Disambiguation
Title: Disambiguation
Disclaimer: Being a bloke who likes to slash pretty men doesn't make me RTD, I don't work for the BBC, and as much as I might like to, I don't own Jack or Ianto or any part of Torchwood. I do, however, order pizza under that name on principle.
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Ianto/Ianto.
Rating: Hard R or light NC-17 for some sexuality and a bit of profanity.
Notes/Summary: When the Rift shifts, Ianto finds himself caring for himself in ways he never expected. It's not long before he discovers that small mistakes can make a big difference, and that he might be the only hope for a Jack he's never met. Written for damalan, who gave me the prompt when I said something about needing to write more fluff. Oh, the things I do for this man... ;)
Jack didn’t like this. Not one bit.
He and Gwen had been in Grangetown investigating some weirdness Andy had sent their way when Tosh’s voice had come over the headsets shouting about an infiltration. Seconds later, the Hub’s defenses had cut all communications in and out of the base.
That was an hour ago.
He’d sent Gwen to guard the tourist office door, while he stood on the invisible lift. He touched a finger to his headset. “Lockdown should end in about forty seconds. Be ready to secure the office. I’ll drop into the main Hub. Anything crazy happens - and I mean anything -- and you get the hell out. You understand me?”
“Got it, Jack.”
He felt the locks disengage under his feet with a click. A quick tap on his vortex manipulator and the paving stone under his feet began to sink. He ducked into a crouch and held his Webley at the ready.
“Office is clear, Jack. Waiting for your signal.” Gwen said over his headset.
Below him Owen and Tosh emerged from the autopsy bay looking whole and unhurt.
“Is the Hub clear?” he asked, checking around him as the stone came to rest at the base of the water tower.
Tosh nodded.
“Okay, Gwen. You’re clear to come in. Tell Ianto to come on down, too. I want a full briefing on why we’re doing lockdowns at nine in the morning.”
Owen and Tosh looked at each other.
“Actually, uh…” Owen started, looking worried.
“Ianto’s the reason for the lockdown, Jack.”
# # #
Ianto stood, arms crossed, staring at the man that could only be described as himself. His plain-suited counterpart seemed equally unimpressed, if maybe a little smug. Tosh had done a set of fingerprints on both of them, and Owen had taken a few vials of blood, retina scans, and voice recordings.
“So what are you? Alien? Some sort of clone?”
“I could ask the same thing.”
“Yeah, but you’d be disappointed.” He smiled a little at this and brushed a bit of fluff from the lapel of his pinstriped suit, only to find himself unnerved when his adversary smirked back.
“You seem awfully sure of yourself.”
“I have no reason not to be! I know you’re the imposter!”
“Prove it.”
Ianto stood to his full height. “Okay. Birthdate?”
Plain-suit rattled it off without distress, then returned fire without a beat. “Hometown?”
“Newport. Favorite football team?”
“Not applicable. What year did Newport RFC beat the All-Blacks?”
“1963, and they won 3-0.”
“Ble mae’r tebot?”
“Twll dy din!”
The plain-suited man stifled a laugh. “God, but whoever planted you did his homework. Or hers. Or its. Though I’m not sure I’d have worn that tie with those stripes. Too much texture.”
He rolled his eyes. “And I suppose you think you don’t look like a funeral director.”
“Twpsyn.”
“Ynfytyn.”
“So what makes you think someone planted me here?”
“For a start, I don’t remember there ever being two of me.”
The plain-suited man’s eyes lit up. “Any other big swathes of things you don’t remember? What’d you have for breakfast?”
“Coffee and toast.”
“Marmite?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then it’s obvious you’re a fake. Ugh.”
He snickered and glanced down. “You really think this tie’s too textured for the stripes?”
“I don’t know. Not really. It’s growing on me as a concept.”
“Hm.” The pin-striped Ianto sighed and leaned against the wall. “Okay, then. Tell me everything you remember.”
# # #
Tosh played the CCTV footage again. They had clear shots of one of them arriving for work, but it was dark enough they couldn’t quite make out which suit he was wearing. Fortunately, there was enough camera coverage in the base to establish which one of them had done the coffee that morning.
“Here’s where the second one comes out of the archives,” she pointed out.
Jack nodded, watching as Tosh and Owen subdued two nervous (if compliant) Ianto Joneses at gunpoint. The two men in suits held still and did not move or struggle as Tosh handcuffed each of them in turn.
“Neither of them struggled?”
“No. They both just put their hands behind their heads.”
“That means both of them know security protocols. Owen, what have you got for me?”
“Well, we took some samples - blood, fingerprints, and so on - and I’ve figured it out. At least, I think I have.” Owen frowned.
“Well?”
Owen took a deep breath. “They’re twins.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
Owen tapped at his hand held. Two strands of DNA popped up on the boardroom screen. “The one on the right is our Ianto. The one on the left is the other one. As you can see, they’re exact, just like a pair of identical twins.”
Owen clicked a button, and two thumb prints appeared on screen.
“DNA, though, doesn’t determine everything precisely. It’s more like a set of guidelines. For example, while their fingerprints are similar overall, they’re not exact.” Click. “Neither are their retinas.” Click. “Voice prints. And so on.”
Jack nodded. “And since we’ve got our Ianto’s fingerprints and retina data on file --”
“We can tell which one is which, yeah. It also means Tosh can put the whole Hub down into biometric mode if we’re worried about our spare teaboy making trouble.”
Jack glanced down at his laptop screen and watched the two men arguing back and forth in their cells. The resemblance was uncanny, and he wondered if he would be able to tell them apart if his Ianto’s suit wasn’t striped where the other’s was solid. He was pretty sure he couldn’t.
“Might not be a bad idea to do that just in case. But otherwise, he’s harmless?”
Owen twitched his shoulder involuntarily. Harmless was not a word he associated with Ianto these days. “If you mean that he’s free of any sort of weird implants, virii, super powers, and alien tech? Sure. But -- ”
Jack got his meaning instantly. “But we still don’t know why he’s here, where he came from, or what he’s about. Or, rather -- ” Jack grinned and turned the laptop around to show his team. The pin-striped Ianto and the plain-suited Ianto had stopped shouting and were now having what looked to be a civilized conversation. “We didn’t. Now we do.”
# # #
“Do you remember what time you went down into the archive?”
“Sometime around eight-fifty? I’d made a bit of coffee, then gone down for a set of files. The others weren’t due in until after nine thirty.”
“Okay.”
“That still doesn’t explain how I got into the building. Unless --”
Two pairs of grey eyes went wide.
“Unless that Rift disturbance that the monitors picked up this morning --”
“-- was me walking through a hole in time and space --”
“-- and landing in the wrong Hub.”
They stared at one another for a moment before reaching in union for their Bluetooth headsets.
# # #
Gwen leaned against Jack’s doorframe and gazed up at the the boardroom window. Inside, Toshiko and Ianto (and, well, Ianto) were hard at work trying to pinpoint the moment of the disturbance, and to establish whether or not it was even theoretically possible to figure out where exactly their visitor had come from, and if it might be possible to send him home.
“Do you think it’s safe? You know. Letting him work?”
Jack looked up from the sheaf of papers on his desk and shrugged. “You have a better idea?”
“Well, no. But we don’t really know him, do we? I mean, he’s not really Ianto, is he?”
“I didn’t notice you complaining about his coffee.” Jack gestured toward the mug in her hands and chuckled as she gave it a nervous look. “And besides, Tosh set him up with limited user rights. He can’t get in or out of the Hub on his own, and if you can think of a better way of observing his behavior than letting him behave…”
“But what are we going to do with him? Where will we put him?”
“Actually,” one of the Iantos piped up from the middle of the Hub with a tray of fresh drinks in his hands, “I’ve already taken care of it.”
Gwen exchanged mugs with him a little uncomfortably. “Are you, um…”
“I’m ours. Our guest is upstairs with Tosh.”
Gwen nodded and gave him an uncertain look.
“So,” Jack re-inserted himself into the conversation as he stood and stepped out into the Hub. “Where are we lodging our wandering friend?”
“I’ve found him a suite at a hotel.” Ianto handed Jack a slip of paper. “It’s close to my flat, and if you’d like me to keep an eye on him, I can take the second room. That is, unless, you’d prefer I took him home with me.”
Jack looked at the paper, nodded, and handed it back. “The hotel should be fine. Thanks, Ianto.”
Ianto slipped the note back into his inner jacket pocket, then turned toward the boardroom stairs. Jack went back to his desk. Gwen followed.
“So what was with the paper?”
“What do you mean?” Jack eyed the ever mounting stack of admin then doodled a little in the margins of the top sheet.
“It was blank.”
Jack smirked. “So it was.”
# # #
Actually, there had been a message on the (slightly psychic) paper:
“I think he’s on the level, but I don’t think he’s telling us everything. He keeps staring at you and Gwen.”
Jack hoped his instructions were complete.
# # #
Ianto knocked on the hotel room door, a backpack and two garment bags slung over his shoulder. He was only mildly put off when he himself answered it in nothing more than a pair of striped flannel pants.
“I thought you might be bored, so I brought some things.” He indicated the backpack.
“Looks like you brought enough for two.”
Ianto shrugged.
His doppelganger shut the door to undo the security chain, then opened the door wide enough to admit him. Ianto crossed the room and dropped the bags onto the double bed before wheeling around, pistol drawn.
He was not surprised to find himself equally at gunpoint.
“Why’d you come?”
“As I said, I brought you things. Take a look.”
“Throw me the bag.”
Ianto reached down carefully with his left hand, slowly took the backpack by the straps, and tossed it to his twin’s feet. He watched as the other man unzipped it, dumped it open, and kicked carefully through its contents.
“It’s mostly toiletries and entertainment. I wasn’t sure how close your tastes were to mine. There’s also an envelope with ₤150 in it to fill in the gaps.”
His double took a step toward him. “Did Jack send you?”
“No. I came on my own.”
They lowered their weapons. Ianto set his gun on the nightstand and helped gather up the paperbacks, CDs and other supplies from the floor and put them back in the bag. He gave himself a little smile.
“Should have known I’d go out of my way to be helpful,” the doppelganger chuckled, taking the bag finally and sitting down on the edge of the bed. Ianto joined him, careful not to sit too close.
“Yeah, well. It’s second nature, I suppose.”
They both stared at the television for a moment.
“You’re lucky,” he said finally, fidgeting with the drawstring of his pajama pants. “You’ve still got him.”
“Got who?”
“Jack. My Jack -” The shirtless Ianto’s face broke and he turned away. “He’s dead.”
“Dead? I thought Jack couldn’t die?”
“Yeah. So did we. Owen shot him three times and he sat up. Gwen swore he did the same when Suzie shot him. But we waited for hours. Owen said he was stone cold, no sign of life.”
“But didn’t Gwen sit up with him?” Ianto asked, placing a hand on the other man’s shoulder.
“Gwen slipped and…well, she fell into Abaddon’s shadow.”
“Oh jesus.”
With a sudden sob, his twin’s façade came apart. Ianto reached out and held his other self, letting the man weep against his chest and shoulder.
Ianto listened he recounted how they’d recruited PC Andy Davidson to replace Gwen, how Jack’s death had been covered up, and how Ianto had found himself in control of the daily operations of Torchwood Three after Owen’s nervous breakdown. He found himself stroking his hair, wiping away tears from a too-familiar face.
He was not expecting to be kissed, desperately and on the mouth. He was especially not expecting it to feel as good as it did to have his own hands cupping his face, his own lips against his, his own tongue…
“Ianto?” he whispered questioningly as the less dressed man pulled away.
“Oh shit. Oh fuck, I’m sorry. That was -”
“Insane.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence for a long moment before they realized they were still holding hands.
“Stay?”
Ianto nodded. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned in and kissed himself again.
# # #
Owen had told Ianto on numerous occasions to go fuck himself. Even so, he was fairly certain this wasn’t what their doctor had in mind.
His other self slipped off the bed and down between his knees. He undid his belt, and soon the man on the floor was sucking him off slowly, doing what felt like an impossible (and yet, thoroughly familiar) thing with his tongue.
“So that’s what that feels like,” he gasped.
His counterpart sat up and grinned. “Show me.”
# # #
“Jack?” Ianto stood nervously in the Captain’s office doorway.
“Ianto.” Jack looked at him for a long moment. “You’re ours, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jack sat back. “I thought so. The other one acts like I’ve hurt his feelings.”
Ianto closed the door behind him and sat down on Jack’s desk.
“What if we’d kept you in the morgue? After Abaddon? Would you have --”
“Died?” Jack asked, his face taking on a practiced neutral expression.
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“But you’d have been stuck.”
Jack nodded. “Trapped.”
“Until someone brought you out again.”
Jack gave him a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Not planning on freezing me, are you Ianto?”
“Only if you ask nicely, sir.”
# # #
“Ianto?” Tosh looked up from her workstation. “Could you go get, uh, Ianto? I think he’s in the tourist office.”
“Of course,” he smiled and strode over to the lift.
When he was out of earshot, she let out a tremendous sigh. “You know, I’m never really sure which one of them I’m talking to.”
“Yeah, well blame Jack. He’s the one who said we couldn’t tag them.”
“You wanted to call them Thing One and Thing Two!” Gwen exclaimed.
“And?”
“And you’d think someone with direct experience of his skill with a firearm would know better thank to pick a fight with two of him at once,” Jack deadpanned, emerging from his office. “Is this progress, Tosh?”
“I think so.” She pointed to a column of values. “These numbers represent all the data we were able to gather on the Rift disturbance that dropped Thing Tw - um, Ianto - here.” She blushed at the slip-up, Owen snickered, and Jack sighed.
“And?”
“And I’ve worked out a way to reverse the effect using the Rift manipulator. We should be able to open up a localized tear in reality and drop him back near his point of origin. There’s some margin for error, but…”
The lift door opened and two near-identical men emerged. They walked nearly in step across the concrete and metal of the Hub’s floors until the came to a stop next to the group.
“Tosh,” Jack said as he tried to meet two matching pairs of curious grey eyes. “Tell them.”
# # #
They were in Ianto’s bed tonight. He leaned against his counterpart, sucking his twin’s fingers as they took turns stroking one another and exploring. It was surreal, being touched by someone who knew him so well - better than Jack, even - and who responded so easily and passionately to the most logical things.
“Do you want to, ah -”
He bit his lip and nodded, then moaned as the other man’s slick fingers entered him.
“Use my name.”
# # #
When he was certain that the other him was asleep, Ianto took the notebook and a pen from the backpack.
Ianto, he wrote in as steady a hand as he could manage.
I’m going to tell you to do something that sounds insane. I can only hope that you trust me, and that our worlds are more alike than they are different.
Three pages later, he tore the pages loose, folded them up, and slipped them into his own coat pocket. He tried not to think about what would happen if Tosh’s attempt failed, or of Jack being trapped in the Dark.
# # #
The three of them stood in Jack’s office. Outside, they could hear Tosh preparing and testing the ranges on the Rift manipulator, checking it against her readings.
“You’re sure you want to risk it?” Ianto asked. “What Tosh is doing is highly experimental. Dangerous, even. It could damage the Hub on either side.”
“I know the risks. I helped document the risks,” the other man said with a sigh. “And as kind as you’ve been, my team needs me. I can only imagine the sort of hysterics they’re in at this point.”
“Forget the hysterics,” Jack chuckled. “Imagine the coffee.”
“He’s got a point,” Ianto grinned at his counterpart. Jack was right about the strange look in the other man’s eyes when they were near him (or to a lesser extent, Gwen).
“Jack? Ianto? Um, other Ianto? I think we’re ready.”
Captain Harkness clapped a hand on each of their shoulders and led them out into the Hub.
The air began to shimmer and taste of metal as Tosh activated the Rift manipulator from her workstation. Owen stood well back, holding Gwen around the waist. The Ianto and Jack also stood out of view and watched as the space began to actually ripple and warp in front of them. There was a puff of air and suddenly the view began to stabilize. Another Hub, only very slightly offset waited on the other side of the ripple.
The double stepped forward and peered through. “Hello?”
“Tosh?!” a male voice called out from across the Rift. “This reading is off the scale! And what the bloody hell is -- IANTO!” A t-shirt clad Andy Davidson stared, dumbfounded.
“Andy, step back, could you?”
He nodded and gulped and took a couple of steps back. “Where are you?!”
“I’ll explain in a second, Andy. Just stand back. I don’t know what will happen if you fall through.” He checked his backpack and moved toward the portal.
“Ianto, wait!”
Everyone turned to face the other Ianto as he retrieved the slightly battered note and pressed it into his twin’s hand.
“What’s this?” He was puzzled, turning it over in his hands.
“Either a gift or a whole lot of heartache. Maybe both. Read it when you get home.”
He chuckled at that. “You’re starting to sound like him.” He glanced in Jack’s direction.
They held each other’s eyes for a moment.
“Take care of yourself, Ianto.”
“Da boch, Mr. Jones.”
Ianto snorted, pulling his doppelganger into a tight embrace.
And then he was gone.
# # #
He and Jack were sprawled on Ianto’s floor, kissing and giggling, drinking champagne.
“So what was it like? Babysitting yourself?”
Ianto pondered it. “Educational.”
“Educational?” Jack chuckled and filled his glass again before toying with Ianto’s collar and thumbing a button open.
“Mmm.” He took a sip. “Very. I’d say I got to know myself quite well, in fact.”
“Is that so?” Jack set down his glass and cupped Ianto’s face in his hands. Their mouths met and they kissed lightly while Jack unbuttoned his lover’s shirt. He slid it off of Ianto’s shoulders and gently pushed him down to the floor before stopping suddenly.
“Jack?”
“Is that -” Jack pointed to a red and purple mark on the younger man’s chest. “That’s a -”
“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘hickey,’ sir.” He sat up slightly to take another sip of champagne from his glass.
“Who gave you a hickey?! I don’t give you hickeys.”
Ianto arched a brow and watched the wheels turn in Jack Harkness’ head.
“No.”
Ianto nodded and grinned.
“Ianto Dafydd Jones. You didn’t.”
“Both nights.”
Jack gaped. “I can’t believe you let him give you a hickey.”
“And I can’t believe you’re not already reminding me why you don’t need to.” He grinned and nipped at Jack’s mouth.
---
Translations:
“Ble mae’r tebot?” - Where’s the teapot?
“Twll dy din!” - Bugger off!
“Twpsyn.” - “Idiot.”
“Ynfytyn.” - “Maniac.”
“Da boch.” - “Goodbye.” (formal)
Disclaimer: Being a bloke who likes to slash pretty men doesn't make me RTD, I don't work for the BBC, and as much as I might like to, I don't own Jack or Ianto or any part of Torchwood. I do, however, order pizza under that name on principle.
Pairings: Jack/Ianto, Ianto/Ianto.
Rating: Hard R or light NC-17 for some sexuality and a bit of profanity.
Notes/Summary: When the Rift shifts, Ianto finds himself caring for himself in ways he never expected. It's not long before he discovers that small mistakes can make a big difference, and that he might be the only hope for a Jack he's never met. Written for damalan, who gave me the prompt when I said something about needing to write more fluff. Oh, the things I do for this man... ;)
Jack didn’t like this. Not one bit.
He and Gwen had been in Grangetown investigating some weirdness Andy had sent their way when Tosh’s voice had come over the headsets shouting about an infiltration. Seconds later, the Hub’s defenses had cut all communications in and out of the base.
That was an hour ago.
He’d sent Gwen to guard the tourist office door, while he stood on the invisible lift. He touched a finger to his headset. “Lockdown should end in about forty seconds. Be ready to secure the office. I’ll drop into the main Hub. Anything crazy happens - and I mean anything -- and you get the hell out. You understand me?”
“Got it, Jack.”
He felt the locks disengage under his feet with a click. A quick tap on his vortex manipulator and the paving stone under his feet began to sink. He ducked into a crouch and held his Webley at the ready.
“Office is clear, Jack. Waiting for your signal.” Gwen said over his headset.
Below him Owen and Tosh emerged from the autopsy bay looking whole and unhurt.
“Is the Hub clear?” he asked, checking around him as the stone came to rest at the base of the water tower.
Tosh nodded.
“Okay, Gwen. You’re clear to come in. Tell Ianto to come on down, too. I want a full briefing on why we’re doing lockdowns at nine in the morning.”
Owen and Tosh looked at each other.
“Actually, uh…” Owen started, looking worried.
“Ianto’s the reason for the lockdown, Jack.”
# # #
Ianto stood, arms crossed, staring at the man that could only be described as himself. His plain-suited counterpart seemed equally unimpressed, if maybe a little smug. Tosh had done a set of fingerprints on both of them, and Owen had taken a few vials of blood, retina scans, and voice recordings.
“So what are you? Alien? Some sort of clone?”
“I could ask the same thing.”
“Yeah, but you’d be disappointed.” He smiled a little at this and brushed a bit of fluff from the lapel of his pinstriped suit, only to find himself unnerved when his adversary smirked back.
“You seem awfully sure of yourself.”
“I have no reason not to be! I know you’re the imposter!”
“Prove it.”
Ianto stood to his full height. “Okay. Birthdate?”
Plain-suit rattled it off without distress, then returned fire without a beat. “Hometown?”
“Newport. Favorite football team?”
“Not applicable. What year did Newport RFC beat the All-Blacks?”
“1963, and they won 3-0.”
“Ble mae’r tebot?”
“Twll dy din!”
The plain-suited man stifled a laugh. “God, but whoever planted you did his homework. Or hers. Or its. Though I’m not sure I’d have worn that tie with those stripes. Too much texture.”
He rolled his eyes. “And I suppose you think you don’t look like a funeral director.”
“Twpsyn.”
“Ynfytyn.”
“So what makes you think someone planted me here?”
“For a start, I don’t remember there ever being two of me.”
The plain-suited man’s eyes lit up. “Any other big swathes of things you don’t remember? What’d you have for breakfast?”
“Coffee and toast.”
“Marmite?”
“Of course.”
“Well, then it’s obvious you’re a fake. Ugh.”
He snickered and glanced down. “You really think this tie’s too textured for the stripes?”
“I don’t know. Not really. It’s growing on me as a concept.”
“Hm.” The pin-striped Ianto sighed and leaned against the wall. “Okay, then. Tell me everything you remember.”
# # #
Tosh played the CCTV footage again. They had clear shots of one of them arriving for work, but it was dark enough they couldn’t quite make out which suit he was wearing. Fortunately, there was enough camera coverage in the base to establish which one of them had done the coffee that morning.
“Here’s where the second one comes out of the archives,” she pointed out.
Jack nodded, watching as Tosh and Owen subdued two nervous (if compliant) Ianto Joneses at gunpoint. The two men in suits held still and did not move or struggle as Tosh handcuffed each of them in turn.
“Neither of them struggled?”
“No. They both just put their hands behind their heads.”
“That means both of them know security protocols. Owen, what have you got for me?”
“Well, we took some samples - blood, fingerprints, and so on - and I’ve figured it out. At least, I think I have.” Owen frowned.
“Well?”
Owen took a deep breath. “They’re twins.”
Jack raised his eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
Owen tapped at his hand held. Two strands of DNA popped up on the boardroom screen. “The one on the right is our Ianto. The one on the left is the other one. As you can see, they’re exact, just like a pair of identical twins.”
Owen clicked a button, and two thumb prints appeared on screen.
“DNA, though, doesn’t determine everything precisely. It’s more like a set of guidelines. For example, while their fingerprints are similar overall, they’re not exact.” Click. “Neither are their retinas.” Click. “Voice prints. And so on.”
Jack nodded. “And since we’ve got our Ianto’s fingerprints and retina data on file --”
“We can tell which one is which, yeah. It also means Tosh can put the whole Hub down into biometric mode if we’re worried about our spare teaboy making trouble.”
Jack glanced down at his laptop screen and watched the two men arguing back and forth in their cells. The resemblance was uncanny, and he wondered if he would be able to tell them apart if his Ianto’s suit wasn’t striped where the other’s was solid. He was pretty sure he couldn’t.
“Might not be a bad idea to do that just in case. But otherwise, he’s harmless?”
Owen twitched his shoulder involuntarily. Harmless was not a word he associated with Ianto these days. “If you mean that he’s free of any sort of weird implants, virii, super powers, and alien tech? Sure. But -- ”
Jack got his meaning instantly. “But we still don’t know why he’s here, where he came from, or what he’s about. Or, rather -- ” Jack grinned and turned the laptop around to show his team. The pin-striped Ianto and the plain-suited Ianto had stopped shouting and were now having what looked to be a civilized conversation. “We didn’t. Now we do.”
# # #
“Do you remember what time you went down into the archive?”
“Sometime around eight-fifty? I’d made a bit of coffee, then gone down for a set of files. The others weren’t due in until after nine thirty.”
“Okay.”
“That still doesn’t explain how I got into the building. Unless --”
Two pairs of grey eyes went wide.
“Unless that Rift disturbance that the monitors picked up this morning --”
“-- was me walking through a hole in time and space --”
“-- and landing in the wrong Hub.”
They stared at one another for a moment before reaching in union for their Bluetooth headsets.
# # #
Gwen leaned against Jack’s doorframe and gazed up at the the boardroom window. Inside, Toshiko and Ianto (and, well, Ianto) were hard at work trying to pinpoint the moment of the disturbance, and to establish whether or not it was even theoretically possible to figure out where exactly their visitor had come from, and if it might be possible to send him home.
“Do you think it’s safe? You know. Letting him work?”
Jack looked up from the sheaf of papers on his desk and shrugged. “You have a better idea?”
“Well, no. But we don’t really know him, do we? I mean, he’s not really Ianto, is he?”
“I didn’t notice you complaining about his coffee.” Jack gestured toward the mug in her hands and chuckled as she gave it a nervous look. “And besides, Tosh set him up with limited user rights. He can’t get in or out of the Hub on his own, and if you can think of a better way of observing his behavior than letting him behave…”
“But what are we going to do with him? Where will we put him?”
“Actually,” one of the Iantos piped up from the middle of the Hub with a tray of fresh drinks in his hands, “I’ve already taken care of it.”
Gwen exchanged mugs with him a little uncomfortably. “Are you, um…”
“I’m ours. Our guest is upstairs with Tosh.”
Gwen nodded and gave him an uncertain look.
“So,” Jack re-inserted himself into the conversation as he stood and stepped out into the Hub. “Where are we lodging our wandering friend?”
“I’ve found him a suite at a hotel.” Ianto handed Jack a slip of paper. “It’s close to my flat, and if you’d like me to keep an eye on him, I can take the second room. That is, unless, you’d prefer I took him home with me.”
Jack looked at the paper, nodded, and handed it back. “The hotel should be fine. Thanks, Ianto.”
Ianto slipped the note back into his inner jacket pocket, then turned toward the boardroom stairs. Jack went back to his desk. Gwen followed.
“So what was with the paper?”
“What do you mean?” Jack eyed the ever mounting stack of admin then doodled a little in the margins of the top sheet.
“It was blank.”
Jack smirked. “So it was.”
# # #
Actually, there had been a message on the (slightly psychic) paper:
“I think he’s on the level, but I don’t think he’s telling us everything. He keeps staring at you and Gwen.”
Jack hoped his instructions were complete.
# # #
Ianto knocked on the hotel room door, a backpack and two garment bags slung over his shoulder. He was only mildly put off when he himself answered it in nothing more than a pair of striped flannel pants.
“I thought you might be bored, so I brought some things.” He indicated the backpack.
“Looks like you brought enough for two.”
Ianto shrugged.
His doppelganger shut the door to undo the security chain, then opened the door wide enough to admit him. Ianto crossed the room and dropped the bags onto the double bed before wheeling around, pistol drawn.
He was not surprised to find himself equally at gunpoint.
“Why’d you come?”
“As I said, I brought you things. Take a look.”
“Throw me the bag.”
Ianto reached down carefully with his left hand, slowly took the backpack by the straps, and tossed it to his twin’s feet. He watched as the other man unzipped it, dumped it open, and kicked carefully through its contents.
“It’s mostly toiletries and entertainment. I wasn’t sure how close your tastes were to mine. There’s also an envelope with ₤150 in it to fill in the gaps.”
His double took a step toward him. “Did Jack send you?”
“No. I came on my own.”
They lowered their weapons. Ianto set his gun on the nightstand and helped gather up the paperbacks, CDs and other supplies from the floor and put them back in the bag. He gave himself a little smile.
“Should have known I’d go out of my way to be helpful,” the doppelganger chuckled, taking the bag finally and sitting down on the edge of the bed. Ianto joined him, careful not to sit too close.
“Yeah, well. It’s second nature, I suppose.”
They both stared at the television for a moment.
“You’re lucky,” he said finally, fidgeting with the drawstring of his pajama pants. “You’ve still got him.”
“Got who?”
“Jack. My Jack -” The shirtless Ianto’s face broke and he turned away. “He’s dead.”
“Dead? I thought Jack couldn’t die?”
“Yeah. So did we. Owen shot him three times and he sat up. Gwen swore he did the same when Suzie shot him. But we waited for hours. Owen said he was stone cold, no sign of life.”
“But didn’t Gwen sit up with him?” Ianto asked, placing a hand on the other man’s shoulder.
“Gwen slipped and…well, she fell into Abaddon’s shadow.”
“Oh jesus.”
With a sudden sob, his twin’s façade came apart. Ianto reached out and held his other self, letting the man weep against his chest and shoulder.
Ianto listened he recounted how they’d recruited PC Andy Davidson to replace Gwen, how Jack’s death had been covered up, and how Ianto had found himself in control of the daily operations of Torchwood Three after Owen’s nervous breakdown. He found himself stroking his hair, wiping away tears from a too-familiar face.
He was not expecting to be kissed, desperately and on the mouth. He was especially not expecting it to feel as good as it did to have his own hands cupping his face, his own lips against his, his own tongue…
“Ianto?” he whispered questioningly as the less dressed man pulled away.
“Oh shit. Oh fuck, I’m sorry. That was -”
“Insane.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence for a long moment before they realized they were still holding hands.
“Stay?”
Ianto nodded. After a moment’s hesitation, he leaned in and kissed himself again.
# # #
Owen had told Ianto on numerous occasions to go fuck himself. Even so, he was fairly certain this wasn’t what their doctor had in mind.
His other self slipped off the bed and down between his knees. He undid his belt, and soon the man on the floor was sucking him off slowly, doing what felt like an impossible (and yet, thoroughly familiar) thing with his tongue.
“So that’s what that feels like,” he gasped.
His counterpart sat up and grinned. “Show me.”
# # #
“Jack?” Ianto stood nervously in the Captain’s office doorway.
“Ianto.” Jack looked at him for a long moment. “You’re ours, right?”
“Yes, sir.”
Jack sat back. “I thought so. The other one acts like I’ve hurt his feelings.”
Ianto closed the door behind him and sat down on Jack’s desk.
“What if we’d kept you in the morgue? After Abaddon? Would you have --”
“Died?” Jack asked, his face taking on a practiced neutral expression.
“Yeah.”
“No.”
“But you’d have been stuck.”
Jack nodded. “Trapped.”
“Until someone brought you out again.”
Jack gave him a grin that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Not planning on freezing me, are you Ianto?”
“Only if you ask nicely, sir.”
# # #
“Ianto?” Tosh looked up from her workstation. “Could you go get, uh, Ianto? I think he’s in the tourist office.”
“Of course,” he smiled and strode over to the lift.
When he was out of earshot, she let out a tremendous sigh. “You know, I’m never really sure which one of them I’m talking to.”
“Yeah, well blame Jack. He’s the one who said we couldn’t tag them.”
“You wanted to call them Thing One and Thing Two!” Gwen exclaimed.
“And?”
“And you’d think someone with direct experience of his skill with a firearm would know better thank to pick a fight with two of him at once,” Jack deadpanned, emerging from his office. “Is this progress, Tosh?”
“I think so.” She pointed to a column of values. “These numbers represent all the data we were able to gather on the Rift disturbance that dropped Thing Tw - um, Ianto - here.” She blushed at the slip-up, Owen snickered, and Jack sighed.
“And?”
“And I’ve worked out a way to reverse the effect using the Rift manipulator. We should be able to open up a localized tear in reality and drop him back near his point of origin. There’s some margin for error, but…”
The lift door opened and two near-identical men emerged. They walked nearly in step across the concrete and metal of the Hub’s floors until the came to a stop next to the group.
“Tosh,” Jack said as he tried to meet two matching pairs of curious grey eyes. “Tell them.”
# # #
They were in Ianto’s bed tonight. He leaned against his counterpart, sucking his twin’s fingers as they took turns stroking one another and exploring. It was surreal, being touched by someone who knew him so well - better than Jack, even - and who responded so easily and passionately to the most logical things.
“Do you want to, ah -”
He bit his lip and nodded, then moaned as the other man’s slick fingers entered him.
“Use my name.”
# # #
When he was certain that the other him was asleep, Ianto took the notebook and a pen from the backpack.
Ianto, he wrote in as steady a hand as he could manage.
I’m going to tell you to do something that sounds insane. I can only hope that you trust me, and that our worlds are more alike than they are different.
Three pages later, he tore the pages loose, folded them up, and slipped them into his own coat pocket. He tried not to think about what would happen if Tosh’s attempt failed, or of Jack being trapped in the Dark.
# # #
The three of them stood in Jack’s office. Outside, they could hear Tosh preparing and testing the ranges on the Rift manipulator, checking it against her readings.
“You’re sure you want to risk it?” Ianto asked. “What Tosh is doing is highly experimental. Dangerous, even. It could damage the Hub on either side.”
“I know the risks. I helped document the risks,” the other man said with a sigh. “And as kind as you’ve been, my team needs me. I can only imagine the sort of hysterics they’re in at this point.”
“Forget the hysterics,” Jack chuckled. “Imagine the coffee.”
“He’s got a point,” Ianto grinned at his counterpart. Jack was right about the strange look in the other man’s eyes when they were near him (or to a lesser extent, Gwen).
“Jack? Ianto? Um, other Ianto? I think we’re ready.”
Captain Harkness clapped a hand on each of their shoulders and led them out into the Hub.
The air began to shimmer and taste of metal as Tosh activated the Rift manipulator from her workstation. Owen stood well back, holding Gwen around the waist. The Ianto and Jack also stood out of view and watched as the space began to actually ripple and warp in front of them. There was a puff of air and suddenly the view began to stabilize. Another Hub, only very slightly offset waited on the other side of the ripple.
The double stepped forward and peered through. “Hello?”
“Tosh?!” a male voice called out from across the Rift. “This reading is off the scale! And what the bloody hell is -- IANTO!” A t-shirt clad Andy Davidson stared, dumbfounded.
“Andy, step back, could you?”
He nodded and gulped and took a couple of steps back. “Where are you?!”
“I’ll explain in a second, Andy. Just stand back. I don’t know what will happen if you fall through.” He checked his backpack and moved toward the portal.
“Ianto, wait!”
Everyone turned to face the other Ianto as he retrieved the slightly battered note and pressed it into his twin’s hand.
“What’s this?” He was puzzled, turning it over in his hands.
“Either a gift or a whole lot of heartache. Maybe both. Read it when you get home.”
He chuckled at that. “You’re starting to sound like him.” He glanced in Jack’s direction.
They held each other’s eyes for a moment.
“Take care of yourself, Ianto.”
“Da boch, Mr. Jones.”
Ianto snorted, pulling his doppelganger into a tight embrace.
And then he was gone.
# # #
He and Jack were sprawled on Ianto’s floor, kissing and giggling, drinking champagne.
“So what was it like? Babysitting yourself?”
Ianto pondered it. “Educational.”
“Educational?” Jack chuckled and filled his glass again before toying with Ianto’s collar and thumbing a button open.
“Mmm.” He took a sip. “Very. I’d say I got to know myself quite well, in fact.”
“Is that so?” Jack set down his glass and cupped Ianto’s face in his hands. Their mouths met and they kissed lightly while Jack unbuttoned his lover’s shirt. He slid it off of Ianto’s shoulders and gently pushed him down to the floor before stopping suddenly.
“Jack?”
“Is that -” Jack pointed to a red and purple mark on the younger man’s chest. “That’s a -”
“I believe the word you’re looking for is ‘hickey,’ sir.” He sat up slightly to take another sip of champagne from his glass.
“Who gave you a hickey?! I don’t give you hickeys.”
Ianto arched a brow and watched the wheels turn in Jack Harkness’ head.
“No.”
Ianto nodded and grinned.
“Ianto Dafydd Jones. You didn’t.”
“Both nights.”
Jack gaped. “I can’t believe you let him give you a hickey.”
“And I can’t believe you’re not already reminding me why you don’t need to.” He grinned and nipped at Jack’s mouth.
---
Translations:
“Ble mae’r tebot?” - Where’s the teapot?
“Twll dy din!” - Bugger off!
“Twpsyn.” - “Idiot.”
“Ynfytyn.” - “Maniac.”
“Da boch.” - “Goodbye.” (formal)