Title: If Not Wisely

Fandom/Pairing: Torchwood, Jack/Ianto

Rating: NC-17

Disclaimer: BBC & RTD; Title is Joss Whedon's, random references are not mine either

Summary: Ianto keeps count. He hardly knows why--it's not like it matters, it's not like Jack cares, it's not like he wouldn't sound like a creepy stalker if he were to say something like, "I remember our seventeenth kiss. It was in the archives."

Act I

Ianto keeps count. He hardly knows why--it's not like it matters, it's not like Jack cares, it's not like he wouldn't sound like a creepy stalker if he were to say something like, "I remember our seventeenth kiss. It was in the archives."

The first time was hardly a kiss. The first time was the barest brush of Jack's lips over his. It followed what Ianto thought of as kiss zero- the warehouse, the feel of Jack's exhale on his lips, the ghost of a touch that left Ianto with a burning curiosity as to how the real thing would feel.

It was after Ianto's first day of work. He was surveying the newly cleaned-up tourist office--it had been a disaster area and a miserable excuse for a cover story; it was no wonder all of Cardiff knew about Torchwood. He'd removed the alien artifacts from behind the counter, though, and gotten rid of the pizza boxes and the containers of decaying Chinese food. The pamphlets appeared to have last been updated in 1999, but Ianto had ordered new ones. He would brave the archives tomorrow, and maybe there would be a place for Lisa somewhere there.

Right now, he needed to go home. She'd be needing her medication.

"Hey, Ianto," Jack said.

Ianto started.

Jack chuckled. "Love what you've done with the place."

"Yes, well," Ianto said, "using real air freshener instead of green, fuzzy Mushu chicken will do that."

"Thanks for the tip," Jack said, coming ever closer, "I'll keep it mind the next time I redecorate."

Ianto's lips twitched in a smile--he liked Jack, despite all, with his broad American personality and larger than life presence. He was mysterious and compelling; he exuded a sort of sexuality that made you want nothing more than to reach over and acquiesce to his constant invitation, and he was…

…right in front of Ianto, the whisper of his pale blue sleeve against Ianto's suit, so close up against him that Ianto could feel the heat of Jack's body though they were barely touching, just in two places, the brush of their arms together and the slight touch of Jack's leg against the outside of Ianto's knee, but he could feel Jack all the same.

Ianto could hardly breathe.

Jack smiled, ferally.

"I…I think that's harassment, sir," Ianto said, his voice sounding odd around his dry throat, strangely breathy.

Jack leaned forward the scant inch between them and brushed their lips together for no more than a few seconds, but Ianto still gasped when they separated, aware that he was just as hard against Jack's hip as Jack was against his. He stepped back abruptly.

"Tease," Jack grinned.

"Harassment," Ianto shot back, guilt sprouting in the back of his mind. He'd been the first to flirt, after all.

"Go home, Ianto," Jack said unexpectedly. "Good work today."

Ianto nodded at him and headed for the door.

"See you tomorrow," Jack called after him.

"Yep," Ianto called back for lack of a better answer. He waited till he was in his car for the breakdown; banging your head against the steering wheel didn't work if you didn't have a steering wheel on you.

Lisa.

-

Their second kiss was only a few days later. Ianto had just moved Lisa into the basement, so his tension level was, understandably, high. He was compensating--he knew he was--by feeding Jack extra cookies and the food from the good curry place downtown and using the special coffee beans he kept hidden behind the cat food Myfanwy sometimes liked and cleaning up even more than usual, being useful and quiet and helpful and Reginald fucking Jeeves.

Jack came up to him sometime around midnight, grasped the lapels of his suit jacket, kissed him briefly, thoroughly, and said, "Go home, Ianto. You've done enough."

-

The third kiss was a full-on snog. It was the aftermath of an emergency-showdown-no-holds-barred-guns-blazing Torchwood thing, and they'd all come out alive and, well, surfing the adrenaline wave.

The other three had gone for drinks, but any idiot could read in Suzie and Owen's body language that they'd be leaving Tosh behind before long.

Ianto was full of nervous energy, the rush still surging through his veins, but there was no outlet in sight, besides energetic cleaning.

Until he found Owen's handgun in the conference room, with the safety catch off and fully loaded. The prick really needed to start using his brain.

The gun felt familiar in his hand, heavy, and Ianto realized it'd been a long time since he'd practiced the skills that had been so hard won in the Torchwood training program.

He took the gun- fair game, he considered, though he'd have to think of another excuse if Owen asked-=and went down to the shooting range.

A few bullets in appropriate targets felt better than he'd remembered, the trigger squeezing and releasing under his fingers more power than he'd held since Canary Wharf.

When the last bullet had shot the last target, Jack stepped out of the shadows, wolf-whistling.

To his credit, Ianto didn't jump.

"If I'd known you could do that, I may have hired you sooner," Jack said.

"Or you may not have hired me at all," Ianto countered. "Not a chance I was willing to take."

Jack shook his head. "Someday, you're gonna lose the mysterious attitude. I bet it'd do wonders for you tension levels." Jack massaged Ianto's shoulders lightly, which was, as usual, a complete disregard of personal space, and if it hadn't felt so good, Ianto might've cared.

"Gets under your skin, doesn't it?" Jack asked quietly, and Ianto could feel Jack's breath on his neck. "The excitement, the endorphins…" his hands slid up Ianto's arms, "Makes you need…release…" he licked up Ianto's neck and Ianto groaned.

Jack's grip on his arms suddenly tightened, strong and sure and then Ianto's back was against the wall and Jack's tongue was in his mouth and it felt so good, so right, and his leg was hooking around Jack's as they kissed, hips rocking together till Ianto wanted so badly he thought he'd explode.

And then Jack stepped back just a bit, let Ianto's legs slide to the floor, ended the kiss with one last brush of his tongue against Ianto's.

"Someday," Jack said hoarsely, a hint of threat and a boatload of desire in his voice, "I'm going to figure out what exactly you want."

And then he actually bloody turned around and stalked off.

Ianto waited until he was well out of sight to give in to the weakness in his knees and slide to the ground, head spinning with lust and confusion and desperation and anger and more lust.

-

Jack played a mean game of hunter and prey. If Ianto hadn't heard the stories, he'd have known the second Jack smiled at him. Jack had laid him groundwork, given him the first scene, and now it was up to him to decide how the act would end. Three strikes and you're out, or would he take that step and ask for it?

It was cruel in a way only Jack could be, tantalizing and yet so, so evil. Jack wouldn't be the one to make the decision, it would be all Ianto, but Ianto could never forget that Jack wanted him, how Jack's lips felt against his, Jack's eyes on the back of his head.

But it was up to him now, Jack having made his final statement that night in the shooting range, waiting for the jury's verdict. And there was so much more to it that just whether he wanted Jack.

That wasn't in question. His entire body wanted Jack, burned for him, screamed for him every time Jack not-so-accidentally brushed against him or laid a hand on his shoulder.

There was Lisa to consider, too. It wouldn't be the first time in their relationship either of them cheated. It would be the first time since they'd said they loved each other.

And then there were Jack's eyes, his ravenous, wild eyes, always on Ianto, watching him, curious, waiting, and the only way to get them off him and off Lisa would be to assuage his curiosity.

Give Jack what he'd almost promised when he took the job.

And good God, Ianto wanted to.

Their fourth kiss was on Christmas Eve under a sprig of mistletoe. Tosh had hung it up surreptitiously, hoping to steal a kiss from Owen most likely, but they were all gone now, leaving only eggnog and wrapping paper to be cleared up. Ianto bumped into Jack just as he was leaving with the last of the recycling, and they were under a doorway with mistletoe above them.

"Tradition," Jack grinned, but he wasn't going to make the first move. He'd made his statement.

"Oh, bloody hell," Ianto muttered and kissed Jack, hard, pushed him back against the doorframe and just went for it, all the uncertainty and desperation and all the sheer lust he could muster in that one kiss.

Jack's hands were on him now, one around his neck, pulling him closer, the other pulling his shirt out of his trousers to touch the skin underneath.

At the first touch of the blunt ends of Jack's fingers against the soft skin of his belly, Ianto knew that it had to happen, soon.

He groaned against Jack's lips, walked Jack back to his desk till Jack was leaning back against it.

"Ianto," Jack gasped out between desperate kisses (five, six, seven, ten…), "Are you sure?"

Ianto growled, cleared the desk so he could push Jack flat on his back over it.

Jack's pupil's were wide and blown with want, his breath coming out in pants, wild grin on his face as Ianto nipped and licked at his neck, opened his shirts to get at his chest. "Tell me you have supplies somewhere around here," Ianto got out between licks at his nipple.

"Oh, god, drawer, over there," Jack said, sounding like he was running a marathon.

Within seconds, Ianto had a finger up Jack's arse, and fuck if this wasn't what he'd been waiting for, the captain all flushed and panting under him as Ianto took him.

Jack had been waiting too, judging by his moans and whimpers of satisfaction as his back bowed of the table in an effort to get Ianto deeper inside him, till Ianto leaned in closer and took his lips in a fierce kiss (eleven) as he pushed inside Jack.

It was so good, so tight, so unutterably perfect despite the million and one thoughts running through the background of Ianto's mind that he wasn't sure how long he'd be able to last, so he just went ahead with the 'fuck Jack blind' part of the proceedings.

Jack approved, repeatedly, vocally, as thrust into him over and over again, till he reached down between them, grabbed his own cock and brought himself off over both of them, loudly.

The clenching and tightening, the unbearable heat of Jack's body, the moan of his name, that was all Ianto still needed before he, too, was gone, coming hard inside Jack.

"Wow," Jack said after a while. "So worth the wait."

-

There were a lot of kisses after that. Ianto gave up on documenting all of them and only went with the ones that meant something, which bumped them back down to four.

Jack was very pleased with the new arrangement, it seemed. He certainly gave up on trying to figure Ianto out, as Ianto had half expected he would.

Like Ianto had wanted him to.

There was no logical reason for Jack's sudden lack of attention to get under his skin as much as did, but Ianto had long since given up on logic. It stung that all it took was a fuck to change Jack's regard of him so wholly, but, he kept reminding himself; it was good, as this way Jack wouldn't find Lisa…

But it was just Jack all over, fickle to the point of childishness, only wanting what he couldn't have. Ianto wasn't an object, and he wasn't in Torchwood to service Jack, and Jack knew all of this and so did Ianto but it still felt like he was. If it hadn't been for Lisa, Ianto would've gone round the bend sooner rather than later. But as his thing with Jack stretched on, his love for her grew, in a sick, twisted way, as if hurting her made it easier to love her because all the blame was on him.

He faded into the background; he was Jack's after-hours shag and he made the coffee and cleaned up and that was that.

Their fifth kiss that meant something remained only half-remembered by Ianto in the midst of blood and pain and Lisa's death.

-

The sixth kiss happened a week into Ianto's suspension.

He didn't know where he stood right then, given the whole horrible betrayal of Jack's trust thing, and the whole horrible demise of the love of Ianto's life thing.

Jack showed up just before midnight. He let himself in with a key he'd probably flirted out of Ianto's landlord. "Ianto?" he boomed out into the pleasant quiet of Ianto's dark flat.

"I'm here," Ianto said dully, not turning around. He wasn't sure he'd be that against being retconned back to infancy or even shot at close range. It might have even done him good to give his pain physical form rather than the haze of guilt and loss he felt himself floating in.

"How are you?" Jack asked, and maybe he understood a little, because he didn't turn on the lights.

Ianto didn't answer. The question was vaguely redundant. Also (not so vaguely), stupid.

"Listen," Jack said when it became evident Ianto was remaining silent, "We need to talk."

"Yes," Ianto sad.

"What you did was a breach of protocol," Jack said, with absolutely no tone in his voice.

"I know," Ianto said.

"I can't ignore that, even with your suspension."

"I know."

Jack came closer, his boots making far too much noise. He was probably tracking dirt in, too. "What do you think I should do?"

"Jack," Ianto said, his voice quiet but precise, at last daring to look at his boss and sometime lover. "You can do whatever you want. You can retcon me or kill me or make me do your laundry for the rest of my natural life. I don't care. Nothing you can do can make me feel more alone, more guilty and more like I wish I'd never been born."

Jack knelt down in front of Ianto and took Ianto's face between his hands. Ianto flinched at the touch, but Jack either didn't notice or didn't care. He kissed Ianto, softly, chastely, and then, mouth still so close to Ianto's lips that he could feel the words, said, "I forgive you."

And then he was gone, the sound of his boots on the floor and the door falling closed almost inaudible in the racket of Ianto's thoughts.

"Well," Ianto said, his lips strangely numb, "I suppose you could do that." And then all he felt was nauseous panic, an irrational need for his mother, and the pain that tore through him as sobs wracked his body so hard he thought he would never draw a proper breath.

-

Jack stopped by a few more times during Ianto's suspension. He didn't kiss Ianto again, though his presence did a little to ease the panic Ianto felt wrapped inside his loneliness. He was so used to having someone to think about, someone to touch and hold and talk to. The comfort Jack offered as simply another living, breathing human being overshadowed the uncomfortable mess of their situation.

When he bothered to think about it, Ianto knew what their next kiss, by default, would be a meaningful one. What they were now, how they were to relate to each other- these things were undefined. And Ianto knew there was one kiss missing, at least, to decide where they were. Even if the answer was 'nowhere', there was one moment of closure missing, a kiss goodbye.

They were only two scenes into the act, after all--Jack's opening and Ianto's betrayal--though Ianto didn't know how many scenes to the act or how many acts to the play.

Nor did he know what kind of play it was- comedy was out, but it was yet to be decided whether Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet.

Their seventh kiss happened after the cannibals, after Jack had brought him home, helped him wash off the grime and the unclean horror Ianto could feel under his skin, and put him to bed.

"Stay with me," Ianto said, already almost gone in exhaustion and painkillers. "It gets so dark when I'm alone."

He later thought Jack must have known he wasn't talking about the cannibals. But it didn't matter, because Jack kissed him, less chaste than the last kiss, more like "I'll be here for you".

Ianto fell asleep in Jack's arms that night, and he wondered later whether their play might not be a tragedy after all.

-

Eight, eight, eight for the April Rainers, Henry the Eighth, an agony in eight fits, because there was something more there, wasn't there? Something left over that wasn't quite right yet.

It took Ianto a while to realize, took him days, weeks even, to see Jack's pattern again. I'll be here for you, that was his statement this time. I still want you and you're still there.

He was just starting over, like the whole thing had never actually happened before and ended in blood and death and mayhem.

Ianto almost dropped Jack's favourite coffee mug when he realized what was happening. Jack was just starting from step one--he'd made his position clear when he'd stayed with Ianto that night, and now he was waiting for Ianto's move. Jack was probably one of those people who thought about relationships in chess metaphors, Ianto thought sourly.

Although, really, this was good. It meant that it was up to Ianto now. Jack had put the decision in Ianto's hands, and it was up to him to define their relationship. Or perhaps 'define' was the wrong word. It wasn't like Jack went with labers. But Ianto was the one who was to decide the depth of their relationship.

Or so it seemed.

But Ianto had a long and proud tradition of overanalyzation and he was going to stick to it. He mulled it over in the quiet of his lonely flat one evening, empty wine glass spinning between his fingers.

The depth was Ianto's decision, because Jack didn't care. And that really wasn't depth, was it? The question was, after all, basically 'sex or not?' not, 'emotional intimacy or not?'. And Ianto was welcome to be emotionally intimate with Jack, but Jack would never be so with him. It couldn't, by nature, be a real romantic relationship, not the kind Ianto knew. It would be him leaning on Jack for the support he needed and both of them getting the sex and human contact their jobs made imperative.

And really, this was Torchwood. You took intimacy, of any kind, wherever you could get it.

Their eighth kiss was a mess of lips and hands and heat and lust up against Jack's office wall in the wake of Suzie's second death. It had been too long and they were too desperate to get any further than that, Ianto's legs hooked around Jack's waist as Jack fucked him against the wall, all ragged moans and hard thrusts till Ianto screamed out his orgasm and clenched around Jack so tightly Jack's own climax hit him so hard he couldn't move for minutes afterward.

Ianto was still breathing hard when Jack came back to himself. He immediately began peppering Ianto's neck and shoulders with kisses. "God, Ianto," he was saying, "so good…" His teeth sank into Ianto's shoulder and Ianto decided that as soon as they could make it downstairs, there was going to be a round two, preferably with the stopwatch.

He wanted Jack spread out and screaming for him, the sooner the better.

-

Nine kisses should have completed the triptych, really. Nine important ones--there were all manner of unimportant ones between eight and nine, no more than foreplay and fun.

The ninth one was after Jack came back from 1941, and at the time, Ianto knew nothing of the real Captain Jack Harkness. Tosh clued him in later with all the subtlety of a rampaging elephant, but in her defence, she didn't know about him and Jack.

It annoyed him a little that Jack could forge such an instantaneous connection with a stranger when he had Ianto to connect to right there. But the jealousy only ran skin deep--Ianto'd had one night stands since he and Jack had started their thing and Jack knew it. They weren't exclusive, just vaguely emotional.

So when Jack came up to him, desperation clear as daylight on his face, and kissed him with all the fervour he could muster, even without knowing about the real Captain Ianto knew to kiss him back with all the despair he himself had felt at the thought that Jack would never come back and he was doomed to lost everyone he cared about.

-

But then he did lose Jack.

Then Jack revealed his immortality and apparently found a way to cure it, and suddenly his cold, dead corpse was lying in the autopsy bay. It was like the play was suddenly over, gone, third scene never fully realized, carpet out from under Ianto's feet leaving him sprawling on his arse, Gwen's insistence that Jack was coming back nothing more than further mockery.

Until Jack came back. And their tenth kiss was right there in front of everyone, god, you scared me and it's okay, I'm back.

It just made Jack leaving that much worse, but it was still their tenth kiss that meant something.

--