Title: "For the night is young and lasts too long"
Author: Hecate
Fandom: Torchwood
Rating: PG 13
Spoiler: series 1
Pairing, Character: Ianto/Tosh, Ianto/Jack
Summary: "Love is like falling and falling is like this" Ani DiFranco
Disclaimer: Not mine. No money made.
Note: Thanks for the help with the characterization and for the beta go to sandrine, the_milky_way and hegemony.

Tosh kisses Ianto the first time some hours after Mary died, standing on her tiptoes in his hallway, her arms around his neck and tears in her eyes. She doesn't know why, not really; it's just that she needs someone now, someone who gets her. And she thinks Ianto might. He stops her with a nervous little laugh, leading her to his couch and wrapping himself around her once she sits down. She cries herself through the night then, Ianto breathing around her. They never talk about this night later, and she never mentions his thoughts she read earlier.

Her back hurts the next morning and Ianto walks without his usual grace, but she manages a smile and he fakes one of his own. Before Mary, before the pendant, she would have believed that smile, but now she knows better. She kisses him the second time before they leave his flat, and again she doesn't know why. Mary's taste vanished with the first kiss, and it's not as if he would kiss her back. It's not like anybody would kiss her who doesn't plan to betray her.

Suzie betrays them, too, not much later, and it's a bit like Mary because Tosh used to like Suzie. Used to trust her, and Tosh can't even look Suzie in the eyes properly. Ianto plays shadow even better than usual while Suzie is around, slipping in and out of the Hub without a sound and it's only the sudden appearance of coffee at her side that gives him away. There is no coffee for Suzie, and it makes Tosh smile. Maybe she shouldn't, maybe she should feel sorry for Suzie, but Tosh can't. When Suzie almost kills Gwen, Tosh is glad that her anger prevailed.

She takes Ianto's hand when Jack tells her that Gwen is alright and that Suzie is dead again, and she holds on until the rest of the team returns. He doesn't object, doesn't pull away, just sits with her, reassuring and silent.

She ends up in front of Ianto's door again that night, tired and bitter, but Ianto doesn't open the door, and when she spots the love bite at his neck the next day and sees Jack's satisfied smirk it feels like a betrayal, too. She chides herself for it seconds later; Ianto isn't hers and whatever he does it none of her business. It still hurts. It feels as if he should belong to her.

She's getting closer to the ground, falling with speed, and she doesn't even know when she stepped over the edge. All she knows is that Ianto can make her smile and that Ianto made her feel safe after Mary died and when Suzie was sitting next to her her. All she knows is that she's falling in love and that there won't be a safety net keeping her from crashing. She still likes the view.

A ghost later the Hub starts to creep her out a bit, and she wonders if Suzie walks around them, transparent and angry. When she talks with Ianto about Eugene and ghosts, he gets quiet and cold. She wonders if he sees Lisa sometimes or if he doesn't but wants to, and when he walks away she tries not to feel jealous of a dead woman. Later she makes him more of her bad coffee, and he raises an eyebrow at her before smiling, accepting her silent apology. He doesn't leave when she sits down beside him, and when she leans into him he hugs her briefly before getting back to work. She smiles at his retreating back, drinking the coffee he left behind and still smiling through the horrible taste of it. Ianto doesn't embrace people, doesn't touch them often. But he just hugged her.

Ianto calls her late at night, weeks later, his voice exhausted. He tells her that John killed himself in Ianto's car, and if she could come by and drive him home. Ianto doesn't want to use the car now, she gets that, and when she enters the Hub and sees Jack pacing in his office she knows why Ianto doesn't want to stay.

The drive to his flat is silent until she turns the radio on, music filling the spaces between them, and slowly the moment turns from uncomfortable into the two of them, making their way through the night. Ianto hugs her before he leaves the car, muttering a thank you into her ear, and when he's gone she misses his presence and turns the radio louder. It doesn't really help.

She drives him to work and back until he gets a new car, and she could love these hours because he's all hers then. Just the two of them, talking about computers and technology without interruption, his sarcasm more apparent when it's only them. He makes her laugh and smile, and it could be perfect. But it isn't because every time he tells her to drive home without him, she knows he stays with Jack for the night, and she curls herself together at home, cursing both of them.

She's getting close to slapping Jack a few times during Owen's undercover case, because she hates what they do to the Weevils, and she hates what is happening to Owen, and she can't talk about this with Jack or Ianto. Jack praises her work and makes her smile, but he goes too far with the Weevil and he risks Owen's life. Ianto doesn't care much about the Weevils either and sometimes he cares even less about Owen. While her crush on Owen has turned dull through his words and affairs, she still cares about him. She doesn't need to hear what Ianto has to say about Owen, and she doesn't want to hear him defending Jack. Not on this, not now, not when she still spots Jack's marks on him sometimes.

When she's lost in time with Jack, her anger is drowned by fear and worry and Jack's promises. He's still Jack, the man who didn't fire her after Mary, who talked to her sometimes as if she matters. Sometimes the marks on Ianto's skin make her forget that, sometimes she hates him for something that isn't his fault at all. But not now, not when he talks about stolen names and lost chances, not when he looks so broken. His hand in hers is warm, his smile even warmer, and for seconds, this moment is beautiful. When she sees Jack with his namesake, she can't help but feel for him. Later, in his office, she almost forgives him for being the sun in Ianto's orbit and seemingly not caring a bit about that. Almost, but some resentment stays behind, because Ianto deserves more than this and she deserves more, too. She still trusts him, she would still follow him, but she wants Ianto, too.

Ianto makes her coffee before she leaves, hovering around her the whole time, and when she turns to him he smiles. "I was worried." She nods and waits, she knows there's more to come, and when Ianto speaks again his voice is rough and shaking. "I....I wanted you back. Both of you. But I couldn't let Owen do this...I couldn't. There was so much that could have happened and I'm sorry. I'm sorry that I didn't do what Owen did." She stands up then and wraps her arms around him, breathing deeply as he returns her embrace. He didn't risk the world for her. But he didn't risk it for Jack either.

When the world goes crazy the next day, she doesn't tell him that he was right. And when Owen leaves and Ianto looks at her with worry lines edged into his face, she doesn't come to him. She thinks of her mother instead, her mother and the Rift. And when Rhys dies and both Owen and Ianto turn against Jack, she follows them - not because of what they mean to her, but because of her mother's words.

Later, days after Jack's two resurrections and his disappearance, she tells Ianto about her mother, about her vision in the hallway, and he tells her about Lisa. Jealousy for the dead fills her again, because Ianto would still do everything for Lisa and he wouldn't for her, and she can't bring herself to feel sorry for the envy filling her.

They spend more times working together now, reconnecting the lines the Rift broke, and she moves closer to him when he's busy, and she tries not to hope too much when he smiles at her. But Ianto brings her coffee before he brings some to the others, and he talks to her about things that have nothing to do with Torchwood and Jack. Sometimes he looks at her with bright eyes, a smile on his lips, and she can't help it: she hopes against hope and Jack and Lisa; and she waits for something to change between them.

They all miss Jack, they all wait for him to return, but Ianto pushes Jack out of her mind easily, and it scares her that he starts to mean more and more to her. It scares her because she fears he will never feel the same for her.

When Jack is gone for five weeks, she finds a cigarette package Mary had left behind in her flat and she remembers that Jack sent someone straight into the sun she had kissed only hours before that. She misses him a bit less then, and she wonders if Ianto feels like that sometimes. If he thinks of Lisa going down and hopes that Jack won't come back. She doesn't ask him, the answer wouldn't help either of them. But when Ianto kisses her six weeks after Jack vanished, she almost wants to thank Jack for leaving. She almost wants to pray for him to stay gone.

It's just a brief kiss, more friendly than anything else, but it still burns on her lips when he's already busy doing something else. She knows it didn't mean anything to him, that it was friendship and not love she tasted on his lips, a way too make sure she's alright after the last mission went wrong. But it's a start, and Jack isn't there to ruin this beginning.

She waits two weeks until she asks him out, voice shaking, and for a moment she's sure he will decline. But then he nods, and the two of them watch a movie together, and she concentrates so much on his body by her side that she doesn't remember anything of the movie later.

He walks her home, and she invites him in – and again, he surprises her when he accepts her invitation. They drink some badly made cocktails and watch the rerun of a horrible soap opera and curl together on her couch, both needy for touch and comfort. Ianto turns off the lamp on the table beside them at some point, and she turns off the TV after the story line shot past hilarious and aimed for unbearable. For a while, they rest in silence, the room a cocoon around them.

"Do you love him?" Tosh asks him, and she knows she doesn't have to mention Jack's name. Ianto knows she means Jack anyway.

He's silent for minutes, calm breath beside her in the dark, and when he answers he sounds surprised. "No, I don't."

She fights down her smile before she remembers that he can't see her in the darkness, and then she lets it break free. Ianto doesn't love Jack, and he's warm beside her; and when she moves even closer, he doesn't push her away.

"Maybe he won't come back," she says and waits for Ianto's body to flinch.

"Maybe he won't." Ianto is calm and his breathing hasn't changed. When he speaks again, his voice sounds different, tired and exhausted, and it hurts her to hear him like this. "I used to think he would matter. That he...that the thing we have would make things easier. But it didn't. I miss him, I miss him so much it hurts, but being with him didn't make me miss Lisa less than before. Being with him didn't make me love him. But I forgave him and I think he forgave me and that's more than I expected. It's just...when he comes back I won't pretend we're having a relationship again."

She never expected Ianto to tell her all this; she's used to his silence and short remarks, and for a moment she doesn't know what to say. Then, when she knows, she can't speak up because she's afraid of the answers, afraid to hear him say that no, he doesn't think he will ever love someone as much as he loved Lisa again. And no, he doesn't want to. So she stays silent and falls asleep, and when she wakes up it's like the morning after Mary. She just didn't kiss him this time around and she doesn't know if that is good or bad.

Ianto is in her kitchen, conquering her coffee machine, and she watches him from the door, taking in his rumbled clothes and his wild morning hair. She wishes she would see this more often, she wishes this would be normal, but she knows that everything she wants is far away from her.

Ianto's voice calls her back into her kitchen, and she notices that he didn't even turn around, that he must have heard her before. "You didn't ask me out as a friend, did you?"

Tosh almost lies then but in the end she doesn't. She leaps over the edge again and hopes for the best. "No. I...I kind of developed feelings for you."

He chuckles at that, a soft sound filling the room, and when he turns around to face her, he smiles. "Must be the coffee."

She grins at that and nods. "Obviously."

"Listen," and he's serious again, smile gone and she wants to run away so badly. "I can't promise you anything. I mean, I tried this thing with Jack and it didn't work and I don't know if I should even consider this because I don't want to hurt you but...but if you want to we could try this dating thing. Just to see where it goes."

Just so we aren't lonely, says his face but she doesn't comment on his unspoken words. Doesn't care about them, because he wants to try and it might end badly, but everything else could end badly, too, and she's had enough of waiting. Since she first kissed him, she's falling and sometimes she hates it and sometimes she doesn't, and the only thing that could stop this is the ground anyway. No safety net, no way to stop this, so she steps closer to him and takes his hand.

"I'd like to do that. Try, I mean."

And he nods and smiles and doesn't kiss her. But it's alright for this moment, because Ianto is here with her, and her kitchen smells of fresh coffee and all they can do is to try.

See where it goes, she thinks, and she kind of likes the sound of that.