Title: Fluid Emotions

Fandom: Torchwood

Rating: PG-15

Disclaimer: Sadly I do not own them, nice as it would be.

Summary: Sequel to Go Far to Come Near. Ianto will live his life, with or without Jack.

Fluid Emotions

Ianto wonders if it's tacky or cruel to invite Jack to his wedding.

It's not intended to be either.

It just… seems right.

Archibald McGregor, Head of Torchwood Two, is laid to rest in a well kept Church of Scotland graveyard. The day is clear and still, not gloriously beautiful, but calm. As the Head of the Torchwood Organisation, Ianto leads the mourners along with Archie's closest friend and surrogate daughter, Michaela. He keeps an arm around her shoulders, but she's holding up well.

Jack on the other hand is doing that stoic expression that utterly fails because his chin keeps trembling.

Gwen and Rhys are looking after him.

Ianto has been dating other women when he realises he's going about this the wrong way.

It's been two months and a week since Archie died, since the TARDIS gave him back his missing soul piece. Since then he has been searching for the woman he had seen in the wedding dress. His future wife.

So far he's had no luck.

He has placed Michaela at the head of Torchwood Two. She was the only choice, and so far he has been happy with the way it had worked out. Then she called him sounding tired and weak, and he decided to check in on her himself.

Flu's sucked, no matter who had them. With Michaela, she basically turned into a little girl, needing looking after. Not that she would admit it.

"I'm ok, you have work." she says, sniffling as she curls up on the couch. Her giant wolfhound Dubhtach seems to roll her eyes at Ianto.

"I'm looking after you." says Ianto.

Michaela gives him such a pathetically grateful look he doubts he could have done anything else. Smiling, he reaches out and rests his hand on her hot forehead. She moans quietly at the touch.

"Cool…" she sighs. Ianto chuckles.

After the funeral, Michaela looks a little lost.

"Just… isn't the same as the ones back home." she explains, digging her heels into the ground. "I mean, for one, no games?"

Jack, Gwen, Rhys, Martha and Ianto all look at her in utter bafflement. She shrugs, "You know, like, the younger lads sneak in, tie a string around the wrist of the body, chuck it out the open window and when someone else comes in, they pull it."

"Causing the mourner to have a heart attack?" Martha raises a dubious eyebrow. Michaela shrugs,

"It's a game."

"That's disgraceful." snaps Gwen. Michaela shrugs again,

"It's life."

That shuts Gwen up somehow. Ianto squeezes Michaela close and drops a kiss on her brow, murmuring into her hair.

"You Irish are mental."

Michaela snuggles into his chest, mumbling, "Would you have us any other way?"

As Ianto helps her into bed he looks at her red nose, watery eyes and pouty lips.

'I love you.' he realises with a jolt.

"Quit staring at me." she scolds, clutching his hand and disappearing under the duvet.

The invitations to the wedding are sent out.

They're green and blue, not too fancy, just simple and classy. Suits them both. The leprechaun riding a dragon on the back is the quirk they could not resist.

"You know Jack would make so many jokes about that image." sighs Ianto as they examine the finished card.

"If he gets one." is the quiet reply.

Ianto sighs and sets the card on the table. "I still don't know."

"If he came, would you change your mind about me?"

"No." Definitely not.

"Are you inviting him to be spiteful?"

"No… I just want him there."

"Then deliver it to him yourself."

There's no big dinner and drink up after Archie's funeral. Ianto knows the lack of it has put Michaela on edge.

"You're meant to gorge yourself because you can after a funeral." she sighs as Ianto takes her to her bedroom, so she can change. Ianto's going to run a bath for her.

"We can still do that."

"Feel hollow now. Meant to do it with everyone." she mumbles, undoing the buttons on her blouse. Ianto realises she's watching him and blushes.

"What are you doing?" he asks stupidly.

Michaela smiles, "What are you, Mark from the Room?"

Ianto grimaces at the memory of being forced to sit through that film sober. "You're upset…"

"No… I just miss you."

Ianto finds himself reaching out and slipping his hands under her blouse, his fingers slotting into the dips of her ribs, fitting nicely. Her skin is warm, and since his encounter with Bad Wolf Rose he has avoided intimacy with anyone, partially because he's worried that he might affect a partner with whatever he's got.

"Do you want me?" she asks, the question kind, not seductive. Giving him a way out.

Ianto pulls her against him and kisses her.

Jack doesn't come to the wedding.

Ianto cannot say he's surprised. Since Archie's funeral Jack has been missing and only Gwen and Martha can reach him –if that.

Ianto had to get Martha to pass on the invitation.

Annoyance is the predominant reaction to Jack's absence. Hurt is the second.

"Wanker."

Ianto asks Michaela to marry him on a Thursday.

She gives him an answer on Sunday. After a pointed question.

"How come?"

"Because I want to marry you."

"Not because of Jack?"

"Not everything in my life revolves around him."

"Used to."

"Not anymore."

"Ok then. You'd better not break my heart."

Ianto won't promise it, because every time he makes a big promise, he never seems to live up to it. Maybe if he doesn't promise, he'll be able to actually do it.

Gwen thinks Ianto's being kind, like Michaela is a charity case.

Martha thinks Ianto is running away from his feelings.

Rhys thinks Ianto's better off with Michaela –though he only says so out of earshot of Gwen.

Rhiannon is confused that Ianto's with a woman again. But decides that she likes her.

"She's a bit posh, but you're happy with her."

Ianto knows for a fact Michaela's about as posh as himself. It's all an act. She's a bogger, a country girl to match his estate lout.

Ianto doesn't know what Jack thinks. Quite frankly he's not interested in dissecting his mind.

Ianto knows he loves her. She's his friend, his lover, and she loves him without drama.

It's all he wants.

One night, eleven months after Archie's funeral, Ianto is making love to his wife.

It's quiet, intense, Ianto loves the way they surround each other. He holds her as close as he can, occasionally kissing her ear as they move.

Her fingers dig into his skin as she moans and he follows her to completion with a loud, satisfied sigh.

He's almost asleep on top of her when she goes ridged under him and her fingers dig in again. He looks up and nearly jumps when he sees the tall shadow standing in his bedroom. But in the moment of surprise comes the recognition.

"Jack!"

Twenty-six months after Ianto got his soul back, he's holding his first child.

A daughter. Leeza Murphy-Jones

She's got his nose, her mother's eyes and her own sense of timing.

She was due ten days ago, but had refused to budge. Ianto had done everything his miserable, uncomfortable wife had told him to do to try and get the baby moving. He was immortal, but that didn't mean a pregnant woman was no longer a formidable and terrifying prospect.

Ianto had been examining a new artefact when the call came that Michaela was in labour.

It was exactly the moment when the artefact triggered a lockdown.

"Jack, what the hell are you doing?" Ianto demands, getting off the bed and pulling on his discarded tracksuit bottoms.

"I… I came… I need…"

Jack sounds hoarse, bone weary and Ianto wants to look after him. But Jack has been standing there for God knows how long watching something that Ianto considered private, just between him and his wife. He felt like his intimate moment had been violated.

Michaela turns on the bedside lamp and pulls the sheet tight around her. Jack looks worse in the yellow light. He's dirty, thin, red-rimmed at the eye.

"Jack what are you doing here?" repeats Ianto, stepping closer. Jack looks dazed, eyes flicking between him and Michaela and back. Then he starts pulling at his clothes, a grimace of a smirk on his face.

"Thought I'd join in." he drawls.

It's like a pathetic parody of Captain Jack Harkness. It doesn't seem real.

"Jack no. Get out of this bedroom."

"C'mon Ianto… you know you can't turn me away." The strain around Jack's eyes belies the slightly more convincing smirk. He's now shirtless and turns his eyes to Michaela, leering at her, "Don't tell me you haven't thought about it Micka. Just imagine what I could do to you."

Ianto moves between Jack and the bed, seeing Michaela's face is twisted between pity, disgust and embarrassment.

"Back off Jack, I mean it."

"Aww, c'mon Ianto… a threesome is a great way to spice up a lukewarm marriage."

Ianto doesn't even think before he punches Jack.

Ianto's favourite game during the pregnancy months is flat football.

He finds flatish objects that he can rest on the expanding bump and waits for the inevitable kick of a tiny heel to send the object flying. This always sends him into childish giggles of glee, clapping his hands like a seal and rocking back with delight.

"If it's a boy you're gonna try and make him the next O'Gara, aren't you?" Michaela smiles, reclining back into the couch and watching him. Ianto does not correct her choice of an Irish kicker, he's too busy balancing a coaster right where the last kick was. "It's your laughing it's responding to, you know that, right."

Yes, Ianto does know, and it makes his whole body warm to think of it.

Ianto drags Jack out of the bedroom and down into the kitchen.

"What the hell are you playing at?" he demands of Jack, who staggers like he's drunk –though Ianto cannot smell any alcohol.

"What? Thought you'd be grateful." snorts Jack, shaking his head.

"Jack I am this much away from throwing you out of my house-"

"You're an idiot!" snaps Jack, eyes clearing a little. "Don't you realise what you've done?"

"What are you talking about?"

"You really think marrying her is a good idea?"

"Yes I do."

"You'll regret it. You'll regret it when she breaks your heart."

Ianto realises what this is about and rolls his eyes. "Ah, and just how will she break my heart?"

"She'll leave. Whether by her own will, or by death, she'll leave you."

"And?"

Jack blinks, as if he had not anticipated this response.

"And… then you'll be miserable."

"I expect so. But you know what, it's ok."

Jack gapes at him, then flares up in a rage, "Don't you get it? Every single person you will ever love will leave you, either because they can't take being with you, or they die. You will always be left behind!"

"So I should adopt your strategy, hm? Running and hiding every time there's a chance I could make a real connection with someone? Treat people who care about me like shit so that when they're gone I'll not be so hurt? Only when that happens, what'll I really feel but regret at the fact that I wasted the chance I had to make happy memories in favour of being a bastard?"

"You have no idea-"

"No! You're a coward Jack Harkness. You're willing to do all sorts of dangerous things to save the world but when it comes to your heart you are a coward!"

Ianto ducks away from Jack's swinging fist –clearly he's in better shape than Jack.

"You don't-"

"Oh I do. Believe me, I understand just fine. But I'd like to think I've learned one thing from you, and that is that I should take my loved ones and hold them close until I lose them. So that when I look back on my memories of them, I'll be able to smile, and not wish I could have given them more."

"And what about me?"

"Right now I'm not really inclined to touch you, let alone shag you."

"I'm the only other immortal around!"

"And I'm glad of that, believe me, I am. But that does not mean I'm not still mad at you for how you treated me. And what is your sudden desire to love me but relief at how I am? You just wanted someone you couldn't lose."

"I cared about you! Don't you dare say I didn't."

"…That would have meant something when I wasn't safe."

It isn't always easy.

Their second child is born two years after their first, but the months leading up to it are hell.

Leeza is jealous and angry over the coming baby, and seems to have gotten it into her head that this new baby will steal away her parents. So she throws tantrums, breaks things, and even buries new toys for the baby in mud after rain. The Rift is busy and UNIT is on their backs. Ianto is afraid something will happen to the baby or Michaela if things get worse.

Thankfully things quieten down a little in time for their son to be born. Archer Murphy-Jones. He comes rather easily in comparison to Leeza, and that reflects in his temper. He is unbothered by noises, and soon sleeps through the night. Leeza takes a long time to warm up to him, and so she latches to Ianto, since Michaela is breastfeeding.

Rhys is a favourite of Leeza, who shuns Gwen's coos, and dislikes Anwen who tries to treat her like a doll. A tomboy through and through.

Ianto loves having her with him in his office, where she can watch the goings on from a safe distance. They decided before she was conceived that their children would be aware of their parents' jobs, and impressed with the understanding that it was a secret.

So far so good.

Just wait until school.

'Bobby' is his nickname thirteen years after he marries. It took a near embarrassing amount of time for him to understand what the reference was. It's only when the American UNIT Captain who gave him the name jokingly called,

"Hey Bobby, how's Ethel?" that he makes the connection.

He is indeed following in JFK's brother's footsteps when it comes to reproduction, seeing as his ninth child was just born.

Gwen cannot understand how Michaela can do it. Anwen is still her only child.

Rhiannon thinks they're both nuts.

Johnny's impressed. "Didn't think you had that much in you, especially since you went bender for a bit, eh?"

Ianto makes no apologies for his children's creation, or existence. Nor does he wonder at why Michaela, a modern woman, seems happiest pregnant and caring for their kids. Not after the chewing out he got when he asked her if she felt like a barefoot-kitchen wife.

"It's my fucking life! I'm supposed to make the choice. If I want to be a mum and raise kids, then that's what I'll bloody well do Ianto!"

Money isn't an issue, and since Ianto rarely gets tired anymore, he has plenty of energy to spend on his kids. Leeza's a moody brat sometimes, Archer is a mummy's boy and quite content that way, Toshi is abrasive and Eoin is technically minded (the irony amuses Ianto almost every day), Freda and Georgina are doubles of each other who have nothing else in common, though neither share their Weasley namesakes' mischievous side thank Christ! Leeza named them after hearing that they were twins. There was no changing her mind. Jacque was conceived in France, and much to their distress at the time, is deaf. Now they all use sign language at all times in the house. Erin has her mother's hair and her way with animals, while their baby, Shannon (though always called River), was almost lost to them by fanatic war mongers.

The Doctor is never letting anyone have sex on the TARDIS again.

"Always leads to trouble and is it really necessary to add to the confusion by calling her River too? Honestly you humans!"

"You should have come to the wedding." Ianto tells Jack, who scowls.

"Yeah, really wanted to see that. You only married her because I-"

"My marriage has nothing to do with you!" snarls Ianto furiously.

"Oh doesn't it?" snorts Jack.

"No! It doesn't. I married Michaela because I love her."

"And what, you just forgot about me?"

"You are so self absorbed."

"You live long enough-"

"I'm pretty sure you have to be born with this much narcissism."

"You're lying to yourself and to her if you think you love her."

"Oh, you really sound like a 20th century person now Jack. Then again you've spent more of your life then than in your own time. I guess it's only to be expected."

"Wha-"

"I am perfectly capable of loving more than one person and many people in different ways. I loved you, hell a part of me still does. It does not lessen or discredit my feelings for my wife. And if you try and suggest otherwise I will punch you again."

Torchwood is a massive organisation by the time Ianto reaches his fortieth birthday. He would dare say only his family outdoes it.

Fifteen children later and Ianto quietly suggested to Michaela that that was enough. Leeza is almost seventeen and they have a five month old. The gap is big enough that Leeza refuses to take Quinn out in his pram, insisting that everyone thinks he's hers.

"I'm no slut having a kid at seventeen!" she snaps, before striding out of their house. Jacque rolls his eyes and bangs his fist up against his other flat hand. Fool.

Don't be rude. Ianto tells him, with a scowl to emphasis his signs.

Jacque makes a small circle with his fist over his heart. Sorry.

Ianto squeezes Jacque's shoulder and wonders if he had ever even dreamed of having a family so massive they had to custom build a house big enough to hold them all.

Nope.

Definitely not.

He grins.

Jack doesn't come to see Leeza when she's born. Nor does he come for Archer, or Toshi, or Eoin.

It's the twins he turns up for, which catches Ianto so off guard he actually jumps. Jack gives him a weak smile.

"Finally!" he sighs, "I made you jump."

Ianto stares at him carefully. The last time they spoke, Jack had walked out after Ianto had declared his love for his wife.

Jack looks better, like he's cleared his head, and eased his soul.

"I hear you and Micka have had another baby."

"Two. Twin girls."

"Ah… how many does that make?"

"Erm… six." says Ianto, a bashful smile spreading on his lips as he shrugs. Jack's eyebrows shoot up.

"Wow… quite a handful."

"Yeah. But I've loved almost every minute of it."

Jack nods as if he understands. "So… no regrets?"

"None at all."

"Good. I… I hope it remains so, even when-"

"Don't talk about that. Not today."

"Right. Sorry. I just…"

"Yeah."

"Yeah."

"…so."

"So…"

There's nothing to say right now. So they don't bother.

Reviews are greatly appreciated.

Night's Darkness