore the pain that the depth of emotion in Jack's voice awoke in his chest.

"What are you doing?" Jack asked, as he pulled open one of the drawers.

"Getting a consent form." Ianto retrieved a sheet of paper and scanned it, making sure it was the most recent revision. "She'll have to sign to say her wishes have changed." The fact that Gwen probably wouldn't be able to even hold a pen, let alone sign her name, didn't escape Ianto, but he'd needed an excuse to move away from the other man.

"Put that back," the Captain commanded. "She's not signing anything, this is my decision."

Ianto stared at him incredulously. "No, it's hers."

"I'm in charge here, Ianto. I give the orders. You obey them, remember?" Jack had risen to his feet, anger making his presence dark and foreboding. "If I say she gets frozen, she gets frozen."

"Jack, you can't ignore her wishes like that."

"Fuck her wishes," Jack growled, slicing the air with a decisive hand.

Ianto gaped, astounded by the other man's words, but as he searched for a response, Jack's shoulders suddenly slumped and his chin dropped to his chest, as though his head was too heavy to hold up any longer. "Ianto..." he whispered, "...it's Gwen."

And that summed it up entirely, Ianto realised. He wouldn't be able to make Jack see reason and he couldn't do anything to stop him either. He placed the paper back into the drawer and took a few steps closer to the Captain, a small resigned smile on his face.

Jack sighed in relief and collapsed back down into his chair. "You'd think I'd be used to this by now," he said after a moment, rubbing at his temples.

"I hope you never get used it," Ianto murmured, instantly picking up on the direction of his thoughts. "Death isn't something you should become accustomed to."

"Other than my own, you mean."

"Yes, our own deaths are a different matter. We're allowed to feel however we want about those."

Jack looked up at him, studying his features intently, trying to see the thoughts that filled Ianto's mind. "How would you feel about yours?" he asked.

Ianto shook his head. "I'm not answering that question, Jack, not today. But I will tell you this: if it were me lying in that room unable to breathe by myself, I'd hope you'd come and see me." Jack's brow creased but before he could protest, Ianto continued. "I know you've been avoiding going in there. You shouldn't. You have to spend time with her."

"Because she needs me to lie and tell her I'll make everything better?" Jack asked coldly.

"Because you'd hate yourself for a long time if something happened to her, whether she die or be put into cryo, and you hadn't sat by her side for at least a few hours, whilst you still can."

Jack nodded reluctantly, giving into Ianto's logic. He pushed himself back up from the desk, body heavy with troublesome emotions that he could no longer deny. Ianto grasped his arm before he could move away and forced him to meet his gaze.

"Tomorrow morning I'm going to bring Rhys in to see her," he told the Captain in a tone that would allow no argument. "He has to say his goodbyes as well." He lowered his voice slightly. "She's been asking for him again."

Jack stared at Ianto for a long silent moment and then nodded again. If they truly were going to freeze her then he couldn't continue to deny that request.

"Talk to her," Ianto said quietly, sliding his hand down Jack's arm to his fingers and squeezing them once before letting go and making his way out of the office.

---

The ringing droned in his ear and Ianto mentally willed it to stop, impatient and anxious all at the same time.

"Hello?" Alex finally answered.

"Hi. It's me," Ianto said into his mobile. "I need to see you."

"You don't call for days and now we're at the 'it's me' stage?"

Ianto rolled his eyes. How did he always end up associating with self-proclaimed comedians? "Are you free tonight?" he asked, ignoring the question.

"Well yeah, it is the day of rest and all that. You want to come over now?"

Ianto pressed a button on the wall beside him and heard the bell ring at the other end of the line. "I'm already here."

"God, Ianto, I didn't realise we were at the 'dropping by' stage either."

"Alex, please just let me in!" The urgency in his tone finally seemed to get through to the other man and a buzz filled the air, indicating that the building's door had been unlocked. "Thank you," he said as he let himself in and hurried over to the stairwell.

Ianto flipped his mobile shut without waiting for a response and took the stairs two at a time up to the third floor, where the other man was waiting in his open doorway. He looked rather unkempt, dirty blond hair ruffled and distinctly flat on one side, and he wore a loose purple robe that had definitely been chosen for comfort rather than style.

"Hi," Ianto said again, finding it hard not to push his way into the flat, eager to keep moving lest he stop to think about what had compelled him to come here.

"Oh, it's you," Alex dead-panned, taking a step back and letting him inside.

Once the door was shut and locked, Ianto felt a great sense of relief wash over him, as though simply being in this man's home could remove all of his tension for good. He knew that wasn't true, but it didn't stop him from dropping onto one of the two large sofas taking up most of the space in the living room.

He'd left the Hub immediately after ordering Jack to talk to Gwen, unable to stand the idea of trying to work whilst the Captain sat with her, pouring out his heart to the dying woman. He hadn't quite been able to admit to himself why that notion bothered him so much, only that it had been enough to drive him out of the base when he should have been there, doing his job and waiting nearby in case he was needed.

"Okay," Alex said. "I just woke up from a nap and I'm not quite with it, so you'll have to help me out here...is this a social call?"

Ianto blinked up at him, confused, and then shot to his feet as though there was a fire beneath him. "Oh...I-I'm sorry...I didn't..."

Alex held up a hand to stop him. "It's all right, Ianto. You're free to sit if you want."

"I'm sorry," Ianto repeated, looking down at the sofa in bewilderment. The last time he'd sat there had been his first meeting with Alex, when the older man had explained what he offered and made Ianto aware of the rules he worked by. Since then, he'd only ever passed through the living room on his way from the front door to the playroom and back again. "I'm a bit..." he struggled for the rest of the sentence, "...out of sorts."

"So I see." Alex ran a hand through his hair. "Would you like a drink?"

Ianto shook his head. "No."

"Would you like to talk?"

A flash of discomfort passed across Ianto's face. Talking seemed such an innocent notion, but he knew it had devastating power. If he voiced any of what was crashing around in his head it would cause it all to become real; more real than Ianto could handle right then. If he said aloud the way sending Jack to Gwen had felt, it would mean that the jealousy truly existed, and he couldn't afford for it to exist.

He didn't want to experience that kind of pain again.

His eyes slid to the closed door on the opposite side of the room and he unconsciously licked his lips, the mere thought of what lay beyond causing his heart to race.

"Would you like me to help you?"

The question was asked quietly and Ianto glanced away from the door to find Alex standing closer than before. "Yes, please," he murmured submissively in response.

Alex leaned in and pressed his lips softly to Ianto's, pulling back almost immediately to gauge his reaction. "Do you trust me?"

Ianto frowned. Alex had never asked that before, nor ever started the session with a kiss. "Yes..." he replied carefully, not entirely sure why the other man was changing the script without permission.

"Good, because we're going to try something different today and you're going to need to remember that you trust me."

"Alex..."

"No, Ianto, the normal stuff isn't enough for you anymore. I can tell you want something more but you're afraid to ask me to help you find it." He smiled. "You don't know what you need, but I do, so you're going to trust me and I'm going to make you feel better than ever, okay?"

Ianto was lost for words for a moment, the commanding tone of the older Welshman tapping into his base instinct to defer to strength and authority. He licked his lips again, tempted.

He'd had a lot of trouble accepting his need for the bondage and flagellation sessions, but they'd certainly served their purpose and cleared the feelings of doubt and inadequacy from his mind. Now, however, if the past week or so was anything to go by, they weren't working nearly as well as they had been. Perhaps Alex was right, perhaps he did require more.

"Okay," he agreed. He hadn't known what to expect the first time he'd come here, so why act so cautious now that he knew what Alex could do for him?

"Come on." Alex turned on his heel and led the way across the room without looking back.

Ianto followed, but once he realised that they weren't heading for the playroom, he faltered in confusion. "Where are we going?"

Alex didn't reply, simply opened another door and stepped inside. Ianto stopped in the doorway when he saw that they were in a bedroom. "Alex?"

"Sit down."

The room was as neat and airy as the rest of the apartment, other than the rumpled state of the recently used bed covers, but Ianto barely took any notice of the décor, focusing instead on the fact that the only place to actually sit down was on the bed. "Where?"

A short laugh drifted out from the en suite. "On your arse. Don't question, just sit down."

Ianto took a step forward. Maybe Alex needed to fetch something before they went into the other room.

The older man emerged almost immediately from the bathroom, having rid himself of his robe, and Ianto couldn't help giving his body a once-over...he was wearing nothing but loose jogging bottoms after all. He'd grown accustomed to being half-naked in Alex's presence, their previous activities requiring it, but Alex had always remained aloof of the proceedings; his existence as a large, intimidating man made bland and innocuous by a uniform of muted colours and not a spread of bare muscular flesh.

"Did you not hear me?"

Ianto glanced up, flushing to realise he'd been staring. "Sorry?"

"Sit."

Ianto straightened automatically at the firmness of the other man's tone, recognising it as the one he used in the playroom. It was also similar to the one Jack used when he assumed full Captain-mode, but Ianto never liked to linger very long on that comparison.

Without closely considering what he was doing, Ianto crossed to the bed and sat on the edge of the mattress.

"Good," Alex said with a nod of his head. He walked to the door and shut it, dispersing Ianto's theory that they would be leaving there soon. When he opened his mouth to question that fact, the look Alex gave him stopped the words in his throat. "Now strip," the older man went on.

Ianto blinked up at him. Okay, so he'd only just thought about being mostly naked around the other man, but a stern order to strip wasn't part of the normal script either. The corner of his mouth twitched up briefly into an anxious smile. "Perhaps you should explain-"

His words were cut off by a heavy slap that sent him tumbling to the floor.

***

Jack swept both hands over his face, trying to wipe away the uncommon fatigue that had settled so heavily upon him. In the bed beside which he sat, Gwen slept on, though during Owen's last check-up he'd assured the Captain that the most recent dose of sedatives would wear off soon and she would wake within the hour.

Smiling grimly to himself, Jack shifted in the plastic chair, attempting to get more comfortable as he settled in to wait. He was determined that Gwen would know he'd been there for her, even if it had taken him far too long to realise that necessity for himself.

Ianto had been right to accuse him of avoiding spending time alone with her. He'd actually managed to surprise himself with his behaviour; he had truly thought he'd become accustomed to seeing the people he cared for die, hence his insistence on seizing the day and making the most of every moment he might have with them.

Of course with Gwen, it seemed, that practise had been shot to hell.

Jack studied her sleeping face, wondering at which precise moment she'd gotten under his skin. He knew he had admired her impetuous and determined personality from their very first encounter, and of course she was more than just a little attractive, but somewhere along the line he'd realised that there was something else that set her apart from most of the people Jack had met in his lifetime.

And those she was similar to were ones with which he'd ended up in serious relationships.

Jack lifted a hand and tidied Gwen's hair, straightening her fringe and moving a stray dark strand from across her face. He could easily fall in love with her, already did love her to a certain extent, but he'd held back from allowing anything to happen between them and, even more importantly, from allowing himself to give her his heart.

At the start he'd restrained himself to better enjoy the game. It was clear she wouldn't have resisted for long if Jack had really turned on the charm, but that was far too easy and so he'd refused to act until he'd had a bit of fun watching her squirm.

As he'd come to know her, however, and recognised what they could have together, he'd hesitated again, his mind ensnared by the holes his previous loves had left in his heart. And when Gwen had agreed to marry Rhys, he'd realised that he couldn't deny her the chance of a normal love, even if Torchwood meant there would be nothing normal about the rest of her life.

Of course those decisions, which Jack knew to be for the best, did not stop him from questioning that choice now that she was so close to death.

"I do regret it," he said quietly, resting a hand on Gwen's bandaged arm. "But it was the right thing to do. If I'd given it a chance, one of us would have had to change, and I'm not sure that would have been good for anyone."

---

Alex smiled down at the man on the floor. "Strip," he repeated warmly. "You don't want to get your nice suit creased, do you?"

Caught off guard by the suddenly pleasant tone, Ianto shook his head. When Alex turned away, he pulled himself to his feet, torn between demanding to know precisely what was going on and simply giving into the order. He eyed the door but didn't make a move towards it, held in place by the need that had brought him here. He wanted to be rid of the tumultuous emotions that were troubling him and only Alex was capable of doing that.

Even if he was insisting on a different tone and location for it.

Ianto toed off his shoes then bent down to pull at his socks, trusting the other man to know what he was doing. He was a professional after all, a highly recommended one at that, and Ianto had been happy with everything else he'd provided in the previous few months.

"Sit," Alex said from across the room, his back to Ianto.

Rolling his eyes, Ianto sat and continued to undress. Perhaps when Alex had said he wanted to do something different he'd meant treating Ianto like a dog. What would be next? 'Fetch'? 'Roll over'? The young man bit back a chuckle at the idea and hoped that wasn't the case.

Some people might dream of wearing collars, but not Ianto. Unless it was a tie, Ianto didn't like things around his neck; he had an inexplicable, albeit entirely normal, fear of strangulation. He had, in fact, informed Alex of that whilst they were setting the ground rules, so he was fairly sure dog collars and leashes were off the menu. Thankfully.

Alex turned around once Ianto was down to only his trousers, revealing that he now held a padded cuff in each hand. Ianto licked his lips as he recognised them as the beautifully crafted leather ones he'd admired earlier that week and his back warmed instantly with the phantom memory of being lashed.

He knew those cuffs, he wanted those cuffs, and he stood up, his arms outstretched. A quiet and detached voice in the back of his mind noted his clearly Pavlovian response but he ignored it, wanting only the familiar tightness around his wrists.

Alex smiled knowingly. "Trousers," he said and Ianto hurried to rid himself of the final item of clothing, folding them neatly and adding them to the rest piled on the corner of the bed. When he straightened up, Alex was beside him and he fixed the snug cuffs to the wrists Ianto presented again promptly.

"Sit," he said again and Ianto did so. "Arms behind your back." He leaned down and reached behind Ianto to attach the short chain on one cuff to a hook on the other, binding his arms firmly in place.

Alex pulled back, trailing a hand over Ianto's bicep and then around to the back of his neck. He smiled, moving to sit beside Ianto, but as he turned, he tightened his grip and pulled the young man with him.

In one graceful movement, Ianto found himself staring at the carpet.

He blinked dumbly, trying to work out what had just happened, as Alex rearranged them both, widening his legs to help Ianto balance. A hand settled on the small of his back, beneath his own trapped hands, whilst the other slid between his shoulder blades. Ianto's mind finally caught up with his position across the other man's lap, his head almost touching the floor and his backside sticking up in the air. If the blood wasn't already rushing to his face from being upside down, he would have blushed.

"Alex," he began, only to be silenced by a sharp slap to the backs of his thighs.

"You said you trusted me, remember?"

It was clearly a rhetorical question and so Ianto said nothing, merely grudgingly accepted the truth of his words. He had said that, and he did trust Alex – he undoubtedly knew more about this kind of thing than Ianto himself – it was simply rather unsettling to find himself sprawled across someone's knees without any warning.

Fingers swept over his back, over the faint lines that had almost entirely faded since their last session. Ianto shivered, remembering, and tried to focus on his breathing as Alex's hand slid down across his twisted arms to the waistband of his underwear. Ianto's heart began to race. He'd known what this position had meant the moment Alex had swung him over, but the observant part of his mind only started speaking up when the other man's hand traced one round buttock through the tight dark cotton.

He shifted automatically, discomfort rising and got another slap to his thighs for it.

The fingers returned to the band of elastic and tugged slowly downwards, exposing Ianto's backside but not completely removing the garment, letting the waistband hug the underside of his ass and pull against his cock where it was still trapped inside the material.

"You have a male lover, don't you?" Alex asked suddenly, his hand stroking over Ianto's skin. "That's why you insisted I only leave light marks on your back."

Ianto's breath was coming faster now, his attention divided between trying to balance himself on his toes and reminding himself that he needed to trust this man.

"But you can't be that close if you're confident he won't notice anything even as faint as this on your body." Ianto could hear the smile in Alex's voice. "Unless you top...but somehow I can't imagine you limiting yourself like that." The older man ran his hand over the base of Ianto's spine. "I suppose you could only use certain positions until the marks had faded, but how would you explain such a request?" The legs under Ianto's chest shifted slightly as the older man shrugged. "Either way, he doesn't have a clue what makes you tick. He doesn't know about this at all, does he?"

Ianto stared at the carpet, unwilling to respond. Jack had nothing to do with this part of his life and he certainly didn't want to start discussing how close – or not, as the case might be – he was to the Captain.

Alex's hand fell heavily against Ianto's ass. "I asked you a question."

Ianto jerked in surprise, the slap harder than the ones on his thighs had been. "No," he said. "He doesn't."

"What's his name?"

Ianto hesitated and received another smack almost instantly. He shook his head, refusing to answer. Alex slapped him again and his hips jolted forward, pushing his trapped cock into the older man's thigh. A strangled noise escaped his throat, embarrassment threatening to overwhelm him. He squirmed and Alex's other hand moved to the back of his neck, stilling him with that simple touch.

"Tell me his name," Alex said, quiet but firm, accompanying every following moment of silence with a stinging slap.

He repeated the question a number of times, but Ianto could only hear his voice and not his words, the sound a distant murmur as the strikes against his backside continued. His buttocks clenched in anticipation of every smack and his entire body rocked as they increased swiftly in strength. Whack...whack...WHACK! A particularly harsh hit to the increasingly tender area made Ianto gasp out loud.

"Owen!" he cried through gritted teeth, only just able to retain hold of his senses to keep from answering honestly. "His name's Owen!"

He braced himself for the next slap, half expecting Alex to see through his lie, but it didn't come. Instead the older man's palm rubbed over his reddened skin, gentle and soothing. "Good boy," Alex murmured and Ianto swallowed a bitter laugh, reminded of his earlier thoughts about being treated like a dog.

"Do you know why you come here?" Alex asked casually, as though he wasn't currently fondling the ass of the fully-grown man lying across his lap.

Ianto frowned at the question, feeling like he was two steps behind and even further out of his depth. He thought about it for a moment...why was he here? Here in this man's bedroom, almost entirely naked and being spanked?

His face burnt with humiliation as he pictured what he must look like, bent over Alex's knees like a misbehaving child in need of discipline, his backside exposed and covered in bright red handprints.

As though in response to his thought, another sharp blow fell, making him jump from both the sound and the pain upon his sensitive skin. He shook his head, then realised that wouldn't be enough of an answer. "No!" he cried out.

He'd been avoiding considering too deeply the reason why he felt the need to have this man hurt him; when he was at work or at home (on the odd occasion he was actually there) he made the effort not to think about it, lest his secret show through in his behaviour. When he was here with Alex, he stopped thinking all together and instead simply felt his way through the sessions.

Despite Ianto's response, the open palm continued to strike against his backside, falling harder and harder, causing him to jerk rhythmically against Alex's leg. WHACK...WHACK... His cock began to swell with blood, the friction exciting him against his will, and though he squirmed, ashamed, the older man had too firm a hold upon him and he could not move away. His groin rubbed against the strong muscled thigh beneath him, creating a luscious counterpoint to the stinging of his abused cheeks.

"You're lying."

"No!" Ianto said again, only barely aware of the strained conversation, whilst the sensations throughout his body tried their best to distract him.

"You come here to forget about your problems," the older Welshman answered for him. "To let go and step outside yourself." He accompanied his words with a flurry of hard, bruising blows and then, without warning, Ianto was on his back, shoved from Alex's knees to the floor. His side burnt from scraping across the carpet but that barely registered as he stared up at the man looming over him, trying to work out how he could have been pushed down again without instinctively trying to defend himself. Where had all his training gone?

Alex twisted slightly, snatching up Ianto's hastily, yet neatly, folded clothes from the corner of the bed and flinging them to the floor. "Up," he commanded.

Ianto glanced at his crumpled suit in mute dismay and a fist closed in his hair, dragging him to his knees. "Up," Alex growled again and Ianto found his feet just in time to keep from being hauled onto the bed by his hair. He sprawled over the covers in an ungainly heap and then struggled to push himself up when he realised what position he was in.

Just as he managed to sit upright, legs caught in a tangle beneath him, the bed dipped with the other man's weight and warm skin pressed against his back.

"You're a very reserved man, Ianto. You pride yourself on your control, don't you?"

Ianto tensed in alarm as Alex's cloth-covered groin pushed against his bound hands, the hardness there unmistakable. It was bad enough that his own cock still stood defiantly half-erect in the confines of his underwear, but to know that the other man was aroused as well almost sent him over the edge into a full-blown panic attack. His heart raced, his breathing loud and laboured and Ianto was struck with a sudden memory from the first day he'd met Alex.

"Before we discuss anything else, I have to make something very clear. I'm not selling sex here. I'm not a whore."

Ianto gasped as lips touched his neck, strong arms encircling him and hands smoothing over his chest.

"I didn't presume that you were."

Alex curled his fingers, digging his nails into Ianto's flesh and scraping them down his pectorals, leaving eight individual arcs of red in their wake. Ianto gasped and tried to flinch away from the pain, yet only managed to push back harder against the other man.

"One can only hold back their emotions for so long," Alex murmured into his ear. "Then they have to be expelled." He rocked against Ianto's balled fists. "You chose light bondage and pain to counter your strict need for control, but it wasn't enough."

He removed one hand from Ianto's chest and fumbled between them, pulling down his jogging bottoms and letting his cock spring free.

Ianto began to tremble.

"Open your hands."

Ianto shook his head. He couldn't speak.

"Open your hands," Alex repeated, and this time there was clear warning in his rumbling tone.

Ianto obediently loosened his fists and the other man slid his erection into their grasp. Alex used his free hand to curl Ianto's fingers around his stiff flesh before returning it to his chest.

"Tell me how you feel."

Ianto gave a weak laugh of disbelief and Alex began to push into the tunnel formed by his hands.

"You're scared," Alex said. "You're embarrassed. You can't do anything to stop me." The older man reached down and pushed his fingers into Ianto's boxers. "I'm stronger than you. Even if your arms weren't tied, you'd be no match for me." He pulled the material down over Ianto's hard cock, wrapped a hand around it and began to stroke. "You've got no control, Ianto. I can do whatever I want and you have to take it."

Ianto drew in a sharp breath, the heady mixture of what was happening to his body and the revelation that he truly had no power over this situation sending an astonishing sensation of freedom through him. He wasn't doing anything, he didn't have to do anything, everything was happening to him and all he could do was let it.

His hips lifted slightly in response to the stimulation and Alex's other hand slipped down to cup his balls, rolling them firmly between his fingers. Behind him, Ianto's own fists tightened, squeezing the hardness they held. Hot breath gusted over his ear, Alex leaning even closer as he thrust into Ianto's hands. He licked at Ianto's neck, directly over the throb of his racing pulse, then nipped at the skin and the younger man's head dropped back in submission, giving him better access.

The fingers around his cock tightened, thumb slipping into the leaking slit at the peak of every jerk, and his balls were kneaded until they ached.

Ianto fought the sensations, hated the way his body pushed into the other man's hands, the way his hands gripped the thick cock and imagined what it would be like to have it forced inside him. It was wrong, so wrong, but still he spiralled up towards orgasm with alarming haste, breath hiccupping out of dry lips until suddenly he was coming in a violent burst, spilling himself across the sheets with a pained cry of ecstasy.

Alex continued to stroke him, milking him until it hurt. "Harder," he whispered into Ianto's ear and the young man's hands dutifully clenched around Alex's cock, sending him over the edge with a joyful grunt, his seed arcing up across Ianto's faintly striped back.

***

Next part of The Undeniable.

• Main Torchwood slash page
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• Amazon.com - Torchwood: Children of Earth
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• Amazon.ca link - Torchwood - The Complete First Season (7DVD)