Rating: Hard R to NC-17

Word count: ~ 4,200

Warnings: AU, angst to the nth degree, sex, emotions, etc.

Disclaimer: All recognizable characters are the property of their respective owners. I am in no way associated with the creators, and no copyright infringement is intended.

Summary: They call the first one the Naïvety Marriage, the second the Desperation Marriage, the third the Tequila Marriage. The fourth is the Insanity Marriage, where they both went in with their eyes wide open. Ianto swears they won't have a fifth, but there's always the possibility that one will finally be their forever thing.

A/N: I don't even know, okay? This just—came out, and I have no idea how, why, or from whence. I don't even read Janto AUs all that often. And this…I get engaged and instantly start writing divorce fics. Help? (For a P.S., this takes place in a lovely fictional universe where gay marriage is legal everywhere. I can dream, right?)

A Forever Thing

They call the first one the Naïvety Marriage because of the way they went into it. They'd thought, just out of their teens and hopelessly, ridiculously in love, that nothing could ever break them apart, that they were one of those forever things that popped up on the Lifetime channel and in bodice-ripper romances the world over.

It took them three years to figure out that they weren't.

(Jack is nervous, and Ianto is terrified, but they're nothing if not stubborn, and Ianto knows they can make this work. They've already been living together since they were eighteen, and now that they're twenty and married, the worst must already be behind them.

So they move into their new apartment, Jack takes over as CEO of Torchwood Industries now that he's of age and has his degree, and Ianto settles into life as [in Jack's words] butler-ninja-barista-secretary extraordinaire.

["Really, Jack," Ianto says exasperatedly, turning away so Jack won't see his blush. "It's just coffee. And secretary is no longer politically correct. It's personal assistant. How many times will I have to remind you?"

Jack just grins at him, bright and beautiful, in a way Ianto's come to read as "maybe just once more."]

But maybe they're a little too young, for all that Ianto is ridiculously happy most of the time. When they were younger it was actually easier. Now Jack's away all the time, flying around the world on business, and Ianto is left behind to help run things in his absence while one of the newer PAs follows Jack continent-hopping. It's usually the same PA, too, a young Gwen Cooper Ianto thought was safe, as she's engaged to a nice Welsh bloke. Unfortunately, the rings both she and Jack wear don't seem to mean quite as much as they should, as Ianto finds out when Owen, the head of the Science Department, drunkenly confesses to sleeping with her. [He and Ianto aren't friends, exactly, but Ianto's fairly certain that mortal enemies don't go to the bar together every Wednesday after work. It's a little complicated.]

The worst of it is that Jack also seems like he's interested, even though Ianto knows the he wouldn't betray their marriage. But if they weren't married, he'd most definitely take Gwen up on her unspoken offer.

That they're married and he won't should be enough comfort.

It's not.

And when Jack and Gwen walk back into the office, Jack flirting [because Jack is always flirting, it's his default setting] and Gwen lapping it up [because she's a bit more naïve than Ianto thought it was possible to remain after being around Jack Harkness for two years, and she doesn't seem to see her engagement ring as much of a barrier], Ianto's heart breaks a little.

It's their anniversary, and Jack can't keep his eyes off the new girl.

Ianto feels a bit like the other woman, even though they're married, and that's not a comfortable feeling to have.

Not blaming Jack is difficult, even though Ianto's always known what Jack was like—they grew up together, went through puberty and the aftereffects together, experimented and told stories together; there's little Jack can do or say that will surprise Ianto anymore.

Except…this almost does.

He loves Jack, and he knows Jack loves him. But the few times Ianto tries to explain what he's feeling, his unhappiness with Jack and Gwen's relationship, Jack just doesn't understand. He's not cheating, so he doesn't get the problem, and Ianto can't explain the abstract and unfounded worry he has in a way that sounds convincing. It leads to a shouting match in the kitchen, and they don't speak to each other over dinner or when they go to bed.

In the morning, Jack leaves before Ianto gets up for another business trip. When he gets back, they don't talk about it, and the wounds start to fester. The silences get longer and longer, the gazes colder, and they've never fought like this before, so neither of them knows how to fix it. Somehow, Ianto thinks bleakly, they both believe it will fix itself.

["I'm terrified," Ianto tells Tosh over dinner, while Jack's in Mumbai with Gwen and he's stuck in meetings all week. "What if this isn't something we can fix? But he just doesn't get it and he's happy to have Gwen hanging off his every word and treating him like some dashing hero, and he hardly even looks at me anymore."

Tosh—the head of Torchwood's Tech Department, who was originally Jack's friend, but whom Ianto has adopted because she is absolutely adorable—smiles sympathetically and pushes his plate of lasagna closer to him in an unsubtle hint that he needs to eat more. "I'm sure it will all be fine. Every couple has rough patches."

According to everyone Ianto's talked to, that's correct, but he still fees uneasy. To cover it, he smiles at Tosh and offers her more wine. "I get to keep you in the divorce, though, right?"

She laughs at that and hands over her glass. "It's in the prenup," she agrees.]

Somehow, in some way, those words are a portent. Things get worse and worse, until one day Ianto finally gives in and leaves the packet of divorce papers on the kitchen table.

He takes it as a sign that he made the right choice when Jack doesn't come home and see them for three weeks.)

The second one—the Desperation Marriage—happened exactly a year and six months after the end of the first. Ianto was in Cardiff for the first time since the divorce, reorganizing the Torchwood Industries branch there, and trying desperately not to miss Jack with every breath he took. It just so happened that Jack, despite usually traveling at that time of year, was in Cardiff to supervise the overhaul, and doing the same.

They met in the hallway, had dinner, and fell into bed as though they'd never left it, never left each other. They were both desperate, both still in love, both lonely and trying to survive without the other for the first time since primary school.

A week after that they held the ceremony, unable to remember why'd they'd ever divorced in the first place.

Twenty-four months later, they remembered all too well.

(Eighteen months into divorced life and Jack still feels the ache every time he thinks of Ianto, every time he turns and expects to see Ianto next to him or rolls over in bed at night looking for the warmth of his body. It's agonizing, and he can hardly function sometimes, the hurt is so immediate. He'd thought that after a few months it would go away, that he'd finally be able to adjust to living alone, but that hasn't happened yet. Sometimes, he's not sure that it ever will.

At least there's work, to keep him distracted. Some rising star in the London branch revolutionized the filing and archival systems Torchwood has been using since its founding, and is coming down to oversee the change-over to the new way. Jack, who's usually in Shanghai for a conference this time of the year, canceled his trip and stayed. This work is more immediate and more engaging than listening to other CEOs whine about shareholders and the market, and Jack needs the help to keep his mind off the approaching anniversary of the divorce.

Of course, he realizes the second he steps out of his office that he forgot to check the name of the person coming, because this—

This is about as far from a distraction as he's likely to get without Ianto handing him another set of divorce papers.

Granted, Ianto looks just as startled as Jack feels, electric blue eyes wide as he clutches a file to his chest. And damn, but he looks just as heartbreakingly beautiful as he did the day they said goodbye, all clean lines and slender figure and pale skin with a neatly styled shock of dark hair that wants urgently to curl.

The only thing that's missing is the golden band around his finger.

[Jack's wearing his on a chain around his neck, and maybe that's a little masochistic and a lot stupid, but he lost the will to care about the time Ianto left Cardiff for London.]

"Jack," Ianto says, and it's small comfort that it comes out a little breathless.

But they're both adults, and Jack's had more than his share of exes, from before he and Ianto got together at seventeen and in the first month after the papers were signed, when he had gone after everything with a pulse to prove that he didn't hurt. So Jack dredges up one of those bright grins Ianto has always been able to see right through and says warmly, "Hey, Yan, how have you been?"

Ianto looks at him, and instead of his usual blank, professional expression, there's pain and sadness and longing and need in his eyes, and it's not just physical need. The knowledge that Ianto still loves him—and, perhaps somewhat less astonishing, the knowledge that Jack still loves Ianto—hits Jack in the chest like a ten-pound sledge, and he nearly staggers from the force of it.

They're not over. Not yet. Not entirely. Jack can't believe he thought they were.

This is more than the meeting of two exes forced into tight quarters as they work to overhaul the system and not drown in the painful awkwardness. They both obviously still care, and Jack is so desperate for any kind of caring that it doesn't matter that they're divorced, or they never talked about the why, or that Ianto lives in London now and Jack is still bouncing around their empty flat in Cardiff.

He's torn between wanting to run far, far away and wanting to gravitate closer, and Ianto isn't helping. He must have taken Jack's lack of hostility as a sign that they're all right, because he's just as snarky and bitchily deadpan as ever, and has Jack in stitches when they end up at the same cafeteria table for lunch that day. And he's gorgeous, too, always gorgeous, whether he's crawling around in back storerooms or chewing up minions for breakfast or generally being the terrifying avenging angel of filing and competence that Jack always cowered from.

["You're pathetic, mate," Owen tells him, not even looking up from the pile of paperwork Ianto had dumped on his desk. "You're still arse over teakettle for the bloke, why can't you just give it up and deal with it? Shag him, get shagged, and move on. Christ."

Jack skulks away to find a dark corner somewhere, thinking petulantly that someone whose paycheck he signs should have a little more sympathy.]

Then they have dinner, and Jack is well and truly lost.

His only consolation is that Ianto seem to be as well.

As he and Ianto lie in bed, both deliciously breathless and sweaty as they recover from the second round, Jack acknowledges to himself that he'll be putting that ring back on Ianto's finger before the month is up. There's no doubt he's just as ridiculously gone on the Welshman as Owen said, but there's just as little doubt that he's going to let Ianto get away from him again.

He rolls over onto his side, running his eyes and then his hand down along the clean, elegant line of Ianto's back. Ianto shivers under his touch, shifting closer and spreading his legs, and Jack can't resist covering him with his body again, rolling him over and taking Ianto's mouth in a long, slow kiss. There's no lust in it, no driving need for anything but closeness, and that should scare Jack most of all.

It should, but then again, he's never been smart where Ianto is concerned.

[When he asks Owen to stand up for him as his best man, the doctor just looks at him with a pitying expression that's vaguely unsettling, and says, "I don't know about this, Jack. Why don't you just try living in sin for a while?"

That is, Jack informs him, entirely not funny and absolutely beside the point. He wants Ianto wearing his ring again, and sometime early this morning, when Ianto was gasping and moaning under him, utterly, perfectly imperfect even as he came apart around Jack's cock, Jack had decided that he would do whatever it took to get those simple bands of gold back around their fingers.

It's absolutely insane, but Jack's all right with that.]

But they've never talked about all the things that didn't work the first time. There's no learning from their mistakes because they haven't acknowledged that they've made any mistakes.

Gwen is still Jack's PA, and Ianto frowns a little when he finds out. [That's the first warning, but Jack doesn't heed it.]

She looks at Jack like he's her hero and her god, all wrapped up in a handsome package with excellent teeth, and Jack doesn't stop her. [That's the second warning, but Jack doesn't heed that one, either.]

And then Ianto meets Jack's mentor, the Doctor who helped his father start the company, and the only man in the world Jack's fallen in love with who doesn't love him back. John Smith tells him about exciting new opportunities in China that he just has to come see and Jack drops everything to follow him there. Ianto's left back in Cardiff without so much as a note, because the Doctor's like a whirlwind and once Jack gets caught up in him he can't see anything else.

He comes back two months later to find his husband, dry-eyed and pale, sitting at the kitchen table—the same kitchen table where Jack found the divorce papers last time. Ianto looks up from his coffee and says, "Jack, I think we need to talk."

There are no reassurances Jack can offer that he won't do this again, because while he's loved Ianto since they were seventeen, he's loved the Doctor all his life and not even two marriages can change that.

He says little, and Ianto says even less, and it all falls apart from there.)

The third one lives on in infamy as the Tequila Marriage, where they wound up in the same bar in the small hours of Christmas morning, drank ridiculous amounts of tequila while complaining—to each other, which Ianto finds mind-numbingly ironic—about the state of their love lives. The next morning they woke up in the same bed, the ink still drying on the marriage certificate.

They'd tried to make a go of it, because they were nothing if not committed once they started something and still incredibly, stupidly in love with each other. But all the trying in the world couldn't make it last, and thirteen months later the divorce papers made an appearance once again.

By that time, Ianto had had enough practice watching Jack leave—and leaving himself—that he could almost pretend his heart wasn't being ripped out through his ribs and shredded.

(They manage not to see each other for two years, which is an achievement in and of itself when they both work for [or own, in Jack's case] the same company. Ianto still lives in London, and Jack is still globetrotting for business far too often, but they somehow end up in the same bar in Cardiff on Christmas Eve.

"Well, fuck," Jack says when he walks in and sees Ianto sitting at a table in the corner.

Ianto heartily agrees with the sentiment, but he's already halfway to drunk even though he's quite good at holding his liquor, and he can't bring himself to care. He just eyes Jack for a moment, and then signals for the bartender to bring over the bottle and leave it.

Jack flops down into the chair across from him, still wearing that vaguely shell-shocked expression, and orders a bottle of his own.

[Tosh and Owen, who are looking for Ianto and Jack, respectively, come face to face outside the bar and stop dead.

"Damn," Tosh says, casting a glance at the darkened doorway.

Owen's never heard her curse before, but this is a situation that almost requires it. He offers a commiserating wince and shakes his head.

"Yeah," he agrees. "How long do you think it will take this time?"

Admittedly, twice isn't a pattern, but he knows Jack well enough to understand just how bloody stupid he can be about some things. And on that list of things, Ianto Jones will forever hold the top spot. Granted, though, Ianto's not much smarter where Jack's concerned.

Tosh falls into step beside him as they head back down the streets, the taciturn agreement to leave their two best friends to their fates turning them into momentary allies. "Less than a week," she offers in amused resignation, "and half a year before they can't make it work anymore."

Owen casts her a sideways glance, and she's really very pretty, for all that he's never seen her without her laptop and BlackBerry close at hand. "Make it a year before they're gone and it's a bet." He stuffs his fists into his coat pocket and jerks his head towards the Chinese place up ahead. "Plans for tonight? Want to get some dinner?" If Jack's getting laid, he might as well make an attempt, too.

It's almost midnight, but Tosh smiles at him and says yes anyway.]

The sex is just as fantastic as Ianto remembers. Jack's just as overwhelming as he remembers, and in a way no extra inch of height can account for. He throws Ianto down on the bed, their bed, and covers him with his body, kissing and biting and shredding Ianto's concentration far too easily. Ianto turns the tables, flips them, and takes control.

By the time he's screwing himself on Jack's cock, moaning and shuddering, it's quite obvious Jack doesn't have a problem with that at all.

Ianto sighs as he comes, feeling Jack's body-deep groan as he does the same, and slumps forward to rest his forehead on Jack's collarbone. Jack makes a sleepy contented noise and wraps his arms all the way around Ianto, bearing him down beside him on the bed, and then interlocks their hands so that the newly returned rings clink together.

The tequila—Patrón Silver, Ianto's favorite, which feels a bit like fiery silver starlight when swallowed and gets him drunk faster than anything else—is still a warm presence in his blood. He'll absolutely hate himself for this in the morning—and not just because of the hangover—but he snuggles closer into Jack's embrace and turns to whisper directly into his ear, "Love you, you bastard."

It doesn't make him feel any better when Jack whispers back, "I know, Yan. I love you, too."

[Tosh is entirely unsurprised and unsympathetic the next morning, when Ianto has recovered from his hangover and the panic attack that followed close behind, and goes to see her. She opens the door in a tank top and boxers, and normally Ianto wouldn't blink at that, but they're not her boxers, even if they are bright red and covered with glittery pink and lavender hearts.

In fact, he recognizes them as a gag pair he helped Jack pick out for Owen during their first marriage, and oh god.

"Never mind," he says quickly, slapping his hands over his eyes. "I'll go. There's no way I'm going to risk seeing Owen naked."

"Go to hell, mate," the doctor snaps, leaning around the corner of the kitchen. He is, thankfully, wearing a bathrobe, but Ianto decidedly does not think about what he might or might not be wearing under it. "Tosh, how do you want your eggs?"

It takes Tosh a great deal of effort not to say "fertilized" but one look at Ianto's horrified expression—she's always wondered if he can't read minds—and she relents. "Once over, please." Then she looks at Ianto's hand, sees the ring, and sighs. "Oh, Ianto."

He can guess the train of her thought, and grimaces as he lowers his hands. "I'm mad, aren't I? Certifiable. We're doomed, Tosh."

Tosh pats his shoulder carefully. "All you can do is try," she consoles him. "Third time's the charm, right?"]

It's not.

They try. They try so hard.

But there's too much history there, too many things unspoken between them, and it's not enough.)

The fourth is what Ianto likes to call the Insanity Marriage, because they both knew exactly what they were getting into, and went into it with their eyes wide open. There was no tequila to blame, no youthful naïvety, not even desperation and the stress of working with an ex. They'd been clearheaded and certain, dedicated to the idea of one more attempt to make it all work.

It was absolutely no surprise to anyone that they'd finally admitted defeat, one and a half years in.

(They're insane. It's the only justification for why they even try, and even that's not enough to explain why they last a whole eighteen months afterwards.

It's stubbornness, Ianto thinks. That's all. They're both competitive people, and to fail at the same thing, over and over, rankles. He's terrified that somehow, for some reason, they'll keep trying until one of them is dead, or they fall out of love.

He's not entirely certain which idea scares him more.)

Ianto tells himself in no uncertain terms that there will be no fifth try.

(But there is, there's always another time, and Ianto's accepted the thought of getting his heart ripped out and sewn back in every few years like clockwork. It's never going to get any less painful in the bad parts, but the good parts are so fantastic, so wonderful and perfect and warm and everything that they'll keep trying anyway.

Jack adds it up one night during their fifth honeymoon, and it turns out they've been separated six years, two months, and some-odd days, all told. They've been married for almost eight.

The good outweighs the bad. They've been together longer than they've been apart.

Ianto keeps thinking that, keeps hoping that this is the one that will turn out to be a forever thing, and can't bring himself to stop.

Someday, he knows it will be true, and until then they'll both keep trying.