our share of night

[jupiter2932]

Title: our share of night
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: R
Word Count: 24,341
Characters: Ianto, Jack, Owen; Tosh & Gwen are there, but don't feature much in this one.
Relationships: Ianto & Jack, Ianto & Owen; there's some mention of past (and possibly future) Ianto/Jack
Notes: Written for febuwhump (day one: helpless)
Warnings: Sexual assault/rape, kidnapping, attempted murder, vomit, medical examination.


They take him from a Tesco parking lot, which is, frankly, a little insulting. Within the last week alone Ianto has trawled through sewers, tramped through woods, trekked through an abandoned factory, and trudged through a dank, haunted hotel all without sustaining so much as a scratch, but he gets kidnapped just before dusk in a well-lit parking lot, within view of the CCTV, not a hundred yards from a rowdy family packing a cart full of groceries into the trunk of their minivan.

He gets a few good shots in, at least. It's not much consolation, considering he's immediately afterwards bundled up into a trunk he's rather too tall for, but he gives someone a nicely broken nose and cracks somebody else's ribs. It's all quite quick; there are three men, in hoodies with their faces shaded, converging on him when he's hoisting a bulky megapack of toilet paper into the back of his Jeep. He sees them just before they go in for the grab, lashing out with his fist and getting in a good headbutt before there's a syringe jabbed into the back of his neck.

It doesn't knock him out, whatever it is. Paralyzes him, muscles slack no matter how hard he tries to move, but he stays conscious through them jamming him into the trunk and driving off.

His own Jeep is left unlocked, door open behind them. That's good, insomuch as it's likely someone will notice him missing and get Torchwood looking more quickly, but Ianto hopes nobody steals it. He's already going to have enough paperwork when he makes it back.

Because of course he's going to make it back.



The car drives, as far as Ianto can tell, roughly thirty minutes west; when they open up the trunk to bring him out again, he only gets a quick view of the sky before they yank a sack over his head and drag him out. Pynterch, maybe, or somewhere nearby on Cardiff's outskirts, he thinks. It smells like oak trees, which is wildly unhelpful, and he can hear traffic somewhere in the distance—so possibly he's near a motorway.

He'll know as soon as he manages to get free, of course. Once his body starts working again. It shouldn't be too long. A couple hours, maybe; up to four if he's unlucky, but Ianto's familiar, in general, with the sorts of drugs that cause conscious paralysis, and he's pretty sure a dose strong enough to put him out for very much longer than that would have killed him outright.

He's fairly certain, anyway.

They drag him from the car to a building; somewhere big enough they pass through two rooms and a short hallway before they reach the one they hold him in; it's not heated, though the two rooms they pass through first are.

Somewhere older, then, without central heating.

It doesn't smell old, though. Smells like air freshener. Ianto doesn't recognize the brand, but it's some cheap citrus thing that makes his nose itch, like something from a pound shop. He can't get any weight on his feet when they drag him in, one man on either side of him—he thinks four men total, with three on the grab team and one waiting for them here. His boots drag on carpet, though, thin stuff like in an office building or a rental redone in the nineties, like the shitty flat Ianto lived in when he was first in London.

At least no one had pissed all over these carpets.

They heave him into an office chair and yank his jacket off, patting him down for weapons, before they secure him to the armrests with zip ties. There's not much of a reason; aside from his pocket knife Ianto doesn't go around armed when he's off the clock—though that's a choice he'll certainly be reconsidering, now. He'd tell them as much, but his mouth isn't working yet, lips barely starting to tingle. He can open his eyes, at least, in long blinks; he can't see much through the weave of the sack on his head, but he can tell that the walls of the room he's in are white and there are fluorescent lights overhead.

"He'll be out for another hour or two," one of the men who ties him down says when he's secure. "Plenty of time for—"

"Digon." Enough.

It's a new voice, from outside the room. Ianto can just make out someone down the hallway they passed through. Tall, kind of big. Maybe Jack's size. His Welsh has what might be a slight Northern accent, but Ianto's pretty rubbish at distinguishing regions.

Local talent, then. Probably hired by whomever really wants Ianto to make it harder for Torchwood to find them if things went south. And there's going to be some time before the pickup. Or dropoff. Which is probably for the best; if Ianto's gotten very lucky and someone got suspicious about his car and called the police right away, Jack's probably just been notified of his disappearance. It'll take a while before the team makes it to the Tesco. Tosh has got the day off for some family thing, so she'll probably be a bit late, which means they'll be a bit held up on analyzing the CCTV footage (assuming these guys aren't professional enough to have wiped the footage; Ianto's going to think positively and assume they're idiots).

Hopefully, though, they'll be able to ID one of the men from the footage, and between the four of them to search through and pore over lists of known associates, property deeds, and bank accounts, if Ianto's even luckier still they could come rescue him in just a couple of hours. Not that he's going to wait for them, of course, once he gets control of his muscles back, but if an hour or two is 'plenty of time' for something these guys are waiting on, Ianto's not wasting any time getting free as soon as he can.

Nothing he can do for now, though, but sit and wait and hope and try not to panic. They don't talk any more in front of him, just leave the room and shut the door. He hears a TV turn on in the distance—football—and laughter, after a few minutes, but any more words are impossible to make out.



It's actually really, really hard not to panic.

There's nothing else to do while he waits, and after a minute or two his sense of time gets all distorted. There isn't much that he can see in the room, even through the sack. A table, maybe, along one wall, and what he thinks might be a heavy-duty copier near the door. Probably an abandoned office, then, or somewhere one of the men has access to. Maybe a family-owned business. Not that it matters.



The football gets switched to a game show after a while, but he can't tell if the game went full time or if it got switched off in the middle. He didn't hear a halftime, at least, judging from the sound of the stadium crowd, so it will have been forty-five minutes or less since they turned on the TV. Probably. It's hard to keep it straight, though, and the more time passes the more the anxiety ratchets up in him.

The longer it takes for Jack to find him, the greater the chance that Ianto gets passed on to the person behind this, which—whatever they've got planned for him, it's not going to be good. Torturing him for information on Torchwood, using him as a hostage to try and force Jack to do something, maybe just killing him as revenge for—well, any number of things. Ianto's helped to stop a lot of psychopaths, at this point; for all he knows, this is about something he did with Yvonne.

Oh, god, he really hopes this doesn't have anything to do with Yvonne. Yvonne made a lot of rich and powerful people very, very angry throughout her career, and it'll take Jack that much longer to find him, too.



Eventually the game show ends. There are a few raised voices from the room the TV's in, but they quiet after a few moments, and the channel gets switched over to a true crime show Ianto recognizes from the theme music. They show reruns of it at four in the morning; Ianto catches it sometimes when he can't sleep, and he and Tosh have been known to watch an episode or two over a takeout lunch on those rare occasions when she's running an experiment she needs to keep an eye on and the rest of the team is out.

They're nice memories, but thinking of unsolved murders is rather less comforting when he's facing the likely prospects of torture and death in the near future.

It's easy to tell, at least, when the episode carries on through to its end, so that's another half hour down, and then another. Going on two hours since they nabbed him, probably, if he's not off. He's freezing cold, but he doesn't think he'll have to worry about hypothermia just yet; there was snow expected this evening, but not for a few hours until after his Tesco run.

He's starting to get some sensation back in his extremities, but it's barely there and he's pretty sure it's going to take longer than he'd expected before he can try freeing himself from the chair, let alone throw a proper punch.

But any time now, Jack and the team will come and get him. Any minute they'll storm through the doors, shoot out some kneecaps and come rescue him. They're bloody Torchwood, of course they're going to make it in time. And even if he didn't have the team, Jack would come for him. Ianto's sure of it. He doesn't—he isn't sure exactly how to label this thing with Jack, though he's pretty sure it's crept beyond the bounds of some no strings attached shags. It's hard to tell, with Jack, about anything involving emotions, but Ianto thinks there might be something there. He's been putting off bringing it up, but, hell. Maybe they can talk it over once he gets out of here.

He just really hopes he makes it out of here.



He wonders what they'll tell Rhiannon and his mam, if he doesn't make it. What story they'll come up with. He knows Jack will see to it personally; regardless of where they're at with each other, Jack will do that much for him.

Might even come up with something nice. Ianto died saving a bunch of kids from, god knows what, drowning in the bay, maybe. Or pushing a little old lady out the way of an oncoming car. It'll be all right; Mam and Rhiannon will grieve for a while, but he hasn't exactly kept close with them the last few years, and especially not since Canary Wharf, so it'll be easier on them. And Jack will make sure they're all right; Ianto's sure of it.

But hopefully Jack will come for him first, just to save himself the trouble.



There's some more TV for a while, but they switch channels several times so Ianto can't keep track of the time. It switches off for a while after that, then back on. There's talking that happens, on and off, but Ianto can't make out more than a stray word here and there over the TV. Something about payment, then a question about a menu—he's pretty sure they're taking lunch orders—and Ianto thinks at one point the lead guy says something about a contract, but he's really not certain.

He can move his thumb, by that point. Just his left, and he can sort of bend several of the fingers on his right hand, and if he tries really hard he can shift his left foot an inch or two, but improvement is slow.

He doesn't want to die. His stupid body won't work, but Ianto really, really doesn't want to die.

He's trying to raise his head when there's a sudden outburst of voices from the other room. Ianto's Welsh isn't up to snuff, but he makes out a few words and phrases he thinks he got right. Something about calling with no response, and something muffled about a dropoff. Problems with the client, then. Could be that Torchwood found them and stopped them from arranging to pick Ianto up. Could be they're dead.

Could be that, whatever's happened, these guys are going to get spooked and dispose of him so no one comes after them.

He focuses harder on moving his arm.



Maybe twenty minutes later there's more noise from the front. Raised voices, footsteps, and after a minute or two someone slams several doors shut. Ianto hears a car start, tires squealing on pavement; then the TV's switched back on. Someone with a deep voice cracks a joke, and another man laughs. The temperature in Ianto's room has dipped even further, and he can't stop shivering.

Come on, Ianto thinks. Jack, please.



There's some sort of drama on that Ianto doesn't recognize, but it's long. Possibly they've turned on Netflix and started binging. It maybe plays through two full episodes before a ringtone blasts out. The TV keeps playing through the phone call, so Ianto can't make much of it out, but it stops abruptly right afterwords. The men talk something over in low tones for several minutes, voices rising and falling in a few waves, and then there are footsteps through the rooms, down the hall, and the door to the room Ianto's in swings open.

Two men walk in. One circles around Ianto, but the other steps up and yanks the sack off his head. He's tall, slim, dressed in practical hiking clothes and boots, and he's holding a hypodermic syringe in his left hand.


Any time now, Jack.


"Christ, it's freezing," the man standing behind Ianto says. He leans over and slices through the zip ties with a knife—with Ianto's own pocket knife, the bastard—and shoves Ianto off the chair.

He doesn't hit the floor hard, but his cheek scrapes against the carpet and something sharp jabs into his ankle and rips a shallow path through an inch of skin.

"Remember," the guy behind the chair says. "We can't leave any marks. He'll be pissed off if he finds out."

No, no no no no.

"His eyes are open," the other guy says. "Is that normal? Can he hear us?"

"He can't bite," the first one replies. He grabs Ianto's hair and yanks him up, hard, up to kneeling, rests Ianto's bulk against his legs and holds him up by his hair. "That's what matters. But his mouth'll open if you squeeze his jaw."

Jack, please, Ianto pleads, and then there are hands on his face and the guy in front of him unzips his fly, and Ianto shuts his eyes and tries not to think at all.



He wipes his face and neck off when he finishes. Ianto's thrown up a little, and there's—there's other stuff, too, on his chin, and dribbling down his neck, but the guy wipes him off with a tissue and zips himself up, and Ianto thinks that's it, it's done, but then the guy behind him shakes his head a little by his hair and says, "Help me bend him over the table, yeah?" and then there are hands on him again, dragging him and lifting him and draping his body over it, hands on his belt and his zipper, and Ianto finds a stain on the carpet—a dark, big, irregular thing that's maybe coffee or blood—and he keeps his eyes on it and doesn't look away until it's over.

There are going to be bruises on his hips, he knows, and on his chest from where he hit the edge of the table, smacking against it repeatedly. And it—it hurts, the rest of it, and doesn’t feel like it’s going to stop hurting any time soon. He can't tell if he's bleeding, but it burned when it was happening, and it aches still.

And the whole time, the guy kept the knife up against his neck. It cut in a little, back and forth, on some of the more violent thrusts, and Ianto stared at the water stain and thought if he isn't careful he could slit my throat, and he's not being careful, and he thinks maybe it's good his mouth wasn't working yet because if it had been he would have begged them to stop.



They heave him back into the chair, when they're done, pants back up and sack back over his head, a new set of zip ties looping around each wrist and an armrest again.

They're turning to leave, straightening their jackets and jeans again like they got wrinkled sitting in a car, and Ianto thinks okay, so they're not killing me yet, when the first one in says, "Oh, yeah, man, top him up," and the other guy looks for the syringe he brought in and finds it on the edge of the table and says, "Shit, yeah, I almost forgot," and he walks over and sinks the needle into the slope of muscle between Ianto's neck and shoulder, and Ianto thinks, Jack, fucking please, please, and every bit of his body goes numb and his eyes drift shut and the first guy says, "Wait—you didn't give him the whole dose, did you?" and a hot burst of panic flares to life in Ianto's stomach, and he doesn't believe in God much any more, not really, but he falls unconscious begging God wordless not to let him die.



And then someone's smacking his cheek. Someone annoying. Smacking his cheek and not stopping, even though he really, really wants them to.

"Wake up, Ianto, come on. Wake up. Wake up, you wanker. I know you're in there."

Of course it's Owen. Few other men could be as irritating on purpose as Owen Harper is by accident of birth. There's more tapping on his cheek, hard, and Ianto swears he's going to make the man nothing but decaff for the next month straight.

"Come on, Ianto, let me see those gorgeous baby blues."

And that—that's Jack, and Ianto was just asking for Jack, wasn't he? He was—he was asking someone. He wanted Jack to be there. Needed Jack to help him. Needed—

"Come on, sweetheart. Time to wake up, now."

Hell. If Jack's resorting to pet names in front of Owen, Ianto can't disappoint him.

It takes enormous effort—he thinks there's something wrong with his eyes, actually, their lids are so heavy today—but he manages, blinking his eyes several times before he gets them all the way open.

He's greeted with Jack grinning down at him like he's just saved the world single-handed.

"Hey," Jack says. He moves, and Ianto feels Jack's hand rest on his chest, and it's really, really warm, which is funny because he doesn't feel cold at all, but Jack's so much warmer than him and doesn't even look flushed.

And that's weird, too, he's lying down, why is he lying down? And he wants to say "Hi," back, but his mouth isn't working, nor his throat, he can't talk at all, and that's not normal. And then Owen's there, too, leaning over him, telling him he did a good job and now to look straight ahead, please, and then Owen's got a pencil torch and he flicks it on and he shines it in Ianto's eyes, and he might as well stab him in the sockets with an ice pick because this white hot pain just lances through his head, bright sharp overwhelming agony that makes his insides burn.

"Shit!" Owen snaps. "On his side, help me—"

If Owen says anything else Ianto misses it, because Owen's hands and Jack's grab Ianto bodily and roll him to his right just as Ianto's guts revolt, and he spews hot, sour sick all over the cheap blue carpet he's lying on.


Doesn't look like anyone tried to take the stain out, he thinks, and the guy's hand reaches up and touches his thigh and leans in and then it hurts, it hurts and it hasn't even really started yet and is it coffee or blood or maybe dark red wine, the stain, is it—


"Stop," he tries to say, except his mouth doesn't work yet and he's still throwing up, and when he tries to push through it he stutters on a heave and chokes, and then he can't breathe, he's choking, there's vomit in his throat and his lungs and up his nose and he can't breathe, he's going to choke to death on his own sick and—

"Absolutely not," Owen says, and he slings Ianto up with an arm around his chest and smacks him, hard, on the back. Again, and again.

And suddenly Ianto can breathe again.

He gasps, sputters, heaves some more.

Jack says something Ianto doesn't catch, and Ianto realizes he's holding his hand and he has no idea when that happened.

"Muscle relaxant," Owen says over Ianto's retching. "Probably affecting his throat. The neostigmine should counteract that, but it's still kicking in."

Ianto stops heaving, breathes, and finds himself heaving again.

"Plus," Owen continues. "He was fucking overdosed. God knows how much they gave him."

Ianto spits.

"'S okay, Ianto, just get it out," Owen says, and Ianto revises his idea about the decaff.

Owen's getting any pastry he wants at every briefing for the next month.

Ianto's body is starting to trickle back to life by the time he's done, but Ianto doesn't have the energy to do anything but sag in Owen's arms and pant. Owen holds him up like that for a little bit, lets him catch his breath without complaining.

Ianto's skin crawls at the feeling of being touched again, but when he thinks of shoving Owen away his hands automatically clutch on to Owen's arm, and he finds himself ready to punch anyone who tries to make him let go. Owen, god help them both, is his friend, and apparently that's fine enough for now. Plus, despite whatever Owen's given him to counteract the paralytic, Ianto doesn't think he's up to walking yet.

That proves not to be an issue, though, as Jack and Owen deftly handle getting him cleaned up—as much as can be managed with a couple wet wipes, anyway—and shifting him away from the vomit.

"That's better," Jack says, smiling even though Ianto can tell it's strained. Ianto blinks at him. He's not sure he could talk right yet if he needed to, but Jack's looking at Owen, so he must not be needed. He lets himself drift a little, voices washing over him. It's been tiring, he realizes, having to pay constant attention all evening since he got shoved in the trunk. His shoulders are stiff with the stress of it.

It felt like it did when he was hiding Lisa, sort of. The same sort of tension in his spine, in his lungs. Constantly keeping aware of everything around him so he didn't get her found out and get them both killed.

"Oh, Ianto," Tosh's voice breaks in from somewhere very far away. She sounds kind of like she did that one time they talked, after she told him about the pendant. It makes Ianto's stomach hurt. "I got the thermal. Should I—"

He'd wished he could tell them about Lisa a lot. He'd had nightmares about them finding out, but it had been so hard, keeping her hidden and safe, and he'd been so tired.

He thinks, I can't remember the last time I wasn't tired, and, If I rip my skin off, will they notice?, and, Can't show it can't hint, they never need to know, do they? I don't need to tell them, I don't think I want to tell them, do I tell him?, and all his thoughts are jumbled up and—

"On the couch," Owen says, and then his hands are shifting; they're moving; Owen grips him underneath the shoulders and stands, and Jack grabs his legs, and Ianto shuts his eyes for a second and when he opens them again he's being settled onto a soft, lumpy couch on some sort of shiny, crinkly fabric. There's a television propped up on a bench a few feet away; it's on mute, but turned on to an episode of The Bill. There's a coffee table, also, pushed to the side of the couch with several empty boxes of Chinese takeout stacked on one end of it. There's sauce smeared on them, and the smell makes Ianto's stomach churn uncomfortably. He gags, but swallows it back down.

Jack's gone when he looks up again.

"On it," Owen says somewhere out of sight by Ianto's feet. He reappears seconds later, a hypodermic in hand, and stands, leaning over. "Just an anti-emetic," he says, reading something in Ianto's face. He shifts up then, lifting Ianto's sweater quickly before shoving it back down with an apology when Ianto tenses.

"Only mild bruising," Owen mutters. "Good." He doesn't touch Ianto's pants, which Ianto's pathetically grateful for.

Ianto hums. There's movement around the room, at the edges of his sight. Clothes rustling. People. He tenses for a second before he recognizes Gwen's footsteps. He catches sight of her just out of the corner of his eye as she heads out of the room; she's carrying a cardboard box with something in it that's got wires poking out of the top of it. Electronic equipment of some sort. He feels like he should recognize what the wires are for, but his head's still aching and the thoughts slip through his head too fast for him to chase.

Things are moving faster, now. He wonders if it's because everything was going so slowly for so long that they're trying to catch up now he's been found.

Something beeps suddenly in his ear and startles him into a jump.

"Sorry," says Owen, not looking sorry at all. He's holding a thermometer, and he frowns when he sees the numbers. He looks at Jack, who's appeared again over Ianto's shoulder—and that's nice, in a way that makes Ianto's insides feel warm. Jack's good. Jack's safe. Ianto doesn't know if it's okay for anyone to touch him a lot yet, but if it is then it's probably Jack.

"Hypothermic, but it's moderate," Owen says. "He can skip a hospital, barring complications, if we keep an eye on him."

He's moving while he talks, bringing up the rest of the thermal blanket that Ianto's lying on and tucking it around him, ducking out of sight and reappearing with two more wool blankets, which he piles on top.

"Gwen, love, grab us that hot chocolate? And see if there's anything we can use for a hot pack."

Ianto's eyes flutter shut, and he struggles to open them again. Jack's leaning over him, looking worried, and Ianto wants to—

—he wants to—


"He can't breathe, you daft shit. He won't be any use if he suffocates on your dick, give him a second."


He reaches out. His arm feels heavy, and he doesn't so much aim as he does yank it out from under the blanket and stretch out with optimism, but it works.

"I'm not going anywhere," Jack says, wrapping his hand around Ianto's.

Ianto squeezes it back as best he can.

Jack came, after all. Jack's safe.



Jack's good as his word. Perches on the edge of the sofa and holds Ianto's hand the whole time Owen fusses around him, holds it—and holds him back—when Owen tries to pat his scalp down to look for injuries and Ianto rears up to headbutt him reflexively.

"It's okay," Jack says. "It's just Owen. I'm right here."

Owen doesn't hold it against him, anyway; he comes back a few minutes later to tuck two hot packs up under Ianto's underarms.

Things get fuzzy for a while, after that.

"Just set it on the table," Jack tells Gwen, who's holding a steaming mug. "Owen said he should be in and out. We're just waiting on him to warm up enough for the drive back."

"It's all right," Owen says, and Gwen's gone and Owen's swapped spots with Jack, and the light's changed in the second Ianto's eyes were shut since Jack was talking—oh, the television's been switched off—and oh, god, it's freezing, it's freezing cold, he's dying, he needs more blankets and—

"This is good, actually," Owen says, and he helps Ianto sit up and helps him drink some hot chocolate because his hands are shaking too hard to hold the cup without slopping it all over himself, and his teeth bang into the rim and it makes them ache. Owen makes him tuck his arms back into the blanket it and sits Ianto up against himself like a big burrito, holds the mug steady in front of his mouth in between sips. "Shivering means your body's getting back to a normal temperature. If you weren't we'd be packing you up for a trip to the local A&E, and you know how Jack drives on a hospital run."

'Bat out of hell' is putting it kindly.

"'S'not grea', is it," Ianto says, distantly proud of himself for managing the words.

Jack says, "Really?" from somewhere beyond the couch in what should be but isn't an aggravated tone, and Owen looks rather pleased with himself, which honestly he only usually does when he's done something he actually should be pleased about; or when he's gotten laid, which Ianto supposes must be an accomplishment for some.

Ianto doesn't understand what's going on. It's fucking hard enough to keep his eyes open. Owen's told him it's the hypothermia and the lingering effects of overdosing on muscle relaxants—which Jack has specifically forbidden him from doing ever again—and Ianto just needs to pass out for several hours straight and he'll feel all better.

He nods back off to Owen sticking the thermometer in his ear again.

At some point Jack moves back up next to him and Tosh says something from the doorway, and Ianto doesn't catch what it is but Jack chuckles and says, "Yeah, I know."



Ianto dozes off with Jack telling him something soft and holding his hand and undozes up to Jack talking on the phone with the prime minister and holding his hand.

"We haven't identified them yet," Jack is saying. "But as far as we can tell, he was unconscious the entire time they had him, so there was no chance for interrogation. But we're concerned about the risk to UNIT employees, based on e-mails we've found between—"

Whatever, Ianto thinks, and lets himself drift.

There's noise, now and then, footsteps in and out of the room, the sound of snow starting to fall on the roof, wind picking up outside. Murmurs, eventually: Owen and Jack, talking over his head. Ianto, floating in a sea of warmth, struggles to focus on them.

"—and the cut on his neck—"

"It's shallow, nothing to worry about. I cleaned it off while he was sleeping, but—"

"No, I know. But does he have a tetanus booster on file?"

There's laughter at that, muffled like Owen's burying his face in his hands, but it cuts off with a, "Fine, fine, Christ. No, his shots are all up to date. He's not catching anything. Blimey, you're fucking soft for him as an—"

He's interrupted by a slamming door, Gwen calling something from the front about some heating, but Ianto misses most of it.

He hadn't—he hadn't thought. Of diseases. God, what's his brain even—he's not been thinking straight since they took him, hasn't been—God, what if they've infected him with something, what if he's gotten—then Jack would find out anyway, even if he got it treated elsewhere, and someone else would find out, and everyone would find out, because that's how gossip works at Torchwood, and he doesn't want—doesn't want them to know, not like that, doesn't want them to know about the—the hands that touched him and made his skin crawl and the knife on his neck and the—and he'd be poor, useless Ianto again, Ianto who got himself kidnapped at a Tesco's and ra—

"Hey," Jack says, hand settling on Ianto's shoulder, and Ianto starts and two of the fingernails on his right hand, he notices, have dug into his palms deep enough they've drawn blood where his hand's resting on top of the blankets Owen piled on him.

"Hey, it's okay," Jack says. "You're safe, Ianto. It's just me."

Ianto nods. Takes a breath.

He wants to vomit again, a little.

"Just startled me," he bites out, and his words are barely slurred at all.

He breathes again. Again. Owen walks in and grabs his medical kit from where it's apparently been lying at the end of the couch by Ianto's feet.

"SUV's warm."

"Ready to go?" Jack asks him, and it's not actually a question; Ianto can tell because he doesn’t say yes or no, but next thing he knows Jack's helping him sit up and Owen's sticking that thermometer in his ear again—looking quite satisfied with himself when it beeps—and then they're moving, untangling him from the blankets Owen had piled onto him. He just has a moment to shiver in the slight chill of the office building before they stand him up. Owen grabs him by the waist and takes most of his weight and Jack comes up behind him, his greatcoat in hand.

"Nice and easy," Jack says, and gently slides Ianto's left arm into a sleeve before reaching for his other.

It's warm, the coat is. Almost as soon as he puts it on. Heavy, like Ianto expected, but well-worn in a way that means comfort. It smells like Jack, like the soap and aftershave he wears, the cologne he uses when they go out on a date, of fifty-first century pheromones and twenty-first century sweat.

Ianto breathes in the scent of it and shuts his eyes and doesn't think about Owen and Jack and where their hands are on his body.

"Almost looks better on you," Owen says. His hands tighten on Ianto's sides. "Just as long as you don't start lurking on the roof, too. One sulky bastard breaking his neck is bad enough."

It takes Ianto a long moment to notice Owen is joking; longer still to realize this is probably for his sake.

He's shaking.

Huh.

"Let's get you home," Jack says softly. He brings Ianto's left hand up and slips a familiar leather glove on it, does up the button—replaced a few times since the glove was made in 1941—at the cuff. "Get some rest. Worry about everything else tomorrow."

He's going to want to stay the night. That's been a recent development, and it's only happened a few times, but Ianto thinks it's starting to be a thing they do. And Jack will understand about not wanting sex tonight, he won't even question it—and Ianto isn't averse to him spending the night if there's no sex involved, he thinks, maybe probably yes—but he won't understand if Ianto stops wanting sex indefinitely, or if he freaks out about it, or if—he'll notice something is wrong; he'll notice something is wrong anyway, probably, tonight, because he's a good leader and he cares about them now and Ianto doesn't know how long he can hide it for, how well he can hide it. And he could maybe do it if he sent Jack away, but he doesn't—he had a knife against his neck again today, and the last time someone held a knife up to his neck and threatened to kill him with it he went home and almost overdosed and he's—he's not, he won't, but he doesn't want to be alone, he doesn't want to go home by himself, he wants Jack there, wants—

"No rush," Jack says, ducking under Ianto's left arm and waiting for Owen to take the other over his shoulders. "Just a short walk to the SUV and you can take another nap."

And he has to tell them anyway, doesn't he? He has to talk to Owen and get that—that thing. He doesn't know if—it's PrEP? Or, no, PEP, PEP's the one for sexual assaults, the one in the pamphlets Ianto read that time they bagged that alien hunting homeless teens and spent five hours on stakeout in that crisis center, PEP's the one you take afterwards for HIV if you're not expecting unprotected sex beforehand. Ianto hasn't bothered, with Jack, because they have weekly blood tests and Jack would warn him if he had unsafe sex with someone else between tests, so he's never thought about it much, but—

Cold. It's fucking cold.

"Almost there, mate."

His legs aren't back to normal yet. They're all right; he could stand up on his own if he really needed to, probably, but he's not sure for how long, and walking is complicated, and there's snow been falling for a while now, and it's heavy and soft and slippery and hard and makes walking stupidly difficult. Jack and Owen end up taking most of his weight, and he stumbles rather than steps down the short walkway to the SUV.

Tosh is standing by the front tire, which makes sense when Jack and Owen heave Ianto in and bundle him into the far left backseat. Owen slides in behind him, and Tosh squeezes in at the end while Jack shuts the door on them.

It hurts when he sits down, but he hides it with a shrug and squirms around until he's as comfortable as he's going to get. He fumbles with the seatbelt until Owen says something under his breath and yanks it away from him, snapping it in.

Jack's wearing the jacket Ianto wore to Tesco, Ianto realizes when Jack slips into the passenger's seat. It's a little tight across his shoulders, and it's too light for this weather.

At least the SUV's warm. Gwen's in the driver's seat, and she and Tosh must have been waiting while it warmed up. Buddy paired, because they're in a deserted area where Ianto's gotten kidnapped to, and the kidnappers are—actually, he doesn't know if any of the kidnappers are still at large. He didn't see any bodies.

There should have been bodies. Or police officers, carting off the injured guys. There should have been some sort of commotion. Blood, or bullet holes in the walls from when they came in, or signs of struggle. He'd have missed it, but there should have been something he could have extrapolated from to figure out what happened. Or bodies.

Why weren't there any bodies?

"Wha' happened?" he asks, gingerly resting his head against the cold window to his left.

There's movement next to him. To his front. Owen tensing at his side, head whipping around to look at him. Jack, likewise, sitting ramrod straight and turning, peering at Ianto like he could pick him down to his base parts to find the glitch.

Oh. Right. Specificity.

"To th' guys," he hurries on. "The guys that took me. D'you turn them over? I don't—"

"We can worry about that later," Jack says, just as Owen chimes in with something about getting some sleep.

Gwen, Ianto notices, is also quite tense there in the driver's seat, and there's a sort of rustling from Owen's other side that sounds, somehow, Tosh-shaped.

"Did you—did they get away?"

It sounds even dumber when he says it out loud, because of course they wouldn't gotten away; they might have been organized but they're just local talent, ultimately, hired brawn not trusted enough to do more than grab him; and they're not even alien; and this is Torchwood.

But the silence that answers him is deafening.

"But—"

But this is Torchwood.

And now they're—they're running around out there, then, free, the guys who snatched him from the parking lot and the two who—

"There wasn't anyone there when we found you," Jack says. "Retrieving you was our first priority, and when we found you..."

When they found him, they'd had to stop to revive him. The guys who—the guys supposed to be watching him had left him there to die. Alone. They must have figured out they'd given him an overdose, and they'd scarpered before their boss found out. If the team hadn't found him, he would have died alone in the cold, zip-tied to a chair with a sack on his head, and the autopsy would have—wait.

"How'd you find me?" He shifts against the door again; he's warm, in Jack's coat, but the door's cold against his neck and head and uncomfortably hard against his shoulder.

Owen gives a supremely dissatisfied huff and tugs at Ianto's upper sleeve so Ianto straightens up, then yanks Ianto down to lean against his own shoulder.

Ianto resists for half a moment before he settles in. At least Owen isn't freezing cold. "D'you know who they are?" he asks.

And it's funny, because the team absolutely should know who kidnapped him; how would they have found him otherwise? But nobody's saying anything, and he can see now, slumped over Owen, that Tosh is fidgeting her fingers in her lap, and she's not meeting his eyes even when he turns towards her.

Jack sighs. "We weren't able to get footage of the attack when they grabbed you. Tosh and Gwen managed to ID the car from a traffic camera, and we tracked it to this area from CCTV, found you that way."

And then they'd been too distracted by Ianto almost dying to try to figure out who was behind the whole thing right away. That must have been the boxes Gwen and Tosh had carried out to the trunk—anything in the building they thought they might get DNA or fingerprints off of, or any tech they could try to scrub for data. And the phone call from the PM, too, because if they don't know why Ianto was taken, they can't rule out anything, including terrorist attack. And right now, everyone involved is still out there.

They're still out there.

He has a thought, just then, that makes him queasy, and pushes it away for the moment.

"Cold?" Owen asks.

Ianto shakes his head and forces himself to relax. Thinking about that can come later. After they're—once he—later. He takes a deep breath and curls into the greatcoat, head pillowed on Owen's shoulder. He's surprisingly comfortable, Owen is. You wouldn't think it to look at him, all sharp snark and prickles, but if this were any other situation Ianto could fall asleep, easy.

"We can debrief tomorrow when you're rested," Jack says, and Ianto realizes he's missed something. Probably just declarations of his intent to find anyone involved and make sure they're never able to try something like this again, or something. He thinks maybe Gwen said something, when he thinks about it. Probably something about liaising with the police.

He wonders if Jack's going to be singing the same song once he knows.

Because he will have to know, won't he? Even if he and Ianto weren't—whatever the hell they are to each other, he'd still find out from Owen, if Ianto didn't tell him in the debrief; there's probably some sort of regulation about that, and Ianto knows his medical records stopped being private the minute he joined Torchwood.

And the thing is, Ianto and he are doing something. They might have agreed on a one-time deal back when they first started shagging, but it's been a few months, now, and there have been a lot of times. And it's not just sex either, now; Jack's spent four nights in Ianto's flat in the last two weeks. He's even got a toothbrush there now, and the other morning he made pancakes and bacon for breakfast without even asking.

He might not have noticed something wrong with Ianto a year ago when Ianto was hiding Lisa, but he won't be able to miss it now. Not something like this.

"So, Hub, flat, or hospital first?" Gwen asks. She's eyeing Owen through the rear-view mirror when Ianto looks up; when she sees him watching, she smiles easily.

"I can set him up at home if someone stays with him." Owen's chest rumbles when he speaks. It's funny, because it's not like he has a low-pitched voice. "Jack and I can get him set up and—"

"Sh'd drop the girls off first." That'll work. Tosh and Gwen's flats are both on the way to Ianto's, coming in from Pynterch way. It'd be stupid to drop him off first and make them double back. And that way Gwen and Tosh, at least, won't be around. He doesn't want to tell them. He doesn't want them to know. He doesn't want—doesn't want—

"Ianto," Gwen starts, and her voice is so kind it makes Ianto's stomach hurt. "It's no trouble. You need to re—"

"'S out of your way." He straightens up, away from Owen's comfortable warmth. He needs them to go. "'M fine. Fine, I'm fine. I'll rest easier if I'm not keeping you."

There's a silent conversation between Gwen and Jack that takes place, but Ianto doesn't get to follow it because Owen mutters, "Fuck’s sake," under his breath, reaches up, yanks the top half of his seat belt out and up and tucks it behind his back, and gently pulls Ianto back down so Ianto's stretched out over Owen's lap, his head pillowed in Tosh's. And it's nice, it's kind, it's a lot more comfortable than Ianto was sitting up straight, but he has half a second settling in before he realizes Tosh is going to play with his hair.

"Ianto?" Owen asks, because Ianto's breath has caught in his chest and his muscles have all seized up, stiff, and frozen, but Ianto pushes through it, puffing out a mouthful of air and raising his hand up to forestall Tosh, because he can't, he can't tell him, not in front of anyone, and he just needs them to all leave so he can get it over with as quietly as he's going to get.

"Just cold," Ianto says, and Tosh takes his hand in both of hers and sets it down on her knees in front of his face and rubs her thumb over his palm, soothing, and Ianto's lungs start up again and the knot in his stomach loosens up a bit again. "I'm fine."

From the front seat there is a resigned sigh.

"I can pick you and Tosh up tomorrow on my way in," Jack tells Gwen.

Ianto takes a breath and is relieved and heaves it out, and his fingers tremble in Tosh's hold.

It must be nearly a forty minute drive back, with the way Gwen takes it once they think he's asleep, but Ianto doesn't have the time, somehow, to figure out what he's going to say, the ride warps by so fast.

He dozes uneasily for a while, in small bursts; he's wired up on nerves and nausea, maybe, but Owen wasn't wrong about his body's need for rest. It drags him down even through all the noise in his head, the sour taste at the back of his throat. He wishes he could sleep properly, but he only manages to drift in and out of it, lulled by a light buzz of conversation that picks up the moment Tosh says, "I think he's asleep."

"Good," is Jack's contribution, and, some time later, "When I saw him, I thought—" and later, still, "I don't care who it is behind this, if it's the prime minister himself, we'll find them, and we'll take them down."

"If we'd been half an hour later, he'd be dead," Owen says at one point, and, "Christ, what a long fucking day," at another.

Gwen's quieter than the others, at the wheel, doubtless peering at the road with tired eyes, but she asks, "Will he really be okay?" one time when it's quiet.

"It was bad enough," Tosh puts in a little before that, her thumb never pausing, brushing over the back of Ianto's hand, touching each knuckle in turn like a benediction. "But it could have been so much worse. We all got lucky this time, didn't we?"

"Ianto most of all," Gwen mutters gravely, and Ianto wants a little bit to smash his face into the dashboard.

He keeps his eyes shut and focuses on his breathing and doesn't startle when Owen sets a hand on his shoulder.



He's sleeping uneasily when they stop off at Tosh's, but jostles awake when she slips her hands out of his grasp.

"Get some rest, Ianto," she says softly, with a squeeze to his shoulder. He thinks, from her start, that her fingers brush against Owen's when she leaves and wonders, viciously, if she's going to use it to bond with him, going to bring up Poor Ianto's Kidnapping over lunch in the briefing room tomorrow and say God, wasn't it awful? Ianto must be traumatized! It must have been terrifying, right?

He's sorry for it right after, guilt bitter in his mouth when he swallows, but the thought niggles in his mind. He wonders if it was her who found him? Jack? Which one of them kicked the door open and saw him slumped over in the chair, bag on his head, pulse low breathing slow skin so cold they maybe thought he was dead when they put their fingers to his wrist to check.

He wonders how long the two guys stayed before they left him to die.

Owen shifts over and manhandles Ianto so his head is resting on Owen's thigh. It's cramped, in the small backseat, and Ianto squirms uncomfortably to try and ease the ache between his hips, but it's easier than sitting up, still, and Owen's thigh is warm against his cheek.

Owen doesn't hold his hand like Tosh had, but he leans down and angles the air vent up when it starts blowing right at Ianto's face and makes him flinch. Jack keeps peeking down at him over his shoulder, quick, darting looks he thinks Ianto doesn't see. Gwen for her part takes it easy at the wheel, slowing before every speed bump and easing on the brakes at every stoplight.

It's nice, their concern. Ianto's aware that it's nice in an abstracted way, but the closer they get to Gwen and Rhys's the harder it is to focus on anything except the cold, gnawing fear clawing at his throat.

He's biting his lip to keep it in by the time she parks, fingers worrying the cuffs of Jack's coat.

"Take care of him," Gwen tells Jack when she heads off. Jack says something in reply, something soft and kind and sweet probably, but Ianto misses it for the rushing of blood in his ears.

He doesn't want to do this. He wants to go home and curl up in bed and stay there forever, and he wants to take a bath and scrub his skin until he can't feel anything on it at all, and he wants Jack to hold him and he never wants anyone to touch him again, and he wants his Mam and he wants—

"Just hang on, Ianto. I'll get you home in no time."

Owen hasn't moved up to the passenger's seat. Ianto thought he would, but Owen seems happy enough to play Ianto's pillow and doesn't go.

"Yeah, mate," he says. "Day off for you to sleep in tomorrow, too. We'll have to see if Gwen can make coffee, god knows mine is shit."

It's an effort to cheer him up, which Ianto appreciates, but Owen sounds exhausted. Ianto sort of remembers him talking about staying late, yesterday after work, to run some tests on a tissue sample they picked up on that thing in Narberth two weeks ago, and he was snoozing on the couch in the workspace when Ianto came in this morning. Probably didn't get a lot of sleep, and it must be pushing one, two in the morning now, if not later. Long day for him already. He's probably ready to go home and sack out as soon as he gets Ianto set up.

It's a decent excuse, and Ianto almost takes it. He could do it, he knows. Keep his mouth shut. Go home, go to bed, let Jack look after him for a few hours. Go to see a doctor in the morning and figure out how to deal with Jack later.

He doesn't want to tell them. And that thought, the one that made his stomach squirm when he thought it earlier, it can go fuck itself; why does it have to be him—have to be them, have to be Torchwood—always putting themselves last, giving up everything for the greater good? Can't he just have this one thing? Today's been hard enough already—can't he be allowed to be selfish about this one thing?

"You just rest," Jack says. He comes to an intersection and stops. It's Gwen's turn-point to the Plas. Left will take them to the Hub, right will have them at Ianto's flat in just under ten minutes. Fewer, probably, with traffic at this time of night.

Just this, Ianto thinks. Just this one thing. Just this one time.

"Ianto?" Owen asks, and Ianto realizes he's digging his fingers into Owen's shin.

If they don't find out who did this, next time it could be Owen. Or Tosh, or Gwen. Or Jack. And they might not be quick enough, next time. Death by overdose probably would have been a mercy, compared to what would have been coming to him if he'd been passed along to whoever it was ordered the thing in the first place. It'll be someone else next time, and they won't be so lucky.

Jack turns left, easing out onto the road and speeding up.

Ianto shuts his eyes and eases his grip on Owen's jeans.

"We," he starts, but he has to stop to clear his throat. Just like ripping off a plaster, right?

"Yeah?" Jack asks.

"We need to go to the Hub."

Owen shifts, huffs and mutters something that sounds like god save me from idiots, but it's Jack who breaks in.

"What you need is to get some rest, in your own home. You've had a hell of a day, Ianto. The debrief can wait until tomorrow, and there's nothing else so important that you have to see to it tonight."

The wool fabric of Jack's cuffs is soft in his fists. Comfortable. Familiar, now, from putting his hands on Jack's shoulders or brushing his hand across Jack's back. Ianto digs his fingers into it and breathes.

In, out, in.

"We need to get DNA swabs before I shower," Ianto says. The car jerks to a sudden stop on the side of the road, and Ianto bites the inside of his cheek and plunges into the huge, heavy silence that follows. "And I'm going to need a course of PEP."

Out. In. Out.

"Oh," Owen says. “Fuck.”

It is perhaps the most heartfelt and earnest Ianto's ever heard him, and after he says it he tenses under Ianto and very, very carefully doesn't move.

There's a rustling in the front seat, Ianto's jacket sliding against the cushion as Jack turns to look at him. Ianto's eyes are still shut, and he squeezes them tighter.

"Ianto," Jack says.

Well, who knew? Jack Harkness actually can sound scared.

"Ianto," Jack repeats. Softer, this time.

Owen shifts minutely. His hand tenses on Ianto’s left shoulder, like he’s going to lift it, but when Ianto moves into it, just the slightest bit, he leaves it be. "Jack."

Ianto breathes in through his nose and out through his mouth, steady, and doesn’t look up.

"Jack," Owen says again. "Let's just get to the Hub, yeah?"

Ianto slits his eyes and stares resolutely at the lint on the carpet under the driver's seat.

"Right," Jack says. "Yeah. Okay."

There's the familiar click of the gear shift, and the SUV starts again, easing into a wide U-turn, fresh snow crunching under the tires.



Owen doesn't move the whole way back.

It's easier, now that Ianto's got it out. The rest of it, back at the Hub, is going to be awful, he's sure, and when he thinks of it he feels vaguely nauseated and panicky still, but it's nothing like the knot of anxiety that had been building up in his stomach before he let it out. He tries not to think of it though, focusing instead on Jack, who's sitting grimly in the front seat, and Owen, who's stiff as a board underneath him.

Ianto isn't sure whether he should sit up or not; Owen's still comfortable, but having it out now, it's all awkward. Ianto doesn't like awkward, but he doesn't think it would be any considerably less awkward if he were sitting up straight on his side of the seat. And he isn't sure he could sit up on his own right now, anyway, with his head swimming like this, at least not without tipping over or needing Owen's help at some point, and that feels like it would be maybe even more awkward—because Owen and Jack would know he was just sitting up because he was feeling weird about the whole thing, and then they'd be weird about it, too, and Ianto wouldn't know what to do with that. Maybe Owen's had experience with this sort of thing before from his rounds back when he was training at public hospitals; and probably, thinking about it, there's a good chance Jack's had some experience with this sort of thing because he's let some things drop, now and then, about things he's seen with Torchwood and before, and he's dead good with trauma victims.

But Ianto doesn't have any experience with this sort of thing, not with anyone else and not with himself, and he knows how he's supposed to act after he's taken a punch—the script he's supposed to follow—but he doesn't know this one, and he doesn't—he doesn't like not knowing his scripts. Feeling lost like this. It trips him up, makes him clumsy, and he always ends up making everything worse. It makes his hands clammy and his skin itch, and right now he doesn't—right now he can't—

"Turn the heat back up?" Owen asks, breaking the quiet when they're halfway there.

Jack does, flicking the dial up all the way again, and Ianto finds himself uncurling a little at the blast of hot air. He hadn't even realized he was cold.

It hurts, when he shifts, though, not enough space in the SUV to get comfortable. He winces before he can think it through and stop himself, and it's probably just tensing in Owen's muscles that his brain correctly parses as movement, but he could swear he feels Owen's eyes rake over him, tracking his stiffness and aches, and he hates it, he hates it, and it makes him think about what's going to happen once they get to the Hub, and his cheeks warm and his eyes well up in reflex. They'll notice if he wipes them off, he knows, and he doesn't want that either, so he blinks and blinks and blinks and tries to will the hot wetness away.

Most of it goes. A little bit of it doesn't, a few drops squeezing past his lids and dripping sideways across the bridge of his nose and his temple, down to Owen's jeans. There's no way Owen doesn't notice, but he doesn't say anything, and Ianto breathes through his mouth until he doesn't have to sniff.

It's not a long drive; Gwen's got an easy commute to the Hub, and the SUV is down in the public parking garage at the back of the building before Ianto's ready for it. Jack's out and waiting by Ianto's door almost as soon as they're parked. He opens the door, but he doesn't reach in and try to help Ianto out.

Owen does, though, move now. He reaches down, mutters, "Let's get you up, mate," and slowly helps Ianto sit up straight. Ianto pushes himself up, but his hands are wobbly, arms shaking, and Owen does most of the work, leaning him up against the back of the seat and then helping him slide upright.

"Got your seatbelt," Owen says next, and reaches down and clicks Ianto free, easing the belt out of Ianto's way while telegraphing his movements for Ianto to see.

He heads out himself, then, and it's up to Ianto to move it along.

"Help me down?" he asks Jack, who's standing stock-still by the door except for his left hand, which is tapping compulsively against his thigh. "I’m dizzy."

The blank look disappears from Jack's face with an, "Of course."

Owen rounds the back of the car as Jack grabs his arm, and the two of them end up helping him down between them, steadying him when he stumbles, his head uncomfortably floaty for several long moments.

They take him in together, too, one arm over each shoulder. He's only vaguely more sure-footed after the drive than he was when they helped him out to the SUV. There's a sticky bit, when they're heading into the building itself; the hidden door in from the garage unlocks after an iris scan, but it only stays open eight seconds before it locks down hard for six hours. Ianto trips on Owen's foot on their way in, and they just manage to squeak in before the door swings shut and the lock clicks, nearly catching the edge of the greatcoat.

It's a slow way down to the morgue from there. Owen narrates every move they make, every time he has to move his hand to Ianto's waist to steady him or prop him against Jack so he can open a door. Jack barely says anything at all, except, "Easy," one time when Ianto stumbles, and, "On it," just before he peels away from them, when they make it to the main workspace and Owen tells him to go grab them some spare pajamas.

Jack doesn't wear pajamas, but Ianto doesn't point that out.

They make it, just, the rest of the way, the two of them. Owen's taking most of his weight by the time they make it down the steps, and he helps Ianto up to the morgue table with a grunt.

He doesn't say shit about it, though, not then, not until he slips on his lab coat and turns around and sees Ianto's face.

"Like six feet of lead, mate," he says, lips quirking up at the edges and it's fake, Ianto can tell, but it keeps Ianto's eyes from tracking the gloves Owen grabs from a box on the counter, so it doesn't matter. "Where d'you find the time to keep fit? I'm putting in for a raise, if lugging your ass around's going to be in my duties."

This, Ianto realizes, isn't Owen. It's Dr. Harper. Ianto's seen him, now and again, dealing with civilians who get swept up in alien shit, but they've never met face to face, not like this.

Jack takes that moment to come in, a t-shirt and a very soft pair of flannel pants in hand. He sets them on the counter nearest the stairs and steps back, rocks onto the back of his heels like he's unsure.

"Do you want Jack to stay?" Owen asks, and Ianto's grateful for him in a way he couldn't express if he wanted to.

His mouth is dry, but he shakes his head.

"It's okay," Jack says with a smile, and Ianto doesn't know if he's just saying that but he doesn't look like it, and Ianto's grateful for that, too. "I'll go make some coffee."

He heads out with that, still in Ianto's too-tight jacket. Owen waits until they can't hear his footsteps before he stands away from the counter.

"You're in charge here," is what he says, staying right by the counter. "You set the pace, and any time you tell me to stop, I'll stop, yeah?"

Ianto jerks his head down in a nod. It makes him dizzy again and he has to put his hand down on the table to steady himself, but it's good enough for Owen. He pulls open one of the cabinets beneath the counters and rummages around, coming up, eventually, with a light blue hospital gown, the wraparound kind that tie at the side. He sets it on the table by Ianto's side, but darts off again with a, "One sec," and grabs a plastic box out of a drawer. That one Ianto recognizes, having processed orders to restock it; Owen's own handmade DNA collection kit, used to take samples from human, weevil, and multi-tentacled alien alike. Each set has multiple swabs, sterile plastic bags and bottles, and labels for use in the field. Owen sets the box in a silver bowl—Ianto guesses for the discarded baggies—and brings them over to the table as well.

Christ. He can't do this. He can't—

"Any pain?" Owen asks, drawing near. He snaps open the top of the box and grabs a swab in plastic and paper packaging.

Ianto breathes. His fingers wrap around the edge of the table and grip it tight. "Yes."

Owen nods. "We'll sort that in a tic. Do I need to take a mouth swab?"


He doesn't bite, that's what matters.


"Yes," Ianto says again, swallowing. He can't look Owen in the face, so he fixes his sight on one of the cabinets behind him and focuses on that instead. "I drank, though. Hot chocolate. And I was sick."

Owen rips the wrapping off the swab, dropping it on the floor. Shrugs. "You never know."

There's a smudge on the cabinet, near the floor. Someone rested their sneaker on it—probably Owen himself, judging from the height of the smudge.

"Okay, mate, if you can open your mouth for me, we'll get this over with, all right?"

The smudge is probably from last night, when Owen was in late running that test. Ianto cleaned the morgue yesterday morning after the dissection of that carcass from Butetown, but it didn't see any use today, so he didn't come in earlier.

Owen rubs the swab up between Ianto's teeth and his lips and cheeks, quick but thorough. It's fine, until he reaches Ianto's back molars and suddenly it's not fine. Ianto jerks away. Gags.

Owen grabs the silver bowl and sets it in Ianto's lap.

Oh. That was smart of him.

"It's okay," Owen says. "It's just you and me, Ianto. We're in the morgue in Torchwood, and Jack's in the conference room making some fucking terrible coffee."

He busies himself putting the swab in a plastic tube and capping it, writing out a label for it while Ianto gets his breathing back under control, and he waits, after that, to go on until Ianto tells him it's okay.

He swabs around Ianto's mouth next, under his nose, around his chin, even down his neck when Ianto tells him. It's easier than the mouth swab, doesn't make him feel sick, doesn't make him think of anything at all.

Then Owen says, "Going to touch your face, all right?" and Ianto nods, because of course that's all right, it's just Owen, he gets why Owen is asking but it's not necessary, not now, and then Owen touches his face and Ianto jerks back and stops breathing and pukes up all the hot chocolate they made him drink earlier.

It goes into the bowl rather than on him and Owen, which is fortunate. It's over quickly, too, Owen handing him a bottled water not a minute later, when he’s caught his breath.

"We almost got pulled over on our way to get you," Owen says while Ianto rinses his mouth out. "We forgot to call it in with SWP, and Jack was driving like a rat on crack. Fucker chased us half to Pynterch before dispatch got through to him. We can take a break if you need it."

"I'm fine," Ianto says. His left hand slips a little on the bowl when he hands it over, his palm's sweaty enough, but he wipes it off on Jack's coat and shifts to rest his weight on it. "Sooner we finish, the sooner I can go home, right?"

Owen nods and pours the puke down the sink. "If you can shift out of the coat," he says, rinsing the bowl out, "I'll help you with the sweater."

In, out, in. Out, in, out. Regular, even breaths. Easy peasy.

Just a little bit longer and he can go home.

He tries to zone out for the rest of it, but his brain refuses to click off. It's all crisp and clear, picture perfect for his future recall.

Owen makes it as easy on him as he can. He does help Ianto with his sweater, bags it up and sets it to the side, then helps him put on the gown and tie it before he finishes undressing. His boots are next; Owen has to crouch down and unlace those for him. His jeans are tricker; Ianto fumbles with his belt and zipper, but Owen waits patiently, reaching under the gown without looking to help him pull down his jeans and underwear when he's too dizzy to bend down.

There was bleeding, Ianto sees when he steps out of them, leaning on Owen to steady himself. Not excessively, but it's visible on his boxer briefs. Jesus.

Owen bags those up quickly, too, dropping them off on the counter next to the box of gloves.

He's as quick as he can be through the rest of it.

He talks throughout, keeping up a constant patter—how his experiment with the tissue from Narberth is going (surprisingly), the pasta he had from the new Italian place down by the theater (edible, just), the new bar over by the old Italian place (too loud).

"Let's get you lying down," he says once Ianto's set, shivering in gown and socks.

"You don't have to tell me everything you're doing," Ianto says.

Owen nods. He moves away to grab the swab box once Ianto's down.

The morgue table's really fucking cold.

It's not the first time Ianto's been laid out on it—that honor goes to a minor stabbing at the hands of a woman who'd wandered into the parking garage after dropping acid; but that time Jack had been leaning against the counter, hands in his pockets, telling stories about the time they found a weevil high on someone's discarded weed brownies, and Gwen had spent the time sitting on the stairs, equal parts grossed out and enthralled by watching Owen sew the wound shut, and Tosh had wandered in and out several times, pretending to be working until she gave in and plopped down next to Gwen with a mug of tea.

This time Ianto doesn't want anyone to see this, and he's so freaked out that the minute Owen steps close to him again, Ianto stops him with a hand to the chest out of sheer reflex.

"Actually," he says, once he's dropped his hand and grabbed back onto the table and his heart has, to some extent, settled back in his chest. "I take it back, tell me everything you're going to do, please."

Owen does.

Ianto spends the last five minutes on the table with his palms pressed up into his eyes, but it's over, eventually.

Owen gives him some time to get himself together, tossing out his gloves and washing his hands and generally straightening things over by the sink before he steps back to help him get dressed.

The flannel pants Jack brought down are worn soft, cozier than any Ianto has; the t-shirt, Ianto recognizes with amusement as one of his own, which Jack borrowed the last time he went over to Ianto's after work and lost all the buttons on his shirt.

Owen must notice—it's a band t-shirt Rhiannon gave Ianto for his birthday two years ago featuring a local indie punk metal band that Jack wouldn't be caught dead listening to voluntarily—but if he does he doesn't mention it, sitting Ianto back up on the table instead, telling him about his downstairs neighbor's yappy dog while taking his blood pressure and listening to him with a stethoscope again.

Ianto thinks, if this were a soap opera this would be the part where his brain finally checks out, while Owen's taking his temperature and nattering on about Fifi, the world's most obnoxious shih tzu. Ianto would just sort of go into delayed mental shock or something, and he'd come back to himself back at home, everything already done and nothing else to fuss about tonight, everybody else worrying about the cleanup for a change.

Of course, this isn't a soap opera, and there aren't any easy outs.

Owen has to put his boots on for him; when Ianto bends down to do it, he gets a wave of vertigo so bad he ends up back on the autopsy table, half lying down, forehead pressed to the cool metal until it passes.

It's a side effect of the medication Owen gave him to counteract the paralytic, apparently, so he's looking at dizziness and drowsiness for the next ten hours or so, with the possibility of fainting if he stands up too fast.

They manage the stairs without calling in Jack. He's waiting for them, arms crossed, by Owen's desk when they make it up. Takes them a few minutes, and Ianto drops more than sits on the office couch when Owen helps him over. The ache when he sits has dulled a bit, thanks to Owen, but he finds himself shifting to find a more comfortable position until he feels Jack's eyes on him.

Heat floods his face, and he looks away, fixing his sight on the floor near the printer as Owen walks over to meet Jack, huddling over his desk and launching into a status update on Ianto's general health.

It's nice that there isn't any carpeting in the Hub. Carpet's too prone to staining, and it's a bitch to clean. It traps dust, too, like flour on a wet spoon, and it takes so much longer to hoover a place properly than to mop it down. And with the number of times—since Ianto came on alone—that Ianto has had to clean blood up outside the morgue, carpet would probably pose a biohazard.

"—lungs are clear, no sign of aspiration, but he's still feeling residual effects of the paralytics and side effects of—"

"—should ask him if he's comfortable with—"

There are some scores though, in the concrete, one long slash under Tosh's desk that predates Ianto by a decade and a little burst of pock marks near one of the cabinets in the morgue from that one run-in with an alien that left explosive devices in the stomachs of its victims.

That had been a nasty cleanup. It had only been two weeks into his time here, and between cleaning up and looking after Lisa, he'd pulled an all-nighter. No one had noticed; he'd ducked down into the showers about ten minutes before Suzie got in. He'd kept a spare suit in the back of his Jeep back then, just in case.

He doesn't now. He's got a bag with a change of clothes, though; jeans, long-sleeved t-shirt, windbreaker, a cheap, three-pack of boxers, warm socks, and an old pair of sneakers. He switched over after the second time he got called out on a field mission and ended up covered in mud.

He does have a spare suit, but he keeps it on the coat rack, tucked behind a coat, in Jack’s office. Fewer wrinkles that way. Less fuss. Less work to do when he's tired.

"Hey," Jack says, crouching down on his heels in front of him. He's got a thermos with a lid on—Tosh's, snitched from her desk; he hands it to Ianto, making sure Ianto's got a firm hold on it before letting it go.

It's not coffee. Ianto didn't think he'd get coffee. He's pretty sure it's some of the nettle and chamomile tea Gwen brought in three weeks ago when she was getting over that cold.

Owen, Ianto notices out of the corner of his eye, has coffee. A nice, full mug of it.

Ianto looks back when Jack shifts and realizes he's still waiting for an answer.

Right.

"Hello," Ianto says. He takes a quick sip. It burns his tongue a little, and he can't say nettle and chamomile is particularly tasty, but it's warm going down. That's nice.

Jack tries for a smile, he really does, is the funny thing. Goes for encouraging instead of that big grin he gave Ianto when Ianto first woke up, but it slides off his face in a second flat just the same. He doesn't go back to blank, at least, but there's this grimness that's settled deep in him since he took that U-turn on the way to Ianto's flat. It's on Owen's face, too, when he doesn't think Ianto's looking.

Ianto wonders if he'd see it on his own, if he looked in a mirror.

"I thought I could take you home," Jack says. "Owen wants someone to stay with you, in case of side effects. I'm happy to stay, but if you'd rather someone else, Owen's offered. Or we could call Tosh, or even—"

"Just you." Ianto licks his lips. Owen, over by the desk out the corner of his eye, looks like shit. He's working up some dark circles under his eyes, left foot tip-tapping on the floor like it does when a briefing runs long, and he's clutching his mug like it's the holy grail. "Please."

If Ianto asked, Owen would take him home and stay up the rest of the night looking after him, no questions asked, he can tell. It's nice to know. But he doesn't want Owen.

Jack's okay. Jack's safe. Jack's Jack.

"Okay," Jack says, and helps him up.



Ianto expects them to take the SUV—because it's Jack, and Jack's maybe temporarily on Ianto-monitoring duty but he's never off of Rift-watching duty—but Jack and Owen herd him to his own Jeep once they hit the parking garage.

Ianto doesn't ask. It registers as something like an unusual fact somewhere in his thoughts processing, but he's so close to going home now that he just can't—he can't—

"In you go," Jack says, more foisting than helping him step up into the passenger's seat. He spends a couple of minutes talking with Owen after he shuts Ianto's door, leaning with his back against it and his arms crossed.

Jack doesn't keep Owen long, probably on account of Owen's having loaned Ianto his coat. Jack's coat, apparently, got vomit on it and has to be laundered.

Owen's coat is a little tight on Ianto, cuffs a little short, but it's warm enough; Owen bundled him into it without asking when they finished up, saying he'd be fine when Ianto asked.

"He's just got a couple things he wants to do tonight," is what Jack says when Owen slouches back to the Hub when they leave.

It takes Ianto too long to realize Owen's got to run the DNA tests before Tosh and Gwen come back in the morning, so they don't figure it out.

"I gave him the day off tomorrow," Jack continues when he looks over. "It's not a problem, Ianto."

"Sure." The passenger side window is cold, but Ianto presses his forehead to it, letting his body sag against the door. Cardiff passes by them at a blur, a little wet, a little dark, shadows in the doorways and the far reaches of the alleys they drive by, streetlights illuminating the clumps of snow slowly collecting on the pavement.

He'd think it was a nice night for a walk, usually. Would think of maybe asking Jack to go out, if they were working late at the hub, would imagine the two of them walking hand-in-hand together to the bay, would chicken out and settle for a quickie in Jack's office or a soft and shy good night at the door.

That seems as far away as sunshine in the night, just now.

They stop for food on the way to Ianto's flat. Owen told Jack Ianto should eat if he could, apparently, that it might help his symptoms.

It's kind of surreal to end the day with Jack ordering him a burger at a Maccies drive through, but there's not a lot that's open at four in the morning, and even less available in Ianto's fridge.

He eats a third of the burger and two of the chips; the rest sits in his lap, on top of the paper bag, until Jack pulls up in front of his block of flats. When Ianto looks down again after Jack has parked, bag and burger and chips have disappeared; when he turns to ask Jack, Jack's gone, too. Ianto stares stupidly at the empty seat until Jack knocks on his window and asks him to unlock the door.

Things do sort of blur together after that. Jack helps him up the stairs to the third floor, since the lift still isn't working after half a week out of order. Ianto does vaguely remember the stairs later, Jack saying encouraging things all the way up, and the fumble for keys at his front door until Jack gives up and picks the lock.

"Bed?" Jack asks when they make it in. He reaches over as soon as the door shuts behind them and dials up the thermostat, then walks Ianto over to the nearest couch. Ianto almost misses the click of the decrepit radiator that heated the flat he lived in before this, when he first moved back to Cardiff. He might have spent nights worrying it would set the house on fire, but it was—it was something tangible. It was so easy to tell when it was working and when he had to harass his landlord to have it seen to again.

Now he can't tell if he's cold because the underfloor heating isn't working properly or if it's because there's something wrong with him.

"Ianto," Jack says, and Ianto must have missed something because Jack looks a little concerned. "Do you want to go to bed right away, or do you want to—"

"Shower," Ianto says. He jerks up to his feet, sways, and reaches out blindly before he falls.

Jack catches him.

"I'll draw you a bath," Jack says. He eases him back down, lets go and steps back as soon as Ianto's sitting but stays within grabbing distance until he's comfortable. He comes back after a couple of minutes, though, setting a glass of water down on the coffee table and handing Ianto the two bottles of PEP pills. A dose of each, at the same time, every day for the next twenty-eight days.

“Take these,” Jack says, and waits beside him until Ianto does. His fingers brush against his when he takes the bottles back, and he sets them on the table next to the water and disappears into the bathroom.

His hands are cold, Ianto thinks. Ianto isn't sure where his gloves ended up—probably somewhere, still, in the morgue, on the counter near where Owen's—

"All set," Jack says, and it's funny because Ianto just watched him duck into the bathroom, but he's already back out in damp shirtsleeves, a line of wet spots along his waist where he's been leaning over the rim of the tub.

Ianto can smell the bath salts through the open door.

"Thanks," he says, and he thinks, I should get up, and he thinks, I should take Owen's coat off, and then he doesn't do either of those because actually putting those thoughts into process is an insurmountable mountain of action he's not quite sure how to manage.

"Here," Jack says, and reaches out a hand to help him up.



He doesn't let Jack help him with his clothes—shakes his head when Jack asks if he needs it, thoughts of hands stripping off his jacket brushing up against his thoughts—but Jack's accommodating throughout, turning on the TV to make a pretense that he's not monitoring every noise he can hear through the bathroom door, only knocking once, when Ianto's been sitting in the bath for forty minutes, to remind him to run some hot water again if he's planning on staying in for longer.

Ianto hadn't planned on anything, one way or the other, but the knock jolts him out of his stupor. He moves, uncurls from the crouch he'd curled into forty minutes earlier when he stepped into the tub. He does run a little more water, because it's cold, but he doesn't linger, scrubbing his hair and skin hard as he can for ten minutes before he rinses off and drains the tub.

He has to call Jack in to help him out, but Jack's as professional about it as a hospital orderly, handing Ianto a bathrobe before he helps him up, stepping back once Ianto's stably propped against the sink and disappearing again with an amiable, "Sure," when Ianto tells him he's fine now.

'Fine' is stretching it, but Ianto manages.

The tube of ointment Owen gave him's still in the pocket of his coat where Ianto shucked it on the floor; he almost has to ask Jack back in to pick it up for him, but breathes through the sudden vertigo and gets a hold of it, eventually.

He really doesn't want to ask Jack for help with this.

He reapplies it—twice a day for a few days, Owen told him—and doesn't think about what he's doing, and he doesn't think about why he's doing it, and he doesn't even think about what sort of job he works that their doctor didn't need a pharmacy to fill the prescription.

He doesn't think about much, actually. Washes his hands and puts on the sleep pants and t-shirt Jack set on the counter earlier. Steps over the puddles of fabric on the floor and, for once, doesn't bother to tidy up.

Jack's in the kitchenette, wiping down the breakfast counter. There are freshly-washed dishes in the drying rack, and the sink looks freshly scrubbed down, gleaming in the low light.

That's right. Ianto had left his supper dishes soaking in the sink while he did his Tesco run, since he'd burned a bit of the pasta and it had stuck.

God. That was just, what, ten hours ago? Eleven?

He's steadier on his feet, at least, than he was when they came up. Leaning over is tricky, and he makes sure to take it slow, but he must look all right when he comes out because Jack doesn't immediately rush over to help.

"You should get some rest," he says instead, drying the table off with a paper towel. "I'll be out here on the couch, if you need anything."

There are, when Ianto looks, a pillow, sheet, and thin blanket folded neatly in a pile on the couch, from the stash Ianto keeps on the top shelf of his closet in case there's ever some sort of emergency and he has to babysit Mica and David overnight.

One never knows.

Well, at least it'll finally come in useful for someone. Even if he does doubt that Jack's going to get any sleep.

He nods and trudges off to bed. He's torn between locking the door and leaving it open, securing himself or trusting Jack to do it for him. He compromises by leaving it cracked an inch and feels uncomfortable even before he settles into bed, lying down on his left side when he can't get comfortable on his back.

There's light enough from the hallway that he can see shadows on the wall, this one the big square block of his wardrobe, that one the thin, long line of the tie draped off the back of his desk where he left it last night after work.

He fixes his eyesight on that warm line of light and brings the duvet up to his chest and doesn't sleep.

Jack's making noise in the kitchen, even though he's clearly trying not to. He's done all the cleaning he can do—because if nothing else, Ianto Jones keeps an immaculately tidy house—and he's moved on to drying the dishes he washed by hand, opening up the cabinets to figure out where to put them.

Ianto wonders if Jack's doing this for him, as some sort of token of friendly, collegial concern, making Ianto's life easier in the ways that he can, or if this is some sort of way of assuaging his own guilt at not finding Ianto sooner (at letting Ianto be taken in the first place, probably, though seeing how anyone could have prevented this is beyond even Ianto's imagination).

Probably a bit of both.

Ianto listens to the muffled clatter as Jack puts his things away and wishes he were in the kitchen, sitting at the counter and watching, or on the couch, close enough to hear the tread of Jack's boots on his floor but far enough he wouldn't be expected to talk.

He doesn't want to talk; he just wants not to be alone.

He doesn't try getting up.

It would be easier if he knew what he and Jack were to each other. There are rules about it. About how much you can ask for at what stage of things, how much is too much and how much is fine. (As if this thing they're in has stages; as if they're not both just feeling their way through the dark).

"Just be yourself," is what his mam said when he mentioned something similar to her, obliquely, a week or two ago.

It's not bad advice. He doesn't try to hide himself from Jack any more, not much, and things are a lot easier because of it. But he thinks, right now, that if he asks Jack for what he wants he might be asking for more than Jack would give him if he hadn't just been—if the things that have happened hadn't just happened to him.

The last thing he wants is false comfort born of pity. And he doesn't have the space for it just now, to spend thinking about his and Jack's relationship. It would just be nice if he knew it was something he could count on.



The noises in the kitchen die out eventually. The muffled fwhump of a blanket being given one firm shake to unfold it. Rustling, then, and a very light thump as Jack sets his boots on the floor by the front door.

He's thought about this once or twice, Ianto has. Not—not this, obviously, not Jack sleeping on the couch, but Jack in his flat acting like he belongs there.

Funny.

He rolls onto his back, out of habit, wincing and shifting onto his right. It hurts in a different way now than it did when it was happening, the ache having dulled in the hours since, but it flares up when he moves. Intimate tearing, Owen had called it, a nice euphemism. He'd said Ianto should feel better in a few days, and the cream would help; and it has, it's helped already, but Ianto can still feel it, can still feel—

He wraps his arm around a pillow and buries his face in it.

It was easier to push it off when he woke up; he'd been fuzzy still, disoriented, and then he'd felt like shit with the puking and everything else; Owen'd said it was normal, with hypothermia, that once he was warmed up he just needed rest, and Ianto had let the exhaustion muffle all of it.

And he's exhausted, still, feels it dragging down like lead on his muscles, weighting down his eyelids. He thinks he could sleep if he tried, if he let himself sink into it, but now he's started thinking about—about it, he can't get it out of his mind.

The hands on his hair, tugging his head up, thumb and fingers on either side of his jaw, the joke the one behind him had made when he tried to move his hand, the fucking way they'd laughed, how he'd tried to make his mind go blank and think about the team coming to save him, tried to imagine it was Jack manhandling him and hadn't managed to hold it in his head, laid limp over the cheap plastic table with that fucking piece of shit rutting up against him like Ianto was a glorified blow-up doll, like he wasn't even a person, like he—and his fingers digging into his left hip so hard his blunt, short nails left crescents on the bruises Owen cleaned off with an alcohol wipe when Ianto froze up on the table and asked Owen to stop the other thing that he was doing for a second.

He doesn't freeze up now. His throat feels like it has a bit, for a few moments, but he swallows it down, and then it hurts and he swallows that down too, and he remembers the sharp scrape of the knife on his neck, and he presses his face so hard into the pillow that he can't breathe, and he blinks his eyes and the pillow wets.

He has to breathe eventually, and he does. Has to pull himself away entirely because his nose is congested suddenly, leaves a string of mucus attached to his pillowcase when he moves until he swipes it off.

His breath's unfortunately loud when he takes it, and louder when he heaves it out again even though he tries to muffle it.

There's movement in the living room. A blanket rustling.

He crushes his face back into the pillowcase and holds his breath. A sob tries to pitch itself out of his chest, but he cuts it off in time and gasps again instead, shoulders betraying him with an involuntary jerk.

"Ianto?"

He stops. Holds his breath. Clutches the pillow tight to his face before he rolls over and turns towards Jack, standing in the doorway with the glow of the hall lights framing him all six feet of him. Because of course.

Ianto swipes his hand across his face and breathes loudly through his mouth. "Jack."

He can't see Jack's face with the light behind him, but he can see Jack's fingers tapping on his left thigh.

"Are you," Jack starts, then cuts himself off. He pads the three feet to Ianto's bed, stands next to it with his knees pressed up against the side of the mattress. He looks down at Ianto, on the opposite side, and he crosses his arms over his chest and sighs. "I didn't mean to drive you off, Ianto. I should have asked if you wanted company."

Ianto shifts, and it hurts, and he shifts again and feels his cheeks burn in the dark. It burns inside, too, white-hot humiliation roiling in his gut. His eyes well up again, and he swipes them off again. Useless, a fresh burst stinging his eyes again in a second.

"Do you?" Jack asks.

Ianto sniffs. Clears his throat. Feels the brush of a phantom hand at the back of his neck, pressing him down, blinks and remembers on purpose the warmth of Jack's hand on his chest when he woke up on the office floor not six hours earlier.

"Yes," he says. "Please." His voice is hoarse.

Jack nods and moves, sitting down on the bed, tentatively at first but sinking back against a pillow when Ianto doesn't tense. He doesn't reach out, though, and Ianto waits, lost, for a minute before he scooches back up against the headboard himself, his shoulder close enough to feel the heat from Jack's.

"I'm so sorry this happened to you," Jack says. "Can't change that, but whatever you need, I'm here. We're here, for you. Anything you need, just say the word. But I need you to know, if you're feeling ashamed right now, or if you're feeling like what happened is your fault, it's not. You couldn't have done anything to stop it, and it won't change how any of us see you."

Ianto reaches out blindly to his right, finds the box of tissues he keeps on the nightstand and blows his nose. Grabs a pillow, tucks his arm around it so he has something to do with his hands, hunches in on himself like it'll hide the shaking of his shoulders. Starts to take a steadying breath and fucks it up, curling over his pillow when it cuts off jagged.

"Can I touch you?" Jack asks.

Ianto nods, shut-eyed into the pillow, and Jack sets his arm around Ianto's shoulders, resting warm and grounding and not the least bit heavy, but Ianto can read the offer for what it is.

"Just," he says, and he moves down and over and in, coming to a rest on his stomach next to Jack, his right arm over Jack's chest and his head resting in the crook of Jack's shoulder. "Don't touch my hair?"

Jack nods. His breath ruffles the hair on Ianto's forehead when he does, but that's fine. That's bearable. "Sure."

Jack's chest rises and falls so steadily. Ianto breathes through his mouth and follows it, charting the movement with his hand, the strong and steady beat of his heart.

"It was two of them," he says. Jack's undershirt is soft under his fingers, bunched up in his grip. "Owen probably told you."

Jack makes a "Hmm," that's neither disagreement nor confirmation and moves his other hand so it rests just on the edge of Ianto's back.

Ianto rubs his thumb across the bunched-up fabric in this fist and thinks about how wrinkled it's going to be in the morning and not on the feeling of someone else's breath on his neck.

"The others left them to watch me. I think there was a problem with the buyer, and I—I don't remember. They left. And I think they were bored, or they talked about it, and—"

Fuck.

"I thought they were going to kill me," he says, and his voice is hoarse and cracked and wrong, he shouldn't—he shouldn't be—

"It's okay," Jack says.

He swallows. The lump in his throat comes right back up again regardless. "One of them had a syringe, and I thought the, the buyer had backed out or something, and I'd been trying to move, I was really trying, Jack, but I—they thought it was funny, that I couldn't fight them off, and one of—the second one, he held a knife to my throat when he put me over the table, and, and he couldn't keep his hand steady while—, and I thought he was going to slit my throat by accident, and I—"

I didn't want to die, he thinks, and he can't get it out because his lungs heave with something loud and broken just then, but Jack understands, he thinks.

"I'm so sorry," Jack says, and, "I've got you now," and, "You did so well, Ianto, you made it out, you're safe now," and he rubs circles into Ianto's back and lets Ianto sob into his chest until the first pink glimmers of sunlight hit the sky above Cardiff.



It's just shy of a quarter past one when he wakes up again, head clear but eyes gritty, sleep sticky in their corners. It's bright, for a winter day in Cardiff, and the sun's streaming in through the gaps between the curtains.

Jack's gone, his side of the bed cold, but there's movement in the living room, a clatter in the vicinity of his coffee table that sounds—and smells, when he sniffs—like takeout.

Ianto lets his head sink back down to his pillow and takes a long, deep breath and thinks about not getting up.

He's pretty sure Jack won't make him if he doesn't want to. Might order him to eat something, but he could spend all day in bed, all night again, lying like a lump and not thinking of anything at all, let the static take over like it did the first two days of his suspension after Lisa died.

He gives himself two minutes before he makes himself kick off the blankets and stand up.

He stumbles a little at the head rush, but steadies himself with a hand on his bedpost and waits for his head to settle. It's quiet in this room with the windows shut, the specially-treated glass cutting down the sounds from outside until he has to strain to hear the noise of the freeway not far off; he hasn't replaced his blackout curtains he ripped to shreds that one time he got dosed with that alien drug, but the ones Tosh bought him at Asda the morning after do a decent enough job to leave his bedroom in a perpetual state of twilight.

He blinks in it now, telling himself he should go out, go out and see, go out and move and not give in and lie back down. His stomach rumbles, but when he thinks about food he doesn't feel hungry.

He feels quiet, sort of, just like his bedroom. It's the usual thing after big crying jags, he thinks. That empty, hollow feeling. The normal thing after sobbing your heart out and sleeping it off. It's good, he tells himself.

He looks back at his bed and considers, again, lying back down and not getting up for the rest of the day, then brushes his hand through his hair and makes himself walk out.

Jack's taken over his couch and his coffee table, perched on the edge of one with several files and a freshly-opened box of pizza sitting on the other.

"Hey," he says around a bite of cheese and pepperoni when Ianto comes out, alert and assessing and ready to move if he's needed, Ianto can read it in the sudden tension of his thighs and shoulders, but keeping to his spot on the couch when Ianto looks fine.

Ianto lets out a quiet sigh of relief and heads to the bathroom.

Jack's poring over a file when he comes back out, holding a half-eaten slice in one hand and a green pen in the other.

"You're welcome to some," he says, waving the slice in Ianto's direction without looking up. "If not, Gwen stopped by with some groceries earlier."

An entire fridge's worth of groceries, apparently. The only things he'd had in his fridge the day before were half a loaf of bread, a tub of butter, and a barista-sized carton of cream for his pre-work coffee. But now there are several oranges, a package of pre-sliced kiwis and berries, some milk, a half-dozen eggs, two different types of cheese, orange juice, and an assortment of pre-seasoned vegetables in a ready-to-cook bag. When he opens the freezer, he finds a bag of skinned, boneless chicken breasts and two packages of pre-cooked pasta.

"Gwen brought all this?"

"I might have snooped in your kitchen while you were asleep, mentioned the state of your fridge when she called to ask how you were doing." There's not the slightest trace of embarrassment in Jack's voice; self-satisfaction, if anything, and Ianto wonders if he told Gwen on purpose.

Then wonders if he knew Gwen would need something to do that fell under the heading of 'Helping Ianto'. Jack's good at handling them that way, without them even noticing it. Or even when they do. He's pretty good at figuring out what people need at any given time.

He rips a paper towel off the roll sitting on his counter and makes for the couch.

Jack doesn't turn to look at him when Ianto eases down next to him, but Ianto sees the green pen pause mid-word and knows he's being scrutinized in Jack's peripheral vision.

He ignores it and grabs the biggest slice.

Jack, after a moment, relaxes just the tiniest bit, and he finishes writing 'Please' on what Ianto sees is an autopsy, following it up with 'expound on cause of death'.

The current cause of death listed on the report is, "Blood loss, somehow."

The little snake guy from last week, Ianto's mind helpfully supplies. Now that had been a hell of a cleanup. He'd stayed two hours late finishing, until Jack had noticed him failing to turn up for their pre-scheduled shag and come looking for him.

He'd helped Ianto finish the cleanup, gotten down on his hands and knees and helped him scrub green alien blood from the grout and hadn't complained.

It made Ianto feel warm at the time, set butterflies fluttering in his gut when Jack led him to the showers afterwards and washed him off with gentle hands before he blew him.

He chews the pizza, now, and doesn't taste much of anything at all.

"You didn't have to stay," he says when he swallows the last bite.

Jack shrugs. "I didn't mind."

It's not, "It was no problem,"—which implies it was, in fact, a problem—or, "Someone had to look after you,"—which places it squarely in the realm of a medical responsibility; something a boss would take care of personally in a professional role, if he were the sort of boss—like Jack is—who lives by the maxim that he won't delegate any responsibilities he wouldn't take on himself.

"I didn't mind," is just honest. Probably. Maybe.

He doesn't actually care, just now, except to know he usually would. He isn't sure what to say next, though. Jack needs to get back to work—if he's desperate enough to be working on files here, he's definitely got a sizeable stack waiting for him back at the office, on top of all his other duties; and he told everyone else to come in late, which would put them all behind on their work even without having to pick up the slack on Ianto's.

Oh. And they'll be having to process all the evidence they picked up at the office yesterday, as well, and investigating anything else they can about the kidnapping. Ianto had forgotten that, for a second.

He wonders, distantly, if Owen's gotten any hits on the DNA he ran.

"Ianto," Jack calls out.

He looks worried when Ianto turns to him. Just a little tightening at the corners of his mouth, but Ianto knows him well enough to notice.

"Look," Jack says, lips pursed. "I don't know if you want to be alone right now, but I need to head back to the Hub for a while. Owen won't clear you for work for another day, but if you'd rather keep busy, you can come help me with the—"

"Yes," Ianto says. "Please. I'll just get dressed."

He goes before Jack can second-guess himself.



Jack insists on driving. Ianto doesn't mind, though he's feeling well enough he's sure he could manage. The sleep did him good; there's barely any vertigo now, and only when he turns his head too fast, and the nausea's completely gone.

He's never been precious about who's driving though, anyway, nor about his Jeep. He's been thinking of trading it in for an Audi, now he has some money to spare every month.

Sometimes he feels guilty about that, about living in a nicer flat and sleeping in on his days off and going out for drinks with the team, like if feeling relieved he's not on the verge of collapse like he had been back then, caring for Lisa, means he's relieved she's gone.

Jack's quiet for the first minute or so, but he starts talking once they hit the road. Tosh is almost done running tests on that carnivorous plant they got from the Rift last week, and Owen's taking it up to the hothouse in a day or two but had a question for Ianto about cross-referencing for its file; Gwen has a question, too, about one of the procedures Ianto wrote for a piece of equipment from the Archives—some sort of recording device, they thought—though it's not anything pressing.

And on, and on, and on.

Ianto stops trying to respond halfway there. It's enough to pay attention and let the words wash over him. He stares out at Cardiff instead, watching the last clumps of snow from last night melt into dirty slush on the pavement.



Tosh and Gwen are more surprised at his choice of outfit—jeans and a soft hoodie over another band t-shirt from his punk days—than at the fact that he came in, which probably says something bad about his working habits. Jack leaves him to them for a minute while he checks on Myfanwy, who apparently threw a shitfit when Tosh tried to feed her and kicked an entire raw chicken at the windows of Jack's office.

Gwen gives him a bit of a disappointed look when he yawns, but it turns soft just before she tugs him into a kind, warm hug with a heartfelt, "I'm glad you're okay."

He nods into the hug, his chin bumping into her ear, and steps away with a, "Thanks," as soon as she lets him go. She nods and heads off, only to reappear two minutes later with a mug full of Tosh's lemon tea.

Owen, for his part, is curled up on the Hub couch, snoring lightly, face mashed into the back cushions with Tosh's coat laid over him.

"He couldn't sleep, so he stayed up processing the evidence last night," Tosh says when she sees Ianto's glance. She smiles, shuffles some papers around on her desk and moves on quickly, though. "So, how are you doing? Were you able to rest once you got home? Owen told us, you know."

"Oh," he says, "Right," and watches the mug hit the floor and break and doesn't realize he's dropped it until Tosh grabs his sleeve and asks if he's okay.

If nothing else, that, plus the hot tea splashing all over his shins, jolts him into—well, into some sort of waking state. Rips through the numbness, just a little.

"Oh, Jesus, sorry," he says, crouching down to help Gwen pick the biggest pieces up and drop them into a bag. "Sorry, I'll just—"

"It's fine," Gwen says, and, "Don't worry about it," Tosh murmurs, and then Owen's there, too, leaning over without touching with an easy, "Careful, anyone needs stitches today, they don't get a lolli."

He's guided up eventually, away and up the stairs while Gwen finishes up the cleanup with a, "Go sit down, Ianto. Honestly, why Jack didn't tell you to stay home for one day."

Owen, for his part, doesn't say shit about his coming in. He does sit Ianto down as soon as they make Jack's office and take his pulse—the old-fashioned way, with his fingers to Ianto's wrist, mumbling a count under his breath—but seems satisfied enough at that.

"Any more nausea?" he asks, and nods when Ianto shakes his head. "Dizziness? Headache?"

"No," Ianto answers, sinking into the cushy armchair—which wasn't in Jack's office yesterday—and resting his head on the back. "Not—just when I move too fast. I didn't drop the—Tosh surprised me, is all. She said you'd told her and Gwen. About last night."

Owen's eyebrows furrow at that, even the dark circles under his eyes scrunching up with the frown, and Ianto takes a breath and thinks, Oh, he didn't tell them, because no, of course he didn't. He's a good doctor, and he's—he's Ianto's friend, too.

"They noticed your suit in my lab, so I told them I brought you here for blood tests before I let you go home. Because of the drugs."

That makes a lot more sense.

"Oh," he says. "Right. Sorry, I—"

"Don't worry about it, mate," Owen says with a very quick but honest smile. It turns into a grimace, though, when he gives Ianto a once-over and takes a half step back, leaning on the edge of Jack's desk. "How's the pain today?"

Ianto knows Owen's not talking about his shins. He looks away, past Owen's shoulder, eyes lighting on Jack speaking with Gwen and Tosh down below. "Better. I guess."

Not much, though; but it's easier for him to hide it, and as long as he blocks out any thoughts about why it hurts he's fine.

He's fine.

"Okay." Owen nods in the periphery of Ianto's sight, arms crossed over his chest. "Let me know if it gets worse. And—"

Jack glances up; his eyes slide over Ianto's face, and Ianto feels his cheeks heat up and looks away.

It's just a broken mug. It's not like he freaked out.

"UNIT has several therapists attached." Owen's face is carefully blank, but the tip-tapping of his left foot gives him away. "If you want someone to—"

"No."

Down below, Jack nods at Gwen with a smile and turns towards the stairs.

"Okay," Owen says. He doesn't move, arms still across his chest. "If you change your mind, just let me know and I can sort it out with Jack for you."

Gwen totes the trash bag out to the kitchen, and it's all cleaned up, easy as that. Tosh heads back to her desk and gets back to work, and it's like nothing ever happened.

He waits until Jack's there before he leaves, clapping Jack on the shoulder and tossing an, "In the morgue if you need anything," behind him in Ianto's direction.

Ianto wonders how much longer until he's back to being 'Tea boy' or a 'sodding muppet'. Owen keeps this up, Gwen and Tosh are bound to notice something's up. And, besides—

"I thought you gave him the day off?" he asks Jack.

Jack huffs. "Yeah. Gave you the day off, too, didn't I? It's almost like I'm surrounded by workaholics."

That gets a chuckle. Jack looks him over when it passes, though, a long, incisive look, but is satisfied enough by whatever it is he sees to pick up a stack of manila folders from the top of his desk and hand them over.

"Look over the expense reports?" he asks, grabbing a blue pen for Ianto as well. "You're better at those than I am, anyway."

"I don't get impatient and sign off on everything without checking, you mean," Ianto jokes. He settles back with the folders, though, opening the first and setting to work perusing Owen's first quarterly requisitions for the hothouse.

This is familiar ground, at least. He could do these in his sleep—has had dreams before, where he's been marking budget reports for Jack and finding more and more ludicrous requests but been unable to refuse them because of the Hub's entire supply of pens being broken unexpectedly; plunging into them is easily mind-numbing in a comfortable way, and he flips through page after page, marking notations and double-checking the Hub's inventory—and several vendors—on his laptop, which Jack comes back from a coffee break with.

He doesn't notice Jack leaving again three hours later until Owen's quiet, "Hey," from the doorway grabs his attention.

Owen's got a paper bag from the deli down the block in his left hand, a bottle of flavored sparkling water tucked up against his stomach, and a blood pressure cuff in his right hand.

Let it never be said that Ianto Jones can't be bribed into good behavior.

Inside the paper bag is a bagel sandwich with brie, bacon, tomatoes, baby spinach, and cranberry sauce that makes his mouth water when he unwraps it.

He's hungry, he realizes. Starving. He's only had the one slice of pizza today.

"No eating until after the reading," Owen says. He waits for Ianto to take his hoodie off himself before he moves in with the cuff.

They cover the basics: no more dizziness, lightheadedness, or nausea since the last time Owen asked, which isn't too surprising considering Ianto's been doing nothing but sitting in a big cushy armchair since. Owen still looks satisfied about it, and he doesn't frown when he looks at Ianto's blood pressure.

"You shouldn't drive until tomorrow, and light duties for another day, just to be safe, but you're good to go otherwise," Owen says.

So Jack doesn't have to keep an eye on him tonight.

Not unless he wants to.

Ianto's stomach twists.

He takes a bite of the sandwich to distract himself and finds his appetite's still very much alive. God, he was hungry. Which makes sense; lone pizza slice aside he hasn't eaten anything since—oh.

He sets the sandwich, in its wrapping, down on the end table to his right and takes a sip of the sparkling water.

"Oi, by the way," Owen says, blood pressure cuff in his hand, shifting his weight to his left foot. "We can do your first blood tests next Monday. The incubation periods vary, so we'll have to do several rounds."

Right.

"Sure," he says, fingers numb around the plastic bottle.

Owen nods. "Get some more rest, you look like shit," he says, and heads downstairs.

Ianto finishes his sandwich, more out of muscle memory than anything else.

He'd forgotten about that. About the possibility of STIs. Owen started him on the PEP course last night—he's got the rest of the pills at home—but there's a whole host of other ones that he hadn't thought about since Owen had mentioned them the night before.

It's not something he's had to worry about since his first year in London, during the brief period after he started working at the cafe and before Yvonne found him, when he'd hit the clubs after his shifts and wake up in rooms nicer than his shithole apartment. He'd stopped having the time for that after he started at Torchwood, and within four months he was dating Lisa, and that was it for him.

And there hasn't been anyone since Lisa but Jack. Jack, who, like the rest of Torchwood, has blood tests done every week.

Years he's gone without having to worry about shit, and now—and it's not even his fault, not like he got drunk and made a shitty mistake or got caught up in the heat of the moment and figured a good shag was worth a little worry.

He swipes the back of his hand across his eyes and looks out over the Hub until he's breathing steadily again.

He'd thought Jack would pop back in as soon as Owen left, but he's nowhere to be seen. Gwen and Tosh are eating lunch together. They're sitting at Gwen's desk instead of the conference room like usual, but he can tell they're gossiping about something from the way they're laughing. Owen's over by the printer, waiting on a document. He's not involved in the conversation, but as Ianto watches he turns and says something that makes Tosh burst out giggling so hard she chokes.

Hell.

He kicks his shoes off and curls up on the couch and picks up another folder, but it stays open in his lap until the three of them go back to work.

It's not exactly bright out in the Hub—hardly ever is, unless they turn the lights all up—and Myfanwy's perched on one of the rafters, sleeping; he can just see the shadow of her wings on the floor by Owen's desk. Jack must have gone to feed her again, then, given her an extra serving of chocolate for putting up with him instead of Ianto. She always likes a nap after a snack.

He thinks of her sleeping, of her deep, steady breaths, of the rasp of her wings when she shifts in her sleep, and rests his head against the back of the armchair.

He wakes up to Jack taking the folder off his lap.

"Go back to sleep," Jack says very softly. "It's okay."

Something warm spreads out over him, cozy and soft and smelling of Jack's quarters, and Ianto breathes it in and finds he can't see it because he's shut his eyes again.

He should open them again, he thinks, and doesn't.



The next time he does wake up it's slow, and it's to the sound of Tosh and Jack having a normal conversation about one of Tosh's assignments at roughly a third of their normal volume.

"I couldn't find a link immediately," Tosh is saying in a barely-audible tone a few feet to Ianto's left. "But I hacked into his bank account and was able to find deposits he'd made in a shell corporation I traced to Novalabs, which—"

"Were involved in the theft of that truck from UNIT custody a year ago, weren't they?" Jack murmurs. There's a shuffling sound, paper flipping on a desk.

"Allegedly," Tosh says, her voice almost lost in the shuffle. "UNIT never found hard evidence connecting them."

"Well, UNIT didn't have you working for them, did they?" And that is an actual whisper, which makes no sense, because Ianto knows they're in Jack's office, knows the sound and the smell of this room almost as well as his own flat.

"Why are you whispering?" he asks. He's thirsty, he realizes when he speaks; mouth dry, voice all scratchy, and he reaches out and paws for the glass of water he keeps on his nightstand, but it's not there, so he opens his eyes and—

oh.

Oh.

Right. He's not in bed in his flat because he's in Jack's office, covered in a crocheted blanket from Jack's quarters, curled up sleeping in the armchair someone brought up for him from the storage closet in Sub-Basement 1 that morning before he and Jack came in, and that's why Jack and Tosh are whispering. So they don't wake him up.



Because he needs the rest to recover from yesterday, when he was kidnapped, nearly murdered, and raped.

He jerks upright. Grabs the sparkling water from the top of the file cabinet. Holds it too tight; splashes tangerine-scented water over the blanket.

His chest feels tight.

"Just e-mail me what you've got," Jack says, still quiet, which is stupid because Ianto's awake now so there's no need to hush, and Ianto's lungs don't want to work but that's no reason to whisper, is it?

"Ianto," Jack says, crouched suddenly in front of him—and this is starting to get to be a thing—and Tosh is gone when Ianto looks, the top of her head bobbing down the stairs just in sight through the window, and that—losing time—that's starting to be a thing, too, and it doesn't help with the anxiety settling in around his chest and making his fingers shake, either, because it's his job, isn't it? Noticing things, keeping track of things and people and time; it's his job, and it's a part of—of maintaining the safety of the Hub and everyone in it, and he doesn't like not knowing what his brain is doing; he doesn't like not being in charge of it, doesn't like not being in control—

"I'm going to touch your hand, okay?" Jack says.

It's funny; Jack says that, out loud, and he moves really slowly—and Ianto watches him move—but it's still, somehow, a surprise when both of Jack's hands close over his around the bottle, when one pries it from his hold and sets it aside and the other clasps around his, soft and warm.

Grounding.

"Okay?" Jack asks.

Ianto nods.

"Just breathe." Jack shifts, settles down on the floor and brings his other hand up again, wraps his fingers around Ianto's hand. "Can you do that for me? Just take some long, deep breaths, you know the drill. Just like that."

Ianto breathes. Stutters. Breathes again.

"Sorry," he says. The fingers of his free hand twist in the soft, fuzzy fabric of his hoodie. "Sorry."

Jack's hands squeeze his. He smiles, just barely, but his eyes are warm. "It's fine, Ianto. No one expects you to be fine right now. Even Gwen and Tosh. Honestly, I'd be worried if you were."

Ianto tries to smile back, but he can't manage it. He shrugs instead. He glances out at the Hub again. Tosh and Owen are bent over their computers, Tosh typing furiously into a program and Owen reading something, scrolling with one hand while resting his head on the other. Gwen's on the phone, holding a pen in her free hand and jabbing the air more and more wildly as he watches, her phone call clearly not going well.

He doesn't have to ask to know they're all working on his kidnapping.

UNIT's probably got a couple people on it, and the local police might have gotten involved, but Torchwood isn't going to stop investigating until everyone involved is safely held in a secure facility. And then—well, that'll be it, won't it? All the bad guys caught, any threats neutralized, risk of kidnap and torture back to acceptable levels for all Torchwood and UNIT personnel. And Ianto back to coming in early to make coffee every morning, back to feeding Myfanwy and answering Rift alerts and finding time to scrub the morgue clean after autopsies in between. Ianto back to normal too, somehow, because there isn't anything but Torchwood so he'll have to figure out a way.

Jack's looking up at him when he turns back, eyes soft and kind and bright, bright blue. Jack, who's a mystery wrapped in a greatcoat, who's popped up in all the files Jack's ever read about Torchwood's history, time and time again, losing more than Ianto could ever hope to have in one lifetime.

"I don't know how to do this," Ianto says.

Jack's mouth twists. He's going to say something quick, something easy and soothing, Ianto can see it, but he stops himself short and sighs.

"Just keep going," he says eventually. He shrugs. "If we were the sort of people who would try anything else, we wouldn't be in Torchwood. So you keep going. This isn't ever going to leave you, but you'll learn how to work around it, and one day you'll be here in the Hub and someone will bring it up, and you'll realize you haven't thought about it in weeks."

It's not much in the way of consolation, but it's clearly not intended to be. Jack isn't the type to sugarcoat things, even when it's hard.

It's going to have to be enough. Because Jack's right; if Ianto wants something easier—something healthier—than that, he's not going to find it at Torchwood, and the only way he's planning on ever leaving Torchwood is in a body bag.

"Okay," he says, and squeezes Jack's hand.

Jack bows his head, slowly, and carefully places a kiss on Ianto's knuckles.

"You'll be all right, Ianto Jones," he says.



Of course, directly after that Jack stands up, and, the most apologetically Ianto's ever heard him, informs him that they thought Ianto needed some more rest earlier so they didn't bring it up then, but if he's feeling up to it now they're going to need to debrief him.

"You can do this with whoever you're most comfortable with—me, Owen, Tosh, Gwen. UNIT expects a report sometime today, but you can take your time, if you need it."

He gives Ianto several minutes to think it over, heading downstairs for some coffee.

Ianto's back to queasy just like that, palms sweaty, heart banging away in his chest. He shifts over to the chair in front of Jack's desk without being asked. He's sure Jack would do this anywhere Ianto wanted in the Hub, but the desk makes it feel more official. Less like he's trying to tell his friend and occasional hook-up partner details about his sexual assault and more like he's making a report to Human Resources. Or at least that's the hope.

Because it's going to be Jack. He almost goes with Owen, and even seriously considers Tosh and Gwen for a second—Tosh because she's the kindest, and his friend, Gwen because he knows her least of them all so it's almost like reporting to a stranger—but ultimately, it's protocol to debrief with Jack, and Ianto's always found comfort in protocol.

It'll be fine, he tells himself.

His hands curl into fists and his short nails bite into his palms. He's still thirsty, but after he sits down he doesn't want to get up again for his sparkling water. It's probably flat, anyway, and Jack will be back soon with the coffee.

And it'll be fine.

He can just see Gwen's desk from his seat, here. She's off the phone, but she's still waving her pen, saying something in the direction of Owen's desk. She's smiling, at least; he wonders, idly, how much they've found out about the men who took him. About who was behind it. The DNA samples will already have brought back results, if Owen stayed up and ran them after Jack and Ianto left—which Ianto's sure he did—and after that it's just a matter of tracking payments, deposits, looking up known associates, and—oh. That's what Tosh was talking about. Novalabs. Whoever took him is associated with Novalabs, so they either wanted to get their hands on alien tech or use him for knowledge to unlock some tech they already have.

It would have been torture, then, for sure. And when they were done with him they would have probably dumped his body in the Bay, or dissolved it in acid in a bathtub, or cremated him in an industrial oven until there wasn't anything left of him at all, and Rhiannon and his mam would never have known what happened to him.

He's counting his breathing again by the time Jack returns.

Jack brought a tray laden with not just coffee, but with two bottled waters, a plate of biscuits, and a sleeve of crackers with a single can of ginger ale in one corner.

It's a bit much, but then, Ianto supposes that's Jack.

Jack sets the tray to the side of the desk, within Ianto's easy reach but leaving space for a notebook and pen and his laptop. The laptop, Ianto knows, is going to record and transcribe as they go; but Jack likes to take notes on the fly.

Ianto pushes the thought of Jack's notes far, far away. This is his boss, not his friend, not his—whatever they were starting to be to each other before this happened.

He doubts they'll be anything like that again. He's not going to be up for—hell, he doesn't know, but the thought of touching anyone like that right now makes him want to vomit and punch something. So whatever it was, Jack's going to move on now—which is probably for the best. Last night was kind of him, and Ianto's going to value that friendship, but if nothing else, he's about to tell everything that happened yesterday, and he can't see anyone—once Jack hears that, he'll probably—

God. He just wants this done with.

Jack turns back to lock the door before he sits down. He bustles around with his notebook, opening it up and uncapping his pen, opening up the transcription software on the laptop and double-checking it's set to save a copy to the right folder.

He doesn't try to stretch it out, though, which Ianto's simultaneously thankful for and irritated by.

He reaches out for a bottled water and takes several drinks while Jack fiddles with the software, then caps it again and holds it in his lap, squeezes the bottle nervously now that it has some give. Jack gives him a reassuring nod, and his face settles into a—it's not a completely blank mask, not like last night when he was waiting outside the SUV, but it's polite. Distanced. Professional. It's a look Ianto's seen dozens of times since he came to work at Three, though it's never been directed at him before.

This is fine. He's going to be fine. This isn't Jack, not the same Jack who let Ianto cry all over him last night; this is Captain Harkness, his boss, who's done debriefs hundreds if not thousands of times before, sitting up straight across the desk from him.

This isn't Jack.

"Beginning debrief," Jack says, speaking clearly though he doesn't turn his head towards the computer. "Captain Jack Harkness, head of Torchwood Three, debriefing staff member Ianto Jones."

Ianto's fingers squeeze the bottle again. Again. The plastic squeaks and crinkles in his hand. He takes a deep breath in, deep breath out, and looks past Jack's shoulder out to the office below. The plastic squeaks again, just a little slippery under a suddenly-sweaty palm; his leg jiggles up and down without his say-so. His knee bumps into Jack's solid oak desk, stinging immediately.

He's fine. He's fine. This should be fine.

"The date," Jack says, "Is—"

Nope.

"I'm sorry." Ianto meets Jack's eyes for half a second before he has to look away. "I'd like to change my mind. If I, uh. Can Owen do this?"

He chances a look back, and a knot in his stomach untwists itself.

"Of course," Jack says, and just like last night he doesn't look upset at all. He just nods and pushes his chair back a few inches, but doesn't stand up. "Are you—no, stupid question. I'll go get him. You can have my office until you're done."

He gets up and turns, heads to the door and is just reaching to unlock it when Ianto blurts out, "It's not that I don't trust you!"

He feels stupid about it right after, but Jack smiles at him. "I know," he says. "It's fine. I told you, Ianto. Whatever you need, we're here for you."

Ianto waits until he's gone to crack open the ginger ale.



It is easier with Owen.

It's still awful, of course, and Ianto spends most of it with his eyes fixed firmly on the bottle of water in his lap, but they get through it. Owen's professional throughout. He doesn't mention Ianto's swap-out, even though Ianto's pretty sure he'd managed to doze off before Jack went and got him.

He asks a lot of questions about the actual kidnapping, at the Tesco, really goes over that. How many men were there, did Ianto see any of their faces, does Ianto think there were any witnesses in the parking lot, did any of the men say anything, what were they wearing—on and on. He's similarly detailed about anything Ianto might have heard while he was alone in the office room; how many men he estimated were there, anything distinctive about their voices or speech, every single thing Ianto can remember about what was said on the phone call or about whoever hired them.

The last part, he lets Ianto get past considerably more quickly. He asks a few questions to lead Ianto down it; he shows Ianto, too, two photos to identify. He must have gotten samples of each of their DNA, so at least there's that, though when he mentions DNA samples Ianto feels sick and Owen calls down and asks Gwen to bring them another ginger ale.

Gwen gives Ianto a big hug, too, which is nice, and doesn't even try to look at the computer screen, which considering the usual level of nosiness of, well, everyone working at Torchwood, must take some self-control.

He plows through the rest of it with Owen, only stopping one time for a break when Owen asks if he thought one of the two guys who assaulted him was in charge and he says, "Well, this guy stopped the other one when I started suffocating on his dick," and subsequently spends the next two minutes hunched over in the chair, rubbing his sternum and listening to Owen tell him it's okay, they can take a minute, just breathe, yeah, just like that, while Owen rolls closer in his chair but visibly stops himself from reaching out.

He's gone a little numb by the time Owen shuts off the transcription software with a very relieved, "All done."

He responds well enough to whatever it is Owen says at the time, though he barely remembers any of it later, except Owen asking if Ianto wants him to get Jack.

Ianto says thanks, but he's fine.

Owen's probably going to go find Jack anyway, he knows, just to tell him that his office is free again. Ianto briefly considers bunking down for a nap or some mindles TV in Jack's quarters—he's been in them before, and he doesn't think Jack would mind—but when he thinks about it he feels, suddenly, shut in.

Coffee and a walk around the block, he thinks. It'll do him good.



Jack, he finds out on his way out, is down in the target range.

It's not like the man needs to improve his skills with a gun, but he's adamant about keeping in practice; and, moreso, Ianto knows it's a way Jack likes to let off steam.

Ianto—

Ianto doesn't have a lot of those, himself. He used to, briefly. With Lisa. Was trying to be a better person, someone who could deserve her. And then Canary Wharf happened, and that was all over.

Christ, he's tired.

"I'm off for a walk, if anyone asks," he tells Tosh on his way past her desk. She looks like she's going to offer to go with him, but he yanks on his jacket and walks off before she can.

Owen's nowhere to be seen as he leaves, though there's punk rock just audible from the direction of the morgue. Ianto hopes they tidy up the loose ends on the kidnapping early so he can actually go home tonight. It's not his fault Ianto went and got himself kidnapped and—

Oh, fuck this, he thinks.



He ends up walking just a few hundred feet down to the waterfront and plops down on a bench. The sun's out today but the breeze is cold enough, when it picks up, that nobody sits down next to him, and he can look out over the bay undisturbed.

It's maybe an hour before Jack comes after him. Ianto recognizes his footsteps on the stone and knows it's him without having to look, catching a whiff of Jack's pheromones when the captain stops short two feet away.

"It's not that cold." Ianto doesn't turn, but he can tell Jack smiles from the easing of his shoulders in Ianto's peripheral vision.

He honestly doesn't know, at this point, how much of it—of how well he knows them—comes from working with them and getting to know them personally and how much of it is a result of his conscious efforts at studying them, watching them, when he was hiding Lisa. He wonders if any of them ever think about that, or if it's just his mind in which it lingers.

Maybe it's just guilt, now that he's lost enough stress he can feel it.

He's certainly feeling a lot of it today. And for no good reason, he knows. But like Rhiannon kept telling Mica last time he saw them, you can't help having feelings.

He wonders what she'd have to tell him, in this situation.

"You're off work today, Ianto; you don't have to stay in the Hub if you don't want to. Though I'll warn you, Owen's waiting with a thermometer when you come back in."

Ianto snorts.

"But I thought," Jack says. He stops and walks closer, then rounds the bench and sits down next to Ianto. He's in his greatcoat again, looking dapper as ever; it spreads out when he sits, a little, the heavy wool just touching Ianto's thigh. "I'm about done here at the office, if you wanted me to drive you back. The others would offer, but Tosh and Owen are catching up on an experiment, and Gwen's eager to get home."

He doesn't say to Rhys, which he would have a week earlier, which Ianto tucks away in his mind under, oh, Jack knows about Gwen and Owen, too, in his mental gauge of 'how much of what goes on around the Hub is Jack aware of?'

It's been three months since Lisa, now, and he's still doing it without thinking. He'd thought it would have stopped at this point.

"I have some paperwork," Jack says. "But I can do that out of the office, if you want me to stay over again."

Oh.

"That's," Ianto says. No, he thinks, he'll be fine on his own, and, Yes, because the thought of being alone right now makes him feel scared like a little kid, and, No, because the idea of someone seeing him vulnerable makes him want to vomit, and, "Okay," he says. "If it's not an imposition, sir."

Jack huffs. There's something behind it—a deep, dark well of meaning, of dismissal and anxiety and fondness and irritation—but Ianto can't read it.

"It's not," Jack says, and Ianto has to take him at his word.

Jack doesn't make a move to get up, though; he settles back on the bench instead, when Ianto doesn't stand, puts his arm up on the back of the bench, bent at the elbow so his hand hangs down between them.

Two days ago he would have stretched his arm out behind Ianto's shoulders and traced his index finger over the skin at Ianto's nape, would have leaned in and whispered something obscene in Ianto's ear. Thinking of it makes the skin on Ianto's neck crawl. The lack of it aches like a hole in his heart.

There's some detritus in the water near one of the piers, remains from someone's takeaway tangled up with a very soggy teddy bear; it's drifting farther and farther away, deeper into the lake with the tide; the water, lapping against the shore like a tame and gentle thing, will soon take the thing away, out of Ianto's sight, into the depths of the lake.

Ianto's going to come in to the Hub tomorrow and get back to work like those ten, twenty minutes during his kidnapping never happened. If he's very, very lucky, he'll hide it well enough that Gwen and Tosh never find out. He's never going to tell his mam or his sister or anybody else who doesn't know about it, probably. He'll just keep waking up every morning, putting on a suit, and getting in early so he can have the coffee ready when everyone else comes in. Jack's probably not going to look at him the same way again; whatever they had starting up is over and finished with, and Owen's always going to keep an eye on him, now, whenever they deal with missing persons or hostages or rape victims, and check to see if he's going to freak out on them, look out for signs of PTSD and bring it up every so often at blood draws and physicals. And things are just going to go on like this until Torchwood kills him.

His eyesight blurs a little; when he blinks it back to normal, he's lost track of the trash in the lake, but in the far distance the sail of a yacht pokes up above the horizon, struggling to be seen in the growing twilight.

"So," he says. He takes a breath. He sees movement beside him as Jack turns to look at him. He doesn't look back, though, doesn't want to see anything in his eyes. "Just keep going."

He leans forward and stretches out, head dipping down below his knees for just a second.

"Yeah," Jack breathes.

It's going to be hell, he thinks, and he shakes his head, okay, and stands up.

It maybe was colder than he'd thought when he sat down, because it hits him all at once now he's up. He shakes it off with a shiver and crosses his arms over his chest, and Jack chuckles as he joins him.

It's just coming on seven o'clock, now, as they start the short walk back to the tourist centre. Ianto saw the receipt from Tesco last night, when Owen helped him with his pants; the checkout time read 7:06.

So in just a few minutes—probably about when Owen's letting go of Ianto with a grouchy look on his face—it will have been exactly twenty-four hours since Ianto started loading his groceries into his car and didn't see the three men coming up behind him until too late.

"You're going to be okay again," Jack tells him when they get back to the Hub. And he opens the door and steps through. "It's just going to take a while."

Ianto pauses, and takes a breath, and ducks in after.

Comments

[badly_knitted]

And you think I'm prolific? Look how long this fic is! I haven't read it yet, I'm a slow reader, I like to savour fics, but I'll comment again once I finish it.

[jupiter2932]

XD Oh, this one took me about a month to do, and only just because we had the holidays & a really slow work week in early January. No worries about commenting! I do hope you enjoy it, though. I was worried about how I managed to pull off a few things in it because spoilers, so I hope it's fine :)

[badly_knitted]

I'm about a third of the way through, read as much as I could last night and I'm going to continue reading shortly. I just want to hug Ianto, but after what he's just endured, I suspect that might just send him straight into a panic attack so I'll just offer my fluffiest blanket instead. Poor Ianto =(

You still did really well to write nearly 25k on one fic in a month. My writing's always spread out over dozens of short fics and drabbles, I'm not good at long fic because I have to spend half my time re-reading what I already wrote to make sure I don't contradict myself.

[jupiter2932]

Don't worry, Ianto will get hugs eventually :D

I used to just write short fic, but now I find it hard not to go long whenever I start something (case in point: this fic I originally meant to be 2k :|). That's why I've been having so much fun with the drabble comm.

I love how you've built up such a huge universe with all your drabbles. And there are just so many of them it's spread out for all the characters :D I'm still going through them, and it's so much fun to see Fluff pop up, or some of the kids, and find more ficlets about them all over the place :D

[badly_knitted]

It happens to me too. Yesterday I started what was meant to be a double drabble (different fandom) and it ended up over 1200 words. I also have a fic (unposted) that was supposed to be a drabble and is currently over 6k. Nowhere near as long as your huge fic of course, but ideas do take over sometimes and I get carried away. I'm supposed to be working on a WiP this month that 13k so far, but getting around to it is proving difficult. I'm trying to get another fic ready for posting first, but I keep getting side-tracked with other challenges o_O

Glad you're enjoying wandering about in my many 'verses. They all came about completely by accident. Even Nosy was only supposed to be a one-off character, but it proved so popular people wanted a sequel and... I just kept going. My head is filled with fluff and Fluffs.

[jupiter2932]

Oh, is that 13k fic also Torchwood, out of curiosity?

I know what you mean about getting sidetracked. I was actually trying to focus only on original fiction this month, so of course I signed up for febuwhump XD. If only we had eight extra hours a day just to write fanfic things would be fine.

I love Nosy! Though my mental image of them is more tribble-like (that's on me though, lol), so I keep forgetting their actual size when it comes up in your fics.

[badly_knitted]

Yes, that one is. I have Ianto going undercover in a Goth club *grins* The other one I'm trying to get ready for posting is a silly one where Torchwood gets some Whooping Snakes. I like variety in my writing.

I've seen the latest batch of fics you've posted! Not sure if I'll get to read any of them tonight, probably tomorrow, but I WILL get there. I copied the prompts for Febuwhump, knowing I wouldn't have time to do anything for them this month because I already committed elsewhere to work on WiPs, but it never hurts to have plenty of prompts collected for those times when I'm at a loose end.

Nosy's what... five and a half metres long, I think, a formidable but very fluffy creature... Take a look at this. Wrong colour of course, not really long enough, and a bit too large in diameter, but the creature in these pics was the inspiration for Nosy.

https://badly-knitted.dreamwidth.org/45616.html

[jupiter2932]

Oh, how fun! The world needs more Goth Ianto :D.

No worries on reading the fics; I'm doing terribly at keeping up with other fics, especially with febuwhump, but I'm saving a lot for later :) I love having prompts too--I have a Bad Things Happen bingo card somewhere as well, though I have no idea when I'll be able to get to it.

I kind of love Nosy even more now :D. That's, what, eighteen-ish feet? Do you do miniatures? They're so neat :D

[badly_knitted]

One day I hope I'll get it finished. There are of course Mysterious Things happening and an alien involved *grins*

Might get to read another one tonight, but I also need to get going on my sweater sleeves if I want to get this sweater knitted by the end of the month. Too many things to do...

I love reading whump type fics, although I don't write so many of those. Fluff and Crack and my usual genres for writing. Looking forward to what you come up with when you get to write for the other prompts.

I have A LOT of Jack and Ianto action figures, lol! I used to do Christmas and New Year set-ups with them, but that's fallen by the wayside in recent years. They're all tucked up in their beds at present. The Nosy toy was something I picked up at a charity shop or car boot sale forever ago, but I thought of it when I wanted to create a friendly alien. Not sure now whether Nosy is supposed to be 3.5 metres or 5.5... I always forget. It started out green and brown in the first fic, but I forgot about that and made it completely green, then remembered and had to write a drabble to explain the colour change. Fluffs can in fact change colour at will, like chameleons, 'cause it's fun.

[jupiter2932]

I will very much look forward to what you come up with for Undercover Ianto. And it's nice to have so much fluff and silliness to dive into--so much of the fics for Torchwood are so serious and angsty, I love seeing more Nosy being cute :D

Oh, you knit? I crochet (very occasionally, but I enjoy it when I have the time and energy :D).

[badly_knitted]

I'm working on it. I've read through what I've written so far, and send some questions to someone who's offered to help me with the Goth club stuff, so hopefully I can tidy that up and make progress.

I do love a good angsty read, and I write the occasional one, but fluff and silliness is what inspires me. You should check out tanarian's fics on LJ, especially Distract Them, Unforeseen Risk Elements, and Reach Out and Touch Someone. She wrote such great fics, and many are highly amusing, especially the first two.

https://tanarian.livejournal.com/45713.html

I knit, I crochet a little, I cross stitch... I run a crafting community too, get_knitted. Despite the name, it's for all crafters.

[jupiter2932]

Oh, thanks for the rec! I think I've read some of her angstier fics, but I'll bump these up the tbr :D

[badly_knitted]

Well, the link is to her master list so you can go to town with the reading, lol!

[badly_knitted]

Yes, definitely going to take a while for Ianto to heal, not just physically but mentally and emotionally too. But he's stronger than he knows, and he's got through awful traumas before, so he will get there even if he's trying to convince himself at present. As for Jack. he's not going anywhere, he'll still be there when Ianto's ready to pick up where they left off, taking things at Ianto's pace.

Owen is a good Doctor and a good friend.

Tough to read, but well written.

[jupiter2932]

Thank you so much! Yeah, I have fics planned further on to follow Ianto during some of his recovery, and it's a long road, but he'll get there. And of course Jack will be waiting for him when he's ready :) Ianto's just all emotionally wobbly and off-center at the moment.

[badly_knitted]

Which no one can blame him for after what he's been through.

[jupiter2932]

Yeah, absolutely not.

That's honestly what I really wanted to do with this fic, which actually started off as 'I can do that better' fic after reading something with a big traumatic thing happen to a character where the character just immediately had this perfect perspective on it. It irritated me, so I started this--it's why I kept this fic to such a short time frame, so it cuts off before he has a chance to really start processing things.

[badly_knitted]

That's what makes it so effective.

It's very easy for writers to handwave away potential and even probable trauma, I'm sure I've been guilty of that myself at times although hopefully only in fics that are supposed to be funny. I try to be more accurate in the serious fics. But it does get annoying for a reader, and for a viewer. So often in Torchwood the effects of trauma are simply ignored. I liked that you showed Ianto's mind shying away from what happened to him, not wanting to face it, bring borderline in denial as if by ignoring it, it might somehow not have happened. It's realistic, and adds to the impact.

[jupiter2932]

Oh, I've definitely done it too, but I've gotten a bit more impatient about it as I got older.

Every time I'm chatting with you about Torchwood I feel like I end up going, "I wish Torchwood had been X," but it is frustrating, going back and rewatching and reading so much fic (and also listening to some of the Big Finish dramas, now), because the show had such a good *skeleton*, and they could have filled it out with so much fun character growth and introspection and, yeah, dealing with all the trauma they went through in the episodes, but for the most part they just didn't. Which leaves so much space to play in with fic, but it's frustrating thinking about what we could have gotten to watch the actors play.

[badly_knitted]

That really is the downside of watching Torchwood, so many missed opportunities. We learned very little about most of the characters until right before they were killed off. We never even got to see where Ianto lived when he wasn't at work. Could be forgiven for thinking he was filed down in the archives at night.

Still, it does give us more room to come up with our versions of how things should have gone. Gareth was so good, I would have loved to see more. Same with Burn Gorman and Naoko Mori.

[jupiter2932]

Yes! I'm just fascinated with all the different takes in fic on Ianto's home, among other things :D

[badly_knitted]

I've had him in flats and in houses, depending on which of my 'verses I'm writing in, lol! He's even moved into the Hub with Jack, in expanded quarters, a time or two.