Tell Me You Need Me

Their lips connected and hands roamed each others bodies in a hungry lust for contact between them. Kisses; all tongues, teeth and lips, mashing together furiously and filled with an insatiable desire. Clothes were disposed uncaringly to the floor beside the bed along with the bed sheets and pillows and their antics continued.

"I love you," Ianto's groggy voice barely registered in Jack's mind, but he knew what was said. What Ianto said every night. Though it was slowly losing it's conviction. Once it had been lingering, needy and for the want of a response, but the tea-boy had learnt only too quickly that there would never be a response. Never.

Jack's arms slid around his body and held him near, Ianto giving a soft but content sigh and burying his face into the elder male's shoulder, curling up comfortably and listening to the beat of Jack's heart as he attempted to distract himself from the yearning.

It was almost too painful.

One needing love more than anything, and the other afraid of the implications love could bring. After all, Ianto wouldn't live forever. He'd die just like everyone before him, and if Jack were to surrender and say those words, it would hurt all the more when Ianto turned to dust before his eyes.

Jack pressed his lips to the Welsh male's forehead, listening to his breathing slow, and his own followed suit. "Ianto," He murmured quietly, and he felt Ianto's pulse quicken beneath his fingers, his hope rising quickly, though after a moment of silence passed, it plummeted quickly.

Being at work was worse.

Owen's off-handed remarks had begun to sting more than the dark-haired man intended and Ianto found himself beginning to believe them.

Was he just Jack's part-time shag? Was it really as dull and emotionless as that? The mere thought caused his throat to tighten, and more than once he made to call the entire thing off but he couldn't bring himself too.

He could stop the small hope that maybe Owen was wrong.

Not likely, but still much better than resigning himself to the truth of the matter. Jack would never say those words to him and somehow he thought the illusion would be broken if he did.

"Ianto."

Ianto glanced up from where he'd been staring off into space, a slowly cooling mug of coffee in his hand. Catching sight of the Captain in front of him, he glanced from the shelves of archives, quirking a brow slightly.

"Did you need something, Sir? You never visit me in the archives," Ianto pointed out with a mild smile at his lips before they were caught in a heated kiss, his mug slipping from his grasp and breaking somewhere behind him. Had his lips not been otherwise occupied, he would have protested to the breaking of his favorite coffee mug, though at the moment it barely registered in his mind.

"Ianto," Jack whispered, his lips brushing along the shell of Ianto's ear and coaxing shudders from the younger male. "I need you," He whispered with conviction, Ianto's lips curling into a smile.

It wasn't an 'I love you' but it was enough. Enough to keep him lingering at the immortal's side for the rest of his own life.