Fic: Any Other Day: Monday/Tuesday (aka part 8/8, team, NC-17)
Title: Any Other Day: Monday (Again!) (aka 8/8)
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 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 WAS a WIP, divided by days: Monday-Tuesday. It has 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
MONDAY:
I think there should be something in science called the "reindeer effect." I don't know what it would be, but I think it'd be good to hear someone say, "Gentlemen, what we have here is a terrifying example of the reindeer effect."
----Jack Handey
The day had been long, not unlike the night before Christmas or one's birthday. Gwen stared at the stack of forms that Ianto had said would keep her busy and with which she had to be done before the end of the day.
89. Whilst in the foreign vessel, did you experience any of the following (fill in any that apply on the scantron sheet):
a. itching
b. time travel
c. vertigo
d. dizziness
e. tingling in extremities
f. loss of balance or coordination
g. slurred speech
h. temporary blindness
i. shingles
j. profuse sweating
k. heart palpitations
Gwen glanced up at Ianto, who was fishing things out of the Hub Tub, a weekly ritual that usually came up with horrible things, all contributed by Myfanwy. Well, one time they'd found one of Jack's shoes, and another time a series of foam animals that no one remembered seeing before.
He looked to be engaged in his activity and she wasn't going to yell at him over the forms, unless they turned out to be some sort of sick joke. The light in Jack's office hinted that he was busy working on them too. Every once in a while she would hear a noise in the office that sounded like someone saying "Oh, for-" and then the rustling of papers or a slamming sound. At least they were both having fun.
Her chair was too small, and she didn't like the way it groaned when she shifted. Everyone was engaged, so there was no skiving off there. Tosh had come in and buried herself in work, using her rare yet universal sign of 'don't talk to me' by installing headphones on her ears and humming under her breath. Owen was in the autopsy theatre, had been all day, taking apart things in his backlog in between bitching Jack and Gwen out for 'letting' the Belbels take their dead compatriot. There was only one thing to do when Owen was in this mood, and Tosh was doing it. In fact, the only one paying attention to Owen was Owen himself.
Tosh was kicking herself for not seeing the music ball for what it was, and every time Gwen glanced over at her, she found Tosh staring at the workbench, her eyes off-centred, and Gwen knew that she was thinking about the music ball, planetseed, thingy.
She had been there last night and it was still hard to wrap her brain around (metaphorically, as her brain was not hers, on a physical level, and wasn't that bizarre and slightly frightening. Much in the manner that she was going to replace her toothbrush, Gwen was frightened to think about what synapses Jack might be firing in her skull.). In fact, she had been trying to forget last night, because well, it had contained other things that she wasn't ready to talk about yet.
Even as she thought about it, her cock told her that it was ready to do more than talk about it. She shifted in her chair and it squeaked loudly.
89. Whilst in the foreign vessel, did you (fill in any that apply on the scantron sheet):
a. Eat any foreign foods (including but not limited to Asian, French, Basque and/or Canadian cuisines)
b. Perform any menial tasks that required the use of an allen key
c. Engage in intercourse (with the opposite or same sex)
d. Ingest any "recreational" or illegal drugs, including retcon (levels 1-4, 6-8)
e. Swim or bathe in, drink or come into contact with water from the following bodies: Cardigan Bay, Taff River, Thames River, Loch Ness (If yes, please see appendix 3H9DH.6)
f. Watch or listen to any recordings or live showings of Eastenders (If yes, please see appended form 9999J9.J)
Gwen squinted at Ianto and reevaluated his ability for paperwork. She also possessed a new understanding for why so much of it was piled on Jack's desk undone. This was some sort of test, it had to be. Any second the paper would self-destruct or Ianto would take it away and say to her, 'You have passed the trials.' Then they'd have cake.
At one point early in the morning after the debriefing about their intruders, Gwen had almost asked Owen to give her a sedative so that she could sleep through the day and wake up closer to midnight. But the paperwork would have been there still, waiting.
"Ianto!" Jack shouted. "This says that I need appended form B-789FH, but that's not here."
Ianto pulled a bone from the net he held and peered at it before dumping it into the bin beside him. "Yes it is," he replied without even glancing up at the office.
Gwen watched Jack stand in the doorway, a hand on either jamb, and watch Ianto for a second. Was he thinking about…? Gwen didn't want to think about what he and Ianto might have been up to this past week. In fact, she was doing a bang-up job of compartmentalizing it for the time being.
"There's no appended form." Jack finally waved some papers in his hand. "I checked."
"It's on your desk." Ianto dredged for more at the bottom of the tub. Owen walked by and pointed to something in the bottom of the pool. "That's the drain," Ianto told him. "It's permanent."
Jack looked back at his desk. "There's nothing there but a green binder."
"Precisely."
Jack stared at Ianto with the expression of someone who had just been hit in the face with a fish. Was that what she looked like sometimes? Dear God. Gwen thought he was going to protest, to pick a fight, but he just lowered his shoulders.
"If I answer 'no' to all of these questions, it will be obvious that I'm lying right?"
Ianto was unconcerned. "If you answer 'no' to all of the questions, the binder about why you answered 'no' to all of the questions is approximately four hundred pages and in nine point font." He glared at Jack over his shoulder. "Don't make me get the No binder."
Jack sighed and trudged back into the recesses of his office.
Gwen pulled her scantron closer and began to erase the straight line of No's.
***
Tosh sat down across from Jack and waited. She could only see the top of his head; the rest was buried under paperwork and hidden behind the curtain of Gwen's fringe, but she knew he was awake because he was mumbling to himself and erasing a string of what looked like filled-in scantron bubbles. "I'll show you a No binder," he mumbled.
She cleared her throat and Jack sat up, blinking at her, but instead of saying anything like, 'Hello there Toshiko,' or 'Would you like a pasty, Toshiko?' or 'Toshiko, take the day off,' he held up a paper and read from it aloud.
"'I often think about shrimp. Strongly agree, agree, neither agree nor disagree, disagree, strongly disagree?'"
She shrugged. "Is there a write-in option?"
Jack scanned at the paper. "No, but my first reaction is that this question makes me want a cocktail."
Tosh thought for a bit, stealing a square of chocolate from the open Milka on his desk. "Agree."
Jack filled in a little circle. "It's on your head."
"Fair enough." She crossed her legs. "What can I do for you?" she asked.
Jack set his pencil down and cracked his knuckles. "You can learn how to speak Xarxian." He smiled. "And then you can teach Archie. And then you can unteach those guys in there and teach us all something new."
Tosh followed his gaze to the conference room, where the Xogs were still lodged. They were going to go to Archie, but until the...well, no one had wanted to worry about that until things were truly back to normal. The Xogs were quiet, polite, well-mannered and probably companionable, but Tosh wouldn't know, because she couldn't be in there with them. Ianto had assured her that after they were gone, he was going to thoroughly vacuum and disinfect the conference room, but she doubted that she would be going in there without medication for a few weeks. Owen should install a Claritin lick outside the room so she could just take a few tongue swipes before every meeting.
"You want me to formulate a new derivative language," she clarified.
Jack shoveled an overly large square of Milka in his mouth. "Yesh."
She thought about it. She had the entire Xarxian language in her databases, including pronunciation. The problem was that Xarxians had three windpipes which worked jointly to produce the sounds, and so humans would have a hard time communicating in it properly. If Archie was going to have any sort of working relationship with his new…charges, he would have to create something new, based on the old, but definitely less multi-tonal.
"For when?"
Jack smiled and she sighed. "You're trying to distract me from the planetseed."
Jack's grin never wavered.
"It's just that I should have paid more attention--"
Jack raised a hand and cut her off, then held up a paper. "'True or false: when a tree falls in the forest and no one is there, it does not make a sound.'"
She snorted and stood up. Fine, Jack was going to do this thing he always did, where she didn't get her questions answered, but he told her everything he felt she needed to know by not answering anything. "I'll get on it."
Jack flipped a page. "'True or false: I feel pretty and witty and gay.'"
***
Gwen could feel herself vibrating a little, not unlike being over-caffeinated. In fact, she wasn't sure whether or not she was over-caffeinated, excited, or if this sensation was some sort of by-product of the body switch coming to a close. Whatever it was, she rocked on the balls of her feet as she stood in the old conference room, now used for storage.
Jack nodded to her as Ianto set the box on the table, his hands swathed in pot holders again, as though he was afraid his archival gloves wouldn't be thick enough.
"Everything is just where you left it," Jack said, patting his chest down as if he was checking for his keys and wallet. Perhaps he was saying a fond goodbye to what he'd referred to this morning as, 'The girls'. Gwen rolled her eyes, knowing that anything she would say would just egg him on. "No, really, this morning I shaved your legs. And I've been doing your kegel exercises for you."
Gwen stared at him. Thank god this was only going to be a running gag for a few more minutes. It occurred to her that she was finally one of Jack's sexy sexy stories, and that maybe in fifty years, he would be telling it over Chinese to a whole new group of Torchwood employees, and they would all laugh hysterically. She wasn't sure whether or not she should be amused by that.
Whatever she looked like must have been distressing, because Jack's grin slid off his face. "Gwen, a joke. Remember those?"
Gwen's mouth twitched. "A joke," she said, "is your shampoo." She smiled. "Wash and Go? Seriously? I replaced it with Mane N Tail."
Ianto pulled the tea cosy from the box and stepped back. "Joke when this is over," he said to them. Gwen thought he looked a tad relieved. It was worth considering just what they had got up to with her body; probably something questionable. Once again (this was becoming paranoia), she wondered if she'd find racy polaroids stashed about the Hub some day, and the thought stopped her cold. Dear Jesus, they wouldn't have.
Jack rubbed his hands together. "I think, given what happened last time, we might want to sit down or something." He pulled out one of the conference room chairs and plopped himself in it, and she rounded the table so that she could sit opposite him. Across from her, her body stilled, both hands flat on the table. Jack smiled reassuringly at her, and she noticed that he'd changed her lipstick shade, and it was, she had to admit, a bit more flattering.
"I bit your fingernails down," she confessed, raising a hand.
Jack grinned. "Saves me the trouble."
Ianto made a soft noise in his throat. "I'm just going back here, behind the blast shield." Sure enough, he'd erected a small Plexiglas demolition shield at the far end of the room and stood behind it, crossing his arms. Tosh darted in with the sensor equipment and slipped in behind Ianto. Owen, as he had told them a few moments earlier, was in the autopsy theatre, waiting for heinous results. They should have done this in the shooting range. Oh well, it had worked earlier with everyone else.
Gwen closed her eyes and took a deep breath. This was her last moment of The Jack Harkness Experience, and she was ever so glad to be rid of it. She was fairly sure that Jack felt the same, if his constant bitching about her body maintenance had been any indication.
"Gwen, it's been swell," Jack said aloud, and she smiled. "But the swelling's gone dow-"
The light was blinding, and unlike with the Xogs and the Xarxians, it was more than just light. It felt like a bomb had gone off in her outer ear. Jack kicked her under the table and she bucked her own legs a bit. Her fingers curled on the tabletop and then whatever it was hit her in the face, like running into a cement wall.
The sound and light were only a split second long, and then it was over. Gwen looked up, blinked a few times, and tried to assess herself. Across from her Jack was staring at his hands. She could feel her heart speed up when she wondered what had gone wrong, why did this look so odd, why did this feel so strange-
"Gwen," Jack said, staring at her accusingly. "I know you said you bit them down, but look at them!"
Ianto popped his head from the blastshield. "Ah, all done?"
She looked at her hands, longer nails, then down at-oh, hello, girls.
"Yes," she told Ianto without looking away from her chest. "Yes we are."
Thirty minutes later she stood on the upper level above the autopsy theatre and watched Owen finish the last of the tests on Jack and his body.
"As far as I can tell, you're back to normal." Owen set the last scanner down and dusted his hands, but that was probably just for show. "You know, considering all the other things that are abnormal about you."
Jack smiled. "There's that bedside manner."
Owen turned away. "Failed that one too."
Gwen wiggled her toes in her trainers and tapped her fingers on the railing. She shook her head and was comforted by the movement of her hair across her face. Earlier she'd gone into the loo and checked under her clothes that everything was where it was supposed to be (it was). She even felt clean. Why she had thought that Jack would somehow be incapable of cleaning her body properly was a right mystery. But she had seen Jack run his fingers through his hair in the reflection of the glass wall already, and when she had been going in for her round of tests she was sure she'd seen him groping himself, so at least she wasn't the only paranoid freak in this equation.
"That's it," she murmured, "this is all done."
Ianto leaned on the railing next to her and gave her a conspiratorial smile that was truly meant for her. "You can consider this caper terminated."
"I hadn't finished all my answers," she admitted. "I was halfway done."
Ianto shrugged. "Torchwood One is gone, who reads that shite? Not me." He leant even further in. "Just between us, of course."
"Then why would you-"
Ianto smiled. "It kept you distracted, didn't it?"
Gwen watched Jack make funny faces, like he was stretching out his mouth or yawning. It was hard to tell. "You are an evil genius, Ianto Jones."
"I've often thought so."
Gwen bumped his shoulder with her own. Jack jumped up and down experimentally for some unfathomable reason and then bounded up the stairs to the atrium.
"Archie is gleeful to get his hands on giant alien guard dogs that might be helpful in fetching and ripping things up," Jack said, then glanced at the smallest one, the Jack Russell. "Or, you know, just barking and jumping up and down at the first sign of possible trouble. Or birds. We should get them out there soon. Toshiko, do you have it?"
Tosh handed him the small external hard drive. "Archie has everything we have. He just has to install the program, and it'll do itself. It's artificially intelligent, so it will learn as they go." She smiled. "Archie will never speak Xarxian, but they won't either." She nodded at the dogs. "Maybe they'll make up something new."
"A Scots-English-Xarxic pidgin." Jack tapped the disks against his chin, pondering. Gwen liked when he pondered in his own form; it definitely looked more heroic than his feeble attempts in her body. It was the posture. It had to be the posture. "Hrm. Do you think it'll have a burr? I like languages that have a burr. Maybe some rolling R's. Or a silent Q. You can't go wrong with a silent Q."
Ianto stood from laying down a bunch of newsprint. "They're all sorted for the night. I think I managed to stammer out something about not sleeping on our chairs." He shrugged. "At least they don't look offended."
Tosh shouldered her purse and Gwen mirrored her. "Well, then, if that's it, Jack…."
Jack smiled. "Oh yeah. Everything is quiet, we're all tired, and I want the house to myself so I can order pizza and talk like a sailor. Everyone go away." He shoved his hands in his pockets and rolled on the balls of his feet, smiling.
Gwen sighed. It was just as well. She needed to settle back to being herself before she wanted to talk about it. But she did want to say something, she just wasn't sure what yet. She felt compacted, too small, and the events of the days before shifted in her skull like child's clay smashed into a plastic container.
She wanted to talk to Jack about what had happened when the bullet had hit her, when her vision had gone black, and she had thought that one last time, oh, this isn't right. She wanted to ask him what he saw, or if he ever remembered. He once told her that there was nothing in the darkness, but she wasn't so sure that it was true. Something she carried with her, in her heart, it felt, was new and shiny, like it had been borne all the way back from the afterlife and transplanted in her psyche, and she sometimes sensed it right out of her perception, not unlike movement in the corner of her vision.
Or she could have been compensating for the truth, Jack's truth, and all that it conflicted with what she'd been brought up to believe about life after death. It wouldn't have been the first time Jack's worldview had ripped hers to shreds. She also wondered if it did, or if she just let it.
She opened her mouth to speak, but the only thing she could say was, "And what do we do with the dogs, then? Ship them up freight?"
"I'll drive them up tomorrow," Owen offered, coming up to join them in the atrium. "What? I like dogs."
Gwen was in the middle of contemplating Owen's hidden tenderness, when he shrugged. "Besides," he added, "the ladies love a man with a dog."
Ah, truly back to normal, then.
***
Jack's statement to the contrary, not even he had wanted to stay at the Hub tonight. Not with the Xogs still trapped in the conference room. Ianto had tried to use what language he knew of the Xarxians to convey (again) the idea of what the papers were for in the far corner of the room, but he wasn't sure if he'd have to fumigate and vacuum and clean the carpets tomorrow. At the moment, he was just pleased to be away from the drool and dog hair. He liked dogs, as long as they weren't his. His hands were full with human maintenance.
So Owen had taken Tosh out for a 'we're single and footloose' drink, and Gwen had gone home to Rhys (much to her relief, Ianto could see it on her face), and Jack had turned towards his office when Ianto had laid a hand on his arm and said, rather pointedly, he thought, that Jack would go insane if he stayed in the Hub with all the Xogs (except he didn't say that out loud, he just thought the word.). So when Ianto had prepped to go home, he hadn't been surprised to meet Jack at the cog door stairs, coat on, face drawn and tired.
"I have to admit something to you," Jack said as they climbed the stairs to Ianto's flat.
"Admit what?" he said distractedly. Distracted, because even though they had been alone in the Hub for the rest of the evening, left together, had walked back to his flat together, had just ascended the three flights of stairs together, Jack had yet to say or do anything remotely sexual. It wasn't that Jack was incapable --as Ianto well knew, especially considering the last week-- of being anything other than 'business,' but he rather thought that they, well, that was why they were coming back here, right? Business as usual. The other business.
Jack watched him fumble his keys. "I was really afraid for a second there," he said, face serious and not a little bit tentative. "When Gwen died, I thought, just for a second, I thought…." He looked away. "For once, I was glad that it wasn't me." When he returned his gaze to Ianto, his smile was wan. "How's that for a leader, huh?"
He didn't know what to say, perhaps there was nothing to say to that, just nod and acknowledge it because Jack needed to say it. That happened sometimes; Jack would say something like this, because there was no one else.
So he nodded and opened the door, entering and throwing his keys on the table; he shed his coats, hung them in the closet. He toed off his shoes at the door; he wasn't a neat freak or anything, he'd just mistakenly tracked in entrails too many times. Jack followed suit with a bit more clumsiness at his laces, as if he was relearning how his hands worked.
Perhaps that was it, then. Did Jack have to settle back into himself, like relearning how to play an instrument after some time? A week wasn't long in the scheme of things, but who knew how muscle memory worked? How long was it? Would it be longer for Jack, Jack with his unique ability, to stretch out and relearn the limits and movements of a body that barely aged, didn't die, rarely slept?
Would he miss what he'd tasted again so briefly? Had that vulnerable part of being alive, truly mortal in Gwen even been perceptible? Had he felt it?
"Well," he said, heading to the kitchen and leaving Jack with his laces. "If you had been stuck in Gwen, I suppose I'd have to work out a rota with Rhys." Sometimes humor was the best way to deal with these things. And this was treading too close to a relationship talk, and he and Jack didn't have those. He was just fine with that.
Jack didn't want to talk about Rhys, obviously, because he snorted and shoved his hands in his pockets, finally abandoning his shoes at the door. Coat, shoes, all the things that made it easy to just walk out; that was heartening. Ianto watched him shuffle through to the kitchenette and lean on the counter, almost putting his head on his hands.
"I'm glad it's over, really." He turned his head and looked at Ianto coquettishly. "I was not made for heels and menstrual cycles."
Ianto barked a laugh as he poured them both glasses of water from the pitcher. It kept his hands busy, and he still had no idea what they were going to do now that they had arrived. Just pick up where they had left off? Have a heart to heart? Drink heavily? Watch Barbarella like some domesticated thing that they weren't (And did anyone ever watch that with a straight face?)? Because something in Ianto recognised, and he had to pause in mid swallow as it hit him, that somewhere in the middle of the week, he'd got used to the curve of Jack against him, the softness in him, and that was gone now. And some of him might remember it, in the night, in the dark, when he took the man in hand. And he wasn't sure if he would regret that.
Jack unbent then, handling his glass with the surety of someone used to his skin, to his muscles, and Ianto thought perhaps he had imagined the unsteadiness before. Perhaps Jack just recovered that quickly. Ianto set his glass down and rounded Jack for the toilet.
When he returned, Jack was meandering about the living area. The blankets from the night earlier that week were still folded in a pile on the floor by the sofa. He stood and watched Jack touch the back of the sofa, as if he needed to be able to feel it with his own fingers.
Ianto clapped his hands together once, lightly, as if he was calling a meeting to order. Jack's mouth quirked, and he knew why; it was a gesture that he'd picked up from Jack, and sometimes he wondered if anything of his had rubbed off on the other man. Because he rather thought that if anything, it was reassuring that Jack might adopt a habit or two from him. Something to take with him into infinity.
"Well, it's late" he said, "but we've limited choices for this evening."
"We could see a film," Jack said, shrugging. "I know the projectionist at the Multiplex."
Ianto nodded gravely. "We could. We could also go to some random restaurant, if they'll have us."
Jack smiled at the open empty Barbarella case on the top of the DVD player and turned on the telly to the blue video screen. "We could get take-away, or go get some beer. I bet you could use a drink."
Ianto sighed and ran a hand along the back of the sofa. "I could use several, actually."
Jack stuffed his hands in his pockets and circled the DVD rack. "Or we could just have sex," he offered.
"Oh thank god," Ianto said, picking at the knot of his tie. "You had me worried there."
Jack pulled his hands out of his pockets and began to unbutton his shirt, pulling the tails from his waistband. "I know. You should have seen your face." He pulled the shirt over his head as soon as the neck was wide enough and tossed it at Ianto. "Such a stiff upper lip."
Ianto whipped his tie at Jack. Jack responded with his vest. Ianto pulled his belt from the loops, doubled it over, and made a circle of the halves, a hand on either end. He pulled it taut with a crack. Jack kicked off his trousers and toed off his socks.
"Ooooh," Jack mocked when Ianto stepped towards him, and then he fell backwards onto the sofa behind him. "Oh wait, put on Barbarella."
Ianto smirked and picked up the remote, tapping it on one leg. "Pervert."
He pressed play.
***
Gwen much preferred afterglow when she could snuggle in Rhys's arms without him pitching a fit. And also, when she could actually fit into his arms comfortably. He smelled good, like cologne and roasted garlic and fabric softener, and he radiated heat. She threaded her fingers in his chest hair and relaxed into the feeling of having just been thoroughly shagged.
Just one thing, though--she felt her breasts. They were sore. "I think Jack was right. I am getting my period."
Rhys snorted. "And yet another tender moment ruined by Jack Harkness," he moaned. Gwen licked his shoulder and he slapped her arse. "You can't out-gross me."
Gwen sighed. "It's good to be back to normal," she said to the air. "Really rather good."
Rhys shifted and she rolled on her back so that he could turn on his side and prop his head up on his hand, looking at her. His face was still a little sweaty. "So, what was it like, being a bloke for a few?"
She thought for a long moment. "I get why you think about sex all the time," she began, and laughed when he blew a raspberry. "No really, it wasn't the man part as much as it was the whole not-being-me thing." And the dying thing, she didn't add. "I dunno. I didn't get a chance to do much," she said finally.
Rhys raised his eyebrows. "If I was a woman, I'd wank all day."
"You'd wank all day anyway."
"That's fair." Rhys smiled. "I bet Jack felt himself up a lot." With one hand he mimed breasts on his chest and she kicked him.
"I don't want to think about what he did," she said loudly, "and I am happy never knowing." Which wasn't accurate in the strictest sense of the word, but she didn't care to take that part further.
Rhys stared at her for a second, and she wondered if he could see it on her face, what she and Jack had done, if he could sense that she knew what it felt like to have hands on her cock, mouths on body parts that she no longer possessed. "So, anything you regret not doing?"
She paused to think about it. What should she say? "I don't know. If I haven't done it, then I can't regret it, can I?" And wasn't that rather loaded? She tried not to look away from his eyes, because if she did, even in the moonlight, he'd see it.
Rhys broke the stare first. "Well, it's over now, yeah?" He rolled out of bed and stretched. "But see, this whole thing put a little bit of a kink in my plans for your birthday."
She propped herself up on her elbows and watched him pad towards the closet. "Oh?"
Rhys didn't answer, just rummaged on the top shelf, behind the stacks of winter sweaters they always meant to store away but never did. "Yeah, see." He found what he wanted and she watched his arse as he stood with his back to her, extracting something from a plastic shopping bag.
"What?"
"Well they…at the shop they said it was all the rage, or something. More popular now, I guess." Even in the moonlight she could see him blushing as he turned to her and held out the box. "I didn't want to get into a big conversation about it with the shopgirl, but I thought-"
She took the box and stared at the logo for the local sex shop. Her heart thudded in her chest like it had when she had been in another body. That had been another lifetime ago, it seemed.
Rhys gave her a little secret smile, one that she recognised from other people's faces, sometimes even her own. "I thought you might, uhm, yeah?"
"Oh," was all she said, because a part of her that she didn't have anymore almost stirred despite its absence. Her fingers prised off the lid and drifted along the silicon of the dildo, the leather of the harness. "Oh."
Rhys blushed. "Believe it or not, I bought it three weeks ago."
***
TUESDAY (EPILOGUE)
I don't understand people who say life is a mystery, because what is it they want to know?
------Jack Handey
"You are indeed a brave little toaster, Gwen Cooper," Jack said from behind her. "I have to admit, while I like it up here, I can afford to be careless."
Gwen turned and watched Jack make his way out to the forward strut of the Altolusso. She shoved her hands in her jacket pockets and followed the lines of traffic below. Her feet felt much surer than the last two times, when she had been in Jack's body. Just being herself was somewhat of a confidence builder.
The wind wasn't anywhere nearly as strong as the last time, and it was reassuring. The view went on for miles and miles. She felt heady and a little bit drunk, her stomach flipping like just before her roller coaster car tipped over the top of the hill and surged downward.
"Oh, just adding things to The Gwen Cooper Experience."
Jack joined her, bracing his feet, hands in his pockets, matching her stance as they looked out over the city. "I liked The Gwen Cooper Experience," he told her. "I mean, it beats The Owen Harper Experience."
Gwen snorted. "I don't think I want to imagine that."
"Let's give Owen some credit. I'm sure he'd have been perfectly lovely with tits," Jack said then, his eyes scanning out over the city. Sometimes she thought he fancied himself Cardiff's very own Dark Avenger. Maybe he was. She glanced down at her bright red trainers. Did that make her the Girl Wonder?
She amused herself casting the rest of Torchwood as superheroes for a few minutes (Tosh was Wonder Woman, Owen was The Incredible Hulk, et cetera), watching the sunlight catch the glass windows of the buildings around her. She was right pleased with herself for even getting up here, and she intended on enjoying it.
"Ianto and I," Jack said, his voice low, "we didn't do anything. I just thought you should know."
Gwen blushed a bit. The memory of Sunday night was a little embarrassing and surreal, like remembering a television episode one saw once three years ago whilst high in the middle of the night.
"Do you want to talk-"
"Oh dear god no," Gwen said quickly. "Repression is good for this. This is why they make repression."
Jack looked away. "Yeah, works for me." He was quiet for a moment and then, "It's okay," he said, eyes suddenly bright, "Because this morning before you all got in, we found a pair of your knickers under my bunk-"
Gwen laughed. "You two are perved," she told him. Before he opened his mouth again, "Keep them. Wait, which ones?"
Jack raised his eyebrows, then closed his eyes. "Green. Lacy. Kind of like y-fronts."
"Ah. Yeah, definitely keep them. A gift from me to your extra-curricular activities. They're called boykinis," she added. "Though I guess for you they're boykinkis."
Jack smirked. "I don't think I can top that." The wind picked up and she swayed. Jack's close arm snaked about her waist and pulled her in. She pressed her head against his shoulder. "I wasn't really joking when I said that I don't think you should be up here doing this," he warned.
Gwen reached down to her waist and lifted the climber's rope attached to the harness she wore over her denims and under her coat. The cord ran in thick ropes down to the strut, where it was lashed with multiple knots and carabiners. Jack glanced at it and at her face, raising an eyebrow before laughing.
Gwen laughed too, loudly, almost bending at the waist; she couldn't help herself. It was such a relief to hear herself laugh, her own vowels, and her voice when she said something. It was so bloody amazing to pull on her clothes, to brush her hair, to sit on her sofa at home and curl up inside Rhys's arms.
"I stand corrected," Jack said finally, arm still firmly around her waist as he stared off into the distance, eyes tracking something she couldn't find in the sky. "You can come up here anytime."
Gwen considered the rope at her waist, hand playing on the carabiner. "Oh, I think this is all you," she said finally. "It's not my thing. I just needed to do it once, myself, you know?"
A set of gulls swooped past them, racing in the wind, on their way to the bay, no doubt; the steady stream of traffic and the blaring of horns contributed to an overall sense of movement. Everything was churning on, just as it should, just as it would, like any other day, regardless of what body she was in, really.
"Someday," she said, squinting into the sun and resolutely not looking at him. "I want to talk about what happened." She didn't have to say what thing she meant. He knew. Just like she knew he understood without looking at him.
"That conversation is best in the darkness, in the nighttime," he said in a low voice, pulling his arm away, drawing into himself a little. "But when you're ready, let me know."
That was comforting. Jack could wait, and so could she. There was no force, no hurry, just a running current of knowing that wasn't critical, the slow easiness of a cask in the dark, aging and waiting on a long-term schedule.
"It was fun, you have to admit," Jack said finally. "Like a holiday."
"Oh please," Gwen replied, rolling her eyes. "I don't even know how you manage to cope with all that in your trousers. The running alone-"
Jack barked a laugh. "I wear underwear." She didn't bother to correct that to Well, some of the time. "And besides, sister, you do not want to nit-pick about things that bounce when you run."
There was a gust of wind and she had to raise her arms to steady herself a little; the strut almost groaned in the breeze, as if it had been engineered to sway through things like this. Jack kept his hands in his pockets, moving with it, unperturbed.
"What were you planning on doing if you actually fell?" He studied the cord and the scaffolding of the building below.
Gwen shrugged. "Curse your name, and then call Ianto to help me up."
Jack nodded. "A wise choice."
Her comm beeped in her pocket and she didn't bother to get it because Jack answered his bluetooth, already clipped to his ear. "Toshiko, top o' the morning."
"Jack," Tosh said brightly through the outer speaker. "Good morning! I've a pasty for you."
Jack smiled out at the city. "Oh, you are truly my girl. What can Gwen and I do for you?"
"I've got some strange readings in Grangetown, and I think our friends from the Ceephus ring might be back to strip more copper from those empty houses."
Gwen groaned and Jack snorted. They hated the Ceephus-dwellers; they were ugly, manky little fuckers who stripped houses and took all the copper and marble back with them wherever to make nests where they grew more little Ceephus..es. Ceephi? Whatever. And they smelled like rotting cheese. And under emotional pressure they exploded. Gwen looked at her trainers and said goodbye to them with the wisdom of one who had dealt with smelly exploding Ceeph…us…i before.
"All right, send the coordinates to the navsat and we'll check it out." He glanced at Gwen, who was unhooking the carabiners. They had to go, and this was the tricky part. "Have Ianto prep a hazmat suit or industrial hose or something."
"I do love the firehose," Ianto piped in, and Gwen started. Of course he was listening in. Only Owen wasn't, since he was probably halfway to Glasgow by now, just him, the open road and a car full of Xogs.
Jack terminated the call and sighed. "Ceephus," he muttered as he turned away to walk back down the strut. "Sometimes I hate my job."
Gwen raised her arms so that she could walk along the strut, balance beam like. She had left the ropes lashed to it, in a just-in-case maneuver. Just-in-case she ever did want to come back up. If anyone came up here and saw them, they'd probably have a little bit of a start.
"The game is 'I love my job'."
Jack turned and held out his hand for her and she jumped off the shallow ledge and onto the gravel of the roof. "That's a dumb game. If you hate your job, you should say so."
Gwen let him kiss her hand before pulling it away and rolling her eyes. "I love my job."
Jack's eyes twinkled. "Good answer. On another note," he continued and they walked towards the rooftop door, "That shampoo you bought me? Much better."
Gwen smirked. "Well, I guess we're even for the lip gloss, then," she told him, and then they shut the door behind them and started the long trip down.
END