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Sometimes Ianto catches Jack watching him. He's done it in so many ways since they met - everything from lust to distrust - but there's something else in it now, something that makes Ianto the tiniest bit unsettled and uncomfortable. It feels a bit like awe.
*
They found Jack on the edge of the solar system. For him, it had been six months. For them, it had been a year. A pretty bloody bizarre year, honestly, for all it had been... New, definitely. Amazing, most of the time. And horribly embarrassing the few times Ianto had pushed himself too far too fast, demanding to know everything without considering that it would be best to learn to walk before running hurdles. Even looking at himself in the mirror had been unnerving for a while, noting the tiny, minute changes his body had undergone to accommodate the needs of a Timelord: barely anything, but enough to produce a strange feeling of foreignness in his own face.
He felt the same, most of the time, was the thing, and then suddenly something would change and he'd suffer the worst kind of vertigo. Times like that, when he realised again that he wasn't human, it all seemed to bear down on him like weights on his chest. (Though, as a matter of fact, Timelords had a completely different respiratory system to humans, closer resembling a lymphatic system. It was all terribly efficient - and weird.)
But seeing Jack again, that felt right. It didn't matter that they were on a spaceship poking around ion reefs or that he was fairly sure he'd earlier overheard somebody talking about a "tentacle sex show", it was just... so natural to walk up to him, to reach out and touch, feel the scrape of the coarse woolen coat under his fingers. He'd gotten his wristband back, sometime, though the strap was different now. He supposed the last one hadn't fared too well so close to the bomb blast.
"Jack," he murmured.
He couldn't read the expression on Jack's face, or maybe that it was just that there were more important things to focus on, like the fact that he was alive and here and both his hearts were beating too fast. Jack lifted his hand, traced the shape of Ianto's cheek. "You look different."
If he was honest, he hadn't expected Jack to notice, and it made him laugh, though there was a hint of a choked sob somewhere in there too. "It's me," he assured him, hoping he wouldn't have to spill secrets that only they knew, things shared in the dead of night, to prove himself. They still felt too sacred to voice aloud. "It's really me."
"It's really him," agreed the Doctor, standing three metres behind him and a little to the left.
It was impossible to tell who took the last step forward, but the next moment Jack was crushing him in his arms and they were burying their heads in the crook of each other's shoulders and Ianto was thinking, it will be alright. Everything will be alright.
*
Sometimes Jack can't help noticing just how different Ianto really is now. It's not the times when they lie awake at night, talking softly while Jack runs his hand down Ianto's side and counts an extra bump after his ribcage should end, and it's not the times when Ianto attempts to practice speaking Gallifreyan, his (apparently) awful accent amusing the Doctor to no end.
It's when they're all in the engine room and Ianto is helping pilot, and the Timelords move so perfectly, and Ianto asks him to pass something over. Or when he extrapolates knowledge that would have been beyond his ability to infer, before.
He really suspects that a psychologist would have a field day with all three of them. The Doctor's endless loneliness. Ianto's need to always be more than the sum of his parts. Jack, worshiping one Timelord and loving another. And it's strange to think, too, that if Ianto is fully Timelord, if he can regenerate, than the Doctor will likely be the first of all of them to finally die.
He looks at Ianto like a proud father, and Jack thinks that's right, somehow. Both of them are of him, and will outlast him, but Jack is one step removed and doesn't blame the Doctor for looking like that at Ianto and not him. Ianto shines.
*
The second morning after Jack joined them on the TARDIS he came out into the engine room looking faintly dazed. The Doctor didn't ask where Ianto was - he didn't sleep as much as he had as a human, but still more than the Doctor did, and even when he was wide awake he sometimes liked to cocoon himself in blankets and just lie in bed where it was warm and cosy. So it was no surprise to see Jack, who also slept less now than when he was mortal, up and about before Ianto.
"Pass me that wrench, will you?" greeted the Doctor. "The purple one."
Jack did, then perched on one of the thick, organic-looking crossbeams. "Think we could make a stop somewhere?"
"That's the idea! Best ship in the galaxy, you know, be a pity not to take her anywhere."
"I want to get Ianto a new watch." He paused, kicking a leg slightly until he noticed he was doing it and stopped; he was far too old for the childish tell of restlessness. "The Time Agency used to get them in from a timekeeper in the forty-fourth century, Haven. Modified the hell out of them of course, but the basic design is just about perfect for him. No dangerous extra toys, just a setting for local time and a setting for subjective linear time."
The Doctor studied him for a moment, then nodded, pulling a level and flicking a few switches. It was a good idea. He suspected Ianto had a better sense of time than Jack realised, but he'd like the watch, and he'd like that Jack had thought of it. "Transfer me the exact co-ordinates, I'll get as close as I can. Quick in and out, back before breakfast!"
Jack winced, though he was already tapping buttons on his vortex manipulator, and a moment later the TARDIS was displaying the co-ordinates on screen. "You'd think you'd know better than to say things like that, Doc. I'm writing him a note in case we get kidnapped. Or arrested. Or distracted by damsels in distress."
"No need." He slapped a button, and looked up in pride as the central pillar of the TARDIS started pumping, fueling the jump towards their destination. "The TARDIS will tell him if she has to."
"Oh."
There was something strange in Jack's tone that made the Doctor glance over at him. He remembered when he'd first had Jack on board, that he'd said he could feel the TARDIS singing to him. He'd been the only one the Doctor had trusted to work on her in a long time. He was simply too primitive to have any really meaningful conversation with the ship, though, and for all that he seemed fine, same old Jack, back with a new load of baggage to work through and too much responsibility on his shoulders, the Doctor wondered how he was taking things with Ianto. "He's still the same person," he assured him, despite the fact that he really had no idea if he was the same person. He'd only known Ianto for this last year.
"Mostly. Sometimes I feel like I have God in my bed though." His chuckle was rueful, and he steadied himself as the Doctor set the TARDIS down. "You know, I'd've been happy just to have him back, how he was. All this? It's almost too much to take in."
The Doctor grabbed his coat, beckoning for Jack to follow behind as they headed out to the streets of Nuevo Nice, the capital city of Haven. It had been named by a pair of, he rather suspected, linguistically-challenged colonists with an enthusiasm for homeworld nostalgia, but the odd name gave it something of a charm. "That's his bed, technically," he told Jack as an aside, fully aware that the immortal had barely even bothered to track down his old room, and then only to get some of his things out of it. "It's new for him too, you know. Imagine a year in the context of our lives. It's downright brilliant that he's doing as well as he is, but he needs an anchor. Can you do that? Can you treat him normally, no matter what happens?"
They walked in silence for a block and a half, Jack thinking, the Doctor looking around at the architecture, the animals, the storefronts, the people. He had no pressing need to be part of this conversation - he'd brought it up for Jack's benefit, and for Ianto's, and now it was up to Jack to decide whether he was steady enough.
Watching the care with which he picked out the perfect timepiece, the Doctor rather thought that they probably both knew the answer already.
*
To be quite honest, Ianto had spent enough time as a human considering the consequences of changing things in his past to know it was a bad idea, so he doesn't really need the Doctor's flat-out ban on taking the TARDIS anywhere in the (subjective, personal) near-past. And now that he's a Timelord he can see things on those ripples that he could never have even imagined as a human. They'd had to work on that several times, controlling the way the possibilities leapt into his mind and demanded attention, and he's glad of that now that he's got a handle on the technique because he's quite sure if they overwhelmed him for too long he'd go mad.
There are things he likes about having Jack here:
- Having Jack here, in itself, is a thing as much as anything else.
- The sex, of course. He'd once asked if it had changed much. Apparently the rather significant drop in body temperature is more negligible at the surface, especially when he's turned on, but his reactions have changed a little, some of the gasps and panting. It's as good as it ever was, though. Maybe better, the way the smell of Jack affects him so much more now.
- Being able to flee when the Timelord lessons get too much.
- The humour. Not that the Doctor isn't funny, because he is, but with Jack everything is bigger. He can command the attention of a room and the stories he tells are funny simply because he declares that it should be so. They've always joked around with each other, teasing sometimes in hugely bad taste, and he's glad that that hasn't changed.
There are things he likes less about having Jack here, too:
- Sometimes he doesn't want to be the fabulous thing that the Doctor and Jack think he is now. Sometimes he just wants to be the teaboy.
Besides which, Jack still leaves his clothes all over the floor and too many hair products in the bathroom. Somehow this seems a bigger issue than the uncommunicative, self-loathing moods Jack falls into sometimes. Ianto can hardly begrudge him those, not with the strong suspicion he has that they're to do with Stephen and the 456. He only wishes he knew how to help, but all he can do is ask the TARDIS to provide what comfort she can.
They're all rather broken, anyway.
*
There's a pile of pieces of metal in the garden that Jack and Rose always used to jokingly refer to as a Timelord Rubix cube. The Doctor can put all twenty two pieces together in two or three minutes flat, aligning them in the correct way to make the finished shape fit together and light up in glowing, colourful patterns. He told them it was for children, and it wasn't actually from Gallifrey; he'd picked it up along the way somewhere.
Typically, Jack could get three or four pieces together, and once got as many as six. Rose had considered three to be a huge success.
He hadn't even been aware that Ianto had been trying until he walks into the garden one day and sees him there, the last two pieces in his hands as he carefully adjusts his view of the polyhedron, swaps out one part with the shape in his left hand, then neatly fits the final two into place. The toy rises into the air a few inches and opalescent colours shimmer across the surface, making Ianto laugh in simple pleasure, and Jack thinks that this is probably the first time he's managed to finish it.
He still can't help but stare. Ianto's always been smart, sure, but this is just insane.
With his attention no longer focused on the Rubix cube, it only takes a moment for Ianto to realise that Jack's there, and he turns with an almost guilty looking expression. "Hey, Jack."
"I always thought I was doing well to get six of those done," he comments, gesturing at the floating shape.
"It's in how you look at it," Ianto starts to explain, then realises-- what? That Jack couldn't understand? It's probably true, and the knowledge (if that is indeed what he's thinking) stains his cheeks pink. "I only just managed it, anyway, and it's been sitting here for a year." He reaches under it to pluck out the base, and the whole thing collapses in on itself and lands back on the ground in a heap.
The action makes Jack feel faintly guilty for intruding, but leaving now would be... awkward, so instead he moves closer and says lightly, "I'm impressed."
"Yeah." He looks up at Jack, quickly, a flick of the eyes, then down at the toy pieces, and there's a long pause before he lets out a tight, choked laugh. "God, Jack, can you just-- I miss how things used to be."
The words 'when you were dead?' race onto the tip of Jack's tongue before he can bite them back, and instead he just says, "How?" The question sounds dumb, like he's just repeating Ianto's words back to him.
"When we could bitch at each other, and get irrationally annoyed, and go off alone and know it would be okay. And it wasn't perfect, and that was okay too. I just... never wanted to be unique, or special, not like this. You look at me sometimes like-- like I'm a god, and it's terrifying."
The words are reminiscent of something he'd said to the Doctor once, and Jack's stomach jolts a little at the familiarity. "You've always been special." And never been able to realise it, though Jack suspects, a little, that that may be part of his charm. He's going to have to say more than that, though, and he tries to scrunch away the awkwardness that always seems to creep up on them in these conversations. "It's not the Timelord thing, either. You-- you were dead, Ianto. You died in my arms. I sent Gwen away. I killed my own grandson, I might as well have killed my daughter. And for six months I wasn't sure it was worth it."
Ianto is staring at him now, looking as though he's trying to puzzle him out. "You saved the world," he says slowly.
"I lost everything," Jack replies. "And then... you came back to me. I didn't deserve it. I don't deserve it."
There's silence between them for a moment, though less strained than before, as Ianto considers this. "Well, I suppose if you were the only person left on Earth it might have been easier to find you," he says eventually, and Jack blinks at him uncomprehendingly, once, twice, before laughing. Ianto looks pleased at the reaction. "See, jokes in bad taste, that's all I'm asking for. A bit of normality!"
"I'll try," Jack promises, because Ianto's right. He did like how things used to be. He can't just turn the wonder off, though, not when Ianto insists on walking around alive and healthy and there and utterly, completely brilliant. He still has one thing left to say, though, and it's too easy to bring the mood back around to solemnity. "I'm still going to live longer than you. And I'm going to move on and love other people. But I will never, ever forget you."
"I know," Ianto says, and that's that then. Jack wonders if he knows that that's part of why he's so special, that he understands the realities of his immortality and only asks for less than what Jack would give him anyway.
Ianto kisses him, briefly, and for a moment they just stand and lean against each other, Jack's hand resting on Ianto's hip, Ianto's hand curled in the bracers Jack still wears.
"I wish I could have met your family."
Jack nods. "Me too."
*
Sometimes the Doctor wants to tell Jack, and maybe Ianto as well, that he'll do worse things to save worlds. He knows Jack after all. The immortal thinks that the Doctor made him how he is now, but the Doctor knows that Jack made himself - after all, even as a conman he'd tried to avoid killing people unnecessarily.
Like any father, though, he looks at his passengers and can't bring himself to destroy what innocence they have left. So instead he does what he's always done - he travels with them, flinging open the TARDIS doors every time they land and building up his mood until it's infectious and even Jack is smiling freely, burning brightly through the guilt that hangs thickly around him.
If he teaches them only one lesson, he wants it to be that it is worth it.