Fic: Any Other Day: Sunday (aka part 7/8, team, NC-17)

[amand_r]

Title: Any Other Day: Sunday (aka 7/8)
Fandom: Torchwood
Characters: Team, Rhys (Jack/Gwen, Gwen/Rhys, Jack/Ianto)
Ratings: NC-17 (in some parts)
Timeline: Post-Meat, Pre-Reset (assumes flashback knowledge from Fragments)
Summary: Hey, this one time? At Torchwood? Gwen and Jack switched bodies and everything went pear-shaped.

Author's Notes: I love this fic, because I love the team, I say, THE TEAM. Thanks to 51stcenturyfox and cruentum for the beta! This was started back in May, when I wasn't nearly the TW freak that I am, and so I think it's more cracky than I had intended. It's funny. It's potboiler fic.

SPECIAL THANKS to laurab1 for the bitching fanart! Check that shit out!

This fic is a WIP, divided by days: Monday-Tuesday. It should have 8 parts, some longer than others, depending on what happens any given day. There you go.

PREVIOUSLY, on TORCHWOOD: Monday, Tuesday (A), Wednesday (A), Thursday (A), Friday (A), Saturday



SUNDAY:

The difference between a man and a boy is, a boy wants to grow up to be a fireman, but a man wants to grow up to be a giant monster fireman.
----Jack Handey

"You realise that the Xarxian bodies that we killed had the personalities of these dogs' bodies," Jack said to Gwen as they lounged in the conference room. The Jack Russell paced on top of the table, moving away from the lunchmeat platter Ianto had brought to serve as breakfast/lunch/early dinner for the Xogs along with an assortment of kibble they didn't seem to like and a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables in which they had taken an interest. That alone would have clued someone in to the fact that they weren't normal dogs.

Their eerie silence would have been the second clue.

"So?" Gwen said, distracted by the fact that she had just eaten a piece of salami from the platter, and she hadn't realised that there might have been dog tongues on it.

Jack let the Airedale rest its head on his thigh as he scratched behind its ears. "The mastiff I get, and this one and the mutt could have been anything, but this means that at one point in time you and I were pitted against 'Wee Jock' here." He let the dog lick his face when he leant in. Gwen wanted to say something about please not to be letting it lick her face, but it wasn't her body. Not at that second. Anyway. And the thing seemed to like something on his face. With her luck it was her concealer.

Did Jack even know how to use concealer?

Gwen tilted her head. "Small in body, Jack, ferocious in spirit."

Jack blinked. "Like Rob Roy."

Ianto entered and heard the last of their conversation. "No. Nothing like Rob Roy."

"The drink and not the hero."

"Especially not then."

Jack shrugged. "Point. He could have been the one the Belbels took apart." The Jack Russell brought him a slice of salami and he let it fall on the floor. "But I think the other way is funnier."

Gwen covered the terrier's ears with her fingers and he jerked his head out of her hands. "Don't. You don’t know how much English he understands. Besides," she added as she apologised for assaulting the thing by shredding some chicken salad on the table for it. "Those poor things were under stress, and they were dogs. They didn't know any better."

Jack watched Ianto collapse into the chair to Gwen's left and reach for one of the beer bottles on the table. "Ianto, can we finally call them Xogs now? I mean, come on."

Ianto stared at him, then opened the bottle on the edge of the table and rolled his eyes. "Oh whatever."

Gwen took the beer bottle he slid across the tabletop to her with a smile. Ianto reached down beside his chair and pulled the carton of Stella from the floor. Ah, Ianto, always prepared.

Owen coasted in and sat in a chair, lost in thought but still aware enough to tax Ianto a beer (Ianto always called forking beers over to Owen 'paying the PAT (Prat Added Tax)'). Tosh settled in the chair farthest from the dogs, perched on the edge and eyes rather glassy. Ianto had mentioned that she'd been taking allergy medication, and she didn't look very well. Jack had sent her home directly from Dylan's apartment, and she must have sandblasted all the dander from her skin in a hot shower and slept heavily, but she didn't look well-rested. Gwen supposed that maybe she really was allergic. Her face and eyes weren't puffy, but Gwen's cousin had bad pet allergies, and she just got watery at the very end and stuffy and sick for most of the time she was around animals.

Tosh slid a box across the table and the Jack Russell chased after it. Jack caught it and lifted the lid with delight. "Why yes, Toshiko, I would like a tasty pastry." Gwen watched him bite into the Danish with the fatalism of one who knew that their body was being wrecked and there was nothing they could do about it.

This was their first actual debriefing, now that everything regarding the Xarxians had been sorted, minus obviously Gwen and Jack. Gwen like to think of their predicament as a sidebar that had nothing to do with the case, and in fact, she really wished they didn't have to write it up at all. But Ianto had already started them on the paperwork, and apparently, at their leisure, they were to fill out some questionnaires whilst still in the 'foreign vessel' so as to get an accurate assessment of perspectives and perceptions of being…in another vessel.

Gwen sometimes hated Torchwood. Maybe in a hundred years this would be useful to someone else. In a hundred years it would probably still be sitting in a cardboard box in the sub-basement, much like the Q'nog file, waiting for a day that would never come.

Not that she was spending any time today harping on her obsolescence.

So here they were, finally done with everything. No more mystery, or guns, or cover-ups. Ianto and Gwen had gone out that morning in their 'maintenance' coveralls and spackled the laser scorchmarks off the pillars in the Plass, right in front of all the civilians. It was amazing what people let someone in a coverall (or boiler suit for that matter) get away with without question.

Owen and Jack had dealt with the Xarxian bodies and the Belbel bodies, firing up the incinerator and having at it. Last she'd heard, though, Owen had left one of the Belbel bodies behind for study.

Tosh had been fabricating cover stories, putting the finishing touches on the lies that they had spun about what Simran Parikh and Dylan Smith had been doing that week. There was only so much they could do-Dylan had been let go from his job, but Simran had not. They could arrange that the lottery ticket tossed on Dylan's desk come up with a winning number and a few thousand quid to tide him over until he found gainful employment. Tosh rather liked that area of work, said it made her feel like the puppet master.

"Simran and Dylan have been sorted," Tosh said with a sigh. "They neither of them remember anything. I left a few brochures for Snowdonia in Dylan's flat, and there's a confirmed reservation up at a Bed and Breakfast." She blew her nose. "I got him a discount. Least I could do when making fake charges for a holiday he didn't take but has to pay for." Tosh smiled. "I also doctored some photos of the hills on Dylan's camera. If you look close, you can't even see Owen."

Owen smiled at that. "A damn shame." Then he sobered. "Simran seems to be under the impression that she was attacked by a large dog at work and had an adverse reaction to the medication that she was given. Hospital staff don't seem to remember differently." He made a surprised 'oops' gesture with his hands and face.

Jack fed the rest of his Danish to the Airedale, who licked his fingers. "The police?"

Gwen shut her eyes for a split second. "Detective Inspector Swanson has been told that the case is closed, that all charges against Dylan Smith have been dropped and that any further investigation on her part would be most discouraged." Her eyes focused on Jack's, and he glanced away, leaning forward to dig his fingers into the Airedale's neck fur.

"That's not going to stop her," Owen muttered.

Jack let go of the dog and sat back in his chair. "I'll deal with that."

Ianto sipped from his beer. "I have to admit that I'm disappointed that we have yet again fabricated a holiday for someone else, and cannot manage to book one ourselves."

Owen shrugged. "Is Snowdonia really a holiday, though?" Ianto looked about to protest, but then tipped his bottle in Owen's direction with a smirk.

"If I took a holiday anywhere in the world," Tosh mused, staring off into space. "I'd go to Amsterdam. Get caned." When they all stared at her, somewhat in shock, she shrugged, and it looked a great deal like Owen. "What? It's legal there."

Gwen decided that the least she could do was be nice to Jack's body and maybe he's regret the fifteen million stones of grease and processed flour and sugar he'd poured into her this week. She dug into the fruit tray with her fingers, fishing out what she thought was citrus of some sort.

Jack grinned at her. "You'll just piss out the extra vitamin C."

Ianto opened another beer. "Your medical health non sequitur today is brought to you by Captain Jack Harkness, RAF."

Owen finished his beer and 'taxed' Ianto further. Tosh finished her pastry and wiped her hands with a serviette. It had apparently been something with lots of sugar, because the paper serviette just stuck to her fingers, tearing off in little pieces. The Jack Russell came to explore and Tosh shot back from the table. Owen called him over and poured some beer on the tabletop for him. Ianto rolled his eyes and dumped a handful of paper serviettes on top of the mess.

"And these beasties?" Gwen said, reaching to feed the Jack Russell a bit of pomelo; the animal sniffed it, and snapped it up in a second. It wasn't Danish or beer, but apparently it would do. "What do we do with them?"

Jack studied the dogs, his eyes moving from one to the other. The mutt had settled under the table, right by Tosh's feet, but the mastiff had apparently found a friend in Ianto, leaning against his chair and setting its huge head on his armrest while it made huge exasperated eyes at him. Gwen began to understand that whole pets-resembling-owners thing.

"I dunno," Jack said slowly, the gears of his brain obviously turning. "We can't keep them, but we can't let them go." He glanced at Ianto. "Can we add dog walker to your massive list of duties?"

Ianto petted the mastiff's head fondly. "I think," he said in a light and non-threatening tone, "that would drive me over the edge." Then he smiled.

Tosh sneezed and they all looked at her. "I don't know why you all seem to think I'm lying about being allergic."

Jack clapped his hands together. "Oh, yes!" And then he dashed from the room and up into his office. They all stared at each other on confusion, only to jerk when Jack's Gwen-voice thundered through the Hub as he shouted into the phone excitedly. "Archie! It's Jack Harkness! You love dogs, don't you? All country Scotsmen love dogs!"

***

Jack dusted the coral on his desk with a feather duster he'd purchased for just that task and no other. He kept it in his desk drawer in a plastic bag, though really, it didn't have to be that clean. It just seemed appropriate, like having a cloth in one's pocket solely dedicated to cleaning one's glasses.

Tosh had been sneezing all afternoon, and so Owen had taken her home with a promise to return, but that kind of promise was like the kind you gave when you promised to visit a relative who lived a continent away: 'Yeah, yeah, sure, I'll get right on that.' Jack knew that he was a little stropped about the retconning of Simran, mostly because he rather had a thing for her, and Jack was sorry about that, but it was Owen; he'd find another shag soon enough.

Jack had been relieved that the day had consisted of things he could do in the Hub, since he figured that he had less than twenty four hours to go in Gwen's body and that with Murphy's law, sometime in those last twenty-four hours was when he would slip on a banana peel or get hit by a runaway Brains truck. One of those accidents after which they played clips of witnesses saying things like, 'It was the darnedest thing. She walked under the crane, and all of the reinforced cables snapped at the same time! That piano just fell fifteen storeys. What a freak accident.'

Of course, the Hub wasn't exactly risk-free, but he trusted Ianto to have covered most of the outlets with safety plugs, in the metaphorical sense.

He used the handrails on the steps, just in case.

That meant that when, after a light take-away dinner from the local gbk, the police band picked up some chatter about a few weevils in Butetown, he sent Gwen and Ianto. That neither one of them had argued with him or even given him a strange glance was testament enough to the fact that they all knew what was at stake.

That left him here with paperwork and a cup of cold coffee. Jack looked at the white cream swirls on top and wondered if it would be worth it to try to microwave it.

"Well," he said as he ran the feather duster along the very top of the coral, tickling it slightly. "There's always you."

The coral signaled assent by…doing nothing.

"Sometimes I think I made a huge mistake coming back," he told the coral. "I know, I know, but still."

The coral was mum.

"Yeah, well, you say that now, but I'm sure Ianto would have taken care of you, right?" Jack ran the duster down the side. "He kept you immaculate."

The coral didn't respond, which was still not very surprising.

Jack bagged the duster and tossed it in the open desk drawer. "Yeah yeah, you say that now, but later you'll feel differently when I spill coffee on you."

The coral was very very very quiet.

Jack meandered down the stairs, one hand on the rail, and drifted about the atrium level, stopping at Ianto's workstation to nose about his open rolls of blueprints and documents. It looked like he was trying to reroute the ventilation in the autopsy theatre, which was probably less about safety and more about odour. He scribbled a few notes on a post-it and then stuck it to the top blueprint.

Owen's workstation was a biohazard, the polar opposite of his med lab and theatre. There was an inch of paperwork in varying stages of completion and mixed in with high quality printouts of Playboy centrefolds past and present, which accounted for the massive amount of money they'd been spending on laser printer ink. Jack drew some smiley faces in very inappropriate places on a few of them and tucked them back where they had been haphazardly hidden.

He ate about fifteen of Tosh's sweeties, tried to mess with her code, but she'd locked them all out of her workstation. That was for the best, he was sure, but also slightly worrisome and a bit of a security issue. They were going to have to have a talk.

Gwen's desk wasn't there. He was sure. There had been a desk there at one time, but now it was buried in clothes and papers and a few crumples bags and three different coats. He saw a small box of shoes off to the side of the desk, and slipped off his trainers to try on a pair of heels that she'd probably brought to work with the intention of wearing them out to dinner with Rhys directly after she'd got off, but which were still here. Jack wondered if Gwen had had plans with Rhys this past week that had been interrupted. He'd certainly had plans that had to be cancelled.

Well, okay so it was an ongoing thing, but still, Ianto had put it on hold.

He put Tosh's bluetooth in his ear and pressed the button. "Hey there!"

There was the sound of grunting and breathlessness that meant that they'd been running. "Jack?" Gwen's voice-his voice-sounded worried on the phone. "Is everything all right?"

He sniffed an open canister of something from Owen's lab table as he wandered the room. "Oh nasty."

"Jack?" Ianto panted. "What's wrong?"

He opened a morgue drawer. Oh hello, Belbel number six. Lookin'…frozen. "No, nothing nothing," he mumbled. "Just checking in on my favorite-"

"Gwen, he's got a knife," Ianto said calmly, and there was a sound of breaking glass. "And a broken bottle. Lovely."

There was a gunshot and Jack reached up to turn the volume down on his comm. "Are you guys okay?" He slammed the door shut and jogged up the stairs to Owen's workstation, where he couldn't key anything up because Owen had locked his workstation as well. He started to punch a few buttons on his vortex manipulator, and then realised that he had everything he needed to track Ianto and Gwen up in his office

Ianto made a noise like he'd been hit in the gut. "Ianto is-getting sucker punched by a Weevil," Gwen said in an almost amused voice. "Mine had just discovered tools, but I shot it in the knee."

Jack double timed it to his office and settled in the chair, but his weight was so much lighter that he coasted back too far on the rollers and had to pull himself back with his fingertips on the desk edge. The trackers on the comms showed them under the ground somewhere around the Grange Gardens. "Clever girl," he finally told Gwen, but she wasn't too busy yelling at Ianto.

"You have to get it in the-"

"I know how to do this, you know," Ianto snapped, and there was the sound of his fist impacting with something hard that crunched, most likely a face. Jack hoped it wasn't his face. That would bruise.

"Classy," Gwen said. "Bag it."

They must have been bagging their weevils, because they were breathing hard but silent, and Jack drummed his fingers on the desk, trying to think of something to say. He picked up his cold coffee and sipped it experimentally. It was true; Ianto's coffee magic turned back into a pumpkin after the coffee had been sitting for two hours.

"Are you getting on-"

"Jack, we're rather busy so unless you have-where did that come from?"

"Whoa, he's coming right for you-"

"I have it, I have it."

"YEOW!"

"Oh, sorry. Look, just wipe it off your-"

"I know how to use a handkerchief, Ianto."

"Wow, that was a close one," Jack murmured conversationally, and there was silence on the other end.

"Jack," Gwen said, and he knew his 'irritated' voice when he heard it. "Is there anything you need?"

He cast about and lost his grip on his coffee mug at the same time he was gesturing with it, and the mug tumbled in the air, the cold coffee spinning out in all directions, onto his desk and the lit coral. The mug rolled to a stop on the desk, kept from falling to the floor by its sturdy and apparently slippery handle. "Oh, I spilled my coffee."

"You called because you spilled your coffee?" Ianto groused. "Are your hands painted on?"

Jack stared at his clumsy hand accusingly and wondered if the coral would forgive him for dousing it in Ianto's cold Chanchamayo. "One might think so," he answered slowly.

Gwen made an exasperated noise. "We'll be home soon."

He only noticed the 'home' part after they'd clicked out. An odd choice of word, that. On the other hand, everything was odd this week, including the fact that he had to pee again.

Jack looked at the dripping coral and sighed. "I told you this would happen," he told it, picking it up. "Come on, we need a bath."

***

Most of the lights were out when Gwen came up from the showers. She hadn't bothered to use Jack's small shower, but chose to wash up in one of the basins in the communal room, scrubbing the grease and goop from her face and hands with brisk gestures. She didn't smell too bad, so she planned on falling into the bed and sleeping a few hours before she woke on Jack's preternatural schedule, and she'd shower then, quiet her mind a bit. It would give her something to do.

Gwen figured that Ianto had taken Jack with him, and so she hadn't expected that, when she kicked her shoes under Jack's desk, he would hear his voice-her voice-call up from the quarters below the ground.

"Ianto?"

Gwen knelt down and peered through the hole from above. She could see the edge of the damp bed, but nothing much else. Jack had put a braided throw rug down there at one time, and she could see the ragged reds and blues of it from here.

"Ianto went home," Gwen said, her fingers tracing the top rung of the ladder.

"Ah," came from below.

She waited for more, but there was nothing. She wasn't sure what else she could or should say. "Do you need something?" she asked, which was stupid. That was Jack's private room, and he was more familiar with the business and amenities of the Hub than she would ever be. Jack should have been asking her if she needed anything, starting with the secret stash of Haagen Dazs that Tosh had around here somewhere.

"Nah," Jack said.

Jesus, he couldn't shut up on the comm earlier and now he was downright laconic.

"I'm coming down," she said, "for my toothbrush."

Her feet were already on the rungs and descending by the time Jack replied with, "Okay."

Gwen jumped down the last three rungs of the ladder and turned to where Jack was sitting on his bed, cross-legged and examining his knees. "What are you doing down here?"

Jack looked up at her, his face freshly scrubbed, hair still wet. Obviously he had figured out how to wash the make up off properly. Part of her wondered why he had even bothered wearing it this week. Then again, why had she bothered trying to figure out the mystery that was Jack's hair styling technique?

"I'm contemplating my last day in your body," Jack said. "I should also have not eaten that pasty this evening. You have a sensitivity to preserved meats." He grimaced and rubbed his belly.

Gwen nodded, shoving her hands in her pockets. "Ah."

"You?"

She shrugged. "I was going to 'sleep'-" Here she made finger quotes. "-but I'll just brush my teeth and take the sofa upstairs-"

"Oh hell," Jack said, swinging his legs off the bed. "I didn't think about-"

Gwen put a hand on his head, ruffling the wet strands. "Don't."

He stayed where he was while she darted into the small toilet off to the side and brushed her teeth and used the mouthwash that Jack apparently should purchase stock in, he had so much of it. Three bottles in a cardboard box under the sink alone.

"Floss," Jack said mockingly from the bed. "I have to take those teeth through eternity."

Gwen might have argued, but she didn't have the spirit for the weight of the joke. Instead, she flossed and rinsed again and flicked the lights to the toilet off when she exited, dimming the room by half. Jack blinked and they stared at each other, waiting for their pupils to adjust.

"I've thought about it," Jack said, bouncing on the bed. "And I think we should share the bed."

She crossed her arms and stood in front of him. "Really."

Jack patted the bed beside him. "Not really. I'll crash upstairs. You're like a whole foot shorter."

Gwen sat on the edge of the bed and considered how they never seemed to have a problem switching back and forth between my and your when referring to these bodies. You're shorter, not I'm shorter. That was healthy, right? That she could follow him must have meant something too.

They sat in companionable silence for a few seconds, and Gwen glanced at the covers. The bed was small, she knew that from sleeping down here a few nights ago on her own, but it was even smaller for the fact that there were two of them on it. She wanted to ask, flippantly, how he and Ianto managed, but he'd just leer at her and offer to show her personally, and then she'd have to think of an excuse not to let him. It didn't seem right, shagging Jack ever, no matter what body he was in.

On the other hand-

No.

Gwen reached out to Jack and ran her fingers through his hair. "I have split ends."

Jack peered at her fingers, but they were too close to his face and his eyes crossed. "So you do." He refocused on her. "I didn't do that," he added defensively.

"I died," she said to him suddenly, meaning for it to be more complicated than that but finding that it didn't need to be. "Friday."

Jack nodded solemnly. "Yes, you did."

"But I came back."

"That too."

"I don't really know how to think around it."

Jack smiled ruefully. "Then don't. It wasn't your death, Gwen, it was mine. Just like that might be your body right now, but it's not, not really, no more than these are my feet or eyes or quite lovely bosoms."

"No one says 'bosoms' anymore."

Jack picked at her braces. "They do when they're trying to seduce the person those bosoms belong to."

Gwen looked at the low neckline of the shirt that Jack had picked to wear-without a bra-and something in her trousers stirred. "And whose bosoms are they?" she asked.

Jack leant his face in to her and that afforded her a look at said bosoms. "Yours," he whispered.

Well then. "Consider me…" Gwen didn't bother to play at it anymore and just met Jack's mouth with her own.

It was hard to not think that she was kissing herself, but she'd never done that with her mouth quite that way, or tried that before in such a manner. It was Jack steering her body, like watching film of two different racecar drivers try out the same car. Jack was all thrust and impatience, all dippy head and tongue, and he didn't seem to care that he had her neck in his hands and was driving into her. She didn't know what to do with her fingers, so she used them to pull at Jack's top. He inched around and squirmed until she'd pushed it down his arms and chest to ring about his waist, and when he stopped kissing her mouth long enough for her to pull back, he pressed his forehead to hers, his breathing hard and heavy.

"It goes without saying that any time you'd like to-" She cut him off with her mouth, fastening to his in a blur and a bit of an awkward smoosh of lips, but that did what most kisses do-it sorted itself with some head tilting and heavy breathing and her hand on his shoulder, his wet hair cascading down to drip little runnels over her skin.

Jack's fingers pulled at her buttons and she let him. He slipped the shirt off without the slightest hesitation, following the exposure of flesh with his mouth. Her button-down peeled away and the vest slid over her head; his breasts were cool against her chest and she shivered for a second when Jack bent and ran just the tip of his tongue down her chest, along the pectoral muscle and finally to her nipple, taking it into his mouth and swirling his tongue, like she had done millions of shags before with other men.

It was an awkward shimmy, to get her out of her trousers, get Jack out of his knickers. They had to navigate her socks and the rest of it, all without taking their mouths from each other's bodies. She wanted to taste the hollow of his neck, wanted him to never stop sucking her earlobe, wanted to see what it felt like to rub more and more of her skin on his, what would that be like?

But there they were, tangled together, still sitting up in the bed, hands and mouths everywhere, his hair in her face, it smelled like strawberries, and her engagement ring clinked on the metal of his watch when they brushed each other. Gwen looked at it for a second before Jack drew her face away from the sight with a shake of his head and his finger on his lips. That hand slipped under her jaw and brought her in for another round of kisses, light and then harder and harder as feather down and wind turned to stones and fire with his tongue, with his grip on the underside of her chin.

And then his fingers found her cock, and it was all over.

The sensation was not unlike being fucked inside out, she mused, that she could feel him, three-sixty around her, and he was warm and soft and pulling at her foreskin, all the way back and then all the way forward, and that hurt a little at the extremes, but as the saying went, the good kind of hurt. Her fingers scrabbled on his leg, she tried to tell him that this is how it felt, but he knew, he knew and his laugh in her ear told him that he knew exactly what it felt like. His free hand clasped one of hers and guided it between his legs as they hung off the bed.

She slid her fingers through Jack's pubic hair, threaded and tugged at the strands and wiggled a finger in between the folds of flesh to find his clit and he bucked a bit, sucking in a breath when she rolled it under her finger, her mouth moving in for another kiss. Jack kissed like he was in flames, like he needed to get somewhere, like he needed to fuck and suck his way there, through her body, and take her with him to his final destination.

"You can be on the top," Jack said into her ear after leaving a mark on her neck. "Do all the work." He squeezed her cock in his hand and chuckled when she gasped and thrust up into it. "Or I could be on top and help out a-jeez, you have to stop that." He plucked her hand from his lap, licking her fingers. The sensation didn't shoot down to her cock so much as the feel of his tongue on her fingers reminded her cock of what that tongue could feel like on it instead.

Gwen ran her hands along Jack's breasts. She wanted to lick them, taste them as they hardened because of what she did, and when she leant in and her mouth fastened on a nipple, Jack threw his head back a bit and groaned. "I don't think I can be on the-"

Gwen bit the nipple, trying to remember what she liked in this body, where the sensitive spots were. Jack certainly wasn't shy about reaching for all his favorite spots, and soon they were licking and touching and groping, poking and rubbing along each other's bodies with the confidence of people who had been doing this for years. Because they had, really.

"How's this?" Jack said when he rolled her balls in his hand and she felt a tightening there and had to breathe slowly, stop her fingers from exploring his perineum while her thumb stroked his clit.

"That's, oh, yeah, that's."

Jack grinned. "I've always thought so."

Gwen wondered if she could hold on to this feeling, like the world was attached to her cock, and whenever Jack touched it, squeezed it, brushed it with skin or hair-he hadn't even put his mouth on it-she couldn't help the surge of her hips, and she understood now, the whole drive to put your dick in something, anything.

Jack bent over to the bedstead and Gwen ran her fingers up his cunt from behind. He almost fell off when she speared him with two fingers, but she grabbed his waist with her other hand and steadied him as he searched in the drawer for whatever he was seeking.

"Lie down," he told her, pushing on her shoulders and sliding down her body, his hair sending shivers across her skin. His tongue darted between his teeth and just the tip of it drew a line down her belly to her cock. He pressed his face against the length of it, and then buried his face in the hair at the base. "Ah, hello there. Long time no see."

Gwen reached down and tugged at his hair impatiently, something she remembered that she hated but couldn't keep herself from doing. "You're going to draw this ou-uuuugh." It was a devolving thing when Jack simply took her cock in his mouth all at once and swallowed in the back of his throat, moving his tongue against the underside before bobbing his head, humming and drawing his lips back up so that he could smile at her. His tongue worried the slit and one of his hands played with her foreskin, but Gwen could only stare at him, his secret smile, her secret smile, as he gave the head of her cock a sloppy kiss.

"Everyone should be deep-throated at least once in their lifetime," he told her, and then proceeded to do just that.

Gwen didn't even know that she could suppress her gag reflex. Jack could do things with her mouth that she had never tried before. Her body was a violin that she used to play Chopsticks. Jack could play The Flight of the Bumblebee.

Or she might have been thinking with her JT, which was novelty enough, and apparently justified. She reached down and grabbed Jack's hair and he covered her hands with his own, letting her hold him in place while she fucked his mouth just a little. It was mostly gravity doing the work, and Jack's tongue and lips and some sort of musical number he was humming that sounded vaguely like 'Copacabana'.

She didn't know how long it stretched on, probably only thirty seconds or so, because just when she felt something building, felt an inevitableness that gathered low in her, Jack pulled off with a final lick up her cock and smiled. "Maybe we'll finish that later. For now-" He righted himself and inched up on his knees until he was almost sitting right on her cock. He opened the condom wrapper with his teeth and spit the edge off into the darkness. She reached up to do it, and he batted her hands away, pressing her shoulders back into the bed. "No, this is for me."

Gwen closed her eyes and felt the condom roll down her cock, muting the touches that followed, but still a little out of control. It was easier to think for a second when the condom went on, Jack's fingers rolled it as far down as it would go, and he bent in for a kiss, licking her lips and biting at her gently before pulling her bottom lip in his teeth and letting go. His cheek slid along hers until he with flush with her ear.

"Are you ready?"

All she could do was nod. Her hands were useless beside her, but he gathered one up and drew it to her cock, helped her direct it instead of doing it himself.

Jack was all stop and okay now and wait, let's try-oh yeah and the occasional oh you're huge, and Gwen found that she had words of her own, like what are you…? and right there and oh shut up, Jack, but she never needed to say them, because he had her covered. He rolled and bucked, ground himself against her, lifted, dug his hands under her back and pulled, sped and slowed. Jack was the master controller, and she felt heavy, paralysed by the sensation in her cock. She wanted to flip him over and pound pound pound pound until something happened, till everything crested, till she came, she guessed.

"Do you want to…" Jack trailed off as he pulled off almost the whole way and smiled; she knew that smile. It was her smile, and it went with that maneuver. She did what Rhys always did (oh god Rhys) and reached out to slam Jack's hips down and Jack fell willingly, laughing the whole way until they were chest to chest. He slid his legs from her sides and on top, lying completely on her from shoulders to the tips of his toes, so that her cock was squeezed inside him, and also between his legs, and her balls were crushed in the press of their bodies together, and it was like heat and light and things burst in her head and she could feel herself losing everything.

She bucked up into him as he ground himself down, arching his back and pushing himself up with a hand on either side of her so that all of his weight rested on the join of them both, rolling in circles. Her hips pumped up into the pressure, and the noises she made, while not high on her list of worries, weren't remotely sexy. It was true; making alluring noises while you were having an orgasm was impossible for a man. She would mock no more.

Jack did some sort of satisfied "hnnnnh" noise and increased his efforts, this time sliding his knees back down to either side of her and taking her cock to the root and then working himself against her pubic bone. She rested her hand on his hips and pushed up as much as she was able, but all her energy seemed to have vacated her and was trapped in the reservoir tip. Ha.

Jack's forehead was shiny with sweat and he grunted now, face twisted in concentration, eyes closed, and he murmured under his breath in wispy little whispers, Right…there….right….there, until he rammed hard against her and pressed for one long moment, his mouth wide open, his eyes screwed shut, hands clenching her shoulders when he came, his voice an inward strangled breath.

He hung over her for a second, waiting, feeling, all but vibrating with the sensation, his hips still swaying for aftershocks to hit him, and when he clenched around her softening cock she all but groaned. There were a few satisfied one syllable laughs that sounded like 'huh huh', and then he lowered himself to lie on her, his face buried in her neck.

"Oh, wow," she breathed.

Jack laughed in her ear, his chest sticky and hot against hers. "Oh, yeah, that's what I'm talking about."

***

Gwen was 'passed out' (he used the finger quotes in his head to amuse himself) in the camp bed and would be for a little while longer, if he remembered himself as clearly as he did. Jack stared at her sacked out on the bed, arms and legs splayed. She'd all but pushed him off the mattress, and so he'd yanked on one of the button-downs from the closet and tugged on her knickers before ascending the ladder and making his way through the darkened Hub towards the kitchenette. Ianto had left him some of that instant hot chocolate, and by God, he wanted it.

Some the lights flicked on when he passed them, motion activated, which was handy since the Hub didn't have many walls upon which to conveniently place light switches. Jack caught sight of himself in the glass from one of the transparasteel walls and started. He'd forgotten that he was…not himself. Easy to forget, when he was, for the first time in a week, quite thoroughly shagged. He was used to that feeling and this past week of famine had been a bit of a shock.

Gwen had needed it, more than he could tell her and more than she could articulate; it sounded smarmy and opportunistic to sit her down and say, Gwen, darling, you got blown away and that made a little bit of a hole in your mind, and now we're going to fill that with a good hard fucking, because he didn't think that was exactly it. He'd always been up for the fucking, any kind, all kinds, well before Rose had fallen off a barrage balloon and subsequently altered the course of all events for him, forever. So no, it had been a guess, a thing that he used, when he was frightened and tired and whatever had punched a hole in his chest this week had taken pieces of him with it, and he needed to get them back. For him it was fingers and legs and mouths and those noises that people made when they were on the edge of delight, the edge of bursting out of their skin at the end of a rattlingly good fuck.

Except, you know, not actually bursting out of their skin. There were limits to sexy on this planet.

He dug around in the cabinets under the sink and uncovered where Ianto kept all the latex gloves, a useful bit of info for a much later date. He rummaged in the cabinets to the left and found fifteen packets of ramen noodles that he was sure had belonged to Suzie. And then to the right of the sink was a canister that Ianto had recycled and refilled with what this anally precise handwriting spelled out as Jack's Cocoa :) Do Not Touch >:(. Lovely.

He was in the middle of tinkering with the electric kettle when his manipulator lit up like Cardiff New Year's and all of the computer screens in the place came alive as if someone had wiped the screensavers off all at once, pulling a tablecloth out from under a pile of dishes on a table. The audible alarms didn't go off, and Jack would have paid a great deal to learn that magic trick, he decided as he abandoned his drink and made for the closest workstation.

He was halfway there when the Belbel came up the autopsy theatre steps, the dead and cold corpse of presumably its kins…person over its shoulder, tail dragging on the ground behind them both. Jack froze and the Belbel froze and they blinked at each other for a second before he heard the sound of snakeskin on cement and saw another one out of the corner of his eye. He raised his hands to show that he was unarmed, but he would have felt a whole hell of a lot better if he knew where the third one was.

Oh and he wouldn't have said no to a stab vest and a firearm. Maybe an indestructible body. A flame-thrower.

A mirror would have done the job in a pinch.

The first Belbel stood with the body over its shoulder, hissing and clicking to the others, and Jack turned his head slowly to watch the second one root through Tosh's workbenches, pushing aside tech and wrenches and spools of wire.

"The thing," the second Belbel said to him when he made eye contact, "give it the thing."

This again. He began to lower his hands and open his mouth, but there was the whine of a laser blaster revving up, and the spot appeared on his chest. He followed the red line of the sight up to the ceiling of the Hub, where Bachelor/ette number three waited at the opening to the invisible lift, gun calmly pointed at him. Always good to have a man on the roof, as it was.

"Jack?" Gwen said behind him and he turned his head so that he could see her behind him, in the doorway to his office, her firearm out and pointed. He crooked two fingers in one of his upraised hands to tell her to stand down.

The Belbel tried again. "The thing, give it the thing." Its eyes roamed Tosh's workstation.

Jack could see the Q'nog Trans______ right under the tea cosy. It was clear as day. Someone, probably Owen, had written 'seX-Box' on the green quilted surface with a marker. Even if they didn't read, didn't get the joke, how could they not see that it was the right size for the Trans______?

"We're going to have to have a little discussion about this thing you're looking for," he drawled, "because we still kinda need it."

"Jack," Gwen said, "Let them take it. It's not worth it."

Jack watched the Belbel sniff the cozy and lick the material with its tongue. "The hell it's not," he said softly. "Look," he said, "I'm more than happy to give you the box, but you have to wait for another…" he drifted off when the Belbel picked in a pile of things on Tosh's desk and came up with something small and spherical and shiny. Golden. "Day," he finished, and it was apparently completely anticlimactic.

The Belbel sniffed the ball, and then licked it. It raised its eyes to the other one across the atrium, and then barked and clicked and hissed, its throat exposed and head lifted to the ceiling, at Sharpshooter McGill up there.

"Jack," Gwen began, but was cut off when the Belbel snapped a bunch of clicks at its counterpart and pocketed the ball in a pouch at its waist. Then it backed away from him and towards the invisible lift.

The Belbel with the body passed Jack without looking at him, but he was sure that if he had become a threat or even a minor nuisance it would have batted him around like a football and possibly slam-dunked him in the basketball hoop. He left his hands where it could see them, and when it had walked around him it turned its head and hissed something in his face. Its breath smelt like rotting flowers. There was him told off.

When the two Belbels were at the lift, they boarded with the body and Jack watched them begin to rise. The lift was halfway up when the second Belbel pulled something from its waist and tossed it down at Jack, probably a thermal detonator of some sort, and Jack ran for cover. Stupid thought, that. If they were tossing an incendiary device or even a viral device down here, there would be no where Jack or Gwen could run.

He skidded anyway and dove for the sofa, hitting his head off the coffee table in front of it before he could stop himself. Behind him he heard Gwen clatter down the stairs in her barefeet, and when the lift finally clamped closed, she was already pulling him upright and rubbing his scalp, looking for open wounds.

"Jack, Jack, are you all right?" She cupped his chin in her hand and turned it to face her, and he blinked a few times.

He probably didn't have a concussion, but he was seeing stars, and his forehead hurt quite a bit. He explored it with his fingertips, feeling for bleeding and finding none. Good. He didn't want Murphy's Law to screw this up for him or Gwen.

If needed, he reminded himself that he could point out that he had in no way, shape or form encouraged any of the danger they had just encountered. Except for the thing about diving and hitting his own head, a course of action that he decided had been useless, seeing as how they had not exploded or begun to hemorrhage from their eyes.

He and Gwen scrabbled on the floor by the invisible lift for a few moments before Jack found the thing the creature had tossed (he wondered if they were having a hearty chuckle at his running for cover act), balanced on the edge of the hubtub and waiting for a breeze, a Myfanwy fart from above, to blow it in. He plucked it from peril and peered at it-it was a datachip.

"That looks like a flashdrive," Gwen said, following him back to Tosh's workstation.

"It is. Pretty much. The fifty-third century's equivalent of one, actually. They went to a bit of deliberacy to give this to us. Let's see what they wanted us to know," he murmured. Jack stuck the chip into the data port on one of Tosh's external hard drives and hooked it up to the monitor. The language was Belbel and Universal, but his skills were rusty and the text was from this time, which meant that it was the equivalent of reading Chaucer as far as his home language was concerned.

Tosh was good at many many things, and one of them was translating written languages and building databases of them. It took Jack a few seconds to find the filters he wanted, and in the end he got the Babelfish version of what it probably said, but that was good enough. This wasn't To Serve Man or anything. At least he hoped it wasn't.

"It's payment," he said, slightly stunned. "They've just handed over three hundred million credits." He whistled. "Wow."

Gwen leant against his back and peered over his shoulder at the monitor. "Whatever for? I thought they were bounty hunters."

Yeah, that bothered Jack, too. He pressed a few buttons and then switched to the secondary unit on Tosh's workstation, sifting through her week of work to find the thing he was looking for. "Working on that," he said over his shoulder.

Gwen let him search, trusting that the answers would come in due time, of course, and in the interim she looked at the first screen, poking it with one finger. "How much is that anyway? In…Earth…money." He knew how dumb she felt saying it and could barely resist a snort.

"Let's see," he mused, still scrolling through Tosh's apparently myriad scans of the Q'nog Trans______. "On today's exchange rate…did you know that you can rent Liechtenstein for a whole day for about three hundred grand?"

Gwen laughed. "We could rent Liechtenstein for a day?"

Jack winked and she caught it in the monitor reflection. "We could lease it until the end of the next century. Make Torchwood: Europe." He shrugged. "On the other hand, consider EuroDisney. We could just save it for the next time we're in New Las Vegas and squander it on 3D blackjack. Ah, Tosh, you are too thorough for your own good. Here we are." He blinked back and forth at the two monitors, eyes flitting from one identical picture to another. "Oh, they paid us for retrieving it."

That was…not normal.

The test folders opened in front of him and he peered at the first one, a simple snapshot of the thing itself. Not very useful. But when he accessed the interior scans the infrared took, that was a different story. The ultraviolet wasn't very useful, but the x-ray Tosh had thought to do was illuminating.

"That music ball thingy?" Gwen asked. "I thought you said it was like a rain stick. And also broken."

Jack watched the very bland and undetailed schematics unfold on the screen. Tosh hadn't done more than take the scans and then set them aside for a later day, what with being distracted by the Q'nog Trans______ and all. But sooner or later she would have seen them, and she would have brought them to Jack, and he would have put it together.

"It's not a music ball. It's supposed to look like one. A broken one. Oh son of a bitch, we're lucky." He peered at the schematics and the language on the edges of them, language that looked familiar, like the other screen, the one showing him the readout of the-"They weren't paid to retrieve this." he murmured, eyes still trying to make all the connections in a way that would make sense to the time line and the-

Since when did time have to be all linear on the Rift? He knew someone who would have beat him about the head for thinking that way. Well, no, he'd just roll his eyes and smile, but that was pretty much the same as beating about the head.

"Oh fuck," he breathed out, and Gwen's head darted over his shoulder in response to the cuss. "Fuck me up the arse with-"

"Language," Gwen murmured. "What is it?"

Jack ignored her, eyes running along the translation and the lines painted on the inside of the ball that the scans had lit up like Kirlian photography. "That's why it made the gas, and it killed that Xarxian," he murmured. "It was too much to carry inside, and it just…" He sat back in Tosh's chair and almost fell off, because he had sat on it sideways and forgotten that the back wasn't behind him. Gwen steadied him with her hand.

"This is all lovely and disturbing. But tell me more so that I can share your level of wonder," Gwen joked.

He pointed to the scrolling flowers and artwork that, when magnified to an extreme degree, showed flowers and trees and creatures, like a painting on the outside of one of those Russian eggs, but in reverse, on the inside. "That's called a planetseed."

"A what?"

"A planetseed," Jack said. "It's a myth, a thing of legend. A-I feel dizzy."

Gwen grabbed him by the arm and walked him back to the sofa so that he could sink down onto it.

"The planetseed builds a new actual planet out of, well who knows what out of. It yanks matter from everywhere around it. It's God in a ball." Jack waved a hand. "You have to put it somewhere logistical and smart. Not too close, not too far away, not near anything, but with a heat source."

"Like the sun," Gwen said, and Jack tried very hard not to roll his eyes and suggest no, Gwen, the convection oven. Gwen glanced at the display and then up at the invisible lift. "Well, that doesn't sound like something that we should have given them." Her face paled. "Good god, what if they detonated it right here?" She frowned. "What if it had gone off in that body's stomach?"

Jack nodded at her, thinking of Athena bursting from her father's head, fully grown. But as horrible as that thought was, Gwen hadn't got to the punchline yet, just licked off the candy coating of the mystery, of the strangeness.

"Maybe we should go after them."

"Gwen, it belonged to them. It's been assigned a space in, well, space." He blinked and laughed. "It has a time and a place and a history already. There hasn't been a planetseed for…millions of years, see?"

"So it's not supposed to be…?" She drifted off when Jack scrolled his hand and smiled. She shook her head, like clearing cobwebs. "Whose planet is it going to be then?"

Jack leant back and smiled at her. "Theirs."

"What do they need a new planet for? Presumably they already have a…" Gwen sat patiently as her internal processor clicked forward and caught up to the rest, and Jack waited. "That's their home planet," she said. "In that little ball."

Oh, there was his girl. He liked his 'discovery' face. Jack had forgotten he could look that young. Unfortunately, he had also forgotten that he could look that clueless.

Gwen blinked at him, and in the silence he let her put it all together. This was Torchwood. She would see the simplicity of it all. So many things became possible, once you got rid of pesky linear time and introduced space travel, and time travel and more life forms in the universe than could dance on the head of a pin.

"Oh," she said finally. "I guess it's good that we let them take it, then."

Jack leant forward on the sofa and grabbed his head. It hurt to laugh. It hurt a lot.

But he laughed anyway.

END SUNDAY

On to Monday/Tuesday