They had been…different for a week, and gradually their research into the device had been shoved to the back burner. It wasn’t like the rift went on holiday, and they had learned how to stay alive, even if they weren’t exactly coping.
They were Torchwood, weird was what they did. So Jack sat in his office, much too early in the morning, keeping the younger man on the couch company.
Jack looked up from his work and watched Ianto sleep, listening to the slow, steady thumping of his heart. He looked peaceful. Relaxed. Face free of worry, and annoyance.
It was in quiet moments like this that Jack noticed just how young Ianto looked, like he wasn't old enough to be in the work force, let alone be the one keeping a secret organization running single handedly on fresh brew and organization.
Ianto had been handling the situation well, after the first few screaming matches. Still all hot coffee and quiet charm. A little
quieter perhaps, a little closer. Jack shook him self and tried to concentrate on his work again.
He was getting too used to this.
It had been seven days since they had picked up the Deviled Egg. Jack had protested the name at first, but had insisted, knowing that the pun would amuse Ianto, and it had.
The Egg had zapped them and Jack was getting far too used to having Ianto be attached at the hip with him and . Tosh had said it was instinct. Some primal urge that kept them close, nearly always aware of each other. Watching, Listening, checking in on. Ianto was just as bad as him and .
It wouldn't last. It couldn't. These things never did. and Ianto only went home briefly, packing up bags of clothes, and in
Ianto’s case watering plants. Until they learned how to reverse the device’s effects they had decided it was safer to stay together. in Jack’s room, Ianto stubbornly on the couch. Jack had worried, until Ianto admitted the couch was shades more comfortable than the bed back at his flat had ever been.
But soon, Jack realized, he and would learn to control these powers and Ianto and would go home to their own apartments. Things would return to normal. Or they would find out how to reverse it, and things would go back to normal. Or they'd all die and Gwen and Tosh would have to go hunt down and recruit some new people to take over and go back to normal.
Normal seemed to be unavoidable.
Whatever happened he knew he wasn't going to be able to keep this screwed up situation that managed to be wrong, and yet still comforting. The universe just seemed to hate him too much. Whenever he was really happy somewhere with someone, something came along and snatched it away from him.
He glanced up at the clock and saw the time. Almost 6 a.m. Ianto would be waking any minute. The man, when he wasn't drop dead tired, had an internal clock that bordered on scary. Jack sometimes wondered if the stopwatch was just for effect.
They'd already fallen into a schedule. Jack would get up around 4, demanded company in bed if he had to stay at the hub. Jack would work quietly on paperwork, and watch over Ianto. Ianto would get up at 6, shower, dress, feed Myfanwy and the weevils, and then go back to bed for another hour, sitting carefully to avoid wrinkling his suit. When Jack had suggested Ianto just sleep until 7 he was rewarded with a disbelieving look, and a lecture about the importance of feeding schedules.
When Ianto woke the second time, Jack put away the paperwork and they would work on strengthening Ianto’s shields.
Tosh and Gwen would get in eventually and Ianto disappeared, off to fix coffee and tend to his own work for a while. Jack would go down and physically drag out of bed and into the showers, and they'd all go about they're normal daily work. After hours Ianto would order dinner and the rest of the evening was devoted to testing and learning to control their senses.
It was nice. It was...comfortable. Quickly becoming a scary sort of domestic. Ianto and were almost never out of sensing range. Most of the time they were within a few yards of touching range.
That was another thing he was going to hate to have to give up. The constant touching. Ianto still dug his heels in and refused to so much as enter his room, but the rest of the time the touching was steady. A brush on the back walking by, a pet when setting down a mug of coffee, a touch on the shoulder while leaning over to look at something, a grounding, comforting hand on the arm while working on controlling his senses.
Of course, it was frustrating too. No matter how much he and worked on getting a handle on their senses, they had failed to progress beyond the quick impersonal morning hand jobs in the shower. Small favors and all that, but Jack was beginning to climb the walls. Even those were risky. had zoned the last time, and wouldn’t come around until Ianto dragged him out and talked him down. Once Ianto had realized their problem he had ‘hmmed’ sympathetically, promised to do further research, and then suggested, jokingly, that they take up knitting.
The little touches were as maddening as they were comforting. Maybe he was just noticing something that was normal before, more now because of his senses, but god it would kill him when Ianto and would no longer be there 24/7. Of course like the rest of them they were already there most of the time. The outside world pretty much ceased to exist when you joined Torchwood. But still they would leave. Go home, do whatever they did when they weren’t at the hub.
Jack looked up again as he heard Ianto start to move, stretching and yawning.
"Morning, Ianto." Jack said, watching as Ianto rose from the couch and folded his blanket neatly, sliding it and the pillow underneath the furniture. His pajama bottoms were slung low on his hips, slightly twisted from a restless sleep. His shirt was wrinkled, and rose as he stretched, revealing a pale sliver of skin above the waistband of his pants.
“Morning, Sir. Jack” Ianto amended. “Coffee?” The Welshman asked, already collecting the scattered cups from the day before.
“Please.” Jack smiled, leaning slightly into the arm that brushed his shoulder. “That sounds nice.”
Ianto smiled and was out the door, rubbing a hand through his tousled hair.
Maybe it would stay this way for a little while longer.