Ianto hung his head as Sulu started to get upset at him. He understood why the other man felt that way, and he didn't really blame him, honestly. But he really had been trying to protect that other man--trying to protect both of them from what he was slowly coming to think of as the inevitable. That this thing was going to kill him all over again, and there wouldn't be a damned thing that either of them could do about it.

He carefully pulled his knees in closer, folding his legs in front of himself, putting his hands in his lap as he tried to figure out something to say in response to the other man, but he couldn't think of anything that was really worth saying, anything that would possibly placate the other man. What was done was done, and now he was left to deal with the consequences that...Sulu had found out that he wasn't okay at all.

"I... I didn't want to upset you," he said, quietly. "In case...in case this was all there was. In case this was it..." Because John hadn't been able to find anything. They'd been talking for weeks now, about it, and the fact of the matter was that John just hadn't come up with anything new. And he was getting worse. He just...he wasn't sure that he wanted to tell Sulu he'd been trying to fix things behind his back, and that it wasn't working. He wasn't sure how much more angry that would make the other man, to be honest.