The Oft-Mentioned Mile (1/?)
The Oft-Mentioned Mile
fandom: Torchwood (maybe a bit of Dr Who crossover, maybe)
summary: the obligatory bodyswap fic
genre: likely more drama than comedy
rating: R (for swearing and sexual situations)
set late season 2, spoilers through "Something Borrowed"
pairings: Jack/Ianto (also some Tosh/Owen, Gwen/Rhys)
LJ cut:
Jack clears his throat rather loudly, causing Gwen to jerk her head up and stare at him rather than continue to glare intently at the small, spherical device on the table. Anything is better than looking at her own hands. She shudders just from thinking about it and refuses to look down, impatiently fixing her attention on Jack - who at the moment happens to be Ianto - and awaiting an explanation.
This is all his fault, she decides. Bloody Torchwood. Granted, she's technically the one who triggered the... metallic grapefruit... but it's not as though she knew what it was. They could have very well warned her. And in a way that didn't involve Owen trying to snatch the shiny ball away from her, Tosh grabbing onto him to prevent that action, Jack running to the rescue like some dashing hero and latching onto the sphere as well in an attempt to deactivate it, and Ianto latching onto him with a shout of, "Jack, don't be an idiot!"
After which they were all promptly enveloped in a bright and extremely disorienting light, and the next thing she knew, she was staring at herself, thoroughly traumatized at the realization that she'd just been split in two. Naturally, that thought was followed by pondering whether she was the good twin or the evil one, because that's how it always went. Until she realized that she was neither, and that she was in fact... Owen.
Who is now apparently Toshiko, or so she assumes from the cursing. And is he currently... oh dear lord... She does not want to know.
Gwen quickly looks back to Ianto, or rather Jack. And he is Jack... isn't he? He certainly started ordering them all around as if he's Jack. Hopefully he's about to fix this mess that he got them all into. And he's clearly to blame for not simply telling her to drop the ball. Any of them could have told her that, or just left her alone, since she couldn't very well have switched with herself, now could she? So it's really everybody's fault but hers.
Although she's not one to assign blame.
"I know I'm the last person to enforce office sexual harassment policies," Jack says and proceeds to wink at himself - who Gwen presumes is Ianto - before continuing, "but considering our present circumstances, I feel it may be prudent to set a few guidelines about what constitutes improper touching..."
It takes Owen a moment to realize that all eyes are on him. He stops prodding at his - *Toshiko's* - breasts and removes his hand from under her blouse. "Right... sorry about that." He wriggles uncomfortably around for a bit, rolling his shoulders this way and that. "Seriously though, I've got underwire stabbing into my ribcage."
"Oh for pity's sake, Owen, just take off the bra!" Tosh finally blurts, her cheeks flushing pink.
Tosh is currently occupying Gwen's body, and Gwen would very much like it back.
"Thank you, Tosh, you're a doll," Owen declares while sticking his hands back up the blouse and yanking the bra out the sleeve a moment later and dropping it on the conference table.
Gwen is nearly flabbergasted by the display, although not quite speechless. "How the hell did you manage that?" She's never been able to successfully remove her bra that way without getting all tangled up.
"Well, it's not like I haven't had plenty of practice taking these things off," he comments. Jack snickers. "Off of women! Sheesh, get your perverted minds out of the gutter." He shoves the bra across the table to Tosh.
She awkwardly scoops it up and looks around in confusion for somewhere to put it before attempting to shove it into the pocket of her coat. Gwen makes a mental note to return it to Tosh once everybody is properly switched back. She doesn't want to accidentally go home with Tosh's underwear in her jacket pocket and need to explain that to Rhys when he goes poking around looking for mints.
"Don't know why you feel the need to wear that painful contraption," Owen continues. "Your boobs seem plenty perky enough to hold themselves up."
Tosh manages to turn an even brighter shade of red. "Umm, thank you, Owen..." She proceeds to try to duck behind her hair to hide her blushing.
And how come Tosh got Gwen's body and Gwen didn't get to be Tosh? It just isn't right that she's stuck being Owen. She feels like she's gotten rather screwed-over by this whole arrangement.
"Am I the only one concerned with how we're going to fix this?" Gwen asks. "How am I supposed to explain to Rhys that I'm a man now? I don't think our wedding vows covered that. In sickness and in health, yes, but not in a coworker's body!"
"Dead body," Owen helpfully supplies. "Afraid you're right about the vows thing. Technically he's got a proper out with the whole 'till death' bit..."
"It isn't funny," Gwen snaps.
"It's a little funny," Ianto comments, then frowns. "Sorry, I seem to have gotten Jack's bad sense of humor."
"Although not his accent," Tosh remarks.
Jack snaps his fingers. "You're right! I knew something about this was bothering me."
That is what's bothering him?! Okay, so it's a bit strange hearing Ianto's voice with an American accent and Jack's with a Welsh one, but they all seem to have retained their own particular speech patterns. Accents are clearly dependent on where a person learned to talk rather than what body is doing the talking, so it seems perfectly logical to her. What isn't logical is that none of them seem properly panicked about this ridiculous ordeal. Gwen's rather thankful that Owen's body doesn't actually need to breathe or she'd likely be hyperventilating right about now. Clearly everybody but her has gone insane.
Case in point, their intrepid leader is currently singing. "Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do..." Jack frowns. "I didn't get those gorgeous Welsh vowels."
Ianto sighs as if pandering to a small child, then mumbles, "Do, ti, la, sol, fa, mi, re, do."
Jack beams. "Yep, there they are."
Somebody please kill her, Gwen thinks. Just kill her now. She stands abruptly. "Have you all lost your minds? We're all in each other bodies and the only things bothering you lot are underwire and accents!"
Tosh gives her a reassuring smile, which isn't reassuring at all since she is currently smiling with Gwen's own face. "The device was able to switch us fine once, I'm sure I can get it to switch us all back again. If not, the last one is down in the archives somewhere and we can use it."
"The last one? You've all seen this before?" She sits back down in a huff. "Thanks for waiting so long to let me know!"
Ianto reaches for his cup of coffee that's still on the table from earlier that morning. "Hmm, yes, I believe we first encountered it on an episode of Star Trek." He casually takes a sip from his mug, then looks at it with curiosity and exchanges it for Jack's, which is apparently more to the liking of his new taste buds.
"I think you mean Stargate, mate," Owen corrects.
"Oh, the one with Machello!" Tosh pipes in.
Ianto rolls his eyes. "The one with Kirk and Janice Lester. Spock starts a mutiny. It's a classic."
Gwen drops her head against the table. "It's like I'm trapped in a bad sci-fi convention nightmare."
"One of these devices dropped through the rift a few years back," Jack explains, finally being serious. "It switched the lovely young couple who found it. After a day, the light went back to being blue again and we managed to switch them back. They claimed the experience made them much closer."
"Who would invent such stupid a thing?" Gwen wonders, reluctantly lifting her face from where she'd planted it. Owen has a heavy head, she decides. The pesky light on alien bodyswapper is stubbornly yellow. She's tempted to poke at it.
"Marriage counselors on New Los Vegas," Jack answers simply. "Early 42nd century, I believe. It was part of a campaign to get people to literally walk a mile in each other's shoes before tying the knot. Of course they were outlawed soon after due to the decline in marriage rates, which was the planet's main source of income. Still quite popular as black-market items, though."
Gwen can't decide if any of that is true or if Jack has already mastered Ianto's ability of delivering the perfect deadpan. She reaches for her own mug of more-than-likely cold coffee.
"Oi!" Owen shouts, immediately stopping her and removing the cup from her hand. "That might be all fine and dandy going in, but you won't like the way it comes out."
Jack wrinkles up his face in disgusted agreement. Ianto frowns at him in apparent disapproval of Jack making such expressions with his face. "I can unfortunately vouch for that."
Gwen drops her head to the table once more.
"Hey!" Owen warns. "You bruise it, you bought it!"
"I can't take 24 hours of this," Gwen pouts.
"I'm afraid the New Los Vegas day is 32 hours," Ianto comments, quite straight-faced.
So it looks like Jack's story is actually true. Either that or he and Ianto are both masters of spontaneous lying. "You're serious?"
"Deathly," Owen says. "You eat anything, drink anything, or damage anything while you're in my body, there'll be hell to pay."
"Right. Consider this a team building exercise, kids." Jack actually has the nerve to make that sound like it isn't an utterly bad thing. "For the next 32 hours, we're walking in each others' shoes."
Gwen stares down at herself in a small amount of horror. How is she to handle 32 hours as Owen? "This isn't fair."
"Hey, you're not the only one to get an impromptu sex change," Owen gripes. He then stares at Gwen's coffee which he's still holding. "Oh wait one bloody minute... I'm Tosh!" He gulps down the coffee in one long swallow then all but dives for the box of pastries in the center of the table. He sinks his teeth into a donut and groans in sheer pleasure.
"Refill," he demands around a mouthful of custard filling, shoving his empty mug in front of Jack. When the action gets nothing but a raised eyebrow, Owen slides the mug over a place so that it's actually in front of Ianto. "Captain Teaboy, fetch. And has anybody considered nametags?"
Ianto rolls his eyes yet again and stands, taking Owen's mug. Jack gets up also and catches Ianto's wrist. "I'll get it. So long as we're doing this, might as well do it properly."
"You're going to refill Owen's coffee?" Ianto seems surprised, and fair bit touched, at Jack's willingness to take on his job.
"Why not?" Jack eagerly takes the cup. "I've got a mountain of paperwork sitting on my desk. Or rather, *your* desk..."
Touched turns to annoyance as Jack walks away. Then Ianto smirks, seemingly deciding two can play that game. "By the way, Jack... nice arse."
Jack pauses and backtracks a few steps. "Did you just compliment your own ass?" he asks in amusement.
"Only trying to walk a mile, sir."
"Watch it," Jack warns. "My rules about improper touching didn't include anything about not fondling your own body while somebody else is wearing it. So careful what you start, I might be game."
"What makes you think I'm not?" He moves a step closer.
Jack's eyebrows shoot up in surprise at that, debating whether Ianto is serious. Then they both seem to ponder rather to be aroused or disgusted by the idea.
Gwen coughs, then loudly clears her throat, hoping to stop what is the most disturbing game of Chicken she's ever witnessed.
"I think I'm going to vomit," Owen comments.
Gwen nods in agreement before realizing the statement might not have been about Jack and Ianto's flirting, but rather the fact that he's just finished off a half-dozen donuts. She seems to be the only one whose attention is transfixed on Jack and Ianto. She glances over at Tosh who is absentmindedly poking at her laptop.
Gwen tries to find something to occupy her interest as well, but can't think of a single thing. She settles for staring at Owen's watch and willing time to move faster.
-----
TBC...
fandom: Torchwood (maybe a bit of Dr Who crossover, maybe)
summary: the obligatory bodyswap fic
genre: likely more drama than comedy
rating: R (for swearing and sexual situations)
set late season 2, spoilers through "Something Borrowed"
pairings: Jack/Ianto (also some Tosh/Owen, Gwen/Rhys)
LJ cut:
Jack clears his throat rather loudly, causing Gwen to jerk her head up and stare at him rather than continue to glare intently at the small, spherical device on the table. Anything is better than looking at her own hands. She shudders just from thinking about it and refuses to look down, impatiently fixing her attention on Jack - who at the moment happens to be Ianto - and awaiting an explanation.
This is all his fault, she decides. Bloody Torchwood. Granted, she's technically the one who triggered the... metallic grapefruit... but it's not as though she knew what it was. They could have very well warned her. And in a way that didn't involve Owen trying to snatch the shiny ball away from her, Tosh grabbing onto him to prevent that action, Jack running to the rescue like some dashing hero and latching onto the sphere as well in an attempt to deactivate it, and Ianto latching onto him with a shout of, "Jack, don't be an idiot!"
After which they were all promptly enveloped in a bright and extremely disorienting light, and the next thing she knew, she was staring at herself, thoroughly traumatized at the realization that she'd just been split in two. Naturally, that thought was followed by pondering whether she was the good twin or the evil one, because that's how it always went. Until she realized that she was neither, and that she was in fact... Owen.
Who is now apparently Toshiko, or so she assumes from the cursing. And is he currently... oh dear lord... She does not want to know.
Gwen quickly looks back to Ianto, or rather Jack. And he is Jack... isn't he? He certainly started ordering them all around as if he's Jack. Hopefully he's about to fix this mess that he got them all into. And he's clearly to blame for not simply telling her to drop the ball. Any of them could have told her that, or just left her alone, since she couldn't very well have switched with herself, now could she? So it's really everybody's fault but hers.
Although she's not one to assign blame.
"I know I'm the last person to enforce office sexual harassment policies," Jack says and proceeds to wink at himself - who Gwen presumes is Ianto - before continuing, "but considering our present circumstances, I feel it may be prudent to set a few guidelines about what constitutes improper touching..."
It takes Owen a moment to realize that all eyes are on him. He stops prodding at his - *Toshiko's* - breasts and removes his hand from under her blouse. "Right... sorry about that." He wriggles uncomfortably around for a bit, rolling his shoulders this way and that. "Seriously though, I've got underwire stabbing into my ribcage."
"Oh for pity's sake, Owen, just take off the bra!" Tosh finally blurts, her cheeks flushing pink.
Tosh is currently occupying Gwen's body, and Gwen would very much like it back.
"Thank you, Tosh, you're a doll," Owen declares while sticking his hands back up the blouse and yanking the bra out the sleeve a moment later and dropping it on the conference table.
Gwen is nearly flabbergasted by the display, although not quite speechless. "How the hell did you manage that?" She's never been able to successfully remove her bra that way without getting all tangled up.
"Well, it's not like I haven't had plenty of practice taking these things off," he comments. Jack snickers. "Off of women! Sheesh, get your perverted minds out of the gutter." He shoves the bra across the table to Tosh.
She awkwardly scoops it up and looks around in confusion for somewhere to put it before attempting to shove it into the pocket of her coat. Gwen makes a mental note to return it to Tosh once everybody is properly switched back. She doesn't want to accidentally go home with Tosh's underwear in her jacket pocket and need to explain that to Rhys when he goes poking around looking for mints.
"Don't know why you feel the need to wear that painful contraption," Owen continues. "Your boobs seem plenty perky enough to hold themselves up."
Tosh manages to turn an even brighter shade of red. "Umm, thank you, Owen..." She proceeds to try to duck behind her hair to hide her blushing.
And how come Tosh got Gwen's body and Gwen didn't get to be Tosh? It just isn't right that she's stuck being Owen. She feels like she's gotten rather screwed-over by this whole arrangement.
"Am I the only one concerned with how we're going to fix this?" Gwen asks. "How am I supposed to explain to Rhys that I'm a man now? I don't think our wedding vows covered that. In sickness and in health, yes, but not in a coworker's body!"
"Dead body," Owen helpfully supplies. "Afraid you're right about the vows thing. Technically he's got a proper out with the whole 'till death' bit..."
"It isn't funny," Gwen snaps.
"It's a little funny," Ianto comments, then frowns. "Sorry, I seem to have gotten Jack's bad sense of humor."
"Although not his accent," Tosh remarks.
Jack snaps his fingers. "You're right! I knew something about this was bothering me."
That is what's bothering him?! Okay, so it's a bit strange hearing Ianto's voice with an American accent and Jack's with a Welsh one, but they all seem to have retained their own particular speech patterns. Accents are clearly dependent on where a person learned to talk rather than what body is doing the talking, so it seems perfectly logical to her. What isn't logical is that none of them seem properly panicked about this ridiculous ordeal. Gwen's rather thankful that Owen's body doesn't actually need to breathe or she'd likely be hyperventilating right about now. Clearly everybody but her has gone insane.
Case in point, their intrepid leader is currently singing. "Do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do..." Jack frowns. "I didn't get those gorgeous Welsh vowels."
Ianto sighs as if pandering to a small child, then mumbles, "Do, ti, la, sol, fa, mi, re, do."
Jack beams. "Yep, there they are."
Somebody please kill her, Gwen thinks. Just kill her now. She stands abruptly. "Have you all lost your minds? We're all in each other bodies and the only things bothering you lot are underwire and accents!"
Tosh gives her a reassuring smile, which isn't reassuring at all since she is currently smiling with Gwen's own face. "The device was able to switch us fine once, I'm sure I can get it to switch us all back again. If not, the last one is down in the archives somewhere and we can use it."
"The last one? You've all seen this before?" She sits back down in a huff. "Thanks for waiting so long to let me know!"
Ianto reaches for his cup of coffee that's still on the table from earlier that morning. "Hmm, yes, I believe we first encountered it on an episode of Star Trek." He casually takes a sip from his mug, then looks at it with curiosity and exchanges it for Jack's, which is apparently more to the liking of his new taste buds.
"I think you mean Stargate, mate," Owen corrects.
"Oh, the one with Machello!" Tosh pipes in.
Ianto rolls his eyes. "The one with Kirk and Janice Lester. Spock starts a mutiny. It's a classic."
Gwen drops her head against the table. "It's like I'm trapped in a bad sci-fi convention nightmare."
"One of these devices dropped through the rift a few years back," Jack explains, finally being serious. "It switched the lovely young couple who found it. After a day, the light went back to being blue again and we managed to switch them back. They claimed the experience made them much closer."
"Who would invent such stupid a thing?" Gwen wonders, reluctantly lifting her face from where she'd planted it. Owen has a heavy head, she decides. The pesky light on alien bodyswapper is stubbornly yellow. She's tempted to poke at it.
"Marriage counselors on New Los Vegas," Jack answers simply. "Early 42nd century, I believe. It was part of a campaign to get people to literally walk a mile in each other's shoes before tying the knot. Of course they were outlawed soon after due to the decline in marriage rates, which was the planet's main source of income. Still quite popular as black-market items, though."
Gwen can't decide if any of that is true or if Jack has already mastered Ianto's ability of delivering the perfect deadpan. She reaches for her own mug of more-than-likely cold coffee.
"Oi!" Owen shouts, immediately stopping her and removing the cup from her hand. "That might be all fine and dandy going in, but you won't like the way it comes out."
Jack wrinkles up his face in disgusted agreement. Ianto frowns at him in apparent disapproval of Jack making such expressions with his face. "I can unfortunately vouch for that."
Gwen drops her head to the table once more.
"Hey!" Owen warns. "You bruise it, you bought it!"
"I can't take 24 hours of this," Gwen pouts.
"I'm afraid the New Los Vegas day is 32 hours," Ianto comments, quite straight-faced.
So it looks like Jack's story is actually true. Either that or he and Ianto are both masters of spontaneous lying. "You're serious?"
"Deathly," Owen says. "You eat anything, drink anything, or damage anything while you're in my body, there'll be hell to pay."
"Right. Consider this a team building exercise, kids." Jack actually has the nerve to make that sound like it isn't an utterly bad thing. "For the next 32 hours, we're walking in each others' shoes."
Gwen stares down at herself in a small amount of horror. How is she to handle 32 hours as Owen? "This isn't fair."
"Hey, you're not the only one to get an impromptu sex change," Owen gripes. He then stares at Gwen's coffee which he's still holding. "Oh wait one bloody minute... I'm Tosh!" He gulps down the coffee in one long swallow then all but dives for the box of pastries in the center of the table. He sinks his teeth into a donut and groans in sheer pleasure.
"Refill," he demands around a mouthful of custard filling, shoving his empty mug in front of Jack. When the action gets nothing but a raised eyebrow, Owen slides the mug over a place so that it's actually in front of Ianto. "Captain Teaboy, fetch. And has anybody considered nametags?"
Ianto rolls his eyes yet again and stands, taking Owen's mug. Jack gets up also and catches Ianto's wrist. "I'll get it. So long as we're doing this, might as well do it properly."
"You're going to refill Owen's coffee?" Ianto seems surprised, and fair bit touched, at Jack's willingness to take on his job.
"Why not?" Jack eagerly takes the cup. "I've got a mountain of paperwork sitting on my desk. Or rather, *your* desk..."
Touched turns to annoyance as Jack walks away. Then Ianto smirks, seemingly deciding two can play that game. "By the way, Jack... nice arse."
Jack pauses and backtracks a few steps. "Did you just compliment your own ass?" he asks in amusement.
"Only trying to walk a mile, sir."
"Watch it," Jack warns. "My rules about improper touching didn't include anything about not fondling your own body while somebody else is wearing it. So careful what you start, I might be game."
"What makes you think I'm not?" He moves a step closer.
Jack's eyebrows shoot up in surprise at that, debating whether Ianto is serious. Then they both seem to ponder rather to be aroused or disgusted by the idea.
Gwen coughs, then loudly clears her throat, hoping to stop what is the most disturbing game of Chicken she's ever witnessed.
"I think I'm going to vomit," Owen comments.
Gwen nods in agreement before realizing the statement might not have been about Jack and Ianto's flirting, but rather the fact that he's just finished off a half-dozen donuts. She seems to be the only one whose attention is transfixed on Jack and Ianto. She glances over at Tosh who is absentmindedly poking at her laptop.
Gwen tries to find something to occupy her interest as well, but can't think of a single thing. She settles for staring at Owen's watch and willing time to move faster.
-----
TBC...