Title: “Something Like Hope”

Author: amazonqueenkate.livejournal.com

Rating: R; sex, swearing, mpreg

Posted to: jackxianto, torchwoodcoffee, torchwood_fic, jantolution

“Hurry up.”

“Can’t a dead man get a little patience?”

“My daily quota has expired.”

“And yet, you’re still asking quite a lot of me.”

“I’m asking for you to do a simple scan.”

“For something that isn’t even medically logical. You understand that, right?” Owen asked, fiddling with a piece of expensive, high-tech-looking equipment. The hub was dark, save from the glow of monitors and projections all around the medical recess.

“And a Weevil makes logical sense?”

“Medically,” he replied without looking up, “a Weevil is perfectly logical. Probable? No, not in our world. But in another world, with other genomes and mutations, evolution could quite easily lead us to a Weevil.”

“That’s comforting.”

“You asked.”

“Consider it rhetorical.”

“A bit late for that.” He attached the final wire to an electrode. “Take off your shirt.”

“I always wondered what women saw in you. Wonderful pillow talk.”

“Do you want me to call Jack?”

“…no.”

“Then take off your shirt.”

There was a long pause. Somewhere, up the stairs and at one of the stations, something beeped, probably one of the many gadgets that were strewn about Tosh’s work station. There’d been a spike in rift activity that Jack, Gwen, and Toshiko were chasing. Owen had stayed behind to autopsy a small creature they had found dead on the side of the road – or, as he’d called it, “to clean and cook alien roadkill”. Said “roadkill” looked something like a cross between a possum and a dingo, only less “giant rat” and more “middle-sized, dog-like, blind…thing.”

And as for Ianto:

“Ow,” he muttered when Owen reached over and pressed the electrodes to his stomach. “Gentle.”

“That was gentle,” Owen informed him, adjusting the dial on one. They looked like the same electrodes middle-aged men in for heart exams strapped to their chest before running five kilometers on a treadmill, only these had the capacity for real-time imaging of the organs and tissues inside the body. Owen used the technology to get a good look at alien creatures before pressing scalpels into their flesh. Most the time, it was fairly successful.

Except for the incident with the two-bodied –

“Ow.” Ianto flinched again while Owen pressed his good fingers into the bulge that had overtaken Ianto’s middle. He’d always had the smallest bit of a paunch – a love of biscuits and not-necessarily-long-distance-runs did that to a man – but this was more pronounced and focused, an actual swell in his skin.

“You really are swollen.”

“Not something I would lie about.”

“Well, no offense, mate, but you were the one who told me you’d got an infection from a paper cut.” Owen didn’t take his hands away. They were cold, and Ianto tipped his head back to look at the ceiling. “I take it with a grain of salt.”

“Do you do the same for yourself? ‘No pulse, might be dead’?”

“I can call Jack.”

“I can shoot you.”

There was a beat of pause before Owen looked up and grinned. “I almost like you like this.”

To which Ianto rolled his eyes. “Let’s get this over with.”

“All right. No need to be so touchy. Unless it’s the hormones.”

“Shooting.”

“Already dead.”

“Point.”

The ceiling, Ianto noticed as he sat back on his elbows and studied it, was higher in the medical room – if a strange recess in the floor could be called a room at all – and looked like it had some sort of green-black mold in a corner. Lovely. He wondered briefly if anyone else had ever noticed it, but no, that wasn’t likely, seeing as much of Owen’s clientele ran in the “thoroughly dead” crowd. And it certainly wasn’t likely that Suzie or anyone else they’d brought back to life over the years had taken the time to admire nature’s interior design. More likely, Ianto would be the first and last person to notice or care, and in a few minutes he would be able to push it aside and start the coffee for when Jack and the others were –

“Bloody hell,” Owen said.

Ianto’s head snapped up and he looked at Owen first. For a dead man, he wore “utter shock” quite comfortably. Wide eyes, dropped jaw, disbelieving stare at the monitor. An Oscar-winning performance. It certainly made Ianto’s heart leap into his throat.

It took a good thirty seconds to breathe properly again, and another thirty to turn his head the last few feet and look at the monitor.

In a way, it was lucky that Owen hadn’t taken advantage of the situation and decided to project the image onto the wall like he did with other full-body scans, a larger-than-life representation of Ianto’s innards. Someday, he’d probably thank Owen (mentally and only mentally) for that small show of – what? Kindness? More likely, it was just a lack of forethought. Whatever it was, it meant the live video feed of his internal organs only popped up as a window on a seventeen-inch monitor. Far less intimidating, save for its contents.

Those contents being live-action footage of a strange-shaped blotch, neatly contained in some sort of sac and curled into itself in a spot between some of Ianto’s most beloved vital organs.

A blotch, it was worth noting, with a head. And limbs. And what looked a frightening lot like fingers and toes.

“This isn’t possible,” Owen murmured, very quietly.

“Logical.” Ianto’s own voice sounded foreign to his ears, like he was saying it into a vacuum. “Not medically logical, but…possible.”

“This is a fine time to be mocking me, now that you’re – “

“Don’t say it.”

“What do you mean, ‘don’t say it’?” Owen gestured to the monitor. “I’m staring at your fucking – I don’t even know what to call it! I don’t know how it happened! Bloody hell, just when I thought I couldn’t miss drinking any more than I already did.” He looked at the monitor again. The headed-, armed-, legged-, fingered- and toed-blotch moved and he stepped bodily away from it, like it might come get him. “We need to call Jack,” he decided. “Where’s my mobile? We’ll call Jack, and he’ll – “

Ianto sat all the way up and swung his legs off the end of the cot. “No,” he said firmly.

“No?” Owen stared at him. “Let me explain this to you in layman’s terms, because I don’t think you understand. That – “ He jabbed a finger to the monitor. “ – is a fetus. In about twenty-four, twenty-five weeks, it will decide it’s time to come out and play. In the meantime, you will slowly morph into a very round version of yourself, and unless you intend for the giant up the beanstalk to use you for ten-pin, people will notice.” His finger moved to the projection on the wall. Ianto hadn’t noticed before that the display was of his own medical records. He’d been admiring the moldy ceiling, after all. “You are a man, Ianto. You have a man’s body. Slim hips, prostate gland, penis and testicles, and most notably, no birth canal. Meaning that when Ianto Jr. decides she’s sick of her own personal swimming pool, she’s not going to have an exit strategy. Jack needs to know so we can start going through the steps of getting this taken – “

“No,” Ianto repeated.

“Ianto, you don’t – “

“You are not going to call Jack.” Ianto pulled off the electrodes and slid off the edge of the cot. The computer whined, protesting the sudden lack of connection, and now there were angry red marks on his pale skin, three little, perfect circles. He wanted to rub them out, but he was swollen, sore, and suddenly irritable. “This is my responsibility, and I will take care of it.”

“You’re not quite the person to be taking care of this. It’s like Gwen and the Nostravite. You’re not thinking clearly.”

Ianto set his jaw and tried not to tighten his fists any further than he already had. “Do not compare me to Gwen,” he said, and reached for his buttons. “I’m going to start a pot of coffee. Jack and the others will be back soon.”

“Ianto – “

“And then, I have work to do.”

The hub was so empty, so silent, that his footsteps echoed as he climbed out of the recess and headed towards the work stations.

He was almost completely into the safety of the shadows when Owen said, “Next time, for god’s sake, use a rubber.”

Ianto froze and grit his teeth. “Thanks for the suggestion,” he muttered, and stalked off.

===

Retrospectively, it happened on a Thursday.

Ianto couldn’t remember, not clearly, why they’d gone into the pub. Gwen had been on the trail of an alien all day and they’d been tracing her rift signature through much of Cardiff, running through alleyways and finding a half-dozen dead ends. It would have been bearable, even acceptable, had the alien not been responsible for four grisly murders in the last twenty-four hours. She – Gwen had seen her, briefly, and swore she was a very pretty blonde in very tight jeans – chose her victims at what appeared to be random but still killed them carefully, painstakingly, by gradual strangulation.

Before cutting them open and drinking their blood as one would drink the broth from a cup of soup. “Lovely, that,” Owen had commented.

Owen, Gwen, and Toshiko had split up around the pub, but Jack had suggested he go in and set themselves as patrons. Two of the four deaths had happened in public restrooms. For an alien, she had a fairly consistent and well-planned M.O.

So while Jack had prowled through the pub, slipping towards the back room and loading dock, Ianto’d settled himself on a stool, ordered a soda with lime (so it almost looked alcoholic), and listened to Tosh and Gwen discuss the relative merits of “good” versus “bad” boys on his earpiece.

(Jack, in the end, had insisted that the good boys were more eager to please, and Ianto’d nearly inhaled soda through his nose.)

“It’s always sad when I see a good-looking man like you sitting alone at a bar,” a voice had commented, and Ianto had swung around to see a very attractive blonde with an American accent settle down onto the stool next to him. Her skirt was entirely too short and her blouse entirely too low-cut, and it had taken all his hard-learned decorum not to comment on exactly how many men were craning their necks to see down the grand canyon she’d created.

As it stood, he was guilty of looking.

“I – thank you,” he’d said, and then forced a smile.

“No, really. I mean it.” She reached over and put a hand on his wrist. Her fingers were unbearably hot. “You’re very good looking. I bet you hear that often.”

“From time to time.”

“Don’t you have a girlfriend to come drink with you?’ Her smile twisted, almost wickedly. Ianto glanced over his shoulder as discreetly as he could. No sign of the others, and the earpiece had gone dead. Fabulous. Absolutely no escape strategy, just radio silence. “Or maybe you prefer men. A boyfriend.”

“It’s complicated.” He’d said it as blandly as possible, and she’d sighed as an initial response.

“It’s always the most attractive ones. I’m so disappointed.” Long fingernails trailed over his knuckles. In order to pull his hand away, he reached for his glass and swallowed down the last half of his drink. “Does your boyfriend play well with others?”

Ianto forced a little smirk. “He does. I don’t.”

“Oh, cheeky!”

“I think you’re the cheeky one.”

To anyone else in the bar, it had to look innocent: a tall man with dark hair in a huge military coat sliding into the space between stools, his right side pressed up against the back of the scantily-clad blonde. Only Ianto, sitting so close, could see Jack’s pistol pressing into the small of her back.

She gasped and formed a perfect little “O” with her lips. “Why, Captain. I always thought you were happier to see the boys.”

Jack smiled, one of his dark, almost filthy smiles, and leaned in close to her. “Listen, and listen carefully,” he murmured, and his voice was so low and so deep that Ianto had to shift how he was sitting. “Ianto here is going to pay for his drink and you’re going to walk out with us. If you’re lucky, I won’t decide to shoot you before we get to the car.”

“And if I’m unlucky?”

Jack’s coat shifted. The pistol creased her shirt, dimpled her skin. “You don’t want to know.”

For a moment, she had put a polished nail to the corner of her mouth. Pretended, or so it seemed, to think about it. “I suppose I should go quietly, then,” she replied, and slid around on her stool just quickly enough that Jack had to fumble to stow the gun. “It’s a shame, though. I wanted to buy Ianto a drink.”

“We take rainchecks,” Jack had assured her, and after Ianto laid a bill on the bar, they’d left.

The rest of the evening had been business as usual. Owen subdued her in the SVU, she was transferred to the hub, and life carried on as it always had. Ianto filled out the proper paperwork, turned it in for Jack’s approval, filed it away, and ended up pressed against the file cabinets with his trousers and shorts around his knees and Jack’s mouth on the back of his neck.

Not a bad way to spend one’s Thursday.

Of course, that had been just over three months ago. He’d remembered because they’d all been in winter gear and left the hub for their beds to a slushy, disorganized kind of Cardiff snow, as though Mother Nature hadn’t been sure what she was doing. Now, Gwen brought in Easter-colored candies and daytime television programs referenced Jesus Christ, Lord and Savior far too often. Toshiko was preparing the network for the summer time change.

Such simple things, and all things Ianto thought of as he pushed open the door to the vaults. The dim lighting flickered, a faulty bulb in one of the overhead lights. Janet the Weevil hissed at him and he rolled his eyes, pulling over a crate so he could reach up and tighten the –

“Why, hello, Ianto.”

In those last three months, the blonde alien with the human form had said very little about herself. She sat quietly in her bare cell, ate her meals without complaint, and uttered little besides “Nice to see you” when someone came around to collect her paper plate or provide fresh toilet roll. She’d given no name, no world of origin, no reason for the murders. She’d never even bothered to explain why she drank human blood, since it was clear she didn’t rely on it to survive. Sandwiches and biscuits did just as well. And, perhaps more notably, her silence only ever increased when Ianto was the delivery boy. Rarely did he even get a glance.

Which meant that Ianto froze, his fingers close to the warm bulb, and glanced in her direction at the sound of her voice. It was late. She kept human hours and should have been asleep. When their eyes met, she smiled. “I was wondering when you’d come to see me. I’d assumed you’d figure it out by now.”

“I guess you overestimated me.” Ianto stepped off the crate and moved to stand in front of the glass. She was sitting comfortably on the cot, legs crossed and hands folded over her thigh, as though she was about to conduct a talk on reducing one’s carbon footprint.

“Well, I figured that if this is the mighty Torchwood, you would assume I’d done something to you when you had the first symptoms.” She grinned, and it was dark. Ianto’s stomach nearly turned. “What were the first symptoms? The fatigue? No, you’d blame that on Captain Harkness working you too hard. The vomiting, I’m sure. Men always have the hardest time with the vomiting. Such strong creatures, you human men. Can’t deal with a little bit of morning sickness.”

Ianto took in a deep breath and let it slowly out. Calm was important. At any moment, Jack could arrive back to the hub and glance at the CCTV. He’d wonder what was going on if Ianto was found screaming, pounding on the glass, or opening the cell to shoot her cleanly in the forehead. He couldn’t have that. He wasn’t ready to explain himself. “Tell me what you did to me.”

“And then,” she continued, watching him, “the swelling. I can see it under your coat.” He shifted and smoothed his jacket. “Oh, you’re trying to hide it. That’s so cute! Afraid to tell your captain that you’re having his baby? Or maybe that’s it. Maybe it’s not his baby. That doctor, he’s got that slim shape, I wonder – “

“Tell me what you did to me!” Ianto’s voice echoed against concrete, glass, and steel. Janet, startled, roared and slammed hands into the glass. Ianto looked at her and then away, focused on the alien. His hands shook and he didn’t know why.

She shook her head. “Tsk tsk, Mr. Jones. You’re so rude. No please, no thank you, no offer of tea. I thought Wales was home to real hospitality. This almost makes me wish I’d never come.”

“Tell me!”

“No.”

“You have to tell me!” He slammed his hand into the glass. “How did you do this?”

There was a long silence, and for a moment, it seemed the conversation was over. The alien was still smiling, her eyes still trained on Ianto, and the quiet stretched through the whole vault. Finally, she slid off her cot and walked over. Glass aside, there was perhaps a foot and half of space between them.

She pressed her hand to the glass, against the shape of Ianto’s. He pulled it away, leaving only a palm-print behind. He felt the heat of her skin even through the thick, unbreakable pane.

“Even if I told you,” she said, remarkably calm, “it wouldn’t matter.”

“Why wouldn’t it matter?” he demanded.

“Have your pretty Asian friend look up ‘Gratar’ in the Torchwood database. I’m fairly sure Captain Harkness can explain from there.”

“You didn’t – “

“Oh, Ianto.” She clucked her tongue again. “I think you’re hardly in the position to be making demands of me. If anything, I should be making demands of you.” Her eyes locked with his. “You want to know everything? You want to know how to stop this? Let me free. I’ll walk the streets, and you won’t have to worry about how your precious Captain feels about fatherhood.” She smiled. It was almost innocent. “You’re thinking about it now. What he’ll say. How he’ll react. He doesn’t want to be tied down. He wants to sow all the wild oats he can. And now, his little teaboy is – “

“Ianto?”

Ianto nearly leapt out of his skin at the sound of Jack’s voice, but whirling around revealed he wasn’t there. He glanced over his shoulder, up at the ceiling, and then realized Jack was on the intercom, nowhere near him. He exhaled slowly. “I’m here.”

“Come upstairs. You won’t believe what we found.” There was a pause in the Jack’s sudden enthusiasm. “What are you doing in the vault, anyway?”

He glanced at the alien. She was back to sitting on her cot, smiling serenely.

“Just visiting the zoo animals.”

===

“‘Gratar’?” Toshiko asked, frowning. “Are you sure that’s what she said?”

“I just can’t believe you got her to talk,” Gwen commented, leaning back in her seat. “Every time I go down there, it’s lucky if she looks at me twice. You must have the magic touch.”

“I attract military officers and homicidal aliens. Variety is the spice of life.”

“It’s going to take a few minutes to run this search.”

“I can wait.”

It was amazing how busy the hub could be even in a stretch of time with no Weevils, no new alien technology, no strange rift anomalies or creatures of the night crawling out of the darkness. Ianto’d been forced to wait three days until he could approach Toshiko with what the alien had told him. Three days of Owen glancing warily at him, of his stomach jumping every time Jack put a hand on his shoulder, of spilling tea and not being able to explain why, and of the blonde alien smiling placidly at him when he came into the cell block to feed her and Janet, never saying another word.

But now, with Owen busily practicing singularity scalpel accuracy (in the safety of the firing range, where no one could become collateral damage) and Jack in his office, presumably up to his nose in paperwork (he’d been in a three-hour phone argument that morning with a high-ranking U.N.I.T. officer), it was perfectly safe.

“What are we looking up?” Jack asked from somewhere behind Ianto.

Ianto flinched but managed to not jump right out of his suit coat. When he did look back, Jack was standing comfortably behind both he and Tosh, a cup of coffee in his hand and one of his smug, all-knowing smiles plastered across his face.

“Uh-oh. Did I catch you during another porn search? The rule is that you’re supposed to call me down to join – “

“The alien talked to Ianto,” Gwen cut in. “She told him that he should look up something called ‘Grutur.’”

“‘Gratar’.” How Ianto managed to repeat it with half a smile on his face, he wasn’t sure.

What he was sure of was the way Jack’s own expression changed as soon as he said it. The smugness and certainty was gone from his face entirely. “What else did she say?”

“Not much.”

“Ianto, this is very important. What else did she say to you?”

“Just that I should have Tosh look up ‘Gratar’ if I wanted to know more about her. That’s all.”

Jack put down his mug. “With me,” he commanded, and started towards his office.

Gwen and Toshiko glanced at one another and then at Ianto. Ianto didn’t move.

Halfway up the stairs, Jack turned around. “Now, Ianto!”

There were very few times any of them had heard that tone from Jack, the one that was truly commanding, truly impatient, and truly on fire. Ianto nearly tripped over himself to follow, taking the stairs in twos, and he was halfway into the office when he realized that someone was following, loud clomps on metal grating behind him.

Jack either didn’t notice or didn’t care. He was in one of his desk drawers, digging through. A thick file was produced and then tossed onto the desktop. Only then did he look up at Ianto.

“Listen to me, Ianto. I need to know if she touched you.”

“What?”

“In the pub when we captured her. Did she ever touch you? Skin-on-skin contact?”

The door flew open, and with it came Gwen’s voice. “Jack, what’s – “

“Yes,” Ianto interrupted.

Jack didn’t bother to look at Gwen. His eyes were trained on Ianto, but he wasn’t looking at him. Instead, his eyes cut right through him, as though he could see as deep as Owen’s video electrodes and then, still further. “Where?” he asked.

“What?”

“Where did she touch you?”

He shrugged. It was the only way to stave off the panic that was building in the root of his stomach. “I don’t know. On my hand and my wrist. It didn’t last very long.”

“Jack, I don’t understand.” Gwen’s eyes kept traveling between the two of them, focusing first on Jack and then on Ianto. Beyond her, standing halfway up the stairs, Ianto could see Tosh, safely watching the action from a distance.

Jack’s gaze, however, never left Ianto. “The Gratar,” he reported, “is a species of alien that Torchwood has been hunting for more than a hundred years. Arguably, it was one of the first species to come through the Rift. They look, act, eat, sleep, and talk just like humans. They’re almost impossible to tell apart except for one thing.”

“Which is?” she prompted.

“The Gratar have very poor reproductive systems. They’re not able to go, have a shag, and end up pregnant. They have to rely on the hormones of other, similar species in order to bolster their own. In the case of humans, they ‘charge up’, so to speak, by – “

“Drinking human blood,” Ianto finished quietly.

Jack nodded. “Exactly. The problem with this is that the Gratar have a limited capacity to hold on to this charge. It’s like a mobile phone with a bad battery. You can plug it in for three or four days, but it dies in ten minutes anyway. A Gratar that’s building up, getting ready to mate, has to use up the hormones almost immediately. If it doesn’t, they dissipate.”

“So we aren’t in any real danger,” Gwen reported, and she sounded almost relieved. “She’s been locked up for three months and can’t get to anyone’s blood down there. The reproductive energy has to have gone, right?”

“Not if she touched someone else.”

“Pardon?”

“What do you do if you have to make an emergency phone call and your battery’s dead? You borrow a friend’s phone. Or, if that doesn’t work, you swap batteries. And maybe the friend whose battery you borrow has the same problem, but more than likely, theirs holds a charge for a long time.” Jack paused and wet his lips. Ianto felt himself shift, trying to escape the scrutiny of that gaze. “Four, five, six hours. Maybe longer. There’s no way to tell.”

“Even if she touched Ianto, what good would that do? Ianto’s a man. Men can’t have children.”

“Human men can’t. Their bodies don’t have the hormones to produce and protect the fetus.”

“But then – “ Gwen glanced at Ianto and her eyes widened. Of the team, Ianto decided in that moment, Gwen managed the most convincing “shock and awe” expression, surpassing even Owen. He didn’t dwell on it long, though. Instead, he closed his eyes. “No. No. That’s not possible.”

“Think about it. If a Nostravite is able to impregnate – from the male to a female – by biting, who’s to say that this species can’t hyper-charge the male endocrine system? Moreover, who’s to say it hasn’t been done already?” Jack’s voice sounded far away, and Ianto was only vaguely aware of the fact he kept talking, over the sound of papers rustling. “Take in 1954. A French man by the name of Pierre Gerard reported feeling ill a few days after a threesome with his partner and another young man they’d picked up off the streets. Doctors did a full workup and found a mass in his abdomen that they removed. They thought at the time it was an underdeveloped twin that his body had cannibalized. Gotta love 1950s science.”

Gwen said something then, but Ianto was suddenly aware that it was like listening to a conversation in a tunnel. The voices echoed, moved fluidly, and he was more aware of Jack’s voice – deep, strong, firm – than he was Gwen’s disbelief.

He put a hand on the end of the desk. It was cool against his fingertips.

“Or if you want to go further back,” Jack continued, and Ianto leaned to hear his voice, as though he could slide closer to it, bathe in it, “look at Lina Medina – youngest woman to ever give birth – and the oldest woman, who conceived at sixty-five. Everyone thought they were medical miracles, but – “

“Ianto?” Gwen’s voice sounded like it was across an empty football field from him. “Ianto, are you all – Jack!”

It was then that Ianto was aware of absolutely nothing.

===

“Brilliant,” Owen commented dryly, hanging the IV bag from one of the rails because they, not a proper medical facility, had literally nowhere else to hang it. “I show you your parasite and you still go a day and a half without eating anything more substantial than Jack’s – “

“Hey. That’s part of your balanced breakfast you’re talking about.”

“You’re lucky you didn’t fall on your nose.” He dug through a medical bag and found the sutures. “That could have been ugly.”

“I always preferred forehead-gash over a smashed-in-nose,” Ianto assured him. The mold on the ceiling was, once again, expressly interesting. He’d like to claim that the mold was the only thing staring back at him, but that would be a lie. Gwen and Tosh were practically hanging over the railings, and Jack had one foot on the bottom stair and the rest of his body in the pit.

Ianto looked at them and then put his head back.

It helped keep the blood from the cut on his forehead from sliding into his eyes, anyway.

“You’re going to need a couple stitches,” Owen prattled on, and Ianto listened to the blood-curdling sound of suture needles being ripped from wrappers and lengths being cut. “You went down hard.”

“Not the worst compliment I’ve ever been given,” he muttered.

“You can’t make those comments,” Jack declared. “Takes my material.”

“So sorry.”

The next moments of time slid through in a relative haze, not caused as much from the anesthesia that Owen shot into his scalp (“a small prick”, “not a new complaint, I’m sure”) but from general malaise. Jack knew, didn’t he? That was the question that kept sliding back into his mind. Jack had to know, if he was the resident expert on the Gratar. It still didn’t explain why the alien picked him. There were a dozen men in that bar, never mind the women gathered in every corner. Any number of them could have gone home, had a one-night-stand, and come out of the shag as unlucky as Ianto. Possible not as satisfying for her self-serving, egotistical purposes, but nevertheless, she could have –

“I’ll have to take them out in a week,” Owen said, and Ianto opened his eyes to glance at him. “As for the rest of it – “

“About that.” Jack stepped the rest of the way into the medical recess. “Gwen, I want you to take our pretty blonde friend into the interrogation room for a change of scenery. And crank the air conditioning. We’ll force her to chill out until she’s ready to talk. Tosh, go through our records and find everything you can on the Gratar. I want to know every time Torchwood’s caught one of them, every time they thought they caught one of them, every time they misspelled ‘guitar’ and it came out Gratar. Owen – “

“If you don’t mind,” Owen interrupted, hands on the edge of the cot, “I need to talk to Ianto about – “

“No, you need to contact Martha at U.N.I.T. and get them to send over what they know about the Gratar, too. They have medical records that go back further than ours. I want you to read up.”

“Jack – “

“Go.” He glanced up. Gwen and Toshiko were still standing at the railing. “What are you waiting for? Go.”

While they all tromped off, glancing back as though Jack was suddenly going to change his mind, Ianto sat up. He felt suddenly trapped, now that it was just he and Jack. The others had provided a sense of safety, artificial though it may have been. There was no risk of deep, meaningful conversations or long looks from Jack when the rest of the team was crowded around. Which was ironic given that, usually, Ianto secretly wished to send the rest of them as far away as he could just so he and Jack could spend a few minutes alone.

“I’m fine,” he said when Jack had stood there for a few seconds too long, eyes on him but completely silent. He reached for the IV – vitamins and nutrients, a whole bag’s worth that would take hours to filter into his blood stream – to pull it out. “I’ll call Martha. Owen will probably get into an argument with her, and then – “

Jack reached over and caught his hand. When he tried to tug away, he held fast. “You’re not going anywhere.”

“I’m not an invalid.”

“No, but right now, you have five stitches in your forehead, an IV in your arm, just got over fainting, and you’re pregnant.”

It was the first time anyone had said the word aloud. Pregnant. Ianto had avoided it, stepped around it every time, but now it was hanging in the air between them. It was impossible to unsay a word like that, to take it back, so he simply pulled his hand away and put it limply in his lap. Owen, in the course of treating him, had pulled off his suit coat and thrown it over the rail, which meant he could see his trousers and shirt pulling suspiciously around his middle. He had to look away.

“Owen knows steps to…take care of it,” he said finally, as quietly as his voice would let him. “Probably the biozenic microtron. Been a while since we used that. I’ll be ready to work again Monday or Tuesday.”

“And that’s it?” Jack’s expression told him nothing when he hazarded a glance. Raised eyebrows, certainly, but otherwise, he was a blank slate.

“No different than Gwen and the Nostrovite.”

“Except for one thing.” Jack stepped closer. The cot had been shoved against the wall to give Owen a place to hang the IV and now Jack leaned against it. He met Ianto’s eyes. “She was carrying a Nostrovite egg. You’re carrying a human baby.”

“Don’t say that.”

“Say what?”

“It’s not a baby. It’s a – it’s whatever it is. An alien’s practical joke.”

He shook his head. “Call me old-fashioned, but I always learned when sperm hits egg – or egg hits egg or sperm hits sperm, but that’s a medical advancement we won’t see for a few hundred years – it’s a baby. The Gratar didn’t have a hand in this, except for whatever it did to your hormones. The rest of it was done with some good, old-fashioned elbow grease.”

Ianto snorted and tried to hide his smile. “As I recall, your elbow wasn’t involved.”

“Hey, someone had to keep the file cabinet upright.”

“Leaving me to look after myself.”

“You’ve never complained before.”

He laughed, just a little bark of his voice, and Jack grinned at him. His ass impacted the cot and then, without much warning, he hoisted himself up. Sitting next to one another in the white tile and away from the rest of the team, they felt surprisingly equal. It wasn’t the Jack that Gwen, Tosh, and Owen saw every day, standing at the front of the conference room and barking out orders, but the Jack who remained after the hours: quiet, honest, almost sweet.

He was still an absolute and utter queen and cared more about getting his end off than anything else, but those other qualities were there, too.

Ianto looked at his feet, swinging idly off the floor. “How does it work?” he asked, glancing sideways at Jack. “You said the French man, he had it…removed...”

The comment hung in the air for a few seconds before Jack shrugged. “That’s the thing. There aren’t that many documented cases of confirmed Gratar…interference, you could say. No one knows for sure what happens. Especially,” and he smiled crookedly, “when it’s man-on-man.”

“Great. I’ve been accidentally impregnated with help from an alien and there’s no one who can tell me where we go from here.” He shook his head. “I suspect that there’s no chance of finding a What To Expect When You’re Expecting edition for this situation.”

Jack chuckled and glanced at Ianto out of the corner of his eye, but in that moment, Ianto caught something in his expression. It was…. The first word that Ianto thought of was “sad”, but “sad” implied something less than the look in his eyes. Wistfulness? Quietly contemplative? Those were, he supposed, slightly better words. Less hopeless, certainly, but no less optimistic when he really paused to consider it.

Either way, it was a long moment before Jack said anything, and when he did, was punctuated by a tiny twitch of his shoulders. “The way I see it – take it for what it’s worth – you’ve at least got a chance to make medical history. If you don’t want that, well, then it’s a chance to stick it to our blonde friend in the vault. And if that doesn’t do it for you… There’s the fact that that it’s a baby.” His eyes slid back to Ianto. Watched him, and Ianto wondered what he thought when he did. “Where I’m from, it’s easy to have a baby. Anyone can do it. Literally. I knew a seventy-five year old man who gave birth to healthy twins. They were beautiful. But this world, here, doesn’t afford that possibility to everyone. If you’re not a man with a woman, or a woman with a man, you have to pay for adoption, for a sperm bank, for someone to carry your child. Or you have to go out on a limb and hope that last night’s one-night-stand is with someone who will understand why you did it.” He finally glanced away. “This is a unique opportunity.”

Ianto watched him for a moment, sitting there with his hands on the edge of the cot and his eyes just barely looking at him, and found his mouth was dry. He swallowed, tried to wet it, but words were like raindrops in the Sahara for a moment: they dried up as soon as they hit his tongue.

Finally, the question struggled out.

“Did you – did you know she was a Gratar when we picked her up?”

Jack tilted his head back and grinned. “I didn’t have a clue. I was going on Gwen’s intelligence, god help me.” He nudged Ianto with his elbow before sliding off the cot. “You’re under strict orders to stay down here for the next hour. I’ll bring you something to read.”

“No more Hottest Intergalactic Naval Officers, I hope.”

“Too many of the pages are crusty.” He leaned over and slid his fingers through Ianto’s hair. It was a half-second’s touch, but it made his breath catch. “I’ll send Owen down once he’s finished with going through U.N.I.T.’s files. I want him to know what he’s talking about.”

“And the Gratar?” he asked, raising an eyebrow.

Jack paused. “I haven’t decided what to do about her, yet.”

“She might talk to me.”

“She might try to kill you if I put you in the interrogation room with no barriers. I’m not willing to take that risk.”

Ianto followed Jack with his eyes as he turned around and headed for the steps, but Jack only made it halfway up the staircase. With one hand on the banister and his eyes trained straight ahead, he looked rather like a soldier out of an old World War II loyalty advertisement; In Our Armed Forces We Trust! it would say, and then a man like Jack, dressed like Jack, would be standing on the hull of a ship, foot up on the decking, looking out across the sea.

“I might not have known she was a Gratar,” he said finally, and his head turned just far enough so he could meet Ianto’s eyes, “but if I had, I wouldn’t have done anything different that night.”

He jogged the rest of the way up the stairs, and Ianto couldn’t ask what Jack meant of anyone except the mold.

===

“You know, usually, the first time you have a man over to your flat, it’s supposed to be for sex.”

“Fancy that.”

“So I’m thinking, you open a bottle of wine, I’ll find your iPod, and we can get to it.”

“Don’t you think you’ve done enough damage already?”

Jack grinned, all teeth and lines around his eyes, and Ianto tried (and failed) to do the same in reply. Jack was right on one mark and one mark only: he had never been to Ianto’s flat, and with good reason. In the start, when it was all hasty trysts in dark corners, it seemed unrealistic to invite Jack over. Now that it was…whatever it was, beyond just a shag and a pat on the arse afterwards, Ianto didn’t see the point. They were something, and Jack didn’t have to come over and spend an evening watching BBC2 and drinking beer for it to be that something.

His flat, as it was, sat on one of the lower floors of an older building in City Center, a good distance from the hub. He’d picked it years ago, before Torchwood, because it was on a fairly quiet street and suited all his needs. The front room opened to the kitchen, with a small hall on the other side to the bedroom and bath. Simple, not inelegant, and Ianto had to admit that the wallpaper – thin lines in a number of subtle colors on just-barely-off-white – had been a selling point.

While he tried to maintain a sense of normalcy and did the things he always did when he came home – hung up his coat, took off his shoes, sorted through the mail – Jack wandered through. Ianto watched him out of the corner of his eye as he picked up a throw pillow from the couch, turned it around in his hands, and then put it back down.

“It’s awfully tidy,” he said, grinning.

“Did you think I lied on my CV? ‘Keeps excellent house’ wasn’t just to fill up that last line.”

“You didn’t add that your pillows were pink.”

He paused, halfway through opening his electric bill. “I decorated. That’s all.”

“You coordinated.”

“More than you can say for your office.”

Jack grinned at him. “You never offered.” He walked slowly around the couch and examined the bookshelves – more books than anything else, but Ianto was busily watching his hands on a picture of himself and his father when he was just a boy, instead – before heading for the kitchen. Somewhere on the way, his coat ended up hung over the back of one of the chairs at the dining table, something Ianto noticed only when he’d put his bills down.

His eyes dwelt on Jack’s back and shoulders through his shirt. “I should have invited you months ago,” he muttered to himself.

“Hmmm?” Jack asked, looking up from his perusal of the half-empty fridge.

“Nothing, nothing,” Ianto answered quickly, and walked through with his hands in his pockets. While he’d never thought the flat small before, it suddenly felt cramped and tight, like there was no longer enough room for both he and Jack. He fixed the pillow Jack had upset, picked up the previous week’s television guide to throw out (as though he had time to come home and watch television), and finally asked, “Did she say anything?”

“Who?” Jack pulled out a half-bottle of sports drink and started rooting around for glasses.

“The Gratar.”

“Her? Nah, not a word. Just smiled at me for half an hour. I thought she’d crack.” He shrugged. “We’ll try again in a week. She’ll get stir crazy eventually. It’s not like locking up a Weevil. Gratar are smart, probably smarter than humans on the whole. Eventually, she’ll want to talk.”

“Or she’ll sit quietly for as long as we keep her.”

“What else is there? Releasing her to the wild? Letting her roam the streets and get her messy fertility treatments from your neighbors?” He pressed the glass, now filled with pale blue, badly-flavored drink, into his hand. “Drink this.”

Ianto wrinkled his nose. “Jack, I’m not a seven-year-old with the flu.”

“No, but you didn’t eat all day and Owen said you need to stay hydrated. I’ll figure out what to do about your fridge later.”

“If my mam were here, she’d accuse you of stealing her job.”

“If your mom were here, I’d thank her.”

The earnestness in Jack’s tone just made Ianto look down at his cup before he took a sip. He wasn’t sure what else to say. After another once-over, Owen had declared him well enough to go home and sleep for at least eight hours, and Jack hadn’t taken “I’m fine” for an answer. Which left them here, in his flat, with well-mocked pillows and out-of-date sports drink from when he’d run a five-kilometer charity race while Jack was off with his doctor.

The thought made him slightly bitter.

He slammed back the drink in one go.

“I’ll be in tomorrow at the normal time,” he said, rinsing out the glass and putting it in the dish drainer with the mug he’d used three mornings ago, the last time he’d been home for more than a change of clothes. “I’ll see about bringing the usual pastries. And I’ll finish that report for you as soon as – “

“Stop.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop… Doing that.” Jack leaned back against the counter and looked right at him. It was as bare a look as Jack Harkness had, and even though there were two more rooms and a city street beyond, Ianto felt the walls closing in, trapping both of them. “Stop pretending like you’re fine.”

He looked away, watched stray drops slide down the side of the sink. “How else am I supposed to be?”

“Be scared. Be angry. Be happy, for all I care. Just don’t be…empty.”

The silence felt like it was longer and deeper than the rift, even when Ianto picked up his head and met Jack’s eyes again. The first time Jack had looked straight at him with that kind of raw emotion had been with Lisa, and the emotion had been absolute betrayal. Was that how this started? Penance for being the naughty little teaboy who used his powers for evil? He didn’t know anymore. All he knew was Jack’s eyes on him, watching him, unable to look away.

He swallowed. “I’m terrified.”

Jack smiled and very nearly laughed, a little stutter of breath that escaped his lips. “No kidding. But there are worse things that could have happened to you in the course of this job.”

“Name one.”

“You could be a walking dead man, and then who would I shag?” The self-deprecation just barely touched Jack’s tone and then flitted away again, but not before almost making Ianto smile. When Jack shifted, put a hand against the counter so it almost pressed against his own, his lips did turn. “You could have planned on a white wedding only to have a Nostravite fill you with his alien spawn. Though I gotta admit, Gwen looked good pregnant. It almost makes me want to grand her maternity leave.”

“Imagine explaining that to Rhys.”

“He wouldn’t know what to do with her after two days of having her home.” He grinned, but it didn’t last as long as Ianto had expected. “You could have died. Maybe not like Suzie died, but…somehow.”

He snorted. “And then who would get you all the way to the east end of the city in record time and avoiding traffic accidents?”

Jack’s hand rose and touched his cheek. “I’d find another teaboy.”

“Not one who can make your industrial strength coffee.”

“Ah, but I’m an excellent teacher.”

Jack’s voice was only a whisper, a puff of breath that was suddenly too close to his lips, and then those same lips met Jack’s, immediately desperate. Ianto was acutely aware of how long it had been – three days, thanks to Owen’s scan – since they’d pressed their bodies together, since Jack had forced his tongue into his mouth, since he’d had that bulk and firm body pinning him against the nearest flat surface and struggling for purchase. He opened his legs when Jack’s thigh pressed between them and dug nails into the back of his shoulders. It was too easy, too comfortable, to fall into this.

Deep in the recesses of his mind, somewhere, Ianto knew he should protest. He should stand up, push Jack away, and declare that he didn’t know what he was doing anymore. Only he couldn’t, somehow. He was caught up in a whirlwind of Jack’s fingers on his buttons, of Jack pushing open his bedroom door and throwing his decorative pillows onto the floor, of Jack’s needy breaths catching in his ear. He knew, intellectually, what he needed, silence and a drink – but he couldn’t drink, now could he, and damned if it wasn’t Owen Bloody Harper’s voice in the back of his head when he thought of that – and then another drink, just to sort through this.

But Jack’s hands felt good on his skin, with Jack’s body firm underneath him. And, while he’d never been to Ianto’s flat, never seen his four walls or opened his fridge until ten minutes ago, stretched out on Ianto’s sheets and with hands on Ianto’s hips, he looked almost like he could fit there.

A dangerous thought to have, but then Ianto was leaning back and planting a hand on Jack’s thigh to keep himself balanced. Jack Harkness was exciting, terrifying, demanding, pushy, and free. Jack Harkness was not a man who belonged in a five-hundred-quid-a-month flat in the middle of Cardiff, three blocks from a pub with football hooligans every third night, and –

“Ianto,” Jack panted, and in that one word, tugged him back to reality, back to Jack’s chest flushed pink and hair matted with sweat, back to the way their bodies moved together. Ianto met his eyes, sex-clouded eyes, and bit his lip. Let his eyelids slip shut as rode it through.

Feeling Jack shudder underneath him, after all, seemed to be better than thinking. Feeling the same fire course through his veins certainly was.

“So,” Jack said finally, his chest still rising and falling rapidly and a cheeky little grin on his face, “do I get to spend the night?”

Ianto looked at him. It was hard to judge how long the silence had lasted, how long they’d laid in sweat and come without saying a word, and even if sex had slowed his mind for the time being, the wheels were still stubbornly turning. He wet his lips, his tongue playing across a cut from where Jack had gotten overzealous. He knew if his tongue were longer, he could run it over the same marks on his neck, his shoulder, his chest.

Jack never kept his hands away, let alone lips, teeth, and tongue.

He closed his eyes.

“I don’t know,” he admitted, very quietly.

“Okay.” Cavalier as always, but with an undercurrent of something else that Ianto couldn’t place. Warm fingers trailed up the length of his arm, from wrist to shoulder, and then slid down his chest. Over his ribs, down his skin, and then touching his stomach. “So, this is it.”

He opened his eyes and glanced down. Jack’s large fingers sat, almost utterly idle, on the tell-tale swell. Looking at it from this angle, his head on the pillow, he was reminded of the pictures that cheap magazines first published of celebrities they suspected were mothers-to-be. It could almost be nothing, just a bad bit of Chinese food or a full meal, but the shape and smoothness left nothing to the imagination.

“Yup.”

“Doesn’t seem like much to look at.”

“Funny, I’ve heard the same said about you.”

“Hey, I wouldn’t talk if I were you,” and Jack rolled onto his side and propped himself up on an arm. He’d tossed off the duvet and left it to Ianto, claiming the top sheet for himself. It was thin and white, and stretched over his skin, he looked more like a model for the front of a one-pound-twenty romance novel in the used book store than he did the serious, solemn head of the Torchwood Institute. “You never saw the look on your face when the Gratar was chatting you up. You wanted to head for the hills.”

“Because I was afraid you’d invite her for a threesome.”

“She had a nice ass.”

“For a murderer.”

“What can I say? I admire every living being equally and without prejudice.”

Ianto rolled his eyes and shook his head, and as fond as it was, he ended up watching Jack’s fingers on his skin. He wasn’t stroking, or even paying any new attention to his stomach, but there was something refreshing about his hand there, of all the places it could have landed. “Jack.”

“Hmmm.”

“I – “ He stopped and tried to formulate the words. His tongue seemed unable to find them, like they were locked away. “I don’t know what I want to do.”

“I know.”

“Is something – is this going to change, depending on what I decide?”

There was a long pause, and when Ianto hazarded a glance in Jack’s direction, Jack’s eyes were on him. “I don’t really know what you mean.”

“This thing, what we have… I don’t want it to change.”

“Do you think it will?”

“I don’t know.”

He narrowed his eyes the smallest bit. “You were with Lisa for years. You were practically high school sweethearts. Didn’t you ever talk about having kids?”

Ianto looked away. Whether or not Jack had noticed how sparse the bedroom was – a bed, a wardrobe, a dresser and a night table – was yet to be seen, but he was bound to notice that Ianto still kept a picture of her on the dresser. How could he not? He’d once caught a glimpse of the photo in Ianto’s wallet, something most people would have missed, and raised one knowing eyebrow in question.

For a few weeks, he’d left the photo in a drawer. It was only later that he realized that, if anyone knew what it was to love and then lose someone, it was Jack.

He had the photo with him even now. Well, not with him. In his trousers, on the floor.

“Ianto?” Jack murmured.

“We’d hardly started talking about marriage.” His voice was soft, scarcely a whisper. “Lisa was…practical. She wanted to know we both had steady jobs, good pay, money to buy a flat. She wanted children, but we never decided on anything.” He shook his head. “We’d probably be engaged by now, if she hadn’t… Well. You know all that.”

Jack’s hand flattened against his skin. “I’m sorry.”

“I never really knew what I was doing, with her. Some nights, we’d argue about what I wanted out of the future. I’d grown up with my mam and dad, gone to university a half-hour from the place I’d grown up, gotten a good job that was, I thought, pretty normal. I don’t think I ever thought for too long about what the future held. There was enough uncertainty in every day. If I’d miss the train to work, if I’d be able to meet Lisa for dinner. I never learned to…plan for the rest of my own life. Funny, since I plan everyone else’s now.”

“I don’t think you never learned.” The hand on his skin slid up to his chest. Stayed there, even as Jack wormed closer. “I think you never found something in the future that you saw and really wanted.”

“I wanted Lisa.”

“You wanted the life you’d started building when you were sixteen years old and asked her out for your first tea.” He chuckled, and Ianto scowled at him. “I’m not judging you. God, I know what it’s like to get comfortable. Why do you think I fought in so many wars? Trust me, it’s not the men in uniform. Well, it is the men in uniform, but it was in part that I didn’t know what else to do. I was a man stuck in someone else’s time and the one thing I did well was point and shoot. It took me fifty years to stop pointing and shooting.”

“You point and shoot now, too.”

“Yeah, but with a lot more style.”

Ianto shook his head and for a moment was nearly amused, at least until he felt the heaviness creeping back into his veins, settling in his stomach and chest while Jack rested his cheek almost against his shoulder. “Every time I saw my life,” he murmured, “I saw it with Lisa, a flat, a dog. I got…this.”

“Torchwood or me?” Jack teased.

He turned his head and met his eyes. “Both.”

Jack opened his mouth to say something but the chime of his mobile phone interrupted the silence. He groaned, a throaty sound that reminded Ianto of all the other throaty sounds he’d made in the last hour, and rolled away to go rooting through the debris on the floor.

“Yeah?” he answered, and held up a finger. “How unusual? Tosh, that’s a standard deviation. No, it is. I – “ He rolled his eyes. “If you’re that convinced, take Gwen and Owen to check it out. No, I’m not coming. You’re the one picking this up, and I’ve got something else to take care of. I’ll see you in the morning.” He hung up the phone and tossed it back into the pile of clothes with just enough force that it skittered across the wood floor. “Last I checked, I did still run Torchwood. Generally, that means people are supposed to listen to me.”

Ianto watched him. “Maybe she realized you’re not terribly imposing with your clothes off.”

“At the rate they’re going, I’ll have to put my clothes back on, now.” He fumbled around and found his wrist strap to check the time. “I can make it back to the hub before they go do something stupid if I leave now. Gwen’s home, so that’s at least fifteen minutes, and Owen probably has to close up a body before he goes. ”

He bent down, the muscles in his back working as he reached for his shirt, and for a moment, Ianto allowed him to do just that. It would be for the best, if Jack went back to the hub and his own bed, leaving Ianto to work through all of this. The memory of Lisa, settled as it was around his shoulders, could be pushed away by morning, then. Maybe he could even find a way to reconcile his fear with the strange turn in Jack’s voice every time he mentioned this accident, or the way his heat radiated across Ianto’s skin.

But then, his hand was on Jack’s arm.

“You don’t have to go,” he said quietly.

Jack glanced over his shoulder and met Ianto’s eyes.

“No?”

“No.” He wet his lips. “In fact… Stay. With me.”

Jack smiled and dropped his shirt to the floor. “Okay,” he said.

Ianto managed a tiny smile back. “Okay.”

===

“Owen, can I have a moment?”

“Ah, if it isn’t the world’s first – possibly second – pregnant man,” Owen greeted Ianto a few days later, leaning back in his chair at the conference room table. U.N.I.T. had risen to Jack’s Gratar-themed challenge and sent, by Ianto’s approximation, five dozen file boxes. The tropical rainforest cried at the mere concept of such a collection. It meant that now, the conference room was a labyrinth of various piles, hastily labeled in Owen’s handwriting and shoved in corners and under chairs throughout the room.

MAYBE USEFUL, one label read.

OK, said another.

COMPLETE AND UTTER BOLLOCKS, proclaimed the one in the corner.

“Did you know,” he continued, eyes dropping to the file he had open in his lap, “that the Gratar are so close to humans in their genetic makeup that one U.N.I.T. crackpot thinks we could interbreed?” He dropped the file atop the UTTER BOLLOCKS stack. “You could try getting her pregnant. That would be a medical first. Pregnant man impregnates woman. You could go on the daytime telly.”

“Are you finished?” Ianto asked, hands on his hips. In the last stretch of days, the conference room had become Owen’s private retreat and now resembled a poorly-executed cross between a pig sty and a fifteen-year-old football player’s bedroom a few minutes after the end of the big game.

“I don’t know. Have you come seeking my excellent medical advice or to bring me tea?”

“If it’s a choice between those, neither one.”

“Then Jack sent you.”

“No.” Ianto looked around again. It was hard to spend too long looking at Owen, and not because he was dead or wearing the same t-shirt he’d worn the day before, or even that he was dropping another file on the BOLLOCKS pile, this time without looking. With direct eye contact came direct conversations, another stretch of mockery and nearly-shared frustration, and Ianto couldn’t struggle through many more of Owen’s “witticisms” without snapping.

It was bad enough with Gwen and Toshiko. They both treated him like he’d suddenly been transformed into a thin plate of glass. That morning, Gwen had taken a box of folders from his grip. Ten minutes later, Tosh had offered to make the coffee, even though the last time she’d used the coffee machine they’d had to call in and then promptly retcon a fire fighter and then a repairman. He let them fuss and dote simply for lack of a better response, but part of him wanted to take back his folders and make his coffee because he was fine. His trousers were snug in the waist and he was tired, but otherwise, there was absolutely nothing wrong with him.

Owen did not improve upon this workplace model. Owen only made it worse.

Another two folders were dropped before he looked up. “You’re still here?”

“I… I wanted to know what you’ve found, so far.”

“What I’ve found?” Owen gestured around the conference room. “You can see what I’ve found. Two-thirds of these files are bloody useless. Another thirty-two-point-seven percent of them are only slightly less bloody useless than the really bloody useless ones. And then, there are these.” He picked up a stack of three or four folders. “The only references to your ‘condition’ starring some bloke named Pierre in France.”

“And?”

“And there’s nothing more to tell you. It was the ‘50s. They thought it was a mass and removed it, which, if it was me in the ‘50s, I would’ve done the same.” He flipped through his tiny pile and found one folder. It was so thin, Ianto assumed there was nothing in it. “One doctor, who is now in his eighties and a consultant for U.N.I.T., said: ‘In my professional opinion, if this was indeed a pregnancy in Mr. Gerard, I do not think he could have carried it much longer without substantial risk to his health and well-being.’”

The folder was shoved back in the pile. “But he could have.”

“What?”

“He… could have. Theoretically. If he’d wanted to.”

“Sure. And then, he could have died.”

“But – think about it.” He gestured vaguely with his hand and started to cross through the conference room, picking up plastic wrappers and dried-out tea bags. “If the alien’s fertility…whatever could make this happen, doesn’t it reason that it would protect the person who is carrying the baby?”

“Fetus.”

“Fetus.” He stopped, shoved trash in a bin, and put his hands on his hips. “Evolution doesn’t work very well if the person having the next generation can’t live to have it, right? So it has to be that – “

“Fuck me.”

“Pardon?”

“You want to try to carry it.” Owen was gaping at him, wide eyes and blank expression. “Have you gone mad? Completely, out-of-your-mind mad? You’re going to die. You’re going to swell up like a balloon, rupture all of your organs in one go, and die.”

“You don’t know that.”

“Now you’re the medical doctor?” He stood up, knocking a wave of files to the floor. “Ever since you came to precious bloody Torchwood, you’ve acted like I don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about. I may not be your Captain Jack, but I have a degree that says I know what I’m saying.” He threw up his hands. “You don’t want to listen to me? Fine. You’ll listen to Jack when I report my findings.”

Ianto blinked at him. “Don’t.”

“Ever try to outrun a dead man, Ianto?”

Before he could answer, though, Owen was vaulting over the mess he’d made of the conference room and heading out the door. By the time Ianto was to the stairwell, he was to the floor and practically climbing over Tosh’s station to get to Jack’s office.

“Owen!” Ianto called after him, at a loss of what else to do. Even if he’d been able to catch Owen, what would he have done? Wrestled him to the ground? Declared he was a Weevil and locked him in a cell? Shot him? You couldn’t really hurt a dead man, and Owen had always been able to outrun him. All he could do was follow.

“What’s happening?” Gwen demanded, but the question hardly registered before Ianto was climbing the steps to Jack’s office and pushing open the door.

“ – Gerard was in perfect health,” Owen was saying when Ianto strode in. He didn’t so much as glance towards the door, and then again, neither did Jack. Elbows on the desk and sleeves rolled up, he was completely focused on Owen’s every word. Seconds later came Gwen and Tosh, two more bangs of the door, but it only meant two more bodies were ignored for Owen’s exposition. “But it was the opinion of two doctors who reviewed the case after the Gratar were discovered and one of the doctors who performed the surgery and found the ‘cannibalized twin’ that, if it was a pregnancy, there’d be too much internalized pressure. No man could carry a baby to term.”

Ianto looked at the floor. From behind him, he heard a sound like a sigh escape Gwen’s lips, but he couldn’t bring himself to look at her. He couldn’t look at anything, not even when he heard the tell-tale squeak that meant Jack was leaning back in his chair, probably steepling his fingers as the information washed over him.

“I see,” Jack finally said, almost quietly. When Ianto’s eyes did drift, they rested on the way he played with his lower lip between two fingers, twisting it idly. “And your professional opinion is?”

“It needs to be aborted.”

The word crashed bodily against Ianto and he glanced away again.

“A valid opinion.” Another squeak, and Jack was standing up, moving around his desk to rest his ass on the edge. He crossed his arms over his chest and caught Ianto’s eyes for half a second. It was cursory glance, nothing more. “Roughly how long do you think it would take for the pressure to start being dangerous?”

Owen shrugged. “I don’t know. We don’t have data on – “

“Roughly.”

“It could be any length of time. Six weeks, three months. Not twenty-four weeks.”

“Which is how long it would be to carry the fetus to term.”

“Precisely.”

Jack nodded and wet his lips. “So let’s say Ianto didn’t do anything about it right now. Six weeks or three months from now, could you do the same operation?”

“Of course,” Owen started, “but there’s still potential in the meantime for – “

“Good. Then Ianto can do what he wants and if and when this becomes a medical emergency, you’ll take care of it.” Jack put his hands together and stood up. Moved back around the desk and settled into his chair, just like nothing had happened. “I’ll call U.N.I.T. and let them know you’re packing up their files.”

The room fell completely silent, save for Jack flipping a page on whatever report he’d been reading when Owen had stormed in. Owen himself stood blank-faced in the middle of the office, as though he was five seconds from a retort. Gwen and Tosh remained together, still sandwiched in the doorway, absolutely still. For one of the few times in his tenure at Torchwood, Ianto wanted to slip into the woodwork and completely disappear, not even coming out to hand over tea or pick up soiled napkins. He wanted to completely disappear.

“Jack – “ Gwen started, her voice catching.

“Look.” Jack put his hands on his desk and looked at each of them. “This isn’t ideal. I understand that. I’ve thought about it a lot the last few days. But this isn’t my decision, it’s Ianto’s. I’m going to stand behind that the same way I stood behind you getting married when you were carrying a Nostravite. At least I know this baby won’t break out of Ianto’s abdomen and try to make all of us its breakfast.”

Tosh pursed her lips. “Is it – That is, is the baby - “

“It doesn’t matter.”

Owen snorted. “It bloody well does matter. You wouldn’t be saying it if it came out of some bloke he – “

“Yes, it is,” Ianto interrupted. His own voice surprised him, making him feel like he’d been jarred somehow even as his hands were in his pockets and he shifted in place. He looked back at Tosh. “But it’s not – that’s not why.”

Gwen stepped forward and tilted her head slightly. It forced him to look at her, as much as he hated it. “Then why? Ianto, this isn’t like me or Tosh accidentally getting pregnant. There’s no easy way, having the baby. You don’t even know if you or it can survive past tomorrow, let alone all the way until it can live.”

“Maybe,” he admitted. His mouth felt dry, but wetting his lips only brought his attention back the chap marks from Jack’s bites, nights earlier. “But if we do this to protect people and I can’t give it a chance, everything up to here is…pointless.”

“To be fair,” Owen said, holding up a hand, “it’s not an it, it’s a ‘she.’”

There was a beat of silence. “You know that already?” Tosh asked.

“I asked him a week ago to give me a physical. I knew something was wrong.”

“He hit the nail on the head,” Owen replied, shrugging. “Even if I did take the piss out of him for starting a conversation with ‘Do they make pregnancy tests for men?’”

“Interestingly enough,” Jack noted, a tiny smile crossing his face, “they will, but you won’t want to experience the process.”

Gwen smiled and actually laughed, which was more than could be said for the rest of them in the awkward silence of Jack’s office. “I should get back to work,” she decided, and patted Ianto on the shoulder as she slid out.

“Me too,” and Tosh retreated quickly on her heels.

That left only Owen. He hadn’t moved so much as an inch, not even when Jack had come around the desk, and didn’t move still. Jack leaned back on his chair. “Without the girls here, now, how bad is it going to be?” he asked, eyes not straying to Ianto. “In terms of danger, of pain, of the chance for survival.”

He shook his head. “I don’t know.”

“Yeah, you do.”

For a moment, Owen glanced over his shoulder at Ianto. “The pressure at first will be inconvenient and uncomfortable, but probably bearable. Organs can shift around, make room, but eventually, space will start getting tight. Urination will be easy, than suddenly hard. Depending on position, you could see sexual dysfunction. Hip dysplasia, a very sore back, middle, and rear, increased blood pressure and difficulty with everything you like to do, from work to sleep to eating half a pastry. Your hormones will be impossible to control or predict, and you’ll get mood swings worse than Gwen on a bad month’s pre-menstrual. That’s not even considering the risk that something will rupture or tear long before it’s too painful for you to move.”

The rock that had settled in Ianto’s stomach a week earlier twisted inside, grinding against bone and muscle. He glanced at Jack, knowing full well that Jack wouldn’t look at him as he tried to read Owen’s level of bullshit.

Even Ianto could tell he was telling the absolute truth.

“You didn’t mention chances of survival,” Jack pointed out.

Owen looked back at him. “If he can make it four more months and nothing goes completely wrong, it can probably survive. Him too, though if it’s a choice between one or the other – “

“Okay.” Jack gave him a little smile. “Go open a new medical file.”

“What for?”

“Ianto Jones, Torchwood’s first venture into obstetric medicine.” He grinned, crooked but warm, and nodded towards the door. “Go. We’ll talk more about this later.”

It was impossible to tell whether Owen was pleased, irked, confused, or some combination of all three by the proceedings. He met Ianto’s eyes once more, a dry expression, and then walked out.

The room fell quiet again, but the tension had snapped somewhere. When Jack’s eyes finally traveled over, he smiled. “I think you made the right choice.”

Ianto shrugged and tried not to quirk too much of a smile. “I wanted to try out the Torchwood medical plan. Finest care in Cardiff, I’ve heard.”

Jack laughed. “We could be so lucky.” But when the laughter had cleared, his eyes rested on Ianto again. “Are you going to – “

“I will be,” he assured him, and he knew the look was fond. He could see it reflected in Jack’s own expression. “It just might take a little while.”

===

“Nothing?”

“Not a word. I was down there with her three hours. If she looked at me, all she did was smile.”

“Smiling. Truly a sign of how hostile she’s become.”

“You stay out of this.”

Gwen leaned against the wall and crossed her arms over her chest, even as she still used one hand for emphatic gesturing. “I tried talking to her, riling her up, mocking her, threatening her, but Jack, she hardly looked like she even knew what I was saying. I get more response out of Rhys when he’s had six pints and fallen asleep on the couch.”

Jack snorted, a smug little grin touching the corners of his lips. “I could teach you a few pointers.”

Ianto, slouched as he was in a chair, glanced up at Gwen. “None of them actually work,” he assured her, his fingers lacing across the swell of his stomach.

Gwen’s eyes followed his fingers there, not that he entirely blamed her. His eyes traveled there too, and had since the first morning when he’d stepped out of the shower into a steamy bathroom, wiped down the mirror with the corner of his towel, and realized that the firm curve of his belly wouldn’t be disappearing after a string of afternoons at the gym. He’d spent ten minutes standing there, dripping on the tile, as he tried to reconcile the body he was used to – flat, masculine, verging in a few places on toned – with this new, foreign shape. His trousers, too, had mysteriously stopped fitting, and the shopgirl at his favorite department store had asked “Gained a bit o’ weight?” with a painfully cheeky smile when he’d stacked a few new pairs of slacks on the counter.

Jack leaned back. “I’ll have Owen do a complete run-down,” he decided, bouncing slightly. “Not sleeping, not eating, and not responding to anything is unusual, even for her. I don’t want to find out too late that she’s hatched some sort of diabolical scheme right under our noses.”

“It’s probably just online matchmaking.”

His eyes narrowed in Ianto’s direction but before he could reply to a tiny quirk of lips, Owen pushed the door to Jack’s office open and leaned in. “I’m ready when you are,” he announced, and then jogged back down the stairs.

“Well, meeting adjourned. If you’ll excuse us, Gwen, we’ve got an appointment with Torchwood’s leading gynecologist.” He paused, a hand extended to help Ianto out of his seat. “Is it gynecology when the baby’s mother is its father? That can’t be the right name. Guy-necology?”

“You’re going to see the baby?” Gwen asked, grinning. “Can I come along? I’ve never seen an ultrasound performed before.”

Jack shrugged. “It’s no bother to me. Ianto?”

He glanced at Gwen. He wanted to say no, to insist it was a private experience (well, as private as any experience when Owen projected giant images of your intimate parts onto a wall for the world to see), but Gwen’s eyes were eager. More eager was Jack’s smile, and the pull of his hand on Ianto’s wrist. He finally smiled. “If you want to see me without a shirt, all you have to do is ask.”

“Oi! I’ve seen it before.”

“When was this and why wasn’t I invited? Ianto, you know the rules. I’m always invited as a third party. Even if you don’t want to play, I can still watch.”

In the medical recess, Owen glanced up at the three of them with a raised eyebrow. “I didn’t know this was a party. I would have baked a cake.” He kicked over a large machine. It was wired to a number of electrodes, some of them Owen’s video-feed creations, others that Ianto recognized as their supply from a second-hand medical store. “Meet Torchwood’s first hand-built fetal monitor.” He looked right to Ianto. “You owe me. I burned myself making this.”

“You can’t be burned,” Jack pointed out, grinning.

“Right. Well, I would have. Were I not a shadow of my former, fleshy self.” He nodded to the cot. “Strip down and hop aboard.”

“Strip?” Ianto repeated.

“How can I do a physical if you’re in slacks and a shirt?”

Ianto could feel the eyes on him as he stopped at the bottom of the steps and started on his buttons. Tosh wasn’t presently in the room but she may as well have been; Ianto knew that if she wasn’t watching the footage now, she would be watching it later, after Gwen reported the experience. Still, Owen was tapping his toe and one of the machines was beeping expectantly, so there was little else he could do. Jack took his shirt, then trousers, and finally his shorts, though not without raising an eyebrow. His eyes traveled down Ianto’s body, from shoulders to stomach and then toes.

“It’s not as cold in here as I thought,” he commented, a little turn to his voice.

Ianto sent him a sharp glance and got a grin for his efforts.

“Thank you for that,” Owen, ever the consummate professional, said. “Now, if at any time this hurts, or feels uncomfortable, you need to let me know.”

“You tell that to all your dates.”

“Only the ones who take their fertility treatments from beautiful-but-creepy alien women.” One electrode was added, then two, and finally six of them spread across his abdomen in a way that made it look a bit like a gap-toothed smiling face, his belly button as its nose. Secretly, he considered pointing out the resemblance to Gwen, but she was watching with a bit too much awe for Ianto to justify breaking the moment. “We’re going to get to see and hear this, if it all goes according to plan.”

“And if it doesn’t?” Jack asked, crossing his arms.

“Don’t ask.”

“Confidence-inspiring,” Ianto intoned.

“Quiet. I’m working.”

The projection screen flickered and after a moment, the full-size diagram of a skeleton and muscle structure (presumably Ianto’s own, but he didn’t like to ask) faded away to display a plain blue screen. Static hissed and sputtered from the speakers.

Owen scowled. “Bloody thing worked this morning.”

“This is why I never beta-test any technology. Consistently unreli – “

There was a sudden screech that lasted just a split second before the static was replaced with a constant, if swift, thrumming sound. With it came a sudden burst of light as the projection started up. The blue block was replaced with white light, and when it settled, the picture on the screen was a sort of reddish-pink color. It looked at first like a blob, but when Owen adjusted the machine with a arbitrary presses of buttons, it sharpened immediately into what they’d expected to see:

A baby.

A tiny, scrunched up baby, to be exact, with jumbled arms and legs that attempted and failed to hide its tiny, close-eyed face. Everything was clearly visible, from a slim little bottom to tiny toes on the ends of tiny feet.

One of which, live before their eyes, moved. It wasn’t enough that Ianto could clearly feel the motion – he’d read in a book Tosh had left purposefully at the coffee station that most women felt the first movements by week sixteen or eighteen but they were so subtle that they were usually mistaken for gas or stomach upset – but seeing it in front of his very eyes brought the moment from fever-dream into reality.

“Bloody hell,” Gwen murmured, her voice hardly above a whisper. She crossed in front of Jack to stand under the projection. “That’s – “

“Meet Female Fetus Jones,” reported Owen. “Approximately fifteen centimeters long and logging in at the size of a large tomato. Due, were she to go to term, late August.”

Jack snorted. “A fine summer we’re going to have.”

“We?” Ianto repeated, finally glancing away to look at him. “You’re not carrying around a tomato.”

“Small pumpkin by August, if we’re being honest.” Owen came over and, with little pomp or fuss, placed his unbandaged hand on Ianto’s stomach. “Any difficulty with normal activities? The loo, eating, sleeping?”

“No.”

“Sexual dysfunction?”

“Not by a long shot,” Jack answered.

Owen and Ianto both rolled their eyes, though Ianto was fairly sure that Owen didn’t realize the timing. “It pains me to admit it, but you’re progressing through much like a typical pregnancy. Not that my warnings are invalidated.”

“Of course not. Can’t be having that.”

“Have you decided on a name?” Gwen asked suddenly, turning around. She’d spent the last few minutes watching the screen, which had the added benefit of keeping her eyes away from Ianto as Owen felt lower than his belly.

“A what?”

“A name. Generally, when you’re going to have a baby, you give it a name.” She put her hands on her hips. “Come, you’ve had to consider something.”

Ianto looked at Jack, who was standing with his arms still crossed, watching the proceedings. “Not really,” he admitted with half a shrug.

“Not really! A name’s important for a baby. You can’t just pick the first thing that comes to mind when the baby’s born.”

“We’ll figure something out.”

“Something? You need to – “ Gwen was, thankfully, interrupted by her mobile phone ringing. She dug it out of her pocket and then stalked up the stairs, and when she was out of sight and Owen wasn’t looking, Jack climbed three stairs in his very own impression of Gwen’s “about to talk to Rhys” walk.

Ianto laughed and Owen turned around. “What’s so funny?”

“I was just making naughty shadow puppets. You should see what I can do with two fingers and a teaspoon.” Jack came around the end of the cot. “I need you to go down and run a full physical on our Gratar. She’s been unresponsive and I want to make sure she isn’t trying to kill herself slowly.”

He sighed. “My favorite part of the job. Striping alien women and making sure they’ve got all their parts intact.” He flicked off the monitor. “I’ll unhook our freak of nature here and – “

“Go ahead and do it now. I’ll unstrap Ianto.”

“Are you sure?”

“I’ve defeated evil time creatures, survived Weevil attacks, and lived for the last hundred-and-fifty years without so much as an interruption in service. I think I can handle this.”

Ianto watched as Owen gathered up his medical kit and headed out of the recess, the plastic sheets whispering as he pressed through them. “Alone in the hub” wasn’t a phrase Ianto could use to describe he and Jack, recently; since this particular discovery, he’d been reassigned to mundane tasks such as filing, coffee-making, cleaning, providing takeway, and scaring off over-eager tourists who want to know why the head of the Bay Tourism Center wore such nice suits: in short, all the tasks he’d had before he’d been mission-trained. Jack, on the other hand, was speeding through the city in search of all the creatures they usually hunted down together – Weevils, other aliens, humans possessed by aliens, dogs who were chewing on alien weaponry – and spending less time in the hub to make up for being one active team member short.

And to think, Ianto had privately mocked the concept of a “Torchwood widow.”

“So,” Jack said, hoisting himself up onto the cot next to Ianto and, without so much as a glance at the rest of his very naked body, started gently peeling away an electrode. “What do you think?”

“Chinese would be good for lunch.”

He sent him a withering look.

“It’s surreal.”

“Regretting anything yet?”

“Should I?”

The question was meant, at least in Ianto’s original intention, to be flip and amusing, but it somehow came over as the smallest bit urgent. Jack abandoned the task of removing electrodes to flatten his hand over the curve of Ianto’s belly. “The first pregnant man, from where I’m sitting, was in the thirty-fourth century. A medical experiment. Two-thirds of his doctors said he was bound to die. He was fine. Though I heard his son became an ultra-conservative freak.” He shrugged dismissively. “Happens to the best of us.”

Ianto hazarded a smile. “You make it sound so easy.”

“And you make it look effortless.” His thumb traced the shape of him, smoothing over his skin. “I think she’s beautiful.”

“You’d say that about anything that sprung from your loins.”

He grinned. “No. That would be witty, charming, and delightful. The beautiful isn’t from me.” One more small caress and he reached for the electrodes again. “Do me a favor.”

“What’s that?”

“Don’t listen to Owen. What he’s seeing is a complete contradiction to everything he’s been taught. It’s going to take some getting used to.”

“You assume I ever listened to Owen.”

He grinned. “I think sometimes you listen to more than you admit to.”

“Of course, sir. It’s my job.”

===

“You know, Gwen’s right. She needs a name.”

“I think I’ve dreamt we’ve had this conversation. Wait. We did. Yesterday.”

“You can’t keep denying she needs a name.”

“I’d much rather worry about her making it to birth.”

Jack reached around him for a bowl, his front pressing against him all the way from hips to shoulder. “So you won’t even consider naming her until you know she’s safe?”

The kitchen smelled like thick stew and fresh bread, no thanks to Jack sticking his nose into every pot and pan Ianto had filled with ingredients. Gwen had planned dinner with Rhys, Tosh had a blind date that a friend from London had sent her on, and Owen was spending time with his work, which meant Jack had declared it time for “dinner and some quiet.” Ianto was not sure when in the last month and a half his flat had become home away from the hub, but he could look past Jack leaving his shoes off the rug and coat over the back of the couch if it meant bringing in Clark Pies and eating them in front of an episode of X Factor.

He knew it was completely shallow, but for the first time in his life, he also knew it was precisely what he wanted: quiet, privacy, and Jack.

He watched the stew slide into the bowl and wiped the lip of it with his finger when a drop of sauce threatened to go rogue and escape. “Or until the opposite happens,” he admitted, and reached for the bread knife.

“That’s the problem. You can’t wait. If something does happen – “ And there it was, the softness in Jack’s voice that only slid in when Owen inevitably reminded them how likely this entire experience was to end in tragedy. “ – do you really think you’re going to want to sit down and consider what to call her? ‘I always thought Enid was a beautiful name.’ There won’t be time.”

Ianto sliced the bread slowly, stacking the pieces on a plate. They were thick and left weighty crumbles on the countertop. He brushed them into his hand, dropped them into the sink, and didn’t speak again until he was carrying the bread to the table.

“I don’t want to jinx it.”

It was all the better that he couldn’t see Jack’s expression when the words left his lips, because he could imagine it. At work, Jack was flippant and casual about Ianto’s gradual expansion. Elsewhere, Ianto had to watch the way he smiled at the stretch of his shirts, the way he dragged him (and once, Tosh, which had ended awkwardly) into stores to admire ridiculous powder-pink bric-a-brac, the way he called the baby she in every reference. Even when they ended up in his flat, on his couch with junky food and worse television, Jack’s hand strayed to his stomach and stayed there, fingers occasionally shifting idly.

In the two weeks since his physical, he’d felt her start squirming, wriggling around somewhere beneath his skin like he’d swallowed a bowl of goldfish.

He wondered, sometimes, if Jack kept his hand there because he was waiting to feel it too.

“Naming her isn’t going to jinx anything,” he argued, and it was painfully domestic to see him put down two bowls on the table. Ianto stared at them, even as Jack dropped into his chair and picked up a piece of bread. “You’re assuming that assigning her an identity changes what’s going on with your body.”

“Owen had a point.”

“Owen’s made one point in his entire life and I think it was about shagging.”

“Something could happen.” Suddenly, Ianto wasn’t hungry, and he moved across the flat, tidying up. There was an empty beer bottle on the coffee table. One of Jack’s shoes a good three feet from the mat. A crumpled paper ball halfway under the couch. An empty milk carton in the fridge. He pulled out a bin liner and started filling it with all the debris from the last few days, one thing after another. An expired coupon off the front of the fridge. A courtesy postcard from the dentist. A –

A hand landed on his arm. He dropped the postcard in the bag and looked at it, bent corners against the dark plastic. He didn’t need to glance up to know Jack was standing next to him.

“You don’t have to be afraid of her,” he said quietly.

“I don’t know how to…care about her and lose her.”

“That doesn’t always happen.”

“My record isn’t good.”

He slipped out of Jack’s grip and shoved the bag atop the trash in the kitchen bin. It miraculously didn’t spill. “We’ve all lost someone,” he stressed when Ianto was quiet for too long. “We’ve all – “

“I lost my mam when I was eight. My dad when I was eighteen. Then Lisa. Most everyone else at Torchwood One. Suzie.” He stepped around Jack and circled the couch again. “It’s not as easy as it is for you. You can see them into old age. Watch them decay, but know they had eighty years. I don’t get that comfort.”

“You think this is easy?” Jack asked, gaping at him. He threw up his hands. “Ianto, with most people, I can’t be who I am after knowing them for ten or fifteen years because I don’t get any older. I’ve lost friends, lovers, and people I would have married and grown old with because I can’t grow old. Do you know how many times before this happened that I couldn’t bring myself to think of children because I knew I would outlive them? And then my grandchildren, and my great-grandchildren? No one can fix me, not even the Doctor, and I’m trapped in this…existence knowing that this is all I’ll ever have.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry if you think I’m day-tripping through time, but – “

“You can bloody change that!” Ianto’s voice cracked, a surprise pitch of panic as he broke into Jack’s monologue. “You can – you can walk away, you can go be cavalier and charming back in your time or your old life. You can be with people who know male pregnancy and living beyond eighty and time whorls and dimensional bloody space rifts with Weevils and Gratar and anything else, but I can’t. I have this life. This one. That’s it. In forty years or days, when my something ruptures, I lie down knowing that this was it. The entire, un-extraordinary life of Ianto Jones, who got five minutes on this planet to do something right and couldn’t even do that because some fucking alien from god-knows what forsaken corner of the universe put her hand on me and then let me shag my boyfriend so I’d get pregnant with a baby who might die, or kill me, or both!”

Sometime while he was speaking, Ianto wasn’t certain when, he’d felt himself start to shake, his shoulders to his fingertips, but it wasn’t until Jack was frozen in front of him that he realized Jack had lost his crisp edges and dissolved into a misshapen blur of skintone, shirt, and trousers.

“Ianto – “

“One life, Jack,” and his voice stumbled over his tongue. “That’s all I have. One bloody life and I can’t even get becoming a parent right.”

The blur put his arms around him, pulled him close, and before Ianto could stop it he was crying, his hands finding their way to Jack’s shirt, his face pressing into his shoulder. He smelled warm and sweet, like bread cooked in honeycomb and butter, and he trembled in his grip if only because it was the surest, firmest thing he had. He felt Jack’s face against his hair, Jack’s lips against his scalp, and in the silence of the flat, that all he was left with.

Jack.

“This isn’t the end,” he whispered. “You’re going to be all right, and so is she.”

“And if – “

“No ifs. Owen’s a brilliant doctor but this is out of his league. You and she are going to be perfect and after we rub Owen’s nose in it, we’ll teach her how to break the noses of the boys at nursery school.” He pulled back and reached down to wipe Ianto’s face. “Let me take you to bed. Distract you from this. Stew tastes best after sex.”

Ianto tried to chuckle. It came out shakily. For a moment, all that remained were their even gazes in the quiet room. “Jack, I – “

“You don’t need to say it.” His voice was so low, it was almost a whisper, but Jack never looked away. “I know. I’ve always known.”

===

“Are you sure?”

“It’s toilet roll and a pillow. There’s not much she can do to me.”

“She’s been very quiet. My guess is, she won’t even look at you.”

“Then she’ll be right on course with the people on the street.”

“Oi, don’t say that,” Gwen murmured, and reached over to stroke her hand over Ianto’s abdomen. “Isn’t that right, baby girl? Your dad’s just self-conscious because all the girls want to touch his middle.”

“All the girls,” Ianto corrected archly, “think I drink too much out at the pub. The world’s best-toned beer-belly.”

While Gwen laughed, he knew she had no idea how near to the truth his joke really was. He saw it in everyone’s eyes, even Owen’s, when he walked into a room or stepped into the corner stop for a carton of milk. Another few weeks of time gone meant another few inches added to his waistline, inches he couldn’t hide. Clothes may not have made the man, but the only thing worse than being fully-clothed in public was watching what Owen called “week twenty-four” turn heads was being naked. In the mirror, during a physical, or in bed, all it was from the middle of his torso to his groin was one consistent, even arch of flesh that rippled occasionally in front of his very eyes. Alone, it felt only out of place, but in public he found himself waiting for someone to ask the obvious question:

What could bring that shape to a man’s body?

Gwen caught his eye for a moment, glancing at him, up the steps, and then back again. “Remember, Jack wants to know everything she does. Conversation, gestures, if she eats or – “

“General secretarial work at your service.” Ianto smiled. “Give Rhys my best.”

He watched her take off up the stairs and waited until she was out of sight to stretch his sore back and adjust the weight of the parcel for the Gratar. It was so simple – open the delivery drawer, put the parcel in the drawer, close it and lock it – but he hadn’t seen the Gratar face-to-face since she’d teased him the first night. To ask Jack, she ate less, spoke less, and slept less than she had when Gwen interviewed her two months earlier. She never asked for anything or complained, even when the heating went out or a leaky pipe soaked her blanket. It’d taken them three days to realize she was out of toilet roll.

The vault was quiet when Ianto stepped through the doors, save for a low moan in the back of Janet’s throat. He glanced in her direction and watched her slink to the back of her cell, sitting down against the wall. Her head swayed from side to side, as though she was drunk or woozy.

Next door, the Gratar sat quietly on her cot, legs crossed and hands folded. She was perfectly silent, not even breathing more heavily than usual as Ianto tugged open the drawer and put in the items.

“Toilet roll and a new pillow,” he reported, breaking the quiet. “Not sure you deserve either.”

Janet moaned again and beat her misshapen hands against the glass.

The Gratar didn’t move an inch.

“Well, if you won’t be needing anything else – “

“She smells you.”

Ianto had turned away from the cell but now, he moved back. Her eyes were fixed on his, light with the smallest touch of amusement. “Your hormones. You’re so far along, now. Another month and she could survive. Imagine that. Your own tiny little version of yourself. Is that what you wanted, keeping this?”

“It doesn’t matter to you, does it?” Ianto felt the anger rising in the back of his throat again, the same anger he’d felt when she’d teased and taunted him the last time. “This is a game to you.”

“Is it?” She shifted, rose from her cot and came to the glass. “Do you know what the word ‘gratar’ means in English? It’s not the name of our home, our world. It’s the name we gave ourselves when we came here, to describe us to you human beings.” She caught his gaze. “It’s a word that means ‘the remnants of hope that come after despair.’ We can teach you humans so much, change you. Teach you what’s left, after your despair.”

He snorted. “Is that what this is? A lesson?”

“I don’t know. Are you despairing, Ianto?”

“No.”

“Then are you happy?”

Janet moaned and broke Ianto’s concentration, and he turned away from the Gratar. The Weevil paced her cell slowly, back and forth, her normal restless wanderings. Ianto had monitored her behavior a thousand times before, but now when she raised her head it was almost as though she was moaning for him.

“I’m happier than I was before Torchwood,” he said finally, his own voice quiet. “I’m happier than I was before Gwen and Tosh, before Owen, before Jack.”

“And that’s all?” the alien asked.

“What else is there?”

“A name for your child. Or are you still scared?”

His attention snapped to her. “How can you know that?” he demanded, stepping to the glass. He met her steely gaze. “There’s no way you could know!”

Her lips curved into a slow, confident smile, but whatever had brought her to speak had suddenly dissipated. She crossed her cell and settled comfortably onto her cot, crossing her legs and folding her hands again.

“Tell me how you knew that, dammit!” He pounded a fist on the glass. “Tell me!” And again. “Tell – “

“Enough,” and before he recognized the voice or the reflection of another form in the glass, Ianto felt Jack’s touch, catching his wrist and wrapping around it, not forceful but still just firm enough to keep him from striking the glass again. “It’s done.”

He turned on him. “Jack, she knows something. She knows my mind, my – “

“She doesn’t know anything that will hurt you,” he promised, and slowly uncoiled his fingers. “Go up to the hub. Have a cup of tea. I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

“Jack – “

“Go.” He smiled warmly. “Tosh was none-too-subtly threatening to throw a baby shower on the phone with Gwen. Someone needs to remind her what happened the last time there were balloons with our friend the pterodactyl. I thought the ringing in my ears would never stop.”

Ianto paused for a moment, but Jack tipped his head in a way that indicated he didn’t have much of a choice in the matter. He started out the door, up a few steps, but something in the moment – was it Jack’s tone or his own strange fear of what might happen when Jack stayed in the cell block? – that made him pause just around the bend.

The concrete walls and ceiling provided the perfect amplification to Jack’s voice.

“I don’t know what else you think you can do, but let me assure you, the buck stops here.”

Silence. No footsteps, no murmurs. Not even Janet made a sound.

“Is the mighty Captain Jack scared?” asked the Gratar. Her voice only just carried to where Ianto was standing, but his stomach turned the moment he heard it.

“Why would I be scared?”

“That I’ll offer to help him. That he’ll accept.”

“I watched the CCTV footage. I know you offered once before. He’s not stupid. He won’t accept anything from you.”

“And why not? Because he wants to be a father to your child? Because he loves you? You’re naïve.”

“And you’re a conniving bitch, but you don’t hear me complaining.”

“I only did what I needed to do to survive. You know that feeling, don’t you? Making the choice to protect yourself? You’re no saint.”

“No, but in the end, I protect the people I care about before I protect myself.”

“Then why is he still pregnant?”

“That was his choice, not mine.”

“Then I hope for your sake he survives. Otherwise, where will you be?”

“A lot less fortunate. A lot less happy. But I’m sure that’s exactly what you want to hear.”

Jack’s footsteps were heavy on the floor and Ianto started up the stairs as quickly as he could, realizing only halfway up that he couldn’t move as well with what felt like a football shoved down the front of his shirt. He got to the base level and leaned on the railing, breathing heavily, as he listened for the footfalls behind him and hoped they were far enough back that Jack wouldn’t realize he’d stayed behind.

“Are you all right?” Tosh asked, glancing at him, over her shoulder at the medical recess, and then back at him. “Do you want me to get Owen? Has something – “

“I’m just,” he replied, holding up a finger, “remembering now why fat men don’t run the London marathon.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive. Just need to catch my breath.”

The door to the basement banged open and Jack strode through. Tosh glanced at him, then at Ianto again, and finally walked off. Jack stopped at a monitor for a moment and then came around to Ianto, standing next to him at the railing.

“Next time,” he commented, watching Tosh settle down at her computer, “just watch the CCTV footage.”

“Jack, I – “

“Hey, I benefit from you racing up the stairs. Getting sweaty.” He turned, grinning, and leaned down, closer to Ianto’s ear. “It’s too bad you didn’t tell me you wanted a workout. We could’ve repeated yesterday’s performance. You can still bend.”

Ianto raised an eyebrow. “You suspected otherwise?”

“I suspected – “

“Jack,” and there was Owen, standing on the steps, pulling them out of the moment. “You need to see what I found in the stomach of that dead Weevil.”

He rolled his eyes. “Stomach contents. Sexy.” He slid a hand down Ianto’s back. “Have a glass of water. I’ll be back to finish our…discussion.” But then he was moving away and taking the last few steps in twos so he could go down to the mortuary.

Ianto frowned and stretched, his back protesting uncomfortably, and when he finally found an angle where the pressure was bearable, if not pleasant, he realized Tosh was looking at him. She’d been quiet through the last few weeks, never really asking about or commenting on his health while Gwen found every excuse to touch his stomach and Owen ran weekly physicals. She’d kept her distance, but he’d supposed that was Tosh; not necessarily withdrawn, but a bit bashful, especially given that her colleague – male colleague – was now pregnant.

He smiled at her and she smiled back, brushing hair out of her face. “He – you suit each other,” she said, a bit hastily. “I mean, I’ve seen him – we’ve all seen him with other people, but not like this. Not the way he’s with you.”

Ianto gestured broadly to his middle. “The trap of pregnancy doesn’t just work for women, I suppose.”

“No, I… I mean it, Ianto. You and Jack fit together. I’m…happy for you.”

The earnestness in her voice was just enough to make Ianto smile broadly. “I know,” he replied, and was surprised how much he meant it.

===

“Well, I think you just proved what I always thought was a very popular myth about sex and staying power.”

“Yes, well. I got my inspiration from watching Mythbusters on YouTube.”

“Any other tricks you intend to show me?”

“Oh, plenty.”

Jack laughed, his head tipped back on the pillow and voice carrying through the room. Ianto grinned at him and sat back against the headboard, stretching his legs. The duvet had found its way to the floor, sticky with come and too warm for the start of June, and the sheet could happily stay bunched around his feet given that he needed to stretch and then bend his legs to get comfortable. The pressure was building, as Owen had threatened it would, but most days he could stave it off with a healthy routine of long walks, awkward sitting positions, and sex. Tonight, after the first, second, and now third options were exhausted, he had no choice but to shift until he had his legs up and spread, forcing his belly high.

It still was the smallest bit uncomfortable, but at least it didn’t hurt.

Jack watched all this. He’d watched every motion in the last week, since Owen had first noticed the way the baby was starting to shift and put stress on Ianto’s organs. She was growing quickly and without any additional complications, a good sign even if it meant that Ianto had to visit the bathroom six or seven times before lunch.

Another week, and Owen was fairly sure the baby would be able to live if she had to be removed.

It was a reality that Ianto didn’t quite know how to process. Gwen had offered to take him shopping for “baby things” – a bassinette and crib, diapers and clothes, toys and blankets – but when they’d stepped into the shop, he found himself surrounded by a world of items he didn’t recognize and three overeager shopwomen (too old, at middle age, to be shopgirls) asking him who he was buying for and how far along they were. He’d walked out, leaving Gwen behind, and still had a little pink rabbit sitting on the tourism desk at the hub that she had brought him.

“Baby’s first teddy,” she’d said with a smile.

He hadn’t brought it home.

Jack’s hand landed on his skin and pulled him out of his distraction, especially when, just left of his fingers, his belly dimpled. There was a half-second delay before Jack grinned and pressed his thumb to where the dimple had been. “She’s feisty,” he commented.

Another dimple, and Ianto shifted. “That doesn’t come from me.”

“I don’t know. You’ve got that Welsh fire under there.”

“The Welsh are known for being vicious and impassioned.”

“You gave us Anthony Hopkins.”

“And Catherine Zeta-Jones.”

“Mmm, the things I would have done to her in The Mask of Zorro.”

The baby kicked again, presumably protesting Jack’s lack of attention, and he dimpled Ianto’s skin himself, pressing back. It was like their own form of communication, and twice now, Ianto had woken up in the middle of the night to a poke-and-kick strategy session between Captain Jack and, as Owen called her, Female Fetus Jones.

“Catherine’s not bad,” he said after a moment.

“Not bad? I know she doesn’t hold a candle to me, but really, Ianto.”

“No, I mean… As a name.” Jack glanced up suddenly and he pretended not to notice, watching instead the way his whole body shifted when she moved. “My mam always said to name a baby after someone.”

“Don’t you think Ms. Zeta-Jones is going to be a little upset to know there’s a smaller copy of her back in Cardiff, hyphen and all?” But there was mirth, warm and fond, in Jack’s tone. “What about your mom? What was her name?”

“Winnie.”

He made a face. “You’re not going to be offended if I veto that, are you?”

“I mocked it every day of my life until she passed.” He glanced at Jack. “Yours?”

“Emily.”

“Painfully American.”

“When have you ever complained about me being painfully American?” Jack leaned in, let his chin rest on Ianto’s shoulder and watched his belly jerk and tumble. “Is there a Welsh word for ‘gymnast’?”

“Only if there’s one for ‘I was comfortable until your father started poking you.’”

Jack laughed and turned to kiss him on the cheek, but his lips then drifted to the corner of his mouth and finally turned into a proper kiss, and before Ianto could process the change, Jack’s whole bulk was against him, pressed to his side while lips, teeth and tongue met. It wasn’t urgent, wasn’t demanding, but it was…desperate, somehow. The world became smaller, a pin-prick in the universe consisting of just Jack’s weight, Jack’s scent, and the baby wriggling for both of them.

When they pulled apart to share long mouthfuls of the same air, Ianto opened his eyes to see Jack’s only inches away, sharp and constant, like the tides, the sunrise, the length of a second.

“Emlyn,” he murmured, accent thick. “Welsh for Emily.”

“Yeah?” The little puff of air was accompanied by a shaky smile. “You want something with fewer vowels? Tosh has been doing my research. Eheubryd and Addfwyn topped the list.”

Ianto rolled his eyes. “Another comment on my culture and her name is Cymreiges. I’ll leave you to figure out how the spelling and pronunciation fit together.”

He laughed and with it, Ianto laughed too, not because he thought his own joke was particularly funny but because when Jack laughed, it took over his whole face, from the crease of his forehead to the crunch of his chin, and no one – not a straight man or the butchest lesbian – could fail to find him attractive. “Come here,” he demanded, and before Ianto could protest, he slipped hands under his legs and pulled him bodily onto his lap.

Jack’s hands looked huge – they always looked huge, Ianto supposed, but especially so – against the heavy bulge between them.

“I can’t tell you everything,” he said, his face a mask of pure honesty. “I may never be able to tell you the things you want to know about me. But I will never let you down. I’ll never abandon you. I left once, and saw things… I can’t even describe them to you. But while I was there, while I was trapped, the one thing that kept me going was knowing what was waiting for me. You. The team. You were – you are all important to me. More important than maybe I gave you credit for before I left, but I’ll never make that mistake again.”

“Jack – “

“No, wait. Just… Wait.” One of his hands slid up, cupped Ianto’s cheek. “I can’t promise that I won’t have to leave you again. I can’t promise that something uncontrollable won’t happen. But I need you to trust me when I say this.” His voice caught, a sudden turn deep in his throat, and Ianto could feel his own pulse in his temples. “I need you to understand that, if I ever go, I won’t go quietly. And I will come back. I’ll always come back.”

There was something so open in his expression – wide eyes, parted lips, an edge to his voice that bordered on panic – that the one thing, the only thing Ianto could do was lean in and kiss him, his belly pressing against Jack’s, his weight shifting so he could outright straddle him while he tasted his mouth again and again. Jack’s hands slid to his back, pulled him close and cradled him, and it was only after he’d sucked on Jack’s tongue and listened to him moan deep in his throat that he could pull away.

“I always knew you would,” he murmured. “I never doubted you.”

For a moment, possibly even minutes, Jack simply looked at him, and Ianto wondered if it was reality or imagination that made him think Jack’s eyes were damp.

But then there were lips on his again, and Jack pushing him down onto the sheets and pillows, leaving no more time for wondering.

===

“Gwen, I’m fine.”

“No, no, really, let me help you.”

“I can get up to my flat without you, or Jack, or a stair lift.”

“Ianto, you can barely walk.” Gwen hopped ahead of him on the steps. She was already carrying his bag from work and now, his sack of groceries – mostly instant dinners, being as he couldn’t bring himself to cook in the evenings and Jack couldn’t cook, at least, not unless they wanted a house fire as a side dish – but she still had a bounce in her step. Ianto envied her. He couldn’t make it up one flight without breaking a sweat, tese days. His landlord, a man named Tim in horn-rimmed glasses, had come round a week earlier to express his concern.

“You look sick,” he’d said, standing in the living room. Ianto had been in the door for five minutes, and the interruption had not been mitigated by the fact that Jack was crashing around in the kitchen. “You’re not gonna die on me, are you? I need somebody in this flat. Unless your mate here wants to let it – “

“Fat chance,” Jack had called out.

“ – I need to know you’re not gonna go up and die.”

“I’m not dying,” Ianto had assured him. “It’s…a tumor. I’m having it removed in the next few months.”

“A tumor.”

“Yes.”

“A bloody tumor!” Tim had laughed. “And you say you’re not gonna die on me. I’m watching you, Jones, and putting this flat up to let at the first sign of you disappearing.” After he’d slammed the door, Jack had done a fairly accurate impression. They’d laughed for an hour.

Some days, Ianto thought the only thing that kept him from pulling his hair out by the fistful was Jack.

But tonight, Jack, Owen, and Tosh were on a Weevil hunt in a shady part of the city and it was Gwen who was taking his keys away and opening the door while he caught his breath on the landing. It was sticky out, the air heavy and humid, and every step felt like it would be his last. His legs muscles were starting to lock and cramp, now, and even when they weren’t, he felt like he could only eat half of any meal before he was too full to move. Owen was starting to talk about surgery dates and methods, which just made him more uncomfortable. Every day was an adventure in what could next feel wrong.

Gwen pushed his door open and turned on the lights, which gave him some encouragement to make his way up the rest of the stairs.

He almost wished he hadn’t.

In the midst of the living room, where there should have been a couch (with cushions that were beaten down, thank you Jack), a coffee table, and a rug that went well with both was a singularly massive crib. Crib, of course, referring to a bed. Made for an infant. Moreover, that very crib was stacked with gifts, glittery paper and long ribbons clearly visible through the slats.

Gwen grinned broadly and practically pushed him through the door. “We wanted to surprise you,” she explained while Ianto took in the sight of Owen, Tosh, and Jack milling about, the latter two with drinks and the former looking like he would have rather been fed to a pack of angry wild dogs. “It was Tosh’s idea, actually.”

Tosh looked immediately uncomfortable. “It’s tradition to give new parents gifts so they don’t have to spend all that money themselves,” she explained, turning her glass around in her hand. “I knew you didn’t want us to make a fuss, but when were you and Jack going to have time to shop for baby things?”

“We’ve got a glass tank at the hub they could use,” Owen muttered, and Jack elbowed him in the side.

Ianto shifted from one foot to another, looking at the collection. He couldn’t even imagine what was in half of the boxes, and yet there they were, sitting in front of him. “Thank you,” he said finally, still standing in the doorway in his coat and shoes. “I… don’t know what to say.”

“Don’t say anything!” and Gwen nudged him forward, taking his coat as she went. “Start opening the gifts! Of course, if Jack were a proper sort of man, you would have had a wedding shower ages ago and we could have counted how many times you broke the ribbons to see how many children you’re going to have.”

“Oh no,” Jack stressed, holding up a hand. “Don’t put that thought in his head.”

“You might look good in a wedding gown,” Owen mused.

“I don’t have the hips for it.”

“It’s not too much of a do,” Tosh explained in Gwen’s wake while Ianto settled onto his shoved-aside couch. “We thought… Well, Owen thinks you’re going on bed rest soon – “

“He should be on bed rest now unless you want his innards to start being outtards.”

“ – and we wanted to do something nice for you before that happened.” She sat down next to him on the couch. “It’s not really a fuss.”

She sounded so genuinely apologetic that Ianto couldn’t keep himself from smiling. “Thank you,” he said, and accepted a plate with finger sandwiches when Gwen put it on his knee. “I mean it. It’s not a fuss. It’s very kind.”

“It’s making up for all the times they called you teaboy,” Jack joked, and tossed something in his direction. It was clumsy luck that Ianto caught it, and as soon as he did he knew what it was:

The pink plush rabbit from the tourism façade.

In the next several hours, Tosh and Gwen attempted to horrify him with stories of friends, relatives, and mates-of-mates-twice-removed who’d suffered through grisly births (“You haven’t seen the books he’s been reading,” Jack had insisted as Ianto himself started to turn slightly green) and wrapping paper attempted to completely cover the floor. Never before had he seen, let alone held or been expected to dote on, so many tiny pink outfits, socks, shoes, bows, ribbons, bath goods, blankets, and other items he couldn’t identify. Not even Tosh, who he usually credited with great common sense, had ventured anywhere near the “yellow” or “aqua” side of the spectrum. It was almost painful.

Eventually, Rhys called and Gwen begged off, dragging Tosh along for a ride home. They kissed him goodbye and handled his middle without prejudice, leaving Jack and Owen standing in the kitchen with the last of the sandwiches. Without the girls to jabber on, conversation quickly devolved into football matches and who was going to clean up the mess of ribbon on the floor.

“I think that’s my cue,” Owen finally said, but not before he picked up a brown box and set it down on the coffee table. “You can’t lactate. Formula. Read the instructions and make sure you sanitize the bottles.”

Jack grinned. “It’s almost like you care,” he pointed out.

He snorted. “I just don’t want to hear you lot complaining that I never warned you that you can’t pour it out of the carton and into her mouth.” He waved a hand. “Stay in bed tomorrow, Ianto.”

“Not if I can walk.”

It was the normal end of their conversations and, while Owen let himself out, Jack crouched to open the box and pull out a pair of bottles – miraculously not pink – that had been shoved in amongst the canisters of formula. He held one up and waggled it. “Owen Harper, sentimentalist. We’ll have to cultivate this further. Maybe get him a puppy. Boys like dogs.”

“Explains why I have y – “ The last word was strangled by a sudden pressure deep in Ianto’s abdomen that made it hard to breathe. He shifted his weight, trying to convince the baby to move off of whatever vital organ she’d just shoved her elbow into, but it no avail. His knees shook when he stood and in seconds, it went from feeling like the pressure before belching to a sharp pain that radiated from the bottom of his belly to his middle back. He swayed and caught himself on the arm of the couch just as Jack dropped the bottles to hold him upright.

“What is it?”

“I – hurts.” The words had to be forced out. It felt like his lungs were suddenly shriveled and weak. He closed his eyes and tried to stand up straight, but the pain was too much and he staggered on his feet. Only Jack was keeping him upright. “Pressure. So – fuck.”

“Hold yourself up against the couch,” Jack instructed, and once Ianto’s hands found purchase, he went around behind him and pressed against his back, body fully flush against Ianto’s. He kept him from swaying with one hand on the bottom of his belly while the other popped his buttons and forced his shirt open. His belly, with its dark stretch marks against pale skin, hung between the open shirt but it didn’t matter, because then Jack’s hands were there, cupping the bottom of it. “Lean into my grip.”

“Jack,” he murmured, but another twinge of pain forced his eyes closed.

“Trust me. Lean against my hands. I won’t let you go.”

Another moment’s hesitation seemed wise – a chance for the pain to subside – but the next time his muscles seized, it was simply too much. He leaned into Jack’s grip, those large, firm hands that were holding his belly so carefully. It lifted the weight from his body, put the pressure on something else, and for the first time in what felt like weeks, he could take a deep breath and let it out without feeling like everything else was constricting. He looked over his shoulder at Jack, who smiled serenely.

“A temporary measure. I learned it from a friend. She was carrying quadruplets. Had horrible luck with them but almost looked as good as you with the weight.” He winked. “Feel better?”

“Yes.” He couldn’t take his eyes from Jack. “Thank you.”

“I wish I could do more.”

The murmur came from his lips and then Jack leaned in, chest flush against Ianto’s back, and kissed him. Whether it was meant to be short and sweet, he never knew, because he reached back with an arm and found Jack’s neck, held on to it, and kissed him harder, deeper, more urgently. When they paused for breath, it was also for Jack to tip his head and graze lips and teeth against his neck. What had been a quiet, intimate moment was caught with one moan, then two, and then Jack’s voice in his ear.

“Bend over the arm of the couch. It’ll keep the pressure off.”

But it wasn’t about the pressure, not anymore. It was about Jack’s hands over his skin and Jack pressing into him, opening him, finding every nerve that craved touch and exploiting them, one after another. It was about lips and teeth on his neck, on his shoulder, on his back, about shorts that were dropped to the floor and about the way his breath caught when Jack twisted his nipple. The weight of his belly hung between the arm of the couch and his own legs, but that didn’t matter, not as Jack pressed into him and then again, one stroke and another, driving breath and coherent thought out of his mind.

“Jack,” he murmured, a mantra that found its way onto his lips. “Jack, please.”

“Anything,” Jack promised him, through every whine and helpless noise. “For you, anything.”

===

“Owen, I want her in the vault!”

“She’s sick. What happened to my vow? ‘First, do no harm’?”

“I don’t think Socrates had homicidal aliens in mind when he wrote that.”

“She can hardly breathe. I’m not going to let her die down there.”

“Maybe Owen’s right, Jack. Look at her. She’s skin and – “

“If I wanted your opinion, Gwen, I’d ask for it!”

If Ianto had to count the number of times that Owen had worked on a live patient since joining their merry band, he wouldn’t have had to take of his socks. Most the aliens he came face-to-face with were dead and had been for quite some time, which made the sight of the Gratar, gaunt and ghostly across the cot, only more disconcerting. Tosh and Gwen hadn’t seen Owen bring her up or strap her in, and yet there she was, as living and breathing as any of them.

Well, maybe not as any of them. Any of them who wasn’t –

“Look,” Owen said, and put down his blood pressure cuff. “Gratar are more human in structure than any other aliens we’ve seen. I can treat her and put her right back in her cell, but it would be inhumane to sit her there and let her rot.”

“This,” Jack retorted, “is not up for debate, Owen. I want her in the vault.”

“And if I don’t take her back there, what happens?”

“You’ll be relieved of duty.”

“Yeah. That lasted so long last time.”

“All right, wait,” Gwen said, sliding past Jack to stand halfway down the stairs, blocking his path. She held up her hands. “Give him a few hours, Jack. What’s she going to do in this state? She can’t hurt any of us. And even if she could, there are five of us – “

“And Ianto eats for two,” Owen offered.

“ – and only one of her.”

Toshiko nodded. “From everything we’ve seen of her, she’s extremely intelligent. I don’t think she’d try to trick us. Too many variables, and the odds are stacked against her.”

For a moment, Jack stood stark still, his jaw set and his hands tight on his hips. “Owen.”

“Yes?”

“Two hours to get her back to life and then I will personally throw both of you in the vault. Together.”

The two hours seemed to be two eons, at least from the standpoint of everyone else in the hub. Toshiko went over results from a new algorithm she was running, Gwen hypothesized on the uses of a camera-like device they’d found at a pawn shop that was clearly alien, and Ianto watched them work from the couch, his feet up and his head lulled back. The timer Gwen had set – “To make sure he really gets his hours,” she’d noted, earning a sharp look from Jack – ticked onward, the seconds crawling by. Condensation from the muggy July morning crept down the walls, creating little puddles in the corners.

“I’m going to make coffee,” he announced when the timer was nearly down to zero, causing both Gwen and Tosh to look over at him Jack had retreated into his office, probably doing his best “brooding” face. No one had dared follow.

“Are you sure you should be doing that?” Tosh asked. “Do you want any help?”

“I can carry four glasses without spilling. Built-in tray.” He patted the top of what was starting to feel like his unending swell. It was easier to use coffee-making as an excuse to move around than to admit the pressure was climbing from “annoying” to “unbearable.” He’d almost stayed in bed, but there’d been too much to do at work and Jack hadn’t wanted to leave him alone.

Small sacrifices.

The timer was still ticking down when he handed out the mugs – Jack first, who thanked him with a bit of a smile, then Gwen and Tosh – and he found it was incredibly hard to hold a full cup of coffee even when maneuvering down the steps into the medical recess. Owen was bent over a chart, scribbling notes to himself, and only noticed Ianto at all when the coffee was set in front of him.

He started. “Jesus, mate, you could give somebody a heart attack.”

“Won’t be you.”

“You should be resting.”

“I can’t sit for hours. My arse goes numb.”

“Probably a side effect from life with Jack.” He looked at the mug for a moment and then at Ianto. “Now what am I going to do with that?”

He shrugged, his excuse for nosing around in Owen’s Gratar-laced affairs found out. “You can give it to your guest.”

“She’s a strange case,” he admitted, turning around on his chair and gesturing at the prone Gratar with a pen. “She’s lost more weight than you’ve gained in the last few months, doesn’t eat and hardly sleeps, but she’s still ticking. Physically, she’s still in sharp condition. I don’t understand why she won’t wake up.”

“Probably to spite us,” Ianto mused, stepping forward. She looked harmless, now, strange after all her mind games. Maybe that was the Gratar’s real talent. Hormone-leeching and blood-drinking aside, she could play with his mind, set him off guard, make –

Somewhere out of the recess, Gwen’s timer beeped. Owen sighed and shoved up. “Serves me right,” he muttered, turning off the monitors. “All that bollocks for nothing. Jack gets his way again.”

Ianto chuckled. For a moment, he was ready to give Owen a hard time, point out that no one would ever really be able to get one over on Jack Harkness, but the words died in his throat.

The Gratar’s eyes were open.

“Owen – “

“Hang on, I just have to turn this off and – “

“Owen!”

The next few seconds all moved as one. The Gratar snapped into motion and leapt off the cot with the agility of a gazelle and the strength of a Weevil, grabbing Ianto as she did. One arm wrapped around his middle, just above his belly, while the other pressed to his throat. He tried to push her away, force himself out of her grip, but it was only when he moved that he realized something cold and metallic was against his neck.

And that a scalpel was missing from Owen’s expertly organized tray.

“What’s going on?” Tosh demanded, and suddenly she and Gwen were charging through the plastic sheeting that covered the mouth of the mortuary, guns drawn. Within seconds, Jack joined them, pistol trained on the Gratar.

“I wouldn’t tempt her, if I were you,” Owen informed them, hands raised. His eyes were focused on the scalpel.

“Not so harmless anymore, am I?” the Gratar asked, smiling smugly. Ianto flinched when the hand at his neck moved a half-centimeter closer. He could feel the sharp prick of the blade in his skin. She did it without looking, however, her attention on Jack. “Nice to see you.”

“I warned you,” he growled, his voice even.

“And I warned Ianto, but no one listens to me.” She pressed her nose to his hair and took a deep breath. When she exhaled, it blew into his ear, and he shuddered. “So much more blood, Ianto. So many more hormones. I warned you that I could stop it if you let me go. Now I have to do it the hard way.”

“Why are you doing this?” Tosh demanded, her gun hand trembling. “We’re keeping you alive. You don’t need to take any of us hostage.”

“You humans never understood us. We don’t just pick and choose when to breed, leeching hormones as we go. We need to breed. It’s our biological imperative. When Ianto couldn’t give himself willingly, I had to come up with a second plan.” She pulled him closer. “Otherwise, I’d die.”

“What a shame,” Owen deadpanned.

“You know how it feels, don’t you? To be a shell.” She shook her head. “I thought it would be so easy. But you were so human about it, Ianto. You chose to carry it. It meant I had to wait for my chance. Let you play house with the Captain, build up fantasies of your happy little family, while I – “

“You know what? Enough talking.” The hammer on Jack’s pistol pulled back. “This ends now.”

“Do you really think it can?” The Gratar looked right at him. “Can you shoot faster than I can slice, Captain Jack? And if you can, who do you save: your teaboy, or your baby?”

Jack was motionless, even when his eyes dropped to meet Ianto’s. To anyone else, the gaze was classic Captain Jack Harkness: detached, even, hard. Only he could see under that layer to the apprehension. The fear. It was dark and deep, but very real.

In his belly, the baby shifted. The pressure was sudden and intense, but manhandled as he was, he couldn’t move to adjust. He closed his eyes and tried to focus on anything but the pain, which meant his mind drifted to the scalpel at his neck and the breathing in his ear. There was very real possibility that Jack couldn’t shoot fast enough. Or, worse, that Jack wouldn’t shoot, afraid of the consequences.

That they’d all die there, in the mortuary, tricked by an alien and her “biological imperative.”

The words “shoot her” slid from his lips, a whisper.

“Oh, how sweet. He’s willing to sacrifice himself for his team. His baby girl. So completely selfless. It’s almost too bad he won’t live much longer.”

“Shoot her,” he repeated, and when he forced his eyes open, they sought Jack. The world felt fuzzy around the edges, dark in places, and he could feel his legs turning to jelly even as the Gratar forced him to stand up. “Shoot her, Jack. Shoot her.”

Jack didn’t move. He didn’t so much as blink. “This is your last warning.”

“Not to rain on anyone’s bloody parade,” Owen said suddenly, “but Ianto’s paler than I am, and I don’t have a pulse.”

He was also shaking, trembling in the Gratar’s grip, and when he opened his mouth, his voice was panicked. “Shoot her, Jack. Please. Please just – “

There was a cracking sound, but not from Jack’s pistol. When Ianto looked up, it was Gwen’s gun that had a tiny curl of smoke sliding from the barrel.

The scalpel clattered to the floor. He watched it drop, almost as though it was in slow motion, and then felt it, the loosening of the Gratar’s grip and the sensation that the last thing holding him was gone, leaving him on shaky legs.

Shaky legs that couldn’t support his weight.

“Ianto!”

Somewhere, in a haze of fear and those dark, fuzzy edges, he was aware of Owen reaching for him, of footsteps on the stairs, of how freezing cold the floor was. He felt something hard under his head, then something soft, and words like “surgery”, “table” and “equipment” jumped into his consciousness. Nothing connected, except the sharp pain and breath-taking pressure in his abdomen and the sound, above it all, of Jack’s voice, pushing his name through the mist again and again until the mist finally won.

===

The next thing Ianto was aware of was being very cold.

It was quiet, almost eerily so, and when he opened his eyes it was to stare up at the high ceiling of the medical recess and blink warily at his old friend Black Mold In The Corner. He could scarcely make out the familiar blob, thanks to the dim lighting, and it took a few long seconds to realize it wasn’t his vision but the hub itself that was so dim. Between the dark, the cold, the silence, he suddenly knew what Owen had been describing when he’d come back.

It felt like being dead.

His eyelids felt like lead, so he let him drift shut. Somewhere on the edge of his consciousness, he heard a computer beep – probably Tosh’s – and the rustle of the pterodactyl coming in to nest for the night.

Just another evening at –

“So, there we were.” Jack’s voice was soft, barely a whisper, but it was present and suddenly soothing. “1941. Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking ‘There’s no way that’s possible. Clearly, this dad of mine is a liar.’ Well, you remember that rift I was telling you about? It’s not just space, it’s time. Tosh was thrown for a loop too, so I figure, if you can follow this story right now as well as she could last year, I might have you running the archiving software by the time you’re out of diapers.”

Ianto opened his eyes and turned his head to find the source of Jack’s voice.

If the ceiling was dark, the mortuary was darker, and the only light as far as he could see came from the monitor for his own vital signs, the peaks and valleys of his pulse readings casting odd shadows on the tile. But there, just a few feet from the cot, was Jack himself, sleeves rolled up and first four buttons undone, his braces slack around his waist. At first glance, it was almost like he had his arms crossed, but it didn’t take long to realize that wasn’t it at all.

He was holding something.

The something he was holding shifted on its own, almost a shadow, and Jack chuckled. “That’s right, archives! Exciting.” He lowered his voice. “Don’t tell him I told you, but Dad – the cute one, remember? – wanted to be a librarian. Don’t look so pleased. Can you imagine spending your life sorting through books that no one wants to read? Boring.”

“And your files are any better?”

Ianto’s voice grated along his throat but it was enough to make Jack lift his head. When he smiled, it split his entire face, all teeth and crinkles. “Welcome back. I was about to call Owen out of the vault to come check on you.”

“Finally locked him up?”

“He needed somewhere to do the autopsy, and I wasn’t sure this was the best place for dead-on-dead action.” He paused and glanced at the bundle in the crook of his arm. “You didn’t hear that. We should keep your ears pure for at least the first couple of days.”

He planted one foot and slid the stool over, flicking on one of Owen’s medical lamps as he did. The light was bright but not particularly harsh, illuminating in perfect detail the curve of Jack’s arm, the wrinkles in his shirt, and the mass of pink blanket, pink socks, pink sleeves, and tiny little red cap that had tiny hands and a scrunched, ruddy little face sticking out.

“Emlyn Jones, five pounds, fifteen ounces, meet Ianto Jones, who is, by the way, significantly thinner than he was this time yesterday.”

No words crawled to the surface no matter how much Ianto searched for them. He tried to sit up but a sharp pain in his belly made him freeze and stay lying. With his head tipped, he could still study plump little lips puckering for nothing and a tiny nose wrinkle at random intervals. Never mind the tufts of dark hair under –

“U.N.I.T.?” Ianto asked, his eyes drifting (but only momentarily) to Jack.

“From Martha.” He grinned and moved a hand to cock the little cap at a jaunty angle. “I thought it was appropriate.” Then, without much warning, he shifted and laid Emlyn on Ianto, right in the middle of his chest. “Don’t ask how many stitches you have,” he warned, keeping a hand on her back when she made a tiny, unhappy noise, “or how long Owen wants you in bed.”

“Owen’s never wanted me in bed.” He reached up and ran one finger – just one – over the knuckles of a tiny hand. Her fist twitched, like trying to grip air or maybe the sheet between them, and he smiled slightly. “Is she – “

“Clean bill of health. Not a care in the world, except maybe that her entire wardrobe from now until puberty is pink.” His eyes met Ianto’s and the grin, as incorrigible as it had been, slipped into quiet seriousness. “There was a lot of stress on your intestines, so Owen wanted you in surgery right away,” he murmured gently. “Nothing’s permanently damaged. You were lucky.”

“The Gratar?”

“Dead.” Emlyn shifted slightly, barely more than a twitch, and Jack’s thumb reached up to smooth over her ear. Ianto watched it. Ianto’s entire body wanted to watch Jack, watch the baby, watch both of them together through the haze of heavy eyelids. “Her biological imperative would have ripped through all of us. Owen said her endocrine system was in failure. Too long in a cell without being able to leech hormones from anyone.”

“She really was going to kill me.”

“It was always her plan. She just assumed you’d want to avoid the pregnancy so badly, you’d go along with her demands.”

He smiled slightly and stroked a hand over Emlyn’s back. She made a tiny sound and then settled again, eyes closed and, from the looks of it, mostly asleep. “She was right.”

Jack frowned. “About what?”

“Her kind really hasn’t learned selflessness.”

There was a beat of silence and then he chuckled softly. Fingers slid through Ianto’s hair, a soft, reassuring touch. “I’m glad we have,” he admitted, and kissed Ianto’s forehead.

===

“Have a go.”

“No, thank you.”

“Why not?”

“In case you’ve forgotten, I’m the one who had to remove that from Ianto’s insides.”

“Better mine than yours.”

“Mine aren’t black and blue from carrying around a pumpkin next to my stomach, mate.”

“An important quality for a walking corpse to have.”

Gwen laughed and shook her head. “Listen to them arguing, Em,” she chided, bouncing Emlyn in the crook of her arm while Owen took another rather large step away from her. “You’d think they were an old married couple.”

Emlyn smiled at her, eyes wide as she jerked her arms. It was her newest trick and no longer impressed anyone except Jack. Ianto kept trying to convince him that, no, she really had no intentions of becoming a boxer.

“He should be so lucky,” Owen chided, and finally reached for his bag. “If it’s all right with the baby brigade, I’m going to go home, put on the telly, and watch post-watershed programming for the rest of the night.”

“Most people just call that porn,” Ianto pointed out.

“Most people can still get it up.” He stepped past Ianto, then past Tosh, and finally paused to look down at Emlyn. Her eyes moved to Owen’s face, though whether or not she could tell he was anything other than a fleshy blur was yet to be seen. “You know,” he commented offhandedly, “if your dad had been your mum, you would have been born last week, not a month ago.”

“If her dad were her mum,” Toshiko noted, opening her arms for her own turn (and getting a gummy smile as a reward), “her story would be pretty normal.”

“I’m sure Jack’s looking forward to that call. ‘Mr. Harkness, hate to bother you, but Emlyn’s been telling people she was conceived by alien fertility again. Can you come down for a meeting? We’d like to get to the bottom of this.’”

“Owen, this is Jack and Ianto we’re talking about,” Gwen pointed out.

“And?”

“Ianto’ll be the one taking the call because Jack’s put her up to it.”

There was a beat and then Owen laughed, shaking his head. “This might be more amusing than I thought,” he said at last, and then headed out the door. It stuttered and clanked, making Emlyn squirm, and Tosh self-consciously held her out in Ianto’s direction. “I don’t want to spook her,” she declared.

“If the state of Jack in the middle of the night doesn’t spook her, nothing will,” he replied, but took her anyway. Sometimes, when Jack wasn’t in the room or she was on a crying jag, panic still welled up in the bottom of Ianto’s stomach. Even now, with her wriggling protest, he felt the cold bolus of nerves settling somewhere under his scar, waiting for her to scream. He was only just learning all the clever ways to calm her down that Jack (and, oddly enough, Gwen) seemed to know naturally.

Tosh had asked if it was disheartening to watch both Jack and Gwen handle her without a care while he still stumbled. He’d had to think about it, but in the end, realized it wasn’t disheartening at all.

It was just life.

“What’s it like?” Gwen asked, leaning in. “Jack Harkness playing house? Is it exciting?”

Tosh looked embarrassed. “Gwen…”

“What? You’ve got to be curious.”

“It’s none of our business.”

“You wouldn’t say it was none of your business if you looked past Owen for more than ten seconds.”

“Gwen!”

Gwen cackled and, despite his better judgment, Ianto grinned. “It’s…messy,” he decided, picturing the flat with its overflowing clothes hamper and general disorganization. “Loud. Cramped. A bit of a cross between Life on Mars and The Office, really.”

“Oi! You’re not serious.”

“I am.” He smiled. “But it’s not a complaint.”

“Stop, my ears are burning,” Jack intoned, coming down the stairs with one of his smug smiles. It only made Ianto wonder if he’d heard most or all of the conversation. There was no doubt he’d heard at least some. “And if this becomes a Ricky Gervais comparison, I am leaving.”

“For the best.”

“Oh really?”

“I’ve been wondering what a night without either of you waking me up in the middle of the night would be like.”

In that moment, Gwen completely dissolved into laughter and, from the way she shifted, it was clear Toshiko was not far behind. Jack rolled his eyes. “Abuse from everyone except Em. Good thing we can form a coalition, right?”

Emlyn jerked an arm at him.

“Exactly.” But then he was nudging Ianto. “Coffee?”

“My work is never done.” he said to no one in particular, and even though Jack slid his fingers across the back of his neck before he headed back towards his office, it was no real consolation.

“You’re going to stay this late?” Tosh asked as she gathered up her things. “Don’t you go home?”

“Eventually, but someone still has to be here.” He smiled. “Jack fancies she’ll be our mascot.”

“The teababy,” Gwen teased, and leaned in to kiss Ianto on the cheek. Since Emlyn’s birth, she hadn’t stopped. He supposed he should find it complimentary, and sometimes, he did. The rest of the time, it just always felt awkward.

“Working the coffee machine before she knows she has thumbs,” he promised, and watched both she and Tosh leave the hub before heading for the coffee station.

Jack was, as Jack always was, bent over paperwork, and as much as everything else had changed since March, he reached for the mug without looking. “U.N.I.T.’s going to ask Owen to come speak to their medical team on the Gratar,” he commented after taking a healthy sip. He glanced up at Ianto. “Should we tell them he’s dead?”

“At least warn them his sense of humor is,” Ianto replied. Emlyn, lulled from his walking back and forth across the hub, settled her face against his shirt. Her fists were pressed against him, too, as though she was just moments away from reaching out and grabbing hold. “Did you send them the CCTV footage?”

“Most of it.” He leaned back in his chair, mug between his hands. “There are some things I never want them to know.”

“Such as?”

“What she did to you.” His eyes settled on Ianto’s face. “Wanting to use us as her own fertility farm, I can handle. But I’m not keen on telling one of the highest-powered intelligence agencies this side of the twenty-first century that she helped you get pregnant so she could get an all-you-can-eat endocrine buffet.”

He snorted and came around, rested his weight on the edge of the desk. Jack never stopped looking at him. “Do you know what she told me the last time we spoke?”

“You mean before you eavesdropped?”

“She told me that Gratar meant ‘the hope that’s left after despair.’ I thought she knew something I didn’t. Now, I think she might have been trying to scare me.”

“She didn’t need to scare you,” Jack pointed out, reaching over to tweak one of Emlyn’s toes. She squirmed and made a little noise in the back of her throat. He smiled. “I think some things she said, she meant.” His gaze moved back to Ianto. “How much hope do we need after despair, anyway? The point of despair is that, once you let it go, you can hope again.”

“I don’t think you can despair without hope. To feel that emptiness, you need to know love and hope. You have to see that it’s within your reach.”

“And then what do you do?” Jack asked.

Against his shirt, Emlyn pursed tiny lips – lips that, every time he looked at them, reminded Ianto of Jack’s – and sucked in a tiny puff of air.

“Then,” Ianto replied, “you grasp it and don’t let go.”