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“Ianto,” Jack greeted, running a hand through his fringe as he looked up from his work and towards Ianto.
Ianto regarded his boss for a minute, noting the too-impassive expression Jack was wearing that betrayed none of the emotions he was feeling on the inside. Or, at least, Ianto assumed he was feeling, if Jack was feeling anywhere near the Jack who had been sobbing over him as his heart flatlined, and he -
Yeah, okay. Ianto wasn’t quite used to this whole ‘undead yet dead’ business yet. There’d already been many scans, both by Owen on Ianto and by Tosh on the glove. Nothing had been found. Ianto should, by all means, be dead . And yet here he was, in a terrible half-state, not really living but somehow still tied down to his physical body. He couldn’t eat, he couldn’t sleep - hell, his senses had all but disappeared (excepting, somehow, his sight - and how the bloody hell was he still able to see, when he couldn’t even cry tears?) And -
“Ianto?” Jack repeated, this time in as a question rather than a greeting. He sounded concerned enough for it to draw Ianto out of his thoughts.
“Yes?”
“You okay?”
Ianto bristled slightly and bit down the bitter sarcasm he wanted to reply with. “About as okay as I can be, given the circumstance,” he went for instead.
Jack seemed to be about to say something, but evidently thought better of it. “I’m sorry to say this, but I called you here because I need your firearm.”
“What?” Ianto said, frowning.
“And your security pass,” Jack finished, not meeting his eyes.
Ianto stood still for a second, completely still considering he wasn’t even breathing at the moment. He reached into his suit pocket, grabbing both items, and slammed it down on the desk far more forcefully than was necessary. He felt slightly satisfied to see Jack flinch.
“There. Happy? Anything else you want?” Ianto almost spat.
Jack arched his eyebrows and surprisingly didn’t rise to the bait and argue back. “Yes, actually. I want you to go home.”
Ianto’s eyes bulged. “Go home ?”
“It’s a simple request.”
Ianto stood, not quite sure how to proceed. “So, that’s it then? I’m fired?”
“Not fired ,” Jack said, still not meeting Ianto’s eyes. “Just on leave until we figure out what you are. We need to be certain you’re okay before we let you work.”
“Oh, well done,” Ianto sarcastically retorted. “It almost sounded like you cared for a minute.”
“I do care,” Jack grit out, his voice raised slightly. “That’s the whole point, Ianto.”
“You’ve got a funny way of showing it.”
Jack finally met his eyes, and Ianto realised why he’d been refusing to do that up until now. His eyes were shining blue, hurt quite evident deep in the irises.
“What do you want me to say?” he asked, his voice weaker.
Ianto had no response to give, so Jack continued, “I saw you die, Ianto. Twice. What do you think that did to me? You can’t heal anymore, so I’m sending you home for your own good. Because I love you and can’t see you die again, because it would break me.”
If Ianto had been able to breathe, he would’ve taken in a surprised gasp at Jack’s words.
“Love?” he asked, barely daring to believe.
Jack looked at him sharply. “Yes. I meant every word I said yesterday.”
Ianto thought back to the painful memories, the feeling of Jack holding him so tenderly yet posessively, the knowledge that in that moment, nothing had been more important to Jack than him .
“You didn’t mean that,” Ianto said at last. “Grief makes you say things you don’t really mean. You only said that to… to comfort me or because you were scared of losing me.”
Jack’s gaze softened. “Ianto, I know my own feelings. I’ve been hiding them from myself in the hopes that it would soften the blow of one day losing you. But I’ve already lost you twice, and I’m not gonna waste this third opportunity. I’m not afraid to say it. I love you.”
Ianto stood, his mouth hanging open. “I… you don’t - you can’t mean that! I mean, we’ve only been… well, you know. For a few months. Since you came back, and -”
“Ianto,” Jack broke in, reaching out to take Ianto’s cold hands in his own. Ianto had to close his eyes at the realisation that he could barely even feel Jack’s palms in his anymore, now that his sense of touch had diminished. “I love you. I’ll say it as many times as I need to for you to believe me.”
“Jack, I…” Ianto said, unsure what to respond.
“It’s okay,” Jack said, as if understanding. “You don’t need to say it. You already told me anyway, so I know you feel the same.”
At some point, Jack had taken to rubbing Ianto’s knuckles with his thumb, though Ianto couldn’t have been sure until he looked down and noticed the movement. Suddenly overwhelmed, he pulled his hands back and stood up straight.
Jack turned to look at him with worry in his eyes. “Unless… you don’t feel the same. You… you didn’t mean - was it yourself you were talking about? When you were talking about grief making you say things you don’t mean.”
Ianto looked bewildered, wanting to deny Jack’s statement, but his brain was far too overwhelmed and confused to think rationally.
However, Jack seemed to take Ianto’s silence as confirmation. “Ah. I see. Okay,” he muttered, suddenly wringing his hands together as he let out an awkward chuckle. “Only… you sounded pretty sure, yesterday. You know, all the ‘of course I love you’ and the ‘how could I not?’”
“I remember,” Ianto snapped, feeling irrationally angry all of a sudden. How could Jack say this to him now, knowing Ianto was pretty much dead? There was nothing Ianto could offer Jack anymore. He couldn’t go out to eat at a fancy restaurant, he definitely couldn’t have sex anymore, and really, what were the two of them, if not primarily dating based on sex?
“Look, just have a think about it, that’s all I’m saying,” Jack suggested.
“I don’t need to think about it. This,” he said, indicating between himself and Jack with his finger, “could never work. Especially not now.”
“What, because you’re dead?” Jack asked, frowning. “We could still make it work.”
“No, we couldn’t,” Ianto responded, frowning heavily. “I can’t do anything like this; you’ve made that clear by firing me!”
Jack sighed and folded his arms across his chest. “That’s not the point and you know it,” he said, before his voice turned softer. “Ianto, we can still date without having sex. The feelings are still there, and -”
“When have we ever been more than sex, Jack?” Ianto shot out, annoyed with the parody Jack was still trying to act. “Sure, we go on a sporadic few dates here and there, but you and I both know that they’re nothing more than foreplay.”
Jack flinched backwards, obviously hurt by Ianto’s remark. If he’d been less angry and frustrated at his current predicament, Ianto might have felt sorry enough to apologise to Jack.
“Is that really what you think?” Jack asked him quietly.
Ianto shot his boss a conflicted look. “I can’t do this right now, Jack,” he eventually said, taking a step backwards. “I’m gonna do what you suggested and go home.”
“Ianto, wait!” Jack cried, but Ianto had already turned on his heels and fled.
Storming out of the office, Ianto felt terrible. He knew he was being an arse, but he thought he was at least a bit of a justified arse. There’d been no time whatsoever for him to have come to terms with being dead, and now it was like his entire life was changing. He couldn’t do his job, which was primarily what his life, structure, and routine was based around. He didn’t need to sleep, which some days he would’ve thought a good thing, but now the thought of endless consciousness didn’t exactly fill him with joy.
What was he going to do at home? Well, he supposed he had been meaning to clean the flat but hadn’t really had the time to do more than a quick sweep and hoover, in amongst chasing Weevils and tracking down alien tat. That would take him at least half a day. And of course, there was the book that had been lying on his bedside table for at least half a year now.
“Oi, Ianto,” a voice called, bringing him out of his thoughts. “Come over here, I’ve got a few more tests I wanna do.”
Ianto turned to see Owen, who was looking at a clipboard while he hurriedly bit at a chocolate biscuit. Ianto closed his eyes, opened them again, and spoke.
“No.”
“No?” Owen said, his mouth hanging open with the biscuit held frozen in front of it. “What do you mean, no?”
“Do you know the definition of the word, Owen?”
Owen fixed him a glare. “You’re a dick. Get over here and let me test you.”
“I said, no! ” Ianto spat, holding his hands like fists at his side.
Owen paused for a moment, regarding his patient. His eyes trailed over him. Ianto felt like a specimen in one of Owen’s petri dishes.
“Okay,” Owen finally said, voice slow. “We have done a lot of tests recently. It can wait until tomorrow.”
“Thank you,” Ianto said, trying not to obviously roll his eyes.
“Can you at least grab us all a coffee?” Owen asked, already turning his back on Ianto to walk back to his medical bay.
“Actually, I can’t,” Ianto said plainly.
It was quite comical how quickly Owen swung around again. “What do you mean by that?”
“Well, I’ve had my Torchwood security pass taken away from me and told that I’m not allowed to do my job, which - unfortunately for you, Owen - involved making coffee,” Ianto replied, failing to stop the frustration from bleeding into his words.
“Wait, a second, did Jack tell you that?” Owen asked, looking incredulous. “Look, I can understand field work, but surely, you can’t injure yourself making coffee? Or filing in the archives?”
Ianto shrugged. “You’d have to ask Jack. He is the boss, after all.”
“So you’re just happy to let us do our own archiving?”
“Yup.”
“Seriously?”
“Knock yourself out. I don’t care.”
Owen gave him the most incredulous stare. “Are you sure this whole dead thing hasn’t changed you mentally?”
Ianto glared at him. “You’re the doctor here. You tell me.”
Owen held his hands up in submission. “Okay, no need to get arsey with me.”
At Ianto’s glare, he continued, “I know you don’t want to be treated like a child, but you’ve got to understand it from Jack’s point of view.”
“What do you mean by that?”
“Well, you didn’t see what he was like. When you died.”
Ianto paused for a second, his forehead muscles untightening as his frown waned slightly. “The first or the second time?”
“I wasn’t even there the second time, which proves my point. He was so distraught at losing you that he stopped at nothing to get you back. I can only imagine what he was like when he brought you back.”
Ianto’s mind wandered to what he had thought was his last two minutes on Earth. He remembered the desperation with which Jack had kissed him, the terror on his face that he was trying to hide away from Ianto.
“He’d have done the same for any of us,” Ianto petulantly replied, and Owen scoffed.
“Yeah, right. You keep telling yourself that. Like I said, you didn’t see quite how broken he was when you got shot. It wasn’t just you who we had to carry back to the SUV.”
Ianto bristled at Owen’s words. He felt oddly flustered, embarrassed and irritated for reasons he couldn’t place. “Well, what do you want me to do about it?”
Owen shrugged. “I don’t know. I’m not a therapist.”
“Thanks,” Ianto replied sarcastically. “You’ve been a great help.”
Ianto turned to leave.
“Just, give him a break, okay? You’re not the only person who’s been affected by all this, you know!” Owen called.
“Sorry about the coffee, if that’s what you mean,” Ianto replied, purposefully misinterpreting the message. “I should leave now. Under orders to go home and stay there, after all.”
“Don’t say I didn’t try being nice,” Ianto heard Owen mutter before they both turned their separate ways.
As he stormed away, Ianto thought about his plans to clean the house and decided that there was nothing he wanted to do less than that.