Despite their agreement to pretend that their night together never happened, things between Jack and Ianto just became progressively more awkward over the next two weeks.

The only words they exchanged at all were if the team was actually involved in an active case, and even then, communication was kept to a bare minimum.

On quiet days, Ianto – even more so than before – would stay up in the tourist office all day, or hide away in the depths of the archives where no one was likely to try to find him, let alone bother him.

Jack, for the most part, did his own hiding in his office, burying himself in the paperwork that everyone knew he despised. When he ran out of paperwork – an event that surprised him more than anyone else, the first time it occurred – he would go down to the shooting range, or find a rooftop high enough that none of the others would dare climb up.

They both knew that the rest of the team had noticed something was wrong; despite repeated requests to just leave it alone, Gwen had persisted in trying to get each of them to open up. Tosh shot them worried and sympathetic looks by turn, and even Owen could be heard grumbling around the autopsy bay that 'things around this place would be so much better if bloody Harkness and the tea boy could just get over whatever's bothering them and go back to shagging all over the place.'

Despite this, neither of them were expecting the team to take any definitive action, and certainly not the action they decided to take.

"Hey!" Jack banged hard on the door to the conference room, so rarely closed at all, and now closed behind him. And locked. "What's going on here?"

"What's going on is that we're sick of putting up with the pair of you like this!" came Owen's voice from the other side of the door.

"You're not getting out until you can sort things out!" That was Gwen. "Or at least find a way to be friends again."

"And don't bother trying to unlock the door with your wriststrap, Jack!" Tosh's voice this time. Jack froze, his hand halfway to his Vortex Manipulator, and wondered how she'd known. "It won't work, I made sure of that."

Jack sighed.

"In the interests of letting you have your privacy," Gwen's voice again, "we've turned off the CCTV to this room." She didn't sound particularly pleased with this decision, and Jack suspected Tosh and Owen had had to convince her of that one.

"How… how will you know when to let us out, then?" Ianto said from behind him.

"Call one of our mobiles," Tosh told them through the door. "We'll turn the CCTV back on and decide if we believe you've sorted things out, and then we'll let you out."

There was a shuffling of feet on the other side of the door, and then silence. Jack beat his fist once more against the door and leant his forehead against it. Before he closed his eyes, he could just make out Ianto sinking into a seat behind him.

For a long time, neither of them said a word; they didn't know what to say.

Eventually Ianto cleared his throat and his voice rang out quietly in the stillness of the room. "They do have a bit of a point. We need to find some way – any way – to at least be friends again."

Jack took a deep breath and leaned harder against the door. "Yeah, friends." He shook his head. "That's sort of the problem, really." Straightening up, he turned around to face Ianto. "Even knowing what we know… I don't think I know how to go back to just being your friend."

Ianto looked up at him and bit his lip. "Yeah," he breathed. "Me neither."

Taking three short steps, Jack took a seat at the large conference table opposite Ianto. He traced a pattern on the table-top with the tip of a finger. "So… what do we do about it, then?"

Ianto shrugged. "I don't know. I wish I did. I wish I could just… turn these feelings off, feel what my head says I should feel, instead… but I can't." He sighed. "And I don't even know if I really actually want that at all."

Jack just nodded, knowing exactly how Ianto felt.

Silence fell over them again, although the awkward tension had dropped by just a notch.

Once again, Ianto was the first one to break through the quiet. "It's just," he exhaled, "I don't even remember having a brother." He shook his head in bewilderment. "How am I supposed to learn how to relate to you as one when I don't even know what that sort of relationship is supposed to be like?"

He threw up his hands. "I don't remember that life at all. All I've ever known, all that I really remember even now, is being Ianto Jones. Only child of Bethan and Jonah Jones. I don't feel like Gray …" His words stalled as he searched his memory for information he just didn't have. "I don't even know what your – our – real last name is. I can't make myself feel like that person."

"Pecjak," Jack provided quietly. "That's my real surname." He swallowed hard. "Our… real surname. Pecjak."

"Gray Pecjak," Ianto tested out, shaking his head immediately afterwards. "Nope, still doesn't feel like me. At all."

Jack nodded, his gaze dropping to the table again as he did so. "You don't feel like him to me either." His eyes shot up again as if something suddenly occurred to him. "I mean, I don't mean… you know what I mean."

Ianto bobbed his head. "I know what you mean."

Jack tilted his head to the side. "I have these memories of my little brother; playing with him on the beach, helping my dad teach him to swim, crawling into my mom's lap together when we were both just little and scared of a storm." He met Ianto's gaze. "And I have all these memories of you; little moments - big moments - from these past couple of years. I just can't reconcile the two."

He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them again, they were shining with emotion. "You're Ianto Jones, the man I fell in love with." He lifted his shoulders. "I don't know how to make you anyone else."

Ianto swallowed around the lump growing in his throat. "I don't know how to be anyone else."

Jack reached out a hand across the table between them. "Then why are we even trying? Why are we trying to make ourselves feel things we don't? It's only making us both miserable." His eyes burned into Ianto's. "I've hated these last weeks. Hated them. I don't want to be without you until I have to."

Ianto shook his head uncertainly. "We can't change the fact that, genetically, we are brothers."

Jack shrugged it off. "Who cares?"

"What?" Ianto's eyebrows nearly hit the ceiling.

"You heard me, who cares?" Jack repeated. "If we'd never found out, we'd still be together, right?"

Ianto nodded, not quite sure where Jack was going with this. "Right."

"And what else would it change, really? Nothing. Nothing at all. We could have gone your whole life without ever discovering the truth, and it wouldn't have been important."

Ianto blinked.

"Most of the social taboos surrounding it are based on the ancient genetic deficiencies that can arise if the couple reproduce," Jack continued, "and it's not like that was something we were planning on. Yeah, it wouldn't have ever happened if we had grown up together, but we didn't, and that's not something we can change any more than we can change the fact that we're technically related."

He took a deep breath. "I'm insanely in love with you, Ianto, and that's not going to change. I tried to stop, I really did, but I can't."

Ianto tentatively pushed one hand forward on the table, stopping and curling his fist before it could meet Jack's outstretched one. "I tried too," he admitted quietly. "And I couldn't. I'm still as much in love with you as I ever was."

Something brightened in Jack's eyes. "Then let's forget about all this mess and just be together," he said fervently. "It's not like anyone else who would care even knows." His gaze turned pleading. "I miss you."

Ianto finally stretched the final few inches to cover Jack's hand with his own. "Together," he whispered.

Jack twisted his hand under Ianto's and their fingers twined together.

Smiles began to creep shyly across their faces as they stared into each other's eyes.

"Together," Jack confirmed.

THE END

There is no sequel currently planned to this fic – I DO want to write one, but I don't have a plot idea yet. If and when I do, I'll let you know!

Note: In the writing of this fic, I am not promoting or condoning real-life incest. Jack and Ianto are in a set of circumstances here almost never encountered in the real world – for those rare people that this does happen to, I feel dreadfully sorry.