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It had been a slow day at the Torchwood Institute.
Ianto Jones didn’t mind. There were always a lot of things to do around the Hub. Since his boss had been down at the shooting range for quite some time, he seized the opportunity to bring some order into his chaos. Jack Harkness had many qualities, but tidiness was not one of them. A thorough dusting and picking up discarded clothes had worked wonders for the place.
He was now laden with dirty laundry that needed to be taken to the cleaners. The other team members sat at their stations, working on various tasks. Toshiko Sato was running correlations between rift spikes and weather patterns, and Gwen Cooper was catching up on reports she had missed due to her wedding. Owen Harper, on the other hand, seemed to have nothing to do because he was playing one of his computer games, leaning back in his chair with his feet propped up on the table. With both hands, he steered the joystick he had placed on his stomach through the endless labyrinths of an underground bunker. He loved first-person shooters.
Fitting for his rather large ego, if someone had asked Ianto. Which nobody did, of course.
Computer games were one of the few pleasures he could still indulge in, since… well, since Owen had died a few months ago.
His death had been devastating for all of them, but then he came back - and stayed. He should have been dead and gone, and yet he was still here, with no pulse, but still conscious.
It had been difficult for him to accept this new situation. Now he was back at Torchwood, with his rank restored, but he was in a bad mood most of the time. Struggling with his destiny and fearful of his uncertain future, he vented his rage on Ianto, whom he saw as the weakest link within their team. Some days were worse than others.
When he saw Ianto emerge from Jack’s office, he lost interest in his video game and followed the young Welshman with his eyes instead.
"Where have you been? Warming up the boss’s bed, huh?" Owen snickered.
"I was just cleaning up," Ianto explained, rolling his eyes, but not falling for the bait.
Owen had been teasing him with one snarky comment after another all morning. First, it was his new suit, then the way he made coffee, and now it was the fact that he'd cleaned up after Jack. The doctor rarely cared, but today he was on a roll.
"Ianto Jones, the perfect little butler. You’re one step away from cleaning his arse! Or maybe you already do? Are you sure you’re not both his fuck buddy and his bloody maid?"
"Owen, don’t you have stuff to do?" Gwen tried to intervene. His nasty bickering with Ianto was exhausting. She and Tosh were caught in the middle and felt bad for the young Welshman.
"Nah, I’m good. I just keep wondering..." He didn't stop talking.
Ianto closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The taunting affected him more than he wanted to admit, but he kept quiet. Responding with his usual dry wit would only wind Owen up more.
Owen, on the other hand, was clearly in the mood for a fight, as he made no attempt to back down from his tirade. He simply kept going.
"..., but I guess that’s your schtick. Like when you hid your cybergirlfriend in the cellar. What were you doing down there all the time anyway? Don't tell me it was all about caring for your poor, frail girlfriend who was stuck in her cyber unit! What did she feel like? Half skin and half metal casing. Did it turn you on?"
"Owen!" Tosh exclaimed, visibly shocked by his words.
Ianto froze in his tracks. But he didn’t turn around. He just stood still. Then he placed the dirty clothes on a chair and straightened his tie. Without saying a word, he grabbed his coat and headed for the cogwheel door.
The others watched him as he left.
Owen laughed harshly and scoffed. "What the hell? Running away like that? He’s not even good enough for a proper fight!"
Shaking his head, he was about to turn back to his game when he noticed Jack standing in the archway to the lower levels. His arms were crossed, and he had a grim expression on his face.
Instinctively, Owen sat up straight and put his feet back on the floor. He felt like a schoolboy caught in the middle of a nasty prank.
The captain's heavy boots clanked on the metal stairs as he made his way to the workstations. As he walked past and opened the door to his office, he slowed down and asked, "Owen? May I have a word?" Then he disappeared through the glass door.
Owen looked around with trepidation, but Gwen and Toshiko ignored him. He realised he wouldn’t be able to expect any help from them.
Reluctantly, he got up and followed Jack.
"Close the door," the captain instructed. He sat behind his desk, watching Owen come in with a critical eye.
"What the hell was that for?" Jack asked after the other man had sat down. He was not in the mood to beat around the bush.
"What do you mean?" Owen feigned innocence.
"I overheard the entire exchange from the archway. What did Ianto do to deserve your vicious attacks? Pulling the Cyberman card is low, even by your standards."
Owen huffed.
"He’s got it coming."
Jack stared at him for a while, trying to figure out what was going on in his grumpy doctor's mind. Ever since he’d died, he had struggled with his new kind of existence. Jack understood; it had taken him a long time to accept immortality, too. He still struggled with it, if he was honest with himself.
Therefore, it was no surprise to him that Owen needed time to adjust to his new life as an undead being. But he couldn't understand why he had to vent his frustration on others. Maybe he should ask Gwen to look into anger management classes for Owen. Oh, how he would hate that!
The thought made Jack smile. Owen stared at him, confused.
"What?"
Jack grew serious again. "Nothing. I’m the one asking the questions here. Why the mean streak? What did Ianto do to you?"
"I really don’t understand what you see in him," Owen huffed, ignoring the question of his boss. "No matter what I say or how much I rile him up, he takes it stoically. I would expect him to hit me or something, but no - he just runs away!"
Jack glared at Owen, wondering how daft he was for not getting it.
"He doesn't lash out or fight back because he doesn't want to hurt you. If something breaks, it stays that way. Have you forgotten?" he admonished him. Did he really need to remind the dead man of his shortcomings?
Owen stared at him for a moment, realising his oversight. His shoulders slumped. "I spit all my venom at him, and yet the fool still thinks of others first."
"That’s Ianto Jones for you, you bloody idiot," Jack chuckled.
The doctor made a face, but his anger began to subside. "God, damn it! That well-behaved sod is driving me up the wall!
"You still haven't answered my question," Jack insisted. He needed to know what was happening. This had to stop right there.
Owen pouted as he struggled with the answer. Weighing lies against the truth.
"Since you won’t stop bugging me about it. It’s… I’m… shit - I’m envious, okay? Just a basic, feral reaction to something I want but can't have."
"And what is that?"
"Well, isn’t that obvious? Everybody can see it; you two are not very subtle!"
Jack's eyes widened.
"You mean us?" he exclaimed. Owen never missed an opportunity to make sexist jokes at his or Ianto's expense. Just for the sake of being hurtful. But Jack had never imagined this could have been born out of envy. "How can you know what we have, if we don't even know ourselves? We’ve never talked about it."
"Never?" Owen looked at him suspiciously.
"No."
Owen rolled his eyes.
"Unbelievable," he muttered.
"Doctor Owen Harper being envious? I thought I’d heard it all by now," Jack said, feeling stumped.
"I wonder why you’re so surprised, Jack. You're the one who knows about my fiancée; you know what I had with Katie: we were soulmates, she was the love of my life. We had that special bond."
A cloud of sadness passed over Jack's face. Of course, he remembered his doctor's fiancée and how she had died from an alien parasite.
"And I can see it with you guys. That special bond forming."
"Really?"
"Jack Harkness, you must be blind not to see what's going on here. You have what I've lost. What I will never have again."
Jack stared at him, unsure of what he was talking about. A bond? Hesitant to dig deeper into his own feelings, he decided to disregard the deeper meaning of Owen's words.
"The blind, following the blind, I guess," he teased instead. "Because, for some reason, you can’t see Toshiko."
Owen ploughed forward, almost shouting by now. "Bloody hell, I’m dead, Jack! Have you forgotten? I'll never experience love like that again!"
Jack looked at him. "I've got a feeling that wouldn't be a problem for her."
The doctor shook his head dismissively. "You don't know what you're talking about."
Jack sighed. 'I’m sorry you lost Katie. What happened to her was terribly unfair, but that is no reason to take it out on Ianto. As you so charmingly mentioned earlier, he also lost the love of his life. Just like you! Instead of fighting, you two should band together and form the Lonely Hearts Club!"
Owen huffed. Having introverted Ianto as his best mate was the last thing he wanted. He'd rather have a drinking buddy with whom he could pick up girls in the nightclubs on St Mary's Street.
"He almost killed us all with his Cyberman stunt," Owen lamented. By this point, he was just angry with the whole world. If he was honest with himself, he had forgiven Ianto a long time ago for what had happened with Lisa.
"You would’ve done the same if it had been Katie," Jack said softly.
"Shut up," Owen growled. "Don't try to get me to like him. Because, yes, he lost Lisa. But you two found each other. And now you're constantly rubbing it in our faces."
"We're still figuring things out," Jack said, sounding uncharacteristically uncertain. "As I said, neither of us is any good with talking about stuff like that."
Now Owen had to laugh. "More the hands-on type, huh?"
Jack chuckled. Owen got that right.
"It's nice, though, and I'm grateful for that. You should consider asking Tosh out. Could turn out to be something nice too, you know?" he said gently.
Owen stared at him, unsure how to respond. As it turned out, Jack didn’t expect an answer. The captain stood and stretched.
"I’m going out. See if I can work out where Ianto ran to. He's probably just upstairs in the Tourist Information Centre sorting leaflets," Jack said. Then he flashed the widest grin. "Time to cheer him up with the special Jack Harkness treatment."
Owen responded with another eye roll and a groan. "You two are incorrigible! Too much information!"
Jack laughed and set off in search of his lover.
~*~ End ~*~