Title: Parting
Author: godsdaisiechain
Fandom: Torchwood
Type: Fic
Characters/Pairing: Jack and Ianto, Jack/John Hart (implied),
Challenge: Crack
Word Count: ~2000
Rating: NC-17 (there's some very mild dubcon)
Summary: Ianto is not terribly happy with John or Jack after he has to explain the concept of delayed gratification.

This is a continuation of “Love, actually”  and “Atonement” but it stands alone as well.

Notes: The background is that John Hart stole a TARDIS and then went back and saved Ianto (accidentally making him immortal) and scraped up enough Jack scraps from the explosion in CoE that there are now two Jacks floating around.  It's set in the timeline between CoE and Miracle Day.

Refers to the tea/sex video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gp6alIALDHA.

Jack #2
Seeing Ianto’s grey sweaty face hit Jack like a bottle through his gut, a sensation he was sadly familiar with back in the days when he lived out of a suitcase.  John (who didn’t even have a suitcase to his name and was wearing Ianto’s oversized castoffs) moved forward easily, pressed a cool towel against Ianto’s brow.  “He’s looking better today.  Aren’t you, Eye Candy?” Ianto moaned faintly.  Jack sank to the floor, head in his hands.  John turned, bewildered.  “Jack?”  Jack—John mentally referred to him as Jack #2—didn’t move.

John’s face took on the thoughtful quality it had when he realized the horror of Jack’s inability to die.  It wasn’t simply the pain of coming back to life that would be an endless torment: it was facing the mortality of the people he loved, again and again, the fear of loss. “He’s healing, Jack,” John tried again, more gently this time.  “He’s getting better.”

“I didn’t believe you.”  Jack #2 looked up and John felt his heart twist at the tearful anguish on that well-beloved face.  “I didn’t believe he died. I thought you were winding me up. I knew he’d leave me behind one day. I just didn’t think it would be so soon.”

“It wasn’t easy,” John said.  “The antiviral wasn’t enough.  I had to…” John took a deep breath, explained without explaining because he was unsure of his reception.  Jack’s screams had nearly killed him. He’d stolen a TARDIS and gone to the Time Lords.  He refused to say how he convinced them, but he saved Ianto, left Jack guessing exactly how.  Maybe transfused him with substances he produced from Jack’s blood. Used regeneration somehow as they seemed to be part Time Lord. “I tried it on myself, first, of course.” 

“You what?!”

“It could have destroyed whatever was left of him if it had gone wrong.  I had enough of your DNA left in me to work with.”  John winked.  “Greetings, Jack Harkness.” He made air quotes.  “We’re all immortal now.  Or whatever it is we are.  Now come over here and kiss Eye Candy better.  He’s been asking for you.”

Jack stood unsteadily and approached the bed.  He kissed Ianto’s forehead, then turned and left the room.  He didn’t see Ianto’s eyes open and fill with tears or feel his fingers stretch as if to grab Jack’s hand.

John watched sadly, then patted Ianto’s shoulder.  “Admit it, Eye Candy, you prefer me above anyone anyway.”  Ianto rolled his eyes and fell back asleep.

Ianto
He thought he had never been so profoundly embarrassed in his life.  Until he almost started crying in front of the last person he had ever wanted to see him like this.  That virus had killed him once, and the things that had been done to cure him were almost as bad.  His stomach was empty, a mixed blessing as he hung over the side of the tub, dry heaving into a basin.

“I’m sorry, Eye Candy.  I’m sorry.”  John Hart, squatting down beside the tub—Ianto’s tub in Ianto’s flat—sounded as if he wanted to cry himself.  He had rolled up the sleeves, on one of Ianto’s shirts that couldn’t be neatly repaired after Jack had torn it off him one evening in the Hub.  Ianto retched, feeling as if his stomach was about to leave his throat.  “Just relax.  It’s all right.”

John kept one hand on Ianto’s bare back and the other on his forehead and the reassurance of it almost frightened Ianto. “Did I hurt you? Do you want more paracetamol?”  The water, draining from the tub gurgled sympathetically.  Ianto, shivered, watching the skin goosepimple over his ribs.

“N-no,” Ianto forced out between heaving breaths as John helped him stand up and wrapped him in a fluffy towel, keeping his hands above Ianto’s waist.  The towel had been warmed and Ianto sighed at the feeling of comfort, not just the towel, but the strong arm around him. “It’s just the sense of unwarranted and humiliating personal violation, John. Paracetamol won’t help that, I’m afraid.”

“Fair enough. I’m genuinely sorry,” said John, lifting him, too easily, over the side of the tub, and handing him a glass or water to rinse his mouth. “It’s okay, I’ll hold you up.  I couldn’t leave you like that.  It looked painful and who knows when Jack will be back to see to your carnal needs.”  He shifted so Ianto could set down his feet on the bath mat.  “Lucky sod.”

Ianto moved to keep from hitting his head on the doorway as they sidled out. “Haven’t you heard of cold water?  Or, I don’t know…privacy?”

John helped him into the chair next to his bed and draped a towel over his wet hair. “What are you talking about, Eye Candy?”

Ianto tried to keep himself decently covered.  “Delayed gratification. Tact. Appropriate personal boundaries.”

John adjusted the bath sheet and then rubbed Ianto’s head with another towel.  “Not really my sort of thing, Eye Candy. Besides, I tried not to wake you up.  You should never have been any the wiser.”

Ianto rubbed cream into his beard with trembling fingers. “Remind me to show you the tea video.  Unconscious people do not want tea.”

“Not seeing the connection,”  John hung the towels up neatly to dry.  Not for the first time, Ianto marveled at John’s willingness to keep the flat looking like his home. “I’m responsible for your well being, Eye Candy. You’ll be stronger in a day or two and can take care of that yourself.”

“I keep the laptop in a drawer in the kitchen. Bring it here and I’ll show you.”  John pulled back the covers. “You changed the sheets,” Ianto said, surprised.  John had chosen the cozy flannel sheets, the ones that Ianto loved to feel against his bare skin but Jack said smothered him.  “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” said John, propping him up with pillows and opening a box. “We’re out of jammy dodgers, but I have chocolate.  Dark.”  Ianto took a nougat, thought better of it and tried a mint.  He sniffed it, gagged, and then set it on the nighttable.   “Does does this delayed gratification involve actual gratification?” John called from the kitchen.

“Yes,” Ianto answered.  “A great deal of gratification.” John came back with a steaming mug of coffee.  Ianto’s nostrils twitched.  Coffee.  He wanted coffee with every fiber of his being. “Help me up,” he said.  “Where are my pyjamas?”

“Why?”

“I want coffee.”

“You can have this.”  Ianto rolled his eyes and sat up, wrapping the sheet around himself and swinging his feet to the floor.  “You can’t stand on your own, Eye Candy.”

“You can hold me up.”  John shrugged and helped Ianto into a t-shirt, a set of navy plaid pyjama bottoms, which fell off because he had grown too thin for the elastic, then a robe and socks. Ianto pulled up the pyjamas and tightened the drawstring.   “Stop staring.”

“You’re worth looking at,” John said, unabashedly.  “And from me that means something.  Nice pyjamas, by the way.”

Jack walked in about twenty minutes later to find Ianto operating his coffee machine, John’s arm slung casually around his waist.  Ianto yanked John’s hand up by the thumb as it strayed too near his bottom.  On the laptop, a video about sexual consent and tea played.

John noticed Jack first, raised his eyebrows. “Three days,” said John conversationally.  “Must have been quite a queue at the shop. Did you at least bring the biscuits?”  Jack pulled a crushed paper bag from his pocket.

“May I cut in?”  John slipped away and started inserting bread into a toaster.  Jack had been afraid to touch it after the first time he’d been to Ianto’s home.  The thing went up in sparks when you stuck knives in to retrieve the bread.  Jack wrapped a trembling arm around Ianto.  “Hey, you’re up.”

“Hello Jack,” Ianto said, keeping his eyes on the coffee machine.  John pretended to shiver.

“You want any help there?” Jack said, kissing Ianto’s cheek. “I could give you a shave?”

“No thanks.” It had been almost a week since he made coffee and he didn’t want anything to spoil it.  Especially not Jack. Either Jack.   He wasn’t sure why he was so angry that there were two, but he had begun to feel some sympathy for John Hart’s whining that Jack never wanted to spend time with him. And that made him even angrier.

“You okay?” Jack gathered Ianto closer, pressed his face into the damp hair, kissed him again.  Ianto felt himself responding to the closeness of the man he loved, grew annoyed with himself because he was too weak to pull away.

“Fine.  You?”

John, neatly setting out plates and butter, raised his eyebrows, his mouth in an “o,” considered several snide remarks, discarded them, and decided to leave the room.

Jack watched as a coffee cup filled, then another.  “I love you,” he said midway through the third.

“I know,” said Ianto. John had played him all the Star Wars movies, twice. Jack’s arm dropped and Ianto slumped against the counter. “A little help, please.  I can’t stand on my own.  Or did you think I wanted his arm around me?”

“Sorry,” said Jack, helping Ianto to the couch, then running back for the coffees.  “You know?! Is that all you have to say?”

“I saw your face the instant that thing tried to kill me.  I heard your voice,”  Ianto paused because his own voice was starting to shake.  “I know it wasn’t technically you, but it was you.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said.  “I was a complete jerk. I just hate ….”

“…the word couple,” Ianto said.  “So you said. Me too.”

Jack nodded, grasped his knee. “And you never had a chance to say so.  Gwen told me.”

“Gwen told you,” Ianto repeated, torn between gratitude that she cared enough to try to mend things between him and Jack and irritation that it took Gwen to tell Jack the right thing to do.  That he listened to her, allowed her in.

Jack opened his mouth, and Ianto was just beginning to hope that he’d apologize so that there could be crawling into his lap and cuddling, then drifting off to sleep in Jack’s arms, when John Hart walked back in, took a sip of coffee, and drained the mug.  He let loose a series of groans and collapsed on the couch next to them, arching his back dramatically, a stain spreading on the crotch of the pale grey pyjama trousers he’d borrowed without asking.  “Eye Candy, this coffee is orgasmic.  Literally. My coffee is swill by comparison.” 

Jack threw a pillow, catching John in the face.  “Yuck! Get a room, John.  That’s disgusting.”

John threw the pillow back, narrowly missing Jack’s head.  “I’m hurt.  You used to enjoy that. Couldn’t get enough of it.”  He set down the empty coffee cup.  “And admit it… you felt the same way the first time you drank this.”

“I’m not fully past the vomiting stage,” Ianto said.  “You can keep those pyjamas, by the way.”

John picked up a grey plaid blanket, tossed it into Ianto’s lap.  “Here, Eye Candy, cover up before you get a chill.”

“I have to tell you some things, and I’m afraid you won’t like me afterwards,” Jack said as Ianto struggled to unfold the heavy wool with one hand without spilling his coffee.  John stood up to help, blocking Ianto’s expression with an arm.

“I know,” Ianto and John said in unison.

“I was talking to Ianto,” Jack said.  John rolled his eyes as Ianto waved him off.

“I have something to tell you, too,” said John.  “But you already don’t like me.” Ianto snorted.  “Right, Eye Candy?”

Ianto rolled his eyes. “Speak for yourself, John.”

“I’m going to take a cold shower,” John said, kicking Jack in the leg.

Jack started, then pulled the blanket open over Ianto’s lap.  They sipped their coffee in silence while water ran in the bathroom.  “What was that all about?”

“Nothing important,” Ianto said.  Aside from the jammy dodgers, which were beginning to make him nervous, he hadn’t been able to keep anything down except buttered toast and chocolate, preferably dark, but Jack would have known that if he’d stayed around, like a man who cared about his partner.  “Where have you been?”  He could have kicked himself at how petulant that sounded.  “Anything interesting?”

“Looking for Grey.  He wasn’t in his cryo chamber when I checked.”

Even Ianto had to admit that finding a murderous brother bent on mass destruction was more pressing than holding a basin for him to vomit in.  “He escaped?” said Ianto, wondering why he couldn’t quite bring himself to care more.  It was Jack’s mess.  Let him clean up after himself for a change. “I thought everything was destroyed by that bomb.”

“John did something to prevent everything from blowing up.  Just me and the information booth.”  Ianto didn’t answer. “Are you angry with me? Ianto?”

Suddenly, Ianto was livid.  “You let me die without telling me that you loved me,” he said in a still, quiet tone.  Jack’s mouth opened.  “I know, technically it was the other one, but you would have done the same thing.”  Jack’s mouth closed. “I deserved the conversation about being a couple or whatever we wanted to call it.  Or didn’t want to call it. Or not.”  His face went pink and he lifted his mug of coffee to his mouth, drank.  “I know.  I know you have a job to do, and looking for your brother is horrible, worse than anything I can imagine, and I’m not all alone, but you didn’t even call. Not me. Not John.”

Jack grasped at the last straw. “He could have lied.”

“I checked his wrist strap.”  Jack’s eyebrows lifted.

“I didn’t think you knew how to do that.”

“I know how to do a lot of things you don’t know about.”  Jack sighed and took Ianto’s hand.

“Ianto,” Jack said.  “I told you once that the man I am now is what’s important.  That man was what I was proud of.  I’ve done other things, though. One of the worst of them was right in that room with us.  And that’s what killed you—something I did.  I can’t pretend to be just the man I’m proud of any more.  There are things I have to take care of and I can’t involve people who I care about, who love me, especially not you.”

Ianto noted inwardly that Jack seemed to distinguish between ‘care about’ and ‘love.’   “So you didn’t say you loved me and you ran away when I needed you because you feel unworthy?”

“And some other things,” Jack said.  “I don’t want you to know.  I don’t want that for you.”

They looked at each other for a long time before Jack looked down.  “I think you’d better go deal with your other problems, Jack,” Ianto said. “I’m not strong enough for this. I don’t have anything more to give you just now.”

“I’m sorry,” Jack said, lifting Ianto’s hand and kissing the back of it.  “I do love you.”

“I know,” Ianto said.  “And I understand, but you’d better go.” He let Jack hug him and kiss his head, hating himself for craving that beloved touch, for wanting to curl up in his arms and sleep.

John reappeared, wrapped in Ianto’s spare robe, the one he’d kept around for Jack (who had never used it, preferring to wander around the flat naked), a towel over his wet hair, just as the door closed and the toaster popped open.  “Where’s Jack? Did you send him back out for biscuits that weren’t crushed…” His voice trailed off as he caught sight of the expression on Ianto’s face.

Ianto fought back tears, feeling abject shame at his own helplessness for the second time that day.  John eased himself down on the couch, the towel dropping from his head into Ianto’s lap. “Do you want that paracetamol?” Ianto opened his mouth but nothing would come out. John’s face puckered in concern.  He reached out and touched Ianto’s knee. “Ianto? What’s wrong?”

It was the first time John had ever used his name, and Ianto, exhausted from sitting up and dealing with Jack, bowed his head and sobbed, just once. He could not, would not, let himself really cry in front of John Hart. Startled, John squeezed his shoulder. “I sent him away.”

John nodded.  “Good for you, Eye Candy. Good for you.”  Ianto looked up in shock at the warm, approving tone.  It was the first time John had ever spoken to him as if to an equal. “I didn’t think you’d have it in you, hero-worshipping him the way you do.  He should have told you about his past before you got attached. Told you who he really is. It was wrong of him.” John let go and busied himself with the toast while Ianto wiped his face with the towel.  “You deserved a bit more of a chance.”

“In all fairness, I was a broken shell when Jack and I started up,” Ianto said.

“He’s had years,” John replied, reappearing with a plate of cinnamon toast triangles and strawberry jam toast sandwiches, all with the crusts cut off. “Toast.”

“I didn’t believe you when you said you were a good wife,” Ianto said, waggling a piece of toast. “Even I’m impressed.” John chuckled. Ianto continued.  “When you first asked us if we knew about Jack.  You really meant it, that we didn’t know who we were protecting and why.  It wasn’t just jealousy.”  He took a bite of toast.  “Maybe a bit, but not just.  Wow, this is tasty.”

“Eye Candy, you are some kind of all right.  Oi!  Don’t hog the jam ones.”