Title: Seriously Jack, don't read it

Fandom: Torchwood
Prompts: Diary, Butt, Breakdown
Challenge: fan_flashworks 231 (amnesty)
Characters: Mostly Ianto Jones and Jack Harkness
. Others make an appearance...
Length: 1615

Content notes:
Lots of angst, quite some fluff, stopwatch of course. No smut… M/M relationship in the (very) slow build.
Author notes:
Vying for the Complexity Theorist Badge…once again — 3 more to go!
The very first piece of fanfic I ever wrote was Ianto’s Diary, which you can read here on AO3. Going back to that has been quite the trip down memory lane. I’ve been watching “They keep killing Suzie” again and realized I was probably completely wrong about the time line of Ianto/Jack’s relationship but never mind, I still like what I came up with very much. So here is a new piece to add to it, written especially for the challenge, this time more in Jack’s POV. I hope you enjoy it!
Factoid about the meaning of Ianto: I found that on some crap French website about baby names and nowhere else. It had some vague predictions about what the baby’s character would be like if called Ianto and it fitted Jones pretty well so I decided to go with it.
Summary: 


Jack sauntered into the hub. Owen glared at him. How the man could look so cheerful after spending the last few hours killing Suzie over and over again was beyond him.
“All right everyone, it’s been a trying night - and morning, so, day off. Go home, rest, have fun. Be back tomorrow!”
Gwen eyed him suspiciously. “What are you so chirpy about?”
“Nothing.”
“Right. Nothing. Well, I’m off. At least one of us has an actual life.”
“No need to rub it in our faces.” Owen was still glaring but he took off after her. Toshiko watched them sadly and left in their tow, waving Jack good bye.
Jack made sure they were well away and out of the parking lot before starting to fuss in his office. The place didn’t quite look like his officey-fantasies of high-heeled secretaries and suited errand boys, of printers and rulers. He pushed the couch away in a corner and dragged the heavy desk in a more central position, making sure he had tape, staples, condoms and other necessary tools of a busy desk at hand.
He checked his watch. Fifteen minutes had lapsed, what could possibly… he looked up and saw Ianto crumbling on the floor, right in front of the steps that led up to his office. Jack froze for a second then rushed to him, scared that Suzie might have left some other trap in the Hub. He was not losing another member of the team today, especially not Ianto.
As soon as he reached him, he realized that Ianto was not injured, at least not physically. He was sobbing uncontrollably and Jack reached for his face, petting his hair soothingly and putting his arm around his shoulder, dragging him in a crushing embrace. He was mumbling soft sweet nothings in his ear, lapsing back in his mother tongue without ever realizing. All would be well and it was good to let it all go, he was safe now and he could just cry it all out and in the morning, he would shrug it off and go on with his life.
Ianto quieted but Jack didn’t move. He had a nasty cramp in his left calf and another looming in his right butt. He wasn’t ready to let go just yet though, wasn’t sure he was ever going to be, now that he had finally managed to lay his hands on the handsome Welsh. Anyway, pain was an old companion, one he’d gotten used to. He didn’t so much as twitch.
Ianto started sobbing again and Jack went with it, soothing him as best he could, letting the overflow of emotions ebb and flow, until the tide evened and Ianto came to his senses in his arms.
“Feeling better?”
Ianto blushed slightly, the change barely noticeable against his flushed cheeks. He made to rise and Jack helped him on his feet, wincing as his calf twinged viciously.
“Come on, let’s get to a more decent seat.” He led Ianto to the couch in his office, not sure which of them was supporting the other. Pain might be a old companion but she could be a bitch sometimes. He hid his limp as best he could and dropped Ianto unceremoniously on the plump cushions.
“Ianto? Ianto!” Ianto stared at him blandly. “Gimme that stopwatch would you?”
Ianto’s expression changed slowly, going through a whole spectrum of questioning to uncertain then to disbelieving and ending up to full horrified. Jack played back his last words, wondering what could trigger such a reaction, took in Ianto’s state and it suddenly dawned on him that this actually qualified as harassment. He dropped to his knees, desperate to make Ianto understand that no, he would never ever try to force him into any kind of sexual activity without his consent, hell, without his enthusiastic consent! Not in a million years and he was the only one in the universe susceptible to understand such a vast span of time.
He realized he was stuttering when he saw Ianto’s face crunch up into a smirk that quickly turned into a nervous kind of laughter. It was contagious and Jack’s belly was hurting from the force of it. He finally managed to get the bloody stopwatch and boil up a kettle. He made tea absentmindedly, using some of his ‘special’ stash. He was studying the still giggling Ianto out of the corner of his eyes when it dawned on him. He ruthlessly quenched the realization as soon as it hit him. He couldn’t afford to have feelings, of any kind, for anyone. All he would get for it was the most acute pain of all and devastating grief, once again. And he wouldn’t even be able to hope that he would die from heartache.
He shrugged the thought away and brought Ianto a smoking mug. They sat in silence a little while, sipping the blistering hot tea.
“This tea is good. I hope you won’t make a habit of brewing it or I’ll be looking for a job soon!”
“Oh I shouldn’t worry, your coffee has me begging on my knees. Anyway, I’ve been thinking that we should give you more responsibilities. Manning the front desk is all well and good but we could use your abilities on the field. I was gonna tell you tomorrow…” Jack let his sentence die on his lips when he heard a faint snoring.
The young man had actually fallen asleep while he was talking to him! Rolling his eyes theatrically, Jack poked his arm but didn’t even roused a grunt. This was definitely not how he had expected the evening to go. Perhaps he should start the stopwatch and see how long Ianto was gonna stay under? Jack took off Ianto’s tie and managed to wrestle him out of his jacket. He briefly considered taking off his pants but thought better of it. He very much wanted to see the appetizing man without a stitch on but he would wait happily until Ianto was conscious enough to squeal endearingly when he fondled his naked butt. He settled with helping him slide down on the cushions to let him rest comfortably.
He stayed seated at his feet a while, watching the youngling sleep, his face peaceful and free of all the anguish that distorted it mere minutes before. Jack was petting his hair absentmindedly, miles away from 21st century Earth, humming a lullaby that didn’t exist yet when he noticed a square shape distorting the pocket of the discarded jacket. Curious as ever, he reached and grabbed it.
It was a little notebook, plain and black. Jack didn’t even pause to consider before he opened it. He smiled at the warning on the first page. Had Ianto met him? Surely he realized that telling him not to do something was the surest way to make him want to do it. From his point of view, it was practically an invitation.
He began shuffling through it, not really expecting anything. What he found gave him pause though. The amount of data Ianto had collected on the team before he approached them was mind boggling. He had discovered many things that even he didn’t know about his own team and gosh, even a few that he had thought were safely ignored by everyone but himself. Nothing exactly compromising of course, not even anything leading to his true identity but still, there was clearly much more to Ianto than met the eye.
It seemed Ianto had made a point of listing every tiniest time Jack had shamelessly flirted with him or referred to his handsome suited butt. He had made pros and cons lists about his own goddamn suits, apparently in an effort to find out which one was Jack’s favorite. Apart from the endless boring lists (there was even a list of coffee beans that apparently were part of his blend recipe) there were a few scattered entries, numbered, that were more some sort of reflexions. He smiled at entry 9 as he had indeed checked the meaning of his name. The hidden one was such a perfect fit for him it was almost laughable.
He skipped quickly everything pertaining to Lisa, not quite comfortable with the heart wrenching loss that seeped through the pages. He tried reading only what Ianto had written down about him but the confusion Ianto felt about his orientation and the despair laced through his attraction to Jack made it just as uncomfortable to read. He went over a few more pages then finally gave up when he came across an entry talking about how Ianto felt he’d betrayed everyone, Lisa, Jack, the team and mostly himself. No wonder he had a breakdown as he was about to finally have sex with him. Actually the wonder was how this didn’t happen months ago.
Jack carefully put the diary back where he’d found it and rose, watching the sleeping man with an odd expression that on anyone but Jack would have been loving and tender. Ianto looked like he was gonna go around the clock and then some. Jack fetched his coat from the peg. He was about to don it and leave but instead draped it over the sleeping Welsh on a spur. He scribbled a little note and set it with the stopwatch were he knew Ianto would find it. Only then did he leave, switching off the lights and retiring to a room of the Hub he’d claimed as his own many years ago. When he finally managed to get some sleep, it was uneasy and riddled with dreams of the countless deaths that seemed to overshadow his life constantly.